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

If it is Wark who’s killing cats,she thought, shivering,Ramon’s right. He ought to bemuerto. Debe murir.

Hurrying back to her apartment, she locked herself in, sliding the new dead bolt on the front door, checking the window locks. She made some cocoa and curled up with a book, a tame, quiet read that wouldn’t upset her, couldn’t stir any sense of threat-a soothing story that offered nothing to abrade her raw nerves.

She couldn’t stop thinking about Wark.

Wasn’t the Cat Museum the first place the cat killer would go?

Had he already been there, stalking the grounds? Did the museum staff not know? Orhadmuseum cats been killed, and the museum had kept that out of the papers?

Had some of the poor, dead cats that were found around the city come in fact from the Cat Museum?

What kind of cats, Kate? What kind of cats is he killing?

Was Wark saving the Cat Museum for last? Last and best, in Wark’s sick mind-before the cops got too close and he had to flee?

Was she imagining all this-the connection between Wark and this maniac?

She didn’t think so. A sick, sadistic killer was loose in San Francisco. Lee Wark reveled in that brand of cruelty. Lee Wark had escaped from prison only thirty miles north of the city.

Coincidence? She had the terrible feeling that if she were to visit the Cat Museum, no matter when she went there, Lee Wark would be stalking those gardens.

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

AS CHARLIEGETZ turned her van up the quarter-mile lane that led to Max Harper’s small ranch, the yellow light of the security lamps was mighty welcome. The dark roads were behind her, where perhaps a killer lurked, the hills pitch black, the sky black and starless.

Heading the van down the lighted fence line toward the white frame house and stable, she prayed for the safety of the Marners and Dillon as she’d been praying all night.

The idea of three riders missing was so bizarre-the implication of a child missing made bile come in her throat. Heading eagerly for the stable yard, she knew she was driving too fast.

Slowing the old van, she studied the dark pools of night beneath the overhanging oaks, looking for the mare. She could see, up on the hills behind the ranch, flashes of torchlight jiggling and careening, and could see lights higher up the foothills, disappearing into the pine forest. Parking before the house, she cut the engine and headlights and sat listening to the far, faint shouts of the searchers.

After the wash of light up the lane, the yard was too dark. Harper didn’t like lights glaring in his windows; his yard lights were operable from remotes in his car and truck, and from inside the house and stable.

Now, in the tangle of black shapes around her, nothing shifted or moved.

She’d never been afraid at night, not in Molena Point, not when she’d lived in San Francisco. Tonight her fear made her weak.

Slipping out of the van, she switched on her torch and started across the yard toward the stable, swinging her beam wide, causing the shadows to run and dance-probably only tree trunks, maybe a wheelbarrow.

Then, beneath a far oak, a shadow shifted and turned.

She aimed her light toward it like a gun-wished it was a gun.

Her beam caught the whites of frightened eyes, the line of the mare’s head and pricked ears. Redwing stood pressed against the fence, her eyes wide with fear.

Gently Charlie approached her, aiming her torch away. The mare stood stiffly, holding one leg up. The reins were broken, trailing in the dirt. Harper’s nice Stubben saddle hung down Redwing’s side, the stirrup dragging, the girth loose where a buckle had broken. When she reached for Redwing, the mare threw her head and snorted, rearing to wheel away. Charlie grabbed the broken rein, moving with her, letting her plunge, then easing into her.Laying her hand on the mare’s neck, she felt Redwing trembling. At the same instant, loud barking erupted from the barn where the two big half-Dane dogs had been shut in their box stall for the night. The sound of their voices eased Charlie-as if their bellowing would drive away danger. And the furor seemed to calm Redwing, too. The mare knew the dogs, she played with them in the pasture; she seemed easier at their familiar presence.

Removing the saddle, placing it on the fence rail, she led the mare out to see if she could walk.

The mare limped badly.

Leading Redwing to the barn, Charlie flipped on the lights, found a halter, and carefully removed the bridle, touching it as little as possible. Maybe that was silly, but if someone had grabbed the reins and pulled Dillon off, there could be fingerprints.

Harper would laugh at her. Maybe she read too many detective stories. Hanging the bridle on its hook, she put the mare in the cross-ties and went out to the yard to fetch the saddle, supporting it by two fingers under the pad.

Maybe, when the saddle slipped, Dillon had fallen; maybe she was lying, hurt, up on the dark hills, confused or unconscious.

But why would she be alone, without Helen and Ruthie?

Ignoring the whining dogs, she wiped down the mare, cleaned her skinned knee, and daubed on some salve. Putting her in her stall, she fetched a flake of hay for her and filled her water bucket. The dogs continued to bark and to scrabble at their stall door. Too bad the year-old pups weren’t trained to track; they could be of use tonight. But those two mutts, as much as she loved them, would only get in the way.

When she had the mare bedded, she removed one of the two leashes hanging from the nail beside the dogs’ stall and, by opening their door only a crack, managed with a lot of shouting and strong-arming and ignored commands, to let Hestig out and leave Selig confined.

Leashing Hestig, she tied him to a ring at the side of the stable alleyway. He stood whining, watching her soulfully. She felt easier with the big pup near. The Great Dane part of him gave him a voice like a train horn, and he had the size and presence to intimidate any stranger.

She and Clyde together had started training the two strays in obedience, but it was slow going. Dog training wasn’t Clyde’s talent. The pups had ended up at Harper’s, and she and Max had been working with them in the evenings, taking advantage of the wide, flat acreage to teach them the basic commands. They were learning. But tonight, with the unusual routine, and having listened to the shouting from the hills, they were too excited to pay much attention.

She remained still a moment, stroking Hestig. In the long, quiet evenings, she hadn’t meant for her relationship with Max Harper to turn personal, hadn’t meant to become so attracted to him-and the trouble was, ithadn’tturned personal. She didn’t think Max felt anything for her but friendship.

Harper was Clyde’s best friend. It wouldn’t be like him to hurt Clyde. And he was a cop, his feelings all buttoned up and in control-or at least hidden, she thought wryly.

Except, what about Crystal Ryder?

That one had thrown herself at the captain and gotten a response. But then, the woman was gorgeous, with that tawny blond hair and big brown doe eyes and deep dimples and a figure that, to quote Clyde, was stacked like a brick outhouse. How could Max resist?

While she, Charlie, was just a skinny, gawky redhead with no sex appeal and more freckles than brains.

Crystal Ryder was the first woman Max had looked at since his wife died.

How can I be thinking about such inanities, about my personal problems, when Dillon’s lost and hurt?

Shutting the mare’s stall door, she unsnapped Hestig’s leash from the wall and, with the pup at heel, she circled the stable yard, shining her light deep beneath the trees and up into the hay shed, keeping an eye on the lane, hoping to see a squad car turning in.

But the dirt drive remained empty-empty and lonely. And the winding road beyond the lights was unrelieved in its dense and endless blackness. Feeling vulnerable, she pulled Hestig close to her, and headed for the darkened house.

Using the key Max had given her this evening, and pushing open the back door, she felt Hestig cower against her, so her heart did a double skip.

Quietly she told him to watch. To his credit, the big honey-colored dog came to attention with a surprised growl. Laying her hand on his shoulder, she reached inside and flipped the switch, illuminating the big country kitchen.

No one was there, no one standing against the oak cabinets or lurking beneath the table. Beyond the two inner doorways, the dining room and hall were dense with shadow. She stepped inside, keeping Hestig close, reached for the phone on the kitchen table, and dialed Harper’s cell phone.

“Yes?” he said softly.

“I’m in your kitchen. Redwing came home. No sign of Dillon.”

“We haven’t found her.”

“The mare slipped her saddle, it was hanging down, a girth buckle broken, the reins broken.”

“Does it look like the mare fell?”

“She’s lame on her left front knee. An abrasion, blood and dirt. Yes, like she stumbled. I doctored it. You haven’t found Helen and Ruthie either?”

“We found Ruthie and Helen.” Max’s voice was flat. “They’re dead, Charlie.”

“Dead?” Her breath caught. “How? What happened? Where is Dillon?”

“Someone was up there in the hills. Someone met them on the trail. Their throats were cut. We haven’t found Dillon,” he repeated.

Every drop of strength had drained away. She sat down at the table, pulling Hestig close.

“Both Ruthie and Helen were slashed across the throat,” Harper said, as if perhaps she hadn’t heard, or understood. Hadn’t wanted to hear.

She stared into the shadows of the hall, holding the dog close, filled with the sickening picture of the mother and that lovely young woman lying up there on the dark hills alone.

“Dillon,” she said again. “Where is Dillon? The mare… The mare came home alone.”

“I told you, Charlie. We haven’t found her. Did you unsaddle the mare?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How much did you handle the tack?”

“I… As little as possible.”

“Why, Charlie? How did you know I’d want prints?”

“I just-with three riders missing, I just-thought it might be wise. I don’t know. Just seemed a good idea. Where-where are you?”

“In the hills north of you. I’ll send an officer down. Are you alone?”

“I have Hestig with me.”

“Be wary. Stay in the kitchen. Squad car will be there pronto.”

She hung up, staring at the two dark doorways, wondering if the killer hadbroughtRedwing home-maybe ridden her home-then come into the house.

But why would he do that? After he killed Helen and Ruthie, he’d surely run, try to get away. Shivering, she looked more carefully around the kitchen.

Nothing seemed out of place, not even a dirty dish in the sink. Max kept his house, and even the feed room and tackroom, in the same orderly manner in which he ran the police station, every piece of equipment clean and ready, in its place where it could be quickly found.

She knew Max’s house; she knew where he kept his gun-cleaning equipment, and where a.38 Chief’s Special was cushioned beneath the shoe rack in his closet.

But she would have to go down the dark hall to reach the closet, passing the dark bathroom and bedrooms. She remained at the table, stroking Hestig, feeling cowardly and anxious, waiting for the squad car.

The kitchen still showed a woman’s warmth, Millie’s cookbooks still on the shelf above her little desk, her dried flowers in a vase, the flowered chair cushions. Millie had been a cop, and a good one. But she’d liked having a cozy home. All this, the flowers, the little pretty touches, he had kept, legacy from a cherished and cherishing wife. Millie had been dead for nearly two years before Charlie ever knew Max, before Charlie ever moved to Molena Point.

These last weeks, as she and Max worked with the pups, Max had told her more than he realized about Millie. He’d told her a lot about Clyde, too, as he recalled their high school days, their summers riding bulls on the rodeo circuit. And Harper had told her a lot about himself and the way he looked at life. She hadn’t known he could be so talkative.

And all the evenings she had spent up here, with the excuse of training the pups, she’d kept turning down dinner with Clyde, turning down dates, a simple movie, a walk on the beach.

Shehadgone with Clyde to the jazz concert, though she wanted to be up here with Max. And she’d agreed to see the outdoor theater’s production ofA Midsummer Night’s Dream,but only to ease her conscience-then had sat on the hard bench during the performance, thinking about Max.

She was such a fool.

And how could she think about all this tonight?

But she couldn’t think steadily about what had happened to the Marners. About what could be happening to Dillon. She was terrified to think about Dillon. Staring at the black windows, she realized that Dillon could be here on the ranch, could have slipped from the saddle out there beyond the lights.

She rose, nearly toppling her chair, snatching up the torch. Commanding Hestig to heel in a voice that brought him lurching to her side, she headed out to the yard, was sweeping her meager torchlight between the oaks, jumpy at every imagined sound, when headlights came down the road and turned onto the lane.

It was not the squad car she’s expected, but Clyde’s roadster, flashing down the lane butter-yellow, stirring in her a picture of the night Clyde had escorted her to the opening of her first art exhibit-not a one-man show, but her work prominently featured among that of five local artists. What a lovely evening, and how caring Clyde had been, dressing up for her, polishing the antique car until it gleamed, timing their arrival to pull up grandly before a crowded gallery, handing her out as if she were a movie star.

Behind Clyde’s bright antique convertible, a black-and-white turned in from the road. Clyde was coming up the steps as it parked. The instant she released Hestig, the big pup rushed at Clyde, leaping and whining. Officer Wendell got out of his unit and stood in the yard, asking if she was all right, then went in to search the house. Wendell seemed even more rigid than usual, less friendly. He was always a quiet man. Thin and sour, not a lot of laughs. Maybe the murder had sickened him-or maybe just a sour mood. Wendell had taken a severe demotion recently, after getting into some kind of trouble over awoman. Charlie didn’t know what had happened. She knew that Max wasn’t easy on his men.

Clyde put his arm around her and drew her into the house.“Any coffee?” He looked tired. His dark hair stood in peaks, his T-shirt hung limp with sweat. His voice was hoarse the way it got when he was upset or out of sorts.

She poured the last of Harper’s breakfast coffee into a mug and stuck it in the microwave. “Redwing came home.” She pointed out toward the fence where she’d found the mare huddled. She’d never thought of a horse being huddled, but Redwing had been.

Another squad car arrived. Detective Davis and Lieutenant Brennan got out. Both had cameras. Usually, Davis did the photography. Davis waved her out, nodding toward the stable, her short, dark hair catching the light.

As Charlie hurried out, Lieutenant Brennan began to photograph the stable yard, his strobe light picking out every ripple in the soft earth, every hoofprint. Charlie showed him where she had led the mare to the stable and then crossed from the stable beside the pup. Brennan nodded curtly. She guessed murder of a woman and young girl was not business as usual to these officers.

She hadn’t known the Marners well. Helen was divorced; she and her daughter had been in the village maybe a year, having moved up from LA about the same time that Charlie herself moved down from San Francisco to stay with her aunt Wilma.

Stepping into the stable alleyway, she pointed out to Juana Davis which saddle and bridle belonged to the mare, answered Davis’s questions about where she’d found the mare and in what condition, where she had moved within the stable, how she had handled the tack. Her footprints showed clearly where she had crossed the alleyway from the mare’s stall to the feed room and to the dogs’ stall.

“Nice stable,” Davis said. “You spend much time here?”

“Yes, since we started training the pups. Not before that.” She didn’t let her expression change, would not let herself bristle or take offense.

But cops could be like that. Blunt and nosy.

The stablewascozy-two rows of four box stalls running parallel, separated by a covered alleyway, and with a sliding door at each end. It had originally been a two-stall barn, which Harper had enlarged.

When Davis, making careful notes, had all the information she needed from Charlie, Charlie headed back to the house. She could see in through the bay window; Clyde was standing at the sink, filling the coffeepot. She paused a moment in the yard to watch him-his dark, rumpled hair, his sweaty T-shirt across his heavy shoulders, his jaw set into lines of anger and resolve. She could imagine him up on the mountain searching for the riders, then looking at the torn bodies, and suddenly she wanted to hold him, to ease his distress and her own. Suddenly she felt a great tenderness for Clyde. Quietly she went in, shutting the screen door behind her.

6 [????????: pic_7.jpg]

ONEINSTANTthe kit was there beside Joe and Dulcie, under the folded convertible top, and the next minute she was gone, vanished in the night. The minute Clyde parked in the stable yard, the three cats had leaped out and slipped beneath the car-except that then the kit wasn’t with them.

“Why does she do that?” Dulcie hissed. “She has to be exhausted, wandering the hills for three days. Has to be hungry-but now she’s off again, with cars and riders everywhere. She makes me crazy. What possesses her?”

“She won’t be found if she doesn’t want to be. Let her go, Dulcie.”

“I haven’t any choice,” she said crossly. But Joe was right. Looking for the kit, in the black night, would be like trying to catch a hummingbird in a cyclone.

They watched from beneath the car as Lieutenant Brennan photographed the yard. They watched Charlie cross from the house to the stable behind Detective Davis, and return some ten minutes later. They could see, in through the bay window, part of the kitchen where Clyde stood doing something at the sink, and soon they could smell coffee brewing, a cozy aroma filling them with visions of home and hearth fires. They remained under the Chevy roadster for perhaps an hour watching Brennan at work, watching Charlie and Clyde sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. When they heard a horse coming down the lane, they slipped out to see Captain Harper, on a very tired Bucky, the gelding eating up the road with his distinctive running walk, even though his head hung. Dismounting in the yard, Harper paused for a moment to speak with Brennan.

“The Eagle Scouts and several more riding groups will be out at first light. Three groups of hikers will work along the sea cliffs, and we have kayakers out. A Civil Air Patrol unit is standing by to make a series of passes over the hills and take photographs. Not much chance she’ll be seen from the air, but with telephoto lenses and observation with binoculars, they might turn up something.”

As Harper moved away, leading Bucky to the stable, Joe and Dulcie slipped through the shadows into the alleyway behind him, and into the feed room, to vanish among the bins of grain. They could see through to the stable yard. Beside the fence, Detective Kathleen Ray knelt beneath powerful lights, sifting sand where the mare had stood, looking for any small bits of evidence, a lost button, even a few threads from the killer’s clothes.

In the alleyway, they watched Detective Davis dust the mare’s bridle and saddle and broken girth for prints. When Harper loosened Bucky’s cinch and eased the saddle off, the gelding sighed deeply. Gently Harper sponged Bucky and rubbed him down, his brown eyes distant and hard, the lines of his thin face etched deep. The cats could guess what he was thinking-that Dillon’s disappearance was his fault, that it was his fault Dillon had ever begun to ride.

Dillon’s mother had never let her have riding lessons, until Max Harper said he’d teach her, until Harper took a liking to the child and said she could ride Redwing. The Thurwells had thought Dillon would be safe with the chief of police-and Harperhadtaken good care of her. Harper had told Clyde oncethat Dillon was the spunkiest little girl he knew. Told Clyde that if he and Redwing could help get Dillon through her teen years without mishap, that was all he asked.

Harper was cleaning Bucky’s feet, lifting Bucky’s left front hoof, when he paused, frowning.

“Davis, give me more light. Shine your torch here.”

The gelding stood patiently, resting his left front hoof in Harper’s hand, leaning his head on Harper’s shoulder. Harper looked up at Davis. “We’ll need shots of this.”

“Looks like a stone cut, right across the metal.” She adjusted her camera. Her lights flashed and flashed again, taking half a dozen shots.

Setting Bucky’s foot down, Harper shone his torch along the line of Bucky’s hoofprints leading out into the yard. “Same prints as at the scene.” His face was set like a rock. “Photograph them, Juana. Every few feet, back down the alleyway, across the yard, up the lane. Pick out individual trails of prints, going and coming. Get them going down the road, where I left this afternoon, and coming back, as far as you can see them.”

Davis knelt, looking.“Exact same scar. I got plenty of shots at the scene.”

“Shots where I rode?”

“Shots where Bucky never set foot.” Rising, she began the tedious, close-up photographing, while Harper put Bucky in his stall, fed and watered him, and headed for the house, avoiding the lines of hoofprints.

Two shadows followed him, flashing across the porch into the darkness beneath a metal chair, Joe’s eyes blazing with anger.

Moving inside, Harper picked up the phone, dialing quickly.

“Turrey, you awake?” Through the screen door, his voice was clear and decisive. He listened, and laughed. “I know it’s not light yet. I need you now. Get a cup of coffee and get over here. We need to pull Bucky’s shoes to be entered as evidence, and reshoe him. No, I can’t pull his shoes. They’re evidence. I need someone not connected. I have to tell you, Turrey, somewhere down the line you’ll likely have to testify in court.”

Turrey must have reacted sharply to that announcement. The cats could hear the faint, sharp crackle of his voice at the other end of the line, and Harper smiled.

“That’s all right, the judge doesn’t care if you’re not a professional speaker.”

“I don’t understand,” Dulcie whispered. “Those big heavy hoofprints at the scene, they did have a scar. But they weren’t Bucky’s. They were there before Harper arrived.”

But Joe was watching the threesome in the kitchen. Clyde and Harper sat at the table, where Harper was opening a cold can of beans and a box of crackers. Outside, Detective Ray had stopped sifting sand, retrieved a box from her car, and came carrying it into the kitchen.“Here are the Polaroid shots, Captain. And the first plaster casts.”

Harper wolfed down cold beans and crackers as he studied the casts and the photos.

“Same scar, deep in the outside curve.”

Kathleen Ray looked hard at the captain.“That one, Captain, is from Bucky. This one, with the leaf at the edge of the cast? That was underneath the bodies. Underneath. Helen Marner’s shoulder. The casts are of the same horseshoe. Or one is a good copy.”

Harper just looked at her.

“And this shot was made way up the hill, in a place you didn’t go. I know where you rode. You didn’t go up there, didn’t go near that part of the hill.”

