Cat Fear No Evil (14 page)

Joe stared up at him, his yellow eyes wide and innocent. “You think you should try Kate again? The phone has to be out, it wouldn't be busy all this time, even Kate can't talk that long—but she has to be home, she's expecting Lucinda and Pedric, she'll be worried.”

They had been trying all evening to get her, calling both the house and her cell phone. Clyde wished he had started calling that morning. Both he and Wilma had been waiting for more information, for the sheriff to find the bodies, for some assurance the old couple had indeed been killed. Then when he tried to get Kate this evening, busy signal. “I left messages on both phones. Why the hell doesn't she check her messages!”

Joe said, “Maybe by now she's had the TV on. If it's been on the news, she…”

Again Clyde hit the redial. If she
had
seen the news, if she knew, maybe she was talking with Wilma.

He got another busy. Five minutes passed as he tried to work, patiently lifting Joe's gray paw to check a
price, peering under a gray ear to retrieve a parts number.

“Try again,” Joe said. “I'm worried about her.”

Clyde tried three more times before Kate's phone rang. Just one ring, and she picked up. Clyde left the speaker on so Joe wouldn't crowd him pressing against the phone. “Kate? You okay?”

“No, I'm not okay. Did you…”

“You heard the news.”

“This can't have happened. It's impossible to believe. What were they doing out on the highway in the middle of the night? If they'd had some emergency, say one of them got sick, they'd have called the medics. Or the sheriff. Or a cab. They'd been staying in a campground, they could have called the manager. Have you talked with anyone up there? The highway patrol? The Sonoma County sheriff? What have they found? Couldn't it be some kind of mistake? The wrong RV. Or maybe they—”

Clyde said, “Wilma talked with the sheriff. They've had a crew there all day going through the wreckage.”

“And?”

“They—So far, no bodies. Nothing much at all left.” He glanced at Joe. “It was a terrible fire, Kate. Ashes, rubble. The truck driver…they did find his body, in his crashed truck. The truck wasn't burned as badly as the RV.”

Kate was silent for a long time. When she spoke again, her voice was very small. “They were so happy together. Their late marriage was like a fairy tale, like one of their Old-World folktales. It isn't fair. They were having such a good time traveling. And planning to build their dream house…”

Clyde stared at the phone.

“It's all wrong,” Kate said. “Their campsite hadn't been vacated, they left canvas chairs, a folding table set up under the pines. The late news said some towels were left hanging on a portable line, an expensive bear-proof garbage can.”

The fur along Joe Grey's spine felt rigid. His paws were cold as he sorted through the facts—Lucinda and Pedric heading for San Francisco to stay with Kate, Lucinda with the same kind of jewelry that Consuela had gone to steal from Kate and that the appraiser had tried to buy.

Moving closer to the phone, Joe placed a paw on Clyde's hand, staring at the speaker.

Clyde scowled and shoved the phone at him.

“In spite of this mess,” Joe said into the speaker, “one seemingly unrelated question. Did you get there in time?”

“I did,” she said sadly. “I moved it all, thanks to you. I wanted to call but I…Joe, that cat has been here. Inside my apartment.”

“The cat can't hurt you, Kate.” He paused. He wasn't sure of that. “But Consuela could,” he said staring at the phone. This whole gig made him edgy; this stuff was happening too far away, and there were too many loose pieces, events that didn't add up. “Come home, Kate. Come back to the village now.” He glanced at Clyde. “You can stay with us.”

Clyde looked surprised, then nodded.

“And I've been followed,” Kate said.

“Followed where? When was this? Consuela? Who?”

“A man. I…”

Clyde nudged Joe away from the speaker. “Did you report it to the police? Do you know him?”

“I…No. And I didn't report it, not yet.”

“
Why not?
” Clyde snapped. “Never mind. Kate, get a second appraisal on the jewelry. This is all too weird.”

“Emerson Bristol has an excellent reputation, Clyde. He's a big name in the city.”

