Cat Playing Cupid

9

DON'T LET THE EXPLOSION at the Harpers' wedding eat at you," Mike said. "Things like that don't happen twice. Or…" He looked at her more closely. "Is there something else bothering you?" Sounds of the party drifted upstairs to them, and to the tomcat listening from the adjoining room beneath the king-size bed. "You don't have second thoughts about marrying Clyde?" Mike asked. "You're not regretting this new step in your life?"

"Oh, it isn't anything like that. It's just…Maybe I'm a bit tired."

There was something else, of course, something she couldn't share with her dad, ever. "It's…someone else's secret," she said inadequately, "that I'm committed to keep."

"Well, that's okay, then," he said easily. Then, "You care if I take Rock in to the station now and then? He'll be bored out of his mind if I leave him here all day, this breed was never meant to be idle."

"Take him, if Max doesn't mind. Rock loves a crowd, it would be good for him." She studied her dad. "Dallas and I've talked about training him to track. He tracked Charlie when she was kidnapped, he figured it out on his own, and showed a fine natural skill. But then, he loves Charlie."

"No question he's smart and eager," Mike said. "He's how old? Three? It's easier to start a puppy. But Rock…the way he watches a person, wanting to be part of the action, wanting to do something. He needs some kind of work."

She knew that too well. A dog like Rock, with so much desire and drive-he was too fine an animal to be lying around doing nothing, or looking for trouble. But she never seemed to have the time to give him what he needed, there weren't enough hours in the day.

From the shadows beneath the bed, Joe Grey listened first with amusement, then with rising interest at the idea of training Rock to track, to find felons or lost children. This, the tomcat realized, might solve the problem that had been eating at him. The dilemma for which, until this moment, he'd had no solution.

Rock could find the body that neither Charlie nor the secret snitches dared report. I can teach Rock to track! I can train a tracking dog in ways no human ever dreamed! And then…

The more he thought about the idea, the better he liked it. He lay working out the details, deciding which humans to enlist, to do the legwork, as it were, and by the time Ryan and her dad headed back downstairs, the gray tomcat was grinning with anticipation.

Quietly he followed father and daughter down to the living room where Clyde was changing discs in the CD player, putting on some old ragtime from early in the last century-how many cat lifetimes ago? Hiding his grin, he sauntered past Ryan and Mike and Clyde, leaped to the back of the love seat and to the top of the six-foot bookcase, startling Mike, who stared up at Joe as he stretched out with his paws hanging over the edge.

"That cat sneaks around like an undercover agent."

"Nature of the cat," Clyde said easily, setting aside some discs. "It's the sneaky cat that catches the mice." And he turned away to sort through the remaining CDs.

Ryan had turned away, too, hiding a grin as she brushed lint from her jeans. Behind Mike's back she glanced up to the bookshelf where Joe was washing his paws. She winked at him, then turned back to Clyde. "We were talking about Lindsey Wolf," she said. "She's lived in the village off and on. Do you know her?"

"I used to see her in the vet's office," Clyde said. "She had a golden retriever, and we'd swap anecdotes." He glanced at Mike. "Didn't you date her for a while? Is that the cold case you're working, her fiancé? What was his name? Chappell? Some people said he got cold feet, bailed out because he really didn't want to get married."

Mike nodded. " Carson Chappell. Lindsey came to Dallas because of an article in the paper, the skeleton of a hiker found up in Oregon. Apparently died about the time Chappell disappeared." Mike stepped to the bookcase to stroke Joe, wanting to know the tomcat he'd be caring for. "Not likely it's Chappell, but Lindsey's fixed on the idea."

"I heard Lindsey moved back," Clyde said, "moved her accounting practice up here. I've seen her sister around the village lately, too. That should be interesting, the two of them in the same small town again; I think they were both dating Chappell, and Lindsey was pretty angry about it."

Mike smiled. "I guess there's no love lost." He stroked Joe for a few moments, studying the tomcat a bit too keenly, then turned away and stretched out in a leather chair, eyeing Joe's clawed and furry easy chair with such obvious amusement that Joe bristled.

What's wrong with that chair? That chair is a masterpiece of feline creativity, it's a rare art form. Some people have no taste.

