Cat Playing Cupid

19

IT TOOK ALL of Joe's and Dulcie's strength to tip over a box, at an angle against the dresser, slice the tape with rigid claws, and rip open the bottom of the carton. Tunneling up inside, they dug among layers of clothes and sheets and towels and through a tangle of dog-eared paperback novels. They found no gun. They had reached the top, nearly smothered, when they heard footsteps on the outside stairs, then Ray's enraged voice just outside the front door, Ryder's angry retort, and a key turn in the lock.

Backing out of the box fast and pushing it upright, they fled for the living room just as the couple entered. Like a shadow Dulcie slid under the couch. Joe leaped into the white upholstered chair and curled up, pretending to be asleep. Why were they back so early? The two had hardly had time for a drink, much less dinner.

Ray barged in ahead of Ryder and stomped through to the kitchen; they heard him open the refrigerator and pop a beer. Ryder stood in the living room, her fists clenched as if trying to collect her temper. Joe heard Ray open a cupboard and slam what sounded like a jar onto the counter, heard him unscrew the lid and soon smelled peanut butter.

When Ryder seemed calmer, she crossed the living room and stood in the kitchen doorway, watching him.

"That tears it!" Ray snapped at her. "Your sister snooping around. What the hell was she doing in there?"

"She was having a drink. What else would she be doing? Don't be so suspicious."

"Why would she drink with a cop? He's some kind of cop, I've seen him around the station. What's she up to? Why's she nosing around, hanging out with cops? What did she say about the letter?"

"I don't know what she said. I gave it to that Max Harper, the chief, and I left. How would I know what she said?"

Ray was silent; Joe could hear him scraping a spoon or a knife into the peanut butter jar.

"I still don't understand why you wanted me to write that letter," Ryder said, "when it lays the blame squarely on you."

"I was already a suspect. Even if I didn't kill him. Ten years ago, when he disappeared, they grilled me like I was Mafia or something. I told you, if the case is being looked at again, that letter'll throw them off. Can't you understand that? If that is Carson up there, and your sister had that letter all the time, then that throws the guilt on her. And why would you care? Better her than you."

"Why would they suspect me?"

Ray's laugh was sarcastic. "Think about it. If that body turns out to be Carson, and if the cops think that letter is for real, Lindsey will look guilty as hell. But if they find out it's a fake, you're the one in the hot seat. Either way, they'll quit suspecting me, I'll be off the hook."

There was a long silence.

Ray scraped more peanut butter, most likely eating it from the jar.

"You don't think that's Carson up there," Ryder said coldly. "You know it is! You said Carson took off for Europe with your wife, you said you had proof. You said if I wrote that letter it would take the heat off you and wouldn't hurt anyone. You said that couldn't be Carson because he was out of the country, but now you're saying…" The floor shook as she moved fast across the kitchen. There was the sound of a slap and scuffling and a jar fell to the floor, bouncing.

"They never flew to Europe," she screamed at him. "You've known all along he's up there. You killed him! You made me write that letter laying the blame on my sister!"

"What difference! You hate your sister. Hell, they don't even have an ID on that body. How would they get an ID?"

"That's what DNA is for."

"Those police labs are backed up for years. You think they're going to waste time on a ten-year-old corpse?"

Gibbs, Joe thought, would freak out when he learned Oregon had already ID'd Chappell. The tomcat smiled, wondering how many felons had been taken down by their own blind stupidity.

"They'll ID him," Ryder snapped, "one way or another, and now I've set Lindsey up. You said-"

"I just want her to quit snooping around. Stop her from messing around with those cops. Why's she running with that cop, following us tonight?"

"How could they follow us? They were already in there, their drinks were half finished. You killed Carson, and now you're worried about my sister snooping on you?"

"You talk about snooping! You went through Nina's things after she left."

"I thought I might find something to show where she went, something a woman might notice that you wouldn't."

"That's a crock," Ray snapped. "By then, you were glad she was gone…But earlier, before she started seeing Carson, you and Nina got pretty close. What secrets did she tell you, Ryder? Did she tell you where she went when she used to go off by herself? I followed her once, up in them hills," he said. "She was looking for something. Poking around those old ruins. Did she tell you what she was looking for? She damn well never told me!"

"If she wouldn't tell you, why should I! It was personal, it was about her aunt, nothing to concern you!"

"Money? Was that it?" he scoffed. "What, her crazy old aunt left buried money?"

"It was a keepsake, something of sentimental-"

"Oh, right! Nina was real sentimental!"

"Leave it alone, Ray. It was nothing that concerns you."

