Cat Laughing Last. Cat Seeing Double. Cat Fear No Evil

Joe twitched an ear.

“I saw how interested you were, that night at Lupe’s Playa. So, did you find it?”

He smiled. “It was right here in this stack. I pulled it behind the books, to read it while you vacuumed-while you snooped.”

“And?”

“Catalina’s letters to Marcos Romano are worth something. Two of them sold recently at Butterfield’s for over ten thousand apiece.”

“You’re kidding me.”

He pawed the sheaf of research from behind the books. “Between pages six and seven.”

The auction notice lay there with Traynor’s receipt. Joe showed her the notation at the bottom.

She raised her eyes to his, their faces on a level. “How many letters were there? How many did she write?”

“I don’t know, Charlie. Maybe no one knows.”

“If they’re that valuable, why did he write a play about them-or why is he letting it be produced? Already, apparently, people are looking for them.”

“Maybe he couldn’t resist. Maybe, despite the wisdom of keeping them secret, the letters kept bugging him. The way you get bugged, wanting to draw something. The way you stare at a person, your fingers itching for a piece of charcoal.”

“Aren’t you perceptive this morning.”

“My dear Charlie, cats invented perceptive. If some of Catalina’s lost letters are still out there, and if Traynor thinks he can find them, maybe he figured he’d come on out to the coast and search for them while the play was still in rehearsal, before anyone saw the play, before anyone else thought of looking for them.”

“But�”

“Maybe it was thinking and thinking of the letters that made him write the play in the first place. But now he’s sick and dying, he’s in a hurry. He wants the letters now. Once he’s dead, he won’t care who finds them.”

He looked at her steadily, his yellow eyes wide and appraising. “What do you think of his work in progress?”

Charlie only looked at him.

“I’m no literary critic,” Joe said. “But in my humble feline opinion, that stuff stinks.”

Charlie laughed. She stepped to the window, to check the street, then sat down in Elliott’s padded swivel chair.

Dropping down from the bookshelf to the desk, Joe patted the new chapter. “Right now, there are more questions about the Traynors than answers. Why did Vivi want to avoid Ryan Flannery? And why did she come in here early this morning and print the pages?” Joe shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t feel like it last night after all the excitement. Makes you wonder how he does feel, despite what she tells people about how well he’s doing with the treatments.”

“She printed out his work this morning?”

“She did. And don’t you wonder,” Joe said, “why he packs a gun? Why he brought a gun out here from New York? He must not have declared it, must have hidden it in his luggage, with New York so strict about gun ownership.”

Charlie sat frowning. “For a rotten-tempered tomcat, you come up with some interesting questions. What� Here they come.”

As the Traynors’ car turned in, Charlie snatched Joe from the desk, tucking him under her arm like a bag of flour, forcing an indignant snarl from the tomcat.

“Shut up, Joe. Hold still.” Lifting the vacuum with her other hand, she watched the car pass the window, heading for the back.

“Wait,” Joe hissed. “The research. Put it in the stack, on the bottom.”

She dropped both Joe and the vacuum, hid the research, and they headed fast for the front door. “Where’s Dulcie?” she whispered. “Where’s the kit?”

Dulcie and the kit flew out past her as she jerked the door open. Picking up the doormat, Charlie stepped down into the yard to shake it. Already the three cats were gone, vanished among the bushes.

13 [��������: pic_14.jpg]

The tall Tudor mansion that housed Molena Point Little Theater thrust above the smaller cottages like a solemn matriarch, its old shingles gray with time. But its high windows shone clean, reflecting the midmorning sky in a deep, clear azure. Sixty years earlier, the residence had been headquarters for Hidalgo Farms, an upscale cattle and sheep operation. When, in the seventies, the outbuildings and carriage house and barns had been turned into Hidalgo Plaza, wide paseos and promenades had been added, brick-paved, and roofed with trellises to join one building to the next.

The house itself had been gutted, its inner walls torn out and replaced by heavy beams, to form the vast and high-ceilinged theater. The stage occupied what had once been the large parlor. The old formal dining room and morning room and study, now flowing together, were fitted with comfortable rows of theater seats upholstered in mauve velvet.

Three large ground-level bedrooms had become the cluttered backstage with its dressing rooms, two small baths, and the vast costume room. Other workrooms and the prop room had taken over the kitchen and butler’s pantry and carriage house.

The upstairs bedrooms supplied office space and a balcony looking down on the audience, a long, narrow gallery that accommodated the control panel for the house lights and stage lighting, an area strung so densely with conduit and thick wires that it looked like a den for families of sociably oriented boa constrictors. The balcony was separated from the raftered ceiling space beyond, which yawned over the rows of seating, by a three-foot-high plastered rail. Beyond the balcony, beams and rafters stretched away in an open grid on which were hung banks of lights. The timbers, jutting across empty space, provided to the surefooted and arboreally inclined a fine series of catwalks above the heads of the audience.

Though it was midmorning, barely 10:00 A.M., the vast and empty theater was as dark as night, a sepulchral world woven of flattened shadows and inky and indecipherable vistas. No window opened into this part of the theater. The outer walls of the old mansion, where tall panes of glass had once lighted the living areas, were now blocked by inner barriers. The ten-foot space between these walls was broken into small offices, and storage and work rooms, all cheerfully brightened by those antique panels of mullioned glass. A sunny morning without, but the theater within so dark that only a cat could see her way. On a ten-by-twelve beam above the stage, the kit prowled impatiently, an agile tightrope walker, a swift black-and-brown smear of shadow within shadows, a small phantom personage alone in the empty building, waiting for Cora Lee to appear for work dressed in her painter’s smock.

Usually Cora Lee arrived at the theater much earlier, unlocking the back door from the parking lot and turning on the lights so the stage shown cheerfully around her as she painted the sets forThorns of Gold.This morning, the kit had waited a long time. She had been here from first light, impatient and hungry. Cora Lee always brought a snack to share with her. She waited, dreaming of far worlds peopled by cats like her and Dulcie and Joe Grey, worlds she half invented, and half knew from the tales of elder cats and from the old Celtic myths. But now, as morning wore on, even those stories paled. Her patience frayed at last. Painfully lonely in the empty silence, she gave up on Cora Lee.

Leaping down to the top of an open stepladder and then to the stage, and across the stage and down to the carpeted aisles before the seats, she went to explore the rest of the theater. Trotting into the outer rooms where the windows let in light, she made her way toward the prop room. She knew the theater office; she had walked on all the desks there, across stacks of playbills and papers, had rooted in the wastebaskets, prowled the cluttered shelves, and snatched cookies from a desk drawer. In the wardrobe room, she had wandered dreaming beneath the rows of hanging costumes, sniffing the old smells of lace and satin and leather and the metallic scent of tarnished necklaces. She had patted her paw carelessly into a jar of greasepaint that had been left open, then had printed her paw marks along the hall floors. She had, upstairs on the balcony, tapped at dozens of light switches on the control panel, an exercise that, if the main switch had been on, would have created a wonderland of flashing lights in the theater below. She had tasted the powdered cream in an open jar in the cluttered coffee room and had stuck her nose in the sugar bowl. But best of all she had wandered through the prop room exploring an amazing array of surprises.

It was there she headed now, purring to herself. She had no notion that she was not alone, she heard no sound but her own purring. Only when she stopped purring to nibble at an itch on her shoulder did she pause, suddenly wary.

She’d heard nothing, really. But she thought the air stirred differently, the spaces around her disturbed in some way, as if something was moving unheard and unseen through the theater’s dark reaches.

It was not Joe Grey or Dulcie. They would have mewed a tiny sound asking if she was there, a faint murmur inaudible to human ears. And when they drew close, she would have smelled their scent. Now she smelled nothing different at all among the rich medley of theater scents. What was here in the dark with her that she couldn’t see? Few humans could be so quiet. And why would a human come into the theater and not put on a light?

Did she smell Gabrielle’s lavender scent? The tall blond lady was, after all, the wardrobe mistress; she came and went quite a lot.

Or perhaps she caught a whiff of candy? But, trying to identify the smell, her nose was too filled with the harsh aromas of dust and paint, of turpentine, floor wax, and the body smells of humans. She stood sniffing, more curious than wary, trying to understand the mysterious movement she could detect among the black and angled shadows.

She had heard no door close. Had someone been in here all along, even before she herself came through the narrow attic window beneath the big duct pipes and black ropes of electrical cords? Before she squeezed down through the hole from the attic, past the round silver heat duct, and dropped to the balcony among the huge snakes of wire that always gave her the shivers?

Well, whatever was in here, she was safe. No human would see her in the darkness, and anyway, she could dodge any human.

Happily she padded on again toward the prop room, to play her solitary games among that richness of crazy human possessions that no yard or garage sale could match, among the baby crib and beer signs and bicycles, the wrought iron gates and painted china bowls and metal shields and stuffed horse’s head and the front end of an ancient car. Everything in the world was there-beaded floor lamps, rocking chair, ten green glass bottles each as big as a doghouse, a set of elk horns, pieces of machinery so strange that not even Joe Grey, who had named these things for her, could identify them. The saddest objects were a ship’s lantern and anchor smelling of dust and not of the sea, as if these nautical wonders had forgotten where they belonged.

The game was to see if she could roll and walk and tag among the shelves without knocking anything off. When she tired of that she liked to lie on the pink satin fainting couch that stood wedged between the unicycle and a woodstove with a red paper fire burning in it-not warm, but pretty to look at. She liked to nap on the pink couch imagining what the play would be like all in costume and Cora Lee singing under the lights, and she, Kit, lying on a rafter above the stage, enjoying the best seat in the house. But now, crouched beside the horse’s moldering head, she heard a footstep.

Well, a footstep was better than hearing nothing when she knew someone was there. As the door swung open, the kit slid beneath the old car, tucking her long, fluffy tail under too.

A light blazed, a harsh flashlight beam striking the shelves and moving along them, stopping now and then, a great eye of light searching and peering.

The woman who held the light was small and thin, dressed in dark tights, her black hair pulled back under a cap. Vivi Traynor smelled of cherries. Her full attention was on the crowded shelves, her movements as wary as a thieving dog’s.

But what would the theater’s junk room offer that a famous author’s wife couldn’t buy? Whatever she was looking for, it wasn’t small; she wasn’t poking into the narrow niches. The kit thought of the white chest that man, Casselrod, had snatched and that Vivi wanted badly enough to follow him-but that chest was in his store, already torn apart.

Working her way along the shelves, pushing and pulling and rearranging, Vivi turned at last to fetch the dusty ladder from the corner. Climbing to investigate the topmost shelves, again she moved only large items. She investigated a closed cardboard box, a leather suitcase, a lidded roasting pan big enough to cook a St. Bernard. Vivi opened each, looking in, then closed it again and shoved it back. When she had finished with pulling things apart, looking in and under, and didn’t find what she wanted, she gave a huff of anger, backed down leaving the ladder standing open, and went out again.

The kit followed her, slipping through the door before she closed it, silent and unseen, then padding along behind. She had never seen a human who could be so quiet.

She had never seen a human she disliked in quite this way.

When the raccoons were shot and that smell filled the house, she had blamed that all on Vivi. If Vivi Traynor had been a black lizard the kit would have chomped her, and spit her out dead, then chewed leaves to get the taste out. Following Vivi through the theater, she slipped ahead, stopping under the front row of seats, peering out at the darkly clad woman.

Vivi passed by, inches from her, moving silently to the exit door. There was not a creak when she opened and closed it, and then she was gone, no squall of hinge or snap of the latch. The kit made a flehmening face of disgust. What had she been after? Another chest like the white one? Were there letters worth a lot of money, like Joe Grey said? She hoped, if there were such letters, that Vivi Traynor wouldn’t find them. Or Richard Casselrod either. She hoped her own friends would find them and sell them for a lot of money and buy a nice big house with a nice cozy kitchen and room for a cat to visit. She would like a little bed in a sunny window or by a fireplace. Meantime, she wanted to know what Vivi Traynor was up to with her snooping and prying, and she wished that Cora Lee was there close to her because she suddenly felt very lonely. Her paws were cold with fear.

14 [��������: pic_15.jpg]

Racing up and down the empty beach in the early dawn, the dog searched frantically for his master, his black-spotted white body sharply defined against gray sky and sea. He stopped to stare at anything moving, a wave, the shadows of a wheeling gull, then plunged on again, racing so fast that his polka dot markings smeared to lines across his snowy coat. His expression was urgent and confused. From a block away, Wilma Getz saw him, where she was walking her usual two miles down the shore. She stopped, watching his frantic seeking.

She could still taste her morning coffee, its flavor mixed now with the smell of the sea. She had pulled on a red sweatshirt over her jeans, against the chill; she wore a red wool cap to keep her ears warm, her long white hair hanging down her back, bound with a silver clip. The time was barely six. She had parted from Susan in the village, after they had walked down from Wilma’s house together. Susan and Lamb had turned up the shore to the north for the big poodle’s run, where Lamb liked the outcropping rocks and the tide pools in which to pad a hesitant paw.

Wilma stood very still, watching the dalmatian. When the dog spied her, he came racing, so glad to see a human in this empty world. She knelt, fending off his excited licking, and took hold of his collar. Had he strayed from some tourist, a dog who didn’t know the area, didn’t remember how to get back to an unfamiliar motel? But she already suspected who he belonged to. Trying to hold him still, she searched for a tag or a metal plate on his collar. There were not many dalmatians in the village, and this dog was not one she knew.

The leather collar was old and curled and wet from the sea. There was no identification of any kind to tell her the dog’s name or the name or phone number of his owner. He was a young animal, and so thin she could see every rib. He pushed against her, panting and slurping as if she was his last hope.

“Do you belong to the mysterious walker? To Susan’s young friend? To Lenny Wells?” The dog shivered and licked at her. She looked up and down the beach. “Do you belong to the man who broke into Susan’s house?”

Why would someone abandon such a nice dog? Could the young man have died from his head wound? Perhaps passed out in the bushes after he escaped Susan’s, never waking again from a severe concussion? She imagined him slowly making his way to the shore with the dog beside him, trying to get away from the police, perhaps not realizing how badly he was hurt. Where had the dog been while he broke into Susan’s? Why hadn’t the police seen him when they searched the neighborhood? If Lenny had died on the beach, had the dog, when he could not rouse his master, run away confused and kept running?

But that was two days ago. Someone would have found the body by now. The beach was full of people once the sun came out, kids playing in and out among the greenbelt that met the sand. Why hadn’t someone taken charge of the dog, and called the police or the animal shelter?

Turning back toward home with the dalmatian clinging close to her, she walked him through the village to meet Susan. He didn’t try to leave her, but pressed against her leg as if in terror that she would abandon him. He had to be starved. She had turned into the village market to buy dog food when she saw Susan ahead, on the far side of Ocean, her multicolored sweater and red scarf bright against the pale stucco shops. Drawing near, Wilma held on to the dalmatian’s collar. The minute he saw Lamb he lunged and squirmed, trying to race to the big poodle, leaping and dancing like a puppy so it was all she could do to hold him.

“Same dog?” she called to Susan when they were still half a block apart.

Susan nodded, holding Lamb on a short lead. “Same dog. Where did you find him?” She hurried to them and knelt to inspect the dog, looking at his collar. “Same three long overlapped spots on his left ear. Same thin face and frightened expression. Jobe, Lenny called him.” She looked along the street as if Lenny might suddenly appear, then looked up at Wilma. “He wasn’t with anyone? You didn’t see Lenny?”

“No, no one on the beach. He was frantic, running, doubling back and forth. I couldn’t leave him there, even if I’d wanted to. He’s clung to me like glue. Do you think Lenny was the man in your breakfast room?”

“I keep wondering. I saw only the back of the man’s head, but he was like Lenny. Same color hair, same general build. Lenny always wore-wears a cap, usually with his collar turned up.” Susan hugged the dalmatian, drawing a disapproving glare from Lamb. “This poor dog. Has he been wandering for two days, trying to find his master?”

“Harper will want to know about him.”

Susan nodded. “Is it all right to bring him to your house? We can put him in the garage. I brought plenty of food for Lamb. Or we could put him on a long line in the drive, leave the garage door open, make him a bed inside.”

Wilma was glad she had finished her garage enclosing the carport. It had come in handy. Her English-style cottage had no backyard at all, only a narrow stone walk between the house and the hill behind that rose in a steep, unfenced wilderness. “Of course it’s all right.” Certainly Susan respected her front flower garden as off-limits to canine romping and digging. Lamb was always a gentleman, although it hadn’t been easy for him having no fenced yard to run in.

“Oh,” Susan said, watching the two dogs play, “Lamb does like him. But we can’t have them together in the house, not romping like that.”

“He’ll settle down when he’s eaten,” Wilma said.

Susan snapped Lamb’s leash on the dalmatian, handed it to Wilma, and commanded Lamb to heel. Heading home to Wilma’s, they soon turned up the stone walk through her deep garden, the air cool and still beneath the giant oaks. The pale stone cottage, with its steep slate roof, mullioned windows, and stone chimney, sat against the hill behind as if civilization ended at its back door, the well-maintained house with its carefully tended flowers an abrupt contrast to the hill’s wild tangles. They took the dogs inside through the back door, which opened to the street at the opposite end of the house from the front door, and into the kitchen. Susan fed both dogs while Wilma heated the skillet and laid strips of bacon in it. She had already made the pancake batter. Balancing the cordless phone in the crook of her shoulder as she cooked, she called Max Harper at home before he left for the station. The phone rang five times.

“Did I wake you?”

“I’m in the stable feeding the horses. Had a loaded pitchfork in my hands. This a social call?”

“We-Susan and I-have the dalmatian that belonged�”

“Have you? Hang on to him, I’ll be down in twenty minutes. Sure it’s the same dog?”

“Susan says so. He was running the beach, lost.”

“Did you look around? See anyone?”

“I scanned the beach. Didn’t beat the bushes. He acted like he’d been left.”

