Cat Raise The Dead

35

"No," Harper said, "there was not enough flesh on the body to take fingerprints. But we have positive identification-there's no doubt the body hidden beneath the turf was Jane Hubble's." Mae Rose was very still, but she was calm; her primary emotion seemed to be her deep rage at Jane's death. Harper had wondered if he was being too graphic for these elderly ladies, but evidently not for Mae Rose. Her clear blue eyes were fixed on him not only with anger at Jane's murder but with a bright, intelligent attention. "It was not only the finger," she said, "but Jane's dental work that identified her?"

"Yes, and also an X-ray of an old multiple fracture of her left ankle."

"I remember that. She told me she broke her ankle when she was in college, on a ski trip. That old break pained her a lot in bad weather. And so the X-rays matched?"

"They did," Harper said. He supposed he was an incongruous figure, uniformed and armed, sitting at the delicate garden table in the beflowered patio of Casa Capri. At their small tea table, besides himself and Mae Rose, sat young Dillon Thurwell and Susan Dorriss. Susan had graduated from her wheelchair to a metal walker-it stood beside her chair-and the brown poodle lay beside it, napping. The entire Pet-a-Pet group was in attendance, the occasion a celebration hosted by the new management. At the next table were seated Clyde, Wilma, Bonnie Dorriss, and old Eula Weems.

"If the finger came from Jane's grave," Mae Rose said, "then the other grave, the open grave of Dolores Fernandez, that was just a red herring?"

"It was," Harper said. "After the dog dug into Jane's grave and took the little finger bone, Adelina had Dolores Fernandez's grave dug up to make it look like the finger came from there; and they put new sod on Jane's grave. Adelina must have had some wild idea- some silly hope, that we'd take the incident at face value, wouldn't bother to run the finger through the lab."

"But it didn't work," Mae Rose said with satisfaction. The little, doll-like woman amused Harper. Despite her fragile appearance, she'd been bull-stubborn in her insistence that Jane and the others had met foul play.

"When the dog dug up Jane's grave, that was when Adelina started putting out poison." Mae Rose shook her head. "Adelina had a regular shell game going, switching patients around."

"That's exactly what she had. It started when a Dorothy Martin died, fifteen years ago. We've identified Dorothy, too, from X-rays of her dental work. Adelina buried her secretly in the old cemetery, and told the other residents that Mrs. Martin had been moved over to Nursing, and she continued to collect the two thousand dollars a month for Dorothy's care. Though I guess the fee, now, is more like three thousand."

"Three thousand and up," Susan Dorriss said.

"Adelina did the same with the next two patients," Harper said. "It's possible both of those were natural deaths, forensics is still examining the remains. Neither death was reported, and the trust officers went right on paying.

"All three patients had bank-appointed trust officers looking after their incomes, paying their bills, people who had never even seen their clients. Bank trust officers aren't expected to visit their charges; they haven't the time, and they aren't paid to do that.

"And none of those three woman had any close relatives who might pop in for a visit. If a trust officer phoned to schedule a visit for some business reason, Renet did a stand-in, made herself up like the deceased."

"So Adelina buried her charges," Mae Rose said, "and went on collecting their monthly fees. No wonder she drives a new Bentley."

Harper nodded. "Adelina was able to keep most of her scam from her Spanish-speaking nurses, and she nearly doubled the salaries of the three supervisors. She's always hired nurses who wouldn't be apt to talk, who don't have much English and who've had a problem with the law. Women she can control through threats and blackmail." He sipped his tea, wishing he had a cup of coffee, and studied Mae Rose's overburdened wheelchair-all her worldly possessions. "That doll in your blue bag, Mrs. Rose, is that the doll that Jane had, where you found the note?"

Mae lifted the faded doll and fluffed its dry, yellow hair. "Yes, this is the doll I gave Jane. The doll that was Jane's cry for help." She gave Harper a long look. "A cry that didn't arrive until after she was dead." She stroked the doll sadly, and laid it in her lap beside the brindle cat curled asleep on the pink afghan. "Was there evidence of who-which one of those three-actually killed Jane? And of who buried her?"

