Cat Under Fire

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  She paused, searched his face, lifted a paw. "It could have happened that way."

  "But even if it did, we can't tell that to the police."

  "Why ever not? There's no reason…"

  He laid his white paw on her small, brindle paw. "How does a human informant, talking to Captain Harper on the phone, tell him that the evidence is fifteen feet inside a drainpipe-a pipe no human could get into, or could see into?"

  "But I… But we can't move Binky's bones and move the watch, we'd destroy evidence."

  She turned to lick her shoulder. "I could say I was walking my poodle, that he stuck his nose in the pipe and I… "

  "And you-the human informant-could clearly see fifteen feet back in the dark, could see this little pile of bones."

  "Maybe I had a flashlight."

  "So with your light, you saw the bones. And you deduced from what you saw that this was Janet Jeannot's cat. That it was wearing the killer's watch attached to its collar, a watch invisible from the mouth of the pipe.

  "With her flashlight, this human informant read the plate on the collar that isn't visible. So of course she knew it was the skeleton of Janet's lost cat.

  "Don't you see, Dulcie? There's no way you can tell Harper this."

  "But we have to tell him. This is the only conclusive evidence that Rob didn't kill her."

  Joe glanced away toward the mouth of the tunnel. Dulcie's theory did make sense. What other explanation was there for the presence of the watch buckled around Binky's collar?

  "Maybe," Dulcie said, "maybe if we could find the missing paintings, Mahl's fingerprints would be on them. Maybe then we wouldn't need the watch. But," she said, "if the watch isn't important, if it can't be used for evidence, then why did Binky bring me here?"

  He didn't want to talk about that. The idea of a cat beyond the grave leading them here shook him; such thoughts thrust him head-over-tail into speculations far too unsettling.

  Dulcie rose. "Come on, let's go sit in the sun, I'm sick of the mud and stink and of having to look at poor Binky."

  But at the mouth of the drainpipe she paused, looking out warily.

  "No danger," Joe said, pushing on out. "He's gone. By now that mutt's locked in the pound." He stretched out in the hot grass. "I was hoping one of those cops would shoot the beast, but no such luck."

  "So what happened? Tell me what happened."

  "I just got settled above the second mark, up in that eucalyptus tree beside the stakeout car, when I heard shouting up the hill.

  "I could see out through the branches some kind of disturbance, and I figured you were in trouble, or soon would be. I took off for the Hamry house.

  "When I got there, Varnie was in the truck, goosing the engine, and Stamps was running up the hill, chasing the dog.

  "Varnie took off in the truck-it looked like he was going to leave Stamps to take the rap. But the other two surveillance cars were already moving. They whipped in from both ends of the street to block him. Cops jerked him out of the truck, there was a lot of confusion. They handcuffed him and locked him in a police car, and three cops took off running after Stamps.

  "The young photographer was torn up pretty bad, his face and throat bleeding. Two cops were patching him up, trying to stop the bleeding. I didn't hang around, I caught your scent mixed with the dog's scent going up the hill, and I took off again.

  "All the way up the hill his scent was mixed with yours, and I smelled blood. And then I found the grass all torn up, around that little tree, and the smell of you and the dog and the blood, and I thought the worst.

  "I kept running, following his track, then way above me I saw that the cops had cornered Stamps and were cuffing him. There was no sign of the dog.

  "I had nearly reached them, trying to stay out of sight, when down they came, forcing Stamps ahead of them and dragging the mutt by its collar. I heard one of them say something about rabies, about locking up the mutt for observation. Of course they'd do that after he mutilated one of their finest.

  "There was so much blood on its muzzle I was sure you were dead meat. The higher I got up the hills, the more certain I was.

  "But then I came up the next rise and here you were. Sitting in the sun purring like you didn't have a care."

  She smiled, and licked his face. "So they're all in the slammer. Varnie. Stamps. The dog."

  He grinned. "You did a number on the mutt."

  She smiled modestly, gave him a speculative look. "Joe, even if we could find the paintings and prove that Mahl took them, that doesn't prove he killed Janet. Only Mahl's watch, if Janet's fingerprints are on it, could…"

  "Mahl could say he'd given her the watch, maybe the night of the reception."

