Cat Spitting Mad (12 page)

M
idmorning sun
washed the village with gold, laying warm fingers into Joe Grey's fur as he galloped through the streets, dodging dogs and tourists' feet. Sliding in through his cat door, he heard the washer going. The time was ten-fifteen. Maybe Harper, who had moved in last night, was getting domestic. Strolling into the laundry, he found Clyde was still home, sorting clothes, tossing the whites onto the top bunk, which belonged to the cats, and his colored shirts onto the lower bunk. The fact that the dirty clothes were picking up animal hair was of no importance in this household.

“What're you doing home?” he said softly, glancing in the direction of the spare bedroom. “Harper's not still asleep? You feeling okay? You take the day off?”

“Took the morning off. Harper's riding with one of the search groups.”

Joe leaped into the bottom bunk, onto old Rube's blanket, and began to lick dust from his paws. “Has he
heard anything more about the case? Anything from his officers?”

Clyde didn't answer. Continued to sort clothes.

“Well? What? You don't need to act like
I'm
the enemy.”

“You know how I feel about your meddling.”

“I'm meddling? Harper's career is on the line, his whole life is on the line, and I'm
meddling
? And what about the evidence we've already found?”

“What evidence? What are you talking about?”

“The barrette, Wilma's barrette. Didn't Harper…” Joe stared at Clyde. “Didn't anyone tell Harper about the barrette? The one that Wilma gave Dillon? We found it up at the Pamillon place—the kit found it.”

Clyde looked blank.

“I can't believe Harper wouldn't tell you—that someone in the department wouldn't tell him. His own men…”

Clyde laid down the shirt he was clutching. “How do you know this? How do you know it was the barrette Wilma gave her? And that she was wearing it Saturday? If it was the same barrette, she could have lost it anytime. Where on the Pamillon place? She could have been up there weeks ago, fooling around, she—”

“She was wearing it that day, that was in the paper, Clyde. With a description of it—silver, with turquoise bars. Her mother said she was wearing it that morning when she dropped her at Harper's place. And Dillon had it on when she and the Marners met Harper for lunch. The waitress in the café remembered it.
That
was in the paper.”

Clyde looked hard at him. “And
you
found the bar
rette. After the detectives went over that place three times.”

“So?”

“They need to know that, Joe! What did you do with it? You shouldn't move evidence. Why didn't you call the department? You could at least have told me!”

“
We
didn't
move it. We didn't
touch
it. The department
knows
about it. What do you think we are, idiots?
Why in the world would we move it? Why would we disturb evidence?”

“Cut to the chase, Joe. Did you call the station? Who did you talk to? An anonymous tip right now could really mess Harper up. When was this?”

Joe glared.

Clyde sat down on the bottom bunk, ducking under the top rail. “You didn't call Garza?” He fixed Joe with a cold glare. “You didn't lay one of your anonymous phone tips on Garza. If you start this stuff with Garza…”

“Start what stuff?”

“Start these insane, unwanted, disruptive, and probably illegal telephone calls. If you start that with Garza—”

“If you really need to know, we found the barrette on Tuesday. Garza wasn't here yet. And it wasn't me who informed the department. Nor was it Dulcie.”

Rising abruptly, narrowly missing a crack on the head, Clyde snatched a wad of shorts and socks from the top bunk, flung them in the washer, and turned back to scowl at Joe. “Not the kit! You didn't teach that innocent kitten to use the telephone.” His face had
begun to flush. “Tell me you have not laid your despicable and alarming habits on that little innocent kitten.”

“It wasn't the kit. The kit is afraid of phones. She thinks telephones transmit voices from another world.”

Clyde let that one go by. “Who, then? Who called the station? Not Wilma. You haven't laid your dirty work on Wilma.”

“If you must know, it was Kate. We found the barrette upstairs in the nursery. Kate pretended she found it, and she reported it—told them where to find it. Do you really want to put those red T-shirts in with the white stuff? You have a sudden yearning for pink Jockey shorts?”

Clyde snatched out the offending shirts. For a long moment, both were silent. Then, “You laid that stuff on Kate?”

“For all intents and purposes, Kate found the barrette. She went directly to Molena Point PD, as any law-abiding citizen would do. I'm surprised no one at the station told you or Harper.”

“They're not
supposed
to tell
me
. They're working a murder case. This is serious business. The department's not supposed to talk to Harper, either.”

“Who made that rule? He ought to be able to step back without being completely cut off.”

“Lowell Gedding made that rule.”

