Cat In The Dark. Cat To The Dogs. Cat Spitting Mad. Cat On The Money

Dulcie looked the cards over with widening eyes, her ears sharp forward, her tail twitching. Suddenly she leaped for the closet.

But Joe was ahead of her, sniffing at the lineup of shoes.

“All the same size,” Joe said.

“And all the same stink,” she replied. The cats looked at each other, their eyes dark with excitement.

Greeley began to laugh.

“You got it, you cats. You got it! You been looking for Pearl Ann Jamison.” He guffawed, emitting rum-laced fumes, rocking back and forth.

“You got it. This Pearl Ann Jamison,” Greeley shouted, spittling rum-laden spray, “this Pearl Ann fits them Jockey shorts just fine.”

24 [????????: pic_25.jpg]

AT THREE A.M., Max Harper pulled into Sam’s All Night Burger up on Highway One. He’d been looking for Mavity Flowers but, spotting Clyde’s yellow ‘29 Chevy, he had wheeled in and parked beside it. He sat a moment admiring the car’s gleaming finish and boxy, trim lines. Clyde had been working on this one for two years, and she was a beauty. Not many women had this much attention lavished on them-or turned out as elegant, either.

Clipping his phone to his belt beside his radio, he locked the unit and headed into the restaurant. Stopping at the counter to order cherry pie and coffee, he moved on back, where Damen sat hunched over a sandwich and coffee. Sliding into the booth, he picked up the menu out of habit.“Any luck?”

Clyde shook his head. He looked dead for sleep.“Not a sign of Mavity. And I haven’t seen Wilma or Charlie for a while. If either one found her, they’d take her back to Wilma’s. Her phone doesn’t answer.”

“I saw Wilma around midnight, up on Ridgeview. She had hoped Bernine would ride with her, said she guessed Bernine had gone out.”

“Only Bernine Sage would party while her latest love interest lies cold in the morgue.”

“He isn’t her love interest anymore-he’s no use to her now.” Harper reached for a cigarette, tamped it, stuck it in his mouth unlit. “I wired Atlanta on this Warren Cumming. As Mavity said, charges against Cumming were dropped. His partner, Troy Hoke, was convicted, did a year for theft by fraud against Dora and Ralph Sleuder and five other victims. He’s been out just over six months.

“Shortly after Hoke’s trial, Cumming left the state. Gave a Florida forwarding address, a private postal box. Forfeited on the lease of his Atlanta apartment, closed his bank account, took the balance in cash.”

“Big money?”

“Very small. I’m guessing he had larger accounts in other names and that the Florida move was a red herring.”

Billie, the straw-blond night waitress, brought Harper’s pie and coffee. She was sixtyish and smelled of stale cigarettes, her thin face dry and deeply lined. Setting the pie down, she spilled cherry juice on the table. Scowling, saying nothing, she wiped it up.

“What’s with you?” Harper said.

“Fight with LeRoy,” she said shortly. She looked hard at Harper. “What’s with these guys? Does he have to mess around with that stupid motorcycleallthe time?”

“Better than another woman,” Harper told her.

“I don’t know, Max. Perfume is easier to get out of the laundry than grease.”

Harper tried to look sympathetic. When she’d gone, Clyde said, “Why doesn’t she leave him?”

“Never will. She just likes bitching about him.” But he looked distressed, too. Despite dealing with the dregs of the world, Harper never got used to people staying in a bad marriage. His own happy marriage had ended far too soon, when Millie died of cancer; he didn’t have a lot of sympathy for people who put up with anything less than a completely wonderful union. To Max’s way of thinking, it was better to be alone. He tasted his pie, ate half of it before he spoke again.

“After Hoke was released, he received several phone calls to his Atlanta apartment.” He glanced up at Clyde. “All were placed from the Sleuders’ phone. And a few days after the last call, he left the state. That was four months ago.”

Clyde had stopped eating, was quiet.

“Shortly before the Sleuders flew out here on vacation, they placed several calls to a Molena Point pay phone a block from the Davidson Building.

“The way I see it, Dora Sleuder stumbled onto Cumming’s whereabouts by chance. Try this: Dora makes a casual phone call to her aunt-evidently they talked once or twice a month, family stuff, keeping in touch. During the conversation, Mavity mentions her new investment counselor, brags about howwell she’s doing.

“She tells Dora how wonderful Jergen is and describes him-you know Mavity, going on about Jergen’s youthful looks and silver hair. The description fits Cumming, and Dora starts asking questions.”

Clyde nodded.“Like, how old is he? How does he dress and talk? How he furnishes his office, what kind of car he prefers?”

“Exactly. Now assume that Mavity’s description was so much like Cumming that it got Dora and Ralph wondering, made them decide to check up on this Jergen.”

“But?”

“They knew that Hoke was just out of prison-they’d kept track of him. And they knew he’d be burning to get at Cumming, for setting him up. Hoke did all the time for that scam. Cumming didn’t do a lick.

“Dora and Ralph decide that this Jergen could be Warren Cumming, and they sick Hoke on him, encourage Hoke to come on out here and take a look.”

“But how did they find Hoke? Through his parole officer?”

Harper nodded.“We have the parole officer’s phone record, and we’ve talked with him. He remembers a woman calling him, said she was Hoke’s niece, that Hoke had some things of her mother’s that he’d put away before he went to prison, that she wanted to get them back. Parole officer wouldn’t discloseany information, but he took her phone number, passed it on to Hoke-he’s obliged to do that. Figures he’ll watch developments. This officer keeps good records, the Sleuders’ number was there in his logbook.

“So Hoke calls Dora, and she tells him about Winthrop Jergen. According to Hoke’s phone bill, they talk for over an hour. The next day Hoke moves out of his apartment, leaves Atlanta.”

Harper slipped a photograph from his pocket, handed it across.

The man in the picture was thin and pale. Light brown hair, long and tied back. One low shoulder. A bony face, thin eyebrows.

Clyde stared.“The guy who hangs around the apartments. Mavity calls him ‘the watcher.’ This is Troy Hoke?”

“Yep. And we have Hoke’s prints, from the Atlanta file.” He mopped up cherry juice with a forkful of crust.

“Did they match the prints from the murder scene?”

“The only prints we got at the scene were for Jergen himself, and for Mavity and Charlie.”

“You didn’t get Pearl Ann’s prints? They should be all over the place. She cleaned for him regularly, and she did the repairs. Except?” Clyde thought a minute. “Pearl Ann wears gloves. Has some allergy. Gloves to work on the Sheetrock, to clean, to paint.”

“Charlie told me that. Rubber gloves or sometimes a soft leather pair.”

Clyde nodded.“She takes them off several times a day, to put on some kind of prescription hand cream.”

He looked intently at Harper.“Sounds like this will nail Hoke-but what about Mavity? It won’t help us find Mavity.” They were speaking softly. At three in the morning, the restaurant was nearly empty. Down at the far end of the counter two men in jeans and plaid shirts sat eating, intent on their fried eggs. In a booth near the door, an elderly couple was drinking coffee, each reading a section of a newspaper. At the counter near them, a striking blond was nibbling at a sandwich and sipping orange juice. As Harper signaled for a refill of coffee, his cellular phone buzzed. Picking it up, he started to speak, then went silent.

Watching him, Clyde thought the call was being transferred. The blond got up from the counter, wrapped her unfinished sandwich in a paper napkin, paid her check and left. Clyde watched through the window as she swung into a Chrysler van with the windows open and a huge white dog hanging his head out, watched her feeding the dog little bites of the sandwich. Across from him, Harper had stiffened.

Harper felt his blood go chill. The voice on the line was female, a smooth voice, a velvety, insinuating voice that made the hackles on his neck rise. He could never get used to hearing this woman. He didn’t know her name, had never seen her, didn’t know anything about her, but every time she called, the nerves in his stomach began to twitch.

“Captain Harper? Are you still there?”

He said nothing.

“Captain Harper, you have just sealed the scene of a murder up on Venta Street.”

“Have I?”

“Your men didn’t touch the computer. You left it on, and you have a Bureau man coming down early in the morning to check it out.”

Harper remained silent. The pie in his stomach had turned sour.No onecould know about the Bureau man except his own people and Charlie Getz. He tried to figure who, in his own department, would breach security, would pass along such information. The officers at the scene had been Brennan, Wendell, Ray, and Case. The two medics had left before he called the Bureau.

The caller was waiting for him to respond. He motioned for Clyde to listen. Clyde came around the table and sat down, shoving against Harper, jamming his ear to the phone.

“Captain Harper, there are two code words for the computer that your Bureau man will want. Jergen’s code, to open his financial files, isCairo.

“The second code word was used by Pearl Ann Jamison. It should open a set of files that Pearl Ann seems to have hidden from Jergen, on his own computer. That word isTiger.I believe those are both Georgia towns; I looked them up on the map.

“In looking for suspects,” the caller said softly, “you need to be looking for a man. Pearl Ann and he are?”

She gasped, Max heard a faint yelp of alarm and the line went dead.

Harper sat frozen, staring at the phone. Clyde exploded out of the booth like he was shot, threw a five-dollar bill on the table and fled out the door.

“Hold it,” Harper shouted. “What the hell?” He stared after Clyde perplexed, watched the yellow roadster scorch out of the parking lot moving like a racing car and disappear down the hill toward the village.

He wanted to go after Clyde. Instead, he sat thinking about that soft voice.

You need to be looking for a man, Pearl Ann and he are?And then the gasp or yelp, a strange little sound, and then silence.

The two arewhat?

Working together? Pearl Ann and a man are working together? Involved? Involved in Jergen’s death? Pearl Ann and who? Troy Hoke? And then that startled yelp, and Clyde taking off like his boots were on fire.

He motioned for more coffee, and dug in his pocket for some antacid. He didn’t want to know where Clyde was headed. He didn’t want to follow the yellow car. He didn’t want to know who the caller was, with the soft and velvety voice.

25 [????????: pic_26.jpg]

IN THE DARKEST CORNER beneath Wilma’s bed, Dulcie crouched, listening to the footsteps coming down the hall, ready to run if Bernine looked under and found her. At the first sound of someone approaching she had abandoned the phone and dived for the shadows, leaving Max Harper shouting through the receiver. If Bernine heard him andpicked up the phone and started asking questions-and Harper started asking questions-all hell would break loose. There was no one else in the house, to have made the call.

But she daren’t leap onto the bed again and try to hang up, there was no time, Bernine was nearly at the door?

She’d waited all night to make this call, waited for Bernine to get off the phone and now here she came when she should be in bed drifting off to sleep.

It had been nearly one A.M. when Dulcie slipped in through her cat door exhausted from listening for hours to drunken Greeley Urzey and breathing his stink of rum in Pearl Ann’s pokey little room. They’d had to listen to him agonizing over Mavity and to his wild plans for finding her, which amounted to nothing, because by midnight he had drunk himself into a stupor. Azrael had looked intensely pleased that Mavity might have met with foul play, his amber eyes gleaming with malice. Pure hatred, Dulcie thought. The cat was filled with hate, that was his nature-loathing for anyone who didn’t worship him.

Racing home, bolting in through her cat door, she’d realized that Wilma wasn’t home; her car wasn’t in the drive or in the open garage. She’d pictured Wilma still cruising the dark streets searching for Mavity, looking for Mavity’s little VW.

Bernine’s car was at the curb, but Bernine had gone out to dinner with a real estate broker. Dulcie hoped she was still out. But then, heading for the phone, she’d heard Bernine’s voice.

Slipping through the dark dining room, she’d caught the scent of Bernine’s perfume and seen her sitting at Wilma’s desk talking on the phone. She’d listened for only a few minutes before she decided Bernine was making up with her estranged live-in. She slipped on into Wilma’s bedroom, wishing they had two phone lines.

The curtains had not been drawn, and the faint light from the distant street lamp bathed the room in soft shadows. The bed was smoothly made. Leaping up onto the flowered, quilted spread, she had settled down to wait.

She’d waited for nearly two hours for Bernine to finish, had slipped periodically out into the hall to listen as the conversation swung from mushy love talk to angry argument to sweet words again in a sickening display of human indecision and female guile. Bernine had moved the phone to the couch, lay curled up onherpatch of velvet, sweet-talking this bozo.

On the bed she’d dozed, waked to listen to Bernine going on and on, to see the light still burning in the living room and beneath the guest room door and feeling her stomach churn with impatience at the delay.

But then at last she heard Bernine leave the living room, head down the hall, and from the guest room she could hear little rustling sounds. Either Bernine was packing to leave or she was getting ready for bed.

Easing Wilma’s bedroom door closed, catching it with her paw just before it latched, she’d leaped to the night table, nosing at the phone.

Her sensible self said,Wait until Bernine’s light goes out-don’t do this while she’s awake.

But she’d waited too long. Her impatient self said,She won’t hear you. What are you afraid of? It’s practically morning, let’s get on with it.

Lifting the headset by its cord, she had dropped it on the pillow, squinched up her paw and punched in Harper’s number, cocking her head to the receiver. Joe was an old hand at this, but she still got nervous. The first time she’d dialed and heard a voice at the other end, she’d felt as weird as if she were communicating with someone on Mars.

When the dispatcher answered, she’d boldly asked for Max Harper.

“Captain Harper is not on duty. Lieutenant Brennan can help you.”

“I have information to give to Captain Harper personally. About the Winthrop Jergen murder. Information that Harper must have before the Bureau agent arrives in the morning. I must give it to him now; I cannot call again.”

It had taken some time for the dispatcher to switch the call to Harper’s cellular phone, a degree of electronic sophistication that further awed Dulcie. The delay made her so edgy that her skin began to twitch, but at last Harper came on the line. She had tried to speak clearly, but she hadn’t dared lift her voice above a whisper.

“Captain Harper, I have some information about Winthrop Jergen.”

Harper didn’t respond.

“Captain Harper? Are you still there?” He didn’t answer, but she could hear him breathing. “Captain Harper, you have just sealed the scene of a murder up on Venta Street. Your men didn’t touch the computer. You left it on, and you have a Bureau man coming down early in the morning to check it out.”

Only silence and his ragged breathing. Her paws began to sweat. She wondered if Harper was nervous, too. This was so strange, the two of them linked not only by the wonder of electronics but by a far greater phenomenon, by a miracle that she hardly understood herself-and that Max Harper could never bring himself to believe. She imagined herself like those photographs where a cat’s face is superimposed over a woman’s face, becoming one, and she almost giggled.

“Captain Harper, there are two code words for the computer that your Bureau man will want. Jergen’s code, to open his financial files, isCairo.

“The second code word was used by Pearl Ann Jamison. It should open a set of files that Pearl Ann seems to have hidden from Jergen, on his own computer. That word isTiger.I believe those are both Georgia towns?”

She was just starting to explain about Pearl Ann and Troy Hoke when she heard the footsteps; gasping a sharp mew, she leaped to the floor and under the bed. Above her Harper’s angry voice had shouted,“Hold it. What the hell?”

Now as the bedroom door opened and the light flashed on, Dulcie’s every muscle was tensed to sprint past Bernine’s feet and down the hall to safely. Thank God the phone above her was silent-yet she’d heard no click as if Harper had hung up. She listened for those sharp beeps when the phone was left off the hook. She was so frightened that the sounds in the bedroom hardly registered: the hush of the closet door opening, someone rummaging among Wilma’s clothes. All she could think wasIf Bernine picks up the phone, what if he’s still on the line? No one could have made that call, no one-there’s no other human in the house. Only the cat crouched under the bed scared out of her kitty mind.Shivering, she listened to thewhishof garments from the closet.

Then she smelled Wilma’s scent, Wilma’s subtle bath powder.

Peering out from beneath the spread, she saw Wilma’s bare feet as Wilma pulled on her slippers. Mewling with relief, she came out, curving around Wilma’s ankles, purring so hard she trembled.

Wilma picked her up, stared into her face.“What?” she whispered, glancing toward the closed door. “What’s the matter?”

“I thoughtI thought you were Bernine,” she breathed, snuggling against Wilma.

Only then did Wilma see the phone lying on the bed. She raised a disapproving eyebrow at Dulcie.“You didn’t get my note?”

“What note? You left a note? Bernine?”

Wilma put her down on the bed, hung up the phone, and went down the hall. Dulcie heard her cross the kitchen and open the back door. She returned with a small, folded paper.“I left it tucked in the frame of your cat door, but only a little bit showing so Bernine wouldn’t notice.” As she moved to pull the bedroom door closed, Dulcie, peering down the hall, saw that Bernine’s light had gone out. Had Bernine gone to sleep? Or was she standing just inside, straining to hear?

Wilma unfolded the paper and laid it on the bed.

Have gone to look for Mavity. Don’t stay here alone. Go over to Joe’s, now, where you’ll be safe.

Dulcie looked at her intently.“Did you really think Bernine would?”

“I don’t know what Bernine would do. But all night, while we looked for Mavity, I worried about you. Twice I swung by. When Bernine’s light wasn’t on, I felt easier. She must have gotten home very late.”

“She came in about one. But she was on the phone for hours, talking to the guy she was living with. Weeping, shouting. Sweet-talking. What histrionics. Maybe she’ll move out. You didn’t find Mavity?”

“No.” Wilma sat down on the bed, tired and drawn. “And when I think of Jergen’s grisly death, I’m afraid for her. If Mavity saw the killer, her life isn’t worth much.” She looked at Dulcie a long time. “What is his death about? What’s happening? Dulcie, what do you know about this?”

Dulcie looked back at her, panicked about what to do.

She had tried to tell Captain Harper, tonight, that Pearl Ann was Troy Hoke. Now, should she tell Wilma?

But what good? Wilma daren’t tell Harper. He’d ask how she knew, and why she hadn’t told him before. And if she said she’d just found out, he’d want to knowhowshe learned Pearl Ann’s secret on the same day of the murder. Wilma’s sudden knowledge would implicate her in a way difficult to talk herself out of.

Wilma did not lie well to law enforcement, particularly to Max Harper. She was too truthful within her own profession. And if she attempted some hastily contrived excuse, Harperwouldbe suspicious. Dulcie looked at her blankly, shrugged, and said nothing.

Wilma was turning down the bed, folding the quilted chintz back while Dulcie prowled across it, when a loud knocking from the back door startled them and they heard Clyde shouting.

Racing for the kitchen, Wilma jerked the door open. Behind her, Dulcie leaped to the breakfast table. Clyde rushed in, his voice loud with alarm.“Where is she? What hap??”

“Shhh,” Wilma whispered, grabbing his arm.“Don’t wake Bernine.What’s wrong?”

Clyde’s stubbled cheeks were dark and rough, his dark hair tangled. The underarms of his jogging suit were sweaty. When he saw Dulcie, he stopped shouting. Pulling out a chair, he sat down glaring at her, his face red with frustration. “You just about gave me heart failure. What the hell were you doing? What the hell happened here?”

Dulcie looked at him, puzzled.

“My God, Dulcie. When you called Harper-when you made that awful, frightened cry, I thought someone was killing you.” He lowered his voice, glancing in the direction of the guest room. “That was bloodcurdling-that was the next thing to a yowl on the phone!”

“You were listening? Where were you?” Dulcie cocked her head. “And how did you know where I was?”

“Where else would you be? Except maybe my house. I came here first?” Clyde sighed. “Youmewed,Dulcie-you almostyowledinto the damned phone. Harper looked amazed, looked? I thought someone had snatched you up and was wringing your stupid cat neck.” He glared hard at her. “These phone calls, Dulcie?”

“I didn’t yowl. I didn’t mew. I simply caught my breath. I thought,” she said softly, “I thought I heard Bernine coming.”

He simply looked at her.

“I thought she’d catch me with the phone. But then it wasn’t Bernine, it was Wilma. What did Harper say?”

“He didn’tsayanything. I don’t know what he said. I was out of there-came flying down here thinking you were being strangled. We were clear up at Sam’s, on the highway. My God?”

Dulcie licked his hand. She was really very touched.“How could I know you were listening? I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Why the hell wouldn’t I be upset? And can you imagine what would happen if Harper heard you reallymeow?With all the questions he already has about you two, don’t you think he’d just about go crazy? Questions I can’t answer for him, Dulcie. Questions I wouldn’t dare answer.”

Clyde put his head in his hands.“Sometimes, Dulcie, between you and Joe, I can’t handle this stuff.”

She patted his hand with a soft paw. He looked so distressed that she didn’t know whether to feel sorry for him or roll over laughing.

But still, she thought, Clyde handled most situations very well. From the moment Joe discovered he was endowed with human speech, that he could carry on a conversation in the English language and read the written word, Clyde had weathered Joe’s-and her own-unusual lifestyle with a minimum of emotional chaos. He had indulged in very few out-of-control shouting spells. He had exhibited no mind-numbing bouts of terror that she knew of. He had even paid Joe’s deli bills without undue grousing.

