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Cat Spitting Mad

Page 8

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy


  "None."

  "It's turning into a tangle. The best bet-not that I think your people can't handle it, but to get them off the hot seat-would be to call in an outside detective."

  Harper nodded. "I think you have to do that. Someone on loan from another district."

  "I can talk to San Francisco. I have a friend in the department there. Good detective-Dallas Garza. The family has a weekend cottage down here. I'm sure he'd welcome a change of scene."

  Behind the Chinese planter, narrowed yellow eyes met blazing green eyes. Neither Joe nor Dulcie had thought of an outside investigator.

  And how had Gedding come up with a candidate so fast?

  The cats had thought there was mutual trust here. Joe had heard Harper tell Clyde, more than once, how Gedding had stood by him when the mayor or city council meddled in police business.

  What bothered Joe was, one council member had pushed hard to hire Gedding. And that man wanted Harper out of the department. So where did Gedding's loyalties lie?

  "Garza's brother-in-law," Gedding said, "is chief U.S. probation officer in San Francisco. I believe Wilma Getz worked with him before she retired. Garza's niece-she's the interior designer that Kate Osborne works for. But you know the family-they have a weekend cottage in the village. Kate and Hanni, when they were small, used to play together."

  "I know who they are," Harper said stiffly. "Should I say, small world," he added dryly.

  Gedding shrugged and straightened the papers on his desk. "Have you made any other arrangements?"

  "When your man arrives, Ray and Davis are prepared to step off the case, if he so chooses. I've put Lieutenant Brennan in charge of the department.

  "As for my personal life, I don't plan to stay at home. I've taken my horses up to Campbell Ranch, they'll keep them ridden. As long as I live alone and isolated, there'll be a shadow on my activities. I'm locking up my place and moving in with Clyde. Unless," Harper said with a twisted smile, "unless you plan to put a leg bracelet on me."

  Joe Grey felt his belly lurch. Though Harper was joking, the thought of an the electronic monitor made him twitch. If Harper had to phone the station for permission to walk out his front door, he might as well be locked in a steel kennel.

  It was noon when Clyde left Gedding's office, now on official leave. The cats were about to slip out through the window when Gedding made a long-distance call; they subsided again, beneath the potted fern.

  Gedding was apparently talking with the chief of police in San Francisco. It was all very low-key. Gedding was as nice as pie; apparently he and Chief Barron went back to college days. Barron seemed to be telling him that Garza was busy on a case and suggesting he send another man. Gedding was gently insistent. He wanted Garza, badly needed Garza. It was a long and oblique discussion that left the cats fidgeting. It ended, apparently, with San Francisco's assurance that Garza was on his way.

  "Most informative," Joe muttered as they hurried out along the parking lot.

  "Informative, and confusing. Look. Harper's still here."

  In the parking lot shared by the courthouse and police headquarters, Harper was putting some cardboard boxes in his king cab pickup; the cats could see a pair of field boots sticking out from the top and a gray sweatshirt.

  "He's cleaned out his desk," Dulcie whispered.

  "Dulcie, don't be concerned about Harper. No creeping lowlife is going to get the best of Max Harper."

  He wished he believed that.

  Dropping the box and the boots in the truck bed, Harper closed the canvas cover. He looked more than tired. The minute he drove off, the cats trotted down to Ocean and over to Moreno's Bar and Grill where Harper was headed.

  Padding down the narrow alley past Moreno's front door, they slipped in through the screened kitchen door, pawing it open behind the backs of a cook and two busboys. Past the bar into the restaurant, and through the shadows to the far corner, to Clyde and Harper's usual booth. Sliding beneath the table unseen, they cringed away from Clyde's size tens. The carpet smelled like stale French fries.

  "The horseshoes," Clyde was saying. "Your men didn't find any more tracks made with the cut shoe? Didn't find anything on the trail that could have cut the shoes like that?"

  "Ray and Davis have been over every inch."

  "There have to be two shoes. And you said on the phone that your boot prints were at the scene. But you were up there searching. Of course your prints would be-"

  "The prints were under the victim's prints. And partial prints under their bodies. The only time I got off Bucky was when I first arrived, to check the bodies. That set of prints was clear. There were other prints like them, underneath."