Joe swallowed. “Harper needs to know about the barrette. He needs to know that Dillon got away—at least for a while.”

“And I'm elected to tell him.”

“Who else?”

“And how do I explain that I came by such information?”

“Kate told you, of course. Fill her in—but get your stories straight.” He studied Clyde a moment, then curled up on Rube's blanket and closed his eyes. Let Clyde sort it out.

He hadn't told Clyde about their spying on Stubby Baker, and about Baker's connection to San Quentin. He had to think about that. If Harper knew, he might be so angry, and so hot to follow up, that he'd do something foolish, maybe blow the case himself.

Oh, right. Harper had been a cop all these years, to do something stupid now?

Still, with the pressure on, and Harper so rudely excluded from the information loop, who knew?

This whole scene, Joe thought miserably, made him feel like he was clinging to a broken branch that was about to fall, hard, on the concrete.

Clyde said, “Lowell Gedding has complete confidence in Garza.”

Joe opened his eyes. “Confidence in him to do what?”

Clyde glared.

“Confidence that Garza will come up with evidence to clear Harper? Or that Garza will stack the evidence to please those guys on the city council who'd like to see Harper out of there? Who'd like a softer brand of law enforcement?”

“You're letting your imagination run overtime. Harper
asked
Gedding to call in an investigator. That had to be done, to put Max at arm's length. Harper
knows Garza's reputation,
he
has confidence that Garza will clear him. And if Gedding wanted to dump Harper, why would he call in an outside investigator?”

“Why would he
not
? Make it look good. Make a solid case against Harper. An investigator who's in Gedding's pocket.”

Clyde's brown eyes blazed with indignation, but then with uncertainty.

“Gedding was mighty quick to suggest Garza,” Joe said. “He had Garza right on the tip of his tongue, primed and ready, when Harper suggested an outside man.”

“How would you know that?”

“I heard him. Dulcie and I heard him.”

Clyde poured soap into the washer and slammed the lid, closing his eyes as if in pain. “I don't want to know how you two were able to hear Lowell Gedding and Max Harper, in a private conversation, behind a closed door, inside Lowell Gedding's private office.”

Joe Grey smiled. “What I'm telling you, Clyde, is that Gedding came up too fast with the name of Dallas Garza. As if he had it all planned.” He sat up straighter, studying Clyde. “Your face is awfully red. You really ought to think about the damage that stress does to the human body. How long since you've had a checkup? You really shouldn't get yourself so tied in knots.”

Clyde turned on his heel and left the laundry.

Alone, Joe pawed a nest into Rube's blanket, and settled down, considering his options.

 

Despite the dangers and drawbacks, moving in with this new detective was the only thing he knew to do, if
he wanted a line into Molena Point PD.

He could make a run every day into the squad room. Spend his time underneath Garza's desk—until he got caught and pitched out on his furry ear.

And from beneath the desk, what would he learn? He could hear phone calls and conversations, but he'd get no look at department correspondence or at Garza's notes and reports. And as to interviews, Garza had arranged all his appointments away from the department.

Rolling on his back, he shoved Rube's blanket aside. Long-term surveillance beneath the detective's desk would be about as productive as hunting mice in a bathtub.

He was going to have to move in with Garza, give it a try, hope that Garza brought work home at night, away from the department and from the officers who were close buddies with Max Harper.

He imagined Garza, late in the evenings, making his notes and listening to his tapes in private. Quiet evenings in a cozy cottage, perfect to think over the facts, see how they added up; and a good time to place sensitive phone calls.

Particularly if he meant to frame Harper.

Clyde returned with an armful of sheets, tossing them practically on top of Joe. “What are you grinning about?”

He stepped atop the pile of wrinkled bedsheets. “Why would I be grinning? This situation is not a matter for levity.”

Clyde began to sort through his dark shirts, dousing spot remover liberally on shirt fronts and inside collars, forcing Joe to endure a fit of sneezing.

“Tell me something, Joe. I know I'm opening a can of worms here. But what, exactly,
is
your take on the Marner murders? What do
you
think happened up there?”

“You're asking me? You want my opinion? The lowly house cat?”

“Cut it, Joe.”

“You never ask me anything. All you ever do is—”

“Kate and I had dinner last night. I think it's interesting that she didn't tell me a thing about the barrette.”

“Maybe the department told her not to. So what's your point?”

“She told me—this wasn't in the
Gazette,
only in the San Francisco papers—that Lee Wark escaped from prison three weeks ago, with two other death row inmates.”

