Cat Laughing Last

24

As the courthouse clock struck 4:30, its chimes ringing sharply across the dark and silent village, the three cats galloped up Wilma's drive and in through Dulcie's cat door, their backs wet with dew from Wilma's flowers and splotched with primrose petals.

The dark kitchen smelled of last night's roast chicken. Hurrying across the slick, chill linoleum and through to the living room, Joe leaped to Wilma's desk. He felt shaky suddenly, and uncertain.

With this phone call, he'd be playing on pure hunch. No shred of proof, no real information. He'd fingered Susan's burglar, he was pretty sure-or had fingered one of them. But did this information point to Fern's killer as well? So far, all circumstantial.

And as to the other matter he meant to bring up with Harper, that might be all smoke dreams. He could, Joe knew too well, be dead wrong in his suspicions.

Glancing to the hall, he locked eyes with Dulcie, where she sat listening outside the bedroom door to make sure Wilma didn't wake. Wilma knew they used the phone; she wouldn't be surprised that he was calling Harper. It was the second call that would be the touchy one, that he would just as soon she didn't know about.

For a moment he wanted to back down, his bold tomcat chutzpah deserted him.

But he'd made up his mind to do this. And when Dulcie gave him a tail-up all clear and an impatient look to get on with it, he swallowed back his misgivings and reached a paw to knock the phone from its cradle.

Dialing Harper's number, he was glad Cora Lee hadn't been released from the hospital yet, that he didn't have to worry about her overhearing him from the guest room. A surgery patient, who would surely be in some pain, probably wouldn't sleep too well. While tossing and turning, in the small hours, he wouldn't want her to discover more than she needed to know.

Harper answered crossly, on the second ring, irritable at being awakened. Joe knew from past calls, and from prowling Harper's ranch house up in the hills, that at night, the captain kept his cell phone on the bedside stand next to the house phone-Joe liked to think that might be because Harper had come to respect and value his two unidentified snitches, who preferred the cell phone number.

"Captain Harper, I can tell you where to find the tan infinity, license 2ZJZ417, the one I called you about last night."

Harper was quiet.

"And I can describe better now the man who drives it. I believe you'll recognize him." He gave Harper the location of the cottage and described the occupant of the rented room. "He carries a driver's license in the name of Lenny Wells." He could hear Harper breathing. Once in a while, Joe thought, he'd like to hear more than silence to the gems he passed on, would like to hear something besides Harper's smoker's cough and his gruff, one-syllable responses.

"Prey has a gun. A revolver, I don't know what caliber. It has been recently fired and not cleaned. He was asleep an hour ago, with the gun under his pillow."

He knew that this information would generate some hard questions with Harper. How had the informant gotten into Prey's room? How had he been able to look under Prey's pillow and not wake him?

He couldn't help that. Harper had to take him on faith. He had done that, so far, and had benefited from the exchange.

"Captain Harper, do you have the feeling there's something we're not seeing? Some piece of information that would tie all the pieces together? Something so obvious that we're blind to it?"

"Such as?"

"I wish I knew. I'd be happy to share it. This gut feeling I have, maybe it involves the Traynors."

Harper remained silent.

"Captain?"

Nothing.

Joe pressed the disconnect, keeping his paw on it to prevent triggering that annoying little voice that said, If you want to make a call, please hang up and dial again. If you need help…

He knew from his past calls that Harper's lack of response was usually positive. But this silence had seemed somehow heavily weighted.

Was Harper having the same nibble of unease that he himself was experiencing?

Call it cop sense or feline intuition. Didn't matter what you called it, those little irritating nibbles, for both Joe and Harper, had turned out more than once to be of value. He stared at the phone, trying to steel himself for the next call.

Beyond the window, the sky was beginning to lighten. The time on the East Coast would be about 7:40. He glanced out to the hall toward Dulcie where she lay relaxed, washing her shoulder, giving no indication that Wilma had stirred. He had no idea whether the number he had memorized would be the agent's office number or her residence. Or if, indeed, she worked out of her home.

If he were a New York literary agent, that would be the lifestyle he'd choose. No office rent and no commute. He'd watched a miniseries once on writers' agents. A lot of stress there. But with an office at home, you could get up at three in the morning, if you felt like it, to take care of your paperwork. Plenty of time during the day to hit the street for lunches with editors. And then on other days, one might want to just schlep around ungroomed or unshaven with no one but the occasional delivery person to know any different.

He knew he was killing time, half scared to make this call. Carefully he pawed in the number. He was mulling over the wisdom of leaving a recorded message if she didn't answer, when she picked up. Her early morning voice was low and steamy, like Lauren Bacall in one of those old romantic movies that Wilma and Dulcie liked to watch. But she was even more irritated than Harper at being awakened. Hey, it was 7:40 on the East Coast.

