Cat Seeing Double (8 page)

Backing away, she stared into the dim corners where the light didn't reach, expecting to see a figure emerge, perhaps from behind the stacked plywood or from behind one of the old mantels she'd collected or the stack of newel posts. She had no weapon to defend herself, short of grabbing a hammer. She studied the low door beneath the inner stairs that opened to a storage closet. She breathed a sigh when she saw that the bolt was still driven home.

She longed for her gun, which was upstairs in her night table. How many times did one need a .38 revolver to fetch the Sunday paper? Frightened by the shadows at the back of the garage behind what Dallas called her junk pile, she turned swiftly to the pedestrian door and, using the rag in her hand to open it, she retreated to the open driveway.

If she'd had her truck keys she would have hopped in and taken off, made her escape in her robe and called the department from some neighbor's home. Her cell phone of course was in her purse, by the bed, near her gun. Her truck keys were on the kitchen table. She felt totally naked and defenseless. Scuffing barefoot over the dried mud the neighbor's dog had left across the concrete, she hurried up the outside stairs. She paused with her hand on the knob.

She'd left the front door unlocked behind her. Now, when she entered, would Rupert's killer be waiting?

But why would someone set her up as if she'd killed Rupert, then destroy the scenario by killing her as well? That didn't make any sense.

She could imagine any number of estranged and bitter husbands who would like to see Rupert dead, but why would they make her the patsy? What motive would any of them have—except to put themselves in the clear, of course? And why not? What better suspect than an estranged and bitter wife?

Moving inside, glancing through to the night table at the far end of the room, she slipped her truck keys into the pocket of her robe and eased open a cutlery drawer, soundlessly lifting out the vegetable cleaver. Then stepping to her desk, she dialed the department, using the 911 number.

The dispatcher told her that Dallas was out of the station. She told the dispatcher who she was and that there was a dead man in her garage.

“I'm going to search the apartment, if you'd like to stay on the line.” Laying the phone down as the dispatcher yelled at her not to do that, to get out of the
apartment—and warily clutching the cleaver—she moved to the night table to retrieve her gun.

Pulling the drawer open, she stopped, frozen.

Empty.

Notebook, pencils, tissues, and face cream. No gun.

Her face burned at her carelessness. The gun was in her glove compartment. She hadn't brought it up last night or the night before; it had been there since she left San Andreas. She hadn't touched it since she packed up the truck and headed out, day before yesterday.

The wedding, and all the picky details of coming home and lining up her crew to start Clyde's job tomorrow had totally occupied her. She told herself she
wasn't
careless with a gun, that Dallas had taught her better than that.

Yes, and Dallas had admonished her more than once for keeping the .38 in her glove compartment, which was against the law, and in her unlocked nightstand, which was stupid.

Approaching the bath and closet, most of which she could see from their mirrors, holding the cleaver behind the fold of her robe, she moved against all common sense to clear the area. This wasn't smart. Even from the closet she heard the dispatcher shouting into the phone. And, louder, she heard a siren leave the station ten blocks away. Passing the door to the inner stairs, she saw that the bolt was securely home, blocking that entrance. As the siren came screaming up the hill she flung the closet door wider, to reveal the back corner.

The back
of the closet was empty, only her clothes and shoes. A second siren started to scream from down the hills. She moved into the bath, clutching her cleaver, jerking the shower curtain aside. In her inept search of the premises she couldn't stop her heart pounding.

The shower was empty. There was nowhere else for anyone to hide. Slipping out of her robe, she hastily pulled on panties and jeans and a sweatshirt as a squad car careened into the drive cutting its siren, and two more units squealed brakes as if pulling to the curb. Grabbing her sandals she moved across the studio to the front windows. Leaning her forehead against the glass, waiting for Dallas to emerge, she watched three officers get out of their two units, and behind them two medics from the rescue vehicle.