Clyde was saying, "Lindsey told me once that she and Ryder have been crosswise since they were kids. I guess, when Chappell started seeing Ryder on the sly, that didn't go down too well. Then Chappell and Lindsey announced their engagement, and then Chappell disappeared. About the same time, his partner's wife moved away, and of course village gossip had it that Nina Gibbs and Chappell ran off together."

"It isn't rumor," Mike said, "that after Lindsey moved back to L.A., her sister showed up with Ray Gibbs, Chappell's partner. He and Ryder are still together, they have a place in the city, and they're buying a condo in the village."

"You've been busy," Ryan said. "And Gibbs never found his wife? Never heard from her?"

"Not that anyone knows," Mike said. "I haven't talked with Gibbs yet."

Above, on the bookcase, Joe Grey might have added his own take to the scenario. His thoughts might be off the wall, but he couldn't leave it alone. That hiker up in Oregon died some ten years ago. And what about the skeleton Willow had found among the Pamillon ruins? How old was that body? Two unidentified skeletons, discovered within the same week. Nothing at all to indicate a connection. And yet…

The tomcat didn't believe in coincidence. Too often, in the world of criminal investigation, if one looked deeply enough one would come up with some oblique and overlooked relationship between seemingly unconnected incidents. While the assumption didn't hold true in every case, the general concept had served Joe well.

This time, am I way off base? When Dallas and Harper get a look at that body in the ruins-as soon as we set them up to find it without involving the secret snitches-and when the coroner establishes a time of death on it, what will we have then?

Only forensics could date the Pamillon body. And first, the law had to find it among those isolated ruins where no one ever went, not picnickers, not even many lovers wanting privacy, the Pamillon ruins being too eerie for most lovers.

In short, it wasn't likely anyone was going to accidentally stumble on that lost grave, not without help. And, for sure, the report daren't come from the cops' favorite but unidentified snitch.

The cops get a tip that something's dug up a body there-and how else would it get uncovered? And they wonder about the feral cats around the ruins. He could just hear Dallas: "Something dug it up. And there are cats all over that old estate. Would a band of cats dig up a body? But even if they did, who the hell found it? Who was up there to call in the report? That voice-sure as hell, that was our phantom snitch. What was he doing up there?"

Right. The cops start asking questions, that's way risky. A cop's as nosy as any cat. A cop starts wondering about cats and dead bodies and that could be the end of feline investigative work for the rest of recorded time.

No, fate needed a little help here to keep the snitch out of the picture. And excitement filled Joe as, crouched atop the bookcase, shutting out the conversation around him, he laid out his scenario.

How long, he wondered, once the coroner had dug up the Pamillon bones, would it take to get them dated? Sometimes the lab came through right away, sometimes forensics could be backed up and maddeningly slow. And how long until the department had a more definitive date on the Oregon body? All across the country, law enforcement was shorthanded, short of money, backed up for months and sometimes years, pushing court cases into gridlock and even forcing the court to let a suspect walk-while the government spent billions of dollars, Joe thought, on programs that benefited no one but the paper pushers.

Bottom line: he had no notion how long, after the body at the ruins was "found," until the department would have a comparative age on the two sets of bones and there was any real basis for his gut feeling. For a cold case, there could be a long wait. This was not a killer awaiting trial.

Not yet, it isn't, Joe thought. But with luck, it will come to that. Joe Grey was not a patient tomcat.

Nor did he ordinarily indulge in the kind of presumption that now held his attention. His attempt to connect the two bodies was squirrely, but he couldn't shake his feeling that there was a connection-and the more he thought about his plan to anonymously report the body, the more he liked the scenario.

To pull it off, the body would have to remain buried in the earth of the Pamillon ruins for another week, given the fact that tomorrow was the wedding. Well, that couldn't be helped, he'd just have to live with that.

IT WAS EARLY the next morning, three hours before the wedding, when Wilma and Kit went to visit Sage and pick up Dulcie; the clinic was closed on Sundays. Dr. Firetti let them in the side door. He was smiling but looked like he could use a night's sleep; there were smudges under his eyes and his usually ruddy color was pale. In the recovery room, they found Sage and Dulcie in a big cage with its door open, Dulcie lying close to the patient, yawning. Sage was awake and licking up a little warm broth. He looked very small and frail wrapped in the heavy white bandages and with the cast on his leg.

"He's done very well," Firetti said. "I think he's out of danger, barring something unforeseen. Dulcie helped a great deal to reassure him when he came out of the anesthetic. She didn't have to give blood," he said, smiling, "though I used most of what I had.