"None," Harper said. "We know only that she was given a lethal dose of Valium mixed with other drugs. Drug traces in the body are a cause of death which is still detectable long after bruises and flesh wounds can no longer be found. We're assuming that either Adelina or Teddy buried her; forensics found hairs from both suspects around the grave. The lab had to separate them out from some animal hairs that forensics collected at the site, all of it was mixed together in with leaves and dirt and grass."

"What kind of animal hairs?" Dillon said.

"Cat hair," Harper said. "Some stray cat."

He did not look at Clyde, though Clyde was watching him. He was still ridiculously edgy about Damen's gray tomcat. The cat was, at the moment, perched above them in the orange tree, presumably asleep, though twice he had caught a thin gleam of yellow through its narrowly slitted eyes. Aware of the cat, he felt as he did too often lately, edgy, nervous, wondering if he was losing his grip.

The cat had got mixed into the case in a way that left him uncertain and short-tempered, left him so edgy he wouldn't care if he never saw another cat. Cats in the cemetery, some cat racing through the house with Renet in hot pursuit, cat hairs around the doll which had been set up for him to find. And the tiny indentations in the doll's arm, those marks, the lab swore, were the marks of a cat's teeth.

None of this helped his digestion. None of it was comfortable to think about.

If this had been the first time these two cats had got mixed up in a case, he'd shrug and chalk it up to coincidence, forget about it.

But it was not the first time. This was the third murder case within a year that, one way or another, these two cats had seemed to blunder into, leaving their marks, leaving their own perplexing trail.

And the worst part was, he had an uncomfortable feeling this would not be the last time.

Dulcie, lying on Mae Rose's lap, yawned and curled deeper into the pink afghan, pushing aside the doll. She had not looked up when Harper mentioned cat hairs on the grave, nor had she glanced up into the tree. Joe, crouched up there among the leaves, would be highly amused that Harper had sent cat hairs to the lab. If she dared look up at him, she'd see that stupid grin on his face. Grinning out through the leaves as smug as Alice's Cheshire cat.

Harper hadn't looked up at Joe, either. She hoped he wasn't putting some things together that were best left apart.

Still, if he was, she couldn't help it. He couldn't prove anything. She and Joe had, she considered, done an admirable job to assist Harper. But he'd never know for sure. If he insisted on feeling nervous, that was his problem.

"It's so strange," Susan said, "how the stolen doll got into the graveyard-and why Adelina's black book was hidden under her desk. Surely she'd have some better place to hide it." She glanced at Dillon. "It's almost like a child's prank, moving evidence around."

Dillon looked blank Harper helped himself to another slice of lemon cake from the plate in the center of the table. Some details of the case did not bear close scrutiny.

They had a solid case, but there were unanswered questions that could prejudice the prosecution. He just hoped defense didn't claim the notebook was tainted evidence. They'd have to wait and see. Certainly the department had done a fine job sorting out the information in Adelina's black book, checking its entries against the backgrounds of her nurses.

The black book had contained, as well as the dossiers of two dozen employees, a separate sheet of paper with a code list of the dead patients. No name, just a number, with a birth date, and apparently the date he or she was secretly buried. Some had a second date when that person was given a public funeral and some other body buried. He had, when he removed the coded paper, found caught in the spine of the book one short dark hair, a hair varied in color like the hair of a dark tabby cat.

He had not sent this to the lab.

In the old cemetery, his men had found fifteen unmarked graves. They had found, as well, double burials in four of the Spanish graves where more-recent bodies had been tucked in to sleep, perhaps restlessly, beside ancient Spanish bones.

When he did the numbers on that, it looked like Adelina was raking in well over half a million a year on dead patients.

"It was with the fourth death," he said, "whatever the cause, that Adelina decided to have a funeral. By this time, the long-deceased Dorothy Martin would have been ninety-nine years old. Adelina probably decided that she'd better fake a death before Dorothy started receiving unwanted publicity for her longevity. She gave Dorothy a nice, though modest, send-off, using the body of a newly deceased Mary Dunwood. With Renet's background in the makeup department, it was no trick for her to make up the dead Mary Dunwood to look like an aged Dorothy Martin.

