Cat Under Fire

25

Moreno's Bar and Grill was a small, secluded establishment tucked along one of the village's less decorative alleys, a narrow lane two blocks above the beach. The carved oak door was softly lit by a pair of stained-glass lanterns, the interior carpet was thick, plain, expensive. The music was nonthreatening, tasteful, and soft. A patron entering Moreno's felt the stress of the day begin to ease, could feel himself begin to slow, to relax, to recall with deeper appreciation the small and overlooked details of an otherwise unpleasant afternoon. Moreno's offered fine beers and ale on draft and a deep emotional restorative to soften the rough edges of life.

The interior of Moreno's was comfortably dim, the walls, paneled in golden oak, were hung with an assortment of etchings and reproductions highlighting the history of California, scenes dating from the time of the first Spanish settlements through the gold rush days. Max Harper sat alone in a booth at the back, sinking comfortably into the soft, quilted leather.

He was not in uniform but dressed in worn Levi's, plain Western boots, and a dull-colored Western shirt. The old, unpretentious clothes seemed to belong perfectly to Harper's long, lean frame and dry, weathered face. He smelled of clean, well-kept horses; he had spent a leisurely afternoon riding through the Molena Valley, giving both himself and his buckskin gelding some much needed exercise. He tried to ride twice a week, but that wasn't always possible. He was smoking his third cigarette and sipping a nonalcoholic O'Doul's when Clyde swung in through the carved front doors, stopped to speak to the bartender, then made his way to the back As he slid into the booth the waiter appeared behind him, carrying two menus and a Killian's Red draft.

Harper was not in a hurry to order. He accepted a menu and waved the waiter away with a brief jerk of his head. He had chosen the most secluded booth, and at this early hour there were only five other customers in Moreno's, three at the bar and a couple of tourists in a booth at the other end of the room. The dinner crowd would be moderate; the bar would begin to fill up around eight.

Clyde sat waiting, fingering his beer mug, watching Max. Despite the bar's soothing atmosphere, the police chief was wound tight, the lines which webbed his face drawn into a half scowl. His shoulders looked tight, and he kept fidgeting with his cigarette.

Harper eased deeper into the booth, glanced around the nearly empty room out of habit. Normally he wouldn't share this particular kind of unease with Clyde or with anyone. He sure wouldn't share this specific distress with another cop. He would have told Millie; they had shared everything. Two cops under one roof lived on shop talk, on angry complaints and on a crude humor geared to emotional survival. But Millie was dead. He didn't talk easily to anyone else.

He had told Clyde earlier in the day about finding Janet's paintings in the storage locker up near Highway One. Now he studied Clyde, trying to sort out several nagging thoughts. "I didn't tell you how we knew the paintings were in the locker."

Clyde settled back, sipping his beer. "Isn't there a watchman? Did he find them?"

"Watchman made the first call, asking for a patrol car. He'd heard a noise in one of the lockers, like something heavy fell.

"But it was after the two units arrived, that the second call came in, about the paintings. That call was made from a unit radio."

Clyde looked puzzled, sipped his beer.

Harper watched him with interest. "Caller told the dispatcher that there were some paintings I ought to see, that they had to do with Janet's murder. Said I might like to go on over there, take a look for myself. Said the evidence was crucial, that the locker had been rented by Kendrick Mahl."

He stubbed out his cigarette. "An anonymous call, from a unit radio. There is no way to identify which car the call was made from, dispatcher has no way to tell. I've been over this with every man on duty that night."

He fiddled with his half-empty cigarette pack, tearing off the cellophane. "No one in the department will admit to making the call, and no one left his unit unattended except my men up at the locker, and they were right there, not ten feet away, with the big locker door wide-open. Anyone moved out in the alley, they would have seen him."

"Sounds like one of your men is lying, that one of your own had to have made the call. Unless there's some sophisticated electronic tap on the police line?"

"Not likely, in a case like this. What would be the purpose?"

"Could the caretaker have slipped out to the squad cars, and lied about it? But why?"

"The caretaker didn't make the call. Only time he left my officers was when he went to get a ladder, and I told you, they were watching their cars." He crumpled the cellophane, dropped it in the ashtray. "After we impounded the paintings we searched the locker complex. Found no one, nothing disturbed."

He shook his head. "I trust my people; I don't believe there's one of them would lie to me. Except Marritt, and he's accounted for. And those paintings have blown Marritt's investigation, so why would he make the call?"