Well, maybe New Yorkers didn't get up too early.

"Ms. McElroy, this is about your friend and client, Elliott Traynor. You've been concerned about him."

"Yes, I have. Who is this?"

"I won't identify myself. I'm calling from Molena Point. You'll want to hear what I have to say. I believe your questions about Traynor might be answered if you would take a photo of Traynor over to NYPD and talk to one of their detectives. Tell them your concerns about Traynor. I can imagine you haven't wanted to do that and stir up the press, but I think that time is past. In fact, the time may be growing short for you to trigger an investigation."

"Why would I want an investigation? Who is this? I don't understand what you're saying." She was silent a moment, then, carefully, "You think the police could help me? In exactly what way?"

"I have an idea that your questions about Elliott will be answered," he said obliquely.

"You realize that I have caller ID. That it won't be hard to find your name and address."

"Ms. McElroy, I'm doing you a favor. You'll understand that when you've followed up. You can return that favor by destroying any record of this number, by preserving my anonymity. Someday you may understand exactly why that is so important. In the meantime, you will be protecting someone seeking only to help you."

He hit the disconnect, feeling scared. The woman had, when talking to Harper, given Joe the idea that she kept careful records of phone numbers and names.

Dropping down from the desk, he sat a moment, carefully washing, getting hold of himself. He did not feel good about this.

He certainly didn't want Wilma dragged into this because he'd used her phone, didn't want Ms. McElroy phoning Molena Point Library, checking the cross-reference, gaining access to Wilma's name and address-or maybe getting that information from some Web directory. He'd sure hear about that from Clyde and Wilma. He prayed that Ms. McElroy would get herself over to NYPD and not waste time tracing calls, hoped she'd see a detective first thing this morning. Because if he was right, there truly might not be much time left.

Joe worried all day about that phone call, fretted over it almost to the point of losing his appetite-to the point where at the animals' suppertime, Clyde started feeling Joe's nose for fever and smelling his breath. Talk about indignity.

"I feel fine! Leave me alone! I have things on my mind."

Clyde looked hard at him. "Do you know that cats can have heart attacks? That cats can suffer from debilitating, life-threatening stress, just like humans can?"

"No cat I know ever had a stroke."

"So now you're a vet, with unlimited research and information. How many dead cats have you autopsied? This sleuthing business is-"

"You talk about stress. Riding me unmercifully every minute gives me more stress than any kind of activity I might choose!"

"I'm not riding you every minute. I ask one simple question-"

"Two questions. Two questions too many."

They'd argued until Clyde made himself late picking up Ryan for dinner, then stomped out of the house swearing that it was Joe's fault. And all the time, Clyde didn't have a clue what was really wrong.

An ordinary cat expects the house person to know what's bugging him. An ordinary cat thinks that a sympathetic human is clairvoyant-that he knows when and where you hurt and knows what to do about it. Your everyday cat expects an able human companion to know what has upset him, what kind of food he wants, where he wants to eat his supper, where he wants his bed. The ordinary cat thinks humans can divine that stuff, that they just know. And he's royally put off when some dumb guy can't figure it out.

But when you have more than the usual feline cognizance, when logic tells you that humans aren't really that sharp, then you have to inform them. Though at the moment, Joe wished that Clyde could divine just a little bit of what he was feeling.

He hadn't wanted to go into a big thing of explaining about Adele McElroy, but it would be nice if Clyde could guess. Because he couldn't stop worrying about that New York phone call. He had the gut feeling that McElroy would be in touch with Harper this morning and that very soon, Max Harper would be asking Wilma about her outgoing phone calls. He was irritable all day and didn't sleep well that night, even after Dulcie told him that Wilma hadn't talked with Harper. He felt all pins and needles, was so filled with questions that two hours before daylight he slaughtered two moles in the front lawn just for the hell of it and conducted a complimentary vermin eradication marathon among the neighbors' gardens. Leaving twelve little bodies lined up on the front porch for Clyde, he headed for the Traynor cottage.

As Joe prowled a rooftop looking down into the Traynors' windows, and as the sun rose, sending a fiery glow across the bottom of the low clouds, Charlie stood at her apartment window pouring her first cup of coffee. Looking out at the first streaks of sunrise, and down at the village rooftops that always seemed fresh and new, she was thinking about Max as she did most of her waking moments. But she was thinking, too, about the job he'd given her to do, a sensitive bit of subterfuge that both amused and flattered her.

She hadn't the faintest idea why he wanted the evidence, and he hadn't offered to tell her. But the chance to play detective in the Traynor household had set her up, big time.

She took her time finishing her coffee, enjoying the sunrise, then showered and dressed and took herself out to breakfast, treating herself to pancakes at the Swiss Cafe. She did Vivi's grocery shopping and stopped by the drugstore, arriving at the Traynors' just as their black Lincoln was pulling out of the drive.