"Over the years," he said, "no one seemed to notice that Casa Capri always used the same funeral parlor, nor to think it unusual that the funeral director drives top-of-the-line Cadillacs which he trades in every year. Not likely anyone would have commented. No one takes a friendly view of funeral directors-people like to think of them as rip-off artists.

"For each prospect who fit Adelina's requirements-no close attachments, no close family-she kept a detailed record of any distant relative or friend, and she made copies of all their correspondence. It wasn't hard to learn to fake different people's handwriting. And she got personal information, as well, from what Teddy learned during his friendly little chats with the patients. Adelina knew more about those people than they ever imagined.

"And it wasn't hard for Renet, using her makeup and acting skills, to impersonate the dead patients. People change sufficiently as they age; five or six years can make a significant difference.

"Renet took photographs of the victims often, before they died. And she photographed herself made up like them, to compare. She made quite a study of how the patients would look as they aged; we found books outlining the changes that can occur. I'm guessing Adelina demanded that amount of commitment from Renet. Adelina is a perfectionist. She made sure, as well, that wherever Renet was living, up and down the coast, they were in touch. All Renet had to do, if she was needed, was hop on a plane. The nursing home made it known- an inviolate rule-that visitors must give twenty-four-hour notice. That patients did not like surprises, and did not liked to be disturbed during any small illness, such as a cold or an attack of asthma."

Susan and Wilma exchanged a look; Susan's dislike for the Priors was very clear. She had told Harper her suspicions about Teddy and how, the afternoon Adelina and Renet were arrested, there had been a major panic at the home. Susan said Teddy had spent maybe fifteen minutes in Adelina's office, then Adelina had left in a hurry; Teddy had wheeled to the front door, watching her drive away, then whirled his chair around, racing into the social room.

There he had confronted Susan, had wanted to know what she'd told the police, what she'd seen out in the grove, what she'd said about him.

Susan had played dumb, said she didn't know what he was talking about. She'd been terrified of him, said his eyes looked almost glazed, said she expected him to leap out of his chair and start hitting her.

Now, Harper watched Susan speculatively. He had been really distressed about Teddy's threat, thinking of Susan so vulnerable in the wheelchair. Strange, Susan was the only woman, since Millie died, who gave him that warm, totally honest, comfortable feeling, as if with Susan you could be totally yourself.

But he didn't need a woman in his life, not any more than he needed cats under his feet during an investigation.

Across from him, Wilma said, "How did the three Priors respond when you took them in for questioning?"

Max smiled. "Renet was upset, angry. And she was scared.

"Young Teddy went ballistic, threw a real tantrum- though he wasn't sufficiently out of control to abandon his wheelchair. Adelina was cool as ice, totally in charge of herself. And, of course, she already has her attorneys at work on her defense.

Mae Rose said, "Were there other murders besides Jane and Mary Nell? Or did the others die naturally?"

"Forensics is still examining the remains; there's indication that James Luther may have been a victim. With bodies that old, a murder can easily go undetected." He had to marvel at these old people. Some old folks would turn queasy at this much detail. These folks did not seem morbid in their interest, except maybe Eula Weems. They simply wanted information.

But Eula's hands fidgeted and plucked at each other. "How-how did they kill Mary Nell?"

"The way her skull was broken," Harper said, "she probably died relatively quickly. The murder weapon was a smooth, thin object, swung with force.

"One theory is that someone may have tried to smother her, and when she fought back she was hit a hard blow, possibly with the edge of a dinner plate. Such a blow would break the skull in just that way."

He would not ordinarily have discussed a case so openly, particularly when it was not yet in court, but the newspaper had got hold of most of the details; and these old folks did have a vested interest. Two of their close friends had been murdered, maybe more than two. These folks had a right to some answers when the very people who were entrusted with their well-being had betrayed them.

Dillon said, "Jane was desperate, to sew that letter in the doll praying someone would find it. And no one did, not in time."

"But we have her killers," Harper said. "And no one might ever have known, their little scheme might never have been discovered, if not for you and Mae Rose."

He thought he saw the tabby cat's expression change, a twitching of whiskers almost like a smile. But of course he was imagining that.

