Cat To The Dogs

5

JOE FOLLOWED Dulcie through the dog door, watching half with disgust, half with amusement, as she preened and wove around the pups' legs. She was purring like a coffee grinder. Any other cat, confronted by the two monster dogs-even puppies-would have headed for the tallest tree.

Not Dulcie, of course. She wasn't afraid of dogs. But he hadn't counted on that silly maternal grin, either.

He'd expected her to be disgusted with the rowdy young animals, as most adult cats, or dogs, would be. How ridiculous to see a lovely lady cat, self-contained and sometimes even dignified, certainly of superior intelligence, succumb to this ingratiating canine display. He watched with disgust as the pups licked her face and ears. Not until she was sopping wet did she move away from them, shake her whiskers, and leap to the kitchen table; and still her green eyes blazed with pleasure.

"Puppies, Joe! Clyde, where did you get the huge puppies?" Her peach-tinted paw lifted in a soft maternal gesture. "They're darling! Such cute, pretty pups!"

"They're not darling," Joe snapped. "They're monsters. Flea-bitten bags of bones. Clyde's taking them to the pound."

She widened her eyes, twin emeralds, shocked and indignant.

"They are not," Clyde said evenly, "going to the pound." He sat down at the kitchen table. "So what's with you? What's the attraction, Dulcie? You're known all over the village as a dog baiter. What…"

"Dog baiter?"

"Of course. No resident dog will confront you. And the tourists' dogs try only once." Clyde looked hard at her. "You think I don't know about your little games? I know what you do when life gets boring; I've seen you sauntering down Ocean early in the morning when the tourists are walking their pets; I've seen you waltz past those leashed canines waving your tail until some showoff lunges at you.

"I've seen you bloody them, send some poor mutt bolting away screaming. I've seen you smile and trot off licking your whiskers." Clyde looked intently at the smug little tabby. "So what gives?"

"They're only babies," Dulcie said haughtily. "Why would I want to hurt babies? Really, Clyde, you can be so unfeeling." She leaped down to where the pups lay sprawled, panting, on the linoleum. Turning her back on Clyde, she licked a black nose. She couldn't help the maternal warmth that spread over her as she began to wash the two big babies.

Clyde shook his head and stepped past her toward the door, carrying a bucket of trash. Joe, scowling at the silly grin on Dulcie's little, triangular face, muttered something rude into his whiskers and left the scene, pushing out behind Clyde. Let Dulcie play "mama" if that was what pleased her. He was out of there.

Scaling the back fence, he galloped across the village, dodging tourists and cars, heading for Dulcie and Wilma's house, where he could find some peace and quiet without that zoo, and where Wilma's phone was accessible. If the cops missed that cut line, if they didn't look for it before the wreck was lifted from the canyon and hauled away, the evidence might be lost for good.

Wilma didn't like him and Dulcie meddling in police business any more than Clyde did, but she had better manners. She wouldn't stop him from using the phone.

Trotting past early joggers and a few shopkeepers out watering the flowers that graced their storefront gardens, sniffing the smell of damp greenery and of breakfast cooking in a dozen little cafes, Joe kept thinking of the dead man lying in the wrecked Corvette. A fairly young, apparently well-to-do stranger, and very likely an antique car buff-a man, one would think, who would be closely attuned to the mechanical condition of his vehicle.

Did the guy have some connection in the village, maybe visiting someone? Seemed strange that, just passing through, he would meet his doom at that particular and precarious location.

Whoever cut the brake line had to have known about that double curve. Joe didn't believe in coincidence, any more than did Captain Max Harper.

The question was, who in the village might have wanted this guy dead?

Hurrying beneath the twisted oaks, past shop windows filled with handmade and costly wares or with fresh-baked bread and bottles of local wines, he passed Jolly's Deli and the arresting scent of smoked salmon.

But Joe didn't pause, not for an instant. Galloping on up the street to Wilma's gray stone cottage, he made three leaps across her bright garden and slid in through Dulcie's cat door.

