Cat Spitting Mad (9 page)

“The horseshoes,” Clyde was saying. “Your men
didn't find any more tracks made with the cut shoe? Didn't find anything on the trail that could have cut the shoes like that?”

“Ray and Davis have been over every inch.”

“There have to be two shoes. And you said on the phone that your boot prints were at the scene. But you were up there searching. Of course your prints would be—”

“The prints were under the victim's prints. And partial prints under their bodies. The only time I got off Bucky was when I first arrived, to check the bodies. That set of prints was clear. There were other prints like them, underneath.”

“Some son of a bitch has gone to a lot of trouble. How would he get your boots? Could he replicate them?”

“They're Justin's. I buy them up the valley, at the Boot Barn. Those soles were the same shape, same size. No problem there. But they had the same worn places on the left heel and right sole.”

“So the guy stole your boots, then put them back. Or he took a cast of your boots somewhere. Fixed up an identical pair. Same with the horseshoes. Somewhere, that night, was there another horse wearing the same shape of shoe with the same scar?”

“I think the guy took Bucky. Came in the house, took my boots and the knife, then returned with them.”

“Did he have time to do that?”

“Yes, he would have. I left about three forty-five. Helen and Ruthie were killed around five o'clock. And when I came back to change cars, I didn't go in the
house or the stable. He could still have had Bucky.

“And later, when we got the missing report and I went home to get Bucky, he was nervous—irritable and tired. The horse was tired, Clyde. And Bucky is in top shape.

“I'd ridden him for some four hours, then put him up. He'd had plenty of rest—or should have—before I took him out again on the search.

“I was irritated at myself, when I saddled him to go look for the Marners, for not rubbing him down very well, after lunch. He had saddle marks, though I could have sworn