"The court won't let the Priors go free?" Eula said.

"No matter what happens in court, and I don't see them going free, Adelina Prior will not be back at Casa Capri, nor will Renet or Teddy. Judge Sanderson has promised that."

The home, left without management, had been placed under jurisdiction of the court and was being managed temporarily by a court-appointed chain of retirement homes. In the interest of public relations, the new manager had organized not only this little gathering today, but had announced several new policies, trying hard to counter the bad publicity and bad feelings.

He had opened the Nursing wing to patients' families and to all residents each afternoon, so they could visit those patients who felt well enough to have company. The Pet-a-Pet program would continue as a permanent part of the home's therapy, along with several other new programs, including a weekly reading of best-selling fiction by one of the local library staff and several evening classes to be presented as part of the continuing education offerings of the local college.

"Them college classes," Eula said. "Teddy talked about getting some kind of fancy schooling here, but it never happened." Eula sighed. "Teddy was all hot air." The old woman snorted. "He never did need that wheelchair. All the time, he could walk."

She half rose at the table, addressing her audience. "I bet it was Teddy dug those graves. Maybe took those poor old folks out of here, himself, in his van."

Minute particles of flesh and hair had been found in the van, identified as belonging to the dead patients. Clothing fibers were found matching threads from the graves. And similar particles had turned up behind the stable where, for years, an old truck had been parked. Harper's theory was that the bodies were transferred from the van to the truck late at night, and driven out into the cemetery.

And, even more interesting, the fragments of tire marks found behind the stable had matched the casts of tire marks taken from the scene of Susan Dorriss's accident. Same tread, same small L-shaped nick at one edge. The truck had been recovered three days ago in the small town of Mendocino, north of San Francisco.

At one time the truck had been legally registered to Adelina Prior-its original plates had been found in the old stable along with a dozen other plates hidden in a niche beneath the wooden bottom of an old feed bin in one of the stalls used for storage.

His theory was that either Renet or Teddy was driving the truck when it hit Susan, and that Renet had taken the truck to be painted. He hoped with time the department could establish that it was Renet who appeared at the paint shop dressed as a little frumpy Latino housewife, black hair, Spanish accent. He was hoping they could find hard evidence that it was Renet who later bought the truck from the used-car dealer, dressed in a short leather skirt, her hair a blaze of red curls, her legs shapely in black hose. The redhead who bought the truck had put a FOR SALE sign in the window, and two hours later had sold it cheap to a Mexican family moving to Seattle. When the truck blew a head gasket in Mendocino, they sold it for bus fare.

Mae Rose looked at Harper. "Strange that Renet would hit on the idea of calling herself The Cat Burglar. I had a friend once who used to joke that if she ever became a professional burglar, that was what she would do. Pretend to be looking for her lost cat."

She stroked Dulcie, watching Harper. "You said Renet worked in wardrobe, in Hollywood? So did Wenona. I wonder…" The little lady frowned. "It would seem strange, wouldn't it, if they knew each other? But Wenona lived in Molena Point when she was younger. She was forty when she moved to L.A.

Renet would have been about twenty then, doing those early films."

The little woman cocked her head, thinking. "Wenona used to go down to the wharf to feed the stray cats. She liked to feed them, but she was afraid of them, too."

Harper tried to keep a bland face, but Mae Rose's words hit home. When they locked Renet up, she kept shouting, It was the cats. It was those damn cats that put me here. No one had asked what she meant, she was in a violent temper. He hadn't asked, and he hadn't wanted to know.

Harper shivered. He didn't look up, but he felt, from the tree above, the yellow stare of the tomcat. And on the pink afghan, Wilma's cat didn't wiggle an ear, didn't open an eye, yet he could sense her interest as sharply as if she watched him.

And later, as Harper drove Clyde back to the village, he couldn't help glancing down at the gray tomcat. The animal lay stretched insolently between them, across the front seat of his squad car. Clyde said taking a cat in the car was no different than taking a dog, and Clyde was so argumentative on the subject, you couldn't reason with him.