Though he knew this, a chill coursed down Joe's spine. Knee-jerk reaction to the mention of Lee Wark.

“Kate said prison authorities thought Wark might be in San Francisco.”

“I hope Harper knows this,” Joe said.

“Harper's not in the most talkative of moods.” Clyde looked at him deeply, the kind of look that made Joe pay attention. “Kate said there's been a spate of cat killings in the city.

“She's terrified it might be Wark. That's why she came down here, to get away. I don't have to tell you, Joe, that scares the hell out of me.”

“It doesn't make me feel like party time.” Joe sat very straight. “Do you remember when Wark was sentenced? His outburst in court, that he swore he'd get
Harper?”

Clyde nodded. “That he'd get Harper. And Kate. And anyone else who helped do him.” Clyde fixed Joe with a keen stare. “Wark knows you cats helped.”

He reached to touch Joe's shoulder, looking at him deeply. “Kate says that for a week before the Marner murders there were no cats killed in the city. Two days after the murders, they started again.”

Fear sparked between Joe and Clyde.

The idea of Lee Wark slipping around Molena Point made Joe Grey as shaky as if he'd eaten a poisoned rat.

L
ike a
cave in the side of the hill, the Garza family cottage nestled against a steep wooded slope above the north end of the village, its living room windows affording a view of the village rooftops, while its kitchen windows looked up into the back gardens that crowded above it.

The rafters and paneled walls were washed antique white, and the living area divided by a creamy stone fireplace behind which was a small, open study. Beyond the study were Garza's bedroom and bath. At the other end of the large, airy great room, before a deep bay window, stood a dining table big enough to seat a vast tribe of Garza relatives. A stairway tucked next to the kitchen led down to two additional bedrooms and a bath.

On the shelf of the bay window among a scatter of patchwork pillows, Joe Grey sat eating broiled shrimp and pilaf from a flowered plate. At one end of the long table, Dallas Garza and Kate and Hanni enjoyed larger portions of the same fare, and a green salad in which
Joe had shown no interest. The detective glanced up at Joe occasionally, amused possibly by Joe's excellent appetite, or possibly comparing him unfavorably to members of the canine persuasion. From the photographs on the walls, it was obvious that Garza was a dog man. Joe was surrounded by professional-quality color shots of businesslike hunting dogs. Pointers, setters, two Labradors, and a Weimaraner, each picture accompanied by the dog's extensive pedigree and a list of his field honors.

Some of the photos were not posed portraits but had been taken in the field, the dog carrying a pheasant or quail or duck to Garza or to Hanni; in many instances, Hanni was just a little girl—she'd had black hair then, but you couldn't miss those dark, laughing eyes.

Joe knew of dog-oriented families where cats came under the heading of vermin—right down there with a cockroach in the kitchen cupboard. He was surprised Garza had let him in the door.

Shortly before supper, Joe and Kate had made their entrance, Kate carrying Joe over her shoulder, asking nicely if the tomcat could stay for a few days. She said cats in the house upset Harper and made him sneeze, and that Clyde and Harper were painting the interior of Clyde's house, to keep Harper occupied in the evenings while he wasn't working. She said paint fumes were death on cats. It was true about the paint; Kate's manipulation of Clyde had been extensive, Joe thought, smiling.

Garza had studied Joe with the same expression that, Joe imagined, he used on a particularly seedy
transient arrested for mugging old ladies. “Can't Clyde take the cat to a kennel?”

“Clyde put the other three cats and his Lab in the kennel. But Joe pines away. He won't eat. The last time Clyde boarded him, Joe worried and paced until he made himself sick.

“And Wilma Getz couldn't take him; her cat has the sniffles—like kennel cough, you know.” She had given Garza that lovely bright smile. “I don't want him to be a problem. It's just that…I volunteered, I guess. I could take him to a motel.”

Garza snorted. “You know you can't get a motel on short notice—particularly with a cat in tow.”

Kate had watched Garza diffidently, glancing at Hanni.

It was then Joe made his move.

Leaping down from Kate's shoulder and looking the detective square in the eye, he had meowed twice, boldly, the way a dog would speak, and lifted a paw to shake hands. Such pandering disgusted him—but he was doing it for Harper.

Garza had widened his eyes and burst out laughing, a hard, bawdy cop's laugh.

Joe had kept his paw raised, watching the detective with the same keen intensity he had seen in the expression of an attentive German shepherd.

Garza, possibly impressed, certainly amused, had leaned down to shake Joe's paw. “I guess he can stay. As long as he doesn't spray the furniture. Who taught him to shake hands?”