Dallas wasn't with them. Officers Green and Bonner moved up the drive on the far side of her pickup. Green was a wizened, bearded veteran, Bonner a young, new officer as fresh-faced as a high school kid. Detective Juana Davis, dressed in jeans and a sweater, skirted the truck on the near side. All three had their hands on their
holstered weapons. Shakily Ryan pulled on her sandals and went out on the balcony where they could see her. Looking down at Davis, catching her dark gaze, she couldn't read what the detective might be thinking.

“In the garage,” Ryan said, her voice raspy, the way she'd sound if she had a sore throat. She watched the medics halt to wait until the officers had entered and cleared the garage. She couldn't quell her fear, it was a gut reaction beyond reasoning, she was the only possible suspect, she was in exactly the position the killer had planned. Deeply chilled, she looked to the officers for direction. “Do you want me down there?”

“No,” Davis said. “Stay on the deck while we have a look.”

“Could I go inside to get my coffee?”

Davis nodded. Ryan returned to the kitchen to refill her cup, then stood on the deck again setting the mug on the rail, trying to stop her hands from shaking, thinking guiltily about Rupert.

The year they were married, he had been so enthusiastic about her joining the construction firm, taking a full-time job in the business. It had all seemed so wonderful, an opportunity for her to use her design education though she didn't have a degree as an architect, an opportunity to learn some basic engineering from the firm's structural architect. From the beginning Rupert had handled the business end, the hiring and bookkeeping and sales, while she assisted the architect and did more and more designing. When the architect moved on to a practice of his own, she had been able to take over all the designing with the help of a consulting engineer. Their clients had loved her work. She had
served as a carpenter's helper too, adding to the skills she'd mastered working with her uncle Scotty in the summers and weekends since she was a child.

She had gotten so good at the job that soon she was filling in for the three foremen. But then the trouble began. Rupert hadn't liked that she was on the job alone with a bunch of men, even though she had saved them money. She had never drawn a salary, either as head designer or as a foreman; everything went back into the firm. She'd never wanted to know how much might go for Rupert's personal pleasures. She guessed Scotty had tried to tell her, but she hadn't wanted to listen.

Now Scotty was working for her, her dear, gruff, philosophical Scotty who loved carpentry and cabinetwork, who had never wanted to move into the management end of the business. Who had joined her immediately in Molena Point, no questions asked, her first carpenter and foreman. Moving in with Dallas, into their family summer cottage, Scotty had been as happy as she to be away from Dannizer Construction.

When she left Rupert there was never any question where she'd go. She'd loved Molena Point since she was a child. The evening she left Rupert she'd hauled out of San Francisco, taking the oldest company pickup loaded with most of her worldly possessions packed nattily in an assortment of liquor boxes from the local market. It was an easy two-hour drive. Arriving in the village, she had picked up a deli sandwich and a couple of cold beers, checked into the only motel with a vacancy, and called Dallas. When she told him what she'd done he couldn't hide his happiness. She had told him
she wanted to be by herself for a few days to lick her wounds, and he'd understood. She'd taken a long hot shower and tucked up in bed with her beer and sandwich trying to relax, trying to deal sensibly with her conflicting emotions, seesawing back and forth between victory in finally making the move, and fear of what lay ahead. Thinking one minute that she was crazy to go out on her own, that she couldn't make a success of her own company, and wondering the next instant why she hadn't done this sooner—knowing that if she sued him for half the company, Rupert would fight her, maybe so successfully that he would deplete her personal bank account and leave her destitute. Knowing that she had to find an attorney. And that the lawsuit would be incredibly stressful, but that half the business was rightfully hers and she meant to have her share, that she would need that money to get started.

Wondering if she
could
make a go of her own business, if she had it in her to do that, she'd sat in bed trying to calm her nerves, so stressed she hadn't even called her sister, though Hanni would have turned out the guest room, popped a bottle of champagne to toast her wise decision and her coming success.

