Cat to the Dogs (6 page)

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 starting 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.

T
WO NIGHTS
later, as Clyde fetched the cards and poker chips and began to lay out a cholesterol-rich array of party food, Joe was all set for an evening of imbibing the fatty diet necessary to his psychological well-being and picking up interesting bits of intelligence courtesy of the Molena Point PD, when Clyde dropped the bombshell.

“You are not invited, Joe. You are not wanted in this house when my friends are here playing poker. No more snooping. You're done listening to private police business.”

“You have to be kidding.”

“Not kidding. No cats on or near the poker table. No cats in the house tonight.”

“You're making crab-and-olive sandwiches, you know that's my all-time favorite. And I'm not invited to the party?”

“You can take a sandwich with you. Brown-bag it.”

Joe looked at Clyde intently. “You're serious. You are turning me out of my own home.”

“Very serious. No more eavesdropping.” Turning his back, Clyde resumed spreading crab and green olives.

“I see what's wrong. You have your nose out of joint because I was right about that wreck in Hellhag Canyon.”

“Don't be silly. And even if there
was
something strange about that wreck, whatever Max Harper might, in the presence of his officers and closest friend, find fit to discuss in this house, will be restricted to those human listeners, and to no other. No tomcats. No lady cats. No snooping.
Comprende?
”

Joe drew himself up to his full, bold, muscular height, his growl rumbling, his yellow eyes blazing. “For your information, if that wreck turns out to be a murder, I'm the one who put Harper onto it. Me. The tomcat you're booting out of his own home for no conscionable reason. Without yours truly, without the information that I tipped to Max Harper, the killer would go scot-free.”

Clyde turned from the counter to glare at him. “You don't have much respect for the abilities of our local law enforcement. You don't seem to think that Harper is capable of—”

“I think Harper is very capable. Why should I expect one of your limited reasoning to understand that if the brake line
was
switched, and the billfold
was
removed
before
the police got to the scene of the accident that morning, and if the wreck looked in every other way like an accident, and Harper had no information to the contrary, he would have no reason to search for evidence.

“That is a dangerous curve,” Joe explained patiently. “There has been more than one wreck there. The morning was foggy. Thick as canned cream. Without my help, Harper would have no reason to think the wreck was any more than an accident.”

“I've had enough, Joe. I don't intend to argue with you. You are out of the house. Don't come home until Harper leaves. Go now. Go hunt. Go hang out on Lucinda's fence with Dulcie. Get out of here.”

Joe leaped down, so incensed that, stalking through the living room, he paused long enough to deliberately, maliciously rake his claws down the arm of Clyde's new leather chair, leaving long, deep indentations just short of actual tears.

And, shouldering out through his cat door in a mood black and hateful, within three minutes—never reentering Clyde Damen's pokey little cottage—he was set up to listen to every smallest whisper from Clyde's sacrosanct poker game.

He, Joe Grey, would miss nothing.

 

Dulcie discovered Joe's hideaway when she came along the fence from Lucinda's. The night had turned chill, and Dirken had closed the windows. Annoyed at being shut out, she had left the Greenlaws, galloping along the fence top to see if Joe wanted to hunt.

Clyde's kitchen lights were all burning. She smelled cigarette smoke and heard Max Harper laugh. She was about to go on, knowing Joe wouldn't budge on poker night and miss some juicy bit of police gossip, when she saw the two pups behaving so strangely that she stopped to watch them.

Instead of pawing at the back door to get inside and join the party, the pups were down in the dirt beside the back porch, teasing at a vent hole, a little rectangular opening in the foundation that should have had a screen over it but was yawning, the screen cover pushed aside.

Both pups were crouched, heads down, their backsides high in the air, their tails wagging madly as they tried to push in through the small space. Dulcie, leaping down and racing across the lawn, slipped in between their noses—and caught Joe's scent, over the reek of damp earth.

Peering into the musty blackness, she saw a flash of white—two white paws and white chest, where Joe Grey crouched atop a furnace duct, just below the kitchen floor.

A blanket of fiberglass insulation hung down, as if Joe had clawed and torn it away to bare the floor joists. Atop the heat duct, he stared up toward the kitchen, his ears cocked, his expression sly and triumphant. The voices came clearly to Dulcie.

