Eby's wife was as minute as he, and nearly as wiry.
Like Eby, she bought her clothes in the children's section, size ten-to-twelve. Eby maintained a capable gardening crew, but he and Louise liked to do the new landscaping themselves. They might be old and wizened, the cats thought, but Ryan said she had never seen a happier marriage. The Coldirons not only handled the landscaping for half-a-dozen builders, but now and then they purchased a decrepit old house and refurbished it, doing much of the work themselves. And they took a nice cruise every winter to Hawaii or to Curacao or the Bahamas. As Eby stacked his flats at the curb and returned to the back of the house, and Ryan and Hanni disappeared inside, Joe leaped into Hanni's open convertible looking for her cell phone.
It wasn't there. Not on the seat, not under the seat, not in the console that he managed to flip open, nor in the glove compartment. Dropping out of the car again, he headed for the house beside Dulcie. On the porch the dog lay obediently, his leash hooked around the six-by-six stanchion that supported the sweeping line of the roof. Ryan had left the door open, apparently so she could watch him.
Seeing neither Ryan or Hanni inside, the cats padded casually across the stone porch, facing the big weimaraner, ready to run if he lunged at them.
Rock looked at them with doggy amusement, not offering to attack in a sudden game of catch-the-kitty. Quickly they slipped inside, to crouch behind a carved Mexican chest beside the front door.
The room was big and open, the floor on several levels. The seating area was the lowest, with glass walls on three sides, a glass cube set against the oak woods. Its fourth side stepped up to the tiled entry. Its high rafters rose to the skylight, where the mid-morning sun sent diffused light down across the tall fireplace. The built-in, raised seating was covered with bright pillows tossed against the glass walls. With the woods crowding in from outside, the sunken room was like a forest grotto, the embroidered pillows brilliant against the leafy background. Ryan knelt before the fireplace examining the wet rug.
She glanced up at the skylight, and studied the face of the fireplace: the plain white slab that rose from floor to vaulted ceiling showed no sign of water stains. Its surface was broken by three tall rectangular indentations, painted black inside, each holding a stainless-steel sculpture of abstract design.
From behind the Mexican chest, Dulcie drank in the beautiful room with twitching tail and wide eyes. The tiled entry stepped up again to the raised dining area, which gave the impression of a cave. To the right of that, and two steps higher, rose the master bedroom, its bank of white, carved doors standing open, its bright bedspread mirroring the colors of the sitting-room pillows. Looking and looking, Dulcie had the same rapt expression on her tabby face as when she made off with a neighbor's cashmere sweater, the same little smile in her green eyes-a greedy female joy in beauty, a hunger for the lovely possessions mat no cat could ever truly own.
Kneeling in the sitting-well examining the wet rug, Ryan wondered who Marianna had sent down to install the three pieces of sculpture. Maybe the sculptor himself? He lived fairly near, some miles south of San Francisco. The job wouldn't have taken long. One didn't have to drill, just install and tighten the tension brackets, but certainly it wasn't like Marianna to lift a hand. Marianna had left no message on Hanni's tape, as she might if she'd been down. When Ryan felt the rug, it was wet all along the fireplace and back about three feet. Already it smelled of mildew. Using a screwdriver, she pried up a corner to feel the pad beneath.
The pad was sopping. Looking up at the skylight, she studied its pleated shade that had been drawn across the transparent dome. Not a sign of water stain, nor were the white walls of the skylight-well stained.
Rising, she fetched the pole with which to open the shade. When she accordioned it back, there was no spill of water, only sunlight fell more brightly into the room. Fetching a ladder from the truck she covered its ends with clean rags so not to mar the wall, and climbed to examine the Plexiglas dome at close range.
Finding no tiniest streak or discoloration, she frowned down at Hanni. "There's no leak, never has been."
Hanni stared up at her. "But the Landeaus haven't been here. And it did rain last week. Go up on the roof, Ryan. Have a look up there."
"When you called them, told them the rug was wet, what did they say?"
"My god, I didn't tell her it was wet. I just casually asked if they'd been down. She said no. I should tell that woman the roof leaks? You want her all over you?"