Wilma's blue-and-white kitchen was immaculate. The smell of waffles and bacon lingered. He leaped to the counter, where breakfast dishes stood neatly rinsed in the drain. The coffeepot was empty and unplugged. The house sounded hollow.

Heading for the living room and Wilma's desk, he was glad he'd left Dulcie occupied with the pups. She hadn't been in the best of moods lately-though the pups had evidently cheered her. He didn't like to admit that something might be wrong between them, had been wrong for weeks, ever since the earthquake. Ever since that three A.M. jolt when he raced down the street to see if Dulcie was all right, only to meet her pelting toward him wild with worry for him, then wild with joy that he was unhurt. After the quake and the ensuing confusion when people wandered the streets sniffing the air for gas leaks, he and Dulcie had clung together purring, taking absolute comfort in each other; he telling her how he'd heard the bookshelves fall in the spare bedroom as he felt the house rock; she telling him how Wilma had leaped out of bed only to be knocked down like a rag toy. It hadn't been a giant quake-not the Big One-a few shingles fallen, a few windows broken, one or two gas lines burst, people frightened. But at the first tremble, Joe had run out- Rube barking and barking behind him and Clyde shouting for him to come back-had sped away frantic to find Dulcie.

But then a few days later, a kind of crossness took hold of Dulcie, a private, sour mood. She wouldn't tell him what was wrong. She left him out, went off alone, silent and glum. All the cliches he'd ever heard assailed him: familiarity breeds contempt; as sour as old marrieds. He didn't know what was wrong with her. He didn't know what he'd done. When he tried to talk to her, she cut him short.

But that morning, distracted by the idiot puppies, she'd smiled and waved her tail and purred extravagantly.

Mark one down for the two bone bags. Maybe they were of some use.

Now, settling on Wilma's clean blotter atop the polished cherry desk, he could smell the lingering aroma of coffee where, evidently, Wilma had sat this morning, perhaps to pay bills. A neat stack of bill stubs lay beneath the small jade carving of a cat. He could imagine Wilma coming to her desk very early, catching up on her household chores. Beyond the open shutters, the neighborhood street was empty, the gardens bright with flowers; he could never remember the names of flowers as Dulcie did. Sliding the receiver off, he punched in the number for the police.

He got through the dispatcher to Lieutenant Brennan, but Captain Harper was out. He didn't like passing on this kind of information to another officer- not that Harper's men weren't reliable. It simply made Joe uncomfortable to talk with anyone but Harper.

Besides, he enjoyed hearing Harper's irritable hesitation when he recognized the voice of this one particular snitch. He enjoyed imagining the tall, leathered, tough-looking captain at the other end of the line squirming with nerves.

Max Harper reacted the same way to Dulcie's occasional phone tips. The minute he heard either of them he got as cross as a fox with thorns in its paw.

"Captain Harper won't be back until this afternoon," Lieutenant Brennan said.

"That wreck in Hellhag Canyon," Joe said reluctantly. "I'm sure the officers found that the brake line was cut. Sliced halfway through in a sharp, even line."

Brennan did not reply. Joe could hear him chewing on something. He heard papers rattle. He hoped Brennan was paying attention-Brennan had been one of the officers at the scene. Maybe they hadn't found the cut brake line, maybe that was why he was uncommunicative.

"There was a billfold, too," Joe told him. "In the dead driver's hip pocket. Leather. A bulging leather wallet. Did you find that? An old wallet, misshapen from so much stuff crammed in, the leather dark, sort of oily. Stained. A large splinter of broken glass was pressing against it."

He repeated the information but refused to give Brennan his name. He hung up before Brennan could trace the call; a trace took three or four minutes. He didn't dare involve Wilma's phone in this. She and Harper were friends. Joe wasn't going to throw suspicion on her-and thus, by inference, cast it back on himself and Dulcie.

Pawing the phone into its cradle and pushing out again through Dulcie's plastic door, he headed toward the hills, trotting up through cottage gardens and across the little park that covered the Highway One tunnel. Gaining the high, grassy slopes, he sat in the warm wind, feeling lonely without Dulcie.

