Cat Playing Cupid (8 page)

C
HARLIE FOUND
L
UCINDA
in the kitchen setting out a plate of homemade cookies on one side of the round table that was loaded with party food. The tall, older woman was so thin that when Charlie put her arm around her, she could feel every bone—but bone covered in lean muscle. Even at eighty-some, Lucinda Greenlaw was healthy and strong; she did most of her own housework and walked several miles a day. “I need to talk with you,” Charlie said softly.

Lucinda looked at her, startled.

“Nothing bad,” Charlie breathed, “only private. Kit will tell it later, but she's—”

Lucinda laughed. “So impetuous you can't get in a word. Come on, Pedric's in the laundry.” And Lucinda headed across the kitchen, away from the crowd. Charlie, following her, heard through a tangle of laughter Dallas's raised and angry voice from the living room and Mike's sharp retort.

What was that about? Mike and Dallas never had
words. Glancing across the room, she caught Ryan's eye. Ryan shook her head almost imperceptibly before she turned away.

On the closed laundry door hung a little sign:
PLEASE DO NOT OPEN
,
which Clyde had posted to give the three household cats some semblance of quiet and privacy—none of the three liked loud parties. Two were elderly, and the younger, Snowball, had always been shy. Slipping the door open, they found Pedric sitting hunched on the bottom bunk, his head ducked beneath the upper bunk of the animals' bed, petting the three cats. Snowball lay in his lap, and Scrappy and Fluffy were snuggled in the blankets next to him. The cats had shared the two-bunk bed with the two old dogs until Barney, the golden, and then Rube, the black Lab, had passed away. Snowball was still grieving for Rube.

Against the party noise beyond the closed door, Charlie told the Greenlaws about Willow and Sage, then about John Firetti knowing the cats' secret. Neither of the two tall, thin, eighty-year-olds seemed too surprised; it took a lot to amaze Lucinda and Pedric.

“I always thought,” Lucinda said, “that John Firetti acted a bit strange around Kit. When we first took her in for her shots, he looked at her for a long time without saying anything, and then he seemed to
expect
her to lie still and behave herself. He asked if she'd had her kitten shots, and when I told him we didn't know, that she was a stray, he asked where we'd found her,” Lucinda recalled. “When we said Hellhag Hill, there was a sudden light in his eyes, a gleam of excitement, then he quickly looked down.”

“But,” Pedric said, “mostly it was his assuming Kit
would lie still. Why would he think he could just look at her and tell her it would hurt more if she wiggled, and she would hold stone still for him? I thought at the time that it was his tone, that he had a unique understanding of a cat's nature, that his voice and inflection somehow told his patients he expected them to behave.

“But later,” Pedric said, “we wondered.”

“Apparently he
does
have a unique understanding,” Lucinda said, smiling. “More understanding than
I
ever guessed. We did think it strange, though, that he never suggested spaying her. He never brought up the subject. And of course we didn't.”

“Well,” Charlie said, stroking Snowball, “looks like I'm more shaken by this than you two. I never imagined…”

But when she looked at the older couple, who had recently been through a frightening kidnapping that could have cost them their lives, who had escaped unharmed with great resourcefulness, she knew there wasn't much that would shock the Greenlaws—until she mentioned the hidden book.

When she told them more about the battle at the ruins, and described the old volume the ferals had found, Lucinda's eyes brightened with excitement. “Where is it, Charlie? What did they do with it?”

And Pedric was burning with even more excitement. “More tales of speaking cats! Do you think…Are there stories we've never heard?” Charlie could imagine the old man avidly reading those tales, and memorizing every word.