He had even put up with Joe’s reading the front page first in the mornings and demanding anchovies for breakfast. Not until this morning, she thought, had he really lost it.

She patted his hand again and rubbed her whiskers against his knuckles.“You shouldn’t get so worked up-it’s bad for human blood pressure. You can see that I’m all right. It was just a simple phone call.”

“Asimplephone call? Simple?You should have seen Harper’s face.” Clyde sighed deeply. “You don’t seem to realize, Dulcie, how this stuff upsets Harper.”

Wilma rose from the table. Turning away, she took the milk from the refrigerator and busied herself making cocoa.

“Every rime you and Joe meddle,” Clyde said, “every time you phone Harper with some wild tip, he gets suspicious all over again. And he starts making skewered remarks, laying the whole damned thing in my lap.”

“What whole damned thing?” Dulcie said softly, trying to keep her temper.

“He starts hinting that he wants answers. But he’s too upset to come right out with the real question. And that isn’t like Harper. He’s the most direct guy I know. But this? Dulcie, this stuff is just too much.”

She stared sweetly into Clyde’s face. “Why is helping him solve a crime awhole damned thing,as you put it? Why is catching a murderer, to say nothing of boosting the department’s statistics and impressing the mayor and the city council with Harper’s absolutely perfect, hundred percent record?”

“Can it, Dulcie. I’ve heard all that. You’re beginning to sound just like Joe. Going on and on with this ego-driven?”

“Oh, you can be rude!” She was so angry she raised her armored paw, facing him boldly, waiting for an apology.

She would not, several months ago, have dared such behavior with Clyde. When she first discovered her ability to speak, she had felt so shy she’d even been embarrassed to speak to Wilma.

Even when she and Joe began to discover the history and mythology of their lost race, to know that they were not alone, that there were others like them-and even though Clyde and Wilma read the research, too-it had taken all her courage to act natural and carry on a normal conversation. It had been months before she would speak to Clyde.

Wilma poured the cocoa and poured Dulcie a bowl of warm milk. Clyde sat trying to calm his temper.“Dulcie, let me explain. Max Harper lives a life totally oriented to hard facts. His world is made up of cold, factual evidence and logically drawn conclusions based on that evidence.”

“I know that.” She did not want to hear a lecture.

“How do you think Harper feels when the evidence implies something that heknowsis totally impossible? What is he supposed to do when no one in the world would believe what the evidence tells him?”

“But?”

“Tonight, when Harper’s phone rang, the minute he heard your voice, he went white. If you’d seen him?”

“But it was only a voice on the phone. He didn’t?”

“Your voice-the snitch’s voice-has him traumatized. This mysterious female voice that he links with all the past incidents? Oh, hell,” Clyde said. “I don’t need to explain this to you. You know what he suspects. You know you make him crazy.”

Dulcie felt incredibly hurt.“The tips Joe and I have given him have solved three murders,” she said quietly.

Wilma sat down at the table, cradling her cup of cocoa.

Clyde said,“Every crime where you and Joe have meddled, Harper has found cat hairs tainting the evidence-and sometimes pawprints.Pawprints, Dulcie!Your marks are all over the damned evidence. Do you think this doesn’t upset him? And now, tonight, you yowl into the damned telephone.”

“I didn’tyowl.”

“Youknow the way he looks at you and Joe.Joetells you the kind of stuff Harper says to me. How would you like it if Max Harper ended up in the funny farm-because of you two?”

“There is no way Max Harper is going to end up in a mental hospital. Talk about overdramatizing. Half of Harper’s comments are just putting you on. And he only talks that way after a few beers.”

Wilma refilled Clyde’s cocoa cup and tried to turn the conversation. “You didn’t find any trace of Mavity?”

Clyde shook his head.

“We’ll start early in the morning,” she said. “We can canvas the shops that were closed last night, see if anyone saw her.”

“The whole department will be doing that. Mavity is a prime suspect.” He reached to stroke Dulcie, wanting to make amends.

Reluctantly Dulcie allowed him to pet her. She couldn’t believe that Max Harper would really suspect Mavity of killing Jergen. If he did suspect Mavity, he needed to know about Pearl Ann. She rose and moved away from Clyde, stood looking at him and Wilma until she had their full attention, until Clyde stopped glowering and waited for her to speak.

“Mavity isn’t guilty,” she told them. “I was trying to tell Harper that, on the phone.”

“How do you know that?” Wilma said softly.

“Pearl Ann Jamison is the one Harper wants. I wastryingtotellhim that.”

They both stared at her.

“Pearl Ann Jamison,” Dulcie said, “is a guy in drag. I believe that he’s the killer.”

Clyde burst out laughing.“Come on, Dulcie. Just because Pearl Ann’s strong, and a good carpenter, doesn’t mean she’s a guy. You?”

“Are you saying I don’t know what I’m talking about?”

“Of course not. I just think you and Joe? Joe’s never mentioned this. What would make you think?”

“I know the difference between male and female,” she said tartly. “Which is more than you and Wilma seem to have figured out. When you get past the Jasmine perfume, Pearl Ann smells like a man. Without the perfume, we’d have known at once.”

“Shesmellsdifferent? You’re basing this wild accusation on asmell?”

“Of course he smells different. Testosterone, Clyde. He smells totally male. It’s not my fault that humans are so-challenged when it comes to the olfactory skills.”

Wilma watched the two of them solemnly.

“Pearl Ann smells like a man,” Dulcie repeated. “Half the clothes in her closet belong to a man. The IDs hidden in her room-driver’s licenses and credit cards, are for several different men.”

Clyde sighed.

“One ID is in the name of Troy Hoke. He was?”

That brought Clyde up short.“Where did you hear mat name?”

“I just told you. Pearl Ann has an ID for Troy Hoke. If you don’t believe me or Joe, then ask Greeley-Greeley knows all about Pearl Ann.Helet us into her room in the Davidson Building.Heshowed us the driver’s licenses and credit cards hidden in the light fixture. He told us where Hoke parks the car he drives, that none of you have seen. An eight-year-old gray Chrysler.”

They were both gawking at her, two looks of amazement that quite pleased her.

“That’s where Greeley’s been all this time,” she said patiently. “Camping in a storeroom at the Davidson Building.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Wilma said. “It’s not like you to keep something?”

This was really too much.“I just did tell you,” she hissed angrily. Clyde’s skeptical questions were one thing, she was used to Clyde’s argumentative attitude. But for Wilma to question her-that hurt. “We just found out tonight,” she said shortly and turned her back on Wilma, leaped off the table, and trotted away to the living room. If they didn’t want to believe her, that was their problem. She’d call Harper back at once and tell him about Troy Hoke.

Leaping to the desk, she had just taken the phone cord in her teeth when the instrument shrilled, sending her careening off again.

The phone rang three times before Wilma ran in and snatched it from the cradle. She listened, didn’t speak. She patted the desk for Dulcie to jump up, but Dulcie turned away.

“What hospital?” Wilma said.

On the floor, Dulcie stopped washing.

“How bad is she?” Wilma said softly. “Can we see her?” And in a moment she hung up the phone and hurried away to dress and find her keys.

26 [????????: pic_27.jpg]

MAVITY’S hospital room at Salinas Medical was guarded by a thin, young deputy who had been on duty most of the night. His chin was stubbled with pale whiskers, and his uniform was wrinkled. Sitting on a straight-backed chair just outside Mavity’s half-open door, he was enjoying an order of waffles and bacon served in a plastic carton. A Styrofoam cup of coffee sat on the floor beside his chair. He was present not only to assure that the suspect did not escape-a most unlikely event, considering Mavity’s condition-but to bar intruders and protect the old woman in case she was not Jergen’s killer but was a witness to his death.

Mavity’s room was not much larger than a closet. The steel furniture was old and scarred, but the white sheets and blanket were snowy fresh. She slept fitfully, her breathing labored, her left hand affixed to an IV tube, her right hand clutching the blanket. A white bandage covered most of her head, asif she were wearing the pristine headgear of some exotic eastern cult. She had been in the hospital since one A.M., when she was transferred there by ambulance from an alley in Salinas where she had been found lying unconscious near her wrecked VW. She had not been able to tell the police or the nurses her name or where she lived. The Salinas police got that information from the registration of her wrecked car. They had notified the Molena Point PD only after an alert was faxed to them that a woman of Mavity’s description was missing and was wanted for questioning in last evening’s murder.

Salinas Medical was an hour’s drive from Molena Point, lying inland where the weather was drier and warmer. The hospital complex consisted of half a dozen Spanish-style buildings surrounded by a circular drive. It was a training facility for medical staff and a bulwark of specialized medical services for the area, including an excellent cardiac unit and a long-term-care wing for patients in need of intensive nursing. Wilma, Clyde, and Charlie arrived at Salinas Medical at five-thirty A.M.

When Wilma had received Max Harper’s phone call at four that morning, she and Clyde left her house in her car, making two stops, the first to drop Dulcie off at Clyde’s place, an arrangement about which Dulcie was not happy. The last Wilma saw of the little cat, Dulcie was sulking alone on Clyde’s steps, her ears down, her head hanging, looking as abandoned as she could possibly manage.

Wilma knew that the instant she drove away Dulcie would bolt inside to Joe, pacing and lashing her tail, complaining about the indignities a cat was subjected to by uncaring humans.

“They won’t let you into the hospital,” Wilma had told her. “And I don’t want you alone here with Bernine.”

“I could go in a shopping bag. They’d think I was extra clothes or homemade cookies. Don’t you thinkIcare about Mavity? Don’t you thinkIcare that that man might have killed her?”

“Or thatshemight have killed Jergen?”

“Nonsense.Youknow she didn’t. I would fit in that canvas book tote. You could just?”

“Hospital security checks all parcels. They won’t let you in. They’d throw you out in the street.”

“But?”

“Stay with Joe,” Wilma had snapped, and had unceremoniously tossed Dulcie into the car where she hunched miserably on the front seat.

The second stop had been to pick up Charlie, who was waiting in front of her building before the antique shop, sucking on a mug of coffee and snuggled in a fleece-lined denim jacket. She slid into the front seat between Clyde and Wilma, frowning with worry over Mavity.

“Has she remembered her name? Does she know what happened to her?”

“We haven’t talked to the hospital,” Wilma said. “All I know is what Harper told me when he called, that she was confused and groggy.”

“Was she alone in the car?”

Clyde put his arm around her.“As far as we know, she was. They found the VW smashed against a lamppost, outside a pawnshop in the old part of town. Not a likely place for her to be in the middle of the night.”

As they sped east on the nearly empty freeway, the dawn air was damp and cool through the open windows, helping to wake them. On either side of the road, the thickly wooded hills rose dark and solid against the dawn sky. Soon they were inland between flat fields, the crops laid out in long green rows, the dawn air smelling of onions. When they arrived at Salinas Medical, Mavity was asleep, an IV tube snaking up her arm to a slowly seeping bottle. In the corner of the room on a hard wooden chair, Max Harper dozed, his long legs splayed out before him. He came fully awake as they entered.

“I’ve been here about an hour,” he replied to Wilma’s questioning look. “Haven’t gotten much out of her-she’s pretty confused.”

Clyde went out to the nursing station to get some chairs, and Charlie went to find the coffee machine, returning with four large cups of steaming brew that tasted like rusted metal.

“She has a cerebral contusion,” Harper said. “A lot of swelling. They had a shunt in for a while, to relieve the pressure, to drain off some of the fluid. And she’s had trouble breathing. They thought she’d have to have a tracheotomy, but the breathing has eased off. She’s irritable andher memory’s dicy, but that’s to be expected. Not much luck trying to recall yesterday afternoon. And when she can’t put it together, she gets angry. They’re waking her every two hours.” He sipped his coffee. He looked like he could use a smoke.

Wilma smoothed Mavity’s blanket. “Were there any witnesses to the wreck?”

Harper shook his head.“None that we’ve found. We don’t know yet whether another car was involved or if she simply ran off the street into the lamppost.”

Mavity woke just after six and lay scowling at them, confused and bleary. Her wrinkled little face seemed very small surrounded by the thick white bandage and snowy bedding. When Wilma spoke to her, she did not respond. She frowned at Charlie’s wild red hair and glared angrily at Harper. But soon something began to clear. She grew restless, and she reached up her hand to Wilma, trying to change position, kicking out of the blanket with one white, thin leg.

Wilma looked a question at Harper, and he nodded. She sat down on the edge of the bed, helping Mavity to get settled, holding her hand.“You had a little accident. You’re in Salinas Medical. We came over to be with you.”

Mavity scowled. Wilma smiled back.“Do you remember cleaning for Mr. Jergen yesterday afternoon?”

Mavity looked at her blankly.

“Mavity?”

“If it was his day, I cleaned for him,” she snapped. “Why wouldn’t I?” She looked around the room, puzzled. “I was fixing supper for Greeley-sauerkraut and hot dogs.” She reached to touch her bandage and the IV tube swung, startling her. She tried to snatch it, but Wilma held her hand. “Leave it, Mavity. It will make you feel better.”

Mavity sighed.“We had a terrible argument, Dora and Ralph and me. And the hardware store-I was in the hardware store just a minute ago. I don’t understand. How did I get in a hospital?”

“You hit your head,” Wilma told her.

Mavity went quiet.“Someone said I wrecked my car.” She gave Wilma an angry glare. “I’ve never in my life had a wreck. I would remember if I wrecked my little car.”

“When did you make sauerkraut for Greeley?”

“I-I don’t know,” she said crossly, as if Wilma was being very rude with her questions.

“When did you and Dora and Ralph argue?” Wilma persisted.

But Mavity turned over, jerking the blankets higher and nearly dislodging the IV, and soon she dropped into sleep. They sat in a tight little group waiting for her to wake.

When she did wake, she jerked up suddenly, trying to sit up.“Caulking,” she told Wilma. “Caulking for the shower. Did I buy the caulking? Pearl Ann is waiting for it.”

Wilma straightened the bedding and smoothed the sheet.“Pearl Ann sent you to buy caulking? When was this?”

But already she had forgotten. Again she scowled at Wilma, puzzled and disoriented, not remembering anything in its proper order. Perhaps not remembering, at all, Winthrop Jergen’s ugly death?

27 [????????: pic_28.jpg]

IF WILMA GETZ hadn’t spent thirty years working with federal criminals, Max Harper would not have placed Mavity Flowers in her custody. Two days after Mavity entered Salinas Medical, she was released to Wilma’s care. Wilma drove her home, tucked her up in her own bed and moved a cot into the room for herself. Her official duties, besides helping Mavity, were a perfect excuse to evict Bernine Sage from the guest room, to make room for the twenty-four-hour police guard that Max Harper had assigned. The county attorney agreed that Mavity’s care by an old friend might ease her fears and help her remember thecircumstances of Winthrop Jergen’s death; the case was growing in breadth as law enforcement agencies began to uncover links between Jergen/Cumming, Troy Hoke, and several unsolved crimes in Tennessee and Alabama.

No one knew how much of Mavity’s memory loss was due to the cerebral contusion and how much resulted from the shock of what she had witnessed. Under Wilma’s gentle questioning, she was beginning to recall more details, to put together the scattered scenes.

But Dulcie’s information about Troy Hoke alias Pearl Ann Jamison, which Dulcie passed on to Max Harper during an early-morning phone call, had been-so far as Dulcie and Joe could surmise-totally ignored. Harper felt certain that Troy Hoke had come here to Molena Point to find Warren Cumming; he’d told Clyde that much. So why did he ignore their important and dearly gathered information that Pearl AnnwasTroy Hoke?

Mavity could remember returning from the hardware store with Pearl Ann’s caulking. She could remember crossing the patio and hearing angry shouts from Jergen’s apartment. “Two men shouting, and thuds,” she had told Wilma. “Then seems like I was at the top of the stairs standing in the open door.” But always, at this point, she went silent. “I don’t remember any more. I can’t remember.”

“Did you see the other man?” Wilma would ask. “Did you know him?”

“I can’t remember. When I think about it I feel scared and sort of sick.”

Now Wilma glanced out toward the living room where the police guard sat reading the paper.“You were standing in the doorway,” she said gently, “and the two men were shouting. And then??”

“A red neon sign, that’s what I remember next. Red light shining in my face. It was night. I could hear people talking and cars passing.”

“And nothing in between?”

“No. Nothing.”

“The red neon-you were walking somewhere?”

“I was in my car. The lights-the lights hurt. I had to close my eyes.”

“In your own car?”

“In the back, with the mops and buckets.” Mavity looked at her, puzzled, her short gray hair a tangle of kinks, her face drawn into lines of bewilderment. “Why would I be in the back of my own car? I was lying on my extra pair of work shoes. The lights hurt my eyes. Then someone pulling me, dragging me. It was dark. Then a real bright light, and a nurse. I’m in that hospital bed, and my head hurting so bad. I couldn’t hear nothing but the pounding in my head.”

Wilma was careful not to prompt Mavity. She wanted her to remember the alley where the Salinas Police had found her and to remember wrecking her car, without being led by her suggestions.

“Greeley?” Mavity said, “I have to get home-Greeley’s waiting. Dora and Ralph?They’ll be worried. They won’t know where I am. I left the meat thawing on the sink, and that cat will?”

“The meat’s all right-they put the meat away. And they’re not worried, they know where you are,” Wilma lied. But maybe Dora and Ralph did know, from wherever they were beyond the pale. Who was she to say?

Mavity dozed again, her hand relaxed across Dulcie’s shoulder where the cat lay curled on the quilt against her. But then in sleep Mavity’s hand went rigid and she woke startled. “I have to get up. They won’t know?”

“It’s all right, Mavity,” Wilma reassured her. “Everything’s taken care of. Greeley will be along later.”

“But Dora and?”

Suddenly Mavity stopped speaking.

Her eyes widened. She raised up in bed, staring at Wilma, then her face crumpled.“They’re dead,” she whispered. She looked terrified. “Dora and Ralph are dead.”

Wilma sat down on the bed beside her, put her arm around Mavity. They sat quietly until Mavity said,“Greeley-I need Greeley.” She looked nakedly at Wilma. “Is he all right?”

“Greeley’s just fine, I promise.“Rolling drunk,Wilma thought.But he’s all in one piece.

“I need him.” Mavity looked at her helplessly. “How can I ever tell him? Tell him that Dora’s gone?”

“He’ll be here soon. You won’t need to tell him. Greeley knows about Dora. He knows about Dora and Ralph, and he’s taking it very well. He’ll be along soon, to be with you.”

The police had picked Greeley up at the Davidson Building and had held him until he sobered up enough for questioning regarding Dora and Ralph’s deaths. When they released him, Max Harper said, he went directly back to the Davidson Building-to the companionship of several more cases of rum. Wilma had no intention of bringing him to see Mavity until he was sober and had cleaned himself up. Dulcie said he smelled like a drunk possum, andHarper said much the same.

The police now knew that Dora and Ralph had died of a drug overdose. The forensics report made it clear that, in Harper’s words, Dora and Ralph Sleuder were loaded with enough morphine to put down a pair of cart horses.

“The coroner thinks they ingested the drug during dinner. They’d had a big meal, steak, potatoes, salad with French dressing, chocolate pie and coffee,” Max had told them. “We don’t know yet who they had dinner with, or where. That was the night after they met for dinner with Bernine.”

Harper had learned about the dinner at Pander’s from his mysterious informant during the same phone call in which she identified Pearl Ann as Troy Hoke. Checking with Pander’s, Harper had learned that the threesome arrived at seven-thirty and were seated at a table on the terrace. Their waiter remembered what each of the three guests had ordered for dinner, what they had had to drink, what time they departed, and that Bernine paid the bill by credit card.

The doctors had said Mavity might be bad-tempered until her contusion healed, and she was. The four-inch gash in the back of her head was not the result of the car accident; she had been hit on the head from behind several hours before her car was wrecked-very likely she had been knocked out, loaded into the backseat of the VW, driven to Salinas, and her car deliberately wrecked against the lamppost where it was found. Harper had no intention of allowing Mavity to sustain another attack. Besides the twenty-four-hour guard, patrol units were all over the area.

Now, entering Wilma’s pastel bedroom, Max Harper’s uniform and solemn, leathery face contrasted in an interesting way with the feminine room, with the flowered chintz and white wicker furniture, putting Wilma in mind of a weathered soldier wandering among the petunias. As she poured coffee for him from the tray on Mavity’s bed table, Mavity sat against the pillows, pleased at being fussed over, at being the center of attention. The facts she gave Max, as he questioned her, were the same she had given Wilma. Slowly the jigsaw pieces of her memory were slipping into place.

On the bed beside Mavity, Dulcie lay pretending to sleep as she fitted together Mavity’s scenario with what she and Joe already knew.