“You researched the subject,” Clyde said. “You know that such unusual work, made by a master craftsman, ought to be cataloged somewhere. Even if it is paste. You said you've been through all the catalogs, the books in San Francisco Public and in the museums. Don't you think it's strange that there's absolutely no mention of it?”

“Yes,” she said in a small voice.

“I don't like this. Joe's right. Come home, Kate. Bring that stuff down here to someone in the village—someone Harper recommends.”

“I have so much work, installations…”

“Come home, Kate. Come now.”

“I…After tonight, I feel all in pieces. Will you call me when you know more about Lucinda and Pedric? More about what happened?”

Clyde sighed. “I'll call you.”

“And…there's something else,” she said. “I almost forgot. Likely it's nothing, but…I threw out some newspapers when I was cleaning up, but I saved one. It was dated three days before Charlie's gallery opening. There was a jewel robbery here, on Market Street. A cheap, touristy kind of place. It happened around six in the evening, just before the shop closed. The police got there before the three men could get
away. They arrested two, but the third man got a cop down and escaped. The paper said he took a hard blow to the forehead, the store owner hit him with a brick. It's probably coincidence,” Kate said, “but I…”

“Harper is checking the police records for fights,” Clyde said with interest. “For batterings, anything like that. He's sure to catch it, but I'll tell him. Save the paper, the date. And come home, Kate. Where it's safe. We all miss you.”

“I'll think about it, Clyde. Good-night, you guys.” Her voice was weepy. “Good-night,” she whispered. “I guess I feel better.”

When Clyde hung up, Joe dropped off the desk and leaped to Clyde's new leather easy chair that sat before the fire. Clyde had brought the Molena Point
Gazette
upstairs with him. The Greenlaw accident filled the upper half of the front page. Scanning the article, he saw with disappointment that it gave no more information than the TV news had supplied.

The lower half of the page was devoted to Saturday night's clothing store burglary. Alice's Mirror had been relieved of its highest-priced stock. There was no sign of forced entry. The theft hadn't been discovered until this morning when the owner opened the store for the usual Sunday tourists.

Joe sat staring into the fire, wondering how much he should tell Clyde. It was just this morning, the morning after the Greenlaw accident, that Kit had told Joe himself, and Dulcie, about the missing key.

 

After their night on Hellhag Hill, Joe had awakened very late, alone in the rumpled bed. The bedside clock
said 8:15, half the day gone, from any cat's point of view. Clyde would long ago have gone to work. Joe was crawling out from among the tangled sheets when the phone rang. He didn't knock the bedside phone from its cradle, but trotted through to the study. Leaping to the desk, he listened as the machine answered.

Only one word was spoken. “
Joe?
” Dulcie hissed.

He hit the speaker. “
Damen residence
.”

“
Jolly's
,” she said softly and immediately hung up.

He hit the erase button and was out of there, leaping to the rafter above the desk and up through his rooftop cat door.

Pausing in his private tower for a drink of water, he raced out across the shingles, then along an oak branch, across slanting and angled roofs until he was forced to descend to the sidewalk, at the divided lanes and grassy median of Ocean Avenue. Crossing Ocean among the feet of a group of tourists, he shied away from their reaching hands.
What a smart cat, crossing the street with us…Cute kitty…Do you think he's lost? We could…
Dodging away, he headed for Jolly's alley. Dulcie's voice had sounded desperate. All manner of disasters, most of them involving the kit, had raced through his tomcat mind as he swerved along the sidewalks and at last into Jolly's alley.

B
elting into the alley, Joe found Dulcie and the kit
crouched beneath the jasmine vine beside the deli's back door, their ears down, their eyes filled with distress. Though it was midmorning, the alley was empty. No other cats, no tourists. George Jolly's ever-present offering of delicacies stood untouched before the closed deli door. The kit had not even sampled the smoked salmon and egg custard. She sat staring list-lessly down at her paws. Joe nudged at her, deeply distressed by her grieving for Lucinda and Pedric. Pushing in beneath the vine, he nosed at her. When she glanced up at him, the kit looked not only heartbroken, but ashamed.