 

B
EYOND THE LAUNDRY
room's closed door, as the three discussed the mysterious volume, Mike Flannery and his daughter had left the crowd, heading up the open stairs to the new second floor, to the construction project that had marked the beginning of Ryan's romance with Clyde. On earlier visits Mike had seen the impressive addition Ryan had built for Clyde when they'd first met; now Ryan wanted to show him how she would add her own studio. Carrying fresh cans of beer, leaving behind the sounds of the party, neither father nor daughter glanced back to see the gray tomcat pad watchfully out of the kitchen to follow them, they didn't see him slink up the stairs behind them to the master suite and into the shadows beneath the king-size bed.

Joe ignored a twinge of guilt at spying on his friends. At breaching father and daughter's privacy. Dulcie would have said, “Can't they have a few minutes alone, the evening before Ryan's to be married? Do you have to be so nosy?”

But of course he was nosy, he was a cat. Cats were driven by nosiness, they were masters of curiosity. The investigative instinct was their finest mark of uniqueness, and who was he to go against basic feline nature? He followed. He hid under the bed. And he listened. And if the stab of guilt continued to accompany the tomcat's eavesdropping on his about-to-be housemate, Joe thought Ryan wouldn't really mind, that he could talk his way around her annoyance.

 

T
HE NEW ADDITION
had a high ceiling of open rafters, where Ryan had raised the hip roof of the old one-story cottage to form two walls of the new second floor, then added new window walls. Mike admired again the stone fireplace she had built in the master bedroom, the compartmented bath and dressing rooms, and Clyde's cozy study. When Ryan was little, she'd loved to draw floor plans and elevations. Every minute she wasn't riding or working with the dogs, or going out on construction sites with her uncle Scotty, she was inventing her own house designs. Mike had only smiled when her teachers complained that all her school papers and notebooks had little floor plans or architectural details in the margins, sketches quickly made to record some fleeting idea.

Passion, he thought. The child had had a passion for what she loved, for what she knew she wanted to do with her life.

She had never abandoned that drive; she had learned her carpentry skills from Scotty, had studied structural design, had never wavered from the intensity of her goal. Now, having gotten where she wanted to be, she relished the work she did.

So many kids, Mike thought, didn't seem to feel strongly about anything, didn't have any kind of ongoing passion, any dream to follow and fight for. Did today's schools take it all out of them? Or was it the canned culture they grew up in? He thought sometimes that an entire generation had morphed into mind-numbed spectators, that their passion had so badly turned in on itself that they were able to hunger only for the quick, immediate sensation with no meaning.

Well hell
, wasn't he getting jaded. He guessed he'd worked too long among criminal types—maybe it was time to turn his back on law enforcement before he grew really bitter.

Shaking his head, both amused and annoyed with himself, he put his arm around Ryan. “You did a great job with this house,” he said, studying the details of the master suite, the deep window seat beside the stone fireplace, the Mexican-tile floor and carved doors. “And it's a perfect arrangement for a couple. Almost,” he said, laughing down at her, “as if you
expected
to move in.”

Ryan laughed, and blushed a little. “I expected someone would. I didn't think Clyde would remain a bachelor forever, he didn't seem the type—despite his philandering ways.”

“That's in the past for Clyde,” he said reassuringly. “Where will you put the new studio? You plan to enclose the deck over the carport?”

“No, the studio will go just behind it.” She crossed Clyde's study to the glass doors that led to the upstairs deck. “We'll leave the deck, put the studio back there, over the dining end of the kitchen—if we can get the permit.”

She turned, pushing back her short, dark hair. “After the battle I had on the last job, I'm not looking forward to another hassle with city planning—to a fight that has nothing to do with standard building codes. I should be used to it, it goes with the territory. But I never will be.” She looked up at him, her green eyes angry. “I understand sensible restrictions to protect the lovely setting of the village, but—”

“But what you can't abide,” Mike said, “is high-handed
authoritarianism for no reason but personal power.”

She laughed. “Those people don't own the world,” she said. “But they sure like to think they do.” Molena Point's building codes and the patronizing attitude of its building inspectors were a sore point among most of the village contractors, except for those few who passed sufficient sums under the table.

“What if they won't okay the studio?”