“I'll call,” Harper said. They heard the clink of poker chips dropped on the table.

Lieutenant Brennan said, “I'll raise you two.” Dulcie could imagine Brennan sitting back a little from the poker table to accommodate his ample stomach. A woman's voice said, “No way, Brennan. I fold.” That would be Detective Kathleen Ray, the dark-haired young detective who had worked the Winthrop Jer

gen case.

Not all men liked to play poker with women. Not many male cops liked women on the force. Well, these guys were okay. But just for eveners, Dulcie hoped Kathleen Ray went home a huge winner—cleaned them out, even if they were only playing penny ante.

A loud groan announced a pot won. Clyde laughed, and they heard chips being raked in.

“Why are you down here?” Dulcie whispered. “Did you and Clyde have a fight?”

Joe cut her a scowl as sour as yesterday's cat food. “Clyde shut me out.”

“He what? You can't be serious. Out of the house? But why?”

“Said he didn't want me spying on Harper.”

Dulcie stared at him. “What's the matter with Clyde?”

“The minute I left, he went right out to the living room and slid the plywood cover into my cat door. Talk about cheap…I could claw the plywood off, go on in the living room, and listen, but I'm not giving him the satisfaction.”

“I can't believe he did that. Maybe he isn't feeling well,” Dulcie said softly.

“He feels just fine. His usual bad-tempered self. Earlier, when I first got down here, Harper said something about fingerprints. Clyde interrupted him—just in case I was listening.” Joe gave her a narrow-eyed leer. “Well, Clyde can stuff it. I'm hanging in here until I know what Harper's found.”

Dulcie snuggled next to Joe on the warm, softly insulated heat
duct, settling down to listen to endless rounds of poker talk punctuated with scattered gems of police intelligence. Only when the pizza delivery guy arrived, to augment the crab sandwiches, did the ringing doorbell trigger a round of frantic barking from the backyard, and some of the conversation was lost. But then, soon, Harper's dry, slow voice seeped down through the kitchen floor again, along with the scent of pepperoni pizza.

Besides the infrared photos that Harper had taken the night he went down Hellhag Canyon, and some casts of partial footprints that Detective Ray had made, the department had one fingerprint, which Detective Ray had lifted from the engine near the brake line.

The department, contacting Landrum Antique Cars in L.A., had learned that the Corvette had been purchased only a few days before, a cash sale to a Raul Torres. “Torres,” Harper said, “gave them a Portland, Oregon, address that turned out to be a vacant lot. Very likely the name is just as fake. We're waiting for the fingerprint ID. State lab's weeks behind as usual, even for a possible murder investigation.”

The information should have cheered Joe; he remained dour and silent.

Clyde's poker games had been one of his best sources of information. Four or five cops playing stud poker could do a lot of talking. Clyde was the only civilian, but Harper trusted him like another cop. Maybe, Joe thought, that was why Clyde felt embarrassed to let him sit in. If Joe was lying on the poker table nibbling at the chips and dip, Clyde could hardly halt the conversation, could hardly tell Harper and his officers not to talk in front of the cat.

“So what the hell,” Joe said softly but angrily, as the poker game resumed. “All I've ever done is help Harper. Without the evidence you and I turned up, several of those no-goodniks sitting in state prison right now would be out on the street, to say nothing of Troy Hoke cooling his heels for murder in the federal pen.”

Dulcie curled closer to Joe and licked his ear. She had never seen him and Clyde at such odds.

But it was when Harper mentioned Lucinda Greenlaw that Dulcie's own temper flared.

“Your neighbor,” Harper said. “In the old Victorian house behind you. You know her very well?”

“Lucinda? Not really,” Clyde said. “Wilma sees her pretty often.”

“She's an early-morning walker,” Harper said.

“I don't really know. What's the interest?”

“Houseful of relatives right now gathered for Shamas's funeral. Pretty loud bunch, I'm told.”

“They don't bother me. I don't hear them.”

“Had a talk with Lucinda yesterday,” Harper said. “Asked her to come down to the station, give me a few minutes away from the family.” There was a pause. The cats could smell cigarette smoke.