"But it hasn't leaked. Either they've been down or someone else has been here. Did you check for a breakin? Call her again. Make her tell you when they were here, and what happened, or if they loaned out the key." "Make Marianna tell me?" Hanni stared up at her, then went to check the windows. Soon the cats could hear her phoning. Ryan came down the ladder, telescoped it, and carried it outside where she extended it full length against the house.
Swinging onto the roof, she removed her shoes and laid them in the gutter. Walking barefoot across the glazed clay tiles, she knelt beside the skylight. She examined every inch. There was no way this baby could leak. She checked the installation of roof tiles over its two-foot apron, where the roof slanted down. There was no hairline crack in either the Plexiglas bubble or in the casing. Intending to develop irrefutable proof, she went down to the backyard, got a plastic pail from the garage, filled it with water, carried it up, and slowly poured it over the unoffending skylight while Hanni watched from inside.
Only after four bucketfuls of water and no leak was Hanni willing to call Marianna again. She came back from the phone shaking her head.
"Not home. I got Sullivan. They haven't been down. Maybe it's from underneath the floor, maybe a broken water line."
"There is no water line there," Ryan said irritably. "The water lines, Hanni, are under the kitchen and bath."
"Waste line?" Hanni said lamely.
"For a top interior designer, you awe me with your ignorance."
"Just trying to be helpful."
Ryan knelt, sniffing at the rug at close range, moving to smell several places. She looked up at Hanni. "I smell wine. Call her, Hanni. Ask her if she spilled wine. My god, if she tried to mop it up, with that amount of water-she must have spilled the whole bottle."
"I don't want to call again. Let's take the rug up."
Within ten minutes they had the wet rug up. Moving the car and truck, they spread it across the parking apron as if carpeting the driveway for royalty. While they were thus occupied, and Joe watched from the living room windows, Dulcie found Hanni's purse in the kitchen and pawed inside searching for Hanni's cell phone.
Not there.
The Landeau phone stood on the kitchen counter right above her, but she daren't use it. Even as Joe stood watch, Ryan and Hanni returned to the house.
"They were here," Ryan grumbled, coming in. "And they spilled something. Did you tell Sullivan we're laying the new rug tomorrow?"
"I told him."
"Why didn't he tell you what they did? We can't lay the rug until we know for sure what this is. The only other possibility is groundwater, and I have a deep trench clear around the hillside. Maybe Marianna came down alone and didn't tell Sullivan."
Hanni raised an eyebrow.
"Have you checked your tape again? Maybe she left you a message."
Hanni just looked at her, her short white hair catching a gleam through the skylight.
"Call your tape. Where's your cell phone?"
"Forgot to charge it last night," Hanni said. "Left it home in the charger."
"If you'd get another battery…"
Hanni shrugged, and headed for the kitchen as Ryan stepped outside to stroke Rock. The dog glanced in toward the space behind the carved chest where the cats crouched, but then he grew rigid, looking nervously around the room and pulling to get inside. Hanni returned, looking at her watch.
"Marianna called my tape half an hour ago. Said she just woke up, said she was down day before yesterday and spilled
a bottle of pinot noir, that she came down to tend to some errands and to arrange a birthday surprise for Sullivan-that it was too late to call me, that she hadn't told Sullivan she was down here and she knew I wouldn't spoil the surprise. She took a lot of time explaining it all," Hanni said, amused.
Ryan laughed. "So. Cold-blooded Marianna has a lover?"
Dulcie glanced at Joe, her green eyes equally amused. Sullivan Landeau was out of town a lot, was on the boards of half-a-dozen companies. She had heard Ryan and Clyde speculating on what Marianna did for entertainment.
"She said the wine bottle spun and fell before she could grab it, that there was wine everywhere, that she sopped it up with towels, and sponged the rug."
"Can you imagine Marianna Landeau sponging a rug?"
"Dallas was on my tape too. He has the report from ballistics. He wants you to go on back to your place, he'll meet you there."
Ryan had knelt to examine the wood floor. Looking up at Hanni, she stiffened. "Why my place, why not the station when it's only a few blocks away? Why doesn't he want me to come to the station?"