“Be right down. No, I haven’t had breakfast,” he said to her unasked question.

Wilma hung up, laughing, made fresh coffee, and put more bacon in the skillet.

When Harper arrived, Lamb greeted him with dignity. But the dalmatian was all over him, whining and leaning against him. Harper looked him over, feeling him for wounds, looking at the pads of his feet. Removing his collar, he examined it. He looked in the dog’s eyes, his ears, his mouth-wanting to know the dog was all right, Wilma thought, simply because he was that kind of man. But, as a cop, wanting to find anything unusual about the lost animal.

Apparently he found nothing of note. Buckling the collar on again, he gave the dog a pat. The dalmatian lay down by the door, full of breakfast and attention, sighing deeply.

Harper sat at the table between Wilma and Susan, looking with appreciation at the tall stack of pancakes on his plate, and the eight slices of bacon. Max Harper still ate like the wild young bull rider he’d been at eighteen; and he weighed about the same. Clyde claimed Harper took in enough groceries for three men. Everyone had said he’d gain weight when he quit smoking, but he hadn’t.

“We have no line on a Lenny White,” he told Susan. “No one by that name or fitting that description was treated in the hospital emergency room. We do have a response on the other set of fingerprints-which could belong either to the victim, or to whoever attacked him.”

Susan stopped eating, watching Harper.

“There was a fair set of prints on the computer. None on the hammer we picked up, though it appears to be the weapon. Traces of blood and flesh embedded in the creases of the metal. The prints belong to a man named Augor Prey. Does that name mean anything?”

“No.” Susan shook her head.

“We’ll have a picture later today. Prey’s father is a professor of history at Cal, Berkeley. Dr. Kenneth Prey. He taught at Davis while the son was in grammar school. Augor’s description fits your dog-walking friend. Thirty-four, slim, about six feet, brown hair, hazel eyes.”

Susan nodded uneasily. “If that is Lenny, he gave me a false name. And it’s strange. He said he’d moved out from New York, but he didn’t sound like the New Yorkers I know.”

“Prey seems to have spent his adult years bumming around up and down the coast, working here and there. Never been in real trouble. A few minor arrests, fighting, tearing up a beer tavern, petty theft. No record of burglaries. He ran an antique shop in Salinas for eight months, and worked in a San Francisco book store. He’s been living in a cheap room in Half Moon Bay, sometimes works in an antiques shop up there. He’s also worked here in Molena Point, for Richard Casselrod, when Casselrod or Fern has taken time off. When he does that,he sleeps at the shop. Casselrod said he hasn’t needed extra help recently, hasn’t seen Prey for six months.

“If Augor Prey is your Lenny White,” Harper said, “it’s possible he may have been staying somewhere else in the village. We’ve found no motel registration in either his name or for Lenny White.”

“You’ve been very thorough,” Susan said, “considering that we don’t know whether this was a murder or an assault, considering the only charges I could make were for breaking and entering, and vandalism-not for theft.”

“It could turn into murder,” Harper reminded her. “Meanwhile, the detectives have been over your place again. They have everything they’re going to get, pictures, prints, blood. You can go ahead and get someone in to clean up, get your life back in order.”

Susan smiled. “I’ll call Charlie this morning.”

“Please let us know if you find anything missing when you get back home. You still have no idea what they might have been after?”

“No. The only thing I’ve bought recently that wasn’t in the house was the carved chest I called you about. That was in my trunk.”

“I’d like to see it.”

Taking her keys from her pocket, Susan stepped out to the drive. In a moment, they heard her car trunk slam. She returned carrying a small wooden chest, perhaps eighteen inches long, its lid shaped like a peak, with the top cut off to form a three-sided slab. She set it on the table before the police captain.

“There’s an old chest like that in the mission museum,” Harper said. “Only much larger-made to use as a saddle rack. Just fits a stock saddle.”

The sides and lid of the chest were roughly carved with geometric patterns and simple medallions. The wood was oak, apparently unfinished, darkened by age. One end had split through the carvings. The inside of the box was so rough they could see the chisel marks.

“You said you bought this at the Barmeir estate sale?” Harper asked.

“Yes. I got there before seven that morning, took a number, came back at ten to wait my turn. It was mobbed; the estate sales always are. When I saw this little chest on a table in the den, I just-well I grabbed it up and bought it and got out of there. Didn’t even look at anything else.”

“Why?” Harper asked, watching her.

“Because of the play. Elliott Traynor’s play. Do you know the story?”

Harper nodded.

Susan looked at Harper. “Catalina died on the Stanton Ranch, just a few miles from here. Apparently no one knows what happened to the chests.”

“You bought this after you met Augor Prey?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever mention it to him?”

“I-yes, I did. We talked about the yard sales, and about our plans for Senior Survival, about our buying and selling on the Web. I’m afraid I did tell him about the chest.”

“How long was this before the breakin? You discussed these matters only once or several times?”

“Only once. Just� just a few days before the breakin.” She lowered her gaze. “I told a lot to a stranger. Though most of our conversation,” she went on defensively, “concerned my suggestions for him to meet people in the village, meet some younger folks.”

Wilma said, “Didn’t it seem strange to you that he would need help meeting people? Everyone’s friendly, and there’s more to do here than a person could handle in ten lifetimes with plays, concerts, classes.”

Susan nodded. “I put it down to shyness.”

“Did he know where you lived?” Harper asked.

“Yes,” she said, embarrassed. “He never came to the house, but I told him where it was, while talking about the weather, about how much wind we get. So foolish of me.”

Wilma rose to pour coffee, glancing out her kitchen window. “There’s Mavity.” She went to open the back door, calling out as Mavity turned up through the garden. “We’re in the kitchen. Where’s your VW? Don’t tell me you’re having car trouble?”

Mavity laughed. “That old bug wouldn’t dare. I’m parked up the street to clean at the Rileys’. They like me early, but� Well, I saw the captain’s pickup truck�” She glanced shyly at Harper. “Wondered if anything was wrong, if anything else has happened�”

Wilma poured coffee for her. “Have you had breakfast?”

“Oh, yes. But coffee would taste good. Yours always tastes better than mine.” She sat down, smiling at Susan. “It’s pretty early, even for the Rileys. Guess I get restless staying home anymore, thinking about the city tearing down my house. Seems like I can’t feel cozy, knowing it will be gone soon. I just wish the city would make up its mind. If they decide to condemn, then get on with it.” Mavity’s uniform this morning was the ubiquitous white, with pale blue piping at the seams, likely a top-of-the-line model that had seen its share of launderings.

Wilma laid her hand over Mavity’s. “You know my guest room’s yours as long as you want.”

“And my house, too,” Susan said. “I’ll be going home today, to get that mess cleaned up. And who knows how soon we might find a big place that’s just right for all of us.”

Mavity nodded, looking both uncertain and hopeful. She reached out to touch the oak chest. “This is old. Look at that crack, and how dark the wood is. It’s sort of like those wood carvings my brother, Greeley, sends me sometimes from Panama.”

“I got it at the Barmeir sale. I had it in the trunk of my car the morning that man broke in.”

“It’s nicer than that white chest Richard Casselrod made such a scene over-stole it, is what he did. No other word for it. Jerked it right out of Cora Lee’s hands, even if he did throw down some money.”

Harper rose, calling the dalmatian to him. “I’ll take him up to Dr. Firetti to board. Firetti owes me a favor.”

“I�” Susan began. “He and Lamb get along very well. If you don’t find Lenny�”

Harper nodded. “That would be fine. But right now, it isn’t wise for you to keep him. You don’t want Lenny White coming around, using the dog as an excuse. In fact,” Harper said, “I’m not keen on you going back home alone.”

“I’ll be fine with Lamb. If Lamb had been home that morning, those men wouldn’t have gotten in.”

Harper didn’t reply. He rose and left, taking the spotted dog with him. Wilma stood at the window, watching the dalmatian leap up into the cab of Harper’s Chevy pickup. And Susan sat looking silently at Wilma and Mavity, realizing suddenly how very much she did not want to be home alone, did not want to go to sleep at night wondering if someone would break a window and come in-except of course Lamb would bark and wake her.

But she grinned at Mavity’s wrinkled frown of concern. “A poodle’s no sissy, Mavity. Those teeth could take your arm off.”

Though in truth, it was Lamb she worried about. Worried that someone would hit him with a heavy weapon or shoot him, leaving both of them defenseless.

15 [��������: pic_16.jpg]

Driving up Ocean, with the dalmatian in the seat beside him, Max Harper’s mind remained on Susan Brittain. An extra patrol around her place wouldn’t hurt, as long as he had the manpower. Turning off Ocean beside Beckwhite Automotive, he glanced toward the east wing of the handsome Mediterranean building where Clyde Damen’s large, sprawling repair shop was housed, with its separate body and paint shops, its storage sheds and parking space, and Clyde’s private workshop where he restored antique cars. He could see into the main shop, but he didn’t see Clyde. The low morning sun brightened the red tile roof of the complex and picked out the brilliant colors of the Icelandic poppies that bloomed before the dealership’s show windows. The bright colors made him think of his dead wife, of the garden Millie had loved.

Through the shaded glass of the showroom, he could see a dark green Rolls-Royce gleaming, and two new Jaguars, one bright red. He wondered how it would be to have that kind of money.

Grinning, he stroked the spotted dog. “I wouldn’t spend it on cars,” he told the dalmatian. “Spend it on horses, and maybe dogs, too-and on Charlie,” he said. And maybe that was all right.

Millie had told him more than once that she wouldn’t want him to be alone. Until now he’d been content enough, cherishing only her memory.

Dr. Firetti’s home and hospital were just beyond Beckwhite’s, on a residential side street. His facility was a complex of three small, frame cottages that had been built back in the thirties, and were now joined by high patio walls to make an entry and secure dog runs. Harper sat in his truck a moment before going in.

“I guess,” he told the dog, “when this blows over, if no one’s claimed you, Susan would give you a fine home.” He ruffled the dog’s ears. “Companion for Lamb. I bet you’d like that.”

Susan Brittain had had enough trouble with that wreck that had put her in the retirement home, that had left her so crippled her daughter wasn’t sure she’d walk again. But walk she did, got herself up out of the wheelchair, surely with the help of the poodle for moral support. And now this mess at her place, which he hoped wasn’t going to escalate into something worse. Seemed to him that a woman living alone ought to have better security. He had some thoughts on the matter, but his ideas weren’t popular.

This breakin had him uneasy; there were too many vague connections. But that’s what investigating was about. What was the matter with him? Was he getting old, losing his edge? Fetching a halter rope from the back of the truck, he snapped it on the dalmatian’s collar and led the dog into the waiting room.

The ten-by-ten foyer was furnished with a green tweed carpet, green leather couch and love seat, and a couple of wooden chairs. A small old lady sat on the love seat, clutching a cardboard cat carrier on her lap. As Harper entered, a low hiss filled the room, sending the dalmatian bolting away from the carrier, toward the door. The receptionist nodded to Harper, spoke into the intercom, and in a moment motioned Harper on back to Firetti’s office.

Firetti was a small man with a smooth round face, pale hair thinning on top, and rimless glasses. When he examined a large dog, as he prepared to do now, he put on safety glasses. He’d been hit in the face more than once by a lunging animal. Changing glasses, he lifted the dalmatian to the table, though Harper hadn’t suggested an examination.

“Just a quick look-over. What’s the problem?”

“Can you keep him out of sight for a while? One of those back kennels? If you get anyone in here inquiring, let me know at once. Or if it’s a phone call, get whatever information you can. Say you’ll keep a lookout, and call them.”

Firetti nodded, smiling as if pleased to be a part of police business. He ran his hands down the dog, stroked him, checked mouth and teeth and ears, took his temperature, listened to his heart, then set him down off the table. He didn’t ask questions, just nodded to Harper, and led the dog away to the isolation wing. Harper was back at the department in time for court, acting as a witness on a drunk driving case that he hoped would net the defendant the maximum sentence.

He was out of court again by 10:50, heading down the hall to the department, wishing the remodeling was finished, wondering if things would ever be back to normal. Why did any kind of building project take four times as long as the contractor promised? Half his officers were in temporary quarters scattered all over the courthouse. The other half were doing their desk work among bare stud walls, stacks of two-by-fours, sawhorses and piles of sawdust and screaming power tools, and no kind of security. He wondered why he’d started this project.

Though, to give the contractor credit, his carpenters were as quiet as they could be, they didn’t shout, didn’t talk on the job except when their work demanded a few words-no long-winded bouts of sports talk and male gossip that most carpenters indulged in while they hammered away.

When he checked with the dispatcher, two calls got his attention.

At 9:15, the neighbor living next door to Elliott Traynor had called to report gunfire the night before. A Lillian Sanders. She said she couldn’t call until her husband went to work because he had considered the noise backfire and said she shouldn’t bother the police, that she would only make a fool of herself. Checking back over last night’s calls he found four reports of possible gunfire, though it could have been only backfire. An officer had patrolled the area for some time, with no indication of trouble.

At 9:40, Charlie had called for him but wouldn’t leave a message. That wasn’t like Charlie. The number she gave was Elliott Traynors’. She told the dispatcher she’d be there until noon.

Leaving the station, he headed for the Traynors’. Why anyone needed their house cleaned every day was beyond his comprehension. The Traynors didn’t even have children or pets to mess things up.

But Charlie did the shopping as well, and some meal preparation, so she functioned more as a housekeeper than a cleaning service. He wondered, if he and Charlie got married, if she’d want to keep the business or sell it. They hadn’t really discussed marriage. He just kept thinking that way.

Never thought he’d want to marry again. Sometimes it seemed like he’d betray Millie if he married Charlie. But other times, he thought Millie would approve. Thought if she could speak to him she’d tell him she liked Charlie, that he was a damn fool to feel guilty. Thought she’d tell him to get on with what was left of his life.

As for Charlie’s Fix-It, Clean-It business, maybe she’d just hire more help. She’d worked hard building the service, had turned it into a first-class operation in just a couple of years. It would be a shame to let it go. But her real work was her animal drawings, that was where he’d like to see her spend her energy. Her work was very fine, and that was not only his opinion.

She’d tried commercial art, after getting her degree, and had left the field totally discouraged. She had no patience working for others. Maybe that’s why they got along so well. She’d been feeling desperate, just about at rock bottom when she left San Francisco and moved down to Molena Point, living with her aunt Wilma and starting Charlie’s Fix-It, Clean-It.

Then a local gallery had seen her animal drawings. This was the only artwork she truly loved doing. They’d liked her work enough to give her a show and represent her, and she was making a name for herself. She had a feel for animals, she knew anatomy, and she truly captured each personality. She’d done two of his horses, large framed portraits that he treasured. And Clyde’s and Wilma’s cats-Charlie made them look so intelligent they almost scared him. That was the only time he’d seen her digress from an animal’s true character. He didn’t know why, when she drew those three cats, she gave them more intelligence and awareness than even the brightest animal could command. Maybe she didn’t realize how bright she made them look.

Or maybe she did that to please Wilma, and to stroke Clyde’s ego. Clyde did love the gray tomcat, Harper thought with amusement. He’d never thought, when they were young kids bronc-riding and raising hell, that Clyde would end up with a houseful of cats. Clyde had three cats besides the gray tom, though you hardly noticed them much; they seemed to drape themselves around the house minding their own business. It was the gray cat that seemed to be always in your face.

Arriving at the Traynors’, he found that Charlie had already gone, apparently earlier than she had expected. He sat in his truck for a few moments, studying the cottage, then called Charlie on his cell phone. He’d like to question the Traynors, to ask if they’d heard gunshots, but he had no real reason to do that. Charlie answered on the second ring.

“You free for lunch?”

“Yes. I meant to stay there until noon, but I was so ticked. When they got home early I knew I’d better get out or I’d blow at them.”

“You want to tell me now?”

“No. Shall I order some deli?”

“Yes. I’ll meet you in front of Jolly’s.”

When he arrived at the deli, Charlie had just picked up their lunch. She left her van at the curb, and they drove down the coast to the state park. Cruising in through the security gate and slowly through the cypress woods to the ocean, they parked where they could enjoy the waves crashing high against the jagged rocks. Charlie was pale, her freckles dark, the way she looked after a flash of anger or disappointment. She had ordered crab sandwiches, coleslaw and nonalcoholic beer.

He opened two bottles of O’Doul’s. “A neighbor of the Traynors thought she heard gunfire last night. Thought it might have been from their place.”

“You talked to them?”

“I had no real reason to. Several calls were logged in last night, and an officer did an area check. He found nothing. Most of those reports turn out to be backfire.” He looked at Charlie, waiting.

“There was gunfire. It was so� Traynor left me a hundred dollars for cleaning up the mess he made.”

Harper let her tease him along, amused at her anger.

“Raccoons, Max. In the pantry. They got in from the attic. They must have made a racket-tore everything up. He shot them, right there in the pantry. He made a terrible mess, blood and gore mixed with all the food they had spilled.”

She didn’t know whether he was going to laugh or continue to sit there watching her. “Traynor shot them, and put the two bodies in the garbage. Left that mess for me to clean up, along with all the garbage strewn across the yard.”

She saw a grin start at the corner of his mouth, a wry smile that made her want to smack him, then want to laugh, herself. “There was a loose vent into the attic. I got a ladder, nailed it back in place. The raccoons had worked the plywood cover off the crawl hole. Traynor left me a note and a hundred-dollar bill. Said he shot them with a target pistol-didn’t want me to tell anyone.”

The lines that mapped his lean, tanned face deepened with interest.

“It’s a big pantry, a walk-in. Took me half the morning. I didn’t do much else; I’ll make up for it tomorrow. He got home as I was leaving, said he thought it was a burglar in there, that he got the pistol, jerked the door open, saw these huge raccoons tearing up boxes of food. Said they snarled at him and scared him, and he didn’t know what else to do but shoot them. Said he was really afraid of them.”

“A lot of explanation.”

“Why would he not want me to tell anyone? Not want me to tell you? Because he has a gun?”

