Cat Playing Cupid

11

THE MOMENT MIKE went into the bathroom to brush his teeth, Joe Grey's eyes were wide open again, his attention fixed on the Chappell cold file as keenly as if he'd spotted a rat lumbering across the white sheets. Hungering to get at the information, he debated whether to try for a look while Mike was out of the room.

Right. Mike comes out and catches him pawing through the file, and then what? Could he pretend to be sniffing the scent of mouse in the department's archived papers? Well, sure, that would explain a cat's interest.

He waited impatiently until Mike returned, wearing navy pajama bottoms and a short robe; he watched the tall, lanky Scots Irishman light the gas logs in the stone fireplace, set the glass screen in place, and then slide into bed, propping the pillows behind him. Then Joe, making a show of stretching and yawning, sauntered up the bed to Mike's pillow. Yawning again, he curled up beside Mike purring with such sudden affection that Flannery did a double take, frowning down at him.

"What's with you? You miss Clyde already? Is that why you're not out roaming the streets? You're lonesome? Well, dogs get lonely, so I guess cats do, too." And Mike spent a few moments scratching Joe's ears.

But soon, still absently stroking Joe, he was scanning the Chappell file-and Joe, sprawled among the pillows near Mike's left ear, was just as eagerly soaking up additional details of Carson Chappell's disappearance and of Lindsey's search for him.

But as Joe read, he watched Mike, too, and was slyly amused.

Where the original report discussed Lindsey and Carson's relationship, Mike's expression changed from interest to what surely resembled jealousy. In the ten-year-old report, Lindsey had assured the interviewing detective that she and Chappell were very much in love and that he would never have left her. They had planned a honeymoon in the Bahamas, they'd had their plane tickets and hotel reservations and had intended to go directly from the church to the airport. They had planned, on their return, to move into a cottage in the village, on which Carson had made a sizable down payment-they had intended to move their furniture and other belongings in two days before the wedding, the day that Chappell was due home from camping. Lindsey said they had wanted, when they arrived back, to be already comfortably settled in their new home.

In the short quotations that had been included among the dry sentences of the case file, it wasn't hard to read Lindsey's shock when Carson didn't return; Joe could detect nothing contrived or uneasy in her recorded answers, though without the sound of her voice, the intonations, and the facial expressions, it was difficult to make such an assessment. It wasn't hard, though, to imagine a bride-to-be's growing despair when there was no word from the intended bridegroom.

At that time, neither Lindsey nor the police had found the plane tickets, not in Chappell's apartment nor in his office, these had disappeared as surely as had his passport.

Halfway through, Mike set aside the file and sat quietly staring into the fire, a deep and preoccupied look, almost a dreaming look, that Joe studied with interest. Was Flannery keener on finding Chappell? Or on rekindling his relationship with Lindsey?

But that was unfair. Maybe Mike wasn't sure, himself, where his conflicted emotions wanted to lead him.

Only when Rock stirred in his sleep and turned over did Mike come back to the present, reach for the steno pad, and begin making notes. Joe, easing higher up on the pillow, positioned himself where he could read them clearly. Mike glanced at him, frowning, but didn't push him away.

Most of Mike's notations were questions, or lines of investigation that he meant to pursue, and many were the same questions Joe had. When at last he put down the pen and sat staring at the fire again, Joe wished he could read this guy's mind, wished he could follow Mike's thoughts and not just the words on the paper.

But soon the tomcat's own thoughts turned back to that one perplexing connection, to the unlikely coincidence of the two bodies coming to light in the same week. Why did he keep imagining a relationship between them? There was nothing to hint at that, except the timing of the two discoveries.

Or was there some clue in the file, or in something he'd overheard, that he didn't know he was aware of? Some minute detail, caught in his memory, that kept him returning to that improbable conjecture?

No one knew, yet, even if that was Chappell up there in Oregon. Only Lindsey Wolf seemed convinced. And, the tomcat thought, why was she so sure? Did Lindsey know something that was not in the report, and that she might not have told the law?

But why would she hold back information, when she seemed so committed to finding Chappell?

Was she, in some way, covering up her own guilt? Certain that Oregon would identify Chappell, and trying to establish her own innocence?

Dulcie would tell him he was chasing smoke, batting at shadows, that he was way off, on this one-but he couldn't leave it alone. His gut feeling was that there was a relationship between the bodies, and that maybe Lindsey knew that.

Or was he as batty as if he'd been bingeing on catnip?

He watched Mike open the file again and flip to several handwritten pages tucked at the back: three pages of notes on plain white paper, and a yellow, lined sheet with different handwriting. Having to shift against Mike's shoulder again to see around his arm, Joe pretended to scratch his ear.

"You better not have fleas," Mike said absently, knowing that Clyde had the animals on medication against such small, unwanted passengers. The white pages were dated six years ago, the yellow one three years later. That one was signed by Officer Kathleen Ray. That would be about the time Kathleen had come to work at Molena Point PD, Joe thought, not long after he, himself, started hanging around the department when he'd first discovered he could talk and could read and, most alarming, that he was thinking like a human-and, more alarming still, was thinking like a cop.

Mike shifted position again. And again Joe craned to see the file, wondering what Lindsey might have told Kathleen, who was a kind, sympathetic person, that she wouldn't share with a male officer. But as he read Kathleen's notes, he had to remind himself that Lindsey wasn't under suspicion here, that she was the one who had filed the missing-person report.

Lindsey had repeated to Kathleen the gossip about Carson having had several women on the side while Lindsey and he were engaged, including Lindsey's sister, Ryder. Kathleen's interviews with Lindsey's friends had produced the same comments. When Kathleen asked Lindsey about the wife of Carson 's partner having left her husband, Lindsey said she doubted there was any connection.