She studied him. “We're not buying them off, if that's what you're thinking. I can take over the downstairs guest room, though I'd rather not. Clyde likes having a guest room, and so do I. And I really want a studio with a view, I like to look down on the rooftops when I'm working. That's why I like the apartment.

“If they flat-out refuse the permit,” she said, “if I get tired of fighting them, and if you've found a place of your own by then, I'll keep the apartment as my studio. Not as convenient for late-night fits of inspiration, but I can have a small setup here, in a corner of the study. I really do need the apartment's downstairs garage for equipment storage. If I don't have that, I'll have to rent space somewhere.”

She pulled a blueprint from a stack of papers on Clyde's bookshelf and unrolled it on the desk; as Mike looked over the studio's floor plan, she studied her dad. “You had a little tiff with Dallas?”

He looked at her and shrugged. “A small difference of opinion, nothing important.”

She waited.

“Something about the Carson Chappell cold case,” he said.

Ryan hid a smile. “Lindsey Wolf is lovely.”

Ignoring that, he studied the blueprint intently, looking over the interior elevations, nodding with approval at the high, slanted ceiling with its long skylights and the small, raised fireplace in the far corner between the glass walls, its stone matching that in the bedroom.

“Plenty of room for my drafting table,” she said, amused by her dad, “for file cabinets, computer, and a deep storage closet here for drawings and blueprints.” Was he getting serious again about Lindsey? Ryan thought Lindsey was the only woman he had ever really cared about since her mother died.

“The plan's perfect,” Mike said, “and it would be nice to be able to work at home. Not to mention my being able to keep the apartment,” he teased. “I'll think good thoughts.”

“Maybe the construction gods will smile. Maybe, by the time Clyde and I get back from our honeymoon, the permit will be waiting for us. But I'm not holding my breath.” Her green eyes searched his. “Are you okay with staying here while we're gone, taking care of Rock and the cats? I could take Rock up to the Harpers'.”

“I'm looking forward to having a dog again, even if he is only on loan. Looking forward to long runs on the beach, walks around the village, taking our meals at the patio restaurants. With that handsome fellow at my side, I can pick up any good-looking woman I choose.”

“You're an old rounder, you know that? Tell me more about the cold case.” Watching him, she curled up comfortably on the leather couch, sipping her beer.

Mike stretched out in the club chair, his long, lanky frame easy in his worn jeans and faded T-shirt. “You're pumping me, but okay.”

He felt uncomfortable telling her about meeting Lindsey on the street earlier that evening. “I'd already read the file,” he said. “I wasn't sure I wanted to work this case, but it has the best contacts. Not only Lindsey, but her sister and some of the crowd they ran with when Chappell disappeared, quite a few of their friends still in the village.”

“I always thought that was a strange thing to do,” she said, “to go off camping just before his wedding.” Glancing down at her engagement ring, she frowned.

“That won't happen to you and Clyde—you couldn't drive Clyde away with a club.”

“I know,” she said, smiling smugly. But still a coldness held her, a sudden sense of misfortune, and she saw again the day of Charlie and Max's wedding. The explosion in the church, debris suddenly hanging in the sky then starting to fall in slow motion, and a split second later the deafening boom of the blast. Parts of the church walls flying everywhere, mixed with white flower petals floating down and bits of silver fluttering all around her, silver foil that forensics would later identify as the elegant wrapping paper in which a “wedding gift” had been detonated remotely.

She thought, shivering, about her own wedding day tomorrow, about the gathering at the Harpers' house—so many law enforcement people in the wedding party, so many prime targets. And for a long moment, an unreasonable wave of dread held Ryan cold and still.

D
ON'T LET THE EXPLOSION
at the Harpers' wedding eat at you,” Mike said. “Things like that don't happen twice. Or…” He looked at her more closely. “Is there something else bothering you?” Sounds of the party drifted upstairs to them, and to the tomcat listening from the adjoining room beneath the king-size bed. “You don't have second thoughts about marrying Clyde?” Mike asked. “You're not regretting this new step in your life?”