“It’s not illegal to have a gun if he stores it properly and if he’s not a felon. If he keeps it locked up in the house, it’s not my business.”

He looked deeply at Charlie. “You might want to watch yourself around Traynor, until we know what that’s about. He has to have a hot temper, to blow away two innocent animals when he could have called the dispatcher and gotten some help.”

“It’s hard for me to think of him as being crosswise with the law. Though I do have other questions about him.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“Umm-about his writing.”

“About his writing?” Harper leaned back, watching the breakers crash against the rocks sending up white showers of spray. The smell of brine was sharp through the open window.

“I read part of his manuscript that he left lying on the desk.”

He looked at her, raising an eyebrow.

She ignored his silent sarcasm. This was nothing she wanted to joke about. “It’s crude, Max. Clumsy. I don’t understand. Traynor’s a beautiful writer.”

“I didn’t know you were a literary critic. Or that you were so nosy.”

“Call it hero worship,” she said lightly. “But this has truly upset me-a real let-down.”

He began to peel the label from his beer, rolling it into a little ball. “It’s a let-down because his writing is bad. Because you admired his work. You’re disappointed in the man you thought of as perfect.”

“Maybe.” She sipped her beer, staring out at the sea, eased by its endless and constant rhythm. “Somehow the Traynors make me uneasy. They aren’t what I expected. I guess I thought Vivi, too, would be different. That she would be gentler, wise and capable and supportive. My idea of an author’s wife,” she said, laughing. But then, watching Max, she frowned. “You-the police have no reason to be interested in Traynor?”

“Not at all. Not at the moment.”

She watched him, then changed the subject. “I’m keeping the hundred dollars. I earned it. Tucking it away for a special occasion.”

“Like what? A bottle of champagne for our wedding?”

He shocked himself. Shocked them both. Charlie’s eyes widened. Beneath her freckles, she blushed.

He said, “Maybe a wedding and champagne on shipboard, on our way to Alaska?”

“Now I know you’re putting me on. You haven’t been away from the department since you joined the force.”

“Not true. Been to Quantico twice for FBI training. And more conferences on police administration than I want to remember.”

“Well, bully for you.”

He grinned. “A lot of vacation time to use up. I figure a month’s cruise, this fall, before the weather turns.”

Her response was so enthusiastic that she startled Harper. The moment amazed them both. It was a while before they opened their sandwiches and the containers of coleslaw and popped another beer. She tried to get hold of herself, but she couldn’t. When she started to laugh, she couldn’t stop. She leaned against him, laughing.

“So what’s the joke?”

She knew her face had gone red. “Just� just excitement,” she lied. “I�” She looked up at him. “Just happy!” But what she’d thought of suddenly was about telling Dulcie and Joe Grey. Thinking how happy the cats would be-and then that knowledge sobered her.

That was a hard call; no matter how close she and Max might be for the rest of their lives, there was one secret she could never tell him. One part of her life that she could never share.

16 [��������: pic_17.jpg]

Spotlights illuminated center stage. The house lights were dark, the rows of seats marching away empty into the hollow blackness of the theater. Only a few front seats were occupied where Elliott and Vivi Traynor, director Samuel Ladler, and music director Mark King sat together softly talking, and occasionally rattling a script. Elliott had hunched down in his wrinkled corduroy sport coat as if perhaps he felt unwell. On the far side of the theater near the exit door, a dozen actors had taken a block of seats, whispering among themselves, waiting for their callback auditions forThorns of Gold.Above the house among the rafters, where night clung against the high ceiling, crouched an attentive feline audience of three: two pairs of yellow eyes, one pair of green, catching glances of soft light. No human, below, bothered to look up, to find those tiny spotlights.

“But where’s Cora Lee?” Dulcie said softly, peering down at the waiting actors.

“Still backstage,” said the kit. “Painting sets like she doesn’t care at all about the part.”

Of the seven women who had read and sung for the part of Catalina during yesterday’s tryouts, Cora Lee was one of two callbacks. Director Ladler felt so pressed for time that he had notified the actors last night before they left the theater, had stood on the patio with the little group gathered around him and read out the names of the callbacks. Then he had quickly turned back inside before anyone could challenge his decisions. No director liked that part of the casting; no one enjoyed seeing the disappointment of those who were turned away.

Below the cats, Vivi leaned over to Elliott, whispering something, then giggling. She leaned forward in her chair, looking down the several seats to question Sam Ladler and to give him orders. Elliott hardly paid attention. Surely he wasn’t feeling well, Dulcie thought. Maybe the decisions that should be his had suddenly fallen on Vivi’s shoulders and she was nervous about that.

Director Sam Ladler was a lean, tanned man with thinning hair that heightened his forehead into a deep widow’s peak. He looked like he ran or played tennis. He was dressed this morning in old jeans and a limp sweatshirt. He was a terse man, Wilma had said, with a dry humor. Wilma said that he and his casts had created outstanding theater for Molena Point. He sat between Traynor and Mark King, the two directors having managed to put Vivi down at the far end of the row.

Mark King was smoothly pudgy, a young man who seemed to have turned middle-aged before his time. He was short, maybe five-four, with straight, faded brown hair down to his shoulders and rimless half-glasses that he kept wiping as if he found it impossible to remove the smudges. He wore wrinkled chinos and a T-shirt with palm trees printed across it. He rose as Ladler called for Catalina and moved up onto the stage, to the piano.

“We’ll have Fern Barth,” Ladler said, looking down at the little group of actors. Fern was Richard Casselrod’s assistant at the antiques shop, a pale, spiritless woman, in Dulcie’s opinion, whose singing during tryouts had sounded as if she was practicing for second line in the choir box, hitting the notes okay, but with no more feeling than a china doll. As Fern stepped up on stage, a whiff of her perfume rose to the cats as sweet as cake icing.

“Why,” Dulcie whispered, “was this woman called back?”

Joe Grey shrugged, yawning. “Doesn’t stand a chance.”

“I hope not,” Dulcie said uneasily. And her dismay was sharp when Fern had finished, and Vivi smiled and nodded at Sam Ladler. Elliott came to life long enough to give Fern a friendly wink. Sam Ladler looked over at them blankly and called Cora Lee.

Cora Lee came out from the wings rolling down the sleeves of her smock and wiping paint from her face. Moving to center stage, she turned to the piano, smiled at Mark King, then stood quietly looking out at the rows of empty seats, collected and composed.

“Read from where she refuses to marry Stanton,” Ladler said. “Then where she’s locked in her room, and that first number.”

Cora Lee read her lines with cold anger as Catalina was led away to her prison. Watching her, the cats forgot her stained smock and the green smear down her cheek. She stood and moved with the grace and dignity of generations of Spanish queens.

But when Catalina faced the audience from behind her locked door, her movements were restricted and disheartened, her song holding all the misery of imprisonment and of love denied.

“One more number,” Ladler said. “Let’s hear her plea.”

As Catalina begged for rescue, her audience on the rafters above was very still. The kit mewled softly, and Dulcie felt her own heart twist. This was not Cora Lee French, the gentle waitress with gray in her hair; this was a young girl frightened and alone, her pain wrenching their very cat souls. When the number ended, there was not a sound in the theater. Cora Lee bowed slightly to Samuel Ladler and to King, but did not move from the stage. The ghosts from the past that she had summoned clung around her, lingering in the shadows.

“Thank you,” Ladler said softly, and watched Cora Lee move offstage. But as she stepped down to sit with the other actors, again Vivi leaned to speak to Ladler, shaking her head. Her whisper rose clearly to the cats. “Too bad, Sam. She’s just not right for the part-that gray hair, for one thing. Really too bad, but the part calls for a younger woman.

“And,” Vivi said, “to be honest, Elliott doesn’t care for overacting.” She gave Ladler a bright smile. “Well, Fern is perfect for the part. We’re fortunate to have her. So sweet-just the way a young girl would sing, with a broken heart.”

Sam Ladler sat looking at Vivi, very still and rigid. He rose, turning to Elliot. “Shall we step out to the lobby to discuss this?”

“There’s no need,” Vivi said. “We love Fern’s performance. Elliott loves her. She’s perfect.” Beside her, Elliott nodded.

Sam continued to look at Elliott. “I don’t discuss the tryouts in front of the actors. Would you like to continue this in private?”

Vivi said, “You notified the others right away, before they left the theater.”

“Fern’s the one,” Elliott said. “No question.”

Sam looked across to the waiting actors. “Go home. We’ll call you in the morning.”

“No!” Vivi snapped. “Let them stay. You know we’re short on time.” She looked hard at Ladler. “Have you forgotten, conveniently, that Elliott’s permission to produce is subject to his approval of the cast?”

Ladler nodded to the small group and they settled back, dropping their jackets and scripts again on empty seats. “Fern, if you and Cora Lee would like to go out to the lobby and get a Coke, we’ll call you in a few moments.”

Cora Lee slipped away backstage. Fern took a seat beside Vivi, looking defiantly at Ladler. The cats watched the little drama, fascinated. They felt terrible for Cora Lee. The kit’s tail lashed so hard that Dulcie put a paw on it. “Stop it, Kit. Before someone looks up here.”

Ladler looked Fern over. “All right, if you want to hear this.” He turned his back on her, facing Elliott. “Fern’s not right for the part. She can’t hold a candle to Cora Lee. Not right physically or emotionally. Her singing does not do justice to the songs, or to your play.”

“I have to disagree,” Elliott said. “Fern has the part, or there is no play.”

“They’re not in the same league,” Sam snapped, the color coming up in his lean face. “Cora LeeisCatalina. We couldn’t have a better fit. What is it you’re seeing here? Do you want to try to explain?”

“Fern’s completely right for the part,” Traynor repeated, glancing at Vivi. “I’m the writer. I know what I-”

Mark King, stepping to the edge of the stage, stood looking down at Traynor. “There’s nothing right about her. Fern, you really ought to leave, and not have to hear this. But I have to agree that Cora Lee is perfect.”

“That is so shallow and wrong,” Vivi snapped, her look nudging Elliott.

“I’m sorry,” Elliott said stiffly. “It’s my play. Fern Barth has the part or you can stop production.”

Ladler looked them both over. “Cora Lee French has the part or I don’t direct the play.”

Elliott rose, staring at him.

Ladler stiffened almost as if he would hit Elliott. High above them, the three cats looked down from the shadows ready for a good brawl, even if Elliott was to be considered an invalid.

Ladler looked at Elliott a long time, then turned away. “Stuff the play.” He dropped the script on the floor and moved on down to the little group of fascinated actors. “Go home. The play is canceled. You’ll have to wait for this one until Mr. Traynor finds another theater.”

Vivi rose, snatching up her jacket, but Elliott pushed her into a seat, glaring at her, and moved after Ladler. “Wait, Sam.”

Ladler turned, scowling. Quickly Elliott took his arm and walked him outside through the exit door. From the stage, Mark King stood watching them, his round, bespectacled face pale with anger, then he moved away toward the dressing rooms, where Cora Lee had disappeared.

Elliott and Ladler were gone for some time. Fern sat quietly beside Vivi, both staring straight ahead, never glancing toward the other actors. No one spoke, the atmosphere in the theater had swung from the poignancy of Catalina’s lament to conflict as brittle as shattered glass. Above in the darkness the kit rose and padded along the rafter heading backstage, looking for Cora Lee.

When Elliott and Sam Ladler returned, Elliott was smiling amiably, Ladler stonefaced. He paused stiffly before Fern.

“The part is yours. Cora Lee will understudy.” He turned away to the waiting actors and sat down among them.

In a few moments, Cora Lee and King came out from backstage. Cora Lee looked at Ladler for a long moment. He said, “Will you understudy?”

“I suppose I will,” she said, her face closed and expressionless. As she turned away again, the cats could see the kit behind her, lurking in the shadows.

“What did Traynor offer him?” Joe said. “And why? What does Fern have that Traynor needs? Or what does she have on Traynor?”

Ladler rose from the group of actors. “Let’s get on with it. I want readers for Marcos. We’ll get through tryouts tonight. Rehearsals will start Wednesday.”

Joe and Dulcie were too disappointed to listen to further readings; they didn’t care who got the part of Marcos. The dark, good-looking young Latino man would likely have it. Or maybe the pale-haired surfer, who had a good voice, too, but would certainly have to resort to dark makeup and black hair dye. Probably it wouldn’t matter to Cora Lee who got the male lead. Dulcie could imagine her backstage, dealing with her disappointment, maybe with the kit snuggling up close, trying to cheer her. Why had Elliott Traynor gone along with this? It had certainly been Vivi who pushed for it. Neither Joe nor Dulcie had any answers. Among the rafters, they dozed until tryouts ended. As the players rose to leave, they heard Vivi arrange quietly to meet Fern at Binnie’s Italian.

Beating it out of the theater, the two cats headed for Binnie’s, galloping across the dark roofs beneath a skittering wind. Watching the street below, they saw the Traynors’ black Lincoln pass them, and when they dropped down to a low overhang, then to the sidewalk around the corner from Binnie’s, the Lincoln was parked at the curb. Elliott and Vivi were still in the car, arguing.

Crouching by the rear tire, the cats listened, trying not to sneeze at the stink of hot rubber and exhaust fumes.

“� know damn well you went too far,” Elliott was saying. “Don’t you think that looked-”

“What was I supposed to do? That was the deal, that Fern get the part. And you were going to cave!”

“This Cora Lee French was good, Vivi. How do you think this looks, when we-?”

“Good has nothing to do with it! Looks have nothing to do with it. What the hell are you thinking!”

“I’m thinking that if you keep this up, you’ll blow it. Ladler will back out. And don’t you think people will start asking questions?”

“Sam Ladler knew it was part of the deal. Fern has the part, or there’s no money on the side. What made him defy you like that? How did you straighten him out?”

“I upped the ante. It isn’t every day a little theater director sees that kind of money.”

“And he didn’t ask questions?”

“What’s he going to ask? He knows not to ask. We’ve been through this. I said he’d get twice what you offered.”

“You what? Didn’t you think-”

“Twice what you offered. You don’t have a choice, Vivi. So shut up. Right now, I’m in the driver’s seat.”

17 [��������: pic_18.jpg]

The two cats watched Fern’s Toyota pull up in front of Binnie’s Italian. Vivi and Elliott were still sitting in their black Lincoln, snapping at each other. When Fern parked in front of them Vivi got out and hurried into the restaurant with her, slamming the glass door nearly in Elliott’s face. Catching the door, he swung in behind them and eased it closed.

On the warm concrete beneath the newspaper rack, Joe and Dulcie crouched looking up through the restaurant window where Vivi and Fern and Elliott were settling into a booth. Vivi glanced out blankly to where the cats were idly washing their paws, the cats of less interest to her than the metal newsstand. Dulcie loved spying on someone when she was in plain sight. Through the thin glass they could hear every word.

The waitress on duty was Binnie’s niece, a slight, shy Italian girl who didn’t look old enough to have a work permit. Certainly she was too young to serve liquor. When Vivi ordered a bottle of Chablis, Binnie himself hurried out with it, uncorking the bottle across his white-aproned, ample belly, his jowled face rosy from the kitchen. Binnie did enjoy going through the little tasting ritual. Elliott handled Binnie’s ceremony with abject boredom.

Binnie poured in silence, smiled hesitantly at Vivi, and when his smile was not returned, he retreated quietly to his kitchen.

“Here’s to it,” Vivi said, lifting her glass. “So far, very smooth. Even Ladler wasn’t much of a problem.”

“It’s a wonderful part,” Fern gushed. “I’ll do well by it, you’ll see.” She patted Elliott’s hand. “I’m going to be great in this part; it’s going to make my career.” Fern was, apparently, not the brightest young woman. The cats sat through interminable small talk, licking their whiskers when the pizza was served. Vivi and Elliott ate in silence, letting Fern ramble, a tedious monologue that left Joe and Dulcie yawning. They were ready to cut out and go hunt rats when Clyde and Ryan Flannery came around the corner, walking arm in arm, softly laughing.

Clyde didn’t see the cats slip deeper under the newsstand, he was totally involved with Ryan. “So that’s the rest of the shop. That’s what we do, master mechanics to Molena Point’s wheels.”

“All those beautiful Mercedeses, Jags, and BMWs parked in your garage, to say nothing of that silver Rolls. It’s a great shop, Clyde. I’m awed by the state-of-the-art electronic equipment-a far cry from my cordless drill and electric saw.” As the couple passed the window, Vivi’s eyes widened. She nudged Elliott so sharply he spilled his wine.

“You really find that stuff interesting?” Clyde said, holding the door for Ryan. Before he could close it, the cats slipped through behind him. He scowled down at them, surprised and annoyed, but said nothing.

“If I hadn’t ended up as a building contractor,” Ryan said, “I might be a mechanic. I seriously thought about it at one time.”

Elliott had risen and was heading toward the men’s room, behind a partition that also led to the kitchen. Ryan looked after him, glanced at Vivi, and turned away, moving beside Clyde to a table in the far corner. Clyde looked toward the kitchen, waving to Binnie, and they slid into the booth. “You’d like being a mechanic? Working with a bunch of guys? They can get pretty rank.”

“I do work with a bunch of guys,” she said, laughing. “They’re okay if you set some ground rules. But, I don’t know, there’s something restful about putting things together, about figuring out the little mechanical glitches, solving the problems and making them right. Makes me feel safe, somehow, in a chaotic world. Does that make any sense?”

“Quite a lot of sense.”

Under the table, the cats settled down next to Clyde’s shoes, looking around his pant cuffs to where the Traynors sat. The carpet smelled clean and was of good quality, not like some restaurants where the rug stank of ancient French fries. Elliot had not returned. At the Traynor table, Vivi was pale and agitated, gulping her wine. Fern only looked perplexed, her round face and short golden hair catching light from a stained glass corner fixture. Binnie had recently redecorated, abandoning the simple red checkered tablecloth and candle-in-a-bottle motif, with which the village had long been familiar, for bright abstract murals covering the walls and tabletops, splashes of primary color illuminated by the colored glass fixtures. The effect was cozy and inviting. But then, any place that smelled as rich with tomato sauce and garlic and herbs as Binnie’s had to be inviting. As the cats watched Vivi nervously wolf her dinner, Ryan bent down to look under the table.