"Well," Clyde said, "whoever made the call did the department a good turn. And the paintings are safe in the locker?"

"We put new padlocks on the two doors and the gate, cordoned off that part of the complex, and left an officer on duty. It will leave us short, but we'll keep a guard there until the guard Sicily hired comes on duty, and until the canvases can be moved. Forty-six of Janet's paintings, worth…"

"Well over a million," Clyde said. "But weren't painting fragments found in the fire?"

"Lots of fragments-all with thumbtacks in the stretcher bars. We know, now, that Janet used staples. That's the kind of investigation we got out of Marritt. He had no clue that Mahl substituted some other artist's work. Sicily suggested Mahl might have used students' paintings, bought them cheap at art school sales."

"But wouldn't Mahl have known about the thumbtacks? He knew Janet's work too well to… "

Harper smiled. "When Janet and Mahl were married, Janet stretched her canvases with thumbtacks. It wasn't until after she left him, when her thumbs began to bother her from pressing in the tacks, that she started stapling her canvases." He fingered his menu, then laid it down. "But there's something else."

Clyde waited, trying to look relaxed, not to telegraph a twinge of unease.

"I told you we found Mahl's watch, and that it could be conclusive evidence," Harper said.

"That was when you said we needed to talk. I thought… What about the watch?"

Harper turned his O'Doul's bottle, making rings on the table. "The prosecuting attorney examined the new evidence this morning. Took a look at the paintings and talked to Sicily about them. Mahl's prints aren't on them, surely he used gloves. We sent his watch to the lab, and we've had two men searching out photographs of Mahl that show the watch."

Harper peeled the wet label from his beer bottle. "Late this afternoon, Judge Wesley dismissed charges against Lake." He spread the label on the table, smoothing it. "And it looks like we might get a confession from Mahl. He's lost some of his arrogance; he doesn't like being behind bars, and he's nervous. Shaky. If he does confess," Max said, "it'll be thanks to our informant."

Clyde kept his hands still, tried to keep his face bland.

"It's the informant that troubles me," Harper said. "We don't get many informants calling in cold, without previous contact. You know it takes time to develop a good snitch, and this woman-I don't know what to make of her."

Clyde eased himself deeper into the soft leather of the booth, wishing he were somewhere else.

"She has a quiet voice, but with a strange little tinge of sarcasm." Harper sipped his beer. "A peculiarly soft way of speaking, and yet that little nudging edge to it.

"Her first calls seemed to have nothing to do with the Lake trial. She called to tell me she'd slipped a list under the station door, and to explain about it. I had the list on my desk when she called." With his thumbnail he began to press on the wet beer label he'd stuck to the table, pressing at its edges. "It was her list that led us to that burglary up on Cypress.

"We made two arrests, caught them red-handed, impounded a truck full of stolen TVs, videos, some antiques and jewelry, ski equipment, a mink coat.

"The list of residences to be hit was very detailed, showed the times each householder left for work, kind of car, times the kids left for school, time the school bus stops. Right down to if the family kept a dog.

"But no indication of what day the burglaries would come down. She said she didn't know, suggested I set up a stakeout, was almost bossy about it. She put me off, and I almost tossed the list." Harper looked uncomfortable, as if the room was too hot.

"But then she called back, later that same night. Gave me the hit date, said she'd just found out." Harper abandoned the label, lit a cigarette. He had shaped the O'Doul's label into a long oval with a lump at one end. "That second call came maybe an hour after that fuss up at Sicily's gallery, the night those cats got locked inside."

Clyde grinned. "The night my stupid cat got shut in. You saying this woman made the call from the gallery? That the cats got in when she entered?"

"No, I'm not saying that," Harper snapped. He stubbed out his cigarette and fingered the half-empty pack, then laid it aside, started in on the label again, working at it absently with his thumbnail. "I'm not saying that at all. Simply stating the sequence of events.

"And it was that same day," he said, "midafternoon, when the new witness turned up. The one who saw the white van in Janet's drive."

Clyde watched the beer label taking shape, Harper's thumb forming a crude, lumpy head.

Harper finished his beer, draining the glass. "You know I don't believe in coincidence. But the strange thing is-that witness who saw the white van, she turned out to be the mother of one of the burglars."