"He said he'd let himself in. Shall I come with you?"
"Why do I feel so cold? I have no reason to fear the ballistics report."
"You didn't kill him, so what's the big deal?"
Ryan rose, biting her lip. As they turned to leave, the cats slipped out past them and dropped into the bushes, moving so close to Rock they brushed against his leg, startling the big dog. They were concealed among the lavender bushes when Ryan undid Rock's leash.
Crossing to her truck as Hanni locked the house, Ryan was just getting into the cab when the Coldiron truck arrived, Louise driving. Hanni waved to her. "Good shopping?"
"Awesome," the little woman said, laughing.
"You want a rug for one of your rentals?" Hanni gestured toward the ten-by-ten square of beige shag. "It's nearly new. A bit damp. It smells like pinot noir."
"Added bonus," Louise said as Eby came up the drive.
The cats watched Ryan turn out onto the street as Louise and Eby and Hanni rolled up the rug. And still they hadn't called Dallas to tell him they'd seen the old man, to give the detective the make and license of the unlikely car Gramps was driving.
"Senior citizens," Ryan told the big silver dog as she turned out of the drive, glancing back at the Coldirons. 'Tough as old boots." Of the half-dozen older people she had met since she moved to the village, the Coldirons were not unusual. Theirs was a tough generation. She wondered if her own age group could half keep up with them, or with Charlie's gray-haired aunt Wilma who walked miles every day, and could hold her own on the pistol range. Or with Cora Lee French or with sixty-some Mavity Flowers who still did forty hours a week cleaning houses. "Those folks were the depression children, the children of war, the survivors," she told Rock. 'Tough as alligator hide." And she kept talking to the big dog to avoid thinking. She did not want to go home and face, Dallas's ballistics report.
"She's scared," Dulcie said, watching from the bushes as Ryan's red truck pulled away. "Scared to go home, afraid of what Dallas has found. If Rupert was shot with her stolen gun…"
"So someone set her up. Question is, what other contrived evidence did they leave for the police to find?" Joe watched Hanni help the Coldirons load the rug. When the truck and Hanni's Mercedes pulled away, he rubbed his face against a warm boulder then leaped atop the smooth granite, looking around the garden. "What was the dog on about? What did he smell?" He stood looking, then dropped down again and trotted back along the drive sniffing at the concrete.
He picked up Eby's scent, then that of Hanni and of the dog. He found the fainter scent, perhaps days old, of a woman, most likely Marianna Landeau. Nothing else. Whatever the dog had smelled, escaped him. His mind still on getting access to a phone and calling Dallas, he turned to look at Dulcie.
"It's only ten blocks to Ryan's place, and the day's getting warm. Maybe she'll leave the truck window down for a few minutes-right there in her own driveway. Maybe we can call Dallas while he's still at her apartment."
"Just a nice run," Dulcie said, and she took off through the woods heading downhill toward Ryan's duplex. Leaping bushes or brushing beneath them, she was thankful that she and Joe had been given more than the usual amount of feline stamina; most cats were sprinters, your average housecat was not made for long-distance running. Careening down the last hill to the back of Ryan's apartment and around to the front, she wasn't even panting hard.
A squad car sat in the drive beside Ryan's truck. The cats smelled fresh coffee. They circled both vehicles, but all the windows were up; and the covered door handles were beyond a cat's ability to manipulate. Joe leaped at them, trying, but it was no good. There was no chance of using either phone to call the detective. Joe gave her a sour look and they fled around the side of the duplex to the back, where the tiny bathroom window waited.
15
Leaping at the sill, Joe snatched and clung, hanging by his claws, peering down into the empty bathroom, then dropping to the sink and to the linoleum. As Dulcie followed, faintly they heard Ryan and Dallas talking, their voices so solemn that Dulcie shivered.
She liked Ryan Flannery; the young woman was bold and bright. She liked her because Clyde did, and because she was Dallas Garza's niece. Liked her because Ryan had taken hold of her life and straightened out the kinks, exercising an almost feline degree of sensible independence: If you're not welcome, if you're badly treated, make a new start on life.