“Hi, cats. You having pizza?” They smiled at her and purred, and Dulcie rose to rub against her extended hand. She scratched Dulcie’s ear, looking pleased with the greeting. Her face was flushed from the chill outdoor air, her dark hair tangled in a mass of short, unruly curls. In a moment she sat up again. “They’re charming, Clyde. As responsive as any dogs.”

“I suppose they can be charming,” Clyde said. “When it suits them.”

“But pizza, and Mexican food? Doesn’t that stuff upset them? What does the vet say?” She was wearing faded jeans, and brown leather sandals that smelled of saddle soap. Her ankles were nicely tanned. Joe sniffed at her toes until Dulcie hissed at him, laying back her ears. “You don’t need to smell her feet!”

Clyde said, “The food doesn’t bother them; they seem to have cast-iron stomachs.” He looked under. “What do you want on your pizza? Cheese, hamburger, and anchovy?”

Joe Grey purred, thinking,Heavy on the anchovies and plenty of mozzarella.

“Where’s the third cat?” Ryan asked. “The little dark one? Doesn’t she belong to Wilma Getz? Wilma worked with my dad, years ago before she retired, in the San Francisco probation office. The dark cat-what’s that color called?”

“Tortoiseshell,” Clyde said. “She’s been hanging around the theater lately. She likes to prowl the rafters.”

Ryan laughed. “Theatrical aspirations? But when the cats are out on the village streets at night, don’t you worry about them?”

“They’re careful about traffic. And all three are pretty resourceful.”

“My family has never had cats, only dogs. I had no idea cats would-well, these two follow you, don’t they? And they mind you.”

“Sometimes,” Clyde said. “If they’re in a cooperative mood.”

“When my sisters and I were young, and we came down to the village for weekends, we always brought the dogs. Dallas was raising pointers then. We’d each get to bring our favorite pup, we ran them on the beach, took them in the outdoor cafes. It was great fun, everyone made a fuss over them-we were very popular. I’ve always loved the village. I’m going to love calling it home. San Francisco, under the right circumstances, is wonderful, but I think my nesting place is here.”

“And you liked Charlie’s apartment-the duplex?”

“It’s perfect. One big room, and I love the high ceiling. Charlie says we can put in a wood-burning stove if I like. And that wonderful garage, that’s the space I really need. She told me she bought the place for a song.”

“In village numbers, yes. It was pretty run down. Will you need furniture?”

“I don’t need much. Right now, I just want the necessities.”

“Which are?”

“Drafting table. Bed. Breakfast table and a couple of chairs. Desk for my computer.”

“Your taste may be too simple for the Iselman estate sale, but it wouldn’t hurt to look.”

“Which is when?”

“Saturday morning. You go around seven, take a number, go back at ten to be called. They let people in a few at a time.”

“Want to come?”

“Sure. We’ll get our numbers, go have breakfast, and walk the beach.”

The cats looked at each other, amused. Clyde never did waste time. When the pizza was served, they could hear Clyde cutting their share into bite-sized pieces, could hear him blowing on it to cool before he set it on the floor. Across the restaurant, Vivi and Fern were still alone; Elliott had not returned. Vivi was paying the bill. In a moment she rose, said something to Fern, dropped a tip on the table, and was gone, leaving Fern to finish her dinner alone.

“She sure didn’t want any part of me,” Ryan said softly. “Elliott can’t still be in the men’s room.”

“I think that slamming kitchen door might have been Elliott leaving,” Clyde said.

“Maybe Vivi and my womanizing husband did get together last fall. But why would Elliott avoid me? I can understand Vivi staying away-though at this point, I couldn’t care less. But why Elliott? He and I are the wronged parties.”

From beneath the table, the cats watched through the far window as Vivi hurried around the corner to her car. They heard her gun the engine and the Lincoln roared away, apparently leaving Elliott to walk home.

The cats looked at each other with amusement. What a tangle humans could devise. No group of cats ever made such a muddle of their personal affairs. Vivi and Elliott’s behavior not only entertained Joe and Dulcie but left them puzzled and unsettled. As if they’d followed a rabbit scent that led nowhere; that ended abruptly with no rabbit hole, and no rabbit.

They would be far more concerned, however, when the night ended; when dawn broke and they confronted a dead body, a bloody scene of battle, and one very distraught tortoiseshell kit.

18 [��������: pic_19.jpg]

Rehearsal was over. Everyone but Cora Lee had left the theater. Mark King had closed the piano and departed reluctantly, worrying about Cora Lee, standing backstage holding her hands, his round face flushed with anger and concern.

“I’ll be fine, Mark. I just want to sit here for a few minutes alone, in the quiet theater. Guess this part meant more to me than I thought,” she said, laughing.

“There’s nothing I can say about this. It’s incredible. I’m hoping something will happen to change Traynor’s mind,” he said darkly, then turned and moved away through the dressing rooms.

The kit heard the back door slam. When Cora Lee sat down on a folding chair near the piano, the little tortoiseshell came out from the shadows and crawled up into her lap. Around them, the empty theater seemed to echo with the spirits that had been summoned from the past-and with the tensions, with the inexplicable trade-off for which Mark King and Cora Lee had no answers. The kit reached a paw, touching Cora Lee’s cheek.

“All right,” she told the kit. “Let someone else play Catalina. But does it have to be Fern Barth! Fern will destroy Catalina. I do love the story, I love the songs, Kit. I feel so close to Catalina-I don’t want her story made ugly and common.”

She hugged the kit close. “Maybe after Traynor’s dead,” she said coldly, “if he is indeed dying, there’ll be a real performance somewhere ofThorns of Gold.But not for me, Kit. It will be too late for me.

“I’m sixty-four years old. I keep myself in shape, but there’s a limit. Maybe Vivi Traynor’s right, maybe I’m already too old.”

Cora Lee wondered-was it possible that, for some reason she didn’t understand, Vivi didn’t want this play produced? She looked around the empty theater. “There are ghosts here, Kit. All the ghosts of plays past, people who have been brought alive here. Did you know that?”

The kit knew. She climbed to Cora Lee’s shoulder, nosing at her cheek.

“Emotions so powerful, Kit, that they’re part of the old walls, even part of the plywood sets that we cut up and use over and over until there’s nothing left but chips. All those lives are here. And now, is Fern’s saccharine version of Catalina going to join them?”

She rose abruptly, settling the kit more securely on her shoulder. “Well, I can’t help it. I can’t make anything different, I can’t unmake whatever twisted motives Vivi and Elliott Traynor follow.” She cuddled the little cat close. “It isn’t losing the part that makes me cry, Kit. I cry from anger, always have. Anger at unfairness, at human coldness. Why would Elliott Traynor butcher his own play?

“When I was little, Kit, in second grade, we had a teacher who baited us unmercifully. Prodded us, bore down on us, accused us of things we didn’t do, ridiculed and beat us down until she made me cry out of pure rage.”

Cora Lee looked down into the kit’s round yellow eyes. “I’ve always been like that. I’m irate when I feel helpless, when I feel used.” She touched the kit’s nose with her nose. “Can you understand, Kit, how it is to cry with anger when you feel helpless?”

The kit understood. She knew exactly how that felt. The smallest cat in the band of roving cats she’d traveled with, she’d been the butt of them all, two dozen big, cruel felines who delighted in tormenting her, who abandoned her in alleys, who drove her away from whatever food they found to fight over. She knew how helplessness felt. But she couldn’t tell Cora Lee that.

“On the streets, in New Orleans, when bigger kids ganged up and hit us and wouldn’t let us go, and no grown-up would help us, that made me cry-with pure temper, because no big person would help us.” Cora Lee laughed. “I got so mad sometimes that I broke things. Threw china at the wall. That wasn’t civilized, but no one took the time to teach us about being civil. Throwing china was the only way I knew to drive away the demons and make me feel better.”

The kit shivered. The look in Cora Lee’s black eyes was so deep it was like falling into bottomless chasms.

“You make me feel better, Kit. You’re good company. You listen and don’t try to destroy me. Could I take you home with me tonight? It’s just at the other end of the building. I don’t like to leave you alone in the theater, and I won’t turn you out in the dark. Would Wilma mind?” She looked at the kit, puzzled. “What makes you come here, Kit? What draws you here?”

The kit purred and kneaded her mottled black-and-brown paws gently into Cora Lee’s shoulder, careful to keep her claws tucked in.

Cuddling the kit, Cora Lee went backstage to the wall phone beside the dressing rooms, and in the soft light, she dialed Wilma’s number. The kit lay her face against Cora Lee’s cheek to listen, feeling deliciously secretive and smug, her fluffy tail twitching with pleasure.

“Your tattercoat kit is here, Wilma. In the theater.”

“I’m not surprised,” Wilma said, laughing. “Shall I come get her?”

“She’s been here since early in the tryouts. Could I keep her overnight? She’s� we’re friends. I have cold roast chicken and milk custard, if you think that would agree with her.”

The kit smiled and snuggled down with contentment.

“Those delicacies are certainly allowed,” Wilma said. “You’d better have your share first, or she’ll eat it all. How did tryouts go?”

“Could we talk about that tomorrow? I� didn’t get the part.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I�” Cora Lee’s voice trembled.

“Tomorrow,” Wilma said. “Take the kit home. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Just need some rest. I’m going to feed the kit and myself, have a hot bath, and get into bed. I’ll bring her home in the morning.”

“Have another towel handy. She likes to dabble her paws in the tub. Give her something that floats, and she’ll have the whole bathroom soaked, splashing at it.”

Cora Lee laughed. The kit didn’t see anything funny. Hanging up, Cora Lee carried the kit over her shoulder as she turned out the last light and then locked the back door behind her. Heading past several closed shops with their softly lit windows, a dress shop, a toy store, a knitting studio, she turned up a lighted stair tucked between two parts of the building. Climbing two flights, with the kit snuggling against her chin, she moved along an open balcony overlooking the street. Unlocking the third door, she switched on a lamp and shut the door tightly behind her. She set the kit down on a creamy leather sofa so soft that the kit rolled and rubbed her face into the pillows.

The room was done all in almond and white and cafe au lait-ice cream colors, the kit thought. She liked that; this room made her purr. Cora Lee opened a tall, whitewashed music center, and put on a CD of soft jazz. She gave the kit a little smile, as if maybe she had come to some kind of decision. The kit couldn’t ask to share her secret.

The small kitchen had a creamy tile floor and white cabinets. Cora Lee fixed a plate for each of them, poured a glass of wine for herself, and carried their tray into the living room, putting the kit’s plate on the hearth and her own dinner on the coffee table.

Cora Lee ate slowly, relaxing in the music she loved and in the company of the little cat. It was nice to have a special animal to share her supper, it had been some years since she’d had a pet, since she’d put her dear old spaniel to sleep. She still missed him. She’d depended on him a lot when she was newly widowed, in those months just after Robert died.

Robert was killed on their thirtieth anniversary in a plane accident, on his way to meet her for a week in the Sierras as an anniversary present. She had never felt quite whole since. But she had not felt, until recently, the true fear of being alone as she grew older, fear of the approaching years when she might be ill and need assistance, and had no one to help her, no family. That sense of helplessness had made her take a hard look at her life.

Was their Senior Survival plan going to work? Was this going to be a practical solution for all of them?

“It sure beats paying five thousand dollars a month, Kit, in a retirement home. I couldn’t do that. All of us have too much money to go on welfare, and too little to pay those kinds of prices. We’re caught in the middle, Kit.”

She thought that, with the right legal setup, they could make something better for themselves. Watching the kit lapping up custard, she wished the little cat could understand what she was saying, she seemed such a sympathetic little soul. Rising, she went to the kitchen to dish up more custard, hoping she wouldn’t make the kit sick. Wilma was right, this little cat ate like a St. Bernard.

Returning, she refilled her wineglass and turned down the lamp. Could four or five women living together really get along? Was that going to work; would they make the necessary decisions without bickering? If they could hire someone to cook and clean and care for them when they were older, would they find someone they could trust? But they were civil people. And they had three trustees picked out to handle many of the problems.

When the kit had licked up the last of the custard, Cora Lee took their dishes to the kitchen, washed them in hot soapy water, and put them in the drain. “Come on, Kit. I’m bushed.”

She ran a hot bath, found a sponge to float for the kit, and spent more time laughing than relaxing. She mopped up the water afterward with four big towels, wondering where this little cat had sprung from, who was so different and amusing. They were in bed by midnight, snuggled together.

As Cora Lee’s breathing slowed toward sleep, the kit lay looking around her at the carved, whitewashed bedroom furniture, at the sheer white curtains blowing across the open window. Even the paintings on the walls were cream toned. What a pity that Cora Lee would have to leave this apartment when the ladies all moved in together. These bright rooms with their cafe au lait carpet soft under her paws, and the jazz music and cold chicken and custard, this was a lovely place to live. The kit liked it all so much, that she couldn’t stop purring. And, purring, she drifted off into dreams.

But in her dreams she was standing on a strange sidewalk, in a strange part of the village and there was blood on the concrete along with broken glass. Afraid, she woke mewling and pressing tightly against Cora Lee.

But it was a dream, only a nightmare like when she was small and the big cats made her sleep alone in the cold behind the garbage cans and she had bad, bad dreams.

Only then there had been no one to hold her. Now there was someone safe, and she burrowed closer under Cora Lee’s chin, safe with Cora Lee, and warm.

19 [��������: pic_20.jpg]

Fog softened the lines of the long, two-story building, the milky dawn seeming almost to have absorbed its pale walls. The structure was, in fact, two buildings, with a narrow walkway between. The first floors housed various small businesses, including a cell phone repair shop, and an upholsterer. Offices and apartments occupied the second floor. Of the seven cars parked diagonally at the curb before the Pumpkin Coach Charity Shop, four were frosted with water drops as if they had stood there all night. Cora Lee French’s green ‘92 Chevy was dry and faintly dusty, and the engine and hood were still warm. The driver’s door stood open, the keys in the ignition. Cora Lee’s purse lay on the seat.

The Pumpkin Coach was a favorite village institution, staffed by volunteers who arranged and sold the used books and furniture and clothes that were donated, the paintings and tableware and office equipment and children’s toys and every kind of bric-a-brac from Chinese cloisonne and old pewter to Mexican glassware, all gifts from upscale Molena Point households that were moving or changing decor. The shop’s annual income, more than $200,000, was given in total to Molena Point charities-the boys and girls clubs, the Scouts, County Animal Shelter, Meals for the Elderly, and over two dozen other like organizations. At peak hours the Pumpkin Coach was so busy that visitors found it hard to snag a parking place in the large lot. Now, at 6:00 A.M., the shop, of course, was closed.

Cora Lee’s car was not reflected in the large front window of the Pumpkin Coach, though it stood not ten feet from it, just across the sidewalk. None of the cars was mirrored there, nor were the trees that edged the parking lot, or the houses and shops across the street. The window could reflect nothing; its plate glass lay shattered across the paving, its jagged shards reflecting only the milky sky. Sharp pieces of broken glass stuck up from the window frame like knife blades.

The shop’s window was done up each Monday night with particularly appealing items, usually arranged on some theme. On Tuesday, viewers could enjoy the display, read the price list, and make their selections. They would return on Wednesday morning to hand over their cash and record their names on the “sold” list, often having to stand in line for the privilege. They would pick up their merchandise the following week, after the window was changed. Though the shop didn’t open until 10:00, the first arrivals might be there before 7:00, bringing their camp chairs, intent on being first in line.

The Pumpkin Coach was a mecca for the ladies of the Senior Survival club. They tried to rotate their visits so one or the other dropped by several times a day as new donations were put out. Usually Cora Lee took the Tuesday morning run to check out the contents of the new window display. This morning was the same as usual; she had stopped to check the window on her way to take the kit home-and had looked on the scene startled.

Within the display, broken glass sparkled across the small and handsome caned writing desk that held center stage and across the embroidered table cover tossed casually over one end. There was nothing on the desk, but three indentations had been left in the folded cover. Behind the desk hung five paintings and seven carved toys, all skewed aside where the backdrop had been pulled awry, revealing the dark shop behind.

At the foot of the desk Fern Barth lay unmoving, the wounds in her chest and shoulder bleeding into the spills of shattered glass, her blond hair flecked with glass, her fingers clutching a fragment of old, faded ribbon. Cora Lee stood looking, feeling cold, her hands shaking, and for a long moment she didn’t know what to do.

Joe Greyand Dulcie got theirfirst lookat themorning paper as they returned from a midnight hunt. TheMolena Point Gazettelay folded on a driveway, the front page partially visible. Hastily they pawed the paper open, crouching over the picture.

The Pumpkin Coach was enjoying extra publicity; the shop’s display was featured prominently, its window nearly filling the space above the fold-a picture that, if they were right, was going to cause plenty of activity in the village, and not all of it welcome.

Since midnight they had stalked rats beneath the low, dense foliage of a dwarf juniper forest. The decorative conifers covered a residential hillside, a mass of three-foot high bushes so thick-growing that even in the silver dawn the world beneath had been without light, its prickly tangle of interlaced branches stretching away in pure blackness. The warm, sandy earth beneath was riddled with rat holes-a hunting preserve for the small and quick.

Their breakfast catch had consisted of two fat rats and a small rabbit. They could have killed many more, but they couldn’t eat any more. Leaving the bony parts and the skin and fur, they had spent leisurely moments washing their paws and whiskers, then wound their way out of the dark jungle, their eyes shuttered and their ears back to avoid the tiny, prickly twigs. They came out onto the concrete drive just below a two-story house whose shades were still drawn. The cats’ coats smelled sharply of juniper, and their mouths were filled with the rusty aftertaste of rat. It was as they padded down the damp concrete drive toward the street below that the morning paper caught their attention.

