Cat Seeing Double

16

The aromas of garlic and chilies drew Ryan like a benediction. The enticement of a spicy, delicious meal, the hot Mexican music, the soft light cast by the swinging lanterns, all the rich setting of Lupe's Playa seemed to cosset and comfort her. On the brick patio beneath the gently blowing oaks, they had their favorite table in the far corner beside the brick wall. This was where she and Clyde had first met, when she first arrived in the village and Dallas brought her here for dinner. Now, seated beside Clyde, ordering a beer, she took his hand, comforted by his strong presence. Ever since taking the call on her cell phone she had felt even more uncertain, even more raw and exposed.

She hadn't told Clyde about the call, hadn't wanted to spoil their evening. Now, she tried not to keep glancing out through the pieced-brick patio wall, to the street, to see if she had been followed. Yet she couldn't help watching the host's desk, through the patio doors, studying each new arrival, wondering… a thin man, the caller had said. She had no idea whether she would know the person-if she'd been followed, if this wasn't some hoax, someone wanting to harass her. Who could have made such a call?

Certainly Max Harper received some strange phone calls. But she wasn't a cop, she was a private citizen. How could this call tonight have any connection to a police informant?

Whatever the truth, that anonymous call, just after the murder, had given her a deep and lasting chill.

It wasn't as if she knew her neighbors, as if any of them would be concerned about her safety. Certainly none of them would have her phone numbers handy.

"So, you have another date? You want to hurry on through dinner?"

She looked at him blankly.

"You've been staring out at the street like you're waiting for a lost lover."

"I had a phone call, coming down. He wouldn't give a name. Said that when I left the apartment I was followed. I didn't want to tell you, and spoil the evening. He described a slim man driving a gray hatchback, said he'd been parked above the apartment apparently waiting for me. It's probably some nut call, but…"

Clyde's expression startled her. His face flushed but he didn't seem exactly surprised. "What the hell. You don't need crazy phone calls on top of everything else."

"It made me a little nervous, that's all," she said quickly. She wiped some water from the table with her napkin and unrolled the blueprints, weighting them down with the chip and salsa bowls. Clyde leaned over, studying the drawings. She had presented the floor plan and several elevations. The vaulted ceiling of the new room was impressive, both from the street and from within.

But even with the excitement of the promised addition, Clyde's mind remained on the phantom snitch. His thoughts about the tomcat were not charitable. Did Joe have to upset Ryan? Probably the car Joe saw had been some neighbor or visitor pulling away, and Joe had let his imagination run. Damn cat had to mind everyone's business. And what was he doing near Ryan's place? Or, in Ryan's place? Involuntarily Clyde glanced out through the pierced wall, himself, at the slowly passing cars, wondering if someone had followed her-and that message to Ryan wasn't the only phone call Joe had placed tonight.

Just before Clyde left the house Max had called, on his way from San Francisco to Sonoma. The snitch had been in touch, the same unidentified voice that contacted Harper periodically. Max always filled Clyde in because those calls made Max nervous. The snitch had never been identified, the caller refused to give his name, and he did not fit the profile of most snitches- he sure never asked for payment.

The bottom line was, Joe Grey could not stay off the phone.

And now, tonight, had the snitch gone too far? He had told Harper that the San Andreas address for Curtis Farger was a fake, that Curtis had been staying with an uncle up there. How could the tomcat know such a thing, so soon after the bombing? Know more about the young prisoner than did either Garza or Detective Davis, both of whom had questioned Curtis?

This time, Clyde didn't see how Joe could have a solid source, for either call. So he saw someone driving down Ryan's street behind her. Probably some guy running down to the store for a bottle of milk or a six-pack. Joe had to be snatching at whirlwinds, clawing at unreliable "facts" that would only serve to muddy the investigation. Clyde didn't like to think that of Joe.

Certainly he'd underestimated Joe in the past; but these calls just seemed too far out-scaring Ryan, and maybe sending Harper on a wild-goose chase. And there was nothing that he, Clyde, could say to Harper to stop him from wasting his time. That was my tomcat calling, Max, and this time, I gotta say, he was way off base.

Right.

Clyde did not stop to examine his perplexed anger, or to consider that it grew precisely from his own increased respect for the small hunter's skill. Deeply irritated with Joe, wanting only to dismiss the matter, he concentrated on the blueprints.

The first stage of the work to update his modest Cape Cod cottage called for converting the smaller of Clyde's two bedrooms into a stairway and storage closet, the stairs to lead to the new second floor. Ryan planned to jack the tilting roof straight up to form two walls of the new upstairs. She said this was the fastest and most economical approach, and it was a concept that made sense to Clyde. The new master bedroom would have a fireplace, two walk-in closets, a compartmentalized bath, and a large study with a second fireplace. Both fireplaces would have gas logs but could be converted easily to burning wood. Neither Clyde nor Ryan had mentioned that the suite was admirably set up for a couple.