Clyde frowned, shook his head as if trying to sort that out. He had to swallow back a belly laugh. Despite Harper's obvious distress, this was the biggest joke of all time on his good friend. And he couldn't say a word.

Harper still hadn't told him about the watch. It was the watch that was really bugging Harper.

"Yesterday the informant called, asked if we'd found Janet's paintings. She seemed pleased that we had.

"She told me that when we found Kendrick Mahl's watch, that could wrap up the case. She said it was in a drainpipe up in the hills, that we'd have to dig down and cut through the pipe. She thought if we cut straight down into the pipe, we wouldn't disturb the evidence, could still photograph it before we moved it. She gave me the location of the marker where we were to dig, a little pile of rocks, up the hill from the mouth of the drain."

He looked a long time at Clyde. "The drainpipe turned out to be just up beyond the burglarized house, and not fifty yards from where we arrested James Stamps. He'd run up the hill chasing his dog. Dog bit Thompson real bad."

Harper grinned. "Thompson was crawling around in the bushes taking pictures of these two perps, and the dog jumps him.

"We got Thompson to the hospital, took the dog to the pound for observation. Don't know what it got mixed up with, but its face was one bloody mess, Thompson didn't think he did that. Long scratches down the dog's nose and ear."

Harper gave the head on the O'Doul's label two pointed ears, pushed the wet paper again, starting to form a tail. "No one," he said, "could have known what was in that drain. You couldn't see a thing from the opening, not even with a flashlight. The watch was maybe fifteen feet back inside.

"But my informant knew. Knew where the watch was, knew whose watch it was. She described the stone marker exactly. Little pile of rocks pressed into the earth in the form of an X, where the grass had been scraped away."

"Pretty strange," Clyde said. "Makes you wonder. You don't think she's a psychic or something?"

"You know I don't believe in that stuff. It was some job digging down into the drainpipe, and I didn't believe for a minute we'd find anything. I thought this would end up a big department joke."

"Then why did you do it?"

"There's always that chance. Better to be the butt of a joke than miss something. We dug down seven feet to the metal pipe, then cut through the metal with an acetylene torch, kept the flame small as we could.

"Broke down into the pipe two feet above the skeleton of a dead cat."

Clyde wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"The cat had a collar around its neck with Janet Jeannot's name on it." Harper was very still, looking at Clyde. "Kendrick Mahl's watch was buckled to the collar."

Clyde shook his head, did his best to look amazed. He'd had to listen half the night to Joe bragging about the damned watch, and about the paintings.

"We photographed the watch and got it and the skeleton to the lab. Lab found Mahl's prints on the watch, underneath Janet's prints.

"We have photographs of Mahl wearing the watch a week before Janet was killed. And a shot of him the night of the museum opening wearing a different watch, a new Rolex.

"We found the store where he bought the Rolex, a place on the other side of San Francisco from the St. Francis, little hole in the wall. They sold it the day of the opening. The customer fit Mahl's description. He paid cash." Harper grew still as the waiter brought another round of beers, the round little man moving quietly, leaving quickly.

"After we arrested Mahl we searched his apartment. Found the bolt cutters he used to cut the lock off at the storage complex. Found the keys to Janet's studio and to her van, under the liner of his overnight bag. And he had a set of keys to Rob's Suburban. The way we see Mahl's moves, he had already brought the substitute paintings down to Molena Point, sometime before that weekend, and put them in the locker. On Saturday he checks into the St. Francis and puts his car in the underground parking.

"Saturday night he uses his parking ticket to take out Janet's van-he knew she was out to dinner with friends, probably had a good idea she'd make an early evening of it. He drives down to the village, gets the fake paintings, switches them for Janet's, rigs Janet's oxygen tank, and drops some aspirin in her coffeemaker. Stashes her paintings in the locker and hightails it back to the city before daylight.

"He puts Janet's van back in the parking garage, uses that entry ticket later to retrieve his own car. He'd have had to put the van back in the same slot. Probably he pulled his own car into her slot, to reserve it while he was gone. Counted on Janet's not coming down at some late hour; he knew she didn't like to party.

"Who knows when he missed his watch? We're guessing he didn't miss it until he was back in the city, and then it was too late to turn around and go back. He had to be seen at the St. Francis for breakfast, be seen around town that weekend, and, of course, at the opening Sunday night.