Kate said, “Clyde's taught him a number of tricks.
Clyde says sometimes he seems almost as smart as a dog.”

Joe cut her a look.

“Can he roll over?”

“Roll over, Joe. There's a good boy.”

He had flopped down on the rag rug and dutifully rolled over, an appalling display of submission. He was going to kill Kate.

Amazing what indignities a good sleuth had to endure, for a little inside information.

“He can fetch, too,” Kate said. Wadding up a piece of paper into a twist, she tossed it across the room.

Joe fetched the paper back to her, quickly expanding the list of embarrassments he was going to visit upon Kate Osborne. She had sensibly ended the list of his talents with the fetching routine.

Now, finishing his shrimp, he sat on the window seat washing his paws and observing the human diners, wondering if he could work them for seconds. With a few more “cute” exhibits of caninelike intelligence, Garza might have offered a glass of wine.

Thus began Joe's surveillance of the man who had been appointed to clear—or to destroy—Max Harper. When, after dinner, Kate and Hanni went for a walk in the village, Garza retired to his desk and turned on his tape recorder. And Joe leaped nimbly onto the protruding end of the mantel, where he had a clear view of the top of Garza's desk.

The first interview tape that Garza played, with Dillon's parents, made Joe feel deeply sad—and then angry.

The Thurwells blamed Max Harper for Dillon's disappearance.

Even with the heartbreaking tragedy of their missing child, they had no right to blame Max Harper. Harper had treasured that child, had been so proud of her increasing riding skills, of the way she handled Redwing.

He supposed the Thurwells had to blame someone. Supposed that to blame Harper was only human. But Harper had taken such pains with Dillon, had taught the little girl a valuable discipline.

The Thurwells were good to Dillon, but, as Dulcie pointed out, they didn't seem to see the need a growing child has for some direction in her life. Harper knew about that kind of need. He had given Dillon the goals she'd hungered for, had fostered the skills and the strength of mind that could keep her from going off suddenly on some tangent when she hit her teens. Dulcie said you didn't have to be a human to recognize that universal need.

When Garza had rewound the Thurwell tape, he played Harper's statement to Detective Davis, and as the tape ran, he made detailed notes on a large yellow pad.

The detective played back interviews with various personnel at the ranch where the Marners kept their horses, and with the manager and the three waitresses who had been on duty at Café Mundo the day of the murder. There was nothing in their answers to conflict with Harper's statement.

Garza played, three times, his interview with the
witness who claimed to have seen Harper following the three riders up the mountain, directly after lunch. The man was a tourist staying in the village, a William Green. He said he had been out biking, that he had recognized Harper because Green had lost his car keys the week before, and had gone into the station to identify them after a foot patrol found them, that Captain Harper had come in while he was signing for his keys, and he'd heard an officer call him by name.

Fishy, Joe Grey thought.

Green was very sure about his details. Joe felt easier when Garza made a note to check out the man's home address and background.

At twelve-fifteen, Garza called it a night. Kate and Hanni had come in around ten and gone downstairs to bed. Switching off the desk lamp, Garza turned suddenly toward the fireplace, looking directly at Joe.

“For all the attention you've given me tonight, tomcat, I'd say you were some kind of snitch.”

Joe's belly did a flip-flop. He purred hard and tried to look stupid. He could feel his paws sweating.

Garza grinned. “Working for Max Harper? And does that mean you're working for the killer?” Garza's eyes were as black as obsidian, totally unrevealing. Joe regarded him as coolly as he could manage, considering he had a bellyful of hop-frogs.

“Instead of spying on me, you might make yourself useful. This cottage has been shut up for months. It has to be crawling with mice.”

Garza tousled Joe's head as he would rough up a big dog, and headed for the bedroom.

Well, maybe it was only Garza's way. Joe had heard
him tease Hanni with the same dry wit, and had seen him ruffle her head, too.

Retiring to the window seat, he curled up, listening to the night sounds through the slightly open, locked-in-place window. The small clock on the kitchen pass-through said 12:19. An occasional car passed on the street below, and later a party of raccoons began to squabble, chittering and hissing, and he heard a garbage can go over. He woke and dozed, and when next he looked at the clock, its illuminated face said 4:40. Something had waked him. His head raised, his ears sharp, he lay listening.

The sound of footsteps reached him softly from up beyond the kitchen windows, and the rustle of bushes, sounds so faint that only a cat would hear.

Dropping to the carpet, he sprang to the pass-through and padded silently across the kitchen counter. Keeping to the shadows behind the bread box, he peered out beside the curtain into the night.