Now that Ryan was just into her new life, she didn't need this malicious attempt to ruin her.
From behind, Joe nudged her. "Get a move on." She'd been crouched as still as if frozen at a mouse hole, overwhelmed by her own droughts. Trotting into the studio, out of sight of the kitchen, they slipped beneath Ryan's daybed.
The hardwood floor was admirably clean, no sneeze-making dust, not a fuzz ball in sight. That was another plus for Ryan. There was something really depressing about finding the underside of a couch thick with stalagmites of ancient, congealed dirt, the dusty floor littered with bobby pins, lost pencils, and old gum wrappers, with tangles of debris that clung to the whiskers or was gritty to the paws.
Looking across the big room to the front windows, they could see neat piles of papers stacked on Ryan's desk but they couldn't see much of the kitchen, just the end of the table and Dallas's shoulder. They could smell, besides fresh coffee, the greasy-sugar scent of doughnuts, and could hear the occasional cup clink against a saucer. Dallas said, "I wish your dad were here."
"Please don't call him, there's no need for him to think about the murder just now, to take his mind off what he's doing. I'll tell him when he gets home, when he's done with this training. You're my dad too, you and Scotty. Except, you can't play that role just now."
"I can play any hand I like. But it would be nice to have Mike here. You sure you don't want to stay with me or with Hanni, not be alone?"
"I'm fine. If the killer had wanted me dead, he'd have come after me instead of Rupert. I need to do a ton of desk work, clean up a stack of letters, pay my bills. I did manage to do the Jakeses' billing, I have that almost ready to mail."
"I'm glad you've got this big guy." The cats heard Dallas patting the silver dog.
"What did Captain Harper say when he called, when you told him there'd been a murder? I can imagine he wasn't happy."
"He didn't say much, took it in stride. Said he and Charlie are having a great time in the city. They're taking a couple of days to drive home, through the wine country. And before they leave San Francisco he's going to make a contact for me. Something I'd rather he did in person."
"About Rupert?"
"A couple of guys on the force owe me. Good friends. You remember Tom Wills and Jessie Parker."
"Of course. They were partners. Tom's wife teaches second grade."
"I'm giving them a list of the women I know Rupert was involved with. They can do a rundown on them, and on their husbands and boyfriends. Here's the
list. Anyone you'd care to add? Or any facts that would help?"
The cats heard paper rattle, then a little silence. Then, "You were very thorough, all these years. I don't know half these names. Barbara Saunders? Darlene Renthke? June Holbrook? Martie Holland? I haven't a clue, I never heard of these women. My god. How many were there? And you never told me. This makes me feel so unclean. Well here are five I know, all right. And you can add Priscilla Bloom. She drives a little red Porsche with, very likely, marks from a tow chain on the rear bumper, and a citation on record for blocking traffic on the street in front of my house."
Dallas laughed.
"So Max will spend his honeymoon getting that line of the investigation started," Ryan said. "And on the way home, they'll swing through San Andreas to check on the Fargers? I'll bet Charlie's thrilled, having to cancel a dream voyage."
"I imagine they made that decision before they left the village. Doesn't matter," Dallas said. "Those two will have a long and happy honeymoon no matter where they are."
There was longer silence, broken by doggy chuffing as if someone was feeding the weimaraner doughnuts. Ryan said, "I feel so stupid not to have heard anything that night, not to have waked up. You're going to make him sick with doughnuts."
"Why don't you call Charlie on their cellular, see if she'll let you put up a fence out back. It's not the optimum yard but it'll do."
"I told you, I don't plan to keep him."
"Of course you'll keep him. I wouldn't want to try to take him away. When I touch him, you're jealous as a hen with chicks."
"Why does everyone in the family always know what I'm thinking! And what I intend to do!"
"He's a stray, Ryan. He's been abandoned. You going to take him to the pound, like you told Curtis? If he'd been lost, the owner would have been looking all over San Andreas for him."
She sighed. "You look tired. Have you eaten anything this morning besides doughnuts? Did you have breakfast?"
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