Winthrop Jergen had left his apartment at about two, telling Mavity and Pearl Ann that he had an appointment up the coast. Charlie arrived at three and left again a few minutes later, headed for the Blackburn house. Pearl Ann was already upstairs in his rooms repairing the towel rack. As Charlie left, Mavity carried her cleaning things up to his apartment.

“When I came in, Pearl Ann said she was nearly out of shower caulking-that good, plastic kind that she likes. She said if I’d go down to the village for some, she’d start on the refrigerator for me, put the ice trays and shelves in a dishpan to soak. She don’t mind working up there when Mr.Jergen’s not home?” Mavity jerked her hand, sloshing coffee on the white sheet.

Grabbing a handful of tissues, she tried to mop up the spill.“I can’t get used to it-that he’s dead. His throat-the blood?”

Wilma took Mavity’s cup and wiped the sheets. She handed her more tissues, wiped off the cup, and poured fresh coffee for her. Dulcie rose up from her nest of blankets to rub against Mavity’s cheek. Mavity put her arm around the little cat and drew her close.

“Driving back up from the village, I passed Mr. Jergen’s car parked three blocks from the apartments, and I thought that was strange. He’d said he was going up the coast. Oh, it was his car, I’d know that Mercedes anywhere, with its two antennas and those fancy hubcaps.

“Well, I thought he must have met his client there and taken their car. Though that did seem odd, that he would park three blocks away. Or maybe he’d had car trouble. I never heard of a Mercedes having car trouble, but I guess they can.

“I parked and hurried in through the patio because Pearl Ann would be waiting for the caulking. Mr. Jergen’s windows were open, and I heard him and another man shouting at each other, real angry. It was a strange voice but-something about it seemed familiar.

“And then I heard banging and thuds like furniture being knocked over, and then a gasp. Then silence.

“I ran up the stairs, but I was scared. I was ready to run down again. I listened but I couldn’t hear nothing, so I pushed open the door.”

She stared into her coffee cup as if seeing a replay of Jergen’s murder. When she looked up at Harper, her voice was hardly a whisper.

“He was on the floor. Lying on the floor beside his desk. The blood? And Pearl Ann-Pearl Ann kneeling over him stabbing and stabbing? Swinging her arm and stabbing into his throat with that terrible ice tray thing.”

Mavity sat hugging herself.“I backed away real quiet, out the door. Pulled it closed, praying she didn’t hear me, that she hadn’t seen me.

“I didn’t know where the other man was. I kept looking around for him. I felt weak as jelly. I took off my shoes so she wouldn’t hear me going down the steps. I ran down in my socks, to my car. I never stopped for nothing. Kept seeing Pearl Ann kneeling over him stabbing and stabbing?

“I dug my keys out of my purse. I was trying to jam the key in the door?”

She looked up at Harper.“That’s all I remember. Then the red neon sign at night glaring in my eyes, and I was in the backseat lying on my shoes, my face against a dirty shoe. There was a McDonald’s wrapper on the floor-it smelled of mustard.

“And then being dragged or something, that’s all fuzzy and dark. Then I was in bed in that hospital and you were there, Captain Harper, sitting slumped in the chair.” Mavity pulled the quilt up, careful not to disturb Dulcie.

“When you first entered the apartment,” Harper said, “before you went out again for the caulking, do you remember anything strange, at that time, anything out of order in the room?”

“No. The room was neat, the way he keeps it. His desk was clean and neat, nothing on it except a few files lying in a neat pile on the blotter. Well, I guess you could say that was unusual. Mr. Jergen always put everything away, always left his desk with nothing but the blotter and the pens, the regular desk things, no papers.”

She frowned.“There’s one other thing. I’d forgot. I’m sure his computer was off when I first came in. But when I got back with the caulking and saw-saw? Pearl Ann? I think the computer was on.”

Mavity hugged herself.“He shouldn’t have been there at all. He had an appointment up the coast. Maybe he forgot to do something at the computer. Maybe he came back to do that.”

She looked hard at Harper.“Why did she kill him? Why did this happen?”

“Besides the files and the computer,” Harper said, “was there anything else out of order?”

“Not that I noticed. Seemed the same as always, neat, everything in order. Pearl Ann had started working in the bathroom, but she stopped to get the refrigerator started. The kitchen was neat and clean, the way he always left it.”

Harper made some notes and rose. There was a tight, hard look about him. Wilma walked him to the door, where he paused, gave her a hug.“You look tired. She’ll get through this, Wilma. If we can pick up Hoke, Mavity should be clear, I think we’ll have enough to take him to the grand jury.”

“And if you don’t find Hoke?”

“Let’s wait to see what happens.”

Wilma leaned against him, very thankful for Max Harper. She would hate to face this, to try to help Mavity, without Max there to go the extra mile.

He stood looking down at her.“I didn’t tell you this. Some of the blood on Mavity’s white uniform was Jergen’s.”

She only looked at him, frightened again suddenly

“The report came in this morning. But from the way the blood was smeared, the lab thinks it was wiped on, possibly by the murder weapon.”

“It wasn’t spattered or pooled on.”

“Exactly. And we’re not sure, yet, that the ice tray dividerwasthe murder weapon.”

He didn’t move out the open door, just kept looking at her. “It would strengthen our case considerably, if I knew who our informant was. If I knew who the woman was, who tipped us about Hoke. It might make the case, if she were to testify against Hoke.”

“I’m sure it would,” Wilma said. “Maybe she’ll come forward. Let’s hope so.” She hated this, hated lying to him.

“She never has. She’s helped us on three cases but has never identified herself, never offered to testify.” He continued to watch her. “Same voice, same woman.”

Wilma widened her eyes.“You think it’s me, Max? Are you saying I’m your mysterious informant?”

“No,” Harper said. “I don’t think that.” He looked at Wilma for a long time, then turned away, heading for his car. Wilma moved to the window, watching the patrol unit slide away into the village, thinking what a tangled web had drawn them all in-and, for Harper, what a cat’s cradle of leads and unanswerable questions.

28 [????????: pic_29.jpg]

GREELEY URZEY’S sour, boozy smell filled Wilma’s car thicker than steam in a sauna. Despite the fact that she drove with all the windows down, the stink of secondhand rum and stale sweat made her want to boot the old man out and let him walk to her house-except, of course, he wouldn’t. He’d head back for that hovel among his cases of 90 proof.

Shecouldhave stopped by Mavity’s cottage and insisted that he take a bath and change his reeking clothes, but she hadn’t wanted to take the time. Mavity was so anxious to see him; Wilma hadn’t even waited, as she’d promised herself, for the old man to sober up.

But even as rum-sodden as Greeley was, he seemed genuinely worried about Mavity. He sat leaning forward, staring hard through the windshield as if to hurry the car faster-and clutching the black cat in his lap.

She had to smile at the way he’d slipped the cat in. After the police officer let her into the Davidson Building and saw her safely downstairs again with Greeley in tow, she’d waited alone in the dirty hall for Greeley to go back upstairs and fetch his jacket. She didn’t think he’d run out on her-there was no other entry, just the second floor windows. She’d watched, amused, when he returned clutching not only the jacket but the black cat nestled down in the wadded-up leather as if the animal might not be noticed.

Drunk and argumentative, he’d insisted on bringing the beast despite the fact, as she’d pointed out, that Mavity disliked Azrael, and that it was Mavity’s comfort they were concerned about here.

Now as she drove across the village, the cat sat possessively on Greeley’s lap, a huge black presence which, unlike most cats, made no move to leap out the four open windows. “He’ll do as I tell him,” Greeley had promised drunkenly, “or he’ll know what for.”

Well, maybe the cat wasn’t as bad as Mavity claimed. Certainly it was a handsome animal; admiring him, Wilma reached gently to stroke his broad black head-and drew her hand back at the blaze of rage that flamed in his slitted orange eyes.

So much for making friends. The animal was as unsocialized as its master.

The cat watched her narrowly as she parked in her drive and killed the engine, its gaze strangely calculating-as eerie as Poe’s “The Black Cat” with its chilling stare.The figure of a gigantic cat? I could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat?a large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree?

As she herded Greeley toward her kitchen door, escorting the drunken, smelly old man into her clean house, she felt like she was bringing home a parolee just released from the drunk tank-except that Greeley smelled worse. The instant she opened the door, the cat leaped inside, brushing boldly past their legs with none of the wariness most cats exhibited upon entering unfamiliar rooms.

Immediately he scented Dulcie’s cat door and flew at it, sniffing and growling, and before she could stop him he turned his backside and drenched the little door with his testosterone-heavy stink, applying liberally the mark of male dominance and possession.

Shouting, she slapped at him with her purse-and jerked her hand away as he sprang at her, his swift claws raking her arm, leaving long red welts oozing drops of blood.

“You make that cat behave, Greeley. Or you’ll put it outside.”

Greeley shrugged and offered a helpless grin. Wilma found some peroxide in the emergency cupboard, poured some on a paper towel, and scrubbed the wounds, thinking of rare tropical infections and blood parasites. Snatching a spray bottle from the sink, she poured ammonia into it, to mix with the water.“He claws me again or sprays again, Greeley, he gets a shot of this in the face. He won’t like it.”

The cat glared. Greeley looked back grinning, amused that she would threaten his tomcat. Giggling, he headed for the dining room, stumbling unsteadily past her.

Before the cat could leap after him, Wilma slid through the door and slammed it in the beast’s face.

Making sure the latch clicked, that the door was securely shut, she guided Greeley down the hall toward her bedroom. Ushering him in, she wondered if his boozy, sweaty smell would cling in the room forever. Down the hall behind her, she heard the kitchen door click open.

The cat came swaggering out of the kitchen, giving her a stare as sharp as a stabbing knife and pushed past her into the bedroom.

Mavity was asleep. Greeley leaned over his sister and delivered a peckish kiss, surely scratching stubble across her soft skin. Mavity woke, stared up at him vaguely, and drew away, grimacing at his smell.

Unperturbed, Greeley sat down on the bed beside her, taking her hands in his with a gentleness that surprised Wilma.

“Dora’s gone,” Greeley slurred. “My little girl’s gone. And Ralph gone, and that man you set such store by.” Glancing to where the cat was sniffing around the dresser, Greeley whispered, “Death sucked them in. Sucked them all in. Death-death before the moon is full.” Strange words for the drunken little man. Leaning down, he put his arms around Mavity, holding her close.

The cat watched, seeming almost amused. And as brother and sister comforted each other, the beast began to prowl, nosing into every inch of the bedroom, turning occasionally to observe Wilma, his huge topaz eyes as evil, she thought, as twin glimpses into hell.

Annoyed at her own fear, she went to make some coffee.

But, hurrying down the hall, she could feel the tomcat watching her. And when she glanced back, its eyes on her glowed so intently she turned away, shaken.

What was this beast?

Dulcie hadn’t told her the nature of this animal.

Fixing a tray with coffee and sugar and cream and some pound cake, she returned quickly. The cat was not in sight. She set the tray on the night table and checked under the dresser and bed, then went to search the house. She didn’t like to think of that creature alone with Dulcie.

She didn’t find the animal. When she returned to the bedroom, Greeley was crying drunkenly, the tears rolling down his stubbled cheeks.

“? feeding those chickens when she was only a little girl, and helping her mama to plant the garden-my little girl? And that old goose used to chase her! Oh, how she would run,” Greeley blubbered. “I killed that goose, killed it? But now-I couldn’t kill whoever hurt her, couldn’t save my little girl. So cold-so cold there in all them lilies?”

As Greeley doubled over, weeping, the black cat reappeared and leaped onto the bed. Mavity paled and shrank away from it, looked as if she’d like to hit it. Wilma watched, shocked, as it began to stalk Mavity-and thought of the times Mavity had complained about the beast’s dirty habits. Surely, there was no love between them. But now the animal looked dangerous. As he crouched to leap, Wilma grabbed him, tossed him to the floor. The black cat landed heavily and jumped at once to the foot of the bed where it began pawing Greeley’s jacket that lay crumpled on the blanket.

Clawing at the wrinkled leather, he slid his paw into a pocket, and with a quick twist, dragged out a black-feathered carcass. Taking this in his mouth, his ears back, his head low, he began to stalk Mavity. She jerked away, gasping, as Wilma snatched the blood-streaked bird.

But it wasn’t a bird. The thing was hard under her fingers, not soft and limp like a dead bird. She turned it over, looking.

It was a small wooden man, the black feathers wrapped around him like a cloak and tied with red cord. His face was painted with blood red lines like a primitive warrior. His hair felt like real human hair, the side locks stiff with dried red mud, as if he were made up for some primitive ritual.

“Voodoo doll,” Mavity whispered, staring at the six-inch man then at Greeley. “You showed me those, in that shop. Where did you get that? Why would you bring that horrible thing here?”

“Only a plaything,” Greeley said, patting Mavity’s hand. “Ididn’t bring it. The cat-the cat likes a plaything. The cat found it?” He reached up to take the carving from Wilma.

She held it away.“Why did you bring this?”

“Ididn’t bring it! The cat brought it. Damn cat-always dragging in something.”

“Thecatput it in your pocket?”

Greeley shrugged.“He digs in my pockets.” He grinned sheepishly. “He likes that Latin American shop. I expect it smells like home.”

“I’ll take it in the kitchen.”

The black cat hadn’t taken his eyes from the doll. But now he turned from it, fixed his gaze on Mavity, and crept up the bed again, toward her.

“Get him away!”

Grabbing the cat, Wilma drew back a bloodied hand.“Greeley, get the beast out of here.”

“Get down!” Greeley scolded. “Get off the bed!” The cat hissed at him but leaped to the floor.

“And stay off,” Greeley added ineffectually.

Wilma turned away, carrying the doll, but the tomcat leaped, grabbing for its grisly toy. She swung it at the cat’s head until the beast ran. Mavity hadn’t exaggerated-the creature gave her more than chills. When she turned to look back, the cat was not behind her and the hall was empty.

She laid the carving on the kitchen table. More than its ugliness bothered her. It seemed to hold around itself a deep oppression. As she stood studying the doll she glimpsed a shadow behind her, slipping along the floor.

She spun as the cat crouched to leap-whether at her or to snatch the doll she’d never know: At the same instant, an explosion of tabby fur hit him, knocking him sideways.

Dulcie was all over him, slashing and clawing. The black cat fought violently in a tangle of raking claws-but he fought only briefly before breaking away, and careened out through Dulcie’s cat door, the empty door slapping behind him.

As quick as that, he was gone. Dulcie leaped to the table, looking twice her normal size, and began to lick blood from her claws. Gently Wilma stroked her.

“What a nasty beast. Are you hurt? Where did he hurt you?”

Dulcie spit out a mouthful of fur.“I’m fine. A few scratches. They’ll clean right up.” Her gaze fixed on the black-feathered doll. “Voodoo,” she hissed. “Did Greeley bring this? That old, disgusting drunk? Or did Azrael carry it here?” She glared at Wilma, laying back her ears. “Why did you let Greeley bring that cat here-and withthis?”

“I didn’t know. I was trying to keep Greeley happy. I didn’t want him making a scene, so I let him bring the cat. I didn’t see this thing. And the cat seemed tame enough, seemed just an ordinary cat.”

She looked hard at Dulcie.“But he isn’t, is he?”

Dulcie studied Wilma a long time.“No,” she said softly, “he’s no ordinary cat. But he’s not like us, either. He’s not like Joe Grey-he’s horrid.” With an angry swipe, she knocked the feathered man to the floor.

“Azrael believes in these voodoo things,” she said, hissing. “He believes in dark magic-he said it was a fine way to get back at those who mistreat you.

“I expect he wanted,” Dulcie said softly, “to make Mavity sicker-just because Mavity doesn’t like him, because she complained about his manners.”

She fixed her green gaze on Wilma.“Why else would he bring this terrible idol, if not to torment Mavity and frighten her-or try some wild spell on her? Can that stuff work?” she said, shivering, staring down at the black doll lying like a hunk of tar on the blue linoleum. Wilma snatched up the feathered figure and hurried down the hall. Following, Dulcie watched Wilma shove the ugly little idol in Greeley’s face.

“What is this about, Greeley? What did you mean to do?”

“It’s only a native doll,” Greeley said, laughing. “Indian kid’s playtoy. The cat brought it.”

“Voodoo doll,” Wilma replied.

“Voodoo?“He looked at her as if she wasn’t bright and choked out a rum-laden laugh. “Child’s toy. That Ms. Sue Marble, she’s got all kinds of stuff-them Guatamala blankets, all that Panama clutter. Nothing of any use, all that artsy stuff. Even them little gold people aren’t worth nothing-not the real thing, not the real gold. Gold birds. Gold lizards. Sue showed me.” But suddenly his face colored and he looked embarrassed, his eyes shifting away.

“You must have gotten very friendly,” Wilma said, amused, forgetting her anger.

“That nice little woman,” Greeley said defensively, “wouldn’t have nothing costly.” He was blushing; he wouldn’t look at her. She had to smile at his discomfiture, at his strange embarrassment.

Was he romancing Sue Marble? But why embarrassment? His distress puzzled her, made her uneasy.

Romancing Sue for her money?

Oh, that would be too bad.

Dropping the doll in the wastebasket, she carried the basket out to the kitchen to empty it with the trash, all the time pondering over Greeley-and keeping her ear cocked for the thump of Dulcie’s cat door, for the stealthy return of Greeley’s nasty little friend.

29 [????????: pic_30.jpg]

WALKING BACKthe cat,” Max Harper told Charlie as he popped open a can of beer, “means to lay out the evidence and work backward-reconstruct the crime.” The five friends sat around a wrought-iron table in the landscaped patio of the freshly painted apartment building. Moonlight brightened the flower beds, which were softly lit by indirect lamps hidden behind the tall banks of Nile lilies that Wilma had planted as background for lower masses of textured ground cover. The brick paving had been pressure-washed, and it gleamed dull and rich, lending to the patio garden a quiet elegance. The new wrought-iron furniture in a heavy ivy pattern-umbrella table, lounge chairs, and chaises-completed the sense of comfort. Harper looked curiously at Charlie. “Where did you hear that phrase, to walk back the cat?”

“I’m not sure. Something I read, I suppose.”

Wilma said,“Isn’t that a CIA term?”

“I read that in a romance-mystery,” Mavity offered. “That’s the way it was used, when the CIA was wrapping up a case.” The little woman seemed completely recovered. Her memory had returned fully-she had recalled clearly the events surrounding Winthrop Jergen’s murder and, once she came to grips with the truth about Jergen, she had been stoic and sensible, her idolization of the financier had turned to anger but then to a quiet resolve. Now she had put all her faith in Max Harper, to recover her savings.

But the fact that Dora and Ralph had come to Molena Point not only to trap Cumming but to keep Mavity from losing her money had hurt Mavity deeply-that Dora had died trying to help her.

Mavity was dressed, tonight, not in her usual worn white uniform but in a new, teal blue pants suit, a bargain that Wilma had found for her. The color became her, and the change of wardrobe, along with her returned health, seemed perhaps the mark of a new beginning.

Of the little group, only Max Harper, stretching out his long, Levi-clad legs and sipping his beer, seemed aware of Charlie’s unease. He watched the young woman with interest. She was strung tight, seemed unable to keep her bony hands still, sat smoothing and smoothing her cotton skirt. As he considered the possible cause of her distress, and as he went over in his mind the last details of the Sleuder and Jergen case, while paying attention to the conversation around him, he was aware, as well, of the two cats crouched on the brick paving near the table-uncomfortably aware.

The two animals seemed totally preoccupied with eating fish and chips from a paper plate, yet they were so alert, ears following every voice, the tips of their tails twitching and pausing as if they were attending closely to every word. When he’d mentioned “walk back the cat,” both cats’ ears had swiveled toward him, and Dulcie’s tail had jerked once, violently, before she stilled it.

He knew his preoccupation with the cats was paranoid-it was these crazy ideas about cats that made him question his own mental condition. Of course the two animals had simply responded to the wordcat,they were familiar with the word from hearing it in relation to their own comfort.Time to feed the cat. Have to let the cat out.A simple Pavlovian reaction common to all animals.

Yet he watched them intently.

His gut feeling was that their quick attention was far more than conditioned response.

The cats didn’t glance up at him. They seemed totally unaware of his intense scrutiny, as unheeding as any beast.

Except that beasts were not unheeding.

A dog or horse, if you stared at him, would generally look back at you. To stare at an animal was to threaten, and so of course it would look back. One of the rules in dealing with a vicious dog was never to stare at him. And cats hated to be watched. Certainly, with the cats’ wide peripheral vision, these two were perfectly aware of his interest-yet they never glanced his way. Seemed deliberately to ignore him.

No one at the table noticed his preoccupation. Charlie and Clyde, Wilma and Mavity were deep into rehashing the reception they had just left.