  "Why would he give her his watch? He hated Janet."

  Joe sighed. "There's no point in talking about it, there's no way we can get that evidence to Harper. Even if we could, what would he tell the court? He just happened to find a dead cat, and this watch was buckled to its collar? He just happened to look up that drainpipe?

  "And why, if she was conscious enough to buckle the watch around the cat's collar, couldn't she get herself out of the burning studio?"

  "You don't want to see how it might have happened," she said irritably.

  "I'm just looking at it the way the police would, Dulcie. And the way an attorney would. Janet wasn't trapped under anything heavy, and she had no broken bones. If she could buckle the watch on Binky, why couldn't she get out-crawl through the window?"

  "Don't forget that when her van exploded, it turned that fire into an inferno." She licked her paw. "Janet was weak from the aspirin, sick and weak, trying not to faint. Her doctor's testimony-he said aspirin would make her pass out. She was just able to move her hands, buckle on the watch."

  "Maybe," he said doubtfully. "But another thing- would Janet be welding, with Binky in the studio? Would she light her torch with her cat so close? His long fur… "

  "I'm guessing she usually made him leave before she actually got to work. Maybe she'd taught him to go on outside, out the open window. But that morning he didn't go out, he was there when the fire started. She was disoriented, maybe didn't realize he hadn't gone out until he ran to her after the explosion."

  She shivered. "Janet sent Binky to safety with the evidence. And Binky-Binky came to me. Now," she said softly, "now we have to help."

  The morning had grown bright, the sun warm on their backs. "If we can find the paintings," she said, "then Harper will pay attention to the rest of the evidence."

  Joe just looked at her. She was so hardheaded. "And where are we going to look for the paintings? Don't you think Mahl would have taken them back to the city that night?"

  "He had to be in a hurry, he had only a few hours to get down here, switch paintings, load up Janet's canvases, stash them somewhere, and get back to San Francisco, to the hotel. San Francisco is huge," she said. "Would he have time to hide them somewhere in the city? Don't forget he lives miles north, across the bridge." She gave him a clear green look. "Maybe it would have been faster to hide them in the village."

  "Sure. Right here in his Molena Point condo."

  Mahl had kept the condo after he and Janet were divorced; he used it on weekends, and had seemed to enjoy running into her in the small village.

  "If we can get into the condo," she said patiently, "maybe we can find some receipt for a warehouse or locker. The receipt for Charlie's rental locker has the name and the locker number on it. Coast City Lockers, up on Highway One." She nuzzled his neck. "We could try. We got into the gallery, that wasn't hard. So we can get into Mahl's condo."

  Joe looked at her a long time, then rose and prowled up the hill above the buried drainpipe. Pausing on the tallest of the three little hills, he cocked his head, studying the mound and the way it nestled up against the big hill behind.

  Below at the mouth of the pipe she sat in the sun watching him, curious-she had no idea what he was up to, but she could almost see the tomcat's wily mind ticking
away, turning over some wild idea.

  From the little hill, Joe smiled. "Go up the tunnel, Dulcie. Stand beside Binky and yowl-scream like the devil himself is tickling you."

  "Do what?"

  "Sing, baby. Make a ruckus, scream and wail-sing like I sang to the Blankenships."

  She cocked her head, let her eyes widen. She smiled. She vanished within the tunnel, running.

  And atop the little hill, Joe bellied down, his ear to the earth, listening.

  He heard her, her voice louder than he'd imagined. Down there her yowling song echoing along the pipe must be loud enough, even, to wake poor Binky. He followed the sound beyond the little mound, where the earth curved down again, against the larger hill. Pausing to listen, he soon pinpointed her exact location, and there he clawed the grass away, inscribing a large ragged X.

  When she joined him, racing up out of the tunnel, he was still picking up little stones from among the grass, carrying them in his teeth to drop them into the X. She helped him, pressing the stones down with her paw deep into the earth, constructing a sturdy hieroglyph.

  And then, finished, they headed down the hills to pay an unannounced visit to the weekend apartment of Kendrick Mahl.