“Oh, it isn't anything like that. It's just…Maybe I'm a bit tired.”

There
was
something else, of course, something she couldn't share with her dad, ever. “It's…someone else's secret,” she said inadequately, “that I'm committed to keep.”

“Well, that's okay, then,” he said easily. Then, “You care if I take Rock in to the station now and then? He'll be bored out of his mind if I leave him here all day, this breed was never meant to be idle.”

“Take him, if Max doesn't mind. Rock loves a crowd, it would be good for him.” She studied her dad. “Dallas and I've talked about training him to track. He tracked Charlie when she was kidnapped, he figured it out on his own, and showed a fine natural skill. But then, he loves Charlie.”

“No question he's smart and eager,” Mike said. “He's how old? Three? It's easier to start a puppy. But Rock…the way he watches a person, wanting to be part of the action, wanting to
do
something. He needs some kind of work.”

She knew that too well. A dog like Rock, with so much desire and drive—he was too fine an animal to be lying around doing nothing, or looking for trouble. But she never seemed to have the time to give him what he needed, there weren't enough hours in the day.

From the shadows beneath the bed, Joe Grey listened first with amusement, then with rising interest at the idea of training Rock to track, to find felons or lost children. This, the tomcat realized, might solve the problem that had been eating at him. The dilemma for which, until this moment, he'd had no solution.

Rock could find the body that neither Charlie nor the secret snitches dared report.
I can teach Rock to track! I can train a tracking dog in ways no human ever dreamed! And then…

The more he thought about the idea, the better he liked it. He lay working out the details, deciding which humans to enlist, to do the legwork, as it were, and by the time Ryan and her dad headed back downstairs, the gray tomcat was grinning with anticipation.

Quietly he followed father and daughter down to the living room where Clyde was changing discs in the CD player, putting on some old ragtime from early in the last century—how many cat lifetimes ago? Hiding his grin, he sauntered past Ryan and Mike and Clyde, leaped to the back of the love seat and to the top of the six-foot bookcase, startling Mike, who stared up at Joe as he stretched out with his paws hanging over the edge.

“That cat sneaks around like an undercover agent.”

“Nature of the cat,” Clyde said easily, setting aside some discs. “It's the sneaky cat that catches the mice.” And he turned away to sort through the remaining CDs.

Ryan had turned away, too, hiding a grin as she brushed lint from her jeans. Behind Mike's back she glanced up to the bookshelf where Joe was washing his paws. She winked at him, then turned back to Clyde. “We were talking about Lindsey Wolf,” she said. “She's lived in the village off and on. Do you know her?”

“I used to see her in the vet's office,” Clyde said. “She had a golden retriever, and we'd swap anecdotes.” He glanced at Mike. “Didn't you date her for a while? Is that the cold case you're working, her fiancé? What was his name? Chappell? Some people said he got cold feet, bailed out because he really didn't want to get married.”

Mike nodded. “Carson Chappell. Lindsey came to Dallas because of an article in the paper, the skeleton of a hiker found up in Oregon. Apparently died about the time Chappell disappeared.” Mike stepped to the bookcase to stroke Joe, wanting to know the tomcat he'd be caring for. “Not likely it's Chappell, but Lindsey's fixed on the idea.”

“I heard Lindsey moved back,” Clyde said, “moved her accounting practice up here. I've seen her sister around the village lately, too. That should be interesting, the two of them in the same small town again; I think they were both dating Chappell, and Lindsey was pretty angry about it.”

Mike smiled. “I guess there's no love lost.” He stroked Joe for a few moments, studying the tomcat a bit too keenly, then turned away and stretched out in a leather chair, eyeing Joe's clawed and furry easy chair with such obvious amusement that Joe bristled.

What's wrong with that chair? That chair is a masterpiece of feline creativity, it's a rare art form. Some people have no taste.