Hanni had moved down to the village some months before Dallas made his own job change, and Ryan could have stayed with either of them; but Hanni was so positive and sure of herself and would tell her exactly what to do, would cross all the t's and dot the i's to make life easier for her. It would have been hard to explain to Hanni the illogical pangs that were mixed with her wild sense of euphoria at being free—almost free.
Alone in her motel room she'd gone to sleep hugging her pillow, congratulating herself that Rupert was out of her life, and scared silly of what lay ahead.

Now, standing at the rail watching Juana Davis come around the side of the garage and look up, she set her cup on the rail and went down to answer the detective's questions.

 

In the early dawn, Jolly's alley was softly lit by its decorative lights and by the gentle glow from the leaded windows and stained-glass doors of its little back-street shops. The charming, brick paved lane, lined with potted trees and tubs of flowers, was not only a favorite tourist walk, but was the chosen gathering place for the village cats—for all the nonspeaking felines who knew nothing of Joe and Dulcie and Kit's human speech nor, in most cases, would have been impressed. If the occasional cat looked at them with fear or with wonder, these moments were few and fleeting.

Entering at the eastern end of the block-long retreat, they found an old, orange-tabby matron beneath the jasmine vine, licking clean the big paper plate that George Jolly had set out. Joe knew the matron well, they had once been more than friendly but that was long before he met Dulcie. Probably the old girl didn't remember those hasty trysts, and certainly Joe didn't care to. He was a different tomcat now, totally faithful to his true love—though he still liked to look. No harm in a glance now and then.

The matron, finishing her breakfast, lay down on the bricks precisely where the first thin rays of morning sun
would have gleamed, if the dawn sky had not been low with fog. Dulcie glanced at her absently, her mind on San Francisco and on Charlie and Max Harper awakening this morning in that beautiful city.

“Breakfast at the St. Francis,” she said softly, “looking down on the city.” Such a journey, to the city by the bay, had long been Dulcie's dream. But at Dulcie's words, the orange cat widened her eyes then turned her face away with disgust, tucking her nose under her tail. Such un-catlike behavior was both alarming and patently beneath her notice. Squeezing her eyes shut she refused to move away from them, though the skin down her back rippled with wary annoyance. Down at the end of the lane a homeless man ambled by, then two young lean women jogged past, their long hair pulled through the backs of their caps.

“Breakfast in bed,” Dulcie whispered, still dreaming, “then to wander that elegant city, to ride the ferries to Sausalito and to Oakland, to visit the museums and galleries.”

Joe looked at her and sighed. Sometimes it was hard to understand the shape and depth of Dulcie's longings.

Though Joe was just as different from other cats as was Dulcie, he didn't suffer from her exotic hungers and impossible yearnings. He didn't steal his neighbor's cashmere sweaters and silk teddies, for one thing, and haul them home to roll on like some four-pawed Brigitte Bardot. He didn't imagine wandering through Saks, or Lord and Taylor. He had no desire to dine at the finest restaurants with views of San Francisco Bay. Joe Grey liked his life just as it was—as long as Dulcie was a part of it.

The two cats stirred suddenly. Their ears pricked. Their bodies went rigid as sirens screamed from the station four blocks away.

Swarming up the jasmine vine to the roof where the kit sat welcoming the dawn, they watched two whirling red lights racing north among the cottages where some hours earlier they thought they'd heard the two shots fired—and like any pair of human ambulance chasers, Joe and Dulcie took off across the roofs, intent on police business.

The kit trailed along halfheartedly, her mind on other matters.

Racing across the rooftops and crossing above two streets on spreading oak branches, Joe and Dulcie scrambled down a trellis and galloped along the damp morning sidewalks and through fog-wet gardens, eagerly following the sirens. A screaming rescue vehicle passed them. And somewhere in their mad race the kit vanished. Glancing around, Joe and Dulcie fled on; there was no keeping track of the kit. Up the next hill, the rescue vehicle and squad cars were parked in the drive and at the curb of Ryan Flannery's apartment. The cats paused, slipping ahead warily, rigid with their sudden apprehension.