She was so busy these days, spying uselessly on Lucinda Greenlaw. Maybe that was all that was wrong with her, watching Lucinda too much, feeling sad for the old woman; maybe it was her preoccupation with the Greenlaw family that had turned her so moody.

All day Joe hunted alone, puzzling over Dulcie. At dusk he hurried home, thinking he would find Dulcie there because Clyde had invited Wilma to dinner, along with Charlie, and Max Harper.

He saw Wilma's car parked in front of the cottage, but couldn't detect Dulcie's scent. Not around the car, or on the front porch, or on his cat door. Heading through the house for the kitchen, he sniffed deeply the aroma of clam sauce and twitched his nose at the sharp hint of white wine. Pushing into the kitchen, he looked around for Dulcie.

Clyde and Charlie stood at the stove stirring the clam sauce and tasting it. Charlie's red hair was tied back with a blue scarf rather than the usual rubber band or piece of cord. Her oversized, blue batik shirt was tucked into tight blue jeans. She had on sleek new sandals, not her old, worn jogging shoes.

Wilma was tossing the salad, her long white hair, tied back with a turquoise clip, bright in the overhead lights. The table was set for four. Two more places, with small plates and no silverware, were arranged on the counter beside the sink, on a yellow place mat. That would be Charlie's doing; Clyde never served so fancy. The sounds of bubbling pasta competed with an Ella Fitzgerald record, both happy noises overridden by the loud and insistent scratching of what sounded like a troop of attack dogs assaulting the closed doggy door.

He wondered how long the plywood barrier would last before those two shredded it.

"I just fed them," Clyde said defensively. "Two cans each. Big, economy cans."

Joe made no comment. He did not want to speak in front of Charlie.

Charlie knew about him and Dulcie-she had known ever since, some months ago, she saw them racing across the rooftops at midnight and heard Dulcie laughing. That was when she began to suspect-or maybe before that, he thought, wondering.

Well, so that one night leaping among the village roofs, they'd been careless.

Charlie was one of the few people who could put such impossible facts together and come up with the impossible truth. And it wasn't as if Charlie was only a casual acquaintance; she and Clyde had been going together seriously for nearly a year. Joe liked her. She treated him with more respect than Clyde ever did, and she was, after all, Wilma's niece. But still he couldn't help feeling shy about actually speaking in front of her, not even to ask where Dulcie was.

"She's on the back fence," Wilma said, seeing him fidgeting. "Where else? Gawking into Lucinda's parlor." Wilma shook the salad dressing with a violence that threatened Clyde's clean kitchen walls.

Joe, pretending he didn't care where Dulcie was, leaped to the kitchen counter and stared at his empty plate, implying he didn't need Dulcie, that he'd eat enough pasta for both.

"I talked with Harper," Clyde said. "About an hour ago. I want you to behave yourself tonight."

Joe widened his eyes, a gaze of innocence he had practiced for many hours while standing on the bathroom sink.

"Harper says he had another of those snitch calls this morning. Guy wouldn't give his name. Left the message with Brennan-something about a cut brake line." He gave Joe a long, steady stare.

Joe kept his expression blank.

"He says this one was a dud. Totally off track. Said that after the call, two officers went back down Hellhag Canyon for another look."

Joe licked his right front paw.

"The officers said the brake line wasn't cut. Said the line burst, that it was ragged and worn. That there was no smooth cut as Harper's informant described. They said they could see the thin place, the weak spot in the plastic where it gave way.

"Nor was there a billfold," Clyde said. "The officers didn't find a scrap of ID on the body, or in the car, or in the surround, as the snitch had said."

Joe could feel his anger rising. Which uniforms had Harper sent down there? Those two new rookies he'd just hired?

Or had the cut line been removed?

Had the man he scented in the ravine that morning replaced the cut, black plastic tube with an old, broken one, and lifted the driver's wallet?

Those two pups knew the guy was there. He remembered how silent they had grown, how watchful, creeping along sniffing the man's scent.

"So this time," Clyde said, "Harper's snitch was all wet."