"Everything concerns me!" The scuffling started again. A thud shook the floor, as if someone fell or was slammed hard against the wall. Joe and Dulcie left their cover, creeping closer to look, peering into the kitchen.

"Bastard!" Ryder shouted. "You followed him up there! You killed Carson!"

"I didn't kill him! How could I when he was in Europe? I just don't like cops nosing around." There was a long silence, then, "You were crazy with jealousy when Lindsey told you she and Carson were getting married. You wanted Carson, you were hot as hell for him. You followed him up there and-"

"How could I shoot him when I'm scared of guns?"

"How did you know Carson was shot?"

"Lindsey told me. It was in the paper, for Pete's sake."

"I didn't see that in the paper. And you and Lindsey hardly speak. Why would she tell you anything?" Ray hit her again, and she came storming out of the kitchen. The cats vanished under the couch. Peering out, they saw her grab her purse and slam out of the apartment banging the front door so hard Joe was thankful they hadn't tried racing through.

"Out," Dulcie whispered the moment the room was empty, "Out of here, now!" But even as they fled for the sliding screen, Ray emerged from the kitchen. He saw them and lunged for them, burning to take out his rage on anything that moved-as he grabbed for Dulcie, Joe leaped in his face, digging his claws deep, raking Gibbs's whiskery flesh. He leaped free before Ray could grab him and was out the door beside Dulcie, across the balcony, and up the oak tree. As Ray burst out, they streaked higher among the concealing branches. Ray stood on the balcony swearing, staring up into the tree. At last he turned back inside, slamming the glass slider and pulling the draperies.

HALF AN HOUR EARLIER, in the sunken patio of the Running Boar, at the table closest to the stone fireplace, Lindsey Wolf and Mike Flannery sat talking softly as they sipped their hot spiced rum. In the early twilight, the patio was darker than the streets above. The fire on the hearth cast a ruddy, dancing glow across the small tables and onto the faces of the half dozen couples who sat enjoying early cocktails.

"It was only a little one-story cottage," Lindsey was saying, "built during the days when the village was a religious retreat. In the old photos I have of it, the roof was really low, mossy, and sagging. Whoever renovated it and added the upstairs made a great attic living space."

"You were lucky," Mike said, "to find a combination office and apartment."

"I was," she said. "Perfect location, two blocks from Ocean. And the office is just right, with its open beams and fireplace-a far cry from the generic office I rented in L.A. And this one is all mine," she said, her eyes crinkling with pleasure, "bought and nearly half paid for."

She looked into the fire, sipping her toddy, then looked back at him, her hazel eyes dark in the dusky light. "It's good to be back, Mike. Despite all that's happened, despite having to face this pain and ugliness again."

"Why did you leave, Lindsey? You've given me excuses. But why, really?"

She looked at him for a long time. The waiter appeared, then turned away again as if loath to interrupt their intimate exchange.

"To simply say you were all mixed up," Mike said, "that left me pretty uncertain. Mad as hell one minute, ready to fly down there the next minute and demand some straight answers-and then the next minute resolving to put it behind me, to forget you and move on."

"And you did move on," she said softly. "Why did you, Mike, why did you let me go?"

His jaw hardened. "What the hell? You were doing no more than playing hard to get?"

"No, I…I didn't mean…"

"I didn't think you were that childish, Lindsey. I didn't think…" He stopped and turned to look behind him, where she was staring, watching the couple who had come down the five steps from the street. A big, scruffy-haired man in black jeans and black leather jacket, and Ryder, wearing a short, low-cut black dress, her tawny hair fluffed around her shoulders; Mike noticed again how closely Lindsey resembled her sister.

Seeing Lindsey, they paused at the bottom of the short stairs, and the man's voice rose. "What the hell is this, Ryder!" He clutched her shoulder, spun her around, and dragged her back up the short flight. "Christ! Sitting there waiting for us! What did you do, tell her you were coming here?"

"I didn't tell her anything, I didn't know where we were going! I hardly speak to her!" Ryder hissed. She mumbled something more that Mike and Lindsey couldn't make out as Gibbs hurried her away.

Behind them, Lindsey had gone pale. Mike put his arm around her, and she leaned into him. He searched her face sharply.

She shrugged. "Ray never liked me."

"He was your boss, one of your bosses."

"He…came on to me once, pretty roughly. In the file room. I told him if he did that again, I'd tell Carson-and that I'd file charges against him.

"He pretty much left me alone after that."

Mike took her hands to warm them, they were cold and shaking-but whether from distress or from a harsher anger, he couldn't be sure.