They had come up directly from the library party, to enjoy a takeout supper in the newly completed patio and to continue the celebration-an affair that had left Harper irritated yet greatly amused. A reception for a cat. A bash in honor of Wilma’s library cat. That had to be a first-in Molena Point, and maybe for any public library.

The party, besides honoring Dulcie, had quietly celebrated as well the departure of Freda Brackett. The ex-head librarian had left Molena Point two days earlier, headed for L.A. and a higher paying position in a library which, presumably, would never tolerate a resident cat. A library, Harper thought, that certainly didn’t embody the wit or originality-or enthusiasm-to be found in their own village institution.

He didn’t much care for cats. But Molena Point’s impassioned rally to save Dulcie’s position-gaining the wholehearted support of almost the entire village-had been contagious even to a hard-assed old cop.

Dulcie ate her fish and chips slowly, half of her attention uncomfortably aware of Harper’s scrutiny, the other half lost in the wonders of her reception. She had held court on a library reading table where she had secretly spent so many happy hours, had sat atop the table like royalty on a peach-toned silk cushion given to her by the Aronson Gallery. And as she was fawned over-as Joe admired her from atop the book stacks-Danny McCoy from the Molena PointGazettehad taken dozens of pictures: Dulcie with her guests, Dulcie with members of the city council and with the mayor, with all her good friends.

Danny had brought the local TV camera crew, too, so that highlights of the event would appear on the eleven o’clock news. Young Dillon Thurwell had cut the cake, which George Jolly himself had baked and decorated with a dark tabby cat standing over an open book, a rendering far more meaningful than Mr. Jolly or most of those present would ever imagine. Perhaps best of all, Charlie had donated a portraitof her to hang in the library’s main reading room, above a scrapbook that would contain all forty signed petitions and any forthcoming press clippings.

Not even the famous Morris, who must have press people available at the twitch of a whisker, could have been more honored. She felt as pampered as an Egyptian cat-priestess presiding over the temples of Ur-she was filled to her ears with well-being and goodwill, so happy she could not stop purring.

Not only had the party turned her dizzy with pleasure, not only was Freda Brackett forever departed from Molena Point, but Troy Hoke was in jail for Jergen’s murder and for the attempted murder of Mavity. And soon, if Max Harper was successful, Mavity would have her stolen money.

Life, Dulcie thought, was good.

Licking her whiskers, she listened with interest as Max Harper walked back the cat, lining up the events that had put Hoke behind bars awaiting trial for the murder of Warren Cumming.

Hoke had not been indicted for the murder of Dora and Ralph Sleuder. That crime, Harper speculated (and the cats agreed), would turn out to have been committed by Cumming himself-but Warren Cumming alias Winthrop Jergen need no longer worry about earthly punishment. If he was to face atonement, it would be meted out by a far more vigorous authority than the local courts.

A plastic bag containing morphine had been found in Jergen’s apartment, taped inside the computer monitor, affixed to the plastic case.

“It’s possible,” Harper said, “that Hoke killed the Sleuders, and taped the drug there after he killed Jergen, to tie the Sleuders’ murder to him. But so far we have no evidence of that, no prints, no trace of Hoke on the bag or inside the computer.”

“But what about Bernine?” Charlie said. “Bernine had dinner with Dora and Ralph.”

“That was the night before,” Harper reminded her. “The night Dora and Ralph received the lethal dose, they had dinner at Lupe’s Steaks, down on Shoreline-one of the private booths. Not likely they would know about those on their own. And despite Jergen’s entry through the back door?” Harper laughed. “? wearing that pitiful football blazer and cap, one of the waiters knew him.”

Harper shook his head.“The man might have been creative with the numbers, but he didn’t know much about disguise.

“And Bernine Sage has an excellent alibi for the night of the Sleuders’ deaths. She was out with a member of the city council. She was,” he said, winking at Wilma, “trying to work a deal to destroy the petitions the committee had collected for Dulcie.”

“The library cat petitions?” Wilma laughed. “That was pretty silly. Didn’t she know we’d have done them over again?”

In the shadows, the cats smiled, but at once they shuttered their eyes again, as if dozing.

Their private opinion was that though Bernine had an alibi for the night the Sleuders were killed, she had been instrumental in their deaths. If she had not pumped the Sleuders for information, then reported to Jergen that the couple meant to blow the whistle on him, Jergen/Cumming would likely not have bothered to kill them.

“I can’t believe,” Charlie said, “that I worked with Pearl Ann for three months and didn’t guess she was a man. That makes me feel really stupid.”

“None of us guessed,” Clyde said. “Hoke put together a good act. I swear he walked like a woman-guys notice that stuff. And that soft voice-really sexy.”

They all stared at him. Clyde shrugged. Charlie patted his hand.

“A guy in drag,” Harper said, “slight of build, thin arms, slim hands-a skilled forger and a top-flight computer hacker.”

Hoke, dressed as Pearl Ann, had been picked up in Seattle carrying eight hundred thousand dollars in cash, sewn into the lining of his powder blue skirt and blazer-money he had transferred from Jergen’s accounts to his own accounts in two dozen different names in nine San Francisco banks. It had taken him some time to draw out the money in various forms-cash, bank drafts, cashier’s checks, which he laundered as he traveled from San Francisco to Seattle, where he was picked up. The police had found no witness that Pearl Ann had boarded the San Francisco bus in Molena Point. But they located the car Hoke had rented in Salinas, under the name of William Skeel, after deliberately wrecking Mavity’s VW and dumping Mavity in the alley beside the pawnshop.

“It looks,” Harper said, “as if Jergen had come to suspect Pearl Ann’s identity. As if, the day he died, he had set Hoke up.

“He told everyone he was going up the coast, then doubled back hoping to catch Hoke red-handed copying his files. He parked a few blocks away and slipped into the apartment while Hoke/Pearl Ann was working. The hard files he’d left on his desk were bait-three files of accounts newly opened, with large deposits. All with bogus addresses and names that, so far, we’ve not been able to trace.”

Harper sipped his beer.“Hoke comes up to do the repairs, opens those hard copy files with three new accounts, all with large sums deposited, and he can’t wait to get into the computer. Sends Mavity on an errand, uses Jergen’s code, intending to get the new deposit numbers and transfer the money. We’re guessing that he was about ready to skip, perhaps another few days and he meant to pull out for good.

“But then Jergen walks in on him at the computer. They fight, Hoke stabs him with a screwdriver?” Harper looked around at his audience. “Yes, we found the real murder weapon,” he said gruffly. “Jergen was near death when Hoke stabbed him with the ice tray divider-maybe to lay suspicion on Mavity, to confuse forensics. Or maybe out of rage, simply to tear at Jergen. This is all conjecture, now, but it’s how I piece it together.

“He hears a noise, realizes Mavity has returned, maybe hears her running down the stairs. Goes after her, snatches up one of those loose bricks that were lying along the edge of the patio.” He glanced at Mavity. “And he bops you, Mavity, as you’re trying to get in the car.

“After he loads you in the backseat, he realizes he has the bloody screwdriver. Maybe he’d shoved it in his pocket. He buries it down the hill, with the brick.

“He may have moved the VW then, to get it out of sight. He cleans up and changes clothes, then heads out. Takes his bloody jumpsuit and shoes with him-all we found in the duffle he left was a clean, unused jumpsuit. We may never find the bloody clothes. They’re probably in the bottom of some Dumpster or already dozed into a landfill-the Salinas PD checked the Dumpsters in that whole area around where Hoke wrecked Mavity’s car.

“It’s still dark when he dumps Mavity into the alley by her car and leaves her. He walks to the nearest car rental office, waits until eight when it opens. Gets a car and heads north. He’s left his own car in the storage garage a block from the Davidson Building where he kept it-registered inone of his other names.

“We’d like to find the bloody clothes, but even without them we have plenty to take him to court. The money trail alone is a beauty.”

The FBI computer expert who had come down from San Francisco to trace Cumming’s computer transactions had followed Hoke’s transfers from Jergen’s accounts, using the code words supplied by Harper’s anonymous informer. The Bureau had put out inter-office descriptions of Hoke and of Pearl Ann. Two Bureau agents picked him up at the Seattle airport, in his blue skirt and blazer, when he turned in an Avis rental in the name of Patsy Arlie. He was wearing a curly auburn wig.

“But the strangest part,” Harper continued, watching the little group, “is my finding the screwdriver the way I did, the day after Jergen was killed.”

He had discovered it the next morning when he came down the stairs from Jergen’s apartment after meeting with the Bureau agent. He had been late getting back from Salinas Medical that morning; the agent, using a key supplied by Clyde, was already at work at Jergen’s computer. The weapon was not on the steps when he went up to the apartment, nor did Harper see it when he arrived.

But when they came down, it was lying in plain sight on the steps, flecked with dirt and grass seed.

“When we started looking for where it might have been buried-worked down the hill where the grass was bent and broken and found the loose dirt-and dug there, we found the brick, too. The dirt and grass matched the debris on the screwdriver, and of course the traces of blood on it were Jergen’s.

“It had been wiped hastily, but there were two partial prints, both Hoke’s. Whoever found the weapon,” Harper said, “saved the court considerable time and money, and certainly helped to strengthen our case.”

He knew he should be fully satisfied with the case against Hoke-they had plenty to hang the man-but this business of the screwdriver, of evidence turning up in that peculiar way, gave him heartburn. This was getting to be a pattern, and one he didn’t live with easily.

No cop liked this mysterious stuff, even when the evidence led to a conviction. Unexplainable scenarios were for artists, for fiction writers, for those who dealt in flights of fancy. Not for law enforcement who wanted only hard facts.

The cats, having finished their fish and chips, lay stretched out on the bricks sleepily licking their paws, staring past Harper but watching with their wide vision Harper’s frequent glances in their direction. Dulcie, washing diligently, carefully hid her amused smile. Joe, rolling over away from the police captain, twitched his whiskers in a silent cat laugh.

The morning after the murder, just moments after Wilma deposited an angry Dulcie at Clyde’s house and Wilma and Clyde and Charlie headed for Salinas Medical, Joe and Dulcie had bolted out his cat door and doubled-timed up the hills to the apartments, where they settled down to wait for the FBI investigator. How often did one have a chance to observe a Bureau specialist at work?

Crouching in Jergen’s kitchen, they had watched the thin Bureau agent deftly scrolling through Jergen’s files using the code wordsCairoandTigerthat Dulcie had given to Harper, tracing each money transaction that Hoke/Pearl Ann had hidden. Only when they heard the crackle of a police radio, and a car door slam, did they slip back down between the walls, trotting into the patio in time to see Harper going up the stairs.

Leaving the patio, wandering down the hill to hunt, they had caught Pearl Ann’s jasmine scent and followed it with interest through the tall grass. The trail was fresh, maybe a few hours old, the grass still sharp-scented where it had been trampled.

Where they found the earth disturbed, Pearl Ann’s scent was strong. Digging into the loose soil, they had pawed out the screwdriver, then the brick. The brick smelled of human blood. They recognized the screwdriver as Pearl Ann’s, a long Phillips with a deep nick in the black plastic handle. Gripping the dirt-crusted handle carefully in histeeth, Joe had carried the weapon up the hill and halfway up the stairs, where he laid it on a step in plain sight. They figured, as thorough as Harper was, he’d search for where it had been buried and discover the brick, as well.

But as for the village burglaries committed by Greeley and Azrael, those crimes were another matter. Joe and Dulcie had given Harper no clue.

Maybe Greeley would confess and return the stolen money. If not, the cats still had plenty of time to nail him-Greeley and Mavity would be leaving early in the morning to take the bodies of Dora and Ralph home to Georgia. The funeral had been arranged through the Sleuders’ pastor. Dora and Ralph had been active in their church and would be buried in the church plot they had purchased years before.

Mavity and Greeley would remain in Georgia long enough to sell the Sleuders’ home and belongings, reserving whatever mementos they cared to keep. Whatever moneys of the Sleuders’ might be recovered from Warren Cumming’s hidden accounts would be divided between brother and sister. The moneys proven to be Mavity’s would of course come to her, once the FBI accountants finished tracing each of Jergen’s individual account transactions and Hoke’s transfers.

The cats watched Charlie take the lid off a plastic cup of hot tea, handing it to Mavity.“Will Greeley be taking his cat with you on the plane? It seems?”

“Oh, no,” Mavity said. “He doesn’t need to take it. He’ll come back with me when we’re finished in Georgia-he can get the cat then. He’s flying on one of them elderly coupons, so his fare’s all the same even if he goes home through Molena Point. And a very nice lady, that Ms. Marblewho has the South American shop, she’s going to keep the cat. Why, she was thrilled. Seems she’s very taken with the beast.”

Dulcie and Joe exchanged a look.

“I didn’t think,” Charlie said, “that your brother knew anyone in the village.”

“Greeley went in there because the cat kept going in, made itself right at home. They got to know each other, being as they’ve both lived in Latin America. It’s nice Greeley has found a friend here. Well, she does keep those awful voodoo things?”

Mavity stirred sugar into her tea.“I’m sorry Greeley wouldn’t come with us tonight. Said he just wanted to walk through the village, enjoy the shops one more time. I’ve never known Greeley to be so taken with a place.”

The cats, imagining Greeley gazing casually into one of the village’s exclusive shops while Azrael slipped down through its skylight, rose quickly and, feigning a stretch and a yawn, they beat it out of the patio and across the street, heading fast down the hill.

Watching them, Charlie rose, too, and slipped away.

Standing under the arch, she saw them disappear down the slope, watched their invisible trail shivering the grass as they hurried unseen toward the village.

They had certainly left suddenly.

But they were cats. Cats were filled with sudden whims.

Except, she didn’t think their hasty departure was any whim.

From somewhere below she heard faint voices. The girl’s laugh sounded exactly like the female voice she’d heard the night she watched Joe and Dulcie on the rooftops.

She shook her head, annoyed at her wild imaginings. Molena Point was a small village, one was bound to hear familiar voices-probably from one of the houses below her.

But she felt chilled, light-headed.

Hugging herself to steady her shaken nerves, she was gripped by an insight that, until this moment, she would not have let herself consider.

An insane thought.

But she knew it wasn’t insane.

A footstep scuffed behind her, and Clyde stepped out from the shadows. He put his arm around her, stood hugging her close, the two of them looking down the hills. After a moment, she turned in the moonlight to look squarely at him.

She wanted to say,I’ve suspected for a long time.She wanted to say,Iknow about the cats. I didn’t know how to think about such a thing.

But what if she was wrong?

Leaning her head against his shoulder, she felt giddy, disconnected. She recalled the night she’d walked home from dinner and saw Joe and Dulcie racing across the roofs so beautiful and free-the night she heard those same voices.

And suddenly she began to laugh. She collapsed against Clyde laughing, tears streaming. What if she was right, what if it was true? She couldn’t stop laughing, he had to shake her to make her stop. Holding her shoulders, he looked down at her intently. He said nothing.

After a while, as they stood gazing down the empty hill, he said,“Were you really jealous of Bernine?”

“Who told you that?”

“A friend.” He took her face in his hands. “So foolish-Bernine Sage is all glitz. There’s nothing there, nothing real. She’s nothing like you. What’s to be jealous of?” He kissed her, standing on the moonlit hill, and whispered against her neck, “My friend tells me I’m not romantic enough-that it takes more than a few car repairs to an old VW van to please a lady.”

Charlie smiled and kissed him back. It was a long time later when she said,“Doesn’t your friend know how to mind her own business?”

“Oh, meddling is her business. That’s how she gets her kicks.” He held her tight.

Down the hills, not as far away as Charlie and Clyde imagined, the cats stood rearing among the tall grass, looking up the hill and watching the couple’s hugging silhouette, and they smiled. Humans-so simple. So predictable.

Then Joe dropped down to all fours.“So what will it be? We find Greeley and blow the whistle on those two thieves-and maybe open a real can of worms for Harper? Or we find them, try to talk them out of this one last burglary?”

“Or we let it go?” Dulcie offered. “Let this hand play without us?” She went silent, thinking of dark Azrael: Satan metamorphosed. Beast of evil.

Portender of death? Was he really that-really a voodoo cat? A bearer of dark, twisted fate?

“When we charged out of the patio just now,” Joe said, “hot to nail Greeley-that was a paw-jerk reaction.” He waited to see the effect of his words, his eyes huge and dark in the moonlight.

She said,“I don’t think we can stop them. Why would Greeley listen to us? And if we call the station?”

If Greeley was arrested and went to jail, and Azrael stayed on with Sue Marble, they might never see the last of his criminal proclivity, of his cruel nature.

She studied the village rooftops, the moonlit mosaic of shops and chimneys and oaks, so rich and peaceful. And she thought of Azrael moving in with Ms. Marble and all her voodoo trappings, and she wondered.Wasthere, unknown to Sue, evil power among those idols? A wickedness that Azrael could manipulate?

Joe said,“Greeley’s all that Mavity has. It would break her heart to see him arrested.”

“Maybe they’ll go back to the jungle,” she said, “if we let them go. If we don’t interfere. Maybe they’ll go where they belong-back to the jungle’s dark ways.”

Joe considered this.“Maybe,” he said, and twitched a whisker. “And good riddance toel gato diablo.“He looked down at Dulcie, and winked. And where moonlight washed the tall grass, their silhouettes twined together: one silhouette, purring.

5. CAT TO THE DOGS

1

FOG LAY so thick in Hellhag Canyon that Joe Grey couldn’t see his paws, could barely see the dead wood rat he carried dangling from his sharp teeth. Moving steeply down the wall of the ravine, the tomcat was aware of a boulder or willow scrub only when his whiskers touched something foreign, sending an electrifying jolt through his sleek gray body. The predawn fog was so dense that a human would have barged straight into those obstacles-one more example, Joe Grey thought smugly, of feline senses far keener than human, of the superiority of cat over man.

The fog-shrouded canyon was silent, too, save for the muted hushing of the sea farther down and the occasional whisper from high above of wet tires along the twisting two-lane, where some early-morning driver crept blindly. Joe had no idea why humans drove in this stuff; swift cars and fog were bad news. As he searched for a soft bit of ground on which to enjoy his breakfast, another car approached, moving way too fast toward the wicked double curve, sending a jolt of alarm stabbing through Joe.

The scream of tires filled the canyon.

The skidding car hit the cliff so hard, Joe felt the earth shake. He dropped the wood rat and leaped clear as the car rolled thundering over the edge, its lights exploding against the fog, its bulk falling straight at him, as big as a hunk of the cliff, a mass of hurtling metal that sent him streaking up the canyon wall. It hurtled past, dropping into the ravine exactly where he’d been crouching.

The car lay upside down beneath a dozen young oak trees broken off and fallen across its spinning wheels. The roof and those tons of metal had likely flattened his wood rat into a bloody pancake-so much for his nice warm breakfast.

Where the careening car had disturbed the fog, and the rising wind swirled the mist, he could make out the gigantic form easing deeper into the detritus of the canyon, the car’s metal parts groaning like a dying beast, its death-stink not of escaping body fluids, but the reek of leaking gasoline.

This baby’s going to explode,he thought as he prepared to run.Going to blow sky-high, roast me among these boulders like a rabbit in a stone oven.

But when, after a long wait, no explosion occurred, when the vehicle continued only to creak and moan, he crept warily down the cliff again to have a look

Hunched beneath the wreck’s vast, dark body-its ticking, grease-stinking, hot-breathed body-he looked up at the huge black wheels spinning above him and listened to the bits of glass raining down from the broken windows that were half-hidden among the dry ferns, listened to the big metal carcass settle into its last sleep. He could hear, from within, no human utterance. No groan, no scream of pain or of terror, only the voice of the sea pounding against the cliffs.

Was no one alive in there? He studied the overturned car, listening for a desperate and anguished cry-and wondering what he was going to do about it. Wondering how a poor simple tomcat was going to render any kind of useful assistance.

He had been hunting Hellhag Canyon since midnight, first at the shore, dodging the rolling breakers, and then, when the fog thickened, moving on up the ravine. He had tracked the wood rat blindly, following only the sound of its scrabbling, had struck and killed it before the creature was ever aware of him. But all night he’d been edgy, too, still nervous from the quakes of the last week; the first instant the skidding car hit the hill and shook the earth he’d shivered as if another jolt were rocking the cliffs, rattling the central California coast.

The original temblor, two days earlier, at 5.2 on the Richter scale, had sent the more timid human residents of Molena Point fleeing from their cottages, to creep back hours later hauling out mattresses and camp stoves and setting up housekeeping in their gardens. All week, as the village of Molena Point experienced aftershocks, people were tense and excited, waiting for the big one, for the earth to crack open, for their homes to topple and giant seas to flood the land.