“Appears to be Bucky’s shoe,” Harper said tiredly. Joe and Dulcie looked at each other. Charlie, standing at the stove, scrambling eggs and cooking bacon, was white faced and grim, her freckles as dark as paint splatters. Harper looked up at her. “Charlie, I don’t have time to eat.”

She stared at the cold beans and crackers.“You are eating. I bet you haven’t had a hot meal since yesterday.”

Harper nodded to Detective Ray.“Turn your tape recorder on, Kathleen. You can take my statement.”

Charlie turned away. Clyde looked at Harper a long time, his eyes filled with helplessness. He looked around him once as if half expecting help to materialize from the woodwork; then he rose and left the house, passing within three feet of Joe and Dulcie. He was too preoccupied to see them.

The two cats, sitting in the shadows beneath the porch chair and peering in through the screen door, listened to Harper recount his movements of the previous afternoon, giving Detective Ray place and time for every smallest action, laying it out in far more detail than he had for Detective Davis-as if Harper were the suspect. And as the facts and Harper’s vulnerability were revealed, the cats’ fears deepened into a raw, claw-tingling indignation. Joe Grey sat glowering, working himself into a deep rage.

Any pleasure he had ever taken in teasing the police captain vanished now. Any smug tricks and sly innuendos, as Joe secretly collected and passed on information, were forgotten. At this moment, Joe’s admiration for Max Harper ruled him.

Someone, some lowlife, was out to get Max Harper, to ruin him big time.

Harper, with no witness to his movements during the time of the murder, would have only his uncorroborated statements, as told to the two detectives. As the cats crouched listening, deeply alarmed, above them the sky began to pale and the dawn wind to stir sharper; and up the hills, the lights of the searchers moved ever higher into the wild, rocky forest.

And farther north, at the edge of the forest within the Pamillon estate, the cougar prowled, stepping soundlessly on thick pads among the fallen walls of the mansion, the big male seeming, in the first gray haze of dawn, no more than a shifting shadow. He was a powerful beast, sauntering casually across the rubble as if he owned this land. In his own wild way, he did own it-had made it part of his territory.

The front walls of the big Victorian mansion had fallen away, leaving the first and second floors open like a two-story stage set on which the king of beasts was, at this moment, the only player.

Pausing at the threshold to the open parlor, he scented out keenly, his ears sharply forward, his eyes narrowed and intent. Softly panting, he lifted his gaze up past the broken stair to the second-floor nursery, where something drew his attention.

Moving silently into the parlor, he prowled among the rotting, vine-covered furniture, his yellow eyes fixed on the ragged edge of the floor above. He crouched.

In one liquid and powerful leap he gained the broken ceiling and stood in the upstairs nursery.

Moving without sound among the remnants of chests and beds, he sniffed at the fallen bricks beside the fireplace. He licked the leg of a rocking chair, tasting blood.

He pawed, for some moments, at the bloody debris around the chair, then dug beside the fireplace at a pile of broken timbers. Something was there,hadbeen there, something had bled there.

But the sharp stink of wet ashes within the fireplace warped all lesser scents. The smell stung his nose, made him grimace. He could scent nothing alive now, nothing edible. He dug again at the timbers, stopping when he raked his paw on a nail and his own blood flowed. Snarling, he backed away.

Padding to the edge of the broken floor, he looked back once, then dropped down again to the parlor, his movements as smooth as water flowing, and sauntered away into the garden. He was, in the rising dawn, the color of spun honey.

Deep beneath the timbers, the kit listened to the cougar depart. Her little body was iced with terror. From the moment the big beast gained the nursery and began to paw and dig, she had been frozen with fear. Even concealed inside the woodbox, beneath the fallen wall, she was petrified. Why had she come here? Why had she left the safety of the ranch yard to go adventuring on such a night?

The lid of the box did not close fully. Crouching in the black interior, she had seen the cougar looking in. She had prayed so hard she thought her heart would stop, prayed that her black and brown coat was invisible. That the stink of ashes would conceal her scent. They were old, wet ashes, packed deep.

The kit did not know or care that the fires of the nursery hearth, laid down forty years before, had, over generations, been augmented by the fires of hoboes and then of occasional flower children, then of the present-day homeless wandering the Molena Point foothills, seeking shelter on cold nights. But indeed, the accumulated charcoal and lime, sour water and rot and mildew hid many scents from the lion.

The kit cared about none of that. She cared only that she was still alive and uneaten. But when, warily, she slipped out and padded across the nursery to hide herself at its edge, looking down, she forgot even her debilitating fear.

He was down there.

The kit, standing on the edge of the broken floor, peered shyly over, watching the golden king.

The cougar, out in the air again, forgot the elusive and confusing scents from the nursery and centered on the fresh trail of a doe, looking up the hill searching for any faintest movement, for the twitch of an ear, the gleam of dark eyes.

He was the color of the sunstruck desert. He was thirteen feet long from tail tip to nose, weighed a hundred and thirty pounds, and was still growing. Forced from the territory of his mother, the young male had come to claim a home range with water and sufficient game.

The Pamillon estate had water trapped in the old cellars, and there were plenty of deer and raccoons, and now, today, that strange, tantalizing whiff of human blood that he had earlier followed. And the vanishing scent of some small feline cousin, lost too quickly in the ashes.

But deer were his natural food, his game of choice. Moving uphill, away from the fallen walls, he padded along the well-used trail, stalking the doe, forgetting the small cat that stood above, so raptly watching him.

The sight of the lion made her shiver clear down to her soft little middle. Shiver with fear. Shiver with wonder, and envy. He was huge. He was magnificent. He was master of all the cat world. She had never dreamed of such a sight, so filled with powerful, arrogant grace. If she had any more lives yet to live, the kit thought, next time she would be a cougar. She would be lithe. Sleek. A golden lioness, amber bright She was so overwhelmed by the wonders the lion stirred in her that it took a long time to remember that behind her in the nursery she had smelled the blood of a human child. It took her more time still to decide what to do about that.

7 [????????: pic_8.jpg]

FROM HARPER’S KITCHEN,the smell of coffee drifted out across the porch as the cats watched through the screen, Joe Grey fidgeting irritably, rocking from paw to paw, his ears back, every wary alarm in his feline body clanging, as he listened to Max Harper, at the kitchen table, giving his formal statement to Detective Ray.

Harper’s long, Levi’s-clad legs were stretched out, his thin, lined face was expressionless, his brown eyes shielded in that way he had-a cop’s closed face-so you could read nothing of what he was thinking.

From the time he had left the Marners and Dillon at the restaurant, until he arrived at the station three and a half hours later, an hour after he was due to go on watch, he had been in contact with no one. As far as Harper knew, no one had seen him.

“I left Cafe Mundo at about one twenty-five, maybe five minutes after Dillon and the Marners. I rode home along Coyote Trail, around the foot of the hills. That’s the shortest way. The Marners and Dillon headed north up that steep bridle trail behind the Blackwell Ranch.”

“And Crystal wasn’t with you?”

“No, the horse she was leasing was to be shod today. I got home about two, unsaddled Bucky and cooled him off, sponged him and rubbed him down. Cleaned his tack and did some stable chores. Fed him, gave the dogs a run, and fed them. I had just come in the house to shower and change when the phonerang.

“It sounded like a woman. I couldn’t be sure. Husky voice, like someone who has a cold. She wouldn’t give her name. Said she thought I’d be interested in Stubby Baker because I was the one responsible for his going to prison. Kathleen, do you remember Baker?”

Officer Ray looked up at him.“Paroled out of San Quentin about three months ago. Mile-long list of scams.”

Harper nodded.“She said Baker had come back to Molena Point to work a land scam involving the old Pamillon place. Said there was a problem with the title, one of those involved family things, and that Baker thought he could manipulate the records. Work through a fake title company, pretend to sell the land, and skip with the money. She said he had fake escrow seals, fake documents. Said he was working with someone from Santa Barbara, that the buyers were a group of older people down there, professionals wanting to start their own retirement complex.

“I’d seen Baker up around the Pamillon place, I’d ridden up there several times because of those cougar reports. And I knew Baker had been nosing around in the Department of Records. That, with her story, made me want to check him out.

“Baker’s staying in a studio apartment over on Santa Fe. The informant said he was scheduled to meet with his partner at four that afternoon, at Baker’s place. That they were getting ready to make the transaction. That the buyers were going to put a lot of money up front, that they had complete faith in Baker.

“The last scam he pulled here in Molena Point was so shoddy I can’t envision anyone trusting him. But I caught a shower, dressed, and went over there. I thought if I could make his partner, get a description and run his plates, we might come up with enough to search the apartment, nip this before those folks got taken. I drove the old Plymouth.”

Some months earlier, Harper had bought a nondescript 1992 Plymouth to use for occasional surveillance. Usually the detectives picked up a Rent-A-Wreck, a different car for every stakeout, so the local no-goods would find them harder to spot.

“I parked at the corner of Santa Fe and First behind some overgrown shrubs, sat with a newspaper in front of my face. Watched the apartment for over an hour. Not a sign of Baker. Only one person went up the outside stairs-the old woman from Two D. Baker’s in Two B. No one came down, no one leftany apartment I could see, and there’s only the one entrance, there in front, except fire escapes. Even the garbage is carried out the front. I could see all of the second-floor balcony, could see Baker’s door and window. Didn’t see any movement inside, no twitch of the curtain, no light burning.

“Maybe Baker made me and had a quick change of plans. I left at ten to five, swung by my place to pick up my unit, got to the station at five.”

Detective Ray pushed back her long, dark hair.“Did anyone see you, anyone you knew?”

“If they did, they didn’t speak to me. I didn’t notice anyone, just a few tourists.”

“Did you know the woman who made the call? Recognize her voice?”

“As best I could tell, she wasn’t anyone I’ve talked with in the past. No, I didn’t recognize her.” Harper frowned. “It wasn’t that woman snitch who bugs me, at least not the way she usually sounds. That woman speaks so softly, with a touch of sarcasm…”

Outside the screened door, the soft-voiced snitch twitched her whiskers and smiled.

“This one-yes, probably disguised,” Harper said. “Sounded older, rough and grainy. If itwasa disguise, I bet it gave her a sore throat.”

And both cats watched Harper with concern. This giving of a formal statement and all that implied had them more than frightened, left them feeling as lost as two abandoned strays in a strange city.

Max Harper was the one human who made their sleuthing worth the trouble, who, when they helped to solve a case, would see the perps successfully prosecuted-the one law enforcement type who made their sneaky feline efforts worth the trip.

And Harper was more than that to Joe Grey. Joe had a deep and caring respect for the police captain-for his hunting abilities, for his dry humor, which was almost as subtle as the humor of a cat, and for his general attitude of quiet power-all traits that the tomcat greatly admired.

But now, crouched in the dark beneath the deck chair, Joe imagined with painful clarity Max Harper facing Judge Wesley not as a witness for the prosecution but as a prisoner about to be prosecuted. The thought made his belly queasy and his paws sweat.

He might torment Max Harper, might be amused by Harper’s irritable response to certain anonymous phone tips-amused by Harper’s unease at never being able to identify the source of certain information. But he would gladly rip apart whoever had set up this scam.

And there was no doubt in either cat’s mind that it was a scam. Some lowlife was out to ruin Harper, with the help of the American justice system.

During Harper’s statement, Charlie had not left the room. When he was finished, she poured fresh coffee for him and Detective Ray, and dished up the breakfast she had kept warm. Harper was wolfing his scrambled eggs when the blacksmith arrived.

The cats followed Harper and Turrey to the stables, again streaking into the feed room. In the rising dawn, it was harder to stay out of sight.

Clyde’s yellow car was gone from the yard. Whether he had left to give Harper privacy or was angry at Charlie for mothering Harper, the cats couldn’t guess. Clyde and Harper had been friends ever since high school, and Clyde was the only non-law-enforcement type Harper hung out with. For Clyde to see his own girlfriend mooning over Harper-if he did see it, if he was even aware of Charlie’s feelings-was enough to make anyone mad.

Well, Clyde had had plenty of girlfriends before Charlie; it wasn’t like they’d been seeing each other forever. These human entanglements were so-human.Filled with subleties and indirect meanings and hurt feelings. Awash in innuendos. Nothing like a good straightforward feline relationship.

From the shadows of the feed room, the cats watched as Turrey pulled Bucky’s shoes, the small, leathered man easy and slow in his movements. As he pulled each shoe, he dropped it into an evidence bag that Detective Davis held open for him. Captain Harper stood aside. Already he had taken an arm’s-length position, directing his people but handling nothing. He had approached Bucky only to bring the gelding from his stall and put him in the cross-ties, then stepped away.

The cats watched the blacksmith clean out the dirt from each hoof, and scrape it, too, into the evidence bags. Watched Turrey fashion a new pair of shoes for Bucky. Dulcie had a hard time not sneezing at the smell of burning hoof as Turrey tested the metal against Bucky’s foot-the seared hoof smoldered as hot as Joe’s anger at Max Harper’s unknown enemy.

Of course Harper had been set up. What else? All Joe could think was, he’d like to get his teeth into whoever had hatched this little plot.

But while Joe wanted to slash the unidentified killer, Dulcie just looked sad, her pointed little face grim, her green eyes filled with misery.

Charlie seemed the last one to admit the truth. When Turrey left, and the cats followed Harper back to the house, Charlie said,“Maybe there was some mix-up. Maybe the photos and casts were made where you did ride, before the murder-maybe days before.” She stood at the sink washing up the breakfast dishes, her face flushed either from the steam or from stifled tears.

“I haven’t ridden up there in weeks,” Harper told her. “And the evidence wasnottaken from where I rode last night.”

“Maybe two separate shoes got scarred. Maybe some piece of dangerous metal is half-buried in the trail, and both horses tripped on it. If we could find it…”

Harper patted her shoulder.“Leave it, Charlie.”

“But…”

“There’s more here than you’re seeing.”

She looked at him, red-faced and miserable.

“I have good detectives, honest detectives,” Harper said softly. “We’ll get this sorted out. And we’ll find Dillon.”

But the cats looked at each other and shivered. Someone wanting to destroy Max Harper had killed two people and might have killed Dillon.

Still, if Dillon was alive, if they were holding her for some reason, the twelve-year-old would be a hard prisoner to deal with. Dillon wouldn’t knuckle under easily.

Dulcie’s voice was hardly a whisper. “What about this Stubby Baker? Harper said he’s been in town only a few weeks. What if Bakerwasin his apartment? What if he saw Harper watching? What if he could testify to Harper’s presence there on the street between four and five?”

“Oh, right. And an ex-con is going to step right up and testify for a cop he hates.”

But he sat thinking.“What day was it that the kit had that encounter with Baker?”

“How do you know that was Baker?”

“She watched him through the window. Don’t you remember? Saw his name on some letters.”

Dulcie smiled.“I do now. The kit is not a great fan of this Baker.”

A week before the murder, the kit ran afoul of Baker as she was licking up a nice bowl of custard in the alley behind Jolly’s Deli.

Jolly’s alley, to the kit, was a gourmet wonderland. The handsome, brick-paved lane, with its potted trees and benches, offered the village cats a nirvana of imported treats. And that particular afternoon she had been quite alone there, no bigger cats to chase her away. Had been up to her furry ears in cold boiled shrimp and a creamy custard when a tall, handsome man entered the alley.

He was darkhaired, slim, with dark, sparkling eyes, a movie star kind of human of such striking magnetism and appeal that the kit was drawn right to him. She sat up, watching him.

“Hello, kitty,” he said with a soft smile.

In a rare fit of pleasure and trust she had run to him and reared up beside his leg-never touching him but curling up in an enticing begging dance, asking prettily to be petted.

The man kicked her. Sent her flying. She landed against a shop wall, hurting her shoulder. She had been shocked at his unkindness. Only in that second after he kicked her, when she landed staring up at him hissing, did she see the evil beneath his smiling mask. When, laughing, he drew back to kick her again.

That man’s smell had burned into her memory. Within the dark side of her mysterious cat mind, she invented vast tortures reserved for this human, exquisite pain that she longed to visit upon him. Oh, she had told Joe and Dulcie in detail how, when he left the alley, she followed him, keeping to the shadows cast by steps and protruding bay windows. Followed him to an apartment building, where he climbed its open stairs from the sidewalk to a second-floor balcony tucked between tall peaked roofs and shaded by an overhanging tree. Swarming up into the branches, the kit peered past wooden shutters intoa lovely apartment of white walls, tile floors and soft leather that matched the way the man looked.

The mail on the coffee table told her his name was Baker. She watched this Baker and hated him. Tried to think of a way to hurt him. Her nose was inches from the glass when he swung around and saw her, and his eyes grew wide. The kit swarmed down the tree and ran.

“A mean-tempered dude,” Joe Grey said. “With his record, and Harper having sent him up, you can bet he’s connected.”

“You may be right, but…”

“Baker’s part of this mess, Dulcie, you can wager your sweet paws. And I mean to nail him.”

8 [????????: pic_9.jpg]

A HUNDRED MILESnorth, in San Francisco, the morning after the Marners’ murder, Sunday morning, Kate headed again for the Cat Museum, feeling upbeat and determined.

If she had known about the grisly deaths of Ruthie and Helen Marner, she might not have left her secure apartment.

She hadn’t read the paper or turned on the TV or radio since last Saturday, when the headlines so upset her. She didn’t care to know any more about Lee Wark or about the local rash of cat killings-but it was silly to put off doing something she wanted badly to do.

She was, after all, only two hours from home, from Molena Point and safety. She could run down there anytime. Hanni wanted her to go.

Anyway, Lee Wark was probably hundreds of miles from San Francisco. Why would he hide in the city, so close to San Quentin? Why would he stay in California at all, with every police department in the state looking for him? Wark had spent plenty of time in Latin America, likely that was where he’d gone. She had, for no sensible reason, let the newspaper’s sensational muckraking terrify her.

Heading up Stockton, walking fast in the fog-eating wind, resisting any smallest urge to turn back, she had gone five blocks and was beginning to feel better, was telling herself what a lovely outing this would be, how much she would enjoy the museum, was happily dodging people who were hurrying along in the other direction-to church, out to breakfast-when she noticed a man on the opposite side of the street keeping pace with her, his black topcoat whipping in the wind, the collar turned up and his black hat tipped low like the heavy in some forties’ movie.

When she slowed, he slowed.

When she moved faster, he swung along just as quickly, his reflection leaping in the store windows.

He did not resemble Lee Wark; he was very straight rather than slouched, and broader of shoulder than Wark. His black topcoat looked of good quality, over the dark suit, his neatly clipped black beard and expensive hat implying a man of some substance. The very opposite of Wark. A man simply walking to church or to an early appointment, or to work in some business that was open on Sunday, maybe one of the shops near Fisherman’s Wharf.

She turned up Russian Hill, disgusted with herself, angry because her heart was tripping too fast; she was letting fear eat at her. Behind her, the man continued on up Stockton, never looking her way. She felt really stupid.

Yet something about him, despite the broad shoulders and beard and nice clothes, left her sick with fear.

Had she caught a glimpse of his eyes beneath the dark brim? Lee Wark’s cold gray eyes? She couldn’t help it, she was overwhelmed again with that terrible panic.

Maybe sheshoulddrive down to the village with Hanni, for the week. Hanni had business there, and her family had a weekend cottage. They were so busy at work, it would be difficult for both of them to go.

“So we take a week off,” Hanni had said. “While we wait for fabric orders and the workrooms. That won’t kill any of our clients. Relax, Kate. I’m the boss, I say we drive down. You know the movers and shakers in the village better than I. You can help me, it’s for a good cause.” Hannihad whirled around the studio, kicking a book of fabric samples, twirling her long skirt, her short white hair and gold dangle earrings catching the studio lights, her brown Latin eyes laughing. “We need the time off. We deserve it!”

Kate had known Hanni only slightly in Molena Point when the family was down for weekends. She had always envied Hanni’s looks, her prematurely white, bobbed hair, a woman so sleek and slim-those long lean lines-that even in faded jeans and an old sweatshirt, she could have stepped right out of Saks’s window.

Strange-if Hanni hadn’t been involved with the Cat Museum, very likely they wouldn’t be considering the trip home just now.

It was Hanni who had awakened her interest in the Cat Museum, who had shown her photographs of the galleries. Hanni was on the board, deeply involved in the charitable institution’s pending sale.

“We have to move somewhere, we’re about ready to go into escrow. Twenty million for that Russian Hill property-and the taxes are skyrocketing. And so much pressure from the city-from some friend of the city, you can bet, who wants to build on that land.”