Everyone knew that dogs were fine in cars, dogs stuck their heads out in the wind, hung their tongues out and enjoyed. But cats-a cat was under the gas pedal one minute, then trying to jump out any open window. Cats weren't meant to ride in cars; cats were more attuned to creeping around in the shadows.

Besides, he wasn't keen about cat hairs in his squad car.

Though certainly Clyde's cat was obedient enough, it didn't make a hiss, didn't leap around clawing the upholstery, didn't go crazy trying to get out the window. It napped on the seat, purring contentedly. It looked up at him only once, a blank, sleep-drugged gaze, dull, ordinary, unremarkable, making him wonder what he thought was so strange about the animal.

If he thought this dull-looking cat had anything to do with events at Casa Capri or at the Prior estate, maybe he needed a few days off, a vacation.

Pulling up before Clyde's white Cape Cod, he watched Clyde swing out of the car carrying the cat and set it down on the lawn. The cat yawned, glanced up blearily, and wandered away toward the house. Just a dull-looking, ordinary tomcat.

The tomcat, the minute Harper let him and Clyde out of the squad car in front of their cottage, headed for his cat door. Walking slowly, trying to appear stupid, he was nearly choking with amusement.

Pushing in through his cat door, leaving Clyde leaning on the door of the squad car talking, he moved quickly to the kitchen, where he might not be heard, leaped up onto the breakfast table, and rolled over, laughing, pawing the air, bellowing with laughter, working himself into such a fit that Clyde, coming in, had to whack him on the shoulder to make him stop. It took three hard whacks before he collapsed, gasping, and lay limp and spent.

"It's a wonder he didn't hear you; you were bellowing like a bull moose. You really have a nerve, to laugh at Harper."

Joe looked at him slyly. "Harper gets so edgy. Every time we wrap up a case, hand him the evidence, he gets nervous, starts to fidget."

"Just where would the case be, Joe, without Harper? You think Adelina and Renet would be in jail? You think you and Dulcie would have made a citizen's arrest? Hauled Adelina and Renet and Teddy into jail yourselves?"

"I wasn't laughing at Harper. I was laughing because of Harper."

Clyde looked hard at him. "You're not making sense."

"Harper's a great guy, but he's letting us get to him.

How can I help but laugh? He's developing a giant-sized psychosis about cats."

Silence. Clyde snatched the dish towel from its rod, folded it more evenly, and hung it up again.

"You can laugh at Harper," Joe said. "So why can't I? There he is, a seasoned cop with twenty years on the force, and he's letting a couple of kitty cats give him the fidgets."

Clyde sat down at the table, looking at him.

"In the squad car-he could hardly keep from staring at me. He knows we were up to something, and he can't figure it out. So we helped nail Adelina, so does he have to get spooked about it? We scare him silly. Can I help if he breaks me up?"

Clyde put his face in his hands and didn't speak.

But it was not until later, when Joe had trotted up through the village to meet Dulcie in the alley behind Jolly's Deli, that he realized the full import of what he and Dulcie had done and how their maneuvers would affect Harper. Why wouldn't Harper be upset? The man was only human.

"Three murderers are behind bars," Dulcie said. "A rash of burglaries has been stopped. And, best of all, now that those old people are free of Adelina, they're not afraid anymore. They're safe now, and looking forward to enjoying life a little, in their remaining years."

She looked at him deeply, her green eyes glowing. "And we did it. You and me and Dillon and Mae Rose."

"And Max Harper," he said charitably.

"Well of course, Max Harper." And she began to grin.

"What?" he said. "What are you thinking?"

"Renet in her underpants and bra, with that wrinkled old witch face." She rolled over, mewling with laughter, and soon they were both laughing, crazy as if they'd been on catnip. Only a sound from the deli silenced them, as George Jolly came out his back door bearing a paper plate.

They could smell freshly boiled shrimp, and the aroma drove out all other thoughts. They looked at each other, licked their whiskers, and trotted on over, smiling. As they began to eat, old Mr. Jolly stood looking up and down the alley, wondering how those laughing tourists had disappeared so quickly. Only the two cats knew that there had been no tourists, and even for old George Jolly, they weren't telling.