  "Some son of a bitch has gone to a lot of trouble. How would he get your boots? Could he replicate them?"

  "They're Justin's. I buy them up the valley, at the Boot Barn. Those soles were the same shape, same size. No problem there. But they had the same worn places on the left heel and right sole."

  "So the guy stole your boots, then put them back. Or he took a cast of your boots somewhere. Fixed up an identical pair. Same with the horseshoes. Somewhere, that night, was there another horse wearing the same shape of shoe with the same scar?"

  "I think the guy took Bucky. Came in the house, took my boots and the knife, then returned with them."

  "Did he have time to do that?"

  "Yes, he would have. I left about three forty-five. Helen and Ruthie were killed around five o'clock. And when I came back to change cars, I didn't go in the house or the stable. He could still have had Bucky.

  "And later, when we got the missing report and I went home to get Bucky, he was nervous-irritable and tired. The horse was tired, Clyde. And Bucky is in top shape.

  "I'd ridden him for some four hours, then put him up. He'd had plenty of rest-or should have-before I took him out again on the search.

  "I was irritated at myself, when I saddled him to go look for the Marners, for not rubbing him down very well, after lunch. He had saddle marks, though I could have sworn I cleaned him up. Had what looked like quirt marks on his side and rump. I thought he'd been rubbing himself again. And his bridle was hung up differently than I hang it. I thought that strange, thought I'd been preoccupied." Harper paused, then, "Pretty unobservant, for a cop."

  Clyde said nothing.

  "The bridle. The saddle marks, Bucky's condition. The boot prints and hoofprints. And Gedding has received two anonymous phone calls-he thinks from the same man-that I was seen leaving the restaurant at noon riding Bucky up the mountain, in the opposite direction from my place. Following the Marners and Dillon.

  "The day after the murder, Davis walked the trail that the Marners and Dillon rode. The first half mile above the restaurant, they rode on deep gravel. No prints of any value. But where you can see hoofprints, there's the same scar-marked print, coming along behind their three horses.

  "Not a lot of people ride that trail, it's rough and steep. Davis said that deer trails crossed the hoofprints in two places, heading down to water and back again up toward the forest."

  Joe tried to imagine a stranger riding up that mountain following the three riders. A stranger riding Harper's horse? A stranger who had taken Bucky after Harper left for work, and beat it down to the restaurant, to leave hoofprints following the Marners. Then followed them, killed them, and took out after Dillon. And then brought Bucky home, put him back in his stall.

  "I've turned the department over to Brennan. Likely Davis and Ray will be off the case when Gedding's man gets here. Dallas Garza. San Francisco PD. I've moved the horses up to Campbell Ranch, and the pups, too. They'll be fine. I need a place to stay- where someone will know what I'm up to."

  Clyde was silent for some time. When he spoke, his voice was low and angry. "You're quitting. Just quitting-stepping back like that. If that doesn't make you look guilty-"

  "There's nothing else I can do. That's protocol, to do that. Nothing guilty about it. If I stayed in the department, I could manipulate m
y people, cook the papers, cook the evidence. It's not ethical, Clyde. You know that."

  "I'll clean up the spare room. But what about during the day- I can't baby-sit you, Max, while I'm at work."

  "I'll make myself visible in the village. And I'm not finished looking for Dillon. I can move around, be seen, keep my eyes open but stay out of the department's way. If I ride out with the searchers, I'll stay with a group. Some of them keep their horses up at Campbell's."

  "The department's searched the old Pamillon place?"

  "We were all over it that first night and the next day. The detectives have been back three times, have climbed down into every dark, musty cellar that ever existed on that land.

  "This morning they had tracking dogs in there. One of them scented something; it started on a trail, then kept doubling back- sniffing around a puff of animal hair caught on the rocks. Dogs got all confused. I don't think they ever did get Dillon's scent, I think it was just a fox or something-maybe that cougar. The cougar's pad marks were back and forth through the old house- that's what has me worried."