“What?” Joe said. Dulcie, too, looked devastated.
“What?”
he repeated. “What's with you two?”

“She took the key,” the kit said.

“Who did? What key?”

“Dillon. I should have told before but I thought…I didn't want her to be in trouble.”

“
What
key, Kit? Key to what?”

But he knew.

“The key to the back door of Alice's Mirror,” Dulcie said. “The store that was burglarized last night. It was on the local news this morning.”

“I followed them,” the kit said. “The four girls. One afternoon weeks ago. Followed them into Alice's Mirror. They were acting so…I just knew they were going to do something. I slipped inside behind a rack of satin and velvet and I watched them. Dillon looked so…sort of wandering pretending not to look all around. Like a bird when it's busy pecking the ground but really watching you. She was wandering just beside the door to the shop's office, admiring a rack of blouses, sliding them along—then she vanished.

“I could see her in the office where customers aren't supposed to go, so I went in there behind her. She didn't see me; I slid behind some boxes and watched.” The kit sighed. “She took a key from a hook beside the desk and slipped out again and left the shop. Her two friends picked out some clothes, asked a clerk some questions about them and took them to a fitting room. I went outside and saw Dillon down the street, handing something to Consuela. Consuela turned and hurried away. I went up an oak tree until she came back and gave it back to Dillon; it was a key. Dillon went back inside the shop. I followed and watched her put it back in the office, hang it on a little hook. Then in a minute, all three girls left and they met Consuela outside.

“And I ran home.

“But I didn't tell anyone. I didn't want to tell Wilma or you or anyone. I knew I should call Captain Harper,
but I didn't want to get Dillon in trouble and make the captain feel worse about her, so I didn't do anything. I curled up under the afghan and tried to sleep and pretend it didn't happen.”

Joe Grey listened quietly. All along, Kit had carried this burden, wanting to protect Dillon. Kit looked up at him. “They copied it, didn't they? In one of those key places. It was all over the news. The burglary.”

Joe nuzzled her and licked her ear, and the three cats looked at one another. What was happening to Dillon? And, more to the point, what were they to do about it?

Joe said, “It's time to tell the captain.”

The kit's eyes widened; but she didn't argue. She just looked very sad.

“The closest key maker to Alice's Mirror,” Joe said, “is Jarman's, just down the street behind the fire station. Otherwise she'd have to go out on the highway.” Thoughtfully he licked his paw. “Mr. Jarman would remember her.”

Harry Jarman was an elderly, round-faced, gray-haired, gentle old man who had been making keys for the village ever since he was a young fellow. He knew everyone in Molena Point. Even though Consuela hadn't been in the village long, the old man would know who she was, he didn't miss a thing. If he had made a key for Consuela Benton, he would remember that.

Dulcie licked the kit's ear. “Don't grieve, Kit. You did just right to tell us. This is best for Dillon, she can't go on like this, she'd have no life.” Dulcie looked at Joe. “You want to call the captain, or shall I?”

“I'll call him. I can tell him Consuela took the key to be copied. I don't have to mention Dillon.”

Dulcie's eyes widened. The kit's ears pricked up, and her tail lifted more cheerfully. But as the three cats headed for Dulcie's house and the phone, Joe himself felt frustrated and sad. Even if he didn't mention Dillon, Garza and Harper would know; they would quickly uncover the younger girl's role in the matter. And, glancing at Dulcie, he knew she was thinking the same.

 

Before Max Harper had the interior of the building that housed Molena Point PD remodeled, his desk had occupied a six-by-six space at the back of the open squad room. He'd had no walls for privacy, no bookshelves, preferring, then, a work area where he could see and hear everything that went on among his officers: a sacrifice of privacy for control that Harper no longer needed. Now, since the remodeling, the captain enjoyed the luxury of real walls and a solid door, which he had quickly come to appreciate. Charlie said he'd lived a spartan life long enough. She had bought the leather couch as an anniversary present: one month married, time to celebrate. She had added two red leather easy chairs and a bright India rug from their own home. Three of Charlie's drawings hung on the walls where Max could enjoy them, portraits of Max's gelding, Bucky. Harper's work calendar and charts stood in a rack to the right of his desk, at easy glance for the chief but not openly displayed to visitors—though that did not deter Joe Grey.