Well, it was only an earthquake, a natural, Godgiven part of life-a cat might be wary, but a cat didn’t lose perspective. Humans, on the other hand, were hopelessly amusing. Facing a natural phenomenon, the poor, gullible bipeds invariably overreacted.

The earthquake had brought two reporters down from San Francisco, searching for anything sensational, seeking out the displaced and injured, running their cameras in a feeding frenzy, their hunger for alarming news as voracious as the hunger of seagulls attacking a handful of fish innards tossed from the Molena Point pier.

But the quake had disturbed the burrowing wild creatures, the mice and wood rats and voles, driving them from their holes, disorienting the little beasts so they were incredibly easy prey. All week, Joe Grey and Dulcie had gorged themselves.

Though Dulcie refused to hunt down Hellhag Canyon. She had lectured him on the dangers of high, rogue waves after an earthquake, and, when he laughed at her fears, she had turned away disgusted, growling and lashing her tabby-striped tail at what she called tomcat stupidity.

Still listening for a cry for help from within the overturned car, Joe could hear only the drip, drip of gasoline, or maybe radiator water; tensely, he circled the vehicle, ears low, body rigid, ready to spring away if the hulking wreck toppled or exploded.

The broken, fallen saplings that lay tangled across the wreck’s greasy, exposed underside half covered the drive shaft and one bent wheel. He found the source of the dripping sound. It came from the left front wheel, where a viscous liquid, a substance as duck as maple syrup, dropped steadily into a pool among the crushed ferns. When he sniffed the little puddle, the stuff smelleda bit like syrup: the stink of pancake syrup laced with ether.

Backing away, he approached the upside-down windshield that rose from the bracken, the glass patterned like a spiderweb encased in crystal. And now, over the smell of gas, came the sharp scent of human blood.

Behind the glass he could see the driver, white and still, his contorted body wrapped around the steering wheel and impaled by a twisted strip of metal, his head jammed down into the concavity of the roof. There was no way this guy could be alive, not with his chest pierced through and the amount of blood pooling out. The passenger seat had come loose and lay across him. He hugged it firmly in a rictus of pain and death.

The victim’s Levi’s-clad backside was jammed against the shattered side window, an edge of broken glass pressed against the billfold that bulged in his hip pocket. The wallet had probably prevented a sharp cut across the buttocks, not that this fellow would have felt it.

There was no passenger. No one else in the car. The young man had died alone. He was maybe thirty, Joe thought. The victim’s pale blue eyes stared at some entity that no one among the living would ever see.

His brown hair was neatly trimmed-a better haircut than Joe’s housemate, Clyde, would ever spring for. The dead man’s bloodstained shirt and torn, camel hair sport coat looked expensive. The scattered items that had fallen onto the inverted headliner included a suede leather cap, a California road map, a Styrofoam coffee cup spilling coffee across the fabric of the headliner, and bits of shattered safety glass decorating the bloody pools and clinging to the dead man’s clothes like diamondbright sparkles for some gory costume party.

The car was a‘67 Corvette, a collector’s car-you saw many antiques around Molena Point. It was pale blue and, until its mishap that morning, looked to have been in mint condition. The sticker on its license plate indicated that it had been purchased from Landrum Antique Cars in L.A. The wrecked windshield was marked by tape residue where a small piece of paper must have been affixed. He could see no tag ripped away or lying on the floor.

Carefully, Joe reached a paw though a hole in the crazed glass. Pushing out some of the rounded jewellike bits, he squeezed his head through, then his muscled gray shoulders, and eased down onto the dead man’s bent knee, his weight shifting the body and startling him; but then the victim settled again and was still.

Pressing his nose uneasily to the young man’s nose, Joe sought some hint of breathing. But even as he crouched he could feel, through his paws, a faint drop in temperature as the body began to cool.

Grimacing at the smells that accompanied human death-very different from the smell of a dead rat-he backed away and crept out again, panting for gulps of fresh air. This stranger’s death unleashed all manner of past associations for Joe Grey: visions of the police working a murder scene as he crouched watching from the roof above; of a dead man bathed in the green light from a computer terminal; of a man struck suddenly with a bright steel wrench, a memory so vivid that Joe heard again the crack of me victim’s skull.

But those deaths had been murders. What he was viewing here was an accident, the result of careless driving on a fog-blind mountain road.

Except that something tickled at him, a puzzled unease, some detail of the crash-something he had heard before the car skidded and came thundering down into the ravine.

Frowning, the white strip down his gray face pinched into puzzled worry lines, the big tomcat padded along a fallen sapling between the upturned wheels.

What had he heard?

Dropping down on the far side of the wrecked car, his mind played back the crash in a quick rerun: the squeal of brakes, then the skid just about where Deadman’s Curve began. Hellhag Hill was famous for that double twist. If a driver lost control on the first bend, he was hard put, when he hit the second one, to regain command. The too-sharp turn was on him, the canyon dropping straight down away from his front wheels. The locals took that road slowly.The warning signs were numerous and insistent-but in the fog a driver wouldn’t see them. Even a local might not realize just where he was on the hairpin road.

Had he heard another sound before the squeal of brakes? Had he heard a horn farther away, muffled in the fog? The faint, quick stutter of a warning horn?

He squinched closed his eyes, trying to remember.

Yes. First a faint triple beep, then the skid and the crash and the car careening down at him-but had that earlier honking come from a second car, or had this driver honked at something looming out of the fog? Had there been one car or two, moving blindly along that narrow road?

He thought he remembered the hush of two sets of tires; but had they been coming from opposite directions? Then the faint stutter of the horn, then the scream of brakes and the heart-jolting thunder as the car came careening over.

The other car must have had gone on. Why hadn’t it stopped? Hadn’t the other driver heard the wreck?

Padding back across a sapling above the car’s greasy innards, Joe studied the right front wheel with its thick discharge. The drip was abating now, only an occasional drop still falling, its viscous pool seeping down into the dead leaves. The same syrupy liquid coated the bent wheel. He crouched to look more closely.

The drip came from a short piece of black hose attached to the wheel and to a metal pipe that ran to the engine. The brake line. Padding back and forth along the sapling, studying each wheel with its corresponding hose, he found it interesting that only this one brake line was broken and leaking.

Living with Clyde Damen, his human housemate and a professional auto mechanic, Joe Grey had grown from kittenhood exposed to the insides of every possible motor-driven vehicle, subjected to endless photographs in automotive magazines and to countless boring articles on the intricacies of car engines; as he drowsed in Clyde’s lap, he was treated to interminable, mind-numbing hours of Clyde’s detailed dissertations on the subtleties of matters mechanical.

He had a clear picture of this car’s master cylinder, empty now where the fluid had drained away.

No brakes when the guy hit that curve. Zilch.Nada.

He found it most interesting that the broken plastic tube was not ragged as if it had worn through naturally, but was separated by a knife-sharp incision, a cut slicing straight through the hose.

He was debating whether to climb the canyon wall and check the skid marks on the road, to try to get a picture of just what had happened up there, when a noise from above made him crouch.

Someone was descending the cliff, moving downward unseen but noisy, crashing through the fog-blurred tangles in a frenzy, rattling bushes and dislodging stones.

Maybe somebody had heard the crash; maybe the other driver was coming to render assistance after all.

Except, this didn’t sound like a man descending. Even a man in a great hurry wouldn’t break so many bushes; a man hurrying down that steep bank would be more collected so that he, himself, wouldn’t fall. This sounded more like a wild creature running and sliding full out, though the sound was so distorted in the fog that he couldn’t really be sure what he was hearing. One minute the approach was loud enough to be a bear, the next instant the noise faded to nothing.

A bear. Right,Joe thought, disgusted. There hadn’t been bears on the California coast for a century. A bobcat? No bobcat would follow and approach a wrecked car; no wild beast would do that. Warily, he leaped onto a boulder, ready to fight or run like hell, whichever the situation suggested.

Straining to see above him through the disturbed patches of water-sodden air, he wondered if it could be a horse.

But a horse, escaped from one of the small local stables, wouldn’t choose, on its own, to descend the rough and fogbound canyon. A horse, breaking through his paddock fence, would prefer the slopes of Hellhag Hill above, where the grass was rich and nourishing.

He was considering that perhaps a local horseman had heard the wreck and saddled up to come and render help, when the beast charged out of the mist-not one creature, but two.

Two huge dogs plunged straight at him. Panting and baying, they leaped up the boulder, scrabbling to reach him. Joe, hissing and snarling, prepared to bloody them both. Their eyes were wild, their white teeth flashing.

The boulder wasn’t large. It protruded out of the cliff in such a way that if the dogs had thought about it, they’d have gone uphill again and jumped straight down on him. But they didn’t think; they were all bark and gnashing teeth, fighting to reach him, their big mouths snapping so close that he could taste their doggy breath. He had raised his steel-tipped paw, ready to rake to ribbons those two invading noses, when he did a double take, studying their thin canine faces.

Joe dropped his armored paw and sat down, watching them, amused.

Puppies.

They were only puppies. Huge puppies, each as big as a full-grown retriever. Big-boned, big-footed pups. And thin. Two bags of canine bones held together by dry, buff-colored pelts, their black-and-white faces so fleshless they appeared skeletal, their whipping tails so skinny they looked like two snakes that had swallowed marbles.

Two oversized puppies, starving and harmless.

They had stopped barking. They grinned up at him, wagging and prancing spraddle-legged around the boulder, their skinny tails whipping enthusiastically.

They had no notion of eating him. Probably they were too young and stupid to imagine that a dog could kill and eat a cat; the idea would not have occurred to them. They simply wanted to be friendly, to be close to another animal. Now that they’d stopped barking, even their doggy smiles were incredibly downtrodden and sad.

They couldn’t be more than four or five months old, but were so emaciated that even the weight of their floppy ears and floppy feet seemed to drag them down.

He wondered if they belonged to the dead driver, if somehow they had managed, as the car went over the cliff, to leap free?

But the crash happened in a split second; they would have had only an instant to escape. These clumsy mutts didn’t look like they could get out of their own way in twenty seconds.

Maybe they’d been following the car, running along behind. Had the driver been running his dogs the way some country folk did, exercising them down the nearly empty highway? Joe sneezed with disgust. Any man who ran his dogs behind a car-to say nothing of starving them bone-thin-deserved a violent death.

He gave them a gentle growl to make them move back and dropped down from the boulder. They backed away two steps, fawning at him, bowing on their front legs and grinning in doggy obeisance. They seemed, actually, like rather nice young pups. Though only youngsters, they were already as big as Rube, Joe’s aged Labrador retriever housemate. And though they were puppy-silly and disgustingly eager, with their stupid baby grins, Joe thought perhaps the expressions in their bright, dark eyes hinted at some possible future intelligence.

He thought they might be half Great Dane, and maybe half boxer. The smaller of the two had the happy-go-lucky grin of a young boxer. Actually, if they were fed properly and groomed, if their faces filled out a bit, and their ribs ceased to protrude, they might become quite handsome-as far as a dog could be handsome.

Too late Joe Grey saw where his thoughts had led him. Saw that he had reacted with no more common sense than a mush-hearted human do-gooder, sucker for a pair of starving mutts-realized that he had actually been wondering where to find these beasts a meal.

Well, he’d been around Clyde too long; Clyde Damen was such a sucker for stray animals.

Not yours truly,Joe Grey thoughtI’m not playing animal rescue for these two bags of bones.

The fact that he himself had been a rescued stray had no bearing on the present situation. This was entirely different. Turning his back on the gamboling pups, he studied the wrecked Corvette, wondering if anyone at all had heard the crash and called the cops. There were no houses near Hellhag Canyon, only the empty hills and, atop Hellhag Hill, to the north, the Moonwatch Trailer Park.

The instant he turned to look at the pups again, they were all over him, slobbering and whining, soaking him with dog spit.

“Stop it! Get off! Get back. Get off me!”

They ducked away, staring at him white-eyed with alarm.

Obviously they had never been spoken to in the English language by one of feline persuasion. Whining and backing, they watched him with such deep suspicion that he had to laugh.

His laugh frightened them further. The poor beasts looked so confused that he ended up reaching out a gentle paw, patting the smaller pup on his huge white foot, then lifting his own sleek gray face to sniff noses.

He knew he was acting stupid, that he was being suckered. Joe Grey, PI, taken in by a pair of flea-bitten, mange-ridden mongrels.

“Get on out of here! Go on back to the highway!”

They cowered away, crestfallen, and Joe turned his attention to the crash victim, peering in at the dead driver, thinking about the severed brake line.

The cops were needed here, the sooner the better.

He studied the twisted dashboard and the dark hole of the sprung-open glove compartment, but could not see a car phone. Where was the driver of the other car? How could he not have heard the crash? Was he clear down the coast by this time?

Behind Joe, the pups began a cacophony of heartrending whines. Joe ignored them. Whoever had cut the brake line must have known approximately how long it would take the brakes to fail. The car could not have skidded at a more dangerous spot. He pictured the driver hitting his brakes on the first curve, forcing out the last of the fluid, emptying the line, rendering the brake pedal useless when he hit the second twist.

He didn’t know the dead driver, though he knew by sight nearly everyone in Molena Point. Peering in at the man’s unsettling blue eyes, at his waxen face streaked with blood, he wondered where this guy had last stopped, maybe to get gas? Maybe the brake line had been cut then?

Letting his imagination go to work on the scene, he wondered if that other driver had been following the Corvette, waiting to startle the driver with sudden honking and make him hit his brakes at just the right moment, waiting to be sure the driver went out of control and careened over the cliff, beforehewent on his way.

That faint honking and the squeal of brakes formed, for Joe Grey, a frightening scenario.

Leaving the wreck, he bounded up the canyon wall, trying to ignore the whining pups, who clambered up beside him, stepping on his paws. If he’d had a tail-more than just a two-inch stub-the mutts would have stepped on it, too. He hadn’t been troubled with that appendage since he was a gangling kit. The drunk who stepped on and broke his tailhad,in that moment of careless cruelty, really done him a good turn. Life without a tail to get caught in doors and pulled by small children suited Joe Grey just fine.

Before the three animals reached the narrow road that wound precariously a hundred feet above the sea, Joe Grey knew, and the pups knew, that they were not alone. An unseen man stood silently somewhere on the opposite canyon wall-they could smell his heavily perfumed shaving lotion, and a whiff of shoe polish. Sniffing the scents that seeped through the mist, the pups cowered silently against Joe Grey; and Joe himself crouched low against the bushes, looking.

He waited for some time, but even though the fog was thinning above him along the road it was pea soup in the canyon. He could see nothing. The tiny sounds he heard from below, the small crackle of a twig or a dry leaf, could be a person moving around the wrecked car or it could be only a ground squirrel or another wood rat, venturing out to investigate the metal monster that had fallen into their canyon.

When nothing larger stirred, when he could detect in the mist no one climbing back up the cliff, he leaped impatiently up to the narrow two-lane to search the wet black macadam for tire marks.

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IT’S GOING to be hard to dump these mutts,Joe Grey thought. They clung to him like road tar. When he tried to drive them back into the ravine they nearly smothered him with slurping kisses. Even his lancing claws no longer deterred them. They licked their noses where he’d slapped them and bouncedaround him like a pair of wind-up toys, fawning and trampling him, grinning with the delighted assumption that he was their dearest friend; they were so stupid and innocent that even if he could have ditched them and made his escape, something within Joe rebelled. He knew he couldn’t abandon them; puppies and young dogs have no more notion of how to find food for themselves than does a human baby.

Well, he’d take them home to Clyde. Let Clyde deal with the problem. Clyde would love the stupid mutts. And maybe they’d cheer up old Rube. Rube had been mourning the death of Barney, their golden retriever who had succumbed to cancer, for far too long.

So, okay, he’d take them home. But did they have to make such a scene? By the time he reached the road above Hellhag Canyon his fur was sopping from their affection.

Atop the cliff, the sea breeze came stronger, lifting and thinning the mist. The narrow two-lane, clearing of fog, glistened wet and black. In the watery sunshine, the pups looked even more skeletal, every rib casting a curved shadow, their cheeks so deeply sunken that he could see each indentation of their canine skulls. Turning his back on them, he studied the slick black road.

Where the car had gone over the edge, the earthen shoulder was scarred raw, rocks tumbled, bushes broken and uprooted. Trotting along the verge watching for the man they had scented below, for a stranger to suddenly appear climbing out of the canyon, Joe could find no skid marks on the dark macadam. It looked, just as Joe had guessed, as if the driver, when his car hit the second curve, had no brakes at all.

Examining the wet paving, he found several splatters of brake fluid pooled like oil. He had to drive the pups away, cuffing and slapping them to keep them from licking the spills. He didn’t know if brake fluid was poisonous like radiator coolant, but he didn’t care to find out. It was not until he trotted around the second bend that he smelled burnt rubber.

Before him, Sshaped trails snaked across the asphalt, and a larger puddle of brake fluid gleamed. Joe imagined the driver stamping repeatedly on the pedal, trying to slow, the fluid spurting out until it was gone.

Pumping the pedal, jerking the wheel, he’d have hit that second curve like a missile, the car swerving back and forth, gaining speed on the downhill, hitting the shoulder to plow up half a ton of dirt and flip a double gainer straight into Hellhag Canyon.

He could find no sign of the second car, no trace of a second set of skid marks.

He wondered if the driver had braked suddenly to avoid not an oncoming car but the pups themselves looming in the fog.

Except, the horn had honkedbeforethe skid, not at the same moment, as one would expect if the driver were startled by the sudden appearance of animals in his headlights.

Crossing the road, Joe headed up Hellhag Hill through the tall, wet grass. He was halfway to the crest when he realized the pups had left him.

Rearing above the wild oats and barley, he saw them far below, creeping along the edge of the highway, staring up the hill white-eyed and quivering.

Joe didn’t know what was wrong with them; something on the hill terrified them. He stood tall on his hind paws, observing them, smiling a sly cat grin.

Now would be the perfect time to ditch them. Take off across Hellhag Hill and leave them cowering down there.

A practical voice told him,Lose them, Joe. Lose the silly mutts now, while they’re distracted. You’d be stupid to take them home, they’re sure to have mange, fleas, ringworm. They’ll give it to the household cats and to poor Rube, and he’s too old to fight a case of mange. Dump them. Dump them here. Now. Do it now.

But a kinder voice whispered,Come on, Joe. Have a heart. Clyde can take them to the pound, where they’ll be fed and safe, not running along the highway. Even a dog deserves a little compassion.

Ditch them. They’ll learn to fend for themselves, live out of garbage cans. There’s that trailer park up Hellhag Hill; some dumb human will feed them.

And above this internal argument, he kept wondering about the dead man, and about the unseen stranger in the canyon, wondering where he had come from, and why he didn’t hike on into the village and report the wreck. Joe hadn’t seen the guy come up out of the canyon.

He wondered how long before someone else would come along the road, notice the torn-up shoulder, take a look down into the canyon, and call 911. Get the cops and a wrecker down there. Meanwhile, below him on the road, the pups crept along shivering with fear. Poor dumb beasts.

Well, he’d take them home. Clyde would love them. They’d give him something to do: he’d feed them, get them in shape, have them vetted, walk them and bathe them, worm them, fawn over them. Find homes for them. He’d be so proud when they were sleek and had collars and homes of their own.

Right. And when did Clyde ever give away an animal? He won’t find homes for them. He’ll keep the beasts. You and Rube and the household cats will be sharing your nice peaceful pad with a pair of wild-mannered elephants. Think of poor Rube, he?

Sirens screamed from the village, and a rescue unit appeared around the farthest curve, moving fast and followed by a black-and-white. The pups stared around wildly and fled into the drainage ditch, but when a second police unit came scorching toward them, the pups chose the lesser of two evils and bolted up the hill to cower whimpering against Joe.

Joe couldn’t see much with the pups milling around. He glimpsed four officers disappearing down the hill: he thought it was Wendell, Brennan, Davis, and Hendricks, following two paramedics with their stretchers and black bags. He could hear the officers’ muffled voices mixed with the crackle of the police radio. The fog had broken into wispy scarves; now, beyond the cliff, the vast sweep of the Pacific Ocean gleamed up at him in the sun’s first rays, the white surf crashing against the rocks. Off to the north, the red rooftops of the village caught the sun’s light, too, and he could hear the distant, thin chime of the courthouse clock striking seven. The morning smelled of sea and iodine, and of coffee and frying sausages mixed, nearer at hand, with the pungent stink of wet dog. When, somewhere on the village streets, a little boy shouted, the pups cocked their floppy ears, whining and panting. Their eager innocence touched something tender in Joe Grey. “You poor, dumb puppies. So damn lonely.”

They slobbered and drooled on him, so starved for affection that they made a cat barf. Gently he stroked their wet black noses with his velveted paw.