  From beneath the table, the cats couldn't see their faces. Nor did they need to.

  Harper said, "If there was some trace of Dillon up there that the dogs couldn't find, it's beyond what any human could detect.

  "Every department in California has her description and photo," Harper said. "The local TV channels will keep running her picture, along with a recording of her voice, that her mother gave us. Whatever son of a bitch has her, Clyde, whatever son of a bitch hurts her, I'll kill him."

  10

  MAX HARPER'S words kept ringing in Joe's head. If there was some trace of Dillon, that the dogs couldn't find, it's beyond what any human could detect.

  Had Harper been unwittingly asking for other-than-human assistance?

  Not likely. Not Max Harper.

  But as the two cats emerged from the grass at the edge of the Pamillon estate and trotted beneath the chain barrier, Joe's mind was filled with questions. The scarred horseshoe, Harper's boot prints, the anonymous phone calls to Harper and then to Gedding.

  Behind them down the hills, the red village rooftops and dark oaks shone in a bright patchwork against the blue sea-a chill winter day, clear and sharp and filled with potential.

  Slipping in among the fallen walls, their whiskers sliding across broken bricks, threading between overgrown rosebushes whose thorns caught at their fur, they knew that something had drawn them here. A scent left undetected? Some small clue overlooked? Something that puzzled them and pulled them back.

  Springing up the trunk of a broken oak tree, they studied the massy growth below them, the jungle of tall, wild broom and upturned tree roots. Vines woven across a rusted wheelbarrow. A wrought-iron gate standing alone, slowly being pulled down by vines. A world as impenetrably green and mysterious as Rima's haunted Green Mansions, in the book that Wilma and Dulcie liked to read.

  Seeing nothing below them to draw their specific attention, they dropped down again among the foliage where the afternoon light filtered to jade.

  Scenting along through the bushes, they could detect no human trail. Only wild green smells and animal smells, filling every pocket of air. They had to rear up, every few steps, to see their way.

  Where the ancient adobe bricks had been dished out by fifty years of wear, rainwater was cupped, and the cats drank, lapping among the leaves. Down beneath crushed leaves and broken foliage, the earth was a mass of crisscrossed hoofprints, boot and shoe prints, small animal tracks and the tracks of the hounds that had come searching.

  Hours before the police teams arrived, before anyone knew that the Marners were dead, the civilian search party had ridden here, trampling any amount of evidence, so that later when Harper's people went over the land, they could record only fragments.

  Joe and Dulcie came out of the weeds onto a broken terrace so covered with rubble that it was impossible to tell where the rotting timbers of the veranda ended and the decaying floor of the house began.

  Carved mantels stood half devoured by creeping vines. Fragments of torn and curling wallpaper hung from broken walls, as delicate as butterflies.

  Prowling the parlor through forests of nettles that thrust between the rungs of broken chairs and curtained crippled bookcases, one wondered why the locals hadn't long ago taken every piece of furniture. Vines covered a capsized table to form a den that smelled of raccoon. Scraps of water-soaked, mouse-gnawed sofa cushions had moldered into mush beneath a mass of yellow flowers. All around them, they saw the old house being sucked back into the earth from which it had sprung.

  They found no footprints small enough to belong to Dillon Thurwell. They could detect no scent of Dillon. But Joe smelled the cougar, and warily they watched the shadows. And then, near the stink where the lion had sprayed, they caught the scent of the child. Dillon's scent, leading across the parlor and up the broken stair to the nursery.

  The morning glories had arrived upstairs long ago, to festoon a cane-backed rocking chair and to crawl up the faded wallpaper across cartoon rocking horses, the vine's heart-shaped leaves and tendrils fingering out through the broken windows. Morning glory crept across the nursery fireplace that stood alone where the walls had fallen into landslides of timbers and bricks.

  The fireplace stank of wet ashes spilling out onto the floor. Across the ashes led a trail of small, neat pawprints that continued beneath the fallen wall.

  The cats were scenting among the rubble when they heard voices, someone in the garden below.

  Padding to the edge of the broken floor, they watched two young women approaching. "Kate," Joe said softly. "Kate Osborne."