Hanni shrugged.“For that kind of money, why fight it? We can build a lovely complex of galleries and gardens, and I think the old Pamillon estate, those old adobe walls and oak trees, might be perfect. That’s the way the present museum was built; McCabe started by combining four private homes and their gardens. You need to go up there, Kate. You need to see it.”

“Did you say McCabe?”

“Yes. You’ve read about him? He-”

“I… suppose I have. The name’s familiar.”

Only since she’d moved back to San Francisco had she tried to trace her family, from information the adoption agency was finally willing to release. Her grandfather’s name had been McCabe. The agency said he’d been a newspaper columnist and an architect; they said he had not used a first name.

“If we don’t find a place soon,” Hanni had said, “the art collection will have to go into storage, and we’d rather not do that.” Taking her hand, Hanni had given her that infectious grin. “Come with me, Kate. Jim and the kids don’t care if I go, and you don’t have an excuse. Come help me. You know Molena Point, you know realtors there. I want your opinion of that land.”

“But I don’t need to go there to tell you what I already know.”

“You need a vacation.”

Hanni, the mover and shaker. Kate’s boss was a top-flight interior designer and a morethan-shrewd businesswoman. Kate loved working with her, she loved Hanni’s enthusiasm. She loved telling people she was assistant to the well-known designer, Hanni Coon. And if Hanni wanted a week in Molena Point, what better excuse than a multimillion-dollar real estate deal?

Striding up Russian Hill, she saw no more“suspicious” men. The morning was bright, the blowing clouds sending running shadows before her across the pale, crowded houses and apartments. Climbing, she was short of breath. Out of shape. Had to stop every few blocks. If she were back in Molena Point for a week she’d walk miles-along thebeach, through the village, down the rocky coast.

It would be so embarrassing to go back. She hadn’t been home since the afternoon she threw her clothes in the car and took off up 101, escaping Lee Wark. And escaping her own husband. It was Jimmie who had paid Wark to kill her. That came out in the trial.

Everyone in the village knew her husband had gone to prison for counterfeiting, for transporting stolen cars, and as accessory to the murder for which Wark had been convicted-and for conspiracy to kill his own wife.

How had San Quentin let those killers escape? How could a maximum security prison be so lax? The three had overpowered a guard, taken him hostage, using prison-made weapons. A garrote made with sharpened silverware from the kitchen and strips of blanket. That must have embarrassed prison authorities. The guard was not expected to live. They had dumped him in a ditch in Sausalito, where authorities thought the men had split up. Two had apparently stolen cars, and may have taken clothes from the charity Dumpster of a local church.

Had Lee Wark come across the Golden Gate bridge into the city? He could have walked across.

Well, he wouldn’t go to Molena Point, wouldn’t show his face in the village while Max Harper was chief of police. Harper had come down on Wark with a vengeance, had seen that the prosecuting attorney was aware of every dirty detail, every smallest piece of evidence.

Icould go back for a few days. So safe at home. And none of my real friends care that Jimmie’s in prison-not Wilma, certainly not Clyde.

The thought of Clyde gave her a silly little thrill that surprised her.

Well, therehadbeen something between them, an attraction that she’d never let get out of hand while she and Jimmie were married.

And then when she left Jimmie, Clyde had learned about her double nature, and that had turned him off big time.

As she climbed higher up Russian Hill, the steep sidewalk turned brilliant with sun; the sun on her back felt as healing as a warm, gentle hand. Hurrying upward, stopping sometimes to rest, she fixed her attention on the subtle tone combinations of the many-colored Victorian homes. San Francisco’s painted ladies. But, nearing the crest, she stopped suddenly.

He was there. Stepping out from between two houses. The man in the black topcoat.

She swallowed and backed away, ice cold. Wanted to run. Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

She couldn’t see his face. Black hat, pulled low. Black topcoat, collar turned up even in the hot sun so his eyes were nearly hidden. Swallowing, trying to make her heart stop pounding, she casually crossed the street.

Maybe he was some harmless ogler. Nothing more threatening than that.

As she drew opposite where he’d stood, he moved back between the two houses and was gone. Peering across, into the narrow side yard, she saw only a hedge and a patchy scruff of lawn.

And now, up the hill, rose the red rooftops and huge old oaks of the museum. She hurried up toward them, eager to be among people.

But then, as she turned into the museum gardens, it wasn’t people who surrounded her, it was the museum cats. Cats sunning under the flowers and bushes and atop the low walls, all of them watching her as she entered along the brick walk and through the wrought-iron gate.

What kind of cats these might be would not be public knowledge-would be the museum’s most sheltered secret, if even the museum staff knew.

She wandered the paths for a long time among lush masses of flowering bushes, tall clumps of Peruvian lilies, densely flowering tangles. The scents of nasturtium and geranium eased her nerves. She felt so uncertain about asking to see McCabe’s diaries. She was sure they had them, yet had been reluctant even to ask if Hanni knew-because she would have to give Hanni an explanation. And she might, in a weak moment, confess to Hanni that she thought McCabe could be her grandfather. It was all so complicated.

Iwill simply ask,she told herself.Ask, and look at what is there, and notmakeit complicated.Moving toward the door, she pinched a sprig of lavender, sniffed at it to calm herself, stood looking in through the museum’s leaded windows at the white-walled galleries.

But as she turned toward the main entrance, she was facing the man in black. He stood just beyond the door, beneath an arbor, his features in shadow, his muddy eyes on her.

Catching her breath, she hurried in through the glass doors and fled to the reception desk, begging the pudgy woman curator to call a cab. She felt hardly able to speak. She stood pressing against the desk, waiting for the taxi to arrive, then ran out to it, sat stiffly in the backseat, unable to stop shaking. She was so cold and shivering that when she got home she could hardly fit her key in the lock. Safe at last in her apartment, she threw the bolts on the doors and turned up the heat.

It had been Lee Wark. She’d seen him clearly. His eyes, the same muddy-glassy eyes.

What if he’d followed her home, in a second cab? Or maybe he took her cab’s number, would find out from her driver where she lived? She had to call the police. Report that she’d seen him. Wark was a wanted felon, a convicted killer.

Most of all, she had to get out of San Francisco.

9 [????????: pic_10.jpg]

CLYDEDAMEN’S white Cape Cod cottage shook with the stutter of jackhammers and the thud of falling timbers, enough racket to collapse a poor cat’s eardrums. Joe Grey sat on the kitchen counter, waiting for Clyde to make his breakfast, and watching through the window the handsome Victorian home behind thembeing torn down and fed, timber by splintered timber, to a series of large metal Dumpsters that stood in the wide front yard.

The house’s finer fittings, the crown molding, the stained-glass windows, the hand-carved banister and carved cabinets, had long since been sold to an antique dealer, as had the fine Victorian furniture. Seventy-year-old Lucinda Greenlaw had no need any longer for large pieces of furniture since she had married Shamas and moved into his travel trailer and set out to see the world-or at least see more of the West Coast.

All the houses behind Clyde’s had been sold. Both sides of that street were being cleared to accommodate a small, exclusive shopping plaza. The constant noise of the tear-down had been too hard on the other cats-on the three ordinary kitties who could not understand the source of the threatening racket, and on old Rube, the elderly Labrador. Clyde had taken them up to the vet’s to board.

Clyde and Dr. Firreti had an arrangement involving hospital and boarding bills swapped for auto repairs, an agreement that worked to everyone’s advantage except that of the IRS. Clyde didn’t talk about that.

“Another few weeks,” Clyde grumbled, staring out at the destruction, “we’ll be looking out the window at a solid three-story wall smack in your face. The house will be dark as a tomb. No sunrise. No sun at all. You want to look at the hills? Forget it. Might as well have the Empire State Building in the backyard.”

“A handsome stucco wall,” Joe said, quoting Dulcie, “to define the back garden-turn it into an enclosed patio.”

“That view of the hills was the main reason I bought this house-that and the sunrise. A three-story wall will destroy them both.”

“It won’tdestroythe hills and sunrise. The hills and sunrise will still be there. You just…”

“Shut up, Joe. Here, eat your breakfast. Kippers and sour cream. And don’t growl. You don’t have to kill the kippers. You may not have noticed in your enthusiasm that the kippers are already dead.”

Clyde set his own plate of eggs on the table beside a bowl of Sugar Pops. The phone rang. Snatching it from the wall, he answered through a mouthful of egg.

He grew very still.

Joe padded across the table to press against Clyde’s shoulder, his ear to the phone.

Max Harper sounded grim.

“I have an appointment with the city attorney. Ten A.M. Going to take administrative leave.”

“Because of the Marner case? But-”

“Because of Bucky’s shoe, Bucky’s hoofprints all over the scene. And because of new evidence.”

“What new evidence?”

“I just got the report from Salinas. The lab rushed it through. They have the murder weapon.”

“Oh. Well, that’s-”

“Remember that bone-handled butcher knife that Millie’s aunt sent her from Sweden?”

“I remember it. A big, stubby knife with silver inlay.”

“One of my detectives found it in my hay shed, under a bale of alfalfa.”

“But-”

“The dried blood on it was a match for both Helen and Ruthie.”

“That’s insane. No one would commit a murder and hide the weapon in his own barn. Where are you? I’ll come over. If you step off the case-”

“I’ve already stepped off. I’m going to ask Gedding to appoint an interim chief until this thing gets sorted out.”

“Max, if someone’s out to frame you-”

“I’ve removed myself from the case. There was nothing else I can do. I’m not giving up the search for Dillon. I’ll keep on with that, acting as a civilian. And I’m going to have to look for witnesses.”

“I can take some time off, help you talk to people. Help you look for Dillon.”

“I-we’ll talk about it. Every cop on the central coast is looking for her. Every law enforcement agency in California.”

“But-”

“I see Gedding at ten.”

“Meet for lunch?”

“Say, one o’clock at Moreno’s.”

“One o’clock.” Clyde hung up, glancing toward Joe.

But Joe Grey wasn’t there. Through the kitchen window Clyde saw a gray streak vanish over the fence, heading into the village. Clyde stood looking, swearing softly, but he didn’t open the door to shout after Joe.

What good would it do? He couldn’t make Joe come back. And, under the present circumstances, he guessed he didn’t want to.

If Joe could help Harper, Clyde promised himself he’d never again make one disparaging, discouraging, cutting remark aimed at the tomcat. Would never again tease either Joe or Dulcie. He was, in fact, so upset about Harper that he poured coffee on his cereal and had eaten half the bowl before he realized how strange it tasted.

By the time Max Harper entered Lowell Gedding’s office at ten, the two sleuths in question had concealed themselves handily behind a Chinese planter of maidenhair fern, on the wide ledge inside the city attorney’s bay window.

Gedding didn’t like screens on his windows, nor were screens needed in Molena Point. The sea wind kept flies away. And the decorative burglar grid that covered the window offered ample security. The window could safely remain open, allowing access to no living creature larger than, say, your ordinary house cat.

The morning sun washed pleasantly across the white walls of Gedding’s office and across the pale Mexican-tile floor. A white, handwoven rug was positioned on the amber tiles directly in front of Gedding’s dark antique desk. Three walls were bare. On the fourth expanse hung five black-and-white Ansel Adams photographs: stark, hard-edged studies of sand dunes, magnificent in their simplicity.

Gedding sat behind his desk, relaxed and cool. He was a slim, bald, deeply tanned man in his sixties, with the look of the military about him. His gaze was direct, his body well honed, easy in its nicely tailored business suit of a dark, thin fabric. His green eyes were intense.

“Sit down, Max. I gather this is about the Marner murders.”

Harper nodded.

“You have nothing further on Dillon Thurwell?”

“Nothing. Search parties are out, her picture on the Web and to the wire services. We-the department has the murder weapon.”

Gedding leaned forward.

“Detective Davis found it yesterday. They got the lab report back this morning. The blood of both victims was on it.”

“And?”

“It is a butcher knife from my kitchen. It was found in my hay shed.”

“Is it a common make, a knife that could be duplicated?”

“It is a one-of-a-kind carving knife made in Sweden. Swedish steel, hand-carved bone handle and silver inlay.”

Gedding looked deeply at Harper.“Why would someone set you up, Max, but do it so obviously? Had you missed the knife prior to the murder?”

“I hadn’t used anything out of that drawer in weeks except a couple of paring knives. It could have been gone for some time.”

“It’s not like you not to remember details.”

“In your own house? In a place you’re so used to, you stop seeing things?”

“I suppose. So what now? You’ve already removed yourself from the case. You’re not here to ask for administrative leave?”

“Exactly why I’m here. Someone took that knife from the house. Someone either borrowed my horse or came up with a set of matching shoes for his own horse, and marked both shoes. Someone with a pair of boots like mine, the soles worn into the same indentations.”

“You’ve checked the house for any signs of breakin.”

“The detectives have been over it three times.”

“No one has a key?”

“No one.”

“Surely a houseguest or dinner guest could have taken the knife, anyone coming in. Have you made a list of who’s been there?”

Harper handed a list across the desk.“Everyone who’s been in my house the last three months. A few close friends and the plumber. You can see I have a big social life.

“I don’t think the killer’s name is there. No one comes in my place, Lowell, except friends I trust fully.”

“That include Crystal Ryder?”

“She…” Max hesitated. “She’s been up at my place three times, uninvited. She didn’t go in the house any time-that I know of.”

“Couldshe have gone in?”

“Yes, I suppose she could have. While I was feeding or working with the horses. I didn’t like her coming up there. When she showed up, I went on with my work.”

“That’s why she isn’t on the list.” Gedding’s tone was cool.

“Exactly why. Because she wasn’t inside, to my knowledge.”

“That’s not the way I heard the story. Talk in the village has you two pretty close.”

“Put her on the list,” Harper said. “Make a notation that I never saw her go inside, never saw her inside the house.”

Gedding leaned back in his chair.“I’ve received two anonymous phone calls that when you left the restaurant, the day of the murder, you were seen riding your buckskin up the mountain following Helen and Ruthie and Dillon. Ridingupthe mountain, Max, away from your place, not down the hills toward home as you said in your statement.”

“There’s nothing I can say to that, Lowell. It isn’t true. I didn’t do that. I went directly home, took care of Bucky and the other animals. Answered the phone-that tip about Baker. I showered and dressed, and headed for Baker’s place. You’ve read my statement.”

Gedding sighed.“And you have no changes to make to that statement?”

“None.”

“It’s turning into a tangle. The best bet-not that I think your people can’t handle it, but to get them off the hot seat-would be to call in an outside detective.”

Harper nodded.“I think you have to do that. Someone on loan from another district.”

“I can talk to San Francisco. I have a friend in the department there. Good detective-Dallas Garza. The family has a weekend cottage down here. I’m sure he’d welcome a change of scene.”

Behind the Chinese planter, narrowed yellow eyes met blazing green eyes. Neither Joe nor Dulcie had thought of an outside investigator.

And how had Gedding come up with a candidate so fast?

The cats had thought there was mutual trust here. Joe had heard Harper tell Clyde, more than once, how Gedding had stood by him when the mayor or city council meddled in police business.

What bothered Joe was, one council member had pushed hard to hire Gedding. And that man wanted Harper out of the department. So where did Gedding’s loyalties lie?

“Garza’s brother-in-law,” Gedding said, “is chief U.S. probation officer in San Francisco. I believe Wilma Getz worked with him before she retired. Garza’s niece-she’s the interior designer that Kate Osborne works for. But you know the family-they have a weekend cottage in the village. Kate and Hanni, when they were small, used to play together.”

“I know who they are,” Harper said stiffly. “Should I say,small world,“he added dryly.

Gedding shrugged and straightened the papers on his desk.“Have you made any other arrangements?”

“When your man arrives, Ray and Davis are prepared to step off the case, if he so chooses. I’ve put Lieutenant Brennan in charge of the department.

“As for my personal life, I don’t plan to stay at home. I’ve taken my horses up to Campbell Ranch, they’ll keep them ridden. As long as I live alone and isolated, there’ll be a shadow on my activities. I’m locking up my place and moving in with Clyde. Unless,” Harper said with a twisted smile, “unless you plan to put a leg bracelet on me.”

Joe Grey felt his belly lurch. Though Harper was joking, the thought of an the electronic monitor made him twitch. If Harper had to phone the station for permission to walk out his front door, he might as well be locked in a steel kennel.

It was noon when Clyde left Gedding’s office, now on official leave. The cats were about to slip out through the window when Gedding made a longdistance call; they subsided again, beneath the potted fern.

Gedding was apparently talking with the chief of police in San Francisco. It was all very low-key. Gedding was as nice as pie; apparently he and Chief Barron went back to college days. Barron seemed to be telling him that Garza was busy on a case and suggesting he send another man. Gedding was gently insistent. He wanted Garza, badly needed Garza. It was a long and oblique discussion that left the cats fidgeting. It ended, apparently, with San Francisco’s assurance that Garza was on his way.

“Most informative,” Joe muttered as they hurried out along the parking lot.

“Informative, and confusing. Look. Harper’s still here.”

In the parking lot shared by the courthouse and police headquarters, Harper was putting some cardboard boxes in his king cab pickup; the cats could see a pair of field boots sticking out from the top and a gray sweatshirt.

“He’s cleaned out his desk,” Dulcie whispered.

“Dulcie, don’t be concerned about Harper. No creeping lowlife is going to get the best of Max Harper.”

He wished he believed that.

Dropping the box and the boots in the truck bed, Harper closed the canvas cover. He looked more than tired. The minute he drove off, the cats trotted down to Ocean and over to Moreno’s Bar and Grill where Harper was headed.

Padding down the narrow alley past Moreno’s front door, they slipped in through the screened kitchen door, pawing it open behind the backs of a cook and two busboys. Past the bar into the restaurant, and through the shadows to the far corner, to Clyde and Harper’s usual booth. Sliding beneath the table unseen, they cringed away from Clyde’s size tens. The carpet smelled like stale French fries.

“The horseshoes,” Clyde was saying. “Your men didn’t find any more tracks made with the cut shoe? Didn’t find anything on the trail that could have cut the shoes like that?”

“Ray and Davis have been over every inch.”

“There have to be two shoes. And you said on the phone that your boot prints were at the scene. But you were up there searching. Of course your prints would be-”

“The prints were under the victim’s prints. And partial prints under their bodies. The only time I got off Bucky was when I first arrived, to check the bodies. That set of prints was clear. There were other prints like them, underneath.”

“Some son of a bitch has gone to a lot of trouble. How would he get your boots? Could he replicate them?”

“They’re Justin’s. I buy them up the valley, at the Boot Barn. Those soles were the same shape, same size. No problem there. But they had the same worn places on the left heel and right sole.”

“So the guy stole your boots, then put them back. Or he took a cast of your boots somewhere. Fixed up an identical pair. Same with the horseshoes. Somewhere, that night, was there another horse wearing the same shape of shoe with the same scar?”

“I think the guy took Bucky. Came in the house, took my boots and the knife, then returned with them.”

“Did he have time to do that?”

“Yes, he would have. I left about three forty-five. Helen and Ruthie were killed around five o’clock. And when I came back to change cars, I didn’t go in the house or the stable. He could still have had Bucky.

“And later, when we got the missing report and I went home to get Bucky, he was nervous-irritable and tired. The horse was tired, Clyde. And Bucky is in top shape.

“I’d ridden him for some four hours, then put him up. He’d had plenty of rest-or should have-before I took him out again on the search.

“I was irritated at myself, when I saddled him to go look for the Marners, for not rubbing him down very well, after lunch. He had saddle marks, though I could have sworn I cleaned him up. Had what looked like quirt marks on his side and rump. I thought he’d been rubbing himself again. And his bridle was hung up differently than I hang it. I thought that strange, thought I’d been preoccupied.” Harper paused, then, “Pretty unobservant, for a cop.”

Clyde said nothing.

“The bridle. The saddle marks, Bucky’s condition. The boot prints and hoofprints. And Gedding has received two anonymous phone calls-he thinks from the same man-that I was seen leaving the restaurant at noon riding Bucky up the mountain, in the opposite direction from my place. Following the Marners and Dillon.

“The day after the murder, Davis walked the trail that the Marners and Dillon rode. The first half mile above the restaurant, they rode on deep gravel. No prints of any value. But where you can see hoofprints, there’s the same scar-marked print, coming along behind their three horses.

“Not a lot of people ride that trail, it’s rough and steep. Davis said that deer trails crossed the hoofprints in two places, heading down to water and back again up toward the forest.”