"But when he gets back to Molena Point after the opening late Sunday night he takes Rob's Suburban while Rob's asleep, goes to get his watch."

"But he's too late," Clyde said. "Janet's already up in the studio. And no one saw him switch the paintings, no one saw him around the locker?"

"Caretaker says there were two men nosing around outside the fence a couple of nights earlier. He didn't see them clearly, didn't see their car." Harper opened his menu, looked it over. "There were some pieces of sculpture in the locker with the paintings, probably he'd put them in some time before. Early work that, Sicily said, Janet hadn't liked much, that she'd left behind when she split from Mahl and moved out. Maybe Mahl thought they'd be worth something now."

He closed the menu. "Think I'll have the filet and fries."

Clyde grinned. This was Max's standard order, filet medium rare, fries crisp, no salad. "It's a weird story, Max. Don't know what to make of it."

Max shaped the wet label more carefully, its front paws tucked under, its long tail curved. "Informant sees a watch where it's impossible to see it. Night watchman hears voices, but no one there. Call comes over a unit radio, and no trace of the caller.

"But we've got a positive ID of the handwriting on the locker file card and lifted a nice set of Mahl's prints from it."

"Then you've wrapped up the case," Clyde said. "Mahl's in jail. You have solid evidence. And you told me Marritt is off the case and in a bad light with the mayor."

"You bet he is."

"And a new trial pending. Sounds like you're in good shape."

"That watchman can't have heard voices."

"So if no one was there, was the old man lying?"

"One theory is, he was nosing around the lockers for his own purposes, maybe stealing. That when he looked over the wall into K20-or maybe picked the lock to K20-he realized the paintings were Janet's and knew he'd better report it to avoid trouble, so he dreamed up the voices routine.

"Good theory."

"But I don't buy it. I've known old Mr. Lent for years. That old man wouldn't steal if he was starving. And he was really upset by what he thought was a break-in.

"And there's the vent," Harper said. "Vent screen above those lockers was torn."

"A vent screen?"

"Vent about four inches by eight inches."

"So what does that mean? He hears voices through the vent and thinks they're in a locker?" Clyde thought he was getting good at this, at playing dumb-it was little different than lying. Though he didn't much like that skill in himself.

"First thing the watchman heard was a thud, when he was making his rounds. Said it sounded as if something heavy fell. He'd gone around to where he heard it, was standing beneath the vent listening, when he heard the voices, couldn't quite make out what they were saying. A man and a woman, he said, talking real soft."

Harper frowned. "That vent-Lent says the screen wasn't torn when he inspected the buildings earlier that day. Said he always looks along the roofline under the eaves, checking for any signs of leaks."

He settled back sipping a fresh O'Doul's, watching Clyde. "There were hairs clinging to the torn screen. Dark gray hairs, very short. And some white hairs and some pale orange."

"Whose hair was it?"

"It was cat hair."

"Cat hair? I thought you were going to say you had a make on someone besides Mahl. Why would a cat go into a storage locker? Mice? Remind me not to store anything up there. And how could a cat-how high was the vent?"

The waiter brought their napkins and silverware, and the condiments, and a complimentary bowl of french friend onions, and took their order. When he had gone, the two men sat quietly, looking at each other.

Max said, "Millie told me once, a couple of years before she died, 'Don't fool around with the far-out stuff, Max. It can put you right around the bend.'"

Max's wife Millie had been a special investigator. She had spent much of her time checking out odd reports, saucer sightings, nutcases, relatives returned from the dead. Once in a while she'd get one that wouldn't add up, that didn't seem to be a nutcase, and that upset her.

"That stuff she worked on, it always did give me the creeps."

A police officer's training made it hard to deal with the unexplainable. Cops were trained to remember every fact, see and remember every small detail, trained to smell a scam a mile away. A cop was totally fact-oriented, a good officer didn't go for the crazy stuff. So when the facts added up to the impossible, that could really be upsetting.

Harper wiped beer rings from the table with a paper napkin, wiped away the misshapen O'Doul's label from the oak surface. "Now I know how she felt. How easy it could be, given certain circumstances, to wander right over the edge."

"I don't know anything that would put you over the edge," Clyde said. "Hell, Max, be happy with what you have, a case wrapped up, solid evidence-take it and enjoy."

Harper wadded the O'Doul's label into a little ball and dropped it in the ashtray, watched the waiter approaching with their steaks.