Thanks to the cheaper production costs of modern technology, the photo was in full color. It showed three carved wooden chests sitting on an embroidered table cover atop a small writing desk in the shop window. Joe pawed the paper open to the article, his dark gray ears sharp forward, his yellow eyes keen with interest. He glanced up once at the windows of the house but saw no one, and heard no sound. Flattening the pages with quick paws, they crowded together side by side to read. Any neighbor peering out would suppose the kitties had found a mealy bug or some such innocuous creature in the damp folds of newsprint and were about to eat or torment it. The article held their full attention.

ISELMAN ART COLLECTION UNDER BLOCK

Dorothy Iselman, widow of village benefactor James Iselman, has put the couple’s multimillion-dollar art collection up for sale, retaining only a few favorite items. The oils and watercolors by famous eighteenth-century artists will be auctioned at Butterfield’s in San Francisco in mid-July. Less valuable pieces, such as the African and Mexican folk art that Iselman enjoyed owning, have been sold to several local galleries and collectors. Several nineteenth-century wooden toys and primitive, carved chests have been donated to the Pumpkin Coach, a special offering for its charity sales. These can be seen in a handsome display installed last night in the shop’s front window.

“What do they mean by primitive?” Joe said.

“Rough, bold. Not all refined and polished,” Dulcie said knowledgeably. Her green eyes widened. “Don’t they look Spanish? Could these be three of the Ortega-Diaz chests? Sitting in the Iselman house for how many years?”

“Not likely. Wouldn’t Casselrod have known about them, tried to buy them?”

“Maybe he did try, we don’t know. And did the Iselmans know about the letters? Would they have thought to look for some hidden compartment, like the white chest had?”

The cats looked at each other and took off down the drive heading for the Pumpkin Coach. Galloping through the fog across the empty residential streets, brushing through flowerbeds and trampling a delicate stand of Icelandic poppies, racing through patios and gardens, they had nearly reached the two long buildings standing end to end that housed the charity shop when a pale car pulled out of the street behind, coming straight for them. Dodging across the sidewalk into a recessed entry, they crouched against the door of a tile shop. Joe got one good glimpse of the license.

“Got the first four digits. 2ZJZ. A tan Infinity.”

They stood looking after the vanished driver, then raced down the narrow brick walk between the two buildings, approaching the front of the charity shop. Somewhere in the village, a siren screamed, not uncommon in the early morning hours. Galloping past parked cars whose metal bodies exuded chill, they passed a car still warm, a green Chevy with the driver’s door open.

“Cora Lee’s car?” Dulcie said.

Joe glanced in, catching Cora Lee’s scent, wondering why she had left the door open, and where she was. Skirting the glass that glinted across the sidewalk, warily he approached the shop window.

They could smell blood, and the sweet scent of candy. Circling around the glass, the cats reared up to look.

Fern Barth lay in the window, the blood from her wounds turning dark. Joe, leaping up over the jagged teeth of glass that protruded from the sill, stepping carefully around the blood and debris, put his nose to hers.

She wasn’t breathing but she was faintly warm. He was backing away when sirens came screaming and a squad car and an emergency vehicle careened around the corner. Joe sailed out of the window over the ragged glass and behind the potted plants that stood before the shop. The cats were never able to shake their need to hide-and maybe for good reason. Max Harper wasn’t unaware of cats showing up at a scene, of cat hairs clinging to evidence, of paw prints where they should not have been.

An officer swung out of the car, gun drawn, scanning the area, leaving his partner behind the wheel. From the ambulance, two medics stepped up into the shop window as if they knew exactly where to go. As the officer on foot checked the parked cars, the police unit took off toward the back street, apparently to circle the building. The officer on foot approached the green Chevy. Looking inside, he didn’t touch anything. He checked the backseat, but didn’t close the door. As he checked out the other cars, Joe and Dulcie slipped through the shadows to the bushes that lined the walk between the buildings. There, Joe tried to pull glass from his paws, dragging his pads across the small branches to dislodge clinging shards, then plucking some out with his teeth, spitting glass into the dirt, his ears back with annoyance.

The officer on foot had left the cars and moved up into the window, they heard him walk on back inside the shop. The minute he was gone, Joe sped for the Chevy and leaped into the seat.

He sniffed at Cora Lee’s purse, but when he smelled the dash and the cell phone, he shook his head with disbelief. Dropping out again, he returned to the bushes, to Dulcie.

“The kit’s scent is all over the phone.”

“The kit made the emergency call?”

“Apparently. She’s watched us enough times.”

“So where is she? She stayed with Cora Lee last night. Where is Cora Lee? Oh, she’s not in the shop! Lying hurt in there! But what happened?” Dulcie peered out toward the shattered display window, then turned to look at Joe, her eyes wide. “Or did she�? Oh, but Cora Lee wouldn’t�”

Joe just looked at her.

“She was really hurt when she lost the part,” Dulcie whispered. “Angry at Traynor, at Vivi, at Sam Ladler-she must have hated Fern. But she wouldn’t�”

Joe was busy sniffing the bushes. “Cora Lee brushed by here. So did the kit. Come on.”

They followed the scents of woman and cat up the brick walk and around to the street behind the Pumpkin Coach, where the shop’s back door opened. The empty street smelled of car exhaust. They didn’t see the officer on foot, nor was the squad car in sight. As they approached the small, blind utility alley just beyond the Pumpkin Coach, the scents they followed deepened. They could see nothing in the short dead-end alley but a heap of wadded white paper down at the end piled between the trash cans.

But something else was there, besides paper. They glimpsed dark hair among the white, and a tan arm. Then they saw the kit crouched over the figure, pawing at her, trying to wake her.

Cora Lee lay among the rubble, her white dress twisted, her face grayish and sick. When the kit saw Joe and Dulcie she bolted into them mewling.

“She’s dead. Oh, she’s not dead! Oh, help her!”

Sirens screamed again as another squad car roared through the side streets. Pushing the kit away, Joe nosed at Cora Lee trying to detect breathing. Yes, a faint, warm breath, though her skin was chilled.

“She’s alive, Kit. We need the medics, the cops. But you called-”

“From Cora Lee’s car phone like you showed me. I told them there was a dead woman in the window.”

“You told them Cora Lee was here?”

“She wasn’t-I didn’t know she was here. Just that Fern woman in the window.”

“Stay with her, Kit. Stay until we-”

But Dulcie had already raced away, headed for Cora Lee’s car and cell phone.

20 [��������: pic_21.jpg]

The ambulance had gone, taking Cora Lee to the hospital bundled onto a stretcher, tucked up under a blanket. Dulcie imagined her in surgery surrounded by doctors and nurses working over her. Stubbornly she imagined Cora Lee awake again, sitting up in a white hospital bed with flowers and get-well cards around her. And, crouched in the shadows of the alley, cuddling the kit close, she tried to stop the little tattercoat’s frightened shivering. Licking the kit’s ear, Dulcie purred against her, whispering, “It’s all right. She’ll be all right, Kit.” But they couldn’t be certain of that.

“She ran from that man,” the kit said. “He chased her, he must have hit her. When I found her here she was so cold, then sweating, and then cold again. She looked at me and cried, ‘Don’t!’ and tried to get up and then she twisted, and cried out, then fainted.” The kit looked wildly at Dulcie. “All those terrible tubes hanging when they put her in the ambulance. What did they do to her?”

“The tubes could save her life, Kit. The medics will do all they can, and we must be patient.” But Dulcie didn’t feel patient.

The kit’s dark mottled fur stuck up in frantic wisps, and her yellow eyes were as round as moons. “She was taking me home to Wilma’s, she�”

“I know, Kit. I was there when she called Wilma. She said she’d stop here to look in the shop window at the new display. She’ll be all right, Kit. She’ll be fine. Did you have a nice evening?”

“Oh, yes. Custard and chicken and music and such a pretty house and a nice creamy blanket on her bed, but I had a bad dream and then this morning it came true. When we got here the window was all broken, and I could see someone lying in there. Cora Lee rushed to look, she was so upset and wanting to help that she left the car door open, didn’t think about a cat running away. But I didn’t run, I jumped on the dash and watched her through the window. She looked in at the dead woman, then she whirled around toward the car like she meant to call the police, but there was a little white packet nearly under her feet, like papers. She snatched it up, hardly stopping.”

“What papers, Kit?”

“I don’t know, papers tied in a ribbon, and she was almost to the car when a man burst out of the window and hit her and grabbed at them. She kicked him and hit him and twisted away and ran. She still had the little packet. Ran around the side of the building. I remembered about the phone and punched the numbers like I saw you and Joe do, and told them about the woman in the window.

“He chased her, and I followed them. I was so scared and I wanted to claw him. He chased her into the alley and hit her hard. When she fell he grabbed the papers and ran. Left her there all huddled up clutching her middle. I heard a car roar away. She tried to crawl but she was hurt too bad and I didn’t know what to do. She looked at me like she didn’t see me right, like she didn’t know what I was. I licked and licked her face and was going to go talk in the phone again, but she was so hot and then cold and then I heard the siren, and then you came.”

“Kit, what did the papers look like?” Dulcie said.

“Folded up and tied with an old faded ribbon. Old brownish paper like if it’s been in the trash a long time.”

“What did the man look like?” Dulcie glanced around for Joe but didn’t see him.

“Just a man. I don’t know. Tan clothes. Tall, sort of thin, running away.”

“What color hair? Would you know him? Recognize his smell?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” The kit looked crestfallen, her head down, her ears back to her head. “I’m not sure. Maybe I would.” She began to sniff around the alley. But the medics and police had been there; the smells were all mixed up.

“Come here, Kit,” Dulcie said. “It will be all right, we’ll find him.” But her mind was on Joe Grey, uneasy because Joe had vanished.

Was he back there among the officers? Had he followed them into the shop through the broken window? Armed officers going in after a killer would be alert to any smallest movement. The faintest disturbance among the shelves and furniture, and their guns would be on him.

But she was being foolish. Police officers didn’t fire blind-not like some untrained deer hunter shooting at a sound in the brush.

Yet still she worried, pacing the alley, afraid Joe would do something foolish, something macho and foolish.

Withinthe shop, Joe looked far from macho. Crouched under a rack of women’s dresses with a lacy hem dragging over his ears, he peered out from between swaths of silk and velvet, watching Dallas Garza clear the premises. The resale store was so crowded with racks and shelves and overflowing boxes that he felt like he was back among the heaped refuse of some San Francisco alley-except these cast-offs were a far cry from the junk he’d encountered in the city; that trash had been so tacky that even the homeless didn’t want it. This shop had some nicer cookware than Clyde’s kitchen, some handsome lamps, and typewriters and even a microwave oven. In the center of the room between the clothes racks stood a child’s desk, a faded easy chair, a pink crib, three dining chairs, and a sign proclaiming that all mechanical items were in working order.

Slipping along beneath the ladies’ hems, flinching as clothes slithered down his back, he followed Detective Garza. Garza was taking his time, photographing and making carefully recorded notes in a small black notebook.

Pausing under a rack of men’s pants and shirts, Joe followed Garza through an archway, creeping belly-to-carpet among the shadows, into the back room-into chaos. A bookshelf lay toppled, its books scattered open across a cascade of phonograph records and broken china. An accordion lay crushed beneath an overturned table, among a spill of mismatched shoes. And there were splatters of blood, the smell of human blood.

Beneath the fallen books and records, he saw a small, carved chest. A second chest lay half hidden by a scatter of baby clothes. Both looked old, dark, and roughly made, very much like those in the newspaper picture. Watching Garza photograph the scene, Joe slipped behind an upended suitcase for a better look. He wondered if Garza had seen the morning paper, if he was aware of the wooden casks. One was the size of a small bread box, incised with primitive birds and painted in soft greens and blues. The other was half that big, carved with flowers and stained in red and green. The pieces of a third box lay beneath it, smashed and split, with the lid torn off. Joe studied the scene of what must have been a violent fight, and sniffed the tangle of smells.

He had, following Garza in through the front door, reared up to look into the window at Fern’s body where she lay waiting for the coroner. The two bullet holes, one through her chest, one through her throat, were both small and neat. As the detective turned away, Joe had nipped into the window for a better look.

The bullet holes were larger in front, raggedly splattering blood and flesh, as if she’d been shot in the back. Certainly she had been shot at close range. He couldn’t see her back, to know if there were powder marks. The unpleasant smells of death mixed sickly with Fern’s perfume.

But here in the back room, Fern’s perfume came sharper, clinging among the broken furniture.

Had she fought with her killer here? Had she been shot here, from behind, then dragged into the broken window? Or had she managed to crawl there before she died? Or had she run, and gotten as far as the window? He watched Garza photographing, taking advantage of every angle, capturing every smallest detail. Was it Fern who broke the window to get at the chests or did her killer show up first and shatter the glass? If Fern broke in, why would she bring the casks in here? Maybe she was followed, maybe she ran back here to get away.

Too many possible scenarios. He wanted to hear the kit’s story. And he wanted to know more of what Garza and Davis found before he tried to fit the pieces together.

The fur flew in both directions. Joe’s clandestine method of investigation, even with the advantage of his highly superior scent detection, his finer night vision, and his acumen at breaking and entering, was seldom adequate alone, without input from the police. A cat sleuth, picking up what the cops missed, was still deeply dependent on the findings of the crime lab.

Face it, Joe thought, he and Dulcie and the cops were a team-even if MPPD knew nothing of the arrangement. What a cat laugh, Joe thought, stretching out under an antique baby carriage, watching Garza bag evidence. The department had no notion that it was the cooperation of cat and human that had made them one of the finest detecting machines in the state, had put them right up there in the top percentage of cases solved.

Garza had photographed the area where the three chests lay, and was now bagging them, taking great care, placing each piece of the broken cask in a separate evidence bag. One thing was sure. If the fight in the back room was between Fern and the man who hit Cora Lee, if Fern had held her own long enough to create this amount of damage and chaos, Fern was stronger than she looked.

But she would be strong, Joe thought. Working for Richard Casselrod in the antiques shop, she not only kept the books but helped with the displays and moved heavy pieces of furniture. Though a lot of that skill was in the balance, in little tricks like moving a heavy dresser across smooth floors on an upside-down throw rug, sliding it along as he’d seen Wilma do when she rearranged her furniture.

Say the unknown man broke the glass and grabbed the chests, but saw Fern approaching. He ran into the shop. Fern followed him, tried to take the chests, and there was a fight. One of them fell, breaking the one chest. The guy pulled a gun, Fern ran, and he shot her.

Too soon to speculate. So far, his ideas were no more than a forensic shell game-Clyde would say Joe was playing Monday morning football. Yet he couldn’t leave it alone; something kept nudging him. He was missing something, some fact right in front of his nose, some small bit of evidence that, apparently, even Dallas Garza hadn’t found.

He sure didn’t want to think that Cora Lee was involved in this. And so far, he’d found no scent of her within the shop, or in the window.

One thing was certain. When the ladies of the Senior Survival club had gotten interested in the old chests, they had fallen into more than they bargained for. Someone intent on making a bundle from the Ortega-Diaz letters had become a real threat to the ladies’ innocent pursuit.

Creeping close on Garza’s heels among the clutter, Joe sniffed every object, trying to sort out the smells. It wasn’t easy, with recurring whiffs of Fern’s gumdrop perfume mixed with the aroma of old books and old clothes and shoes, with a regular soup of ancient stinks. Yet he did find one scent worth sorting out, a hint hardly detectable over Fern’s perfume. Padding closer to a heap of clothes, he fixed on a tiny bit of refuse barely visible beneath a wrinkled scarf.

He was looking at telling evidence, at a missing piece of the puzzle.

He reached out a paw, but didn’t touch. He shoved the scarf away, so the cherry pit was in plain sight. He was crouched, looking, when Garza turned.

Backing into cover, Joe remained frozen behind a rack of dresses. Garza stared in his direction and stood watching for further movement, his square, tanned face immobile, his dark eyes watchful, his hand on his gun.

When the detective moved suddenly, rolling the clothes rack aside, Joe moved along with the rack, staying under the clothes, his nose inches from Garza’s black shoes.

When Garza found no one behind the rack he circled it, and investigated two more racks that stood against the wall before he decided he was alone.

But he had seen the cherry pit. He stood looking, then knelt and scooped it into an evidence bag.

Smiling, with a twitch of whiskers, Joe Grey fled the scene, fading among the shadows to the front door, pawing it open where an officer had left it ajar. Racing up the sidewalk and around the corner to find Dulcie and the kit, the last bit of evidence burned in his brain, Vivi’s forgotten little cherry seed, sucked clean.

21 [��������: pic_22.jpg]

“This isn’t going to work,” Joe said, looking up at the new, locked front door of the police station.

“Of course it will work.” Dulcie backed deeper into the bushes, away from the sidewalk and the scudding wind that dragged leaves along the pavement past their noses. They were quiet a moment, warm against each other, watching the pub door, half a block down, waiting for Max Harper. Every time the door opened, the wind carried to them the heady scent of beer and hot pastrami.

When Harper emerged at last, returning from an early dinner, Dulcie slipped from the bushes into the shadow behind the twin urns of potted geraniums that flanked the door. When he entered the station she padded in directly behind his heels, as silent and intent as a stalking tiger.

Joe moved close to her and they slipped behind the front desk, across from the dispatcher’s counter. Above them, the new front window was just beginning to darken, the spring sky streaked with swiftly blowing clouds. As Harper headed down the hall to his office, Dulcie slipped out again and approached the dispatcher’s open cubicle. Padding in under the counter, looking up at the dispatcher, she mewed softly.

The evening dispatcher was a middle-aged woman with blond curly hair and a thick stomach that pulled her uniform into horizontal wrinkles. She occupied a nine-by-nine room with open counters on three sides, loaded with electronic equipment. When she saw Dulcie, she glanced across the entry and down the hall to make sure no uninvited human had entered with the cat.