BACKING DOWN the oak tree to the roof of Gibbs's condo, the cats licked bits of oak bark from between their claws, but Joe couldn't wash away the sour taste of Ray Gibbs's stubbly face.

"I wish," Dulcie said, "you'd slashed his throat, down to the jugular."

Joe smiled, wishing he had, too.

"Gibbs shot Carson Chappell," Dulcie said. "He accused Ryder to make himself look innocent. Is there a gun hidden in there? Or is it buried in that Oregon forest? I guess," she said with distaste, "I guess we'll have to go back and toss the rest of the place."

"Not tonight," Joe said. He wasn't going in again with Gibbs there. And more important was to deliver the box of stationery. He tried to decide where was best to leave it. At the back door of the station? Haul it through the window of Dallas's Blazer and drop it on the seat?

How many pieces of evidence, over the years, had they dragged across the village to deliver to Molena Point PD-each time increasing the unease of Max and his officers over the identity of the unknown snitch? How many times had they made that delivery just hours after someone in the department expressed a need for such evidence? Or after some development that cried out for additional information?

It wasn't half a day, now, since Ryder had brought in the letter-in front of Joe Grey. Then an anonymous someone provides the detectives with a lead to the source of the letter. The cats looked at each other, thinking about that. And they left the condo hauling the black T-shirt over the dark rooftops, taking turns dragging it, moving directly away from Molena Point PD.

Carrying it perilously between them across spreading oak branches above the narrow streets, taking a circuitous route above the dimmest streets to avoid being seen from below, they at last backed down a pine tree in Wilma Getz's garden and, with difficulty, were just able to force the package through Dulcie's cat door, into the laundry.

They could hear Wilma in the kitchen, at the sink, could hear the water running. Dragging their prize through, they dropped it by the kitchen table.

"What?" Wilma said, turning from the sink where she was washing salad greens. She eyed with suspicion the wad of black T-shirt, lying like something dead on her clean blue linoleum. "What?" she repeated.

The cats looked up at her innocently.

"What?" she said a third time, not liking their wide-eyed stares.

"Evidence," Joe said. "We need to leave it here for a while."

"What evidence? Evidence to what? What have you two stolen now? Who's going to break in here looking for it?"

Joe said, "You can't steal evidence. Evidence, by its very nature, is-"

Wilma wiped her hands on her apron, her look stern, her eyes never leaving Joe. Dulcie was silent, watching the two of them, thinking that over the years Wilma had grown as acerbic as Clyde-though she knew very well that, in the end, Wilma would join them in hiding the box of stationery.

The upshot was that Wilma put the black package in a shoe box and hid it at the back of her closet until the cats chose a more opportune time to deliver it to the law. Then, returning to the kitchen, she fixed them a snack of crackers, Havarti cheese, and deli turkey. "I have," she said as she added a plate for herself and poured a cup of tea, "I have something to tell you."

It was now that Sage woke and came hobbling out to the kitchen, encumbered by his cast and bandages. Kit padded sedately beside him, quiet and responsible, quite unlike herself. When Wilma lifted Sage into a chair, Kit leaped up beside him.

Wilma set the cats' plates on their chairs. "While Charlie sat with Sage and Kit this afternoon, I did some research in the library." She looked very pleased with herself.

"I looked first in the computer index of local history, and then went to the microfilm reader. My arm's sore from cranking through back issues of the Gazette. I thought I'd find it in the society pages, hoped I would…"

She paused to sip her tea. "And there it was," she said with excitement.

"There what was?" Dulcie and Kit said together, lashing their tails with impatience.

"A picture of the same rearing cat."

"In the society pages?" Dulcie said.

"The society pages. I thought I remembered it. I had an idea about what year it was from helping a patron research Molena Point in the 1920s. And there was the picture, just as I remembered. A photograph of Olivia Pamillon, a close-up of four women dressed for a charity ball."

"And?" Dulcie said, fidgeting. She hated it when Wilma dragged things out, and she knew Wilma did it on purpose.

"She was wearing the bracelet," Wilma said. "The rearing cat was quite clear."

"Then that is Olivia's body," Dulcie said. "But why would they bury her in that little courtyard and not in the family cemetery?"

"That I haven't found out," Wilma said. "I did find her obituary, and it says she's buried in the family plot."

"Did her family change their minds at the last minute?" Kit said. "Why would they?"

"Or," Joe said, "did someone move the body?" The tomcat looked around at their unlikely little group, four cats in chairs and one human with her silver hair looping out of its ponytail. "Or," Joe said, "is that not Olivia, in the grotto? Is that not Olivia, wearing her bracelet?"