Joe tried to imagine a stranger riding up that mountain following the three riders. A stranger riding Harper’s horse? A stranger who had taken Bucky after Harper left for work, and beat it down to the restaurant, to leave hoofprints following the Marners. Then followed them, killed them, and took out after Dillon. And then brought Bucky home, put him back in his stall.

“I’ve turned the department over to Brennan. Likely Davis and Ray will be off the case when Gedding’s man gets here. Dallas Garza. San Francisco PD. I’ve moved the horses up to Campbell Ranch, and the pups, too. They’ll be fine. I need a place to stay-where someone will know what I’m upto.”

Clyde was silent for some time. When he spoke, his voice was low and angry.“You’re quitting. Just quitting-stepping back like that. If that doesn’t make you look guilty-”

“There’s nothing else I can do. That’s protocol, to do that. Nothing guilty about it. If I stayed in the department, I could manipulate my people, cook the papers, cook the evidence. It’s not ethical, Clyde. You know that.”

“I’ll clean up the spare room. But what about during the day-I can’t baby-sit you, Max, while I’m at work.”

“I’ll make myself visible in the village. And I’m not finished looking for Dillon. I can move around, be seen, keep my eyes open but stay out of the department’s way. If I ride out with the searchers, I’ll stay with a group. Some of them keep their horses up at Campbell’s.”

“The department’s searched the old Pamillon place?”

“We were all over it that first night and the next day. The detectives have been back three times, have climbed down into every dark, musty cellar that ever existed on that land.

“This morning they had tracking dogs in there. One of them scented something; it started on a trail, then kept doubling back-sniffing around a puff of animal hair caught on the rocks. Dogs got all confused. I don’t think they ever did get Dillon’s scent, I think it was just a fox or something-maybe that cougar. The cougar’s pad marks were back and forth through the old house-that’s what has me worried.”

From beneath the table, the cats couldn’t see their faces. Nor did they need to.

Harper said,“If therewassome trace of Dillon up there that the dogs couldn’t find, it’s beyond what any human could detect.

“Every department in California has her description and photo,” Harper said. “The local TV channels will keep running her picture, along with a recording of her voice, that her mother gave us. Whatever son of a bitch has her, Clyde, whatever son of a bitch hurts her, I’ll kill him.”

10 [????????: pic_11.jpg]

MAX HARPER’Swords kept ringing in Joe’s head.If there was some trace of Dillon, that the dogs couldn’t find, it’s beyond what any human could detect.

Had Harper been unwittingly asking for other-than-human assistance?

Not likely. Not Max Harper.

But as the two cats emerged from the grass at the edge of the Pamillon estate and trotted beneath the chain barrier, Joe’s mind was filled with questions. The scarred horseshoe, Harper’s boot prints, the anonymous phone calls to Harper and then to Gedding.

Behind them down the hills, the red village rooftops and dark oaks shone in a bright patchwork against the blue sea-a chill winter day, clear and sharp and filled with potential.

Slipping in among the fallen walls, their whiskers sliding across broken bricks, threading between overgrown rosebushes whose thorns caught at their fur, they knew that something had drawn them here. A scent left undetected? Some small clue overlooked? Something that puzzled them and pulled them back.

Springing up the trunk of a broken oak tree, they studied the massy growth below them, the jungle of tall, wild broom and upturned tree roots. Vines woven across a rusted wheelbarrow. A wrought-iron gate standing alone, slowly being pulled down by vines. A world as impenetrably green and mysterious as Rima’s haunted Green Mansions, in the book that Wilma and Dulcie liked to read.

Seeing nothing below them to draw their specific attention, they dropped down again among the foliage where the afternoon light filtered to jade.

Scenting along through the bushes, they could detect no human trail. Only wild green smells and animal smells, filling every pocket of air. They had to rear up, every few steps, to see their way.

Where the ancient adobe bricks had been dished out by fifty years of wear, rainwater was cupped, and the cats drank, lapping among the leaves. Down beneath crushed leaves and broken foliage, the earth was a mass of crisscrossed hoofprints, boot and shoe prints, small animal tracks and the tracks of the hounds that had come searching.

Hours before the police teams arrived, before anyone knew that the Marners were dead, the civilian search party had ridden here, trampling any amount of evidence, so that later when Harper’s people went over the land, they could record only fragments.

Joe and Dulcie came out of the weeds onto a broken terrace so covered with rubble that it was impossible to tell where the rotting timbers of the veranda ended and the decaying floor of the house began.

Carved mantels stood half devoured by creeping vines. Fragments of torn and curling wallpaper hung from broken walls, as delicate as butterflies.

Prowling the parlor through forests of nettles that thrust between the rungs of broken chairs and curtained crippled bookcases, one wondered why the locals hadn’t long ago taken every piece of furniture. Vines covered a capsized table to form a den that smelled of raccoon. Scraps of water-soaked, mouse-gnawed sofa cushions had moldered into mush beneath a mass of yellow flowers. All around them, they saw the old house being sucked back into the earth from which it had sprung.

They found no footprints small enough to belong to Dillon Thurwell. They could detect no scent of Dillon. But Joe smelled the cougar, and warily they watched the shadows. And then, near the stink where the lion had sprayed, they caught the scent of the child. Dillon’s scent, leading across the parlor and up the broken stair to the nursery.

The morning glories had arrived upstairs long ago, to festoon a cane-backed rocking chair and to crawl up the faded wallpaper across cartoon rocking horses, the vine’s heart-shaped leaves and tendrils fingering out through the broken windows. Morning glory crept across the nursery fireplace that stood alone where the walls had fallen into landslides of timbers and bricks.

The fireplace stank of wet ashes spilling out onto the floor. Across the ashes led a trail of small, neat pawprints that continued beneath the fallen wall.

The cats were scenting among the rubble when they heard voices, someone in the garden below.

Padding to the edge of the broken floor, they watched two young women approaching.“Kate,” Joe said softly. “Kate Osborne.”

“What’s she doing here?” Dulcie gawked at the other young woman. “That beautiful white hair. I’ve seen her before, in the village.”

“I think that’s the woman Kate works for. Hanni something-this detective’s niece. Maybe they came down with him. Detective Dallas Garza.” Joe sat down, licking ashes from his paw. “Maybe it was Kate who called Clyde last night. He got all excited. Shouted, ‘When did you get in town? Where are you?’ I was half asleep. It’s all right if he wakes me in the middle of the night. But let me scratch an itch or wash my face, jiggle the bed a little, and it’s a federal case.”

“So when did Kate come down?”

“Last night, I guess. He made a date for breakfast-was off like a flash this morning, all polished and scrubbed, nearly forget to makemybreakfast. And he’s meeting her tonight for dinner. Didn’t give a thought to Charlie. Apparently didn’t wonder if Charlie would be jealous.”

“It would do Charlie good to be jealous,” Dulcie said darkly.

“Clyde called Charlie this morning before he left the house; I think Kate asked him to. Sounded like Kate wants to see Charlie’s drawings. I didn’t want to shove my ear in the phone; Clyde can be so bad-tempered in the morning.”

Below them, the white-haired woman had fished a camera from her leather tote and was taking pictures of the ruined gardens and house. Kate sat idly on a broken wall in a patch of sunshine, her short blond hair as bright as silk. She was dressed in pale faded jeans and a creamy sweater; Kate always wore cream tones or off white. Hanni’s sweatshirt was bright red, her earrings long and dangling.

“The walks could be repaired,” Hanni said. “This is a lovely patio, the way the old walls rise around it.” She kicked away some rubble to look at the brick paving. “This part looks good. And maybe even some of the old building could be kept and reinforced. And if these plants were pruned and cleaned up-a gardener could do wonders.”

“Hanni, I’m having trouble keeping my mind on this, with the murder and the missing child.”

“It’s terrifying, I know. But there’s nothing we can do, Kate. At least at the moment. The department will work overtime-every department in the country has the information, every search team is looking for the child. And Dallas will be down in the morning.”

“I keep thinking of Max Harper, suspected of murder. Keep thinking of Dallas investigating Harper as if he were a criminal. It makes me feel sick. Makes me want to rip and claw whoever did this.” Kate looked surprised at her turn of speech, looked embarrassed. “I… To think that someone has done this terrible thing, has killed and kidnapped people, in order to hurt Harper…” She looked hard at Hanni. “There can be no other explanation. Don’t people know that!”

“I’m sure they do. But the department has to do it by the book, Kate.

“This kind of tragedy goes with the territory. For every cop who does a good job, there are a hundred guys out there wanting to destroy him, and not caring who else they hurt.”

Kate sighed.“And Lee Wark’s out there somewhere. He hates Harper.”

Hanni shook her head.“The whole state’s looking for Wark. He’ll have left the country by now.”

“I hope. Harper was very kind to me when Jimmie hired Wark to kill me, when I was trying to get away from them. This new city attorney-what’s he like? How will he treat Harper?”

“I don’t know anything about him. I haven’t been down to the village for over a year.” Hanni removed a roll of film from the camera and inserted another. “Not to worry, Dallas will get to the truth. He won’t let anyone railroad Harper.”

Kate rose, looking around her into the tangled bushes. The cats watched her with interest. Usually she was so calm, so in control. Now she moved with a lithe, almost animal wariness, nervous and watchful.

“Isthere something about this place?” Dulcie said. “About the Pamillon mansion-some strangeness, the way the kit imagines?”

“Idon’t know, Dulcie. I don’t feel anything strange. You and the kit-”

A small voice behind them said,“Thereissomething. Something shivery.”

The cats turned to look at the kit where she sat atop a vine-covered dresser, her forepaws neatly together, her long fluffy tail wrapped around herself, her round yellow eyes intense.“Somethingelder,here in this place.”

But Joe and Dulcie’s attention was on the dresser top. They leaped up to see better.

Beside the kit’s paw, half hidden among the green leaves, lay a piece of shiny metal. Joe pushed away the leaves.

“What is this, Kit? Where did you get this?”

A silver hair clip gleamed among the leaves, its turquoise settings blue as a summer sky. Joe sniffed at it and fixed his gaze on the kit. And Dulcie’s green eyes widened. “Dillon’s clip,” Dulcie said softly. “The barrette that Wilma gave Dillon.”

Joe pushed close to the kit.“Where did you find this?”

The kit looked across the jungly nursery to the pale stone fireplace that loomed against the afternoon sky.

“In the fireplace? Show me.”

The kit leaped away among the vine-covered furniture and vanished behind the fireplace beneath a heap of fallen timbers beside the chimney. Joe was there in a flash, a gray streak pawing and pushing in where she had disappeared. Shouldering under the timbers, he pushed his head beneath the partly open lid of a long wooden box the size of a coffin-the lid would open only a few inches. The kit crouched within, on the rusted floor. The interior was metal lined; had perhaps, at one time, held firewood.

“Here,” the kit said. “It was right in here.” Even the inside of the box reeked of wet ashes. They could not smell Dillon. There was nothing inside but the kit. Joe backed out again, where Dulcie pressed close behind him.

“We have to get the barrette to Harper,” she said softly. “Or tell him where it is. I suppose whatever prints were on it are smeared with paw marks and cat spit.”

Joe Grey flattened his ears.“Harper mustn’t have anything to do with finding this.”

Her green eyes widened.“But-”

“Prosecution could say he planted it.” He looked keenly at Dulcie. “The detectives need to find it here. The department detectives-or Garza.”

“Then we’ll have to phone the station.”

“We’re not phoning the station. An anonymous phone tip would make Harper look like dog doo.”

“Well what, then?” Dulcie hissed.

“Someone uninvolved could find it,” he said with speculation. “Find it and call the station.” He looked down into the garden.

“Kate,” she whispered.

“Kate,” he said and leaped down the broken stairs toward the garden.

Joe didn’t know he was being watched, just as Kate and Hanni were being watched.

From higher up the hill above the ruined mansion, the three cats had been observed for some time, with keen and unwavering attention-as had two human creatures.

The movements and noises of the humans puzzled and interested the young lion. The mouth noises of his small feline cousins puzzled him far more.

The cougar was uncertain about whether two-legged beasts should be considered food, but the three little felines were certainly edible. They were nice and fat, and were out in plain view waiting to be taken-except that these small cat creatures made noises like the two-legs, and he did not know what to make of that.

And as Joe Grey descended to the garden, to lure Kate away from Hanni and lead her to the hair clip, above them on the hill the cougar slipped closer, padding among dense cover and silently down the slope. Intensely curious, the lion stalked toward the patio, moving as smooth and silently as a drifting cloud-shadow, his big pads pressing without sound among the vines and stones, his broad head cocked, listening, his golden eyes seeking to separate possible lunch from possible threat-his teeth parted to taste cat scent and human scent, trying to sort out another strangeness, in a world filled with dangers from the unknown.

11 [????????: pic_12.jpg]

CHARLIE GETZ was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor of her one-room apartment when Kate arrived, an hour earlier than they’d planned. Charlie answered the door with the knees of her jeans sopping, her red hair in a mess, and a ketchup stain down her T-shirt. Opened the door to a gorgeously turned-out blond, sleek golden hair, clear green eyes, her creamy merino sweater immaculate and expensive. Charlie felt likeshe’dcrawled out of a Dumpster. She’d meant to shower and change, make tea, put the bakery cookies on a plate, try to act civilized. She had never met Kate, only talked with her on the phone last night. If Clyde had told her what a stunner this woman was, she’d have spent the morning fretting over her clothes and trying to do something with her hair.

Kate held in her arms the relaxed and purring tortoiseshell kit. Joe Grey and Dulcie stepped out from behind her, Dulcie’s tail waving, Joe’s docked tail erect and cheerful, the two cats smiling up at her as they pushed past Kate’s ankles into the room. But the expression on Kate’s face made Charlie hurry her inside and hastily shut the door.

“What’s wrong? There’s nothing wrong with the kit?”

“No, she’s fine. I’m sorry I’m so early. I’m Kate. Hanni and I were up at the Pamillon place, we hurried straight down to the police, and I…”

Charlie led Kate to the dinette table and pulled out a chair. Kate sat, still holding the unprotesting kit, cuddling her as if she needed the kit’s warmth. Behind her, Joe and Dulcie leaped onto Charlie’s daybed and began diligently to wash, their expressions smug and secretive. Charlie looked at them intently. “Start again,” she told Kate, turning on the burner under the teakettle and sitting down opposite her.

“We were-we found something of-that might be Dillon’s. I…” Kate looked deeply at Charlie. “I found it. I left it there, didn’t touch it. I came right down to the police. A silver barrette. With turquoise. They-Officer Wendell has gone up to look. But I…” Kate stared absently at the teakettle. When she looked back at Charlie, her eyes were filled with fear and with a strange and powerful wonder.

“What?” Charlie said.

“We saw the lion,” Kate whispered.

“The mountain lion? The cougar?”

“Yes. And it saw us. It came toward us. The kit went up my back like a bullet.” Kate turned to show the bloody splotches down the back of her sweater. She didn’t seem concerned about the wounds or the sweater. Tenderly she stroked the kit. And she began to laugh.

“She clung on my head and she…” Kate doubled over, cradling the kit, laughing until tears came.

When she looked up, she said,“You know about them.”

Charlie was silent.

“It’s all right,” Dulcie said softly. “Kate knows-more then you’d guess.”

Charlie looked at Kate with speculation.“Then what happened?” she said. “What did the lion do?”

“He came right down into the ruin,” Kate said. “Came directly toward us-as if he was curious. He paused not twenty feet from us. We were terrified, we daren’t move. He kept coming, watching and watching us. I thought he would attack-but he was so beautiful. I can’t explain how I felt.

“The kit was up my back digging her claws in. The lion stopped again and stood looking at us. Just-looking. I wanted to run, and knew you daren’t do that. I glanced at Hanni. She was standing stone still. I felt like we were glued to the ground. And then the kit, still digging in-she snuggled down by my ear and whispered, so soft. She told me to look big, to hold my jacket up, make myself look bigger.”

From Kate’s lap, the kit stared at her, trying to see what was so amusing.

“She told me to look him in the eye and speak clearly. She said, ‘Tell him to get lost.’

“I held up my coat and spoke to him just as the kit said. And Hanni-Hanni knew what I was doing. She came up beside me, holding up her coat, and we stood together telling the lion very sternly to go away.

“And he did,” Kate said. She sat back in her chair, hugging the kit. “He turned and melted away into the garden. He was standing on a fallen tree one second and gone the next. I thought he had dropped down behind the log, that he would wait, then attack. But then we saw him far up the hill, standing among the trees. Still watching us.”

Charlie had to grin. She felt like she’d known Kate forever-Kate’s animal sense, her humor, and the way she loved the kit. All were qualities that drew her to Kate-as did the fact that she and Kate shared the cats’ momentous secret. They were bound together, with Clyde and Wilma, in a confidence that, if any of them broke it, would be the most horrible of betrayals.

“And we got out of there,” Kate said. “The moment he was gone. Went straight to the police to tell them about the barrette.”

“Wilma gave Dillon a barrette,” Charlie said. “Silver, set with turquoise strips.”

“It was there in the Pamillon nursery. Beside an old firewood box next to the hearth. A box big enough for a young girl to hide.”

“But why didn’t the searchers find it?”

“The kit found it in the chest, caught up under the lid. Must have pulled off when Dillon hid.”

Kate grinned.“The kit found it, and the cats brought it to me while Hanni was distracted.”

“And you gave it to Officer Wendell?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?”

“I… nothing. When you went to the police, wasn’t Hanni surprised that you brought the cats down from the ruins with you?”

“No. She wouldn’t have left them, with the cougar there. It seemed perfectly natural to her to bring them down.”

Charlie rose to pour boiling water into the teapot. She felt as comfortable with Kate as if she’d known her forever. Setting the teapot on the table, she fetched the lemon cookies, sliding them onto a plate.

Kate’s color was coming back. “To see such a thing, Charlie. Can you imagine it? I felt terrified, but I was filled with such wonder. I still can’t believe I saw that beautiful beast, so close to us.”

How strange, Charlie thought, that Kate’s voice seemed filled with envy.

And she saw envy again, a few minutes later, as Kate looked at the pencil and ink studies of animals that Charlie had lined up along the wall, and at the framed drawings hanging above them, sketches of cats and dogs and of Max Harper’s horses. “And raccoons,” Kate said. “These are all quite wonderful. And foxes. Where…?”

“In the hills,” Charlie said, “around Harper’s place. We’ve been working the pups on obedience, those two big pups Clyde found. Working them in Max’s pasture.”

“And the foxes were watching?” Kate teased.

“In the evenings,” Charlie said, laughing. “That big fellow in the drawings, he comes near the porch. He knows when the dogs are shut in their stall. I think he comes to hunt mice. Max never puts out food.”

The village of Molena Point imposed a stiff fine for setting out food for wild animals. The area was overrun with raccoons; they turned over trash cans and would break into people’s houses, tearing through the screens. Even George Jolly had been criticized for setting out treats in his alley, though the deli was right in the center of the village, not on the outskirts where the smell of food was more likely to attract a wild beast. Raccoons hunting in packs had killed village cats and small dogs-and the raccoons and foxes drew the larger predators: bobcats and an occasional coyote, and now the cougar.

“You’ve been seeing a lot of Harper,” Kate said tentatively, “what with training the pups.”

Charlie nodded.“Clyde talked to you about that?”

“He mentioned it.”

“And…?”

Kate shrugged.“Clyde’s easily made jealous.” She grinned. “Not to worry-jealousy’s good for him, keeps him on his toes.”

“Clyde asked you to pump me. To see how I feel about Harper.”

“Would you mind?”

“I-I suppose not. What difference? Our petty feelings, right now… What difference? Oh, why did this have to happen! To a good man!”

“That’s how you feel about him.”

“Maybe. I really don’t know how I feel, Kate.”

Kate nodded.“Are there any leads to the murder? Any suspects? I know that everyone’s looking for Dillon. What a terrible thing this has been.”

“There’s a parolee in town who might be involved. But I don’t hear much. The department keeps pretty tight security.” She looked at Kate. “Those officers will do everything that’s humanly possible to find the killer and clear their chief.”

“There’s… no chance that Harper, under some kind of stress, in a moment of rage…?”

“Max Harper?” Charlie felt her face go hot. “Kill that woman and her daughter? No way in hell Max could do such a thing.” She rose, refilled the teakettle, and put it back on the burner. Turning, she looked at Kate. “You can’t believe drat.”

Kate smiled.“No. I don’t believe that.”

“Still a fishing trip.”

Kate shrugged.

From the couch, the cats watched this exchange with amused interest.

Kate took two more cookies, ate them quickly.“Do you remember when three men escaped from San Quentin?”