“Will you look at this. Where did you come from, you pretty thing? Did you follow the captain in here? Oh, aren’t you sweet!” She knelt to pet Dulcie, her curly blond hair brassy in the overhead light. Maybe the little chirping noise she made was the way she talked to her own cats. She was new to the station, working the four-to-twelve watch. Her name tag said Officer Mabel Farthy. Opening a drawer under the counter, she produced a ham sandwich from a crackling paper bag.

“Come on up on the counter, kitty. Want a little bite? Come on up here.”

Dulcie leaped onto the counter, smiled sweetly, and accepted the offering, gobbling the ham but daintily spitting out the bread. At least the woman didn’t use mustard. Mabel stood stroking and talking to Dulcie until an emergency call pulled her away. When she turned to handle the radio, Dulcie walked along the counter to where she could see Joe peering out from behind the information desk. He couldn’t see down the hall but she could.

The coast was clear, not an officer in sight. She flicked her tail, and Joe streaked down the hall toward the offices.

Light spilled from two rooms. The one at the far end was where Harper had disappeared. When Joe vanished into the first room, Dulcie turned to study the communications layout.

This setup had far more space than the old communications desk, and Harper had purchased more and fancier equipment. The three new computers and three radios were indeed impressive. Mabel answered two more calls, sending her squad cars out, then took advantage of a lull in the action to offer Dulcie another morsel of ham, petting and talking to her. Oh, Dulcie thought, fate did smile upon the righteous feline. This woman was a pushover.

Dulcie remained on the counter for some time, shamelessly purring and rubbing her face against Mabel’s stroking hand, cementing their relationship. With the increased security in the remodeled department, Mabel and the two other dispatchers were going to be key players.

She just hoped one of the three didn’t turn out to be ailurophobic. Smiling up at Mabel, she purred a song of delight that left the officer beaming, and left Dulcie feeling that she could tame the most timorous cat hater. All she and Joe had to do was hang around the department and make cute, and they’d soon be regulars. Maybe they could even become department mascots, and she could turn her gig as official library cat over to the kit for a while.

This morning, when Cora Lee was taken straight from the Emergency Room into surgery, the kit had been a basket case, pacing and worrying until Wilma, in desperation, took the kit to work with her at the library. The kit had seemed to like that. Cora Lee was out of surgery by noon, minus her spleen, which Wilma said was not critical. Otherwise, Wilma said, she was doing well. Wilma had promised the kit that, if she behaved, she’d smuggle her in when Cora Lee was ready for visitors.

A cat in a briefcase? Or maybe concealed in a pot of fake flowers? Smiling, Dulcie pictured a gift box fitted out with a little door and perforated with air holes.

Following Max Harper’s scent down the hall, Joe tried to get the lay of the new design. The remodeling wasn’t yet finished, but most of the drywall was up and plastered, and ready to paint. The new bulletproof windows were in place, as well as bulletproof glass between the offices. He missed the huge squad room crowded with desks, with all the officers doing their paperwork and taking their phone calls in communal chaos. Now that Harper and the two detectives had private offices, Joe’s own life would be more difficult.

Dallas Garza sat at the desk in the first lighted office, deep in paperwork. But the instant Joe peered cautiously in around the door, Garza glanced up, suddenly all attention. “What the hell?”

Joe stepped out into plain sight, his paws sweating, telling himself to stay cool.

Garza laughed. “How the hell did you get in here?” He held out his hand to Joe. Annoyed, Joe approached him and rubbed his face against Garza’s fingers. This was so demeaning, to have to ingratiate himself-but then, he did like Garza. It wasn’t as if he was playing up to some stuffed-suit type.

“You trying to adopt me, cat? You move into my house, and now here you are in the station. What happened to our beefed-up security? You must really want to be a cop’s cat.”

Joe! The name is Joe!

Garza rubbed Joe’s ears the way he would a dog’s, gave him a pat on the butt, and turned back to his reports. Casually Joe trotted away, hoping the detective wouldn’t think to mention the incident to Max Harper. Harper would not be so forgiving. He soon found the report-writing room with its six computers, each in a private carrel, with bulletproof glass between. He found the coffee room, and had a little snack of someone’s leftover doughnut. But it was the small, padded interrogation room that really interested him.

The cubicle was just big enough for a little table and two chairs. A TV camera was mounted high in one corner. It would be connected to screens in other parts of the building, maybe in the communications room, Joe thought, and in Garza’s and Harper’s offices, areas where an enterprising cat might, with a cavalier smile and purr, pick up all manner of police intelligence.

The door to the basement was kept closed. He knew that the disaster center down there had been upgraded with state-of-the-art communications equipment, a large supply of emergency food and water, six narrow bunk beds lining one wall, and improved bathing facilities. Harper had described with some pride this brains of rescue operations, to be used in case of flood, earthquake, riot, or war.

Max Harper had created a new and improved crime-fighting plant with all the bells and whistles-efficient, but not cat friendly. Maybe Dulcie was right; maybe feline PR was the best antidote to all this upscale security.

Times change,Joe thought.Everything today hinges on good PR. Whether you’re a writer like Elliott Traynor or just an everyday cat sleuth, face it, networking’s become important.He guessed he could go along with the program, could put forth a little in-your-face chutzpah. If Dulcie could play lonesome kitty, so could he.

He didn’t care to see the updated basement firing range; he’d rather just imagine the cavernous room from seeing similar ones on TV. He didn’t like the smell of gunpowder. That stink brought back a couple of decidedly unpleasant moments in his career.

Harper had described very graphically to Clyde how the firing booths had been improved, with thicker barriers between them, and more sophisticated targets; with moving figures electrically operated and enough sound effects and flashing lights to unnerve any shooter. Joe was headed back toward the dispatcher, slipping past Harper’s lighted office hoping the captain wouldn’t look up from his desk, when the dispatcher buzzed Harper. “Long distance, Captain.”

“Tell them-”

“It’s New York. Some literary agent.”

“A what?”

“Literary agent,” she said. “An Adele McElroy.”

Drawing back into the shadows, Joe listened with a thrill of interest. He heard Harper pick up and identify himself, then the captain was quiet for a moment. Then, “Of course I know Traynor. He’s big news here in the village.”

Joe didn’t like hearing only one side of a conversation. He began to fidget. When Harper paused again, he beat it into the first empty office.

Leaping atop a makeshift desk of plywood balanced on sawhorses, he slipped the phone from its cradle.

Silence. Wrong line. He punched the lighted button.

“� all right,” Harper was saying, “as far as I know. Yes, Mrs. Traynor’s here with him. They’ve cast his play and are starting to rehearse. What is this about?”

“Maybe nothing,” the agent said. “Elliott is three months overdue on this book, and that’s not like him. He’s always ahead of schedule. And he’s acting so very strange, he has me worried. We’re good friends, Captain, social friends. But now suddenly he won’t talk to me. Won’t tell me what’s wrong, yet I have the distinct impression something’s very much amiss.

“I’m concerned about him, Captain Harper, and I didn’t know who else to call. Elliott’s always been so conscientious, enthusiastic about his work, always had the material to me months ahead of time-and he has always confided in me.

“I know about the cancer, of course, I know he’s continuing treatments out there. It may be nothing more than his not feeling well, the depression that can accompany ill health. I can’t get anything out of the medical people here. I’ve called his doctors but they won’t talk to me.

“I can’t help thinking there’s something really wrong-more than the illness. I know it sounds strange, but-do you know him well?”

“No, Ms. McElroy, I don’t. I really don’t see that-”

“This-this may sound like nothing to you, but he’s sending me chapters-a few at a time, which I asked him to do. Chapters that are� they have me upset about his mental state. They’re so� so inferior to his usual work�”

“That really isn’t-”

“We’re talking a half-million-dollar advance, here. I don’t think he’s in any condition to write this book. But he won’t talk to me. Nor will Vivi. This isn’t like Elliott. And I� I need help here, and I don’t know who else to call.”

Harper was silent.

“I called a friend of his, out there, a Gabrielle Row, asked her if Elliott was all right. She said she really didn’t know, that she didn’t see that much of them, that they were only casual acquaintances. I had thought differently, from Elliott. I had trouble getting her number, and I still haven’t reached Richard Casselrod, though I’ve left messages.”

“You want to fill me in on your relationship with Gabrielle and with Casselrod?”

“Well, it’s really Elliott and Vivi’s relationship. Gabrielle was here in the city last fall. She had lunch with Elliott. And Casselrod was here in December for the antiques show. He contacted Elliott and spent some time with him, something to do with research on the new book.”

As far as Joe knew, Casselrod hadn’t socialized with the Traynors in the village. Now, Harper was cool to the agent. “Can you be more specific about the problem?”

“It’s his writing, Captain. It’s� I know this sounds silly, but these last chapters are so very different from Elliott’s lyrical style, so different that I’m worried about his state of mind.”

“Ms. McElroy, there’s nothing the police can do about Mr. Traynor’s writing skills or his state of mind. I’m not some literary shrink committed to treating writer’s block. If Traynor should become violent or present some kind of danger�”

“Or, Captain, if he is in danger? I think that might be a possibility.”

“If he’s threatened or harmed, Ms. McElroy, of course it’s our business. But he would have to file a complaint.”

Why was Harper being so stuffy? And sarcastic! Joe felt a quick stab of anger at the man he admired. This woman sounded in real distress.

And he could understand why, having read Traynor’s latest work. If he were Traynor’s agent, he’d be worried, too. This Adele McElroy was three thousand miles away, trying to deal with a writer who seemed to have lost his grip, who seemed to be dumping a million-dollar novel down the drain. She needed some help here. Why wouldn’t Harper at least be civil? Joe wanted to tell her she should hop on a plane, get on out here, deal with Traynor in person.

“Captain Harper, let me give you my number. Would you call me� if you find anything you think would be of help?”

Harper grunted. She repeated her number. Hastily Joe memorized it, saying it over to himself. The handicap of being unable to write didn’t bother him often. But when a problem did arise, it really bugged him-just as Harper’s attitude was bugging him.

Though to be fair, he had to consider the matter from Harper’s view. This really wasn’t police business. Not unless a complaint was filed, as Harper said, or something happened to Traynor that would bring in the law. Max Harper was a cop, not a social worker.

And yet, Joe thought, knowing Harper, and despite what Harper told Adele McElroy, he bet the captain would go the extra mile, that he’d look into Traynor’s condition far more thoroughly than he had told Ms. McElroy he could do.

After all, there was plenty of indication that Traynor might be going funny in the brain. Like shooting raccoons in his pantry-some people might consider that strange. And Traynor’s extreme irritability. And Traynor demanding that Fern Barth play the lead, instead of Cora Lee, a decision any fool could see was softheaded. And Traynor’s two disappearing acts from local restaurants, apparently to avoid a face-to-face with Ryan Flannery. Added up, all this seemed to Joe Grey to amount to a decidedly squirrelly mental condition.

Sliding the phone back onto its cradle, Joe trotted down the hall, catching Dulcie’s eye where she sat on the dispatcher’s desk purring and preening. He watched Dulcie give the dispatcher an enthusiastic head rub, and drop to the floor meowing loudly.

Obediently Mabel Farthy came out from her cubicle. Maybe she had cats at home who had conditioned her to the imperative mew. Looking out carefully through the glass exterior door, she threw the lock and opened it.

The cats trotted through. Looking back at her, they had to hide a laugh. She stood at the glass watching them but when she saw them looking she grinned sheepishly and returned to her station.

The minute they were out of sight and earshot, Dulcie was all over Joe, lashing her tail, nudging him into the bushes so they could talk. “What was that about? What’s with Elliott Traynor? His agent called? What’s happening?”

Moving along through the bushes that edged the sidewalk, Joe was quiet. Dulcie nudged him harder. “What? Talk to me! Tell me what’s happening!”

Joe turned to look at her. She looked so bright and sweet, peering at him through the camellia bushes-exactly like the first time he’d seen her. She’d been peering out at him, then, her dark tabby stripes blending with the foliage, her pink mouth turned up in a smile, her emerald green eyes flashing. In that one moment, he’d been hooked. Head over heels. He’d never regretted it.

“Come on, Joe. Talk!”

“Traynor’s agent’s worried about him. Partly because his work’s overdue, partly because it isn’t up to his usual standards-she’s worried about his mental condition.

“She said she’d called Gabrielle, that Gabrielle said she hadn’t seen them, that they were barely acquainted. The agent said Elliott had told her otherwise.

“And she said Richard Casselrod spent some time with the Traynors in New York last December.”

Dulcie sat down beneath a camellia bush. “We haven’t seen Casselrod with Traynor or Vivi. I don’t-”

The kit appeared suddenly from nowhere, pushing under the bush beside Dulcie, batting at the fallen camellias. Pressing against Dulcie, she was very quiet. Dulcie nosed at her. “What, Kit? You feel all right?”

“Fine,” said the kit in a small voice.

“You miss Cora Lee,” Dulcie said. “She’ll be home soon. Didn’t you enjoy the library today?” Despite the success of Cora Lee’s operation, everyone was concerned about her. “She’ll be home soon, Kit. Home to Wilma’s house until she feels stronger. Maybe you can sleep on her bed, if you’re careful of her incision.” Dulcie looked at Joe. “We need to-”

“Check out Casselrod,” Joe said. “See what we can find. Maybe letters or an address book, something to connect him to the Traynors. And don’t you wonder about Gabrielle?” Joe gave her a long look, and sprang away, heading for the shops south of Ocean.

Buffeted by the wind, and dodging tourists’ feet, within ten minutes they were across the village and up onto the roofs of Hidalgo Plaza. Here on the tiles and shingles, the wind blew harder. Unimpeded by the barriers of solid walls, it shook the tops of the oak trees, the gusts so violent that it flattened the three cats against the slanting peaks. They had to dig in their claws and wait for the hardest blows to ease. Pummeled and prodded, they at last reached the lighted attic window of Gabrielle Row’s sewing workroom.

The open curtains revealed five sewing machines, three padded worktables as long as beds, and racks of hanging clothes and stacks of fabric. Beneath the fluorescent lights, Gabrielle stood alone leaning over a table cutting out a pattern pinned to a length of heavy white silk.

“Could that be Catalina’s wedding gown?” Dulcie said. “Or her nightie? Spanish brides had elaborate nightgowns.”

The kit wriggled close between them, her black-and-brown fur tugged by the wind. “So far away, that other world,” the kit whispered.

“What other world?” Joe said uneasily. He didn’t like the kit’s dreaming. “That talk isn’t going to get us Gabrielle’s address book.”

“Worlds beyond worlds,” the kit said. “Centuries all gone, in another time. An address book? But we can just slip in through the window. Help me push.”

“Not here,” Joe said. “We just wanted to make sure her apartment was empty.” And fighting the wind he took off again over the roofs, then along an oak branch above an alley; then up a peak so steep they slid as they climbed and nearly tumbled down the far side, approaching Gabrielle’s small third-floor window.

Though the glass, they could smell spices, and coffee grounds. Three potted plants stood on the deep sill, between the dark pane and the drawn curtain. The room beyond was dark. They pawed uselessly at the glass. It looked like it had never been opened. All the other apartment windows but one were inaccessible even to a cat, all faced a sheer, two-story drop to the street. Not a vine, not a trellis, not even a protruding windowsill.

The larger window, which was tucked away around the corner among the rooftops, was heavily draped, too, emitting only the thinnest glow at one side, as if from a nightlight.

“Double locked,” Joe said, peering sideways along the glass. “A heavy sliding bolt.”

“Listen,” Dulcie whispered. They all heard it, a click from somewhere deep within the apartment.

Another click, and a soft thud. No lights came on. They’d heard no door open and close as if Gabrielle had finished work and hurried home. She’d hardly had time to do that; they’d come themselves swift as the wind, blown by the wind straight across the rooftops.

From the kitchen, a stealthy sliding noise, like a drawer being pulled out. Another. And another. Then cupboard doors clicking open. Belatedly, a light went on in the kitchen, throwing a shadow on the opaque curtain; a shadow that rose tall, then dropped low as the searcher moved and knelt, opening cupboard doors.

Unable to see in, and unable to reach any other window or try the front door, whose stairway they knew quite well opened from a locked foyer, the cats waited with tail-lashing frustration. The sounds ceased with a final click, and soft footsteps went away again, then a thud as of the front door closing.

Peering over the edge of the roof above the lobby door, they watched a figure emerge, a tall man in a tan coat, with a floppy hat pulled down low. He hurried to the corner and disappeared around it, a slim man with a long, easy stride.

Racing across the shingles they looked down at the side street where he moved quickly toward a tan Infinity. He pulled his hat off and slid in. He had light brown hair, neatly trimmed. The car was a sleek model with curving lines and a sunroof. As its lights came on, Joe leaned so far from the roof that little more than his rump remained on the shingles. When the car roared off he hung there a moment then backed away from the edge.

“2ZJZ417,” Joe said, smiling. “That’s the car from the Pumpkin Coach that almost hit us.” He looked away where the Infinity had disappeared. “Could be Augor Prey. The guy fits his description. Let’s have a closer look.” And they took off across the roof and down a pine tree to the street. Who knew what scent the tires may have left on the blacktop? Whatever might be there, Joe wanted to find it before wind and passing cars wiped it away.

22 [��������: pic_23.jpg]

The street was empty except for two parked cars half a block away. Despite the wind, the smell of exhaust still clung along the concrete. Where the tan Infinity had parked, the pavement was patterned with fragments of crumbled eucalyptus leaves, already stirred by the wind, deposited in the shape of tire grids and decorated with crushed green berries.

“Pyracantha berries,” Joe said, sniffing. “Don’t get that stuff on your nose, Kit. It’s poison.” The tomcat sat down on the curb. “If that was Augor Prey, maybe he’s renting a room, like Harper thought.”

How many places in the village rented rooms, and had eucalyptus and pyracantha by the street or by a parking space? Two dozen? Three dozen? The cats looked at each other and shrugged.