“She walks on Hellhag Hill a lot. I asked her if she'd happened to be up there the morning that Corvette went over into Hellhag Canyon.”

“And?” Clyde said shortly.

“Said she hadn't been, that she'd stayed home that day. You…didn't happen to notice her that morning? Happen to see her go out?”

“What the hell, Max? No, I didn't happen to notice. What is this? What time are you talking about?”

“Around six-thirty. The 911 call came in, from someone in the trailer park, about that time.”

“At six-thirty I'm in the shower,” Clyde said testily. “Or just getting out of bed. Not staring out my back window at the neighbors.”

Harper said no more. The talk from that point was limited to poker. The game ended early. The cats, dropping down from the heat duct, slipped out through the vent, forcing the pups aside, and headed for the open hills.

 

They hunted most of the night, until the first gray of dawn streaked the sky. Joe's mood brightened once they'd killed a big buck rabbit and shared it. Settling back to wash blood and rabbit fur from his paws, he said, “Do you think she might have seen something that morning? Maybe saw one of Shamas's relatives down there, around the canyon, and didn't want to tell Harper?”

Dulcie shrugged. “I don't think she cares enough about any of Shamas's relatives to protect them—well, maybe she cares about Pedric and Newlon. But would she lie for them?”

Joe looked at her intently.

“What are you thinking? That's stretching it, Joe, to look for a connection between the Greenlaws and that wreck.”

“Why
does
she walk so early?”

Her green eyes widened. “You're as bad as Harper. She likes to be alone. You're a cat, you should understand that kind of need.” She rose. “Fog's blowing in. She'll walk this morning. Come see for yourself.” And she spun away at a dead run across the hills, perhaps running from a nudge of unease, from the faint discomfort that Joe's questions stirred.

Down two valleys and across open hills they ran, through a little orchard and a pasture and up Hellhag Hill—to find Lucinda already there. They paused when they saw her, and went on quietly through the tall, concealing grass, watching Lucinda climb through the drifting fog to the outcropping of boulders where she liked to sit.

Dropping her small blanket and her jacket, she moved on beyond the rocks some twenty feet to a stand of broom bushes. There, producing a package from her canvas tote, she arranged its contents on an aluminum pie plate; the cats caught the scent of roast beef, probably leftovers from last night's supper. Setting the plate among the bushes, she pushed it deep enough in so it was sheltered, but she would be able to see it.

“The wild cats,” Dulcie whispered. “They'll come through the bushes from deeper in.”

Among the boulders, Lucinda made herself comfortable on her folded blanket. Quietly turning, she looked up behind her in the direction of the trailer park. The cats didn't think she could see the trailers from that angle, nor could the occupants see her. There was no one else on the hill, yet she scanned the empty slopes expectantly, looking across the grassy rises and down toward the sea.

“She's watching for the wild cats,” Dulcie whispered—but she wasn't sure. Lucinda seemed unusually tense, to be watching only for the cats she fed.

“Why do you follow her, Dulcie?”

“I don't know. Sometimes…sometimes when she's here on the hills, she seems almost to be listening.” She glanced at Joe. “Almost as if she hears some sound, something—”

“What kind of sound?” he said irritably.

“Some…something…stirring within the hill.”

Joe scowled and flattened his ears; he didn't like that kind of talk. She said no more, not mentioning that one day she had seen Lucinda lie down in the grass and press her ear to the earth.

Maybe Lucinda had only been feeling the beat of the sea throbbing through the hill? Could Lucinda feel that vibration, as a cat could? Or had she simply been resting, comforted by the earth's solid warmth?

It had seemed a very personal moment. Dulcie had felt embarrassed watching her.

“Maybe she thinks she hears the ghost,” Joe said.

“Maybe.” The local yarns that had given Hellhag Hill its name described a crazy old man, living a hundred years ago in a shanty atop Hellhag Hill, who spent his time throwing clods at trespassers, and who had been stoned, in turn, by a band of village boys; two days later he had died from the wounds to his head and chest. The story said that his spirit had entered inside the hill, and,
even to the present day, he haunted the cave that yawned higher up Hellhag Hill—an angry and possessive ghost drawing the winds to him and screaming out at strangers; sometimes you could hear his shouts and curses.