  23

  Kendrick Mahl's apartment occupied the third and highest floor of a casual Mediterranean condominium three blocks above the ocean, on the west side of Molena Point. The complex did not have a locked security door as Joe had envisioned, but was a structure of open, sprawling design, with gardens tucked between its rambling wings. Against the pale stucco walls, flowers bloomed all year in blazes of orange and pink and reds, and at occasional junctures, trellises of bougainvillea climbed to the roof, heavy with red blossoms.

  Each first-floor unit opened to a terrace, and the glass doors of the upper apartments gave onto walled balconies set about with redwood chairs and potted plants. At one end of Mahl's veranda, a bougainvillea vine clung to the rail, providing from the ground below a comfortable vertical highway, an access tailored to the use of any inquisitive feline.

  Joe and Dulcie, having checked the mailboxes in the open, tiled entry patio, headed for apartment 3C. Two floors straight up from 1C, Mahl's balcony was an easy climb. There was no one on the surrounding balconies to notice them, no one in the gardens below. The condo compound, this late afternoon, seemed to provide no visible witness.

  From high up the vine they could see a small parking area, down between the buildings, surrounded by trees and flowers. But as they dropped down from the vine onto Mahl's balcony, they drew back. Classical music was playing softly, and the glass door stood wide-open. Deep within the bright living room, Mahl sat at a large, richly carved desk.

  He was talking on the phone. They could not hear much of his conversation above the soothing music, something about delivering a painting. He seemed to be trying to arrange a suitable hour for his truck to arrive.

  A skylight brightened the room, sending a cascade of sunlight down the white walls and across the whitewashed, polished oak floors. The room's furnishings were a combination of white leather and chrome set off by several dark, carved antique tables and chests, and half a dozen small potted trees. The pillows tossed on the long white sofa were deep-colored antique weavings. A Khirman rug in soft shades of red and rust graced the sitting area, nicely mirroring the fall of red bougainvillea on the balcony. And on the pristine walls, seven large paintings provided brilliant pools of color. None, of course, was by Janet Jeannot. Nor were any of the works by Rob Lake.

  As the cats watched, peering in through the glass, Mahl hung up the phone and bent to some paperwork. In the instant that he turned to pull a file from the desk drawer they slipped in and fled, swift as winging moths, across to a white leather couch and behind it. Crouching in the dark between couch and wall, they looked out, assessing Janet's ex-husband.

  Mahl was dressed in immaculate ivory slacks and a blue silk shirt, but the sleek clothes seemed too fine for his sour, owlish face, for shoulders hunched forward in an owlish manner. The cats grinned at each other, watching him, amused by his big, round, blank glasses. Even Mahl's nose was too much like a beak; Dulcie found him so humorous she had to hold her breath to keep from laughing aloud. And though Mahl was large and wide-shouldered, he did not look strong. His oversize form seemed put together carelessly, perhaps in haste. One had the impression of a creature that might be nearly hollow inside, of a thin, frail, loosely connected bone structure without strength.

  They waited impatiently for Mahl to finish whatever work occupied him. At last he rose and retired to the kitchen; they heard the refrigerator door open and close, the sounds of metal cutlery on a plate. As Dulcie leaped to the desk, Joe slid behind a planter, where he could keep an eye on Mahl. From his leafy cover Joe watched Mahl make a roast beef sandwich, piling on thin, rare slices from a white deli wrapper. The rye bread and beef smelled so good he had to lick drool from his chin. But soon the smell was spoiled by the sharp scent of mustard. He never would get used to humans spreading all that smelly goo on good red meat.

  Atop the desk Dulcie pawed through Mahl's in-box and stacks of papers, looking for some record of a rented locker or warehouse space. Most of the papers were letters, some about painting sales. She scanned them, but did not find them useful. None mentioned any kind of storage facility. None, of course, mentioned Janet's work. She left a few cat hairs clinging to the papers, but one could not help shedding. Mahl used as paperweights a small bronze bust of a child, a piece of jade as round and large as a goose egg, and a small pair of binoculars. All were hard to move as she perused the papers, all were hard to put back again. She had just moved the binoculars back into position and was fighting open the top desk drawer when Joe hissed.