Partner Ray Gibbs, when he had originally been questioned about Carson 's disappearance, had seemed open and cooperative. He had been straightforward about Nina leaving him, and had produced a letter from her saying that she would not be back. She did not mention divorce, and Gibbs had speculated that she might not want a divorce, hoping one day to inherit his share of the firm. He said she didn't know that wasn't possible, he was sure she didn't know the terms of the incorporation agreement. A photocopy of her letter was in the file, and the original had been booked in as evidence.

The plane tickets for Lindsey and Carson 's honeymoon turned up several months after Carson disappeared; they had been used for a reservation in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Carson Chappell. Neither the flight attendants or airport personnel had been able to describe the boarding couple. Officers had, a week after Chappell disappeared, found Nina Gibbs's car in short-term parking at the San Jose airport, but had turned up no flight ticket issued in her name.

Joe thought the simple solution, that Chappell and Nina Gibbs had run off together, should have resolved the case for Lindsey. But not so. She had kept after the department to search for him, and then later had continued the search on her own. It was during this time that Lindsey and Mike began to date.

Joe thought she must not have involved Mike in trying to find Carson or he would have gone into the department and read the file then. Maybe because Mike worked for the federal courts, his reading of the file might have presented a conflict of interest somewhere down the line? So Mike had deliberately kept his distance from the ongoing investigation? He watched Mike turn back to Kathleen's notes.

Lindsey told Kathleen that she'd known Nina Gibbs only casually, that because of Gibbs's and Chappell's partnership, they had attended the same functions, that Nina had been friendly on some occasions but withdrawn on others; in short, that they'd not been close. Joe was so intent on the notes about the Chappell & Gibbs partnership agreement that he didn't notice he was digging his claws into Mike's shoulder until Mike swore and pushed him away.

It took him a few minutes to get positioned on the pillow again, drawing a stern look from Flannery. According to the partnership agreement, if either partner became incapacitated, could not or would not participate as a working member of the firm, the court was to dissolve the company after a year, and the assets were to be sold. When Chappell didn't show in the allotted time, the firm was sold, Ray Gibbs received half the proceeds, and Chappell's mother the other half. Chappell & Gibbs had had a sound business, showing healthy annual profits, and there seemed to be no reason for either partner to have wanted out.

A recent notation at the bottom of the yellow sheet, written by Max Harper just a few months ago, said that Ray Gibbs had divorced Nina, who, as far as the department knew, had not reappeared, and that Gibbs and Ryder Wolf were living together, dividing their time between a San Francisco condo and an apartment on Dolores, in the village.

Finished with reading the memos, Mike set the file aside and leaned back among the pillows, lost in thought. From the look on his thin face, Joe guessed he was thinking not about Carson Chappell but about Lindsey; he sat stroking Joe so sensuously that Joe twitched and stared at him and backed away, his retreat jerking Mike from his reverie.

But it was some time before Mike rose to extinguish the fire. Joe, yawning, padded down to curl up against Rock, receiving a long, wet lick across his ears and nose. He'd grown almost used to dog spit, but soon his wet fur began to feel chilly. As he burrowed deeper against Rock to get warm, he wondered how long it would be before they had an ID on the Oregon body, wondered whether the Oregon investigators were thorough enough to come up with a sample of the DNA.

But DNA to match what?

Was there, among the evidence the department had retained on Chappell, any item belonging to the killer that would produce the needed match to DNA found in Oregon? And, he wondered, when forensics began work on the body from the Pamillon ruins, could they get a match on that DNA? Would the lab find anything that might link that body to the Oregon corpse?

But why was he chasing after phantoms? Why was he so fixated on some relationship between two bodies that had lain, for so many years, some five hundred miles apart?

Well, he'd have his first look at the Pamillon grave in the morning, Joe thought, drifting off to sleep. And who knew what he and Dulcie and Kit would find?

He'd barely closed his eyes when he blinked suddenly awake, staring into the first light of dawn filtering in through the accordion shades. Rolling over, he looked at the clock-and came wide awake. Six bells. Dulcie would pitch a fit. He'd said he'd meet her and Kit before daylight-it was a long run up the hills to the Pamillon estate. Padding lightly across the bed, trying not to wake Mike, and only momentarily waking Rock, who sighed and rolled over, Joe fled down the hall, up the stairs to Clyde 's study, and onto the desk. Leaping to a rafter, he was through his cat door and into his tower-and smack into the stern faces of two scowling lady cats.

There they sat, chill and austere, coolly assessing him, their paws together, their ears at half-mast, regarding him as they would a rude and misbehaving kitten.

"Overslept?" Dulcie said. Her sleek, brown-striped tabby coat was immaculately groomed, every hair in place, her green eyes piercing him. Beside her, Kit's long tortoiseshell fur was every which way, as if she'd had no time to groom. Kit looked at him just as impatiently as Dulcie had, lashing her fluffy tail.

He thought of all kinds of excuses: that he'd overslept because he wasn't used to sleeping in the guest room, wasn't used to sleeping with a stranger whose snores were different from Clyde 's. But neither lady looked patient enough to listen to the shortest explanation, their twin stares said, We've been waiting an hour. The sun's nearly up! Come on, Joe. Move it!

Sheepishly he slipped past them and out through the tower window to the shingled roof and took off fast across the rooftops, Dulcie and Kit running beside him.

At Ocean Avenue they scrambled down a honeysuckle vine, crossed the empty eastbound lane, and turned to race up Ocean's wide, grassy median beneath the dark shelter of its eucalyptus and cypress trees, heading for the open hills, heading for the unidentified grave.