Clyde was saying, “Lindsey told me once that she and Ryder have been crosswise since they were kids. I guess, when Chappell started seeing Ryder on the sly, that didn't go down too well. Then Chappell and Lindsey announced their engagement, and then Chappell disappeared. About the same time, his partner's wife moved away, and of course village gossip had it that Nina Gibbs and Chappell ran off together.”

“It isn't rumor,” Mike said, “that after Lindsey moved back to L.A., her sister showed up with Ray Gibbs, Chappell's partner. He and Ryder are still together, they have a place in the city, and they're buying a condo in the village.”

“You've been busy,” Ryan said. “And Gibbs never found his wife? Never heard from her?”

“Not that anyone knows,” Mike said. “I haven't talked with Gibbs yet.”

Above, on the bookcase, Joe Grey might have added
his own take to the scenario. His thoughts might be off the wall, but he couldn't leave it alone. That hiker up in Oregon died some ten years ago. And what about the skeleton Willow had found among the Pamillon ruins? How old was that body? Two unidentified skeletons, discovered within the same week. Nothing at all to indicate a connection. And yet…

The tomcat didn't believe in coincidence. Too often, in the world of criminal investigation, if one looked deeply enough one would come up with some oblique and overlooked relationship between seemingly unconnected incidents. While the assumption didn't hold true in every case, the general concept had served Joe well.

This time, am I way off base? When Dallas and Harper get a look at that body in the ruins—as soon as we set them up to find it without involving the secret snitches—and when the coroner establishes a time of death on it, what will we have then?

Only forensics could date the Pamillon body. And first, the law had to find it among those isolated ruins where no one ever went, not picnickers, not even many lovers wanting privacy, the Pamillon ruins being too eerie for most lovers.

In short, it wasn't likely anyone was going to accidentally stumble on that lost grave, not without help. And, for sure, the report daren't come from the cops' favorite but unidentified snitch.

The cops get a tip that something's dug up a body there—and how else would it get uncovered? And they wonder about the feral cats around the ruins.
He could just hear Dallas: “Something dug it up. And there are cats all over that old
estate. Would a band of cats dig up a body? But even if they did, who the hell found it? Who was up there to call in the report? That voice—sure as hell, that was our phantom snitch. What was he doing up there?”

Right. The cops start asking questions, that's way risky. A cop's as nosy as any cat. A cop starts wondering about cats and dead bodies and that could be the end of feline investigative work for the rest of recorded time.

No, fate needed a little help here to keep the snitch out of the picture. And excitement filled Joe as, crouched atop the bookcase, shutting out the conversation around him, he laid out his scenario.

How long, he wondered, once the coroner had dug up the Pamillon bones, would it take to get them dated? Sometimes the lab came through right away, sometimes forensics could be backed up and maddeningly slow. And how long until the department had a more definitive date on the Oregon body? All across the country, law enforcement was shorthanded, short of money, backed up for months and sometimes years, pushing court cases into gridlock and even forcing the court to let a suspect walk—while the government spent billions of dollars, Joe thought, on programs that benefited no one but the paper pushers.

Bottom line: he had no notion how long, after the body at the ruins was “found,” until the department would have a comparative age on the two sets of bones and there was any real basis for his gut feeling. For a cold case, there could be a long wait. This was not a killer awaiting trial.

Not yet, it isn't,
Joe thought.
But with luck, it will come to that.
Joe Grey was not a patient tomcat.

Nor did he ordinarily indulge in the kind of presump
tion that now held his attention. His attempt to connect the two bodies was squirrely, but he couldn't shake his feeling that there
was
a connection—and the more he thought about his plan to anonymously report the body, the more he liked the scenario.

To pull it off, the body would have to remain buried in the earth of the Pamillon ruins for another week, given the fact that tomorrow was the wedding. Well, that couldn't be helped, he'd just have to live with that.