  She leaped off the desk, leaving the drawer open four inches, and slid underneath into the dark kneehole. The desk was a heavy mahogany piece with ball-shaped, carved feet that left a three-inch space beneath the back and sides. If she had to, she could just squeeze under.

  Mahl came to the desk, but didn't sit down. His feet, inches from her face, were clad in soft leather slippers and cream-colored argyle socks below the creamy slacks. He grunted with mild surprise, and she heard him shut the drawer-the drawer she had worked so hard to open. She heard a paper rattle as if he had retrieved something from atop the desk, then he turned away, returned to the kitchen. She heard a chair scrape as if he had sat down at the kitchen table.

  Leaping back to the top of the desk, again she worked the drawer open.

  But it contained only a few desk supplies-pencils, pens, a plastic box filled with paper clips, a checkbook. She pulled out the checkbook and nosed it open. If Mahl found toothmarks in the leather, how would he know what they were?

  Inside, besides the checks and check register, was a long, thin notepad. On the cover of the pad Mahl had written several phone numbers, an address, and on the lower left corner, in faint pencil, the numbers L24 62 97. The sequence looked familiar; this could be a padlock combination. It was the same pattern of numbers as Charlie's padlock.

  Joe would make some comment about her rooting into Charlie's private possessions, but if Charlie didn't want cats nosing in her stuff, she should put it away. And Charlie had never rebuked her for jumping on the dresser.

  Of course the numbers on Mahl's notepad could mean anything. There was no name of a locker complex, no number for the locker itself. She repeated the combination to herself twice, and then again. She could hear Mahl rinsing his plate. She searched the other drawers and looked beneath the blotter. She was down again, beneath the desk, searching up underneath in the best detective fashion, when Joe hissed once more, and she heard the soft scuff of Mahl's slippers. Sliding out under the end of the desk, she crouched behind a white leather chair. The music had increased in volume and intensity, until it was very military. She was not well hidden by the chair's chrome legs, but it was too late to move. Maybe he wouldn't look in her direction. Crouching behind the cold, shiny metal, she considered the task ahead.r />
  They'd have to check every locker facility in Molena Point and, once inside, have to try their combination on every lock. And how were they going to turn the dial of every combination lock in every locker complex, when, probably, they couldn't even reach the stupid locks? She'd never seen a door for humans with a latch she could reach.

  Crouching in Mahl's apartment behind the chrome chair, the task seemed impossible. They had no proof the numbers were a lock combination, and no proof what a locker might contain-maybe nothing more exciting than old worn-out furniture or tax files. How many locker complexes were there on the outskirts of Molena Point? How many lockers in each one?

  It would be no use to try phoning the locker complexes, making up some story to get information: This is Kendrick Mahl, I've lost the number of my locker, I need to send it to a friend… because certainly Mahl would not have put the locker in his own name.

  When Mahl turned away she slipped out from under the chair and slid behind the couch, beside Joe. He lay stretched full-length, half-asleep, as if without a care. She crouched beside him, depressed.

  But when the music on the CD player grew stormy, she began to fidget, her thoughts circling. There had to be an easier way to find the locker.

  Joe woke and glared at her. "Cool it," he whispered. "He's bound to leave sooner or later. Curl up, have a nap. A few hours-then we can take this place apart." He rolled over, closed his eyes, and went to sleep. She stared at him, unbelieving. Oh, tomcats could be maddening.

  But she curled up against him, trying to think of a plan. The music progressed to the more powerful strains of Stravinsky, she knew that one from home. She could still smell that nice roast beef. Why did humans have to spoil everything with mustard?

  She listened as Mahl made several phone calls. He ordered a grocery delivery of lettuce, some frozen breakfasts, a case of imported ale, and a loaf of French bread. He called his San Francisco gallery twice and talked to his assistant about some sales and about taxes. He made a date for an early dinner, before the local Art Association meeting. The Firebird finished, and Schoenberg's Transfigured Night lulled Dulcie into a little nap. The more familiar music eased her, soothed her jittery nerves. At five o'clock, Mahl put on a recording of the New World Symphony, and went to take a shower. Dulcie could hear the water pounding. She heard, from the bedroom, drawers being pulled out, and hangers sliding in the closet.