So this time, Joe Grey thought crossly, Harper's men didn't have the whole story-and Max Harper needs to know that.

Staring at the dog door, then out the kitchen window, Joe managed a sigh. He looked at the two plates set side by side on the kitchen counter, then back to the window, his nose against the glass. He continued in this vein until Wilma said, "For heaven's sakes, go over there and get her. Quit mooning around. She doesn't need to spend all night watching Lucinda."

He gave Wilma a grateful look and began to paw at the plywood, seeking a grip to slide it out of its track.

"Not the dog door!" Clyde shouted. "They'll be all over the place."

Joe widened his eyes at Clyde, shrugged, and headed for the living room. Clyde said nothing. But Joe could feel him staring. The man had absolutely no trust.

He went on out his cat door, making sure the plastic slapped loudly against its frame.

But as he dropped off the front porch he heard Clyde at the living-room window, heard the curtain swish as Clyde pulled it back to peer out.

Not an ounce of trust.

Not until he heard Clyde go back in the kitchen did he beat it around to the backyard and up onto the back fence where he could see into the kitchen. And not until Clyde was occupied, draining the spaghetti, did he slip around to the front and in through his cat door again, stopping the plastic with his nose to keep it quiet.

Heading for the bedroom, he punched in the number. Quickly he explained the urgency of his message. He got a sensible dispatcher, who patched him through to Harper in his car. Probably Harper was already headed in their direction, on his way for clam pasta.

Joe told Harper that he had seen the cut brake line, that there were three little slice marks just above the cut. He said he'd heard someone else in the canyon, but couldn't see him in the fog. Said he had seen the billfold in the guy's back pocket, with a piece of the broken glass pressing into it.

He reminded Harper where the captain had gotten the information that nailed Winthrop Jergen's killer. Reminded him where he got the computer code word that opened up Jergen's files. He jogged Harper's memory about who identified the retirement-home killer months earlier, to say nothing of finding the arsonist who killed the artist Janet Jeannot. He said if Harper remembered who laid out the facts in the Samuel Beckwhite murder case, then Harper should take another look down Hellhag Canyon, before the wreckers hauled away the blue Corvette.

The upshot was that, five minutes after Joe nosed the phone back into its cradle and returned innocently to the kitchen, Harper called Clyde to say not to wait dinner, that he'd be late, that he needed to run down the highway for a few minutes.

Clyde hung up the kitchen phone and turned to stare at Joe, anger starring deep in his brown eyes, a slow, steaming rage that struck Joe with sudden, shocked guilt.

What had he done?

He had acted without thinking.

Max Harper was headed out there alone, to scale down Hellhag Canyon in the dark. With perhaps the killer still lurking, maybe waiting for the car to be safely hauled away? Harper without a backup.

Cops can be hurt, too, Joe thought. Cops can be shot. He was so upset, he dared not look back at Clyde. What had he done? What had he done to Max Harper?

He wanted to call the station again, tell them to send a backup. But when he leaped down to head for the bedroom, Clyde unbelievably reached up and removed the kitchen phone from its hook.

Joe wanted to shout at Clyde, to explain to him that he needed to call, but Wilma started talking about Lucinda Greenlaw, and Clyde turned his back on Joe. He couldn't believe this was happening. Didn't Clyde understand? Didn't Clyde care about Harper?

The phone stayed off the hook as Charlie dished up the plates. Wilma looked around at Joe, where she stood tossing the salad. "Where's Dulcie?"

"She didn't want to come," he lied-he had to talk in Charlie's presence sometime. And to Charlie's credit, she didn't flinch, didn't turn to look, not a glance.

"We stopped by Jolly's alley earlier," Joe said. "Dulcie's full of smoked salmon, and too fascinated with the Greenlaws to tear herself away."

Wilma gave him a puzzled look, but she said nothing. When Wilma and Clyde and Charlie were seated over steaming plates of linguini, Wilma said, "Lucinda and I had lunch today. She was pretty upset. Shamas's lover is in town. She's been to visit Lucinda."