If Clyde takes them to the pound, they’ll be locked in a cage.

They’ll be fine in a cage; dogs have nothing like a cat’s burning need for freedom, they’ll thrive in a nice warm kennel. Dogs love structure. Look at police trackers, always on leash or on command.

But his other voice said,Pound dogs are gassed, Joe. Euthanized. Sent west.

Ignoring both voices, he moved swiftly toward home, the pups pressing so close that their legs were like a moving forest through which he had to navigate. He wondered, would the cops examine the wreck carefully enough to find the leaky brake line? Lieutenants Brennan and Wendell might very well miss that damning bit of evidence; Wendell had just recently made lieutenant, but he was better with street crime than with the subleties of a possible murder scene.

But the new female officer, Davis, was thorough. Joe had watched these uniforms work a crime scene so often that he felt like part of the force.

The trouble was, they didn’t know this was a crime scene. It looked like an accident that could too easily have happened in this early, foggy dawn.

Now, with the road quiet again, the pups left him, racing down the hill and glancing worriedly behind them.

“Get back up here, get off the road. The ambulance will be coming back. What’s with you two? What are you afraid of?”

They stared up at him, whining.

“Come on, dummies. Get up here. There’s nothing here to scare you, nothing but maybe a stray cat in the grass.” Nothing but a few rats and ground squirrels, and the half dozen stray cats that had taken up residence some days before, following the quakes, appearing suddenly, a clowder of thin,wild beasts so fearful they would run from a bird shadow swooping overhead. No pup could be afraid of them. Dulcie said humans who abandoned cats ought to be stripped naked and dropped without food-without money and credit cards-in the icy wilds of Tierra del Fuego, and see how they liked being abandoned.

Joe thought those cats had probably come from the trailer park, a transient human community of the less-affluent snowbirds who trekked out to California in the winter to escape the blizzards of the Midwest. Usually those people, if they brought pets along, took care of their animals, but once in a while you got some lowlifes.

But Dulcie said these cats were too terrified of humans to have ever lived with people. She thought they were feral cats, the products of several generations of strays, gone as wild as foxes.

He wondered what Dulcie would say about his dragging home the pups.

He could just see her green eyes blazing with amazement.Puppies, Joe? These aren’t puppies, they’re monsters.

Dulcie was not afraid of dogs-she could intimidate any dog in Molena Point and often did-but after their recent encounter with the black voodoo cat, she’d had enough of involvement with any fellow creature. And just then, having appropriated Clyde’s backyard for her own purposes, she’d take a dim view of two giant puppies plunging around barking and whining and getting in her way.

For two weeks she had spent every daylight hour-it seemed to Joe-and most of her evenings, crouched atop Clyde’s back fence within a mass of concealing maple leaves, peering into the windows of the Greenlaw mansion, which stood on the big double lot behind Clyde’s cottage. Clyde called Dulcie’s preoccupation,eavesdropping;he told her she’d grown unspeakably nosy even for a cat. But Dulcie, staring in through Lucinda Greenlaw’s lace curtains, was convinced that something in the old Victorian house wasn’t right.

“Of course something isn’t right,” Clyde had snapped at her. “Lucinda’s husband just died. Lucinda’s suddenly a widow. Of course life isn’t right-don’t you think she’s grieving! Cats can be so unfeeling!”

“Why would she grieve?” Dulcie had hissed, her ears tight to her head, her green eyes fiery. “Shamas Greenlaw was nothing but a womanizer. Going off for weeks, leaving Lucinda with practically no money while he took his expensive trips, and every time with a different bimbo. Why would she grieve! She’s lucky to be rid of him.”

Dulcie didn’t hold with the shades-of-gray school of moral behavior. Shamas Greenlaw had been sampling the herd, and Dulcie called it like it was.

Shamas had been dead for two weeks, drowned in a boating accident off Seattle-leaving his current squeeze on the boat with Shamas’s nephew, Newlon Greenlaw; Shamas’s cousin, Samuel Fulman; and Winnie and George Chambers, an older Molena Point couple. Probably, Dulcie said, leaving the girlfriend deeply grieving as she contemplated an end to the money Shamas had lavished upon her.

“Anyway,” she’d told Clyde, “Lucinda is doing more than grieving. Something else is the matter.”

“And how did you arrive at this very perceptive conclusion?”

“You don’t need to be sarcastic,” the little cat had hissed. “AndI don’t need to listen! If you’re not interested in my opinion, Clyde Damen, then stuff it. I don’t need to come in here and be insulted. I have my own home, which is far nicer and more pleasant than this bachelor horror.” And she had stormed out through Joe’s cat door and up the street, her striped tail lashing.

Joe had looked after her, grinning. But Clyde had sat at the kitchen table cradling his cold coffee, scowling and hurt; looking, that early morning, like a particularly unfortunate example of homelessness, a soul in need of extensive assistance, his short, dark hair sticking up every which way, his ancient jogging shorts threadbare and wrinkled, his sweatshirt sporting three holes where it had gotten caught in the washer. His expression, as he stared after Dulcie, was one of deep puzzlement.

Clyde could mouth off at Joe, and get just what he gave, and that was okay. But he didn’t know how to respond when sweet little Dulcie snapped back at him.

It had taken Dulcie a long time, after she and Joe found they could speak, before she would talk to Clyde. Then, there had been a far longer interval of mutual good manners between cat and human, before Dulcie had the chutzpah to return Clyde’s smart-mouthed remarks in kind.

Now, leaving the jungle-tall grass of Hellhag Hill, Joe called the pups to him for the last time as he crossed a narrow residential street, heading back among humans. He would not raise his voice again to give them a command until he was sheltered within his own walls. The pups bolted up to him, wagging and panting, happy to leave the wild slope.

“Idiots,” he muttered. But maybe he understood their fear; sometimes when he crossed Hellhag Hill, the fur along his own back stood up as rigid as a punk haircut.

Joe didn’t know what caused his unease, but once when he was hunting high atop Hellhag Hill, he’d imagined he heard voices beneath the earth, and that same night he’d dreamed that Hellhag Hill vanished from under his paws, the earth falling away suddenly into a black and bottomless cavern.

He had awakened mewling with fear, as frightened as a helpless kitten.

Ahead of him, one of the puppies stopped, sat down on the sidewalk, and began to scratch. The other pup copied him, nibbling at an itchy tail-causing Joe to itch all over, to imagine himself already flea-ridden, covered with hungry little freeloaders glad to move to fatter environs, parent and grandparent and baby fleas burrowing deep into his clean silver fur.

Hurrying through the village beside the pups, he saw the coroner’s car heading out toward Highway One, and he wondered what the slim, bespectacled Dr. Bern would find. Around him, the village seemed very welcoming suddenly, very safe, the familiar little cottages tucked in among their old, twisted oaks and tall pines. Over the smell of sun-warmed geraniums came the lingering scents of bacon and pancakes and syrup.

Trotting past Molena Point’s bright, tangled gardens and crowded shops, Joe was suddenly very thankful for this village. He would never admit that to Clyde, would never hint to Clyde how much he cherished Molena Point. Would never confess how glad he was to be away from the mean streets of San Francisco-an ignorant kittentrying to cadge a few bites of garbage, hiding from the bigger cats, always afraid, and cold, and mad at the world.

Suddenly, right now, Joe needed to be home. In his own safe, warm home.

Galloping eagerly in the direction of his cozy pad, he dodged the pups, who ran along grinning and panting as if their own salvation were surely near. Joe, racing up the sidewalk through blowing leaves and flashes of sunlight, wondered again: had those uniforms, up at Hellhag Canyon, seen the cut brake line?

Police Captain Max Harper needed to know about it, to know that that wreck had been no accident.

Turning down the little side street toward his and Clyde’s white Cape Cod cottage, running beneath its sheltering oaks toward the ragged lawn that Clyde seldom mowed, and the gray shake roof that constantly needed fixing-repairs supplied by Clyde’s girlfriend, Charlie Getz-Joe breathed in the comforting, warm smells of home.

But crossing the yard, eyeing Clyde’s antique Chevy roadster still parked in the drive, knowing Clyde had not yet left for work, he began to wonder what Clydewasgoing to say about bringing the two puppies home.

And he wondered if, when he tried to get a message to Max Harper about the cut brake line, Clyde would respond in his usual supercritical manner-if Clyde would hide the telephone and give him another of his high-handed lectures about how cats should not get involved in police business. How he, Joe Grey, ought to mind his own simple affairs. How Max Harper needed to pursue his official police business unencumbered by inappropriate feline meddling.

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TROTTING UP the three steps to his cat door, Joe could smell coffee and fried eggs mixed with the meaty scent of dog food. He slid inside fast, under the plastic flap. Behind him, the pups pushed their black noses through-two wet, disembodied snouts sniffing and shoving, forcing his cat door so hard he thought they’d rip out the metal frame.

The familiar room embraced him: the shabby, soft rugs; his own tattered, fur-covered armchair by the window; Clyde’s new leather chair and ottoman, which were the latest additions to the room; the potted plants that Charlie had brought over to soften the stark bachelor quarters. And, best of all, Charlie’s drawings of Joe and Dulcie, and of Rube and the household cats, handsomely framed and grouped on all four walls. These finer touches had turned the tatty room into a retreat with charm enough to please any human or feline. If Clyde ever married, Joe hoped tall, slim Charlie Getz, with her kinky red hair and freckles, would be the one. The fact that she could fix the roof and repair the plumbing, aswell as decorate a house and cook a mean steak, was a definite plus.

Charlie had figured out on her own that Joe Grey and Dulcie were more than your average cats. But she had kept her mouth shut, and this was more than a plus. In Joe’s book, Charlie Getz was already family.

Though so far there was no talk of a wedding. Charlie seemed happy in her own small studio apartment above the village shops, from which she ran her housecleaning-and-repair business.

“Joe? That you? What’s going on out there? What’s all the banging? You stuck in your cat door? I told you you’re getting fat.”

At the sound of a human voice, the pups went wild, pawing and whining.

“Shut up!” Joe hissed. “You want to get your heads stuck in that little square hole? Idiots!” He was rooting at his back to dislodge a flea-thanks to the strays-when Clyde strode out of the kitchen and stood looking at the two black noses pushing in through the cat door.

Joe concentrated on licking his shoulder.

“Now what’ve you brought home?”

“What do you mean,now}What have I ever brought home? I didn’t bringthosehome.” He regarded the noses as if he had never seen them before.

“You have brought home dead rats,” Clyde began. “Dead birds. That live bird that plastered its feathers all over the kitchen. Live snakes. Not to mention a parade of randy and ill-mannered lady cats. Before you met Dulcie, of course.”

“Dulcie is a lady.”

“Don’t twist my words.”

“Are you implying that Dulcie is not a lady? Or that she is not welcome?”

“I am not talking about Dulcie. You have brought home enough trouble through that cat door to send me to the funny farm for life. There’s never a week, Joe, that you don’t get into some kind of new predicament and drag your problems home. Do you see these gray hairs?” he asked, pointing to his ragged, dark haircut.

“Debauchery,” Joe told him. “That’s what makes gray hair. Too many women and too much booze. That’s where the gray hairs come from.”

“I guess you should know about debauchery, every hair on your lecherous body is gray. Before Dulcie, you?”

“Can’t you leave Dulcie out of this? What do you have against Dulcie?”

“I don’t have anything against Dulcie. If you had half her decent manners-to say nothing of her morals and charm and half her finesse-life would?”

“Oh, can it, Clyde. Dulcie’s a female. You wantmeto act all prissy, tippy-toe in here every morning smelling of kitty shampoo and primrose-scented flea powder?”

Clyde sighed and retrieved his coffee cup from atop the CD player. He was dressed for work in a pair of clean jeans, his new Rockports, and a red polo shirt beneath a white lab coat that, this early in the morning, was still unsullied by the grease from a variety of BMWs and Jaguars. His dark hair was damp from the shower, his cheeks still ruddy from shaving.

Clyde regarded the two large canine noses, then regarded Joe.“You’d better tell me what this is about.

But please, make it brief. Cut to the chase, Joe. It’s too early for a long-winded dissertation.”

Joe chomped the offending flea. The one-spot flea killer was okay, but it took the little beasts a while to die.

“Joe, where did you find the dogs? Why did you bring home two dogs? From the size of their noses, I assume they are rather large. From the sound of them and their behavior, I imagine that they are young. What are they, Great Danes? Are there more outside? What did you do, drag home a whole litter?

“I did not bring them home!There are only two. I think they’re half Great Dane.”

“They followed you by accident. You really didn’t know they were there.” Sighing, Clyde stepped to the front door.

The instant he turned the knob releasing the latch, the pair burst through, in their enthusiasm slamming the door against Clyde and slamming Clyde against the wall.

Dancing around the living room like two drunk buffalo in a phone booth, the pups leaped at Clyde, delighted to meet him, ripped his lab coat across his chest, and slurped dog spit across his face.

Joe, having fled to the top of the CD player, watched their happy display with interest.

“They’re hungry, Joe. Look at them, they’re all bones. They need food. Can’t you see they’re starving?” Clyde knelt to hug the monster puppies, his voice softening to a patter of pet words that sickened the tomcat.

“They can’t be five months old.” He looked up at Joe. “They’re going to be huge. Where did they come from? Where did you find them? Well, you could at least have found some food for them-”

“Caught them a rabbit, I suppose?”

“Well, yes, you could have done that.”

“And give them tularemia? Pierce their livers with rabbit bones?”

Clyde rose and headed for the kitchen, trampled by the fawning pups.“You don’t have tularemia. Your liver seems okay.”

“I’m a cat. Cats don’t get tularemia. My liver can handle anything. They’re here only because they followed me, because I couldn’t ditch them. There was a wreck-”

“They’re probably thirsty, too. Look at them. You could have led them to some water.”

“I’m trying to tell you, there was a wreck. The cops are there now. If you would listen?”

Clyde lifted the loose skin on one pup’s neck and let it go. It didn’t snap back, but remained in a long wrinkle. “They’re dehydrated, Joe.”

He filled the dishpan with water and set it on the floor.

“Will you listen to me! There was a wreck. A car went into Hellhag Canyon,” Joe shouted over the racket of the two pups slurping and splashing. “The guy lost his brakes-nice ‘67 Corvette-powder blue-totally trashed it.”

“Really?” Clyde said with more interest. “A Corvette. I haven’t seen a ‘67 Corvette around the village in a long time. Was the driver someone we know? How bad was he hurt? Are the police there?”

“They’re there. But if they don’t look at the brake line?”

Clyde turned to stare at him.“What?”

“The brake line. It was cut. If the cops-”

“Don’t start, Joe.”

“Start what?”

“You know what. Meddling. Don’t start meddling. You always think-”

“If they don’t look closely at the brake line,” Joe said patiently, “they might not see it was cut.”

Clyde sighed.

“Sharp slice. Near the right front wheel. The brake fluid-”

“Joe—”

“Brake fluid all over the road.”

“If itwas cut, Harper’s men will find it. Don’t you think they know their job? Can’t you keep out of anything? You bring home two starving puppies, you don’t bother to find water for them, and then you-”

“And you,” Joe shouted, “you don’t stop to wonder where they came from, you just bang open the front door and invite them right on in when they’re probably full of ringworm and mange.”

“Ididn’t bring them home.”

“And now you won’t listen when I try to tell you something important.”

During this exchange, old Rube had risen from the kitchen linoleum and taken his aged black Labrador body into the laundry. Lying on the bottom bunk, he growled at the pups with a menace that drove them back into the adjoining kitchen.

The bottom half of the two-tiered bunk belonged to Rube, the top half to the cats. From there, the white cat peered down suspiciously. The other two household cats had fled out Rube’s dog door to hide in the backyard; they were used to quiet dogs but didn’t take happily to big boisterous puppies.

The pups, abandoning Rube and his uncertain temper, returned all their attention to Clyde, their forepaws on the kitchen table, barking in his face.

Clyde opened the lower cupboard and hauled out a fifty-pound bag of kibble.

“Don’t feed them too much. You’ll make them sick.”

“They’re starving, Joe.”

“Feed them too much and they’ll throw it all up.”

“Don’t be silly. They’ll only eat what they need.”

Joe headed for the bedroom, where he could find some privacy with the telephone. He had started to paw in the number of the police station when Clyde strode in and unplugged the cord.

Joe stared at him.

“Leave it, Joe. Those guys don’t need your help to find a cut brake line.”

“And if they miss it?”

“I’ll find out from Harper.”

Silence from the kitchen. The puppies had stopped chomping and smacking. Joe could hear them licking up the last crumbs, then heard them drinking again. Clyde said,“How many people in the car? Are you sure it was a ‘67 Corvette?”

“Of course I’m sure. I’ve been force-fed on your antique car trivia most of my natural fife. I know a ‘67 Corvette as well as I know the back of my paw. There was just the driver. Dead on impact. Maybe from multiple contusions, maybe from a strip of metal stabbed through him, maybe a combination. A man I’ve never seen. Went over just at that double curve, driving south. Lost most of the fluid before the second curve. I was hunting down in the canyon, heard a skid, and that baby came over the bank like a bomb dumped from a B-27, fell right at me. If I wasn’t so lightning fast, it would have creamed me.” He gave Clyde a yellow-eyed scowl. “That car could have killed a poor little cat, careening down into that gully, and what would you care?”

“You look all right to me. You shouldn’t have been hunting in Hellhag Canyon. You know how the tides come up.”

“That’s typical. I’m nearly killed, and all you can do is find fault.”

Two wrenching, gurgling heaves from the kitchen silenced them.

They returned to face two huge piles of doggy kibble steaming on the kitchen floor. The pups, having disgorged the contents of their stomachs, began to bark at the mess and then to lick it. Clyde shouted at them, swinging the kibble bag; the smaller pup, startled, yipped as though he’d been struck. Both pups raced around the kitchen barking. Clyde, trying to clean up the mess, yelled and swore to drive them out of his way. Joe, nearly trampled, leaped to the sink and let out a bloodcurdling yowl.

“Put leashes on them, Clyde. Take them out to the car. Take them to the pound-that’s why I brought them home! So you could take them to the pound!”

This wasn’t completely true, but he’d lost all patience. Couldn’t Clyde handle two baby dogs? “Take them to the pound, Clyde.”

“Don’t be stupid! They’ll kill them at the pound! Why would you bring them home and then?”

“The pound will find homes for them!I brought them home so you could drive them out there. You didn’t expect me to walk way out there dragging those two? Expect me to jump up on the counter at the animal shelter and fill out the proper forms? Sometimes, Clyde, you don’t show good sense even for a human!”

Clyde stared at him. The pups stopped barking and stared, too, their tails whipping and wagging.

Joe Grey, glaring at all three, leaped fromthecounter over the pups’ heads and scorched out the dog door. He was crouched to bolt over the gate and go find a phone, when he saw Dulcie trotting swiftly along the back fence toward him, her green eyes wide with interest, her peach-tinted ears sharply forward, her whole being keen with curiosity.

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CROUCHED ON the back fence, Dulcie had started at the sudden barking from Clyde’s house behind her. Sounded like he had a kennel full of dogs in there-big, lively dogs, shouting with canine idiocy. Probably someone visiting had brought their mutts along, and Clyde was making a fuss over them, teasing and playing with them. He could be such a fool over an animal; that was what she loved best about him.

At first when she discovered her talent for human speech, she had been wary of Clyde, wouldn’t talk to him. She’d left that to Joe, who had awakened from simple cathood into their amazing metamorphosis at about the same time. From the beginning, Joe had mouthed off to Clyde and argued with him, while she had hidden her new talents, too shy even to tell Wilma.

Oh, that morning when Wilma found out. When, sitting on Wilma’s lap at the breakfast table secretly reading the newspaper right along with her, that instant when she laughed out loud at a really stupid book review, she thought Wilma was going to have a coronary.

Dulcie had been worrying about how to break her amazing news; she hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. But suddenly the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. And afterward, trying to explain to Wilmahowit had happened, that she didn’tknowhow it had happened, trying to explain how wonderful it was to understand human speech, oh, that had been some morning, the two of them trying to get it all sorted out, Wilma laughing, and crying a little, too, and hugging Dulcie.

Of course one couldn’t sort out such a phenomenon; one doesn’t dissect miracles. The closest she and Wilma could come-or that Wilma could-was to head for the library and dive into a tangle of research. Wilma and Clyde together had dug through tomes of history about cats, through Celtic and Egyptian history and myth. When they surfaced with their notes, the implications had swept Dulcie away.

Suddenly her head was filled with ancient folklore interlocked with human history, with the mysterious Tuatha folk who had slipped up from the netherworld into the green Celtic fields through doors carved into the ancient hills. There were doors with cat faces engraved on them, sometimes in a tomb, sometimes in a garden wall. Doors that implied feline powers and led deep into the earth, into another land.