“Yes. From death row? You’re talking about the one from Molena Point. The one who was sent to prison at the same time-”

“The same time as my ex-husband.”

Kate swallowed half a cup of tea.“I think I may have seen him in San Francisco. Someone in the city is murdering cats. He did that, Lee Wark did that.” She shivered. “He liked to kill cats.”

On the couch, Joe and Dulcie moved closer together, their blood going icy. The tortoiseshell kit turned wide yellow eyes on Kate.

Kate looked back at them sternly.“You would stay far away from a man like that. A tall, thin man, Kit. Thin and hunched and pale, with muddy eyes.”

The three cats shivered.

“The man in San Francisco,” Kate said, “had a black coat that made him look squarer and broader. A black goatee. Black hat. But his eyes were the same. Like a dead fish.”

The kit crowded closer to Kate.Frightened,Dulcie thought.Frightened down to her little black paws. And so am I.And she watched the kit, terrified for her.

Lee Wark had tried to kill Dulcie and Joe just as he had tried to kill Kate. And if he got one look into the kit’s eyes, Wark would know that she, too, was not an ordinary cat.

But Wark was not there in the village, he would not come there. The very thought made her fur crawl.

“Dallas will be here in the morning,” Kate said. “He’s very aware of Wark.”

“What’s he like? What kind of man?”

“I work with his niece, I’m her design assistant. Dallas helped to raise Hanni and her sisters after their mother died. Hanni says he’s totally honest. But…” Kate laughed. “I guess that’s like asking what kind of man your father is. What are you going to say?”

“I… have another source, too,” Charlie said.

“Your aunt Wilma? She worked with Hanni’s father at one time.”

“Yes, in the San Francisco probation office, before he was appointed chief. She knows Garza by reputation. Wilma says he’s okay.”

“Hanni says no little girls ever had better raising. They learned to ride, to hunt, to handle firearms-and to clean house and cook. Hanni says Dallas is a wonderful cook. Kate, he has to be a good man, to take such care in raising his dead sister’s children.”

But Joe Grey, watching the two young women, thought,Even crocodiles take care of their helpless young. Even Mafia parents see that their kids learn what they want them to know.

Charlie said,“Whoever’s out to get Harper, I hope Garza sees them burn him in hell.”

Joe Grey hoped so, too. Though the haste with which the city attorney had suggested Garza, and the pressure that Gedding had put on the chief in San Francisco to get Garza left him wondering-hoping the source of this cold-blooded setup to destroy Harper didn’t reach clear to San Francisco via Molena Point City Hall.

The balance of Max Harper’s life now lay in the hands of Dallas Garza. And Joe Grey, stretching out across the daybed, considered how best to monitor Detective Garza’s moves.

Meantime, he’d like a look at confidence artist Stubby Baker, Harper’s unwitting and apparently useless alibi.

12 [????????: pic_13.jpg]

A CAT COULD travel for blocks above the village of Molena Point never setting paw to the sidewalk, crossing the chasms above the streets on twisted oak limbs or by leaping the narrow alleys between skylights and attic windows, by trotting between shingled peaks so precipitous that even with all claws out, one couldn’t help but slide, landing on a swinging sign below or a roof gutter. At only a few streets must the feline traveler come to earth like a common tourist and run across behind the wheels of slow-moving cars.

Stubby Baker’s apartment was a handsome penthouse on the third floor above a row of exclusive clothing shops. The kit led Joe Grey and Dulcie there as if she had invented surveillance. “That’s where he lives,” she hissed, clinging to an oak branch beside Joe, three floors above the street. “Right in there across that balcony behind those big glass doors, the man who kicks cats.”

From the tree in which they crouched, the cats looked down on a long tiled balcony and a pair of many-paned French doors. Despite the bright day, a light was on within. Baker sat at a dining table littered with papers, just inside the glass doors. He was a tall well-knit man totally unlike his nickname, his dark hair neatly trimmed, his smooth skin well tanned. A man the women would find appealing.

The apartment had high, dark beams against a white plaster ceiling, white walls, a skylight through which the sky shone blue and clear. Used brick formed the floor and the corner fireplace, beside which hung eight small, well-framed reproductions of Richard Diebenkorn’s landscapes, gleaming rich as jewels. An opening behind the fireplace apparently led to a bedroom. Before the fire, three tan leather couches formed a luxurious conversational group, their cushions deep and inviting, perfect for kneading claws.

Baker seemed totally absorbed in the official-looking documents he was reading, making occasional notes or corrections. He wore clean chinos and a tan golf shirt. Expensive sandals graced his thin, tanned feet. He gave every impression, both in his person and in his environment, of a well-to-do businessman of some stature, not an ex-con with a laundry sheet that would stretch a city block.

The cats, slipping along the branch closer to the window, had a fine view down onto the papers that occupied him: documents marked with seals and notary stamps, and a land map marked off into individual parcels. Pens and a ruler were aligned beside it. Joe read the larger print upside down, a talent he had developed during interminable breakfasts when Clyde hogged the front page.

“Deeds of trust,” he said softly. “Copies of wills and property transfers.” He studied the land map. “The way the coastline runs, thatcouldbe the Pamillon estate.”

On an end table, among a clutter of dog-eared paperbacks, lay a stack of bills. The paperbacks didn’t seem to fit Baker’s image; the covers looked like lurid, cheap fare. The utility bills were of greater interest, particularly the phone bill on top, showing half a dozen longdistance calls to one Marin County number.

Joe peered closer, committing the seven digits to memory just as he had committed his own phone number, Dulcie’s, and several numbers for Max Harper.

He might not want to explore some of his more bizarre inherited talents, but the memory bank within his gray sleek head was of considerable use to the tomcat.

Marin County, some thirty miles north of San Francisco, was the home of San Quentin State Prison. And Lee Wark hadn’t been the only convicted murderer incarcerated there thanks to Harper.

Repeating to himself the number and prefix, he was trying to figure how to get inside the apartment and paw through the rest of the bills when Dulcie hissed, staring down at the street.

Almost directly beneath the balcony, in the line of halted traffic waiting for pedestrians to cross, sat an open black Mercedes convertible, its radio blaring rock music, its driver staring above her up toward Baker’s windows. Her honey-colored hair was tied back with a yellow scarf. Her tan shorts revealed long, tanned legs. Her brown eyes scanned the portion of French doors that she must be able to see above the angle of the balcony. Beside her on the front seat sat three loaded grocery bags. The cats could see peanut butter, a jar of jelly, some kind of cereal. The traffic moved on.

Dulcie watched narrowly as the convertible slid away.“What was she looking at?” Dulcie said.

“Maybe at us.” Joe leaped to the roof, away from the branch and Baker’s windows. “Maybe she’s a cat lover.”

“Oh, right.” She joined Joe and the kit on the roof, her green eyes glowing. “Could she be checking on Baker? Is there a connection between Crystal and Baker?”

“I don’t-” Joe began. But Dulcie was gone, streaking across the rooftops, following Crystal’s convertible as it crept in the line of slow-moving cars. Joe saw her disappear over the edge and reappear on the roofs of the next block, lashing her tail with annoyance-very likely after dodging too close to slow-moving wheels. He wished she wouldn’t do that. The village’s daytime streets, though crowded and slow, belonged to the cars of upscale tourists. That, he had pointed out to Dulcie, was why they used the rooftops.

The early-morning village streets, before the tourists were out of their beds, boasted more careful drivers. Those streets smelled better, too. Smelled of the sea and of newly watered gardens, while the midday village smelled, to a cat, of exhaust fumes-deodorants-shaving lotion-perfume-chewing gum-restaurant cooking and too many human bodies.

Joe caught up to Dulcie, the kit crowding close, and they followed the black Mercedes for eight blocks, crossing the streets twice among the feet of the tourists, enduring endless remarks about the cute kitties and constant attempts to pet them, dodging away from reaching hands.

But when Crystal’s car turned right, traffic moved swiftly again and the cats couldn’t keep up; they ran until they were panting. Standing on the sidewalk, Joe stared after the Mercedes, frustrated. Joe and Dulcie didn’t see the black SL again until the following week.

But the kit saw Crystal’s car later that evening and followed it, alone. Galloping along the sidewalk, dodging between tourists’ feet, she was wildly excited to be on a trail that the two big cats had lost.

The time was just dusk. She had been out for a prowl through Jolly’s alley, because no matter how well Wilma fed her, she could never get filled up, and Jolly’s had such delicious offerings, all that lovely smoked salmon.

Leaving the alley licking her whiskers, she saw the open Mercedes go by, saw Crystal’s tawny hair blowing and smelled Crystal’s perfume. She followed, running seven blocks after the car but careful about crossing streets, followed until Crystal pulled into a drive and parked before a closed garage door.

Crystal hurried up the wooden stairs, the kit following so close on her heels that when Crystal pushed in through the front door it slammed in the little cat’s face. Backing away, the kit leaped to the windowsill, pressing her nose to the glass. There was a curtain drawn across.

Rearing up, she couldn’t see over it.

Taking the direct approach she mewled at the door, her cries ever louder and more desperate, in the age-old classic plea:Iam abandoned, I am starving, I am so terribly hungry and cold.She worked herself into a such a frenzy, convinced herself so well of her plight, that she was all a-tremble when Crystal flung open the door and dumped a pan of water in her face.

The kit fled for Wilma’s house.

13 [????????: pic_14.jpg]

DALLAS GARZA arrived in Molena Point at 8 A.M., the morning after the three cats spied on Stubby Baker. He was a big, broad-shouldered man dressed in civilian clothes-faded jeans, a tan shirt, charcoal V-necked sweater, and a tan corduroy sport coat, clothes that blended well into the milieu of Molena Point, comfortable layers to be removed as the fog burned off and the day turned warm. Garza’s thick black hair was trimmed short, in a well-styled, no-nonsense haircut. His chiseled, square face, brown as oak, seemed carved into lines that were all business-a look that won immediate confidence from law enforcement and nervous reluctance from those who would screw with him.

During his twenty-three-year career he had been put on loan three times to other departments when their internal affairs got into a tangle, carrying out investigations of fellow officers-once in Redding on a drug-related case, and twice in southern California on charges of moral misconduct. This was the first time he had been called in to investigate a murder.

He had never met Max Harper. Garza didn’t socialize on his vacation time; he kept to himself. He didn’t like the fact that his case was Molena Point’s chief of police, an officer well thought of in the village and among other law enforcement agencies in the state.

But he owed Lionel Gedding. And Garza was rigid about paying his debts.

He was uncomfortable, too, that Hanni was here and had opened the cottage, as if they were down for a family vacation.

He didn’t stop at the cottage to drop off his bag, but drove directly to Molena Point PD. In the police lot behind the station, he swung a U and backed into a slot against the back wall. Sitting in his car, he took in the blank, two-story brick wall on his right where the jail was housed, and the single-story police station on his left. The station was connected to the courtrooms and city offices behind him by an enclosed passageway.

Garza had worked in San Francisco for ten years. Before that, he had put in five years on a SWAT team in Oakland. He would be forced to retire at age fifty-seven because his work was considered hazardous duty. He had no idea what he would do after that. He was four years younger than Molena Point Police Chief Max Harper. He had read the file on Harper the night before.

Leaving the police parking lot, he walked two blocks toward Ocean to have breakfast at a favorite small cafe. Sitting in the patio with his back to the restaurant wall, he ordered three eggs over easy, ham, biscuits, and coffee. He ate slowly and neatly, watching the village street. A lot of the locals out this time of morning were dog walkers. And the tourists were walking mutts, too. Several hotels in the village catered to pets. Folks liked to bring their dogs along where the little poodles and spaniels-and a few big dogs-could run on the beach, show off up and down Ocean-four-legged conversation pieces-and sit with their masters at the outdoor cafes.

It amazed him that people with money, people who drove expensive foreign cars, had mongrels instead of well-bred animals. Mutts. Absently he counted nineteen dogs; only two of them were purebred, and neither of real good breeding.

If Garza was a snob in any way, it was in the matter of canines.

A well-bred pointer or setter, a handsome big Chesapeake or Weimaraner of really good bloodlines was one of the finest accomplishments of mankind.

A far finer accomplishment, in many respects, than man himself.

But that was a cop’s view.

Paying the bill, tucking the tip under the sugar bowl, he walked to Molena Point PD, entering by the unlocked front door into the big open squad room. His first look at the department didn’t please him.

In the big open room, all functions seemed to be carried out with little thought to privacy or security. And certainly minimal attention to neatness. This surprised him. Harper had a reputation for running an orderly shop, but these officers’ desks were piled with papers; a case of soft drinks had been left by the front door; several officers had hung their jackets over the backs of their chairs; two had laid their guns atop their desks; a pair of field boots stood next to an overflowing wastebasket. They didn’t use shredders? Even the dispatcher’s area contained stacks of papers that he would never have allowed. He did not, as he began to make the rounds of the room, find much to admire in Max Harper’s department.

Joe Grey and Dulcie spotted Garza leaving the restaurant as they stepped out of Jolly’s alley after a leisurely post-hunting snack. The man’s solid build and his military walk and air of authority drew their gaze. Dulcie’s green eyes widened; her dark, striped tail twitched with interest. “Who’s that?” The broad-shouldered, darkhaired Latino was an imposing figure.

“Either a full bird colonel or some kind of law enforcement. My guess would be our detective from San Francisco. Garza’s due to arrive this morning.”

They followed him, padding along the curb and through sidewalk flower gardens until the broad-shouldered stranger entered Molena Point PD. As Garza stepped in through the glass door, the cats beat it into the courthouse, whose front door was easy enough to claw open, galloped down the hall into the squad room, and took cover under Max Harper’s desk.

They couldn’t see much but the jungle of desk and chair legs and officers’ shoes spreading away across the linoleum, but they could hear Garza working the room, introducing himself to individual officers. They listened with interest to the causal wariness exhibited by Harper’s men and women as they tookGarza’s measure.

“Talk about a roomful of tomcats,” Joe said, grinning.

“So what would you expect? Garza was sent here to dotheirjob and possibly to help prosecute their chief.”

Joe slipped out from under the desk far enough to see Garza sitting at Detective Davis’s desk with Davis and Ray. They seemed to be going over field notes, Garza reading his copy and asking questions. Joe felt nearly invisible, with all officers’ eyes on the threesome while trying to look busy with their own affairs. When at last Garza headed for Harper’s desk, carrying the detectives’ thick sheaf of reports and photographs, Joe was deep under the drawer section beside Dulcie.

Sheltered from Garza’s feet, they dozed as the detective shuffled papers. Periods of silence indicated that he was reading. He rose occasionally to refill his coffee cup from the large coffeemaker on the credenza behind him. Joe was soon cross-eyed with boredom.

They had meant, coming out of the alley, to head for Dulcie’s house and make that call to Marin County-Joe had a feeling about that phone number. The same kind of feeling as when, though he couldn’t see or smell a mouse, he knew the little beast was close. He wanted to make that call in an empty house, without any human listening, and Wilma would be atwork.

Telephones still amazed him-sending his voice over that unseen cable to manipulate someone invisible at the other end.

That joining of humanity’s electronic wonders and his own remarkable feline skills gave him a huge sense of power. A real twenty-first-century, state-of-the-art jolt.

And right now, while they marked time on the dusty linoleum under Harper’s desk, learning nothing of value, that Marin phone number bugged him.

They listened as Garza arranged to see the stable manager where the Marners had kept their horses, and to see several Marner family members who had arrived soon after the tragedy and were staying in the village. He set a time to see Charlie Getz and to interview the staff at Cafe Mundo. The problem with all this was that Joe and Dulcie would be privy to nothing, no more inside line to what was happening than if they’d been a thousand miles from Molena Point.

Garza told Lieutenant Brennan that he would talk with the Marners’ neighbors in their condo building, and he made an appointment for that evening with Dillon Thurwell’s parents. That would be a hard call, for Dillon’s mother and father to talk with police again, when there was only that one slim lead to finding Dillon, only the lost barrette.

At least they knew she’d escaped the killer at one point. But nothing after that. Nothing more than that one small piece of jewelry that had been described in the paper just after the murder, the barrette Dillon’s mother said the child had been wearing when she left the house Saturday morning. Nothing else to give them hope that Dillon was still alive.

Garza made no appointment with Joe’s housemate, though Clyde was Harper’s closest friend. Other than this omission, the detective seemed to be starting out in an efficient and businesslike manner. Maybe he was going to descend on Clyde’s place unannounced, hoping to catch Harper off guard.

When Garza finished with the phone, he nodded to Detective Davis and Ray, and the three of them headed back to the conference rooms, Garza carrying the reports Davis had given him, as if he meant to go over the meat of the case in strict privacy. The cats were crouched for a swift race down the hall to listen, when they heard the conference room door slam closed.

Slipping into the shadows of an adjoining room, they pressed their ears uncomfortably to the wall-cats’ ears are not made for wall-pressing; it hurts the delicate cartilage. Even with their superior hearing, they could make out only indistinct murmurs, and the conference rooms had no windows that might be open to the bright morning. Their source within Molena Point PD had dried up faster than canned tuna left in the sun. Sometimes even a cat, the most facile and adept of snoops, gets outshuffled.

“Come on,” Joe said, and he headed down the hall, through the courthouse, dodging behind the heels of a pair of attorneys-you could always tell attorneys, they had briefcases growing out of their hands-and down the street to Dulcie’s house, hot to get at the phone.

14 [????????: pic_15.jpg]

JOE AND DULCIEspied the kit in Jolly’s alley as they were headed for Dulcie’s house and the phone. The kit sat smugly beneath the jasmine vine beside an empty paper plate.

Dulcie nudged her.“Come on, kit. Is that your second breakfast?”

The kit smiled. Her face smelled of caviar and roast lamb.

The two cats hurried her along out of the alley and down the street-like herding fireflies. She was everywhere, up the bougainvillea vines that climbed the shop walls, up into the oaks and across the roofs and down onto balconies and awnings. When they nosed her through Dulcie’s cat door, she charged at a plate of scrambled eggs that Wilma had left on the floor and inhaled yet another meal.

“I saw Wilma walking to work,” she said between bites. “She looked elegant. Those beautiful pale jeans and that new black blazer and cashmere sweater.”

“Just jeans,” Dulcie said. “Not soveryfancy, kit.”

“Elegant,” the kit repeated. And Dulcie had a sharp sense of the kit’s fascination with beautiful clothes-a hunger perhaps as keen as Dulcie’s own covetous craving. She wondered if the kit had ever stolen a silky garment from some house when she traveled with that rebel band of homeless cats. Wondered if the kit, just as she herself, had ever innocently lifted a silk nightie from someone’s clothesline or nipped in through an open window to snatch a lacy teddy or a pair of sheer stockings.

Well,Dulcie thought,Idon’t do that anymore.

At least, hardly ever.

She missed having those lovely garments to snuggle on. Oh, Wilma gave her pretty things. But the stolen ones were nicer.

She was ashamed of her failing, and secretly reveled in it. She didn’t consider herself a thief. She always gave back the stolen items, in a way-leaving them in the box on the back porch that Wilma had provided, where the amused neighbors knew to retrieve their “misplaced” clothes.Notstealing, she thought, following Joe through the dining room and onto Wilma’s desk.

Joe pushed the phone from its cradle, squinched his paw small, and punched in the San Rafael number. He was unusually nervous. The kit bounced up beside them to watch, round-eyed. And the three cats bent their heads, listening to the measured ringing.

A man’s gravelly voice. “Year. Alby? That you, Alby? You’re two minutes early.”

Joe said,“Is this Davis Drugs?”

“What the hell? Who’s this? Who you calling?”

“Davis Drugs.” Joe repeated the number he’d dialed.

“You got the wrong number, buster. Get off the friggin’ line.”

Joe pressed the disconnect, scowling.“That didn’t net much.”

“Didn’t it?” said Dulcie. “Wait a few minutes, and try again.”

He waited, then punched the redial, checking the little screen to be sure he’d dialed the right number the first time. The kit watched every move.

A different voice answered. Smooth but equally abrupt.“Yeah? Who you want?”

“Hello?” Joe said inanely.

“Who you want to talk to?”

“I was calling Davis Drugs. Can you tell me what place I’ve reached?”

“DavisDrugs!That’s a good one! We ain’t got that brand, buddy. Who you calling?”

“Can you tell me what place this is? Maybe I have the…”

A clanging, metallic voice sounded in the background, its vibrating rumble so loud they couldn’t make sense of the words. Sounded like “Wall uh-uh-ers heave ta ecc-ecc-ecc-ed wall at once.” A man shouted, “Come on, Joobie. Get off the damn phone! I got a call coming.” Then a click and the line went dead. In a moment the recording came on telling Joe to hang up and dial again.