Waving, she turned in, parking by the back door. Using her key, which the rental agency had given her before they moved in and that Vivi had so reluctantly agreed she keep, she carried the groceries and her tote bag into the kitchen.

Putting away the canned goods, milk, salad greens, and cherries, she waited long enough to be sure Vivi wouldn't forget something and come hurrying back, then got to work with the evidence bags.

She left the house ten minutes later carrying her tote, which now contained six dirty glasses from the Traynors' dishwasher, each lifted out with a spoon and dropped into a separate bag. Out of six, Detective Garza hoped to lift prints for both Vivi and Elliott.

She wondered what Clyde would think of her doing this. Not that he needed to know. Last night, she and Max had planned to have potluck with Clyde and Ryan, but then Max and Dallas had received a call that sent them off to the station. Charlie had used the excuse to go home and curl up with a sandwich and a good mystery, sending Clyde and Ryan out alone for dinner-a far better arrangement, in her opinion.

Interesting, she thought, that Clyde's attraction to Ryan truly pleased her. And it wasn't that she was happy to dump him, to have someone take up the slack when she started seeing Max. It was more than that. She thought Ryan Flannery might be very good for Clyde.

Wheeling out of the Traynors' drive, she met Max two blocks away at the designated intersection. Both stayed in their vehicles. Double-parking beside him, she moved over to the passenger window and handed the bagged glasses through to him. He grinned at her, his brown eyes amused. "Will they notice them missing?"

"I bought six like them at the drugstore, it's a common style. When the agency furnished the house to rent, they didn't want to use the owner's crystal. The new ones are in the dishwasher, where Vivi left these."

Max gave her a wink that made her toes curl. She grinned back at him, did an illegal U-turn in front of him, and returned to the Traynors'. She felt so pleased with herself that before she began to clean she wheeled the vacuum into Traynor's study, to have an excuse for being there while she copped a peek at the latest chapter. Maybe this would be better, maybe these pages would be as fine as his old work.

She couldn't leave it alone; the flawed novel drew her, habituating and insistent.

But, starting to read, she was more dismayed than before. Even considering that Elliott was ill, the work left her perplexed. She didn't understand this writer who had for years charmed her with his prose. She was convinced his mind was deteriorating, and that was incredibly sad. She wondered if he might be in the first stages of Alzheimer's and wondered if Vivi understood how much Traynor's work had changed, if Vivi really knew or cared. Laying the pages back on the desk, she had a terrible, juvenile urge to grab a pencil and start editing, the way she would have done one of her own amateurish school papers.

The history was all there, but reading this was so dull. Elliott Traynor's words should flow, be alive, propel the reader along. She wanted to see these chapters as he should have written them. She felt strangely hurt that Traynor was ruining his own work.

Aligning the pages, she had no notion that she was not alone. A thump on the desk brought her swinging around-to face Joe Grey. He stood boldly on the blotter, a smug smile on his gray-and-white face.

"At it again, Charlie."

"How did you get in? I fixed the vent."

"What did you take to Harper?"

She simply looked at him.

"What did you take to Harper? Something from the dishwasher, but you had your back to me. I couldn't see much through the window."

"How did you get inside?"

"Slipped in behind you when you got back from meeting Harper."

"That makes me feel pretty lame that I didn't even see you."

"I was on the roof next door when you came to work. Watched you through the window, digging around in the dishwasher. Bagging plates, Charlie? Followed you over the roofs. What's Harper after, fingerprints? All that fuss with evidence bags."

Charlie sighed. "Dirty glasses. I don't know what it's for, okay?"

He glanced at the pages in her hand. "When did Harper ask you for the prints?"

"He called me early this morning, if it's any of your business."

"What time this morning?"

"Why? What difference does it make? I don't know. He woke me up. Around five, I guess." She looked at him, frowning. "He said he was working on a hunch. That he didn't want to make waves yet-that an early morning tip got him thinking."

Joe Grey smiled.

She reached to touch his shoulder. "What? What did you say to him?"

Joe glanced at the manuscript. "What do you think of the latest chapter?"

Charlie sighed. You couldn't force information from anyone, certainly not from a hardheaded cat. She looked down at Traynor's offending pages. "This should be a wonderful book; so much was going on in the early eighteen hundreds. He's done a huge amount of research, but he's going nowhere with it. This makes me want to write it the way it should be. How can he-"

They heard the back door close softly, though no car had pulled up the drive and they had seen no one approaching the house. At the sound, Charlie flipped on the vacuum. "Get lost, Joe. Hide somewhere." Maybe Vivi or Elliott had cut through the backyards from the side street.

"Open the window," Joe hissed.