Wilma’s research had led Dulcie to Set and Bast, to Egyptian cat mummies and Egyptian tombs with small, cat-decorated doors deep within. From the instant she first realized that she could understand human language, could speak and read the morning paper, then realized there were books about cats like her and Joe, the entire world had opened up, her curiosity, her imagination, her very spirit expanded like a butterfly released from its cocoon.

But Joe Grey hadn’t been so charmed; he didn’t like those revelations of their own history, he didn’t like thinking about their amazing lineage. It was enough for Joe that he was suddenly able to talk back to Clyde and express his own opinions, and could knock the phone from its cradle, to order takeout.

Nor was Joe thrilled to encounter others like themselves, rare creatures among the world of cats. He had certainly not been impressed with the black torn and his evil voodoo ways. That cat had caused more trouble than she cared to remember; she could have done without Azrael. She was glad he’d gone back to the jungles of Central America.

She had spent the early morning perched as usual on Clyde’s back fence beneath the concealing branches of Clyde’s maple tree, her dark stripes blending with the maple’s leafy shadows as she watched Lucinda Greenlaw, alone in the parlor, enjoying her solitary breakfast. Looking in through the lace curtains of the old Victorian house, Dulcie felt a deep, sympathetic closeness to the thin, frail widow.

She thought it strange that Lucinda’s tall old house was so shabby and neglected, its roof shingles curled, its gray paint peeling, when the Greenlaws were far from poor. At least when Shamas was alive, they’d had plenty of cash.

The interior was faded, too, the colors of the flowered wallpaper and the ornate furniture dulled by dust and time. But still the room was charming, furnished with delicate mahogany and cherry pieces upholstered in fine though faded tapestries. Each morning Lucinda took her breakfast alone there from a tray before a cheerful fire; her meager meal, of tea steeped in a thin porcelain pot and a plate of sugar cookies, seemed as pale and without substance as the old woman herself.

According to the pictures on the mantel of Lucinda and Shamas in their younger days, she had been a beauty, as tall and lovely and well turned out as any modern-day model; but now she was bone thin, shrunken, and as delicate as parchment.

Lucinda Greenlaw had had her own metamorphosis, Dulcie thought. From glamorous social creature when she was younger, into a neglected and lonely wife. From the vibrant, very alive person she had been, as Dulcie’s friend Wilma had known her, to a faded and uncertain little person as colorless as the fog that drifted, that morning, in wisps around the parlor windows. Watching Lucinda Greenlaw, Dulcie was gripped with a painful sadness for her; Lucinda had a talent for distressing Dulcie, for stirring in her a desire to protect, almost to mother the old woman.

Dulcie’s housemate responded to Lucinda in the same way. Wilma, too, felt the need to protect Lucinda, particularly now that Lucinda was newly widowed, and now that she had a houseful of her husband’s noisy, rude relatives to bedevil her. A crowd of big, overbearing Greenlaws filled the five bedroomsawaiting Shamas’s funeral, so many big men and women that they seemed to smother Lucinda with their loud arguing and careless manners.

Still, Lucinda knew how to find her own peace. She simply walked away, left the house. She might look frail, but Lucinda had been out as usual that morning before daylight for a solitary ramble of, very likely, several miles.

Earlier, as Dulcie leaped to the fence through the dark fog, she had seen Lucinda coming up the street returning home, her short white hair clinging in damp curls, her faded blue eyes bright and happy in the chill predawn.

Since Shamas’s relatives began to arrive, these early-morning walks and her solitary breakfasts seemed the only moments Lucinda had to herself. Dulcie watched her often, sometimes late at night, too, from higher in the maple tree, watched Lucinda reading in bed from a stack of well-used volumes that stood onher night table; her books of European history and folklore were all Lucinda had to keep her company, alone in the big double bed. She seemed to have every volume of Sir Arthur Bryant, who was one of Wilma’s favorite authors, too.

Lucinda’s beautifully appointed bedchamber, with its high poster bed and long, gold-framed mirrors, was faded like the rest of the house, the velvets as colorless as Lucinda herself, the once luxurious love chamber deteriorated as if love itself was forgotten, and only sadness remained.

Wilma said Lucinda had been a late bride, that she had met Shamas Greenlaw when she was working in Seattle as a doctor’s receptionist. They had married there, where Shamas owned a machine-tool company. Soon after the wedding he sold his Seattle apartment and they moved to Molena Point, to his old family home. Wilma said the handsome, charming couple had launched immediately into a busy social life, that for nearly five years they had circled brightly among Molena Point’s parties and social gatherings, its gallery openings and benefits and small concerts. But then Shamas grew restless; the limited society of the small village began to bore him.

He bought a yacht, a sixty-foot catamaran in which they could take their friends on interesting junkets. Money seemed in ample supply-both Lucinda and Shamas had new cars every year. Surely the clothes in the photographs on the mantel looked expensive. The yacht parties, Dulcie thought, must have been happy times-until Shamas’s shipboard affairs became apparent.

Lucinda shared her uncomfortable memories with few people, but she trusted Wilma. Dulcie’s housemate and Lucinda saw a good deal of each other, particularly since Shamas’s death. The last two weeks Wilma had made every effort to be supportive, to help Lucinda through this hard time. During their quiet meals together, Lucinda had opened up to Wilma, expressing her pain at the unhappy marriage, describing how, on the yacht, Shamas would slip out of their cabin in the small hours, returning just before dawn, imagining that she slept.

Lucinda had never confronted Shamas, had never protested his affairs. She simply quit going with him, choosing to stay home alone.

“Giving up,” Dulcie told Wilma. Wilma agreed. That was what made Dulcie sad. “Why didn’t she fight back? Why didn’t she leave him, change her life, make a new life?” Dulcie had hissed. “She just gave in-to exactly what Shamas handed her.”

Dulcie didn’t understand why Shamas hadn’t loved Lucinda, had treated her so shabbily when she had been so beautiful, when she had such a gentle warmth. Lucinda was still beautiful to Dulcie, like an aged porcelain doll, so frail one would not want to press a paw hard against the old lady’s cheek for fear of tearing her fine, powdery skin, so delicate that Dulcie would hesitate to leap hard into Lucinda’s lap, for fear she might fracture a bone.

Yet Lucinda was not too frail to walk miles along the shore each morning or to climb the steep slope of Hellhag Hill. Sometimes Dulcie followed her on those lonely predawn jaunts, trotting well behind her, staying, for some reason she could not explain, warily out of sight.

Lucinda must have been miserable all those years while Shamas played fast and loose. She told Wilma she had almost left him a year ago, when he first turned down a rich offer on the old house. But she hadn’t left, hadn’t found the courage.

Brock, Lavell& Hicks, a local developer, had begun buying up the property on the Greenlaws’ block. By the time they approached Shamas, they had purchased all the houses across the street, planning a small, exclusive shopping paseo. Eager to acquire the Greenlaws’ two lots, they made Shamas a generous offer. Lucinda had wanted badly to sell, to go into an easily maintained condo, butShamas refused, perhaps out of family sentiment, perhaps simply to thwart Lucinda. He reminded her frequently that the old house was his family home, though before they moved to Molena Point from Seattle he had rented it out for many years; there was no family nearby to use it-Shamas’s cousins had long ago moved across the country to North Carolina.

The relatives were all returning now, flocking to Molena Point to quarrel over Shamas’s leavings-while Shamas himself waited, dead and cold, tucked into a vault at the Gardener Funeral Home, for his family to bid him a last farewell. A few more arrived each day, strident, demanding, all alike in their brashness.

But they had charm, too. Loads of charm, Dulcie thought, amused. Big, cheerful Irishmen and women: loud laughing, loud arguing, never able to simply be quiet. Ruddy-faced, sandy-haired folk, ill-mannered, noisy, irritating, and endearing.

Dulcie was certain that none of them had really cared about Shamas, that they had come only to lick up the leavings. So far, more than a dozen cousins and nephews and nieces had descended, the first arrivals moving into the Greenlaws’ unoccupied bedrooms. The remainder of Shamas’s kin were living in their campers and trailers, in which they had driven out from the East Coast, taking over the Moonwatch Trailer Park south of the village, on the crest of Hellhag Hill. Shamas’s funeral would be scheduled when all relatives were present.

Well, the Greenlaws hadn’t let Shamas’s body cool before they’d begun harassing Lucinda about his estate, pressuring her not to sell the house. Dirken Greenlaw was the worst: Shamas’s twenty-year-old nephew had been the first to arrive, moving into the largest guest room. Dirken was louder and more brash than his cousin Newlon.

It was Newlon Greenlaw who had tried to rescue Shamas when he fell overboard in the storm. Newlon had remained on board with their cousin Sam Fulman and two other passengers, to bring theGreen Ladyback to Molena Point harbor. They had docked first in Seattle for two days, where they were questioned by Seattle police, then sent on their way. Newlon, thinner and slighter than most of the Greenlaw clan, was somewhat quieter, too, and perhaps kinder; surely he was gentler with his uncle’s widow than was Dirken.

And speak of the devil, here came Dirken down the stairs, stamping and yawning, his red hair curled over his collar, his teal green polo shirt straining tight over sleek muscles. Settling into a chair beside the fire, treating Lucinda to his charming Irish grin, Dirken was all Gaelic magnetism: testosterone and guile. For Dulcie, Dirken Greenlaw’s appeal grew less each day, with each successive argument.

“Any coffee, Aunt Lucinda?”

“In the kitchen, Dirken. It’s freshly brewed.”

He didn’t move, but eyed her, waiting. She smiled back at him, but didn’t rise, and Dulcie wanted to cheer-Lucinda was no longer leaping up to fetch Dirken’s morning brew.

Immediately after Shamas’s death, Lucinda, in an uncharacteristically decisive move, had begun arrangements to sell the house; the papers had been drawn by the time Dirken arrived.

Dirken had put a stop to the sale. Dulcie had watched him pace the parlor alternately cajoling and intimidating Lucinda, playing on her uncertainty, telling her she would throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars if she didn’t keep the house and let it increase in value as all real estate was increasing along the California coast.

The house was in a living trust, with Lucinda as her own trustee. If she sold it, the proceeds would go into the trust, and she could spend them as she liked.

Apparently Dirken thought that Lucinda, in some bizarre change of character, would throw away the money in wild debauchery, leaving no cash for the clan-for Dirken, himself, to squander.

Of course Lucinda could revoke any part of the trust; but she was not often so quick to take action as she had been to try to sell the house; generally, the old lady had a hesitant nature. Maybe, Dulcie thought, Dirken was banking on that, hoping Lucinda would die before she changed anything about the trust. He argued, he harassed, and if Newlon was not around to stand up for her, Lucinda would grow very quiet, then soon slip away alone-sometimes these human complications were enough to give a cat fits.

Get some spine,Dulcie would think, feeling her claws stiffen.Don’t let Dirken bully you! Send him packing, send the whole tribe packing. Oh,she wanted to shout,get a life, Lucinda. Don’t just roll over for them! Sell the house, do something wild and extravagant with the money! Go to Europe. Spend it on diamonds. Don’t leave a cent to that clan!Lucinda wasso docile that Dulcie wanted to snatch her up and shake some sense into her; if their roles had been reversed, if Dulcie were bigger than Lucinda, she’d have done it, too.

“You’re up mighty early, Aunt Lucinda.”

“I’m always up early, my dear. And what brings you down at this hour?” Lucinda poured fresh tea for herself and sat cradling her cup, looking quietly into the fire as if attempting to hold close around her the tranquility of her early-morning solitude.

“About an hour ago,” Dirken said, “I thought I heard noises outside. I went out, tramped around. Did you hear anything?”

“Not a thing, my dear. What kind of noise?”

“You must have been dead to the world. When I came in, I knocked at your bedroom door, but I guess you didn’t hear me. Why do you lock your bedroom, Aunt Lucinda?”

Lucinda’s eyes widened. “Why would you try my bedroom door, Dirken? I lock it because I don’t want someone barging in unannounced, certainly not before daylight.”

“A bedroom lock with a key,” Dirken said. “So you can go out and lock it behind you.” He hadn’t the decency to apologize for his snooping, or even to look embarrassed; he simply turned his face away, scowling with anger.

“I expect you’ll be working on the house again this morning, Dirken?”

The young man rose, heading for the kitchen and his coffee. In the doorway he turned, watching Lucinda, the firelight catching at his red hair.“I must work on it, Aunt Lucinda. The house needs so much repair. So much to do, if we’re to save this old place-save your inheritance.”

His tone implied that if he didn’t undertake such refurbishing, the house would collapse within weeks, its remains sinking tiredly into the weedy yard, and Lucinda would be out on the street.

Lucinda,Dulcie thought,must not know much about houses.Dirken’s repair and replacement of some of the lap siding had been grossly shoddy work. And Dulcie had observed with considerable interest his curious method of patching the concrete foundation. It did not appear to her that that little project had anything to do with strengthening the decrepit structure.

She had learned, from watching Clyde and Charlie fix up Clyde’s recently purchased apartment building, a good deal about such repairs-though Clyde limited his work mostly to tear-out. But Dulcie had seen how siding should be applied, and how a crumbling foundation looked; she had spent hours lying on the sunny brick patio beside Joe waiting for mice to be dislodged by the workers and observing just such reconstruction operations.

And how arrogant Dirken was about the supposed repairs. His attitude had been, ever since he arrived, not one of tenderness toward his newly widowed aunt, but of confrontation. Not the behavior of a nurturing young relative caring for his uncle’s frail old widow, but of a selfish young man out for his own gain.

Nor did the rest of the Greenlaw clan spend any time comforting Lucinda; they were either harassing her or prowling the village on endless sightseeing excursions, rudely fingering the wares in Molena Point’s expensive shops, leaving grease stains and torn wrappings, their loud complaints seeming to echo long after they had departed. And in the evenings, in Lucinda’s parlor, they were no more pleasant, quibbling about the sale of the house, turning the prefuneral gathering into a bad-tempered brawl.

Send them packing,Dulcie would think, crouching on the fence, her ears back, her tail lashing. She’d hardly been in the public library in two weeks, where usually she spent several hours a day greeting the patrons and playing with the children. She meant to do better; she was, after all, the official library cat, but she couldn’t stop racing across the village to Lucinda’s, to watch the drama unfolding there. Some force was building, she thought. A confluence of emotions and events that was just the beginning of a larger drama, she was certain of it. And she didn’t want to miss a minute. Whatever lay in Lucinda’s immediate future, Dulcie wanted to know about it.

But the most puzzling twist of all was that, while the Greenlaws were so prickly and unpleasant to Lucinda, on the rare evenings that they settled in for a round of Irish storytelling, filling Lucinda’s parlor nearly to bursting, something strange happened: their attitudes were totally different. Suddenly the frail parlor seemed no longer in danger of collapse under their fierce emoting. On storytelling nights a kind of magic sprang alive among the Greenlaws. They seemed gender, easier with one another, nurturing, and warm.

And Lucinda was easier, too. The old woman seemed drawn to the family, clasping her hands at their tales, weeping or laughing with them. Theyseemeda family, then, this obstreperous clan, and Lucinda no longer an outsider against whom they were solidly ranked.

Wilma said it was the old family stories and family history, which Shamas had told so well, that had first drawn Lucinda to him, that Shamas’s commitment to the old ways was perhaps the only real thing about him, that surely this had been the strongest tie between the mismatched couple. Every marriage, Wilma said, must have a fabric of shared philosophy to tie it together. Wilma truly believed that. For Shamas and Lucinda, that richness had come from the old myths that had been handed down for generations through the Greenlaw family.

And oh, those tales drew Dulcie. On warm evenings when the parlor windows were open and she could hear the stories, she would slip across the yard and up a half-rotten rose trellis to cling beside the screen, listening.

She could have pushed right on inside beneath the loose screen. Who would wonder at a little cat coming in? But she didn’t fancy wandering among those big-booted men and bad-mannered kids with too many hands to snatch at her. The Greenlaws might charm her with their stories, but she didn’t trust a one of them.

But how lovely were their Irish tales, filling her with a longing for worlds vanished, worlds peopled with shapeshifters and her own kind of cat. To hear those stories whispered, hear their wild parts belted out, to hear their wonders dramatized as only an Irishman could tell a tale, those were purr-filled hours. Afterward, she would trot away to join Joe, hunting high on the hills, filled with a deep and complete satisfaction.

These were her stories that the Greenlaws told, she had read and reread them, alone at nighttime in the library, when she had the books to herself; this was her history, hers and Joe’s. The Greenlaws didn’t know that, and they never noticed a little cat crouched at the window.

Strangely, even the taleteller’s language was different on those evenings, the loud Irishmen abandoning the clan’s rough speech for the old, soft phrases and ancient words. And there was one old, wrinkled man among them who had such a beguiling way with a story.

“Semper Will,” old Pedric would begin, “he were a packman, and there wadn’t no carts their way, ‘t tracks was all mixey-mirey and yew did need a good pack-donk to get a load safe droo they moors.”

Pedric, unlike his strapping relatives, was thin and bony and wizened; Pedric looked, himself, like an overgrown elven man or perhaps a skinny wizard.

“Will’s track was all amuck, then, with gurt reeds a-growing up and deep holes for tha donk to fall in, yes all a-brim with muck?”

Oh, Dulcie knew that tale of the high banks full of burrows that the donkey would pass, and the strange little cats that would appear there, peering out of their small caves.

“All sandy-colored tha little cats was, and wi’ green, green eyes.” She knew how those burrows led down and down through dark caverns to other lands, to subterranean mountains and meadows lit by a clear green sky. And Pedric told how the cats were not always in cat form but how, down in that emerald world, a cat might change to a beautiful woman dressed in a silken gown. Oh yes, Dulcie knew those stories, and, just as she knew that at least one part of them was true, the Irishmen believed fully in their wealth of tales. They believed just as surely as they believed that the earth was round and the moon and stars shone in the heavens. The Celtic tales were a part of the Greenlaws’ lives, to be loved as musicis loved but to be put aside in their everyday dealings, as a song might be put aside.

Lucinda finished her tea and cookies and rose to carry her tray to the kitchen, seeming hardly aware of the loud barking through the open windows, though Clyde’s house seemed to explode with human shouting and canine bawling.

Looking through the leaves, watching Clyde’s empty yard, Dulcie heard Joe yowl with rage. Half-alarmed, half-amused, she slipped out from the maple tree and hurried along the fence.

“Take them to?” Joe shouted. “Take them to the pound? That’s why I brought them.”

“Don’t be stupid!? kill them?” Clyde yelled.

And Joe came bolting out the dog door, his ears flat, his yellow eyes slitted with rage. As he crouched to leap the gate, he turned and saw her.

He said nothing. He stood glowering, his ears back, the white strip down his gray face narrowed by anger. Dulcie, ignoring him, flicked her ears, leaped down into the yard, and trotted past him to see for herself. She hurried up Clyde’s back steps, her ears ringing with Clyde’s shouting and the wild baying.

Nearly deafened, Dulcie poked her head through the dog door.

The room was filled with giant dog legs, huge paws scrabbling, two giant tails whipping against the cabinets. Clyde was racing around the kitchen trying to put collars on two huge dogs, and such shouting and swearing over a little thing like a collar made her yowl with laughter, then yowl louder to get his attention.

He turned to stare at her.

“If you don’t shut up, Clyde, and make those dogs shut up, every neighbor on the street is going to be down here!” And of course the moment she spoke, the two dogs leaped at her. She hauled back a paw to slash them.

They backed off, whimpering.

She paused, and did a double take. She had scared them silly; they cowered against Clyde’s legs, rolling their eyes at her.

Why, they were puppies. Just two big, frightened pups-two whining pups the size of small ponies and as thin and pitiful as skinned sparrows.

She slipped in through the dog door and sat down on the linoleum.

They seemed to decide she wouldn’t hurt them.

They crept to her. Two wet black noses pushed at her, two wet tongues drenched her with dog spit; they were all over her, licking and whining. Oh, what pitiful, lovable big babies. Gently, Dulcie lifted a soft paw and patted their sweet puppy faces.

5 [????????: pic_6.jpg]

JOE FOLLOWED Dulcie through the dog door, watching half with disgust, half with amusement, as she preened and wove around the pups’ legs. She was purring like a coffee grinder. Any other cat, confronted by the two monster dogs-even puppies-would have headed for the tallest tree.

Not Dulcie, of course. She wasn’t afraid of dogs. But he hadn’t counted on that silly maternal grin, either.

He’d expected her to be disgusted with the rowdy young animals, as most adult cats, or dogs, would be. How ridiculous to see a lovely lady cat, self-contained and sometimes even dignified, certainly of superior intelligence, succumb to this ingratiating canine display. He watched with disgust as the pups licked her face and ears. Not until she was sopping wet did she move away from them, shake her whiskers, and leap to the kitchen table; and still her green eyes blazed with pleasure.