Charlie laid down her fork, her eyes widening. "Cara Ray Crisp, that bimbo who was on the boat when he died? That hussy? What colossal nerve. What did she want?"

"Apparently," Wilma said, "Cara Ray had hardly checked into the Oak Breeze before she was there on Lucinda's doorstep, playing nice. Lucinda really didn't know what she wanted."

"I hope Lucinda sent her packing," Charlie said. "My God. That woman was the last one to see him alive. The last one to-"

"She told Lucinda she came to offer condolences."

Charlie choked. Clyde laughed.

That midnight on the yacht, when Shamas drowned, Cara Ray told Seattle police, she'd been asleep in their stateroom, she'd awakened to shouting, and saw that Shamas was gone from the bed. She ran out into the storm, to find Shamas's cousin, Sam, frantically manning lines, and his nephew, Newlon, down in the sea trying to pull Shamas out. They got lines around Shamas and pulled him up on deck, but could not revive him. Weeping, Cara Ray told the police that when the storm subsided they had turned toward the nearest port, at Seattle. George and Winnie Chambers, the only other passengers, had not awakened; Cara Ray said they had not come on deck until the next morning, when the Green Lady put in at Seattle.

According to the account in the Gazette, the storm had come up suddenly; evidently Shamas had heard the wind change and gotten up to help Newlon furl the main sail. On the slick deck, he must have caught his foot in a line, though this was an unseaman-like accident. As the boat lurched, Sam and Newlon heard Shamas shout; they looked around, and he was gone. Newlon had grabbed a life jacket, tied a line on himself, and gone overboard.

He told police that he got Shamas untangled, got him hooked onto a line to bring him up. When they got him on board, they saw that he had a deep gash through his forehead, where he must have hit something as he fell. Seattle police had gone over the catamaran, had thoroughly investigated the scene. They did not find where Shamas had struck his head. The rain had sloughed every surface clean. They found no evidence that Shamas's death had been other than an accident. According to Seattle detectives, Cara Ray had been so upset, weeping so profusely, that no one could get much sense from her. She had given the police her address and flown directly home to San Francisco, leaving Newlon and Shamas's cousin Sam and the Chamberses to sail the Green Lady back to Molena Point.

And now Cara Ray was in Molena Point, making a social call on Shamas's widow.

"Poor Lucinda," Charlie said. "Mobbed by his relatives hustling and prodding her. And now his paramour descends."

Wilma nodded. "Apparently Cara Ray is as crude and bad mannered as the Greenlaws."

"They are a strange lot," Clyde said.

Wilma pushed a strand of her white hair into its clip and sipped her wine. "Every time I see a Greenlaw in the village, my hackles go up."

Clyde grinned. "Retired parole officer. Worse than a cop."

"Maybe I'm just irritable, maybe it's this temporary job at Beckwhite's. It's no picnic, working for Sheril Beckwhite. I wouldn't have taken the job except to help Max."

At Max Harper's urging, Wilma had been running background checks on loan applicants for the foreign-car agency. Beckwhite's had had a sudden run of buyers applying for car financing with sophisticated bogus IDs and fake bank references. They had lost over three million dollars before Harper convinced Sheril of Wilma's investigative prowess.

"Other than her visit from this Cara Ray Crisp person," Charlie said, "how's Lucinda getting along?"

"She'll do a lot better," Wilma said, "when Shamas's relatives go home."

"Seems to me," Charlie said, "that being Shamas Greenlaw's widow would be much nicer than being his wife."

Wilma laughed.

"She's certainly a very quiet person," Charlie offered. "She seems… I don't know, the few times I've talked with her, she's seemed… so close to herself. Secretive."

"I don't think-" Wilma began when, in the backyard, the pups roared and bayed, their barks so deafening that no one heard the front door open; no one heard Max Harper until he loomed in the kitchen doorway.

"What the hell is this? The county pound?" He glared at Clyde. "What did you do, get more dogs? Sounds like a pack of wolfhounds."

Clyde rose to open a beer for Harper and dish up his plate, liberally heaping on the pasta and clam sauce. Skinny as Harper was, he ate like a field hand. Clyde had known him since boyhood; they had gone through school together, had ridden broncs and bulls in the local rodeos around Sacramento and Salinas.