"With the metal plate and pins in, the leg should heal just fine. The thing now is to avoid infection." Firetti lifted Kit into the open cage beside the patient, so she could visit. "I'd like to keep him another day, to watch him. Isn't the wedding today?"

"Yes, it is," Wilma said. "I can pick him up tomorrow morning, early. Shall I call first?"

Firetti nodded. "Please. When you come for him, I'll give you instructions and show you how to change the dressings."

Wilma was a stranger to Sage, and the young, bleached calico looked up at her warily; but Dulcie and Kit were obviously comfortable with her, and soon he relaxed.

"Was it very bad?" Kit asked him, glancing around uneasily at the wire cage. She did not like to be inside a cage, even with the door open, and she didn't like to see her friend there. Didn't like to see him all bundled up in those heavy bandages, either.

"The doctor is very kind," Sage said sleepily. "Very kind and good." And he laid his head down beside his empty bowl. "I don't hurt anymore…," he said, and he was asleep again, still groggy and worn out.

Wilma gave Dr. Firetti the custards she had brought, and she and the two cats left, Kit looking back at Sage until the office door closed and she could no longer see him; and in the car the tortoiseshell hunched down miserably, thinking only of her friend. "I just wish…," Kit said forlornly, "I wish…I wish Stone Eye could die all over again, slowly and painfully!"

"This is Clyde and Ryan's wedding day," Wilma said. "Are you going to feel all sour and grumpy and make them feel bad, and spoil their happy day?"

"I'm not," said Kit. "I mean to smile and purr. But right now I mean to feel bad just for a little while." And she turned over on the seat with her back to Wilma and Dulcie and said not another word as Wilma headed home to dress for the wedding.

FROM THE CRACK of dawn, Clyde and Joe's house was a turmoil of prewedding excitement that made the tomcat laugh, but that he wouldn't have missed. Mike left early to help Max pick up the folding chairs. Max called later to see if Clyde needed any assistance, and Clyde snapped that he could still dress himself, thank you. Max told him, "Don't forget the rings," and Clyde and Joe argued fiercely about which pocket to put the rings in, which was arguing stupidly about nothing. And then at last they were in the sleek Cadillac Escalade that Clyde had borrowed for the honeymoon trip-borrowed because Ryan had said that, if they were going to be tooling around the wine country with all those great antiques stores, they'd better take her pickup. And Clyde said he wasn't going on their honeymoon in a pickup. "So," Ryan had said, "if you're such a snob, borrow an SUV," and Clyde had gotten a two-year-old, top-of-the-line loaner from the dealership where he had his automotive shop.

Dulcie had come over the rooftops to ride to the wedding with Joe and Clyde. She had, after her long night at the vet's, a great need to be close to Joe. Waiting for Clyde, the two cats leaped into the front seat of the pearl-colored Escalade hoping the groom wasn't going to be late. "I never want to see you in the hospital," Dulcie said, snuggling against Joe. She didn't say, Please take care. But Joe winced because that was what she was thinking. He hated being told to be careful, that kind of female meddling made him feel totally caged. But then he looked at her, saw how tired she was, and tenderly licked her ear.

The luxurious SUV had creamy leather upholstery, an OnStar GPS system, and, best of all according to Ryan's assessment, it had a good strong trailer hitch-if she found some irresistible architectural pieces that wouldn't fit inside, they could haul them home in a rental trailer. Clyde had scowled at that. This was a borrowed and like-new vehicle, as pristine as the day it came off the floor. Now, in the back of the vehicle, besides the couple's two suitcases, were half a dozen thick blankets, presumably to protect the interior, and two coils of rope.

"Some honeymoon," Joe said, "hunting for dusty old stained-glass windows and distressed paneling with spiders in the cracks."

"They're happy," Dulcie said. "Who knows, maybe they'll come home with some ancient car Clyde can't resist."

"Just what he needs, another deteriorating Packard or Maxwell. Some pitiful wreck just crying out for loving attention."

Dulcie laughed. "They're a couple of nutcases. They're not planning a honeymoon, they're off on a treasure hunt." But, watching the groom lock the front door and head for the car, looking very nice in his new tan suit, white shirt, and the first tie he'd worn in months, the cats smiled with tolerance for their crazy human friends.