“Puppies, Joe! Clyde, where did you get the huge puppies?” Her peach-tinted paw lifted in a soft maternal gesture. “They’re darling! Such cute, pretty pups!”

“They’re not darling,” Joe snapped. “They’re monsters. Flea-bitten bags of bones. Clyde’s taking them to the pound.”

She widened her eyes, twin emeralds, shocked and indignant.

“They are not,” Clyde said evenly, “going to the pound.” He sat down at the kitchen table. “So what’s with you? What’s the attraction, Dulcie? You’re known all over the village as a dog baiter. What?”

“Dog baiter?”

“Of course. No resident dog will confront you. And the tourists’ dogs try only once.” Clyde looked hard at her. “You think I don’t know about your little games? I know what you do when life gets boring; I’ve seen you sauntering down Ocean early in the morning when the tourists are walking their pets; I’ve seen you waltz past those leashed canines waving your tail until some showoff lunges at you.

“I’ve seen you bloody them, send some poor mutt bolting away screaming. I’ve seen you smile and trot off licking your whiskers.” Clyde looked intently at the smug little tabby. “So what gives?”

“They’re only babies,” Dulcie said haughtily. “Why would I want to hurt babies? Really, Clyde, you can be so unfeeling.” She leaped down to where the pups lay sprawled, panting, on the linoleum. Turning her back on Clyde, she licked a black nose. She couldn’t help the maternal warmth that spread over her as she began to wash the two big babies.

Clyde shook his head and stepped past her toward the door, carrying a bucket of trash. Joe, scowling at the silly grin on Dulcie’s little, triangular face, muttered something rude into his whiskers and left the scene, pushing out behind Clyde. Let Dulcie play “mama” if that was what pleased her. He was out of there.

Scaling the back fence, he galloped across the village, dodging tourists and cars, heading for Dulcie and Wilma’s house, where he could find some peace and quiet without that zoo, and where Wilma’s phone was accessible. If the cops missed that cut line, if they didn’t look for it before the wreck was lifted from the canyon and hauled away, the evidence might be lost for good.

Wilma didn’t like him and Dulcie meddling in police business any more than Clyde did, but she had better manners. She wouldn’t stop him from using the phone.

Trotting past early joggers and a few shopkeepers out watering the flowers that graced their storefront gardens, sniffing the smell of damp greenery and of breakfast cooking in a dozen little cafes, Joe kept thinking of the dead man lying in the wrecked Corvette. A fairly young, apparently well-to-do stranger, and very likely an antique car buff-a man, one would think, who would be closely attuned to the mechanical condition of his vehicle.

Did the guy have some connection in the village, maybe visiting someone? Seemed strange that, just passing through, he would meet his doom at that particular and precarious location.

Whoever cut the brake line had to have known about that double curve. Joe didn’t believe in coincidence, any more than did Captain Max Harper.

The question was, who in the village might have wanted this guy dead?

Hurrying beneath thetwisted oaks, past shop windows filled with handmade and costly wares or with fresh-baked bread and bottles of local wines, he passed Jolly’s Deli and the arresting scent of smoked salmon.

But Joe didn’t pause, not for an instant. Galloping on up the street to Wilma’s gray stone cottage, he made three leaps across her bright garden and slid in through Dulcie’s cat door.

Wilma’s blue-and-white kitchen was immaculate. The smell of waffles and bacon lingered. He leaped to the counter, where breakfast dishes stood neatly rinsed in the drain. The coffeepot was empty and unplugged. The house sounded hollow.

Heading for the living room and Wilma’s desk, he was glad he’d left Dulcie occupied with the pups. She hadn’t been in the best of moods lately-though the pups had evidently cheered her. He didn’t like to admit that something might be wrong between them, had been wrong for weeks, ever since the earthquake. Ever since that threeA.M. jolt when he raced down the street to see if Dulcie was all right, only to meet her pelting toward him wild with worry for him, then wild with joy that he was unhurt. After the quake and the ensuing confusion when people wandered the streets sniffing the air for gas leaks, he and Dulcie had clung together purring, taking absolute comfort in each other; he telling her how he’d heard the bookshelves fall in the spare bedroom as he felt the house rock; she telling him how Wilma had leaped out of bed only to be knocked down like a rag toy. It hadn’t been a giant quake-not the Big One-a few shingles fallen, a few windows broken, one or two gas lines burst, people frightened. But at the first tremble, Joe had run out-Rube barking and barking behind him and Clyde shouting for him to come back-had sped away frantic to find Dulcie.

But then a few days later, a kind of crossness took hold of Dulcie, a private, sour mood. She wouldn’t tell him what was wrong. She left him out, went off alone, silent and glum. All the cliches he’d ever heard assailed him: familiarity breeds contempt; as sour as old marrieds. He didn’t know what was wrong with her. He didn’t know what he’d done. When he tried to talk to her, she cut him short.

But that morning, distracted by the idiot puppies, she’d smiled and waved her tail and purred extravagantly.

Mark one down for the two bone bags. Maybe they were of some use.

Now, settling on Wilma’s clean blotter atop the polished cherry desk, he could smell the lingering aroma of coffee where, evidently, Wilma had sat this morning, perhaps to pay bills. A neat stack of bill stubs lay beneath the small jade carving of a cat. He could imagine Wilma coming to her desk very early, catching up on her household chores. Beyond the open shutters, the neighborhood street was empty, the gardens bright with flowers; he could never remember the names of flowers as Dulcie did. Sliding the receiver off, he punched in the number for the police.

He got through the dispatcher to Lieutenant Brennan, but Captain Harper was out. He didn’t like passing on this kind of information to another officer-not that Harper’s men weren’t reliable. It simply made Joe uncomfortable to talk with anyone but Harper.

Besides, he enjoyed hearing Harper’s irritable hesitation when he recognized the voice of this one particular snitch. He enjoyed imagining the tall, leathered, tough-looking captain at the other end of the line squirming with nerves.

Max Harper reacted the same way to Dulcie’s occasional phone tips. The minute he heard either of them he got as cross as a fox with thorns in its paw.

“Captain Harper won’t be back until this afternoon,” Lieutenant Brennan said.

“That wreck in Hellhag Canyon,” Joe said reluctantly. “I’m sure the officers found that the brake line was cut. Sliced halfway through in a sharp, even line.”

Brennan did not reply. Joe could hear him chewing on something. He heard papers rattle. He hoped Brennan was paying attention-Brennan had been one of the officers at the scene. Maybe they hadn’t found the cut brake line, maybe that was why he was uncommunicative.

“There was a billfold, too,” Joe told him. “In the dead driver’s hip pocket. Leather. A bulging leather wallet. Did you find that? An old wallet, misshapen from so much stuff crammed in, the leather dark, sort of oily. Stained. A large splinter of broken glass was pressing against it.”

He repeated the information but refused to give Brennan his name. He hung up before Brennan could trace the call; a trace took three or four minutes. He didn’t dare involve Wilma’s phone in this. She and Harper were friends. Joe wasn’t going to throw suspicion on her-and thus, by inference, cast it back on himself and Dulcie.

Pawing the phone into its cradle and pushing out again through Dulcie’s plastic door, he headed toward the hills, trotting up through cottage gardens and across the little park that covered the Highway One tunnel. Gaining the high, grassy slopes, he sat in the warm wind, feeling lonely without Dulcie.

She was so busy these days, spying uselessly on Lucinda Greenlaw. Maybe that was all that was wrong with her, watching Lucinda too much, feeling sad for the old woman; maybe it was her preoccupation with the Greenlaw family that had turned her so moody.

All day Joe hunted alone, puzzling over Dulcie. At dusk he hurried home, thinking he would find Dulcie there because Clyde had invited Wilma to dinner, along with Charlie, and Max Harper.

He saw Wilma’s car parked in front of the cottage, but couldn’t detect Dulcie’s scent. Not around the car, or on the front porch, or on his cat door. Heading through the house for the kitchen, he sniffed deeply the aroma of clam sauce and twitched his nose at the sharp hint of white wine. Pushing into the kitchen, he looked around for Dulcie.

Clyde and Charlie stood at the stove stirring the clam sauce and tasting it. Charlie’s red hair was tied back with a blue scarf rather than the usual rubber band or piece of cord. Her oversized, blue batik shirt was tucked into tight blue jeans. She had on sleek new sandals, not her old, worn jogging shoes.

Wilma was tossing the salad, her long white hair, tied back with a turquoise clip, bright in the overhead lights. The table was set for four. Two more places, with small plates and no silverware, were arranged on the counter beside the sink, on a yellow place mat. That would be Charlie’s doing; Clyde never served so fancy. The sounds of bubbling pasta competed with an Ella Fitzgerald record, both happy noises overridden by the loud and insistent scratching of what sounded like a troop of attack dogs assaulting the closed doggy door.

He wondered how long the plywood barrier would last before those two shredded it.

“I just fed them,” Clyde said defensively. “Two cans each. Big, economy cans.”

Joe made no comment. He did not want to speak in front of Charlie.

Charlie knew about him and Dulcie-she had known ever since, some months ago, she saw them racing across the rooftops at midnight and heard Dulcie laughing. That was when she began to suspect-or maybe before that, he thought, wondering.

Well, so that one night leaping among the village roofs, they’d been careless.

Charlie was one of the few people who could put such impossible facts together and come up with the impossible truth. And it wasn’t as if Charlie was only a casual acquaintance; she and Clyde had been going together seriously for nearly a year. Joe liked her. She treated him with more respect than Clyde ever did, and she was, after all, Wilma’s niece. But still he couldn’t help feeling shy about actually speaking in front of her, not even to ask where Dulcie was.

“She’s on the back fence,” Wilma said, seeing him fidgeting. “Where else? Gawking into Lucinda’s parlor.” Wilma shook the salad dressing with a violence that threatened Clyde’s clean kitchen walls.

Joe, pretending he didn’t care where Dulcie was, leaped to the kitchen counter and stared at his empty plate, implying he didn’t need Dulcie, that he’d eat enough pasta for both.

“I talked with Harper,” Clyde said. “About an hour ago. I want you to behave yourself tonight.”

Joe widened his eyes, a gaze of innocence he had practiced for many hours while standing on the bathroom sink.

“Harper says he had another of those snitch calls this morning. Guy wouldn’t give his name. Left the message with Brennan-something about a cut brake line.” He gave Joe a long, steady stare.

Joe kept his expression blank.

“He says this one was a dud. Totally off track. Said that after the call, two officers went back down Hellhag Canyon for another look.”

Joe licked his right front paw.

“The officers said the brake line wasn’t cut. Said the line burst, that it was ragged and worn. That there was no smooth cut as Harper’s informant described. They said they could see the thin place, the weak spot in the plastic where it gave way.

“Nor was there a billfold,” Clyde said. “The officers didn’t find a scrap of ID on the body, or in the car, or in the surround, as the snitch had said.”

Joe could feel his anger rising. Which uniforms had Harper sent down there? Those two new rookies he’d just hired?

Or had the cut line been removed?

Had the man he scented in the ravine that morning replaced the cut, black plastic tube with an old, broken one, and lifted the driver’s wallet?

Those two pups knew the guy was there. He remembered how silent they had grown, how watchful, creeping along sniffing the man’s scent.

“So this time,” Clyde said, “Harper’s snitch was all wet.”

So this time,Joe Grey thought crossly,Harper’s men didn’t have the whole story-and Max Harper needs to know that.

Staring at the dog door, then out the kitchen window, Joe managed a sigh. He looked at the two plates set side by side on the kitchen counter, then back to the window, his nose against the glass. He continued in this vein until Wilma said,“For heaven’s sakes, go over there and get her. Quit mooning around. She doesn’t need to spend all night watching Lucinda.”

He gave Wilma a grateful look and began to paw at the plywood, seeking a grip to slide it out of its track.

“Not the dog door!” Clyde shouted. “They’ll be all over the place.”

Joe widened his eyes at Clyde, shrugged, and headed for the living room. Clyde said nothing. But Joe could feel him staring. The man had absolutely no trust.

He went on out his cat door, making sure the plastic slapped loudly against its frame.

But as he dropped off the front porch he heard Clyde at the livingroom window, heard the curtain swish as Clyde pulled it back to peer out.

Not an ounce of trust.

Not until he heard Clyde go back in the kitchen did he beat it around to the backyard and up onto the back fence where he could see into the kitchen. And not until Clyde was occupied, draining the spaghetti, did he slip around to the front and in through his cat door again, stopping the plastic with his nose to keep it quiet.

Heading for the bedroom, he punched in the number. Quickly he explained the urgency of his message. He got a sensible dispatcher, who patched him through to Harper in his car. Probably Harper was already headed in their direction, on his way for clam pasta.

Joe told Harper that he hadseenthe cut brake line, that there were three little slice marks just above the cut. He said he’d heard someone else in the canyon, but couldn’t see him in the fog. Said he hadseenthe billfold in the guy’s back pocket, with a piece of the broken glass pressing into it.

He reminded Harper where the captain had gotten the information that nailed Winthrop Jergen’s killer. Reminded him where he got the computer code word that opened up Jergen’s files. He jogged Harper’s memory about who identified the retirement-home killer months earlier, to say nothing of finding the arsonist who killed the artist Janet Jeannot. He said if Harper remembered who laid out the facts in the Samuel Beckwhite murder case, then Harper should take another look down Hellhag Canyon, before the wreckers hauled away the blue Corvette.

The upshot was that, five minutes after Joe nosed the phone back into its cradle and returned innocently to the kitchen, Harper called Clyde to say not to wait dinner, that he’d be late, that he needed to run down the highway for a few minutes.

Clyde hung up the kitchen phone and turned to stare at Joe, anger starring deep in his brown eyes, a slow, steaming rage that struck Joe with sudden, shocked guilt.

What had he done?

He had acted without thinking.

Max Harper was headed out there alone, to scale down Hellhag Canyon in the dark. With perhaps the killer still lurking, maybe waiting for the car to be safely hauled away? Harper without a backup.

Cops can be hurt, too,Joe thought.Cops can be shot.He was so upset, he dared not look back at Clyde. What had he done? What had he done to Max Harper?

He wanted to call the station again, tell them to send a backup. But when he leaped down to head for the bedroom, Clyde unbelievably reached up and removed the kitchen phone from its hook.

Joe wanted to shout at Clyde, to explain to him that heneededto call, but Wilma started talking about Lucinda Greenlaw, and Clyde turned his back on Joe. He couldn’t believe this was happening. Didn’t Clyde understand? Didn’t Clyde care about Harper?

The phone stayed off the hook as Charlie dished up the plates. Wilma looked around at Joe, where she stood tossing the salad.“Where’s Dulcie?”

“She didn’t want to come,” he lied-he had to talk in Charlie’s presence sometime. And to Charlie’s credit, she didn’t flinch, didn’t turn to look, not a glance.

“We stopped by Jolly’s alley earlier,” Joe said. “Dulcie’s full of smoked salmon, and too fascinated with the Greenlaws to tear herself away.”

Wilma gave him a puzzled look, but she said nothing. When Wilma and Clyde and Charlie were seated over steaming plates of linguini, Wilma said,“Lucinda and I had lunch today. She was pretty upset. Shamas’s lover is in town. She’s been to visit Lucinda.”

Charlie laid down her fork, her eyes widening.“Cara Ray Crisp, that bimbo who was on the boat when he died? That hussy? What colossal nerve. What did she want?”

“Apparently,” Wilma said, “Cara Ray had hardly checked into the Oak Breeze before she was there on Lucinda’s doorstep, playing nice. Lucinda really didn’t know what she wanted.”

“I hope Lucinda sent her packing,” Charlie said. “My God. That woman was the last one to see him alive. The last one to-”

“She told Lucinda she came to offer condolences.”

Charlie choked. Clyde laughed.

That midnight on the yacht, when Shamas drowned, Cara Ray told Seattle police, she’d been asleep in their stateroom, she’d awakened to shouting, and saw that Shamas was gone from the bed. She ran out into the storm, to find Shamas’s cousin, Sam, frantically manning lines, and his nephew, Newlon, down in the sea trying to pull Shamas out. They got lines around Shamas and pulled him up on deck, but could not revive him. Weeping, Cara Ray told the police that when the storm subsided they had turned toward the nearest port, at Seattle. George and Winnie Chambers, the only other passengers, had not awakened; Cara Ray said they had not come on deck until the next morning, when theGreen Ladyput in at Seattle.

According to the account in theGazette,the storm had come up suddenly; evidently Shamas had heard the wind change and gotten up to help Newlon furl the main sail. On the slick deck, he must have caught his foot in a line, though this was an unseaman-like accident. As the boat lurched, Sam and Newlon heard Shamas shout; they looked around, and he was gone. Newlon had grabbed a life jacket, tied a line on himself, and gone overboard.

He told police that he got Shamas untangled, got him hooked onto a line to bring him up. When they got him on board, they saw that he had a deep gash through his forehead, where he must have hit something as he fell. Seattle police had gone over the catamaran, had thoroughly investigated the scene. They did not find where Shamas had struck his head. The rain had sloughed every surface clean. They found no evidence that Shamas’s death had been other than an accident. According to Seattle detectives, Cara Ray had been so upset, weeping so profusely, that no one could get much sense from her. She had given the police her address and flown directly home to San Francisco, leaving Newlon and Shamas’s cousin Sam and the Chamberses to sail theGreen Ladyback to Molena Point.

And now Cara Ray was in Molena Point, making a social call on Shamas’s widow.

“Poor Lucinda,” Charlie said. “Mobbed by his relatives hustling and prodding her. And now his paramour descends.”

Wilma nodded.“Apparently Cara Ray is as crude and bad mannered as the Greenlaws.”

“They are a strange lot,” Clyde said.

Wilma pushed a strand of her white hair into its clip and sipped her wine.“Every time I see a Greenlaw in the village, my hackles go up.”

Clyde grinned.“Retired parole officer. Worse than a cop.”

“Maybe I’m just irritable, maybe it’s this temporary job at Beckwhite’s. It’s no picnic, working for Sheril Beckwhite. I wouldn’t have taken the job except to help Max.”

At Max Harper’s urging, Wilma had been running background checks on loan applicants for the foreign-car agency. Beckwhite’s had had a sudden run of buyers applying for car financing with sophisticated bogus IDs and fake bank references. They had lost over three million dollars before Harper convinced Sherilof Wilma’s investigative prowess.

“Other than her visit from this Cara Ray Crisp person,” Charlie said, “how’s Lucinda getting along?”

“She’ll do a lot better,” Wilma said, “when Shamas’s relatives go home.”

“Seems to me,” Charlie said, “that being Shamas Greenlaw’s widow would be much nicer than being his wife.”

Wilma laughed.

“She’s certainly a very quiet person,” Charlie offered. “She seems? I don’t know, the few times I’ve talked with her, she’s seemed? so close to herself. Secretive.”

“I don’t think-” Wilma began when, in the backyard, the pups roared and bayed, their barks so deafening that no one heard the front door open; no one heard Max Harper until he loomed in the kitchen doorway.

“What the hell is this? The county pound?” He glared at Clyde. “What did you do, get more dogs? Sounds like a pack of wolfhounds.”

Clyde rose to open a beer for Harper and dish up his plate, liberally heaping on the pasta and clam sauce. Skinny as Harper was, he ate like a field hand. Clyde had known him since boyhood; they had gone through school together, had ridden broncs and bulls in the local rodeos around Sacramento and Salinas.

Dropping down from the kitchen counter, Joe took a good sniff of Harper. The captain’s faded jeans and old boots bore traces of dirt and of bits of leaves and grass, and carried the distinct combination of scents one would encounter in Hellhag Canyon.

“So what’s with the cat killers?” Harper said, glancing toward the back door.

“Stray pups. Followed my car,” Clyde lied. “Up along Hellhag Hill.”

The police captain looked at Clyde narrowly for a moment, perhaps sensing a twisting of the truth. He sat down in his usual chair, facing the sink and kitchen window, his back comfortably to the wall. For an instant, his gaze turned to Joe Grey, who had returned to the counter and was busily licking clam sauce off his whiskers.

“How sanitary can it be, Damen, to let your cat sit on the kitchen sink?” Harper scowled. “Is that a little place mat? Did he have his dinner up there?”

“That’s Charlie’s doing. And you know I don’t lay food on the counter,” Clyde said testily. “You know I use that plastic breadboard and that it goes in the dishwasher after every meal.” He looked hard at Harper. “So what’s with you? Bad night picking up hustlers? Ladies of the night make you late to dinner?”

Harper brushed the dry grass and leaves from his jeans.“Took a swing down Hellhag Canyon.”