Dropping down from the kitchen counter, Joe took a good sniff of Harper. The captain's faded jeans and old boots bore traces of dirt and of bits of leaves and grass, and carried the distinct combination of scents one would encounter in Hellhag Canyon.

"So what's with the cat killers?" Harper said, glancing toward the back door.

"Stray pups. Followed my car," Clyde lied. "Up along Hellhag Hill."

The police captain looked at Clyde narrowly for a moment, perhaps sensing a twisting of the truth. He sat down in his usual chair, facing the sink and kitchen window, his back comfortably to the wall. For an instant, his gaze turned to Joe Grey, who had returned to the counter and was busily licking clam sauce off his whiskers.

"How sanitary can it be, Damen, to let your cat sit on the kitchen sink?" Harper scowled. "Is that a little place mat? Did he have his dinner up there?"

"That's Charlie's doing. And you know I don't lay food on the counter," Clyde said testily. "You know I use that plastic breadboard and that it goes in the dishwasher after every meal." He looked hard at Harper. "So what's with you? Bad night picking up hustlers? Ladies of the night make you late to dinner?"

Harper brushed the dry grass and leaves from his jeans. "Took a swing down Hellhag Canyon."

Clyde stiffened; Joe saw his jaw clench. He did not look in Joe's direction.

"The brake line was burst, not cut," Harper said.

Clyde cast a look of rage at Joe Grey.

"I took some photographs of the surround, though. Infrared light and that new film. Shot some footprints that my men may have missed-the few they didn't step on," Harper said uneasily.

"What are you talking about?" Clyde said.

Harper shrugged. "Maybe someone messed with the car. Maybe someone switched brake lines. If so, it would be nice to have some evidence, wouldn't you say? I have a crew down there now, working it over."

Clyde closed his eyes.

It must be hard, Joe thought, working a crime scene when the uniforms had already been over it, under the impression it was an accident. And, washing his paw, he hid a huge feline grin. At his word, Harper had not only gone down Hellhag Canyon, he had called in the detectives.

Harper's detectives were good; they'd probably remove the jagged shards of the driver's window, see if the lab could find cloth or leather fragments along the broken edges, probably try for fingerprints around the brake line.

Harper's confidence in the phantom snitch pleased Joe Grey so much that he almost leaped on the table to give Harper a purr and a face rub. But he quickly thought better of that little gesture.

He could see, beneath the table, Clyde's toe tapping with irritation; choking back a laugh, he turned his back and washed harder.

"Good linguini," Harper said. "Reminds me of that Italian place in Stockton, down from the rodeo grounds. So tell me about these dogs, Damen. Pups, you said? The way they're banging on the door, I'd say a couple of big bull calves lunging at the gate. Strays, you said? You plan to keep them?"

"If he keeps them," Charlie said, pushing back her wild red hair, "he's-we're taking them to obedience school."

Clyde did a double take. "We're what?"

She stuck out her arm, exhibiting a dozen long red scratches where the pups, in their excitement at having new and wonderful friends, had leaped up joyfully raking her.

"Obedience school," she said. "You can work with the happy, silly one. I'll take the solemn pup; I like his attitude."

Joe looked at Charlie, incredulous. There was no way she was going to get Clyde involved in dog-training classes. She'd as easily get him into a tutu and teach him to pirouette.

Well, she'd learn.

And Joe Grey sat grinning and washing his whiskers, highly amused by Charlie, and immensely pleased at his rise in stature with Max Harper. Harper had moved fast and decisively on Joe's phone tip, had beat it down Hellhag Canyon posthaste, and that made the tomcat feel pretty good. Made him feel good, too, that Harper was back from the canyon in one piece.

Though he would never let Harper know he cared. Stretching out on the cold tile, he gave the captain his usual sour scowl.

Harper returned his frown in spades. The two of them got along just fine with an occasional hiss from Joe, and Harper grousing about cat germs; anything less would spoil the relationship.