Though the dawn was now bright, a light burned around the edges of Ryan's closed garage door. The voices that issued from within were low and muffled. The cats could hear Ryan, her voice taunt and upset, and could hear Detective Davis and Officer Bonner speaking solemnly. Davis, a longtime department veteran, was solid in her ways, businesslike and reassuring. The cats were still evaluating young Bonner. As
they trotted up to the big, closed door and pressed against it to listen, the coroner's green sedan pulled into the drive. Filled with curiosity, the cats slipped into the shadows beneath the stairs.

Stepping from his car, Dr. John Bern headed around to the side door. Bern was a slight, skinny man with a round face and a turned-up nose so small it seemed hardly able to support his wire-rimmed glasses. As he entered the garage, the cats padded through the shadows as silent as the fog itself and as innocent as any neighborhood kitty out for a morning stroll, and moved in behind him through the pedestrian door, to hide behind some leaning sheets of plywood.

A body lay among a stack of stained-glass windows, as if shrouded by them in some weird religious ritual. Where the windows formed a tall V shape, the cats could see the man's feet sticking out at one end, clad in expensive Rockports. At the other end his head and one shoulder were visible. There was a small hole through his forehead. His neatly trimmed brown hair was soaked with blood. Dr. Bern opened the electric door to give more light, and knelt over the body, making certain the victim was dead. There was not much blood pooled beneath him. When soon the coroner rose again, he began taking photographs. Twice he glanced across the garage to the far, back wall as if tracing the line of trajectory that might have occurred if the victim had been standing when he was shot. Detective Davis, fetching a ladder from beside a stack of old doors, climbed to photograph at close range the twin bullet holes in the Sheetrock. She took pictures from several angles, then told Bonner to cut out that section of wall.
“Allow plenty of board, we don't want to pull on it if there are nails near the shots. You may have to saw through the nails or slice out part of the stud.”

“Do we have the tools?”

“Ryan has.”

The cats could see, when Dr. Bern lifted the man's head, how the shot had left the back of the skull with a wide, ugly tear wound and fragments of bone sticking out. As John Bern dictated his notes into a small tape recorder, he was hesitant in this assessment, offering several possible scenarios as to the sequence of events. When he had finished dictating, Detective Davis spent a long time herself photographing the scene, shooting the body from all angles, laying a ruler here and there around the corpse to show distances. She photographed most of the garage, the floor, the stored tools and plywood, the stacked paneling and newel posts, the furnace and laundry area, and the inside stair that led to the upstairs apartment. Only Joe Grey and Dulcie escaped documentation, crouching silently behind the plywood then moving behind some stored boxes then a mantel, on around the garage as Davis's strobe light flashed. They froze in place when young Bonner glanced at the paw prints in the dust then at the cat door that Ryan had installed. As the officers worked, Ryan stood outside by her truck, pale and silent.

At last Davis put down her camera and began to collect small bits of evidence, threads, slivers of wood, hairs that she picked up with tweezers and dropped in evidence bags. It was late morning, just after 10:00 by the distant chimes of the courthouse clock, when she finished picking up the last nearly invisible bits, then
went over the area again with a tiny and powerful hand vacuum. This part of an investigation always amazed the cats. Talk about tedious. They knew by now that the corpse was Ryan's husband.

Once Ryan had answered Davis's questions she sat in the garage on the inner steps, keeping out of the way, her hands folded on her knees, her expression closed and glum, so distressed that, across the garage in the shadows, Dulcie reached an involuntary paw to comfort her. But soon the sound of a car in the drive sent Ryan eagerly out the side door. The cats followed, slipping into a jungle of pink geraniums as Detective Garza swung out of his Chevy Blazer next to the coroner's car.