Joe entered Harper's office this morning on the heels of Mabel Farthy, the blond and portly dispatcher, as she delivered Harper's early lunch, her approach down the hall wafting the scent of garlic and pastrami
like a long and diaphanous bridal veil behind her. As Mabel set the takeout bag on the desk, and Harper turned to slip some reports into the file drawer, a swift gray shadow slid behind the couch.

Charlie had carefully arranged the furniture with the cats in mind. The couch stood as near the door as she could manage, and she had chosen a style with legs high enough so Joe and Dulcie didn't have to squeeze down like pancakes. Feline surveillance didn't have to be an exercise in flattened spines and shallow breathing.

Joe, drinking in the heavy aroma of pastrami, watched two sets of shoes enter: Detective Garza's tan leather loafers and Detective Juana Davis's regulation black oxfords over black stockings. Garza settled into one of the red leather chairs, stretching out his long legs. His tan chinos were neatly pressed, his Dockers fashionably scuffed.

Beneath the couch, Joe made sure his paws were out of sight—he didn't want to appear to be spying.

Dallas Garza had a deep fondness for fine hunting dogs, but until recently he had never understood, or given much thought to, cats—until Joe Grey came on the scene. Working judiciously on Garza's attitude, Joe had seen the detective develop, over many months, an almost passable fondness for certain felines, at least for those cats who crossed his professional path.

Having spent a week freeloading in the Garza cottage closely observing the detective, Joe had decided that he could trust this new addition to the department. Of course Garza had no notion of the intimate telephone conversations and interdepartmental reports that he had shared that week with the gray tomcat.

As Joe pulled in his paws, Detective Davis sat down at the end of the couch just above him. As she slipped off her shoes and tucked her feet up under her, her shifting weight forced little squinching noises from the new leather. Protocol was not an issue with these three; you could take your shoes off if you liked. Only honesty and ethics mattered. Juana, Max, and Dallas played poker together, usually in Clyde and Joe's kitchen.

As the three tucked into their deli lunch, Joe couldn't help an occasional drool dampening Harper's new carpet. Listening to paper rattling and the sounds of their satisfied munching amid small talk, he had a long and hungry wait before Harper laid down his sandwich and picked up a file of reports. Covetously Joe eyed the sandwich, but told himself to forget it. He could see from his position beneath the couch a long reflection in the glass-fronted bookcase that gave him a view of Harper's desk. This thoughtful touch, too, had been Charlie's. She and Joe had tested it early one morning when Harper was downstairs on the indoor pistol range.

Harper looked up at Garza. “You have no indication that Quinn's house had been broken into.”

“None,” Garza said. “And no other prints besides Quinn's. Only Quinn's prints on the handle of the gas jet, where of course his prints would be.”

Harper shuffled the stack of papers. “There seems nothing out of place here, among his real estate transactions. Both Helen and their broker have been over everything, found nothing out of the way, except for the missing notebook. You searched the real estate office?”

“Yes,” Davis said. “The broker, James Holland,
helped Helen look for the notebook while I waited. They ransacked the entire office. We searched Quinn's car again, took out the seats, everything short of dismantling the vehicle.”

“The notebook may be of no value,” Harper said, “but the case is open until it's found.”

The three were silent, finishing their lunches. Harper asked Davis about two identity thefts that had been reported, both involving scams on local residents. These piqued Joe's interest because this was the first he'd heard about them. Crimes like identity theft made him glad he was a cat without the encumbrance of a charge card, social security number, and other invitations to embezzlement.