A man stood among the bushes on the hill, a dark shadow nearly hidden among the black masses of foliage and trees, a thin, tall man, looking down into the house.

Was he stoop-shouldered like Lee Wark? Through the glass, Joe could catch no scent, but the look of the man made him choke back a stifled mewl, his voice as tremulous as a terrified kitten. In panic, he dropped to the floor, crouching behind the refrigerator, and stared up at the window, half expecting the man to slide it open and climb in. He was ashamed to admit the fear that swept him; he was scared down to his tomcat paws.

But
was
it the Welshman? The shadow blended so well into the overgrown gardens that he really couldn't see much. And now, his nose filled with the stink of dust from the refrigerator's motor housing, he couldn't have smelled Wark if the man had stood on top of him.

Leaping to the counter, he peered out again, but the figure was gone. He could see only the crowding houses and massed bushes, could detect no human shape within the indecipherable tangles of the night.

Pacing the house, he worried until dawn, prowling in and out of bedrooms, making the round of partly open, locked windows both on the main level and downstairs. Twice he imagined he could smell Wark, but the next instant could smell nothing but pine trees and the lingering stink of raccoons.

If that was Wark, had he come here looking for Kate? Joe began to worry about Dulcie and the kit; he wondered if they were out hunting, in the night alone. At 5:00, pacing and fretting, he leaped to Garza's desk, pushed the phone off its cradle onto Garza's blotter, and made a whispered call, watching Garza's closed bedroom door.

Wilma answered sleepily, a curt and irritable “Yes?”

“I think Lee Wark may be in the neighborhood, prowling around the Garza place, but now he's gone. Watch out for him. Are they there? Tell Dulcie she needs to be careful.”

“They're here. I'll see to it.” Wilma asked no questions, wasted no time getting up to speed. Thank God for a few sensible humans.

Beyond the closed bedroom door, he heard the detective stir. Pawing the phone into its cradle, he fled for
the window seat, had just curled up when the bedroom door creaked open and light spilled out—and Joe was gently snoring.

Maybe he'd been wrong, maybe it wasn't Wark out there. Could it have been Stubby Baker? Could Baker be interested in Garza's notes and tapes? Baker was tall and slim like Wark, and about the same height. He was straighter and broader of shoulder, but in the shadows, might he have appeared hunched?

By 5:20 Garza had showered, made coffee, and was frying eggs and bacon. Joe, strolling through the kitchen, yowled loudly at the back door.

“At least you're housebroken.” The detective gave him a noncommittal cop stare and opened the kitchen door.

From the garden, Joe glanced up at the window, expecting to see Garza's dark Latin eyes looking out, watching him, but the lighted glass remained blank. He found, beneath the window, the waffle prints of a man's jogging shoes incised into the damp earth; large shoes, certainly larger than Clyde's size 10s. Carefully prowling, he studied each area of bare soil, tracking the prints clear around the house, pausing where the man had stood looking into the downstairs bedroom windows.

Surely neither Kate nor Hanni had been awakened and seen him. They'd have called the department—or come upstairs to wake Dallas. Presumably, Dallas was the only one with a firearm. Heading around the house again, he pawed at the kitchen door, bellowing a deep yowl.

Kate opened the door. He stepped in, sniffing the aromas of breakfast. Kate and Hanni were showered
and dressed, all polished and smelling of Ivory soap. Hanni sat at the kitchen table across from Garza, drinking coffee as Garza ate his fried eggs and bacon and sourdough toast. The detective glanced down at Joe absently but didn't offer to share.

Evidently no one had pointed out to Garza, and he probably didn't know, that any ordinary cat, moved to a new house, would be kept in for a couple of weeks so he would become oriented and not run away.

When no one offered him a fried egg, Joe fixed his gaze on Kate, licking his whiskers.

Kate fetched a can of cat food.

He looked at her, amazed.
Cat food?

“Cat food,” she said, shaking the can at him. “I'm not cooking eggs for you. Dinner was one thing—you can share our dinner, but I'm not laying out caviar and kippers at six in the morning like Clyde does. Besides, you're getting fat.”

He hated when someone threw insults and he couldn't talk back.
Fat?
Kate didn't know muscle when she saw it. Under his gray velvet fur he was as solid as coiled steel. Studying the can Kate had flipped open, and taking a good sniff, he was relieved to know it was the fancy kind, the brand that, the commercials implied, should be served on a linen tablecloth from a crystal sherbet dish.