  "What's she doing here?" Dulcie gawked at the other young woman. "That beautiful white hair. I've seen her before, in the village."

  "I think that's the woman Kate works for. Hanni something- this detective's niece. Maybe they came down with him. Detective Dallas Garza." Joe sat down, licking ashes from his paw. "Maybe it was Kate who called Clyde last night. He got all excited. Shouted, 'When did you get in town? Where are you?' I was half asleep. It's all right if he wakes me in the middle of the night. But let me scratch an itch or wash my face, jiggle the bed a little, and it's a federal case."

  "So when did Kate come down?"

  "Last night, I guess. He made a date for breakfast-was off like a flash this morning, all polished and scrubbed, nearly forget to make my breakfast. And he's meeting her tonight for dinner. Didn't give a thought to Charlie. Apparently didn't wonder if Charlie would be jealous."

  "It would do Charlie good to be jealous," Dulcie said darkly.

  "Clyde called Charlie this morning before he left the house; I think Kate asked him to. Sounded like Kate wants to see Charlie's drawings. I didn't want to shove my ear in the phone; Clyde can be so bad-tempered in the morning."

  Below them, the white-haired woman had fished a camera from her leather tote and was taking pictures of the ruined gardens and house. Kate sat idly on a broken wall in a patch of sunshine, her short blond hair as bright as silk. She was dressed in pale faded jeans and a creamy sweater; Kate always wore cream tones or off white. Hanni's sweatshirt was bright red, her earrings long and dangling.

  "The walks could be repaired," Hanni said. "This is a lovely patio, the way the old walls rise around it." She kicked away some rubble to look at the brick paving. "This part looks good. And maybe even some of the old building could be kept and reinforced. And if these plants were pruned and cleaned up-a gardener could do wonders."

  "Hanni, I'm having trouble keeping my mind on this, with the murder and the missing child."

  "It's terrifying, I know. But there's nothing we can do, Kate. At least at the moment. The department will work overtime- every department in the country has the information, every search team is looking for the child. And Dallas will be down in the morning."

  "I keep thinking of Max Harper, suspected of murder. Keep thinking of Dallas investigating Harper as if he were a criminal. It makes me feel sick
. Makes me want to rip and claw whoever did this." Kate looked surprised at her turn of speech, looked embarrassed. "I… To think that someone has done this terrible thing, has killed and kidnapped people, in order to hurt Harper…" She looked hard at Hanni. "There can be no other explanation. Don't people know that!"

  "I'm sure they do. But the department has to do it by the book, Kate.

  "This kind of tragedy goes with the territory. For every cop who does a good job, there are a hundred guys out there wanting to destroy him, and not caring who else they hurt."

  Kate sighed. "And Lee Wark's out there somewhere. He hates Harper."

  Hanni shook her head. "The whole state's looking for Wark. He'll have left the country by now."

  "I hope. Harper was very kind to me when Jimmie hired Wark to kill me, when I was trying to get away from them. This new city attorney-what's he like? How will he treat Harper?"

  "I don't know anything about him. I haven't been down to the village for over a year." Hanni removed a roll of film from the camera and inserted another. "Not to worry, Dallas will get to the truth. He won't let anyone railroad Harper."

  Kate rose, looking around her into the tangled bushes. The cats watched her with interest. Usually she was so calm, so in control. Now she moved with a lithe, almost animal wariness, nervous and watchful.

  "Is there something about this place?" Dulcie said. "About the Pamillon mansion-some strangeness, the way the kit imagines?"

  "I don't know, Dulcie. I don't feel anything strange. You and the kit-"

  A small voice behind them said, "There is something. Something shivery."

  The cats turned to look at the kit where she sat atop a vine-covered dresser, her forepaws neatly together, her long fluffy tail wrapped around herself, her round yellow eyes intense. "Something elder, here in this place."

  But Joe and Dulcie's attention was on the dresser top. They leaped up to see better.

  Beside the kit's paw, half hidden among the green leaves, lay a piece of shiny metal. Joe pushed away the leaves.

 

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