He slapped his paw to silence the offensive message.“What was that all about?”

Dulcie sat scowling, trying to make out the words. She lifted her paw.“Let me try.”

She punched the redial and the speaker button so they could all hear. She sat washing her paws, listening with all the sophistication of a debutante buffing her nails while monitoring the call of a dull-witted suitor. The gravelly voice answered.“Start talking. It’s your nickel.”

“Hi, honey. This is May.”

“May who?”

“Maybe I could give you a good time, baby.”

He guffawed, his laugh so loud that Dulcie backed away. But her voice was sweet and smooth as cream.“Honey, are you the handsome one?”

“You bet I am, baby. That’s me.” The guy bellowed a rasping laugh. “Handsome as a hound pup. Who is this? Where you calling from, honey?”

“My name’s Chantelle. What’s yours?”

“Baby, this is Big Buck Brewer. You calling from near here? Why don’t you come on up? Have us a little conjugal visit.”

Dulcie rolled her eyes at Joe.“I’m just a few blocks away, honey. Maybe if I come up there, we could party?”

“Baby, if you can figure out how to get in here, I guarantee you’ll have a party.”

The loudspeaker went again.“Waaalll pr-boom-boom-boom-out of the… yar-yar-yard…” And the phone clicked and went dead. Dulcie looked at Joe, her green eyes huge.

“A prison,” Joe said softly.

Dulcie nodded.“Prison loudspeaker. ‘All prisoners out… out of the exercise yard’?” Her eyes were wide and gleaming, her ears sharp forward. “A prison, Joe? How could we call inside a prison? What prison?”

“There’s only one prison in that area code.” And Joe Grey thanked the great cat god-or the great phone god-that Pacific Bell was so explicit in its billing, listing each city along with its longdistance number. “San Rafael, Dulcie. San Quentin State Prison.” He showed his teeth in a wicked feline grin. “San Quentin, temporary home of every serious felon and convicted murderer in the state of California.”

“But…howcould we phone into a prison? Were those inmates-how could inmates answer the phone? What am I missing here? They’re locked up, they’re supposed to… They wouldn’t havetelephones.”

“Right. And I don’t have claws and whiskers.”

She only looked at him, her green eyes wide with shock-and with growing excitement.

The kit gaped at them both. She was beyond her depth.

And Joe Grey looked like he’d swallowed a whole nest of mice. “This is from the horse’s mouth, Dulcie. Straight from Harper’s men, at the poker table. There are pay phones all over San Quentin. Maximum security prison, but the inmates can make a call to anyone, any time they please.”

“You’re putting me on.”

“Not a bit. They can call out, and can receive incoming calls if they stand around and wait for them. Like, say, their outside contact calls at a prearranged time.”

Dulcie shook her whiskers, her green eyes narrowed with disgust.“What’s the point of putting them in prison? I thought it was to get them out of circulation. What good, if they have all that contact with the outside?”

“Exactly. But the phones are only part of it. Those prisoners have computers, e-mail, the Web, you name it.”

Dulcie sighed.

“The Justice Department wants to crack down on the phones, though. Justice thinks the prisoners are making too many drug deals and orchestrating too many murders from behind bars.”

“Now you’re kidding.”

“Dead serious.”

“Too manydrug deals? And just how many is too many?Too manymurders?” Her tail lashed with rage. “What’s happening to the world?”

“You have to make allowances. You’re dealing here with humans.”

“Oh, right.”

“Bottom line-the state earns a lot of money from those pay phones. Harper said the take in California alone last year was something like twenty-three million bucks from prison pay phones.”

“Come on, Joe.”

“Knight Ridder Newspapers-the wire service,” Joe said authoritatively. “Harper was so angry about it, he clipped the article to show Clyde. It gave statistics for Illinois and Florida, too. Said in Illinois, in one year, inmates placed over three million longdistance calls-and the deal with the phone company is, the state gets half the take.”

Dulcie’s ears went back; her eyes darkened with anger. “Why do we even bother to try to catch a killer, if that’s all it means? He gets free room and board, free computers, free phones so he can do his dirty drug deals-and the state of California rakes in twenty-three million dollars.” She was soworked up she growled at Joe and the kit both. “Those cons sit inside like some Mafia family in its Manhattan penthouse arranging drug sales and murdering people by remote control.”

“That’s about it,” Joe said. “Used to be, prisoners were allowed maybe one call every three months-and those were likely monitored. Now they can use the phone all day. That’s who you talked to, Dulcie, some inmate waiting for a call.”

And Joe Grey smiled.“Lee Wark escaped from San Quentin, but his accomplice in the Beckwhite murder is still there-and Osborne is not on death row. Osborne’s serving life. He’d have unlimited phone privileges. And he isn’t the only no-good that Harper helped put in Quentin. Kendrick Mahl’s there, too.”

Max Harper had helped see Mahl convicted for the murder of Janet Jeannot.

Joe and Dulcie had also helped-though only two people in the world knew that.

Joe sat down on the blotter.“This could be not one felon setting up Harper, but a partnership. A whole squirming nest of rats.”

“Fine,” Dulcie said. “Our source of department information dried up. Harper knows no more than we do. And when we can’t pass on the tiniest little tip without implicating Harper.”

Joe said nothing. Pacing back and forth across the desk, his ears and whiskers were back, his scowl deep, pulling the white splotch down his face into washboard lines.

The fascinated kit lay belly-down on a stack of bills, looking from one to the other as if watching them bat a mouse back and forth.

“So how are we going to play it?” Dulcie asked. “How are we going to lay this on the new detective? Clyde’s right about the phone tips. We try an anonymous tip with Garza, he thinks Harper’s trying to manipulate him.

“Still,” she said, “when the tip proves to be true…”

Joe rubbed his whiskers against hers.“We don’t want to blow this, Dulcie. I want to think about this.”

He gave her a broad grin.“I could move in with Garza.”

“Oh, right. Play lost kitty, as well fed as you look?”

Joe dropped his ears, sucked in his gut, and crouched as if terrified, creeping across the desk as though someone had beaten him.

“Not bad.”

“Add a little roll in the dirt, scruff up my fur, and I’m as pitiful as any homeless. You’re not the only one who can play abandoned kitty.”

“But youcan’tplay stray kitty for Garza. His niece, Hanni, knows us from when she gave us a ride to Charlie’s apartment. Hanni knows you’re not a stray.”

Joe looked sheepish. He didn’t often forget such important matters.

He had to get hold of himself. This worry over Harper was fogging his tomcat brain.

“So I stroll in the front door, look Garza in the eye. Don’t offer up an excuse. Make myself at home. Demand food, lodging, and respect. I think Garza could relate to that.”

“I think Garza would boot you out on your furry behind.”

“Or Kate can grease the wheels. She can say Clyde asked her to keep me for a few days, until the demolition is finished. Say I’m a bundle of nerves from all the noise. That I’ve gone off my feed. Twitching in my sleep.”

Dulcie smiled.

“Once I get inside, I make friends with Garza, and I have free access. I can figure out how to let him in on the Quentin connection, if he doesn’t already know.”

“And what if he does know? What if he’s part of it?”

He only looked at her.

“Joe, this is beginning to scare me.”

“Hey, we’re only cats. Who’s to know any different?”

“Lee Wark would know different.”

“Lee Wark isn’t here. Wark wouldn’t dare show his face in this village.”

“So when are you moving in with this high-powered San Francisco detective?”

“Soon as I can set it up with Kate-and with Clyde,” Joe said, thinking how unreasonable Clyde could be.

“Clyde’s going to pitch a fit. You know how he-”

“I don’t need Clyde’s permission. I’m a cat, Dulcie. A free spirit. A four-legged unencumbered citizen. I don’t need to answer to Clyde Damen. I’ll tell him what I’m going to do, anddoit. If I want to freeload on Garza, that’s my business. It’s none of Clyde’s affair.”

“You’re getting very defensive, when you haven’t even talked to Clyde yet.”

Joe only looked at her. Then he dropped off the desk, beat it through the house and out the cat door.

And Dulcie sat listening to the plastic flap swinging back and forth in its little metal frame. Pretty touchy, she thought, feeling bad for Joe.

It wasn’t easy to have his best line of communication dried up-and the source of that information, the man he admired so deeply, the brunt of a plot that would destroy that man. Couldn’t the city attorney see this? Couldn’t the movers and shakers of the city make a few allowances?

But she guessed that was part of being human-humans ideally had to stay within the law. Once they’d made the rules, the point was to follow them.

15 [????????: pic_16.jpg]

MID MORNING SUNwashed the village with gold, laying warm fingers into Joe Grey’s fur as he galloped through the streets, dodging dogs and tourists’ feet. Sliding in through his cat door, he heard the washer going. The time was ten-fifteen. Maybe Harper, who had moved in last night, was getting domestic. Strolling into the laundry, he found Clyde was still home, sorting clothes, tossing the whites onto the top bunk, which belonged to the cats, and his colored shirts onto the lower bunk. The fact that the dirty clothes were picking up animal hair was of no importance in this household.

“What’re you doing home?” he said softly, glancing in the direction of the spare bedroom. “Harper’s not still asleep? You feeling okay? You take the day off?”

“Took the morning off. Harper’s riding with one of the search groups.”

Joe leaped into the bottom bunk, onto old Rube’s blanket, and began to lick dust from his paws. “Has he heard anything more about the case? Anything from his officers?”

Clyde didn’t answer. Continued to sort clothes.

“Well? What? You don’t need to act likeI’mthe enemy.”

“You know how I feel about your meddling.”

“I’m meddling? Harper’s career is on the line, his whole life is on the line, and I’mmeddling?And what about the evidence we’ve already found?”

“What evidence? What are you talking about?”

“The barrette, Wilma’s barrette. Didn’t Harper…” Joe stared at Clyde. “Didn’t anyone tell Harper about the barrette? The one that Wilma gave Dillon? We found it up at the Pamillon place-the kit found it.”

Clyde looked blank.

“I can’t believe Harper wouldn’t tell you-that someone in the department wouldn’t tell him. His own men…”

Clyde laid down the shirt he was clutching.“How do you know this? How do you know it was the barrette Wilma gave her? And that she was wearing it Saturday? If it was the same barrette, she could have lost it anytime. Where on the Pamillon place? She could have been up there weeks ago, fooling around, she-”

“She was wearing it that day, that was in the paper, Clyde. With a description of it-silver, with turquoise bars. Her mother said she was wearing it that morning when she dropped her at Harper’s place. And Dillon had it on when she and the Marners met Harper for lunch. The waitress in the cafe remembered it.Thatwas in the paper.”

Clyde looked hard at him.“Andyoufound the barrette. After the detectives went over that place three times.”

“So?”

“They need to know that, Joe! What did you do with it? You shouldn’t move evidence. Why didn’t you call the department? You could at least have told me!”

“Wedidn’tmove it. We didn’ttouchit. The departmentknowsabout it. What do you think we are, idiots?Why in the world would we move it? Why would we disturb evidence?”

“Cut to the chase, Joe. Did you call the station? Who did you talk to? An anonymous tip right now could really mess Harper up. When was this?”

Joe glared.

Clyde sat down on the bottom bunk, ducking under the top rail.“You didn’t call Garza?” He fixed Joe with a cold glare. “You didn’t lay one of your anonymous phone tips on Garza. If you start this stuff with Garza…”

“Start what stuff?”

“Start these insane, unwanted, disruptive, and probably illegal telephone calls. If you start that with Garza-”

“If you really need to know, we found the barrette on Tuesday. Garza wasn’t here yet. And it wasn’t me who informed the department. Nor was it Dulcie.”

Rising abruptly, narrowly missing a crack on the head, Clyde snatched a wad of shorts and socks from the top bunk, flung them in the washer, and turned back to scowl at Joe.“Not the kit! You didn’t teach that innocent kitten to use the telephone.” His face had begun to flush. “Tell me you have not laid your despicable and alarming habits on that little innocent kitten.”

“It wasn’t the kit. The kit is afraid of phones. She thinks telephones transmit voices from another world.”

Clyde let that one go by.“Who, then? Who called the station? Not Wilma. You haven’t laid your dirty work on Wilma.”

“If you must know, it was Kate. We found the barrette upstairs in the nursery. Kate pretended she found it, and she reported it-told them where to find it. Do you really want to put those red Tshirts in with the white stuff? You have a sudden yearning for pink Jockey shorts?”

Clyde snatched out the offending shirts. For a long moment, both were silent. Then,“You laid that stuff on Kate?”

“For all intents and purposes, Kate found the barrette. She went directly to Molena Point PD, as any law-abiding citizen would do. I’m surprised no one at the station told you or Harper.”

“They’re notsupposedto tellme.They’re working a murder case. This is serious business. The department’s not supposed to talk to Harper, either.”

“Who made that rule? He ought to be able to step back without being completely cut off.”

“Lowell Gedding made that rule.”

Joe swallowed.“Harper needs to know about the barrette. He needs to know that Dillon got away-at least for a while.”

“And I’m elected to tell him.”

“Who else?”

“And how do I explain that I came by such information?”

“Kate told you, of course. Fill her in-but get your stories straight.” He studied Clyde a moment, then curled up on Rube’s blanket and closed his eyes. Let Clyde sort it out.

He hadn’t told Clyde about their spying on Stubby Baker, and about Baker’s connection to San Quentin. He had to think about that. If Harper knew, he might be so angry, and so hot to follow up, that he’d do something foolish, maybe blow the case himself.

Oh, right. Harper had been a cop all these years, to do something stupid now?

Still, with the pressure on, and Harper so rudely excluded from the information loop, who knew?

This whole scene, Joe thought miserably, made him feel like he was clinging to a broken branch that was about to fall, hard, on the concrete.

Clyde said,“Lowell Gedding has complete confidence in Garza.”

Joe opened his eyes.“Confidence in him to do what?”

Clyde glared.

“Confidence that Garza will come up with evidence to clear Harper? Or that Garza will stack the evidence to please those guys on the city council who’d like to see Harper out of there? Who’d like a softer brand of law enforcement?”

“You’re letting your imagination run overtime. HarperaskedGedding to call in an investigator. That had to be done, to put Max at arm’s length. Harper knows Garza’s reputation,hehas confidence that Garza will clear him. And if Gedding wanted to dump Harper, why would he call in an outside investigator?”

“Why would henot}Make it look good. Make a solid case against Harper. An investigator who’s in Gedding’s pocket.”

Clyde’s brown eyes blazed with indignation, but then with uncertainty.

“Gedding was mighty quick to suggest Garza,” Joe said. “He had Garza right on the tip of his tongue, primed and ready, when Harper suggested an outside man.”

“How would you know that?”

“I heard him. Dulcie and I heard him.”

Clyde poured soap into the washer and slammed the lid, closing his eyes as if in pain.“I don’t want to know how you two were able to hear Lowell Gedding and Max Harper, in a private conversation, behind a closed door, inside Lowell Gedding’s private office.”

Joe Grey smiled.“What I’m telling you, Clyde, is that Gedding came up too fast with the name of Dallas Garza. As if he had it all planned.” He sat up straighter, studying Clyde. “Your face is awfully red. You really ought to think about the damage that stress does to the human body. How long since you’vehad a checkup? You really shouldn’t get yourself so tied in knots.”

Clyde turned on his heel and left the laundry.

Alone, Joe pawed a nest into Rube’s blanket, and settled down, considering his options.

Despite the dangers and drawbacks, moving in with this new detective was the only thing he knew to do, if he wanted a line into Molena Point PD.

He could make a run every day into the squad room. Spend his time underneath Garza’s desk-until he got caught and pitched out on his furry ear.

And from beneath the desk, what would he learn? He could hear phone calls and conversations, but he’d get no look at department correspondence or at Garza’s notes and reports. And as to interviews, Garza had arranged all his appointments away from the department.

Rolling on his back, he shoved Rube’s blanket aside. Long-term surveillance beneath the detective’s desk would be about as productive as hunting mice in a bathtub.

He was going to have to move in with Garza, give it a try, hope that Garza brought work home at night, away from the department and from the officers who were close buddies with Max Harper.

He imagined Garza, late in the evenings, making his notes and listening to his tapes in private. Quiet evenings in a cozy cottage, perfect to think over the facts, see how they added up; and a good time to place sensitive phone calls.

Particularly if he meant to frame Harper.

Clyde returned with an armful of sheets, tossing them practically on top of Joe.“What are you grinning about?”

He stepped atop the pile of wrinkled bedsheets.“Why would I be grinning? This situation is not a matter for levity.”

Clyde began to sort through his dark shirts, dousing spot remover liberally on shirt fronts and inside collars, forcing Joe to endure a fit of sneezing.

“Tell me something, Joe. I know I’m opening a can of worms here. But what, exactly,isyour take on the Marner murders? What doyouthink happened up there?”

“You’re asking me? You want my opinion? The lowly house cat?”

“Cut it, Joe.”

“You never ask me anything. All you ever do is-”

“Kate and I had dinner last night. I think it’s interesting that she didn’t tell me a thing about the barrette.”

“Maybe the department told her not to. So what’s your point?”

“She told me-this wasn’t in theGazette,only in the San Francisco papers-that Lee Wark escaped from prison three weeks ago, with two other death row inmates.”

Though he knew this, a chill coursed down Joe’s spine. Kneejerk reaction to the mention of Lee Wark.

“Kate said prison authorities thought Wark might be in San Francisco.”

“I hope Harper knows this,” Joe said.

“Harper’s not in the most talkative of moods.” Clyde looked at him deeply, the kind of look that made Joe pay attention. “Kate said there’s been a spate of cat killings in the city.

“She’s terrified it might be Wark. That’s why she came down here, to get away. I don’t have to tell you, Joe, that scares the hell out of me.”

“It doesn’t make me feel like party time.” Joe sat very straight. “Do you remember when Wark was sentenced? His outburst in court, that he swore he’d get Harper?”

Clyde nodded.“That he’d get Harper. And Kate. And anyone else who helped do him.” Clyde fixed Joe with a keen stare. “Wark knows you cats helped.”

He reached to touch Joe’s shoulder, looking at him deeply. “Kate says that for a week before the Marner murders there were no cats killed in city. Two days after the murders, they started again.”

Fear sparked between Joe and Clyde.

The idea of Lee Wark slipping around Molena Point made Joe Grey as shaky as if he’d eaten a poisoned rat.

16 [????????: pic_17.jpg]

LIKE A CAVE in the side of the hill, the Garza family cottage nestled against a steep wooded slope above the north end of the village, its living room windows affording a view of the village rooftops, while its kitchen windows looked up into the back gardens that crowded above it.

The rafters and paneled walls were washed antique white, and the living area divided by a creamy stone fireplace behind which was a small, open study. Beyond the study were Garza’s bedroom and bath. At the other end of the large, airy great room, before a deep bay window, stood a dining table big enough to seat a vast tribe of Garza relatives. A stairway tucked next to the kitchen led down to two additional bedrooms and a bath.

On the shelf of the bay window among a scatter of patchwork pillows, Joe Grey sat eating broiled shrimp and pilaf from a flowered plate. At one end of the long table, Dallas Garza and Kate and Hanni enjoyed larger portions of the same fare, and a green salad in which Joe had shown no interest. The detective glanced up at Joe occasionally, amused possibly by Joe’s excellent appetite, or possibly comparing him unfavorably to members of the canine persuasion. From the photographs on the walls, it was obvious that Garza was a dog man. Joe was surrounded by professional-quality color shots of businesslike hunting dogs. Pointers, setters, two Labradors and aWeimaraner, each picture accompanied by the dog’s extensive pedigree and a list of his field honors.

Some of the photos were not posed portraits but had been taken in the field, the dog carrying a pheasant or quail or duck to Garza or to Hanni; in many instances, Hanni was just a little girl-she’d had black hair then, but you couldn’t miss those dark, laughing eyes.

Joe knew of dog-oriented families where cats came under the heading of vermin-right down there with a cockroach in the kitchen cupboard. He was surprised Garza had let him in the door.

Shortly before supper, Joe and Kate had made their entrance, Kate carrying Joe over her shoulder, asking nicely if the tomcat could stay for a few days. She said cats in the house upset Harper and made him sneeze, and that Clyde and Harper were painting the interior of Clyde’s house, to keep Harper occupied in the evenings while he wasn’t working. She said paint fumes were death on cats. It was true about the paint; Kate’s manipulation of Clyde had been extensive, Joe thought, smiling.