The waiter appeared. As they ordered, Clyde glanced out through the wall again, to where Ryan's truck was parked. Several tourists were passing, glancing into the cab as people seemed compelled to do, peering into empty vehicles.

"It'll take only a day to raise the roof," Ryan said, "once we have the end walls off. A few days to build and sheath the new roof and new end walls. Then we'll be dried in and it won't matter what the weather does." Or if I go to jail, she thought. "My uncle Scotty will be coming down to work on the job. My dad's brother."

Clyde nodded. "Dallas calls him a red-faced rounder of an Irishman with a Scotch name and the mind of an insanely talented chess player."

She laughed. "Scotty loves analyzing the smallest detail, sorting out every possibility. It was from Scotty I learned to love all kinds of puzzles-that's what made me want to be a builder. When I was little he taught me about space, the uses of space. I learned to design from Scotty-silly games a kid loves, that teach you to look for all possibilities in how you arrange and use space."

She looked at him solemnly. He didn't teach me about finding a dead body in your space. What kind of puzzle is that? She said, "Dallas called Harper. He and Charlie are coming back, canceling the cruise."

"Yes, Harper called me just before I left the house. They were on the road, going to stay somewhere in the wine country tonight then spend a day or two in San Andreas, see if they can get a line on what the boy was doing up there."

"Some honeymoon."

"Dallas said you talked with the kid again, in jail. What do you make of him, now?"

"He's difficult to read. Maybe scared, maybe just hard-nosed defiant. It's ugly to think about a ten-year-old kid without conscience, but it can happen. Or maybe," she said, "maybe he's trying real hard to protect his grampa."

"You think the old man set the bomb?"

"His son's in prison for running a meth lab. The fact that Harper couldn't make a case against Grampa may have left the old boy feeling like he had to do a little payback."

"Pretty heavy payback. Have you wondered if the kid, when he was up in San Andreas, had anything to do with copying your truck keys?"

"It's possible. That was the first thing Dallas asked me. We both had keys, Scotty and I. I suppose mine could have gone missing for hours, and I wouldn't notice. But that's…" She shivered. "If that's the case, who got him to steal them?"

Clyde buttered a tortilla. "Whatever they find out about the boy, looks like the department's stuck with him for a while. Harper said juvenile hall can't take him, he'd just talked with Dallas. The fire they had last month destroyed most of the building, and the temporary quarters aren't that secure. Juvenile authorities want Curtis to stay where he is."

"When Max called, did you talk with Charlie too?"

He nodded. "She had lunch with Kate Osborne yesterday in the city while Max made some phone calls and kept an appointment-a couple of Dallas's buddies on San Francisco PD," he said softly. "They'll be checking, unofficially at this point, on Rupert's connections in the city."

"The girlfriends," she said. "That's encouraging."

He nodded. "The girlfriends, and their male companions. Maybe they'll turn up a jealous lover or two, find something they can run on."

"I hope." She touched his hand. "I feel shaky about getting through your job without the grand jury coming after me. If you want to…"

"Will you quit that? You didn't kill him and you're not going to jail." He took her hand. "You figure a month to do my upstairs. You were right on schedule with my patio construction, so I'm guessing you will be with this. Long before that, Dallas and Harper will have Rupert's killer behind bars."

She just looked at him.

"Believe me. You have no faith in those guys? In your own uncle?" He winked at her. "You'll have to stay out of jail if you mean to be on time, so you can get on with the next project." They had agreed early on that ripping out one downstairs wall, opening Clyde's seldom-used dining room to the kitchen to make one big space for casual entertaining, fit Clyde's lifestyle. Clyde and his friends played poker in the kitchen, and enjoyed their potluck meals there, or on the new enclosed patio.

"And you still want the little tower at one end of the new upstairs?"

"Absolutely. Joe would feel slighted if he didn't have his own place."

Ryan laughed. "You don't spoil your animals." "Of course not." A private cat tower, Joe Grey had said, with glass all around. Sun warmed, with an ocean view. A private feline retreat, off-limits to humans.

But as he joked with Ryan and tried to reassure her, Clyde kept wondering if the cats had called her from her apartment. And wondering if someone had followed her. Wondering if they might have doubled back when they were sure the apartment was empty, maybe used a duplicate key? And that worried him. If someone was in there, he prayed the cats had left.

The gray hatchback did return to Ryan's place while the cats were still crouched on the desk. They were poised to leave when the same car passed below the windows, coming slowly up the hill, and parked half a block up the street.