“The victims are getting their papers together,” Davis said. “Paid bills, canceled checks. Both have retained attorneys. The one woman, Sheila James, is looking at a five-thousand-dollar-a-month mortgage on a house that is, in fact, completely paid for. The other folks, Ron and Sandy Bueller, moved here just a year ago. Six new credit card accounts in their name, some sixty thousand in debts outstanding, so far, plus payments on a two-million-dollar piece of land in the north part of the county that they didn't buy and have never seen.”

Davis shifted her position on the couch; the leather creaked again. “All of that within the space of a week. And we have nothing so far. Zilch.”

That, Joe knew, was par for the course in these cases. The officers discussed every possible venue at their disposal to get a line on the guy; Davis and Garza were working on them all, and would keep digging; the loopholes, the lack of ways to nail these thieves was, Joe thought, like chasing mice through a metal grating:
the chasee escapes, the chaser bangs his nose on the barrier.

“What about the Greenlaw accident?” Davis said. “Still no bodies?”

“Not so much as a scorched bone,” Harper told her. “Sheriff thinks, now, that neither of the Greenlaws was in the RV when it crashed. He's searching the area, thinking they might have been murdered and dumped before the wreck.

“If they were alive,” Harper said, “someone would have heard from them. Wilma, certainly. She's not only Lucinda's friend, but her executor. She's ready to drive up there, car gassed up, suitcase packed. She'd like to help the sheriff's teams search but right now there's nothing she can do that they're not on top of. Sheriff has dogs out, the works.”

“They're eighty years old,” Garza said. “There are some desolate stretches in those forests.”

“Eighty years old and tough as boots,” Harper replied. “Certainly Pedric is. And Lucinda, since they married, has become just about as strong mentally and emotionally. When Shamus was alive, Lucinda was little more than a wilting violet, acted like she was scared of her own shadow.”

Harper studied his two detectives. “I had a call this morning, about the burglary at Alice's Mirror.

“Our favorite snitch,” Harper said, “suggested we ask Harry Jarman about a key he might have duplicated for Consuela Benton.” The captain smiled. “I picked up a key from Alice's Mirror this morning, stopped by Jarman's with it. He remembered Consuela coming in a couple of weeks ago. I laid seven keys on the counter, six from my own pocket.

“He picked it out right away. Remembered he'd used the last blank like that, and had to order more.”

Davis gave a little pleased
“All right!”
Dallas laughed softly.

“I have a
Be-on-the-lookout
for Consuela,” Harper said. “Soon as we can print her, if we get a match, maybe we can make a case and get a warrant for the cottage she's renting up on Carpenter. I understand the garage is part of the rental deal.”

Beneath the couch, Joe Grey grinned.
Right on, Kit,
he thought, both saddened and relieved.
You nailed her. And if the department can make Consuela for masterminding the burglary, maybe it will go easier for Dillon.
And, Joe thought, the cops might need a warrant to toss Consuela's rental. But a cat didn't.

The three officers moved on to the rash of coastal burglaries, and for over an hour they discussed the various reports from up and down the California coast, comparing MOs. The information from some two dozen fences was all negative. None of the stolen items had been traced to any of the known fences. The burglaries covered the geographic area from Malibu in the south to Point Reyes in the north, and inland as far as Oakland and Berkeley and Thousand Oaks. Garza had prepared a chart on the computer, listing the dates of the burglaries, the time of day they were discovered, the length of time since the items had last been seen. In the case of jewelry kept in a home safe, the lapse of time might amount to several months, the piece in question might have disappeared at any time during that period. There had been no report at all on Clyde's antique Packard.

Peering out from beneath the couch, Joe could
barely see the chart without being seen himself, without his gray-and-white nose and whiskers protruding. As the three officers talked, Davis swung one stockinged foot over, twiddling her toes just inches from Joe's nose. Her feet smelled of talcum powder. Dallas's chart showed all social gatherings at each address within the last three years, with size and description of events, from dinner parties to charity functions. An addendum provided guest lists, and lists of household help and maintenance people for each event.