Flipping the latch and sliding the glass back, she watched Joe leap through and vanish in the bushes below. She was vacuuming when Vivi appeared, pausing in the doorway to watch her. She was dressed in blue tights, a short denim skirt, a black halter top, and a black cap, her dark hair pulled through the back in a ponytail. Charlie turned off the vacuum.

"Why did you leave this morning, Charlie? You left just after you got here. What did you take away with you in the tote bag?"

"I went to get my purse, I left it in the grocery. I had trash in the bag," Charlie said, laughing. "Thought I had my purse. The house I cleaned last night-I dropped the trash in my bag and forgot about it. What's wrong?"

"You could have thrown it in our trash."

"I dropped it in the grocery dumpster." Unplugging the vacuum, she looped the cord up, to wheel it to another room.

"And why is Elliott's manuscript all mussed?" Vivi's eyes were wide and knowing; slowly they narrowed, never leaving Charlie. "Have you been reading this?" Her face drained of color. "Elliott doesn't like people reading his work-in-progress. What were you doing, Ms. Getz? And why is the window open?" She was suddenly so heated that Charlie backed away. "Speak up, Ms. Getz. What were you doing in here?"

Charlie looked Vivi in the eye. "I guess I brushed against the pages. I had no idea he was so-that he, or you, would be upset." Her look at Vivi was as puzzled as she could manage. "As to the window, I was warm. If you don't like me opening a window, I won't do that anymore." Closing the glass, she moved away down the hall to clean the bedroom.

Vivi didn't follow her; she remained in the study a long time. As Charlie made the bed and hung up their clothes, she heard Vivi unlock the desk, heard her open and close the drawers and shuffle papers, perhaps trying to see what else Charlie might have been into. So what was she going to do? Charlie thought, amused. Report her to Max Harper?

Vivi was gone when she finished vacuuming and dusting, had apparently left the house. Charlie supposed, if Vivi had followed her earlier this morning and had seen her meet Max, she would have been far angrier, would have confronted her with that information in a real rage.

Or would Vivi actually have confronted her? Maybe Vivi had seen them, maybe she was desperate to know what Charlie had taken from the cottage.

She went about her work absently, leaving at noon to take care of a number of small household repairs for other customers while Mavity and her crew did their cleaning. She couldn't wait to see if Max had been able to lift two good sets of prints. She finished up at five and hurried home to her apartment to shower and start dinner, stopping first by Wilma's to pick a little bouquet from the garden, daisies and some orange poppies, simple flowers that should please Max.

Frying hamburger to add to the bottled spaghetti sauce, she made a salad and pulled a cheesecake from the freezer. Max got there early, coming directly from the station. He sat on her daybed drinking an O'Doul's, making no comment as she recounted the events of her morning. She left out only her conversation with Joe Grey. Moving from stove to table, and to the daybed, she sat down at the end tucking her feet under her, sipping her beer while the spaghetti boiled. She liked living in a small space, everything near at hand. This apartment was so compact she could almost cook her breakfast before she got out of bed.

She looked at Max comfortably, quietly relishing his presence here in her private space. "I've never felt quite the degree of anger and confusion that I do with Vivi Traynor. You're right, she's not a likable person. And she was so suspicious of me," she said, grinning. "I don't think she saw me meet you, but I can't be sure. She was so prodding and pushy."

"Don't you feel sorry for her husband?" Max said, amused.

Charlie shrugged. "He married her. Poor man. Maybe he got more than he bargained for. Did you get their prints all right?"

"Two perfect sets. Unless they've had company in the last couple of days, we have prints for both Vivi and Elliott."

"And you're not going to tell me why."

"Not yet."

She rose to test the boiling spaghetti and to dress the salad of baby greens and homegrown tomatoes that their local market had been featuring. As she shook the dressing, Harper's cell phone rang. She drained the pasta quickly and dished it up as he talked, afraid he would be called away. She liked watching him, liked his thin, brown hands, his angled, leathery face. She liked the contrast between how he looked in his uniform, a very capable, no-nonsense cop, daunting in his authority, and how he looked in faded jeans and western shirt and hat, with a pitchfork in his hand, or on horseback. That same sense of ultimate control was there, only more accessible.

"Yes, I have them," he said into the phone. "I sent the card this morning, overnight mail. You'll let me know-you can guess we're wanting this one yesterday."

He smiled, glancing at her as he listened. "You bet it will. Answer a lot of questions. Was she dealing with it all right?"

Another pause.

"Very good. Maybe we'll get it sorted out."

He hung up, winking at Charlie, and poured another O'Doul's. He said nothing about the call. She was certain it had to do with the Traynor's prints. Across the table from him, she ate quietly, content in his silence. When he was ready to share information, he'd do that.

But, she thought, that sharing would present a prime dilemma.

Because, was she going to pass on whatever he told her to Joe Grey? Or was she going to guard the confidence Max Harper had in her?