Garza had studied Joe with the same expression that, Joe imagined, he used on a particularly seedy transient arrested for mugging old ladies.“Can’t Clyde take the cat to a kennel?”

“Clyde put the other three cats and his Lab in the kennel. But Joe pines away. He won’t eat. The last time Clyde boarded him, Joe worried and paced until he made himself sick.

“And Wilma Getz couldn’t take him; her cat has the sniffles-like kennel cough, you know.” She had given Garza that lovely bright smile. “I don’t want him to be a problem. It’s just that… I volunteered, I guess. I could take him to a motel.”

Garza snorted.“You know you can’t get a motel on short notice-particularly with a cat in tow.”

Kate had watched Garza diffidently, glancing at Hanni.

It was then Joe made his move.

Leaping down from Kate’s shoulder and looking the detective square in the eye, he had meowed twice, boldly, the way a dog would speak, and lifted a paw to shake hands. Such pandering disgusted him-but he was doing it for Harper.

Garza had widened his eyes and burst out laughing, a hard, bawdy cop’s laugh.

Joe had kept his paw raised, watching the detective with the same keen intensity he had seen in the expression of an attentive German shepherd.

Garza, possibly impressed, certainly amused, had leaned down to shake Joe’s paw. “I guess he can stay. As long as he doesn’t spray the furniture. Who taught him to shake hands?”

Kate said,“Clyde’s taught him a number of tricks. Clyde says sometimes he seems almost as smart as a dog.”

Joe cut her a look.

“Can he roll over?”

“Roll over, Joe. There’s a good boy.”

He had flopped down on the rag rug and dutifully rolled over, an appalling display of submission. He was going to kill Kate.

Amazing what indignities a good sleuth had to endure, for a little inside information.

“He can fetch, too,” Kate said. Wadding up a piece of paper into a twist, she tossed it across the room.

Joe fetched the paper back to her, quickly expanding the list of embarrassments he was going to visit upon Kate Osborne. She had sensibly ended the list of his talents with the fetching routine.

Now, finishing his shrimp, he sat on the window seat washing his paws and observing the human diners, wondering if he could work them for seconds. With a few more“cute” exhibits of caninelike intelligence, Garza might have offered a glass of wine.

Thus began Joe’s surveillance of the man who had been appointed to clear-or to destroy-Max Harper. When, after dinner, Kate and Hanni went for a walk in the village, Garza retired to his desk and turned on his tape recorder. And Joe leaped nimbly onto the protruding end of the mantel, where he had a clear viewof the top of Garza’s desk.

The first interview tape that Garza played, with Dillon’s parents, made Joe feel deeply sad-and then angry.

The Thurwells blamed Max Harper for Dillon’s disappearance.

Even with the heartbreaking tragedy of their missing child, they had no right to blame Max Harper. Harper had treasured that child, had been so proud of her increasing riding skills, of the way she handled Redwing.

He supposed the Thurwells had to blame someone. Supposed that to blame Harper was only human. But Harper had taken such pains with Dillon, had taught the little girl a valuable discipline.

The Thurwells were good to Dillon, but, as Dulcie pointed out, they didn’t seem to see the need a growing child has for some direction in her life. Harper knew about that kind of need. He had given Dillon the goals she’d hungered for, had fostered the skills and the strength of mind that could keep her from going off suddenly on some tangent when she hit her teens.Dulcie said you didn’t have to be a human to recognize that universal need.

When Garza had rewound the Thurwell tape, he played Harper’s statement to Detective Davis, and as the tape ran, he made detailed notes on a large yellow pad.

The detective played back interviews with various personnel at the ranch where the Marners kept their horses, and with the manager and the three waitresses who had been on duty at Cafe Mundo the day of the murder. There was nothing in their answers to conflict with Harper’s statement.

Garza played, three times, his interview with the witness who claimed to have seen Harper following the three riders up the mountain, directly after lunch. The man was a tourist staying in the village, a William Green. He said he had been out biking, that he had recognized Harper because Green had lost his car keys the week before, and had gone into the station to identify them after a foot patrol found them, that Captain Harper had come in while he was signing for his keys, and he’d heard an officer call him by name.

Fishy, Joe Grey thought.

Green was very sure about his details. Joe felt easier when Garza made a note to check out the man’s home address and background.

At twelve-fifteen, Garza called it a night. Kate and Hanni had come in around ten and gone downstairs to bed. Switching off the desk lamp, Garza turned suddenly toward the fireplace, looking directly at Joe.

“For all the attention you’ve given me tonight, tomcat, I’d say you were some kind of snitch.”

Joe’s belly did a flipflop. He purred hard and tried to look stupid. He could feel his paws sweating.

Garza grinned.“Working for Max Harper? And does that mean you’re working for the killer?” Garza’s eyes were as black as obsidian, totally unrevealing. Joe regarded him as coolly as he could manage, considering he had a bellyful of hop-frogs.

“Instead of spying on me, you might make yourself useful. This cottage has been shut up for months. It has to be crawling with mice.”

Garza tousled Joe’s head as he would rough up a big dog, and headed for the bedroom.

Well, maybe it was only Garza’s way. Joe had heard him tease Hanni with the same dry wit, and had seen him ruffle her head, too.

Retiring to the window seat, he curled up, listening to the night sounds through the slightly open, locked-in-place window. The small clock on the kitchen pass-through said 12:19. An occasional car passed on the street below, and later a party of raccoons began to squabble, chittering and hissing, and he heard a garbage can go over. He woke and dozed, and when next he looked at the clock, its illuminated face said 4:40. Something had waked him. His head raised, his ears sharp, he lay listening.

The sound of footsteps reached him softly from up beyond the kitchen windows, and the rustle of bushes, sounds so faint that only a cat would hear.

Dropping to the carpet, he sprang to the pass-through and padded silently across the kitchen counter. Keeping to the shadows behind the bread box, he peered out beside the curtain into the night.

A man stood among the bushes on the hill, a dark shadow nearly hidden among the black masses of foliage and trees, a thin, tall man, looking down into the house.

Was he stoop-shouldered like Lee Wark? Through the glass, Joe could catch no scent, but the look of the man made him choke back a stifled mewl, his voice as tremulous as a terrified kitten. In panic, he dropped to the floor, crouching behind the refrigerator, and stared up at the window, half expecting the man to slide it open and climb in. He was ashamed to admit the fear that swept him; he was scared down to his tomcat paws.

Butwasit the Welshman? The shadow blended so well into the overgrown gardens that he really couldn’t see much. And now, his nose filled with the stink of dust from the refrigerator’s motor housing, he couldn’t have smelled Wark if the man had stood on top of him.

Leaping to the counter, he peered out again, but the figure was gone. He could see only the crowding houses and massed bushes, could detect no human shape within the indecipherable tangles of the night.

Pacing the house, he worried until dawn, prowling in and out of bedrooms, making the round of partly open, locked windows both on the main level and downstairs. Twice he imagined he could smell Wark, but the next instant could smell nothing but pine trees and the lingering stink of raccoons.

If that was Wark, had he come here looking for Kate? Joe began to worry about Dulcie and the kit; he wondered if they were out hunting, in the night alone. At 5:00, pacing and fretting, he leaped to Garza’s desk, pushed the phone off its cradle onto Garza’s blotter, and made a whispered call, watching Garza’s closed bedroom door.

Wilma answered sleepily, a curt and irritable“Yes?”

“I think Lee Wark may be in the neighborhood, prowling around the Garza place, but now he’s gone. Watch out for him. Are they there? Tell Dulcie she needs to be careful.”

“They’re here. I’ll see to it.” Wilma asked no questions, wasted no time getting up to speed. Thank God for a few sensible humans.

Beyond the closed bedroom door, he heard the detective stir. Pawing the phone into its cradle, he fled for the window seat, had just curled up when the bedroom door creaked open and light spilled out-and Joe was gently snoring.

Maybe he’d been wrong, maybe it wasn’t Wark out there. Could it have been Stubby Baker? Could Baker be interested in Garza’s notes and tapes? Baker was tall and slim like Wark, and about the same height. He was straighter and broader of shoulder, but in the shadows, might he have appeared hunched?

By 5:20 Garza had showered, made coffee, and was frying eggs and bacon. Joe, strolling through the kitchen, yowled loudly at the back door.

“At least you’re housebroken.” The detective gave him a noncommittal cop stare and opened the kitchen door.

From the garden, Joe glanced up at the window, expecting to see Garza’s dark Latin eyes looking out, watching him, but the lighted glass remained blank. He found, beneath the window, the waffle prints of a man’s jogging shoes incised into the damp earth; large shoes, certainly larger than Clyde’s size 10s. Carefully prowling, he studied each area of bare soil,tracking the prints clear around the house, pausing where the man had stood looking into the downstairs bedroom windows.

Surely neither Kate nor Hanni had been awakened and seen him. They’d have called the department-or come upstairs to wake Dallas. Presumably, Dallas was the only one with a firearm. Heading around the house again, he pawed at the kitchen door, bellowing a deep yowl.

Kate opened the door. He stepped in, sniffing the aromas of breakfast. Kate and Hanni were showered and dressed, all polished and smelling of Ivory soap. Hanni sat at the kitchen table across from Garza, drinking coffee as Garza ate his fried eggs and bacon and sourdough toast. The detective glanced down at Joe absently but didn’t offer to share.

Evidently no one had pointed out to Garza, and he probably didn’t know, that any ordinary cat, moved to a new house, would be kept in for a couple of weeks so he would become oriented and not run away.

When no one offered him a fried egg, Joe fixed his gaze on Kate, licking his whiskers.

Kate fetched a can of cat food.

He looked at her, amazed.Cat food?

“Cat food,” she said, shaking the can at him. “I’m not cooking eggs for you. Dinner was one thing-you can share our dinner, but I’m not laying out caviar and kippers at six in the morning like Clyde does. Besides, you’re getting fat.”

He hated when someone threw insults and he couldn’t talk back.Fat?Kate didn’t know muscle when she saw it. Under his gray velvet fur he was as solid as coiled steel. Studying the can Kate had flipped open, and taking a good sniff, he was relieved to know it was the fancy kind, the brand that, the commercials implied, should be served on a linen tablecloth from a crystal sherbet dish.

He guessed Kate hadn’t seen the commercials, because she plopped the fish concoction into a cracked earthenware crock and plunked it unceremoniously on the floor.

So much for early-morning amenities.

Grinning with sadistic pleasure, she turned her back on him.

Garza, finishing his breakfast, rose and stepped to his desk. Joe heard him lift the phone and punch in a number-it was local, seven digits.

“Max? Right. You want to come down to the station? I’ll want another statement. Then I want to go up to your place, have a look at the house and stable, then on up to the scene. That fit with your plans?”

All very friendly and low-key.

And Joe was stonewalled. He considered hiding in Garza’s car, riding up to Harper’s with the detective, then following the two men up the mountain-but he knew that wasn’t smart.

Garza, pulling on a suede sport coat over his jeans and shirt, headed for his Chevy coupe. When he had gone, Joe looked with meaning at Kate.

She opened the door and followed him out, leaving Hanni deep in the arts section of the morning paper.

Joe’s whisper was hasty. “Someone came prowling last night. Stood outside your bedroom. Did you see him?”

Kate turned pale.“No. Not a thing. Who…?”

“Tall and thin. It could have been Wark.”

She went completely white.

“There are footprints. Good ones. Garza needs to see them.”

“I-what’ll I do?” She was clearly shaken.

“Call the station. Tell them you just found the prints-that they seem fresh to you. That they go to the kitchen window, then on around the house. They’ll send someone.”

“Shall I call Dallas? I have the number of his cell phone.”

“I-let the department handle it,” Joe said, not certain himself what to do. “And walk around the house yourself first. So they’ll believe you. Don’t step on his prints.” And he hurried away to make sure that Dulcie and the kit were safe, despite Wilma’s promise. Racing down the sidewalks dodging early-morning shadows, he kept seeing that brief, muddy gleam of the man’s eyes, looking in through the kitchen window.

17 [????????: pic_18.jpg]

IT WAS STILL DARK when Dulcie set out to find the kit. Prowling the village among the blackest pools of night, it wasn’t hard to follow the tattercoat’s smell, which had taken on a potpourri of eau de bath powder from Wilma’s dressing table.

Awakened by Joe’s predawn phone call, she had galloped into the living room to make sure the kit was safe in her basket, and found her gone. With her mind on Lee Wark, she had stormed out her cat door, tracking the kit’s boudoir scent over the roofs and across gardens and streets until she found herself doubling back to her own street some five blocks above Wilma’s house.

The kit’s trail led to a neglected duplex built over a pair of double garages, a property unusual in the village for its shabbiness, the yard overgrown with weeds, the clapboard walls badly in need of paint. The stairs led up to a deck that ran the length of the building, dark at the far end but light beneath the windows of the nearer unit; she could see a lamp burning within, but no movement. The kit’s scent led up the stairs to the deck, where an unlatched screen had been pulled out a few inches; Dulcie spotted a hunk of dark fur clinging. She was about to leap up when Joe Grey appeared from the shadows.

She turned a slow green gaze on him.“You following me or the kit?”

“Both of you.” He was all claws and nerves. “I have a bad feeling about Wark.”

Above them, the sky was the color of Joe’s coat, heavy gray without any promise of sun, though the time must be nearly seven.

Joe looked the building over.“Shoddy. Why would the kit come here?”

“Who knows what’s in that wild little head?”

Leaping to the sill, he tried to see through the muslin curtains. There was a screen, but the glass was open a few inches. Dulcie followed, the two cats balancing awkwardly on the slanted, narrow ledge. They were looking into the kitchen and could see one big room to their right, apparently a studio apartment. It was sparsely and cheaply furnished. Pushing in under the screen, they stepped onto the old, cracked tiles of the counter, icy beneath their paws. Dropping silently down, they followed the kit’s scent across the battered linoleum, beneath the scarred breakfast table and into the studio. They heard the courthouse clock striking seven. The room contained a decrepit metal chair meant for outdoors, a scarred coffee table littered with clothes, and a pullout couch made up into a bed. The bed was occupied, the woman’s tawny hair spilling over the pillow. Crystal slept soundly.

And in the rusty metal chair, the kit slept, curled up tight and so deep under that she was not aware of them.

“What the hell?” Joe said softly.

“Beats me.”

“Has she been slipping away to visit Crystal? Why would she do that?”

Crystal’s sandals and riding boots were tossed in the corner beside a pair of high heels. Her purse lay on the coffee table among the tangle of clothes, beside a blue folder. Joe reared up to have a look, front paws on the coffee table.

“Sarden Realty,” he said softly. The folder bore the familiar tree-in-a-circle logo of the local real estate firm. As he reached a paw to flip it open, the kit woke.

She gazed from one to the other with eyes like yellow moons.“How did you find me?”

“Shhh,” Dulcie said. “She’ll hear you.”

Joe pawed open the folder. He was silent for a few moments, then looked at Dulcie.“It’s a sales contract and closing statement. Escrow papers. For this address, Dulcie. Crystal has bought this place.”

“Crystal? This dump? Why?”

“The previous owner was Helen Marner,” Joe said. “The escrow closed two weeks before Helen was murdered. Crystal paid four hundred and eighty thou, with forty thousand down.”

Dulcie looked at him wide-eyed, trying to process this.“What does this mean? Can we get this to Garza? Can you slip the papers out?”

“Oh, right. Crystal finds the papers gone, knows someone’s been in here.”

“But…”

Creeping toward the bed, Joe studied Crystal for signs of waking. She seemed deep under.

Something wasn’t right here. Something was making his fur crawl. He felt as edgy as a mouse in a glass bowl. “Peninsula Escrow,” he whispered, leaping onto the table. “Garza can get a copy from them.” Standing among Crystal’s wrinkled clothes, he looked intently at the kit. “What are you doing here, Kit? What made you come here?”

“I followed a man. He was in Wilma’s garden. And then I followed Crystal.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“Yes, I am. A man came in Wilma’s garden and looked in the window.”

“What man? When was this?” Joe felt his fur going stiff. “What did he look like?” He stared into the shadowed hall that led, apparently, to a bathroom and closet, but saw no one, could scent no other human in the apartment.

“What did he look like, Kit?”

“Muddy eyes. Bent over, like his shoulders wouldn’t hold him real straight.”

Every hair on Joe’s back went rigid.

“When he looked in the window, I dropped off Wilma’s desk and hid. When he went away, I followed him.”

“I thought you hated that cat door.”

“I hate it, but I wanted out. I followed him to where that oak tree grows through the middle of the street and there are pictures of a blue dog in the window and that place where Wilma likes to eat breakfast.”

“The Swiss Cafe. Then what?”

“She was standing by the oak tree.”

“Crystal?”

“They argued. They got so mad-mad as raccoons fighting over garbage. The man said that someone named Mel owed him money. Crystal said, ‘You think I’m stupid? How could he owe you money when you didn’tdoanyone. You think he pays for nothing?’ “

The kit looked from Joe to Dulcie, her round yellow eyes darkening.“What did that mean? How could hedosomeone? Do what?”

Joe dropped off the coffee table, nudging the kit out of the chair and toward the kitchen.“Did she call the man by name?”

The kit mewed a laugh, then hushed, staring back at Crystal’s sleeping form. “She called him ‘you stupid bastard.’ She said, ‘The deal wasn’t with you, you dumb Welsh bastard. What makes you think…?’ Then he interrupted her.”

The three cats leaped to the kitchen counter.“How can you remember all that?” Dulcie said. “How can you repeat all that, word for word?”

“The big cats taught me-the cats I lived with. Well, then the man said, ‘Don’t be such a bitch. Who do you think did them? They’re dead, ain’t they?’

“Was he talking about those women? Is that what it means-to make them dead?”

“Yes, Kit,” Joe said gently. “What else did they say?”

“She said, ‘We’ll see about that, you no-good deadbeat,’ and she left. Walked away real fast and mad, and I followed her.”

“Did Wark see you?” Dulcie said. “Did he know you were there?”

“I stayed way deep in the shadows. I followed her up and up the hill past the shops and saw her come in here. The light came on inside. I found where the screen was loose. I watched her until she went to bed, then I slipped under just like you would. And here I am,” she said proudly.

Joe and Dulcie exchanged a look. Dulcie sighed. She wanted to cuff the kit’s inquisitive little nose-and wanted to hug her. Across the room, Crystal stirred but didn’t wake. Beside the cats, the kitchen window was brightening with dawn.

“Before she turned the light off,” the kit said, “the phone rang.”

“And?” Joe said impatiently.

“She listened but didn’t say anyone’s name. She said, ‘Of course I met him. What do you think?’ Then a pause. Then, ‘No. I haven’t the faintest. I’m still looking for her, you know that.’ She was real angry. She shouted into the phone, ‘Oh, right. And let them hang me, too? You think I want to spend the rest of my life in T.I.?’

“What’s XL?” said the kit.

“It’s a prison,” Dulcie said shortly. “Go on, Kit.”

“She hung up. And she opened up the phone and took out something. Like a little box. She put it in that drawer and put another like it in the phone. Then she poured a drink of that sharp-smelling stuff, there by the refrigerator. She drank it down and went to bed. And I came inside to see what I could see.

“What was that box?” the kit said. “What was she doing? After she went to bed I curled up in the chair to watch her, but I guess I went to sleep. Then you were here.” The kit looked deeply at Dulcie, the tip of her tail twitching. “It’s scary.”

“What’s scary?” Joe said. “Being in here with Crystal? Then why did you go to sleep here?”

She looked bright-eyed at Joe.“It’s scary spying on humans. Coming into their den to spy on them.”

“Then why did youdoit?” Joe growled.

“Because you would have. Because humans do bad things, and you know how to make them stop. Because if you know enough about them, you can make them pay for being bad-like you did before, when that man was killed on Hellhag Hill. I followed her because she’s a mean person.”

Joe Grey sighed, and hid a grin, and pawed open the drawer beneath the counter.

Two reels of miniature tape lay inside, the kind used in answering machines. They were tucked down among some packages of plastic spoons and forks. Joe picked them up in his teeth and dropped them on the counter.

“Those paper towels behind you, Dulcie. To keep the drool off.”

Nipping at the towels, Dulcie managed to pull one free. She was wrapping the tapes, folding the towel with her paw, when Crystal rolled over and pushed back the covers.

Joe glanced back at the escrow papers, then snatched up the package of tapes. Dulcie pushed out the window behind him, nosing the kit along, and they fled down the stairs and underneath.