 

I
T WAS EARLY
the next morning, three hours before the wedding, when Wilma and Kit went to visit Sage and pick up Dulcie; the clinic was closed on Sundays. Dr. Firetti let them in the side door. He was smiling but looked like he could use a night's sleep; there were smudges under his eyes and his usually ruddy color was pale. In the recovery room, they found Sage and Dulcie in a big cage with its door open, Dulcie lying close to the patient, yawning. Sage was awake and licking up a little warm broth. He looked very small and frail wrapped in the heavy white bandages and with the cast on his leg.

“He's done very well,” Firetti said. “I think he's out of danger, barring something unforeseen. Dulcie helped a great deal to reassure him when he came out of the anesthetic. She didn't have to give blood,” he said, smiling, “though I used most of what I had.

“With the metal plate and pins in, the leg should heal just fine. The thing now is to avoid infection.” Firetti lifted Kit into the open cage beside the patient, so she
could visit. “I'd like to keep him another day, to watch him. Isn't the wedding today?”

“Yes, it is,” Wilma said. “I can pick him up tomorrow morning, early. Shall I call first?”

Firetti nodded. “Please. When you come for him, I'll give you instructions and show you how to change the dressings.”

Wilma was a stranger to Sage, and the young, bleached calico looked up at her warily; but Dulcie and Kit were obviously comfortable with her, and soon he relaxed.

“Was it very bad?” Kit asked him, glancing around uneasily at the wire cage. She did not like to be inside a cage, even with the door open, and she didn't like to see her friend there. Didn't like to see him all bundled up in those heavy bandages, either.

“The doctor is very kind,” Sage said sleepily. “Very kind and good.” And he laid his head down beside his empty bowl. “I don't hurt anymore…,” he said, and he was asleep again, still groggy and worn out.

Wilma gave Dr. Firetti the custards she had brought, and she and the two cats left, Kit looking back at Sage until the office door closed and she could no longer see him; and in the car the tortoiseshell hunched down miserably, thinking only of her friend. “I just wish…,” Kit said forlornly, “I wish…I wish Stone Eye could die all over again, slowly and painfully!”

“This is Clyde and Ryan's wedding day,” Wilma said. “Are you going to feel all sour and grumpy and make
them
feel bad, and spoil their happy day?”

“I'm not,” said Kit. “I mean to smile and purr. But right now I mean to feel bad just for a little while.” And
she turned over on the seat with her back to Wilma and Dulcie and said not another word as Wilma headed home to dress for the wedding.

 

F
ROM THE CRACK
of dawn, Clyde and Joe's house was a turmoil of prewedding excitement that made the tomcat laugh, but that he wouldn't have missed. Mike left early to help Max pick up the folding chairs. Max called later to see if Clyde needed any assistance, and Clyde snapped that he could still dress himself, thank you. Max told him, “Don't forget the rings,” and Clyde and Joe argued fiercely about which pocket to put the rings in, which was arguing stupidly about nothing. And then at last they were in the sleek Cadillac Escalade that Clyde had borrowed for the honeymoon trip—borrowed because Ryan had said that, if they were going to be tooling around the wine country with all those great antiques stores, they'd better take her pickup. And Clyde said he wasn't going on their honeymoon in a pickup. “So,” Ryan had said, “if you're such a snob, borrow an SUV,” and Clyde had gotten a two-year-old, top-of-the-line loaner from the dealership where he had his automotive shop.

Dulcie had come over the rooftops to ride to the wedding with Joe and Clyde. She had, after her long night at the vet's, a great need to be close to Joe. Waiting for Clyde, the two cats leaped into the front seat of the pearl-colored Escalade hoping the groom wasn't going to be late. “I never want to see you in the hospital,” Dulcie said, snuggling against Joe. She didn't say, Please take care. But
Joe winced because that was what she was thinking. He hated being told to be careful, that kind of female meddling made him feel totally caged. But then he looked at her, saw how tired she was, and tenderly licked her ear.