A tall man emerged moving swiftly toward the building and silently up the wooden stairs. He was maybe forty, with soft brown hair in a handsome blow-dry and, in his right hand, a small leather case the size of a cell phone. As he approached the door the cats dropped off the desk and under the daybed. They were beginning to feel like moles, or like a pair of fuzzy slippers abandoned beneath the mattress. He knocked, knocked again, waited a few minutes, knocked a third time. Then faint scratching sounds began.

"Picking the lock," Joe said.

He was inside within seconds, moving directly to Ryan's desk. Pulling the curtain across the broad windows, he switched on the lamp to low and reached to a pile of files. But then he shoved them back, laughing softly, and picked up the bills and the copy of her billing for the Jakes job, that lay on the blotter. Chuckling, he turned on her computer. The cats glanced at each other. What had these no-good types done before the invention of computers? Seemed like every kind of villainy, these days, required electronic assistance.

But Dulcie couldn't be still, she kept fidgeting and glancing away toward the bathroom window, thinking about going home, thinking about the kit. Joe laid his ears back, hissing.

"Will you cut it out? She's fine."

"We don't know that. We don't know where she is. I don't like when she's gone for hours and hours. We haven't seen her since breakfast."

Joe hissed again gently to make her shut up, and watched their burglar bring up Ryan's bookkeeping program. He went immediately to the Jakes account.

He made a disk copy of the pages, then changed the figures on her hard drive, making them higher, adding several thousand dollars to the bill. Cooking Ryan's books, setting her up for some kind of swindle. Turning on her copy machine, he made two sets of her lumber and supply bills. He put one set in his pocket, and worked on the other with an eraser and Wite-Out, apparently inserting new figures to match the higher numbers in her computer. He made fresh copies of these. As he ran a printout of the doctored billing, the cats could only puzzle over where this was leading. Ryan had taken her completed bill with her, ready to mail. Had the guy guessed that? Had he seen her through the window working at her desk? Did he plan somehow to intercept the envelope after she mailed it?

Or had she not had time to mail it? Was the envelope still in her truck? If he had followed her to the restaurant, he'd know she didn't stop at a mailbox. Maybe he'd strolled by her truck and seen the envelope lying on the seat.

Shutting down the machine and slipping his various sets of bills and the printout into his pocket, he was out of there quickly, locking the door behind him. The cats fled to the desk watching him descend the stairs, walk the half block up the bill, and swing into the gray hatchback. He headed back toward the village.

"What now?" Dulcie said. "If she's already mailed her bill, what's he going to do with that stuff? Do you think that was Larn Williams? That he called earlier just to see if she was going out this evening?"

Joe didn't answer. Knocking the phone off the cradle, for the second time that night he pawed in the number of Ryan's cell phone.

Ryan was enjoying the last of her flan when her cell phone rang. She didn't want to answer, she pushed it across the table to Clyde.

"R. Flannery, construction," he said between mouthfuls.

"May I speak to R. Flannery? I called earlier, I have an urgent message for her."

"I can take the message," Clyde told Joe, trying not shout with rage.

At the other end, Joe sighed. "All right," he said. "I think the guy who followed her is going to break into her truck, within the next few minutes. It's kind of complicated."

Clyde stared at the phone. "Just a minute." He handed the phone to Ryan. "You'd better take this." But he leaned close to listen.

"It's me again," Joe said. "I believe someone is intent on falsifying your billing for the Jakes addition in San Andreas. Have you mailed that bill?"

"I… who is this? How do you…? What are you talking about?"

"Have you mailed the bill or is it still in your truck?"

"No. Yes. It's in my truck. What…?"

"The person who followed you earlier returned to your apartment and broke in. With lock picks. While you've been having dinner he changed the billing on your computer and made copies of the original bills and doctored them. He ran a new printout, made copies of the doctored bills, and left. I'd guess he's headed your way."

"Who is this? How could you know such a thing?"

"He prepared the new statement for considerably more than your original cost-plus numbers. If you've mailed the bill, probably no harm done-unless he is able to intercept it at the other end. If you haven't mailed it, I think he'll try to break into your truck, open the envelope, and switch billings. In other words, he wants to set you up, add embezzlement to the possible charge of murder."

"Why would he bother? Isn't murder enough?"

"Maybe he thinks embezzlement would in some way strengthen the murder charges."

"What does this guy look like, who's supposed to be doing all this?"

Listening to the caller's description of the burglar, she felt all warmth drain from her hands and body.

"Don't let him get that envelope," the caller said. "There isn't much time." And he hung up.

Hitting the disconnect, Joe dropped to the floor and headed for the bathroom window. Ahead of him Dulcie, balanced on the windowsill, said, "I'm going home first, see if the kit's there. She…"

"There's not time," he said, leaping past her. "We'll miss the action."

"Can't help it. Go watch Ryan's truck. I'll be along when I know the kit's safe."

"But…"

Dropping from the window she fled around the building and raced down the sidewalk heading for home, filled with worry.