Crouched in the damp shadows, they heard Crystal moving around in the kitchen above them, heard water running, then the sucking of a coffeemaker. A lone car passed, its tires hissing along the fog-damp street. Above in the apartment, a door slammed; the pipes rumbled as if Crystal was taking a shower.

Joe dropped the paper packet between his paws.“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Now,” Dulcie said softly, reaching to pat at the packet of tapes, “one of us will have to phone Garza.”

“Maybe,” Joe said. “Maybe not. I can leave the tapes tucked into the morningGazette.”

“But what about the escrow papers? If she bought the house from Helen and didn’ttellanyone… And if thatwasWark she met last night…” She looked deeply at Joe, her green eyes burning. “What does this all add up to?DidCrystal pay someone to kill the Marners? How does this apartment sale fit in?”

Carefully, Joe Grey washed his front paw.“I guess, if Garza got a phone call from an escrow officer, that wouldn’t be the same as an anonymous call.”

“Except,” Dulcie said, “he’d check it out with the escrow company. When there’s no one there by that name-”

“So I get the name of the escrow officers. I think most of them are women-and you’ve been dying to call Garza. You can ask him to keep it confidential.”

Dulcie purred.“You did very well, Kit. I can’t believe you remembered that long conversation.”

“I told you. The clowder cats. They tried to do magic, but they never could. I learned to say the spells the way they did. But they never worked, never made anything different. I was still cold and hungry.”

Joe Grey licked the kit’s ear. “You’re fine now, Kit. You’re just fine.” And he picked up the packet of tapes and led the ladies away from Crystal’s, through the bright, chill dawn.

18 [????????: pic_19.jpg]

THE GARZA COTTAGE smelled of spaghetti sauce laced with marsala. Beyond the windows, the February sky was dark but clear. A thin sliver of moon shone above the treetops. The ringing of the phone mingled with the chiming of the courthouse clock from down in the village. When Garza answered, Joe Grey was already stretched out along the back of the mantel, his eyes closed, his studied breathing deep and slow, feigning sleep. The time was 7 P.M. He could just hear the crackle of Dulcie’s voice from the other end of the line.

Garza listened.“Peninsula Tide Company?” Then a long pause. Then, “Yes, of course I’m interested. Can you tell me your name?”

He listened again attentively, making notes on a pad. Dulcie’s voice would have, Joe knew, that soft, insinuating tone that so annoyed Max Harper. The name Garza jotted down wasCaroline Jacobs.Joe wondered why Dulcie had chosen that name, from the list of four woman officers he’d given her. Maybe because it had a nice rhythm.

Duplex, Dolores above First. Helen Marner to Crystal Ryder. $480,000. Closed February 9.

“Oh, yes, this is very helpful information. Any information we receive about Helen Marner is of course of departmental interest. Can you get me a copy of the escrow papers?

“I see. Yes, of course I understand. I will simply make an inquiry. If Miss Powers wants to furnish us with a copy, I’ll send a man over.” Garza paused. Joe cocked his head, straining toward that faintest murmur from the other end of the line. Dulcie, at this moment, was most likely stretchedout on Wilma’s desk blotter, taking her ease beside the handset, and feeling smug. These little tips to the law really brought out the ham in his lady. Maybe she should have her own talk show.

“Tell me,” Garza said, “were you responsible for making a delivery to my home this morning?”

Whatever Dulcie’s response, Garza grunted as if unconvinced. “Do you know anything about such a delivery? Whatever you say will be strictly confidential.

“I see. But you do know where I live,” Garza said. “You did have my phone number.”

The premise didn’t necessarily follow, but it was a good try. Joe heard a faint click from the other end.

Garza stared at the phone until the canned recording came on, then hung up. Joe settled back into his relaxed sprawl and shut his eyes, waiting for Garza to play the tapes that the detective had found inside his morningGazette.Garza had unwrapped and examined them and dropped them in his pocket.

And he did not play them now. He rinsed out his coffee cup, slipped on his jacket, and left the house for an appointment.

Joe spent a restless night pacing the cottage. Kate and Hanni were at a play, and Garza had not returned when he grew too impatient to stay inside, and went to hunt, slipping out a loose downstairs window, through the burglar bars. He did not look for Dulcie and the kit; they had promised to stay inside. Keeping to the local gardens, he contented himself with house mice. He ended up at home in time for breakfast.

Slipping in through his cat door, past a tuft of tortoiseshell fur, he stopped in the living room, laughing. The kit had learned very quickly to taunt Clyde.

“Whycan’tI sit on the table? Joe Grey sits on the table! And I don’twantscrambled eggs. We had breakfast. We dined in Jolly’s alley,” the kit said grandly.

“Hush,” said Dulcie. “Let me finish.”

“It’s a really shabby duplex,” Dulcie was saying. “But a lovely location and view. Charlie would love it.”

Clyde said.“Wouldyoulike a scrambledegg,Dulcie?”

“I would,” Dulcie said softly. “The kit ate all the blintzes.”

Joe shouldered into the kitchen, to see the kit, looking hurt, jump onto the table. He watched Clyde pick up Dulcie and set her beside the kit, apparently in the interest of fairness. Leaping up beside Dulcie, Joe stretched out across the open newspaper. Clyde, scowling at him, added two more eggs to the skillet.

“It was Wark that the kit saw,” Dulcie said. “It had to be. And it was Wark Joe saw snooping around the Garza cottage.”

Clyde looked at Joe.“Did Garza catch him?”

Joe flicked a whisker.“None of them saw him; they slept right through, even our big-time detective.”

“You sure it was Wark?”

“I’m not sure. Could have been Baker. But the kit saw Wark talking with Crystal.”

Clyde sighed.“Did the man at the cottage see you, Joe?”

“Of course he didn’t see me.”

Clyde dished up the eggs, setting the cats’ three plates on the table. Having nowhere to put his own plate, he stood at the stove to eat. “If you were looking out the window, those white markings would shine like neon.”

“You think I don’t have sense enough to keep away from the glass? That is so insulting.”

“You think he was looking for Kate?”

“I have no idea. Maybe looking for Kate. Maybe checking on Garza. If he was involved in the murders-”

“He could have been looking for you and Dulcie. You’d better come home where you’re safe.”

“Why would I be safe at home? Wark knows where I live. He was all around this house, if you remember, after Beckwhite was murdered. Looking in the windows-right in my face. Scared the spit out of me.”

“Then you can move in with Wilma. No, you can’t do that. He knows where Dulcie lives.”

Joe said,“Dulcie and the kit can stay with Charlie. Not likely Wark knows about her.”

“And you can stay there, too. You don’t need to be hanging around Garza’s.”

“Where do you think Garza makes his sensitive phone calls and tapes his notes? Kate set that up for me, and you helped her-I’m not tossing that away.”

Clyde just looked at him. That ever-patient, put-upon expression of a defeated human.”

“I’ll keep of sight,” Joe said.

Clyde said,“I’ll talk to Charlie about Dulcie and the kit.”

Joe dropped to the floor.“Even Charlie’s apartment isn’t the safest. There’s only one way out, just the front door, down the stairs and through that little foyer to the street. Wark breaks in, you’re cornered. No back door, no side windows. And that window over the street-you can’t reach anything from there, not a rooftop, not so much as a vine. It’s only one floor down, but all concrete. Splatter a cat like-”

“Hush,” Dulcie said. “It’s a perfect setup. Charlie can fix a way for us to slip out to the roofs-through a vent or something. You know how clever she is. Wark would have to bring a ladder to get up on the roofs. And he can’t jump from roof to roof, or run across a branch, or leap six feet between buildings.”

Joe was unconvinced.

“Anyway, he’s after Kate,” Dulcie said. “This time, Joe, he’s not after us. He followed Kate in San Francisco. It’s Kate you should worry about.”

“Kate knows he’s here,” Joe snapped. “Besides, with a warrant out for him, the department will pick him up-haul him back to Quentin.”

Clyde poured a fresh cup of coffee. What he appeared to need, Joe thought, was a double Prozac. With his coffee cup so full it sloshed, he sat down at the table, looking deeply at the cats.

“However this turns out, you two have opened a whole can of worms with Garza. The guy comes here to do a legitimate piece of police work and-”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Joe said darkly.

“To do a straightforward investigation, and he starts getting anonymous phone tips.”

“One phone call,” Dulcie said, “from a legitimate employee of Peninsula Escrow.”

“And unexplained tapes are left at his door that might be evidence and might not. That might be a plant. Don’t you think Garza-”

“So what were we supposed to do?” Dulcie said. “Hold back information?”

Clyde sucked at his coffee.“Crystal Ryder has been in town for maybe six months, living in that duplex. Why, all of a sudden, did she decide to buy it?”

“She had a lease/option,” Joe said. “Apparently she decided to move on it. My question is, why just two weeks before the murder? And it would be interesting to know, as well, why Helen owned a place in Molena Point, when she’s lived for years in Santa Barbara.”

“I can answer that,” Clyde said. “She had half a dozen rentals in the village. Max told me that. She had them with a rental agency.”

“A pretty shoddy agency,” Dulcie said, “or they’d have insisted she paint the place.”

Clyde rose to rinse the dishes.“You three have an opinion on everything. You have an inside line to Garza’s investigation. You have spied on Stubby Baker. You have tossed Crystal Ryder’s apartment and tampered with critical evidence. And you-”

“If you mean the tapes,” Joe said, “if we’d left them there, and Crystal hid them, Garza might never know they existed.”

“And what about the barrette?” Clyde said.

“We had no contact with the police over that,” Joe told him. “Kate reported the barrette to the police, they told her they’d go right up there, photograph where they found it, and book it in as evidence. It’s probably, right now, sitting in the lab being dusted for prints and particles caught in the setting. They-”

“Probably they are going to find cat hairs.”

“Why must you always drag in cat hairs? Why must you always tell us we’re messing up an investigation? Do I really have to remind you, Clyde, of the murders in the past, where with our help Harper has made a case?” He looked at Clyde sadly, hurt written in every line of his gray-and-white face.

“The three of you are going to Charlie’s. You’re going now. And you’re going to stay hidden.”

“Dulcie and the kit are going. I’m settled in with Detective Garza and I intend to stay there.”

Clyde slammed down the plate he was drying, nearly breaking it.“At least you won’t be here in the house taunting Max Harper, makinghislife miserable.”

“We are trying to save his life. And when have I ever taunted Harper?”

But then Joe said, more gently,“Howishe doing?”

“Not good. Won’t talk about the case or about anything else much. He’s quit going out with the search parties. Afraid he might taint some piece of evidence.”

“How would he…?”

“If they find her-when they find her-someone might claim he tampered with evidence or slowed the search, maybe made counterproductive suggestions, that kind of thing. He’s getting…”

“Paranoid,” Joe said. “That’s not like Harper.”

“He talked last night about quitting the force. Retiring. After he’s cleared, of course. Talked about going to Alaska.”

“Alaska!” Joe yowled.

“Max Harper,” Dulcie mewed, “leave Molena Point? I don’t believe that.”

“There’s more than that to believe.” Clyde looked at the cats deeply. “I think there’s something between Max and Charlie.”

The cats widened their eyes, trying to look amazed.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see them, when this thing is over, take off together for Alaska.”

Dulcie stared at Clyde, then turned away, washing furiously.

Clyde said,“Maxhadbeen talking, the last few months, about reorganizing the department. He has five new officers and a new clerk. They’re getting crowded in that one-room setup. But now…”

“He has basement space,” Joe said. “Where they store the old files, where they have the shooting range and emergency operations room.”

Clyde nodded.“He’s done some really nice plans to redesign the building, give officers more space and privacy. Add an up-to-date report-writing room, more room for communications, a bigger evidence lockup, more security.

“But since the Marner murder, it’s as if he never heard of a redesign. Has no interest. Seems like he doesn’t give a damn about the department.”

“When this is over,” Joe said, “he’ll launch into it. Bounce back. Reorganize the space. That would be just the ticket, get his mind off what those buzzards are trying to do to him.”

“If we only knew which buzzards,” Clyde said. “I don’t know, I’ve never seen him like this. Years ago, in Salinas, after a bad bull ride when Max got gored in the shoulder, when he was all broken up and in the hospital-and didn’t have a dime-he was still joking. Still on top of it.

“His shoulder got infected, he had a high fever, three ribs broken. I was scared he was going to cash it in. But he hung in there-joking all the way, with that dry humor.

“Even when Millie died, even though he’s never gotten over it or stopped missing her, he was never like this.

“You had the feeling, when Millie died, that no matter how destroyed he was, he knew things had to get better. That he knew that’s the way life works-that we all take our bumps and keep ridin’. But now…” Clyde shook his head. “Now, he doesn’t seem to believe that anymore.”

Joe just looked at him. Sometimes all these human problems were too much; sometimes he thought the household animals were the lucky ones. All they had to do was nap on their soft beds, gobble their three squares, enjoy lots of petting, and no worries over humankind’s disasters.

Except he remembered too clearly that other life, before he realized his ability to speak. He wouldn’t want to return to that. He’d been bored out of his tomcat mind.

As a young cat, it had been a big deal to invent some simple new entertainment-find some new diversion in one of the several shabby apartments he’d lived in, a new way to tease some human in one of the interchangeable families who’d taken him in. Stupid kitten stuff. He’d never had a real human friend until he met Clyde. Or he’d find some smaller, skinnier kitten abandoned in an alley, someone weaker than he, that he could tease andtorment.

When he moved in with Clyde, he’d graduated to intimidating Clyde’s lady friends. How amusing, to terrorize those lovely young women, faking lethal claws, treating them to loud snarls and flashing teeth-all because life could get so yawningly, nerve-deadeningly, mind-numblingly dull.

But now, with his newly discovered skills, there was no time to be bored. He hardly had time for a nap or a good rabbit hunt-the sleuthing life took every claw-clinging ounce of creativity he could muster.

And now, as a pattern of clues was forming in the Marner murders, a morass as intriguing as a crisscross of fresh rabbit tracks, he had no time for discontented thoughts-except in terms of the final retribution for this killer.

This case was more than a fascinating puzzle. This time, he wanted not only justice, he wanted revenge. Sweet, sharp-clawed revenge. This time, he was out for blood.

19 [????????: pic_20.jpg]

DRESSED IN the oversized T-shirt she’d slept in, Charlie Getz stood on a ladder in her small bathroom, removing the vent fan from the ceiling. She had gone up on the roof last night, removed the fresh-air grid and wiped out a quarter-inch of accumulated dirt from inside the vent pipe. The four-inch tunnel didn’t allow much room-peering along its length at a small circle of sky, she went queasy at the tight quarters through which the cats must push. Six feet of claustrophobia leading from her apartment out to the village rooftops. She guessed Dulcie and the kit could slither through, but Joe Grey had better not try.

Coming down the ladder, glancing in her bathroom mirror at the reflection of her milk-white legs, she had a sharp vision of Molena Point’s pretty, tanned blondes in their tennis shorts. The only tan she had was what her grandmother had called a farmer’s tan, brown only on her neck and hands and lower arms. Not a body to bring the men flocking.

Not the face, either,she thought.But I have a warm heart. And I have nice hazel eyes, if anyone bothers to look.

She wished Max Harper would bother.

Lifting the disconnected ceiling fan from atop the ladder, she nodded to Dulcie and the kit where they crouched in the doorway peering up.

“That should do it. Your own private tunnel. I’ll leave the ladder for you to climb.

“But I warn you, Dulcie. If a rat or a bat comes in through that vent-if so much as a wool moth comes in-you’re dog meat.”

Dulcie smiled. Lashing her tail in reply, she leaped up the ladder into the hole and was gone through the ceiling. Charlie imagined her slipping along above the bathtub, popping out of the wall above the roof like a swallow from its hole. The kit followed her, her fluffy tail twitching as it disappeared, probably to race madly across the rooftops.

She’d done a drawing once of Dulcie and Joe running across the roofs. But it wasn’t a cheerful piece, it was dark and frightening. Though it hung in a prominent place in the Aronson Gallery, still it disturbed her.

Clyde had brought Dulcie and the kit over last night, like a father bringing his children to stay with a favorite aunt. Clyde had treated her like an aunt, too, making it obvious that he knew how she felt about Harper. When he left, she’d been really down. Had she hurt him terribly? She’d queried Dulcie, but Dulcie had little to tell her.

“He’s… would the word be stoic?” Dulcie had said. “Understanding?”

“Stoic,Dulcie?”

“Max Harper is his best friend. You are, in a different way, his best friend. He’s so caught up in Harper’s problems just now…” Dulcie, sitting on the end of the daybed, had looked up quizzically at her. “You are asking me, your friendly neighborhood cat, about your love life?”

“Come on, Dulcie. You sound like Joe.”

“What can I tell you? He loves you both. He knows Harper needs someone just now.”

“You’re saying he’s glad to dump me on Harper.”

“No, he-”

“He’s seeing someone else.”

“No! But-but when Kate called him that night, when she got into town…”

Charlie had sat back against the pillow, hugging herself. Kate. Kate Osborne. That beautiful blonde. It seemed a hundred times harder to lose a man to a beautiful woman than to some pig. If her rival were ugly, she could tell herself Clyde didn’t have any taste. But Kate Osborne…

But why did shecare?She’d been mooning over Max, feeling guilty that she was longing for him, that she was hurting Clyde.

And now here she was green with jealousy because Clyde wanted someone who was more beautiful than she could ever hope to be.

“Perfidy,” she had told Dulcie. “Perfidy and capriciousness.”

Dulcie had smiled and turned away to wash.

“It is all very well, Dulcie, to have a nonchalant wash-up when you want to end a discussion. But such behavior isn’t very informative.”

Dulcie hadn’t answered.

The bottom line, Charlie told herself, was that she wanted what she couldn’t have.

And that didn’t say much for her depth of character.

And through this conversation, the kit had prowled the one-room apartment poking into every box and cranny-making herself immediately and totally at home. Taking over just as she had taken over Wilma’s house and, before that, Lucinda and Pedric’s luxurious RV Claiming every surface-Charlie’s few pieces of furniture, the kitchen counters, the packing boxes Charlie used for cupboards, as her own feline territory. Leaving little face rubs and tufts of black-and-brown fur as fine as silk, tomark her conquests. Clyde said the kit was the greatest feline opportunist ever born, and Charlie believed it.

But who could blame her? The kit had never had a home. Always on the move, tagging along behind a clowder of cats that didn’t want her, never sleeping in a warm, safe house or knowing the friendship of a human, until she went to live with Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw.

Charlie smiled. The kit had learned pretty fast.

Stashing the ceiling fan in the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink, she put her tools by the front door with her purse, nuked her cold cup of coffee, and sat down to finish her sweet roll, using her paper napkin to wipe Dulcie’s and the kit’s pawprints from the table. This business of having cat houseguests was like living in a dream straight from Lewis Carroll. It was one thing to take your meals with cats who could carry on a dinner conversation, one thing to go to bed at night with two kitties who said, “Good night, Charlie,” like some feline version ofThe Waltons.But cats who peered over your shoulder at the pages of the latest Dean Koontz, one trying to learn to read while the other offered off-the-wall opinions of Koontz’s writing style and baroque setting, was a bit too much.

At least Dulcie was well read-and her opinions of Koontz, though wild, were always, upscale and positive.

Finishing her breakfast, Charlie pulled off her T-shirt, showered, dressed quickly in jeans and a clean shirt and tennis shoes, and headed out the door. She had two houses to clean today, a garden fence to repair, and a roof to mend.

But as she climbed into her old Chevy van, she took a moment to look up toward the roofs and say a silent prayer for Dulcie and the kit, and for Joe Grey. Her wish, as she turned out of the alley, consigned Lee Wark to a far more uncomfortable fate than incarceration in the Molena Point jail.

And while Charlie’s prayer coiled itself into the wind to be sucked up like celestial e-mail by the forces that rule the universe, one subject of her concern was quickly and stealthily pawing through Dallas Garza’s papers, scanning a stack of police reports on ex-cons who, apparently, Garza considered possible suspects in the Marner murders. This turn of events was heartening: the tomcat was in a very up mood. The prospect of half a dozen additional contenders cheered him considerably. Maybe Garzawasgoing to give Harper a fair shake.

Unless these documents were for show, simply to make his investigation look good.

The time was 8:15. The cottage was empty, Garza gone to work, Kate and Hanni headed for the Pamillon estate to make measurements and take additional pictures. This time they had a cell phone, two canisters of pepper spray, and, tucked in Hanni’s belt, a.38 automatic that she intended primarily as a noisy deterrent to scare away the cougar.