“What else have we got?” Dulcie said.

Most likely the guy hadn’t been lucky enough to get a garage. Garages in the village were scarcer than declawed cats in a room full of pit bulls. Even a single garage built for a 1920s flivver was a premium item much in demand. The first place that came to Joe’s mind was up the hills on the north side. The other house was a block from the beach; both had a eucalyptus tree, pyracantha bushes, and rooms to rent.

“But before we go chasing after Augor Prey,” Joe said, “let’s give Casselrod a try. See if we can find a connection between him and Traynor.” He was silent a moment, his yellow eyes narrowed, his look turned inward as if listening to some interior wisdom.

“What?” she said softly.

“I keep thinking we’re missing something. Something big and obvious, right in front of our noses.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know, Dulcie. Are the chests the connection between Susan’s breakin and Fern’s murder? Are a few old Spanish chests enough to kill for?”

“The chests, and Catalina’s letters-at some ten thousand each. How many letters were there? Ten letters is a hundred thousand bucks.” The concept of that much cash, to a cat, was surreal. Did you count that kind of money by how many cases of caviar that would buy?

“And there are not only Catalina’s letters,” Joe said, “but Marcos Romero’s answers. According to the research in Traynor’s office, those letters were smuggled back and forth for years-by travelers, the servants of travelers, by vaqueros herding cattle. Even by some of the mission Indians.”

He rose impatiently. “We’re not going to learn anything sitting here in the gutter.” He headed up the pine tree again, and away across the roofs, Dulcie and the kit close behind him, fighting the wind, heading for Casselrod’s Antiques.

In through the high, loose window they moved swiftly, and through the dusty attic presided over by the motionless sewing dummy. She stood stoic and silent, as if disapproving of their trespass. The kit stared at her, and hissed, then approached her cautiously. Sniffing at her iron stand, she turned away with disgust, and was soon caught up in the attic’s jumbled maze, lost among Casselrod’s ancient and dusty collections. Dulcie glanced back at her only once before following Joe, galloping down the two flights to the main floor.

The first order of business was to call Harper.

Because the information they’d collected was so fragmented, they had delayed that sensitive call, hoping to put some of the pieces together into a tip that was worth passing on. Joe couldn’t remember when a case had been so frustrating.

He wondered sometimes if his phone voice carried some disturbing feline echo that made Max Harper uneasy; some unidentifiable overtone, some exotic nonhuman timbre that unsettled the captain.

Harper was an animal-oriented guy, attuned to the moods and body language of dogs and horses, to their subtle communications. What might such a person detect in the timbre of Joe’s phone calls that another human might not sense?

Heading across Casselrod’s dark showroom into the office, he leaped to the battered secretarial desk, slipped the phone off its cradle, and punched in the number of Harper’s cell phone. Following him up, Dulcie pressed her face close to his to listen, her whiskers tickling his nose.

Harper answered curtly. His voice cut in and out as if he might be moving through traffic. Joe knew he could call the station for a better connection, but he never liked doing that.

“You are looking for Augor Prey, Captain. He may be driving a tan, two-door Infinity. Fairly new model. License 2ZJZ417.”

Harper repeated the number, not wasting time on small talk. Long ago he had quit asking the snitch useless questions. Maybe, Joe thought, he was getting Harper trained.

“That man tossed Gabrielle French’s apartment this evening,” Joe said. “And there’s another matter that might interest you.”

“Go on.”

“Elliott Traynor has sold at least two valuable old letters written by-”

“Hold it,” Harper said, “you’re cutting out. Wait until I turn the corner.”

There was a pause.

“Okay,” Harper said, coming in more clearly. “Letters written by who?”

“Catalina Ortega-Diaz, the heroine of his play. Traynor sold those two letters for over twenty thousand bucks to a San Francisco dealer.”

“What does that-?”

“The history of Catalina tells not only about her letters but about the carved chests in which she kept them-like the three taken from the Pumpkin Coach window, when Fern Barth was killed. Vivi Traynor seems interested in similar chests, as is Richard Casselrod. The white chest that Casselrod took from Gabrielle Row at the McLeary yard sale could be one of the group of seven. Casselrod took it apart, and there was a secret compartment in the bottom, plenty big enough to hold a few letters.”

Joe didn’t wait for Harper to respond. That was all he had to tell the captain. He punched the disconnect, shoved the phone back in its cradle, and leaped from the desk to a bank of file cabinets, then onto the chair before the rolltop desk.

The lock was engaged, as before. Inserting a claw into the keyhole, he felt delicately for its inner workings.

He tried for some time to line up the tumblers, with no luck. From two flights above them, they could hear the kit leaping and playing among the stored furniture. The lock was more cleverly fashioned than Joe had thought. Both cats tried until their paws felt raw, then Joe tried the metal file cabinets, with no more success. To lose against an inanimate object gave him the same feeling as being caged, a helpless anger gripping him. The drawers were as impenetrable as if Richard Casselrod had invoked some kind of office voodoo. Joe and Dulcie ended up hissing irritably at each other as they pawed through Casselrod’s stacked papers.

They found no mention of Elliott Traynor.

“Maybe,” Dulcie said, “it was Fern Barth who put Casselrod onto the letters.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Say that Fern heard about the play last summer, when Mark King was writing the music. If she wanted the part, she’d have gotten a copy of the script the minute Molena Point Little Theater decided to do it.”

“So?”

“Will you stop pacing those bookshelves! How can I talk to you!”

He sat down on the top shelf beside an ancient leather dictionary.

“Fern reads the play. She talks to Casselrod about the story and about Catalina’s letters. Casselrod gets interested, begins to wonder if there really were letters. He does some research, finds that there were, and wonders how much more information Traynor has in his possession.

“When Casselrod goes to New York, he gets in touch with Elliott. Elliott has to know the letters are valuable. Casselrod’s an antiques dealer, he could help Traynor search for them.”

“That doesn’t wash. Why, if Traynor thought there was money in the lost letters, would he deal Casselrod in?”

“He has cancer, Joe. He might be dying, or at the least is very ill. He wants to find the letters, but he doesn’t have the time or the energy to pursue such a search. And he doesn’t have a contact on the coast that he trusts.”

“He has Vivi,” Joe said. “He could send her out. He doesn’t even know if the letters are still on the West Coast, after some hundred and fifty years.”

Dulcie’s green eyes widened. “Would you trust Vivi to run that kind of search? Competently? And not cheat your socks off?”

Joe smiled.

She said, “Casselrod is based here on the coast. He has contacts among the antiques dealers and wholesalers, he’s in the perfect position to search for the chests and the letters. Traynor will supply the research, find out all he can. Casselrod will do the legwork.

“Casselrod comes home to Molena Point, starts talking to dealers, looking in other antiques shops, checking out the private collections. They figure collectors might want the chests, but probably very few people know about the letters.

“But then Fern finds out that Traynor and Casselrod have joined forces; that her own boss didn’t include her, after she was the one who told him about the letters. She gets her back up.”

“A lot of conjecture,” Joe said. “And how do you explain Traynor giving Fern the lead inThorns of Gold?”

Dulcie shrugged. “Fern gets mad, wants to get back at them. Say she can’t find any hold on Casselrod. Maybe she starts digging into Traynor’s past, and finds some dirt on him, maybe some illegal business dealings. She trades her silence for the lead in the play, for the chance to be Catalina.”

“That’s reaching, Dulcie.”

“Maybe. But you keep saying there’s something we’re not seeing. Maybe that’s it.”

“So, say you’re right. What does-did Fern have on Traynor?”

“That’s the mouse that doesn’t want to come out of its hole,” she said softly. She began to pace along the bookshelves lashing her tail, thinking, working off frustration.

When a scent caught at her, pulling her back, she sniffed deeply at a leather-bound set of Dickens.

“But Gabrielle was in New York, too,” Joe was saying. “Maybe she’s part of this, maybe�”

Dulcie wasn’t listening. She crouched, frozen, staring at the old handsome set of classics. Her tail was very still, then began to twitch. Her whiskers and ears flat, she stalked the leather-bound volumes.

She paused. Carefully she pawed at the books’ spines, trying to separate them.

The leather looked old, marred, and faded, but it wasn’t crumbly like old leather. The books didn’t smell like leather. Looking along the tops of the volumes, Dulcie smiled. Joe watched her with interest.

Dulcie wasn’t a library cat for nothing, she knew how to hook her claws behind a book and slide it from the shelves. But these babies wouldn’t budge. It was all the two cats could do, together, to pull the set out. Even as it balanced on the edge of the shelf, the books stuck together. One last hard pull, and they leaped aside as the set fell to the table.

It was only a two-foot drop, but the books sounded like a load of bricks dumped from the back of a truck. And they were still stuck all together-one of those clever “hide your valuables” numbers advertised in trinket catalogs.

“No one,” Joe said, laughing, “certainly not Richard Casselrod, would be dumb enough to hide anything in this.”

“So why is it locked? Maybe it’s so obvious, he figured no one would bother to look.”

Joe pawed at the lock, certain that this one, too, would resist them. But after four tries something snapped, a faint, clinking sound, and they slid the back of the set away to reveal a hollow brass interior, dry and clean and smelling sharply metallic.

A brown envelope lay within, a small, padded mailer.

“I don’t believe this,” Joe muttered. But carefully he clawed the envelope out, its cushioned lining crackling. They were working at its little metal clasp when the kit came charging down the stairs, exploding onto the table.

“What?” Joe said, alarmed. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” said the kit, surprised. “I just got lonely.” She brightened with interest as Joe reached a paw into the crinkling envelope and slid out a letter.

It was fragile and old and musty, the ink faded, the handwriting thin and beautiful.

“Cara mia,” Dulcie whispered, picking out a few words she knew from the carefully written Spanish. The paper was so frail that she dared touch it only with the gentlest paw. Hesitantly she lifted the page and turned it over to the small, scrolled signature.

“Catalina,” she said softly.

Joe sat looking, twitching a whisker. The kit was very quiet, sniffing the scent of old paper. Dulcie tried to find other Spanish words that she recognized, but she could not. The handwriting was fine and elegant and, in itself, hard for her to read. “What will we do with it?” she asked Joe. “We can’t take it with us. If it blew away, if we lost it� Maybe we should put it back where we found it? So Casselrod won’t-”

“No way. No matter what kind of monkey wrench we throw in the works, we’re not leaving this here.”

With misgivings, she helped him slide the letter back into the padded brown envelope and claw-closed the metal clasp. A letter worth ten thousand dollars, which they would have to carry between them, across the windy rooftops.

They spent a long time working at the brass box to shift it back into the shelves. They had to push books under to lift it up, tipping it to insert one book at a time until they had it to the height of the shelf, then shoving it back where they’d found it. The operation seemed to take forever. But maybe, with the fake set of Dickens back in its exact place, Casselrod wouldn’t look at it for some time. At last they headed for the attic, Dulcie carrying the envelope in her teeth.

“Interesting,” Joe said, trotting up the wooden steps, “that Casselrod put the letter there instead of in the big combination safe downstairs.”

Her voice was muffled by the envelope. “Did he put it there? Or did Fern? It smells of both of them.” As they dropped from Casselrod’s attic window onto the windy balcony, she concentrated on keeping the envelope from being snatched from her mouth. Starting across the roofs, they held it between them, fighting the scudding gusts. When their passage startled a sleeping bird that flew up in their faces, the kit took a swipe at it; but she let it go and came chasing after them, her galloping paws thudding on the shingles. Only the kit could run the rooftops sounding like a herd of horses, yet could race, when she chose, as silent as a soaring owl. Twice the wind snatched the envelope nearly from their teeth; they could only pray that the letter wasn’t damaged. At last the three cats were off the roofs, backing down a pine tree two blocks from Joe’s house, Joe’s teeth clamped into the edge of the envelope. As he looked ahead to the white Cape Cod, suddenly he ached to be inside his own house, warm and full of supper and settled down in his clawed and comfortable chair.

How lonely the house looked. Not even the porch light was on, and no car in the drive.

But no matter, it was home, he just wanted to be inside. Wanted his creature comforts-some supper, and a few hours snooze, and he’d be ready to roll again.

But then, padding up the dark steps, he imagined his home turned into a restaurant with lights burning everywhere and cars filling the street and crowds of strangers shouting and laughing in the rooms that were his own, and he didn’t like that scene.

Hastily dragging the envelope, with Dulcie and the kit close behind him, he pushed through his cat door into the welcoming dark and the good familiar smells of home-smells of old Rube, of the household cats, of kibble and spaghetti and furniture polish and Clyde’s running shoes, all the comforting mix of aromas that had never been so welcome.

23 [��������: pic_24.jpg]

The first thing the three cats saw as they entered Joe’s darkened house, even before the plastic flap of Joe’s cat door stopped slapping behind them, was the sheet of white paper that had been lodged securely under the foot of Joe’s well-clawed lounge chair.

A note? Clyde had left a note?

Warily approaching, Joe saw the familiar handwriting. What could be so important that Clyde would leave a note in the middle of the living room, where anyone could see it? What if Ryan came back with him? That would be cute. How was Clyde going to explain a note left under the leg of the chair? Joe could imagine him rushing into the house ahead of her, snatching up the scrap of paper and shoving it in his pocket.

The message was cryptic enough.I’m out with Ryan. Goodies in refrigerator. Don’t make yourselves sick.

Joe read it twice, looking for some concealed meaning. What uncharacteristic fit of generosity had prompted Clyde to leave treats for them? Probably some leather-hard remnant of an over-done hamburger that he wanted to get rid of.

But Dulcie was pacing and nervous. “Come on, Joe. We have to hide this thing.”

“What about the bookcase? A bookcase is where we found it.”

“Oh, right. In the bookcase where every housebreaker since books were invented has looked for hidden money, where half the doddering old folks in the world hide their cash.”

“Where, then? The freezer, where everyone who doesn’t read books keeps their valuables?”

She looked pointedly at his chair. “No sensible human wants to sit in, let alone touch, that monstrosity.”

Joe shrugged. He’d hidden valuables there before, and not too long ago. Had hidden jewels and stolen money during that rash of thefts that accompanied the Patty Rose lookalike contest. What a week that had been, with all those beautiful wouldbe stars, and the retired movie star herself, all tangled up in two murders.

“Lift the cushion, Joe, so we don’t damage the letter any more than we already have.”

Nosing the seat cushion up, shoving his shoulder under it, he watched Dulcie lift the envelope in her teeth and gently slide it into the dark recess, accompanied by the faint crinkle of the bubble-wrap lining.

“That’ll do until we find something better,” she said. “Only Clyde would know to look there-and it’s a sure thing no one will sit there.” She paused to consider Joe. “No chance he’d be sending that chair to the Goodwill anytime soon?”

“No chance Clyde wants to meet his maker anytime soon.”

When, some months back, Charlie Getz had helped Clyde redecorate his living room, Joe’s chair had been a matter of heated discussion. Charlie had wanted to replace the chair with a new one and had talked Clyde into it, generating an argument so volatile that at one point Joe had had both Charlie and Clyde shouting at him.

Charlie said his chair belonged in the city dump. But she’d apologized later. She had been, Joe thought, truly contrite. Joe had prevailed, outshouting, outswearing, and finally shaming them both into acceptance. He’d had that chair since he was a half-grown kitten, since he first came to live with Clyde. That was the first time he had ever seen Clyde or Charlie promoting an act to hurt a poor little cat, and he told them so.

The Damen living room, in spite of being decorated around Joe’s chair, had become, under Charlie’s ministrations, a handsome, cozy, and welcoming retreat. Charlie’s artful accessorizing had made his chair look more than acceptable. “It is,” Charlie had decided, “the epitome of shabby chic.” She had selected, to harmonize with it, a handsome group of African baskets and sculpture, all done in tones of black and brown. These, with Charlie’s framed animal drawings, white-matted against the tan walls, gave the room additional style. And the black-and-brown African throw rugs over the pale carpet tied Joe’s chair right into the decor as one more rare and valuable artifact. The carved bookcases and entertainment center and tables had cost a bundle, but Clyde had simply sold another antique car. The room looked great. The humans were happy. Joe was happy. The night Charlie completed the room by hanging the newly framed drawings, she had taken Clyde and the cats out to dinner. Celebrating the fact that they had all been able to agree, she had treated them to broiled lobster in the patio of their favorite seafood cafe.

Glancing up at the kit, always amused that her black-and-brown coloring fit so perfectly into the room, Joe though it would be a pity to even drink of selling this house, now that it was looking so good.

With the envelope safely hidden, the three cats headed for the kitchen, the responsibility of Catalina’s ten-thousand-dollar letter weighing heavily on Joe. What, ultimately, were they to do with it?

They could make a discreet phone call to Max Harper or Detective Garza, then leave the envelope at the back door of the station. That would put the ball in their court. Except, with carpenters and painters still busy on the premises, the fate of a lone envelope could be uncertain.

They could drop the envelope at Dallas Garza’s cottage door; or they could tell Clyde about it. Let Clyde take over, though this suggestion was totally against Joe’s nature.

Maybe, after all, he’d just leave it where it was, wait to see what developed.

Standing on the kitchen counter hooking his claws in the refrigerator door, Joe pushed backward, wrenching it open. He caught it with a fast paw, before it swung closed again.

On the bottom shelf lay a takeout tray glistening with clear wrap to keep it fresh. This was no collection of dry leftovers, this was a work of art, an elegant and expensive party tray, a concoction from Jolly’s Deli, meant for true indulgence. This was their little snack? Joe wondered if he’d read the note right.

But the tray had been placed in his personal area, on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.

“To what,” Dulcie said, “do we owe this? Has Clyde not been well?”

They removed the tray carefully and laid it on the linoleum. “Maybe he’s trying to make up for past cruelties,” Joe said, clawing at the plastic wrap. The tray contained an assortment as fine as any George Jolly had ever put together. There was imported Brie, Beluga caviar, Alaskan smoked salmon, king crab, shrimp salad, cold mushroom quiche, spinach souffle, four small cannoli, and brandy-flavored sponge cake, a treat that most cats would give up eight of their lives for but would find dangerous to their digestion. Enough party food, in short, to give the three cats heartburn for a month if they did not employ some restraint. The two older cats tried to eat slowly, savoring each bite. But the moment the wrap was off, the kit plowed in as if she hadn’t seen food in weeks, slurping, guzzling, smearing the floor and her whiskers.

Joe glanced at Dulcie as if she ought to teach the kit some manners, but Dulcie was too busy enjoying her own supper. When at last they were sated, they pawed the plastic wrap back over the uneaten portions and, like the good cats they were, they put the tray back in the refrigerator. In case Clyde would like a bite later.

With their bellies full, they curled up together in a heap on Joe’s chair, atop Catalina’s hidden letter. They were asleep in seconds.

They barely woke when Clyde came in, didn’t hear him go to bed. They slept until the small hours called to them, the bright and imperative predawn summons that routs all night predators long before the sun appears-that shot of psychological adrenaline that has belonged to cats since the world began. This was the witching hour, the hour when the village was its most silent and when, on the hills, the succulent little rabbits danced.

But tonight, they hunted human prey.

Pushing out through Joe’s cat door, they galloped across the village watching for marauding raccoons and the occasional coyote that might wander the village streets. Overhead, every star that ever burned seemed to crowd the rooftops. They had chosen five locations where the man in the tan Infinity could be staying, all houses with rooms to rent and with the requisite eucalyptus tree and pyracantha bushes. They separated before they reached Ocean Avenue, Joe heading for a cottage to the south, the kit for the one nearest the shore, and Dulcie for a motel just beyond the courthouse. The kit had been given specific instructions and stern warnings about what not to do.

Many villagers didn’t like eucalyptus trees, those handsome, aromatic imports from New Zealand that had so changed the face of California. In a high wind, their trunks broke too easily; and their wood was so full of oil that they created considerable hazard in case of a nearby fire. But other villagers loved them; and to a cat, certain varieties were excellent to climb, with open spaces between their wide-reaching branches, and clumped foliage that could conceal. And tonight those landmark trees might lead them to Susan Brittain’s thief and maybe to Fern’s killer.

Dulcie, trotting away from Joe and the kit, galloped by the courthouse, looking ahead to the tall, rangy eucalyptus that thrust above the cypresses and pines, its silver foliage pale against the night. Beyond it stood a small, old motel of ten cottages surrounding a patio. The softly lighted sign read,No Vacancies. No Pets.The only parking, besides the street itself, was around back, four spaces; first come, first served. Trotting across the neatly tended patio garden between massed blooms of geranium and lavender, and watching for the motel cat, who, being elderly, was probably still asleep, she scrambled up the six-foot gate. Perched atop the fence, she looked down at the bare-dirt parking strip.

A line of pyracantha bushes bordered the drive, and on the narrow space, parked two behind two, were a Ford convertible, a white Olds coupe, a blue Chevy S10 pickup, and a black Jaguar. No Infinity, tan or otherwise. And nothing of that description was out on the nearby streets when she circled several blocks looking. She gave it up at last, and went to meet Joe and the kit. Joe, meanwhile, was trapped in the bedroom of a young woman.

The lady had woken suddenly when Joe jumped to the dresser, though he’d made only a tiny thump. Looking sleepily around the room, she had pulled the blankets up against the early dawn chill, but then had risen to shut the window, effectively trapping Joe inside, unless he could slide the glass up again. She hadn’t noticed the hole in the screen, or that it was unlatched. She had apparently been too sleepy to notice a cat blending into the shadows around the dresser. Joe wondered if all the young women of her generation slept in oversized Tshirts with pictures and statements of a personal nature stenciled on them. This lady liked champagne, diamonds, and hot cars. The room was on the first floor of an old, brown, shingled rooming house sheltered by a large eucalyptus. Joe had found the Infinity parked behind, license 2ZJZ417. Oily leaves stained its sunroof, and from the pyracantha bushes that grew along the drive, green berries were crushed beneath its wheels.

Sniffing along the edge of the driver’s door he had detected the scent of a man, of shoe polish, and of sugar doughnuts. He had followed the trail to the front door of the building, which of course was locked. A small, demure sign by the door said Do Not Disturb Resident. This meant, in village jargon, that the owner rented out a room or two, possibly illegally, a common practice in Molena Point, where any kind of housing was at a premium. He had tried the first open window, had smelled sugar doughnuts within, and had entered.

He’d found the doughnut bag wadded up in the trash, and only the young woman in residence. Had Prey been here, visiting her, and already left? Joe waited until she was breathing deeply again, then fought the window open a few inches. He heard her stir, but he was out before she saw him.

Leaping to the next sill, peering in through the glass, he listened to ragged male snoring. Even through the closed window, he smelled the same male scent as on the car, as well as the sugar-sweet doughnuts. Maybe the two tenants had shared a little snack.

He could detect no smell of dog-but the guy had dumped the dalmatian. Maybe the dog had caused trouble with the landlady, maybe dogs weren’t allowed. Maybe the guy had tried to smuggle it in and got caught, so he left it somewhere.

What kind of a man would abandon a nice dog? Couldn’t he find some other solution? Board the animal? At least take him to the pound if there was no alternative, not just dump him, frightened and hungry.

The man slept naked in the single bed, the sheet thrown back, one arm draped over the side. Enough starlight washed into the room so Joe could see his face clearly. Thin cheeks, muddy-brown hair, pale brows and lashes, his ears set close to his head. His nose was long and thin, with slightly pinched nostrils. His forehead was high, for such a young man, rising into a widow’s peak. A fresh scar burned across his brow, red and puffy, pushing up into his hair just where Susan Brittain’s intruder had been wounded.

The window was locked tight, Joe could see where the bolt had been thrown. But above him to his left, the high, narrow bathroom window was cracked open, the occupant assuming correctly that no human burglar could get through that small opening.

Scorching up a bottlebrush tree that crowded against the house, Joe jumped to the sill and hung, scrabbling onto the narrow ledge. Clawing a hole in the screen, he unhooked the latch and slipped inside.

He balanced for a moment on the sill, looking, then dropped to the cluttered sink among a jumble of shaving gear, antiseptic bottles, adhesive tape, and oversized Band-Aids. A tangle of wet towels hung on the two rods. The walls smelled of mildew. Slipping silently down to the linoleum, without his usual heavy thud, he moved into the bedroom.

The mismatched furniture was scarred and old, possibly purchased from the Goodwill with just this rental in mind. A calendar of the Grand Canyon hung above the bed, a stone landscape without any hint of plant or animal life, so dry looking it made Joe’s paws feel parched. A half-eaten doughnut lay on the dresser next to the guy’s billfold. Leaping up, Joe nosed the billfold open and had a look at the driver’s license.

The face matched that of his sleeping friend. The name given was Lenny Wells-Susan’s dog-walking companion. The address was in San Francisco. He went through the billfold, stubbornly pulling out credit cards with his teeth. He found no other identification. But this guy with the fresh scar on his forehead had to be Augor Prey.

Using teeth and claws, he managed to slide the little plastic cards back into the tight leather compartments, leaving curious indentations for Prey to puzzle over, and coveting, not for the first time, the luxury of human thumb and fingers. He searched the dresser, easing the drawers open, trying his best to be quiet and not make scratching sounds, and glancing up frequently to be sure Prey hadn’t awakened.

He needn’t have worried; the guy slept like the dead, didn’t make a wiggle. Maybe he’d OD’d on too many sugar doughnuts. Finding nothing in the drawers but a few pairs of jockey shorts and athletic socks, and nothing taped beneath the drawers against the rough undersides, he inspected beneath the dresser.

Nothing for his trouble but dust in his nose and whiskers. When he crawled beneath the bed, his inventory included five large dust balls, three gum wrappers, and a wadded-up paper bag, which, when he got it open, proved to be empty. He found nothing remotely resembling Catalina Ortega-Diaz’s letters.

When he shouldered the closet door open, he found the interior bare except for a row of rusty wire hangers. Apparently Prey preferred the backs of chairs for keeping the wrinkles from his jacket and spare shirts. Not until Joe slipped stealthily up onto the bed itself and approached Prey by padding across the blankets did his search pay off.

Watching Prey, ready to leap free from grabbing hands, slipping to within inches of Prey’s stubbled face and redolent night breath, Joe pushed an exploring paw beneath the pillow.

Under the pillow lay a gun, just beneath Prey’s head. Joe could smell burnt gunpowder, as if the piece had been fired recently but not cleaned. The cold barrel lay against his paw; he touched along its length, careful to stay away from the trigger, then gingerly he pressed a paw against the back of the cylinder.

He could feel one shell casing, in the little exposed part of the cylinder that protruded out beyond the barrel. That could mean anything. A full load of five or six shots? A partial load? Only one bullet, in that particular chamber? Or even a spent shell. But surely no one would fire a gun and leave the empty shell casings in the cylinder.

He sure wasn’t going to try to open the cylinder and eject the shells to find out, even if he could manage that. Not without some pistol training-which he didn’t think was in his immediate future. And not while crouching on the bed with his face just inches from Augor Prey’s face.

He had no way to know if this was the gun that shot Fern-but it sure did smell of burnt gunpowder. Slowly he backed away, watching the sleeping man, moving softly across the bed. When his heart stopped pounding, he leaped to the dresser again and sat for some time studying Prey.

The wound on Prey’s forehead was still angry, and darkly scabbed over. Joe could see the rectangle of sticky lines where adhesive tape had been pulled off. When Prey stirred and moved his hand, Joe dropped down to the rug again as silently as he could, and headed for the bathroom.

Onto the counter, among the jumble of toiletries, one leap to the high windowsill, and he pushed out beneath the screen.

Dropping to the grass, he headed through the village, for the house just beyond Molena Point’s tallest eucalyptus tree, where the kit had gone to look for Prey. There must, he thought, be another two dozen houses in the village with eucalyptus trees and pyracantha bushes; and who knew how many of those rented rooms. He and Dulcie, picking the three they knew best, had gotten lucky. Trotting along the sidewalk beside the deep flower gardens of a handsome Tudor cottage, he wondered if his anonymous report of the revolver would be enough for Harper to get a warrant, either for Prey’s arrest or to search the premises. Ahead stood the hundred-foot eucalyptus, at the edge of the little sand park.

The park, running between the Bakery Restaurant and the beach, was a block-square oasis of low sand dunes, twisted cypress trees, and patches of hardy shore plants. The eucalyptus stood on the corner, its pale bark peeled off in long rolls like parchment, its white arms stretching against the night sky. Among its clumps of long silver leaves, he could see something dark, high up; something alive and clinging, wriggling nervously from the highest branch. He caught the gleam of frightened eyes.

“Wow,” said the kit from that great distance.

“Come down,” Joe said softly. “Come down, Kit.”

“Can’t,” bawled the kit. She clung like a dark little owl, high and alone in the night sky.

“What do you mean, can’t? Why did you go up there? You’re not afraid?”

“Tomcat chased me up. I’ve never been this high.”

“Where’s the tomcat?”

“I slashed his nose. He went down again, and Dulcie chased him.”

Joe looked around for Dulcie but didn’t see her. He didn’t hear any anguished cries from the neighboring yards. “What tomcat?”

“A spotted tomcat, in that house I looked in. Came right through the window at me! Mad! Really, really mad!”

Joe Grey sighed. “Come on down, Kit. Come down now!”

She turned on the branch, heading down headfirst.

“No! Don’t do that! Turn around, and back down. You know how to back down a tree with your claws holding you.” He was shouting, angry and terrified that she’d fall, and praying that no one was out walking this late. Or that some homeless soul had decided to sleep in the sand park and would wake highly entertained by their little drama. Why was it that a cat who knew better would lose all good sense when high up in a tree? Why would any sensible cat insist on starting down headfirst, knowing very well that she would be unable to stop herself?

“Turn around, Kit!”

She turned, wobbly with fear, clinging onto one small branch. She started to slip.

“Get your claws in the tree. Back down with your claws! Watch where the bark is loose, don’t�”

She backed straight into the loose bark and slid fast, the bark curling down with her. Frantically she scrabbled and grabbed and nearly fell, then got her claws into a hard place. He could feel his own claws clutching, trying to help her. But at last she seemed to have a good hold. She backed down slowly, though he could still hear her claws ripping the bark. Where was Dulcie? Why had she run off chasing some worthless tomcat? The bark slid again, and he crouched to leap up after the kit, to break her fall.

A voice stopped him. “You’ll only make things worse.”

Dulcie pushed against him, her whiskers brushing his, both of them staring up at that small, scrambling creature. “She has to do it on her own. She has to know she can.”

“If she doesn’t break her silly neck.”

They waited, not breathing, watching the kit fight her way down. She dropped the last six feet into the sand, crouched there panting, then slogged across the sand to them, her paws seeming heavy as lead, her head and ears down, her fluffy tail dragging.

They praised her for coming down so cleverly, then scolded her for going up so stupidly high. They licked and nuzzled her and praised her again until she began to smile. Then they headed for Jolly’s alley, just to cheer her. They were all three stuffed from Clyde’s costly deli plate, but nothing else would delight the kit as much as that little side trip. Trotting close together, soon they turned onto the brick walk, beneath the little potted trees. Light from the two decorative lamps reflected in the stained glass doors and mullioned shop windows. The jasmine vine that hid Jolly’s garbage cans breathed its sweet scent onto the cool night breeze.

But the bowls that George Jolly had set out last evening had been licked clean, the other village cats had been at them. They sniffed with interest the lingering scents of vanished smoked salmon and seafood salad, a little nosegay of mouthwatering goodness where no scrap remained. Facing the empty bowls, the kit hunched down with disappointment.

“You’re not starving, Kit,” Dulcie said. She leaped to a bench beside a potted euryops tree, and stretched out beneath its yellow flowers. Above the tree, the stars burned like the eyes of a million cat spirits. “You found Augor Prey,” she said, watching Joe, amused by his smug look.

Joe Grey smiled. “Fits the description. Fresh scar on his forehead. Driver’s license in the name of Lenny Wells. Revolver under his pillow, that’s been fired recently.” He looked intently at Dulcie. “It’s time to call Harper. Time to find a phone,” he said shortly.

Since he’d grown dependent on placing a call for certain matters, and since every human he knew had a cell phone, the inability to access a phone anywhere, at any time, had begun to make him irritable-instant phone access was now the norm. He didn’t like being left behind.

Right. And he was going to subscribe to Ma Bell Cellular? Walk around wearing a phone strapped to his back like some kind of service cat all duded up in a red harness? Though he had to admit, phones were getting smaller all the time. Who knew, maybe the day of Dick Tracy’s wrist radio wasn’t far in the future. Maybe he could wear one on a collar, designed to look like a license tag.

Though the electronic wonder that concerned him most at the moment was caller ID. How long would it be until Harper sprang for caller ID on his cell phone? That was going to complicate life. As would this new system that would give police the originating location of all cell phone calls via satellite. That would be more than inconvenient.

Wilma had subscribed to caller ID blocking, and so had Clyde, in both cases to give Joe and Dulcie some anonymity. But it didn’t work very well. Whether the phone company didn’t bother to maintain the service, or whether there was some electronic problem, the cats didn’t know. But the fear of identification by telephone deeply bothered Joe and Dulcie, and these new developments presented a constant threat of discovery.

“MaybePrey shot Fern,” Dulcie said. “And maybe Casselrod killed her. If she knew about the letter that Casselrod found, would he try to silence her? Or hire Prey to do it?”

“For a letter worth ten thousand bucks? Not likely. Maybe for ten or twenty letters.” Joe looked hard at her. “In all of this, Dulcie, there’s still something missing. Something right in front of our noses. Don’t you sense it? I can’t leave that idea alone. Some obvious fact that’s the key to everything else.”

He began to pace. “Nothing’s going to fit, nothing’s going to make sense until we find it, or the department does.” He stopped prowling to irritably wash his paw, then paced again. At the far end of the alley he turned to look back at her. “Let’s go, Dulcie. Let’s make that call-let’s nudge Harper, and see what we can stir up.”

24 [��������: pic_25.jpg]

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?

25 [��������: pic_26.jpg]

Beyond Wilma’s windows, the garden was pale with fog, the twisted oak trees and flowers washed to milky hues. Looking out from the desk in the living room, Dulcie enjoyed both worlds, the veiled garden from which she had just emerged and the fire on the hearth behind her. Near the warm blaze, Cora Lee was tucked up on the love seat, with the afghan over her legs and the kit cuddled on her lap.

Wilma had just this morning brought Cora Lee home from the hospital and gotten her settled in the guest room. It seemed to Dulcie that her housemate was always sheltering one friend or another. Charlie had first come to her aunt when she fled San Francisco after quitting her commercial art job, convinced she was a failure, that she would never make it on her own. Then after Charlie started her cleaning business, she had come home to Wilma’s again when she was evicted from her first apartment, dumping her cardboard boxes and bits of furniture back in Wilma’s garage. And Mavity had come here from the hospital after she’d been hit on the head and left unconscious in her wrecked car-had come with a police guard, round-the-clock protection. And now another police patrol was cruising the streets, watching over Cora Lee.

Dulcie looked up, purring, when Wilma appeared from the kitchen carrying the tea tray-a final comforting touch on a cold afternoon. The little tabby looked around her at the perfection of their small, private world, with the fire casting its warm flickering light across the velvet furniture and over the shelves of books and the bright oil painting of the Molena Point hills and rooftops. As Wilma set the tray at the end of the desk, Dulcie sniffed delicately the aromas of almond bread and lemon Bundt cake; but she kept a polite distance. Some folks might not like cat noses in their dessert. Wilma flashed her an amused look and cut two tiny slices for her, slathering on whipped cream. Wilma was wearing a new turquoise-and-green sweatshirt, printed in a ferny leaf pattern, and her gray-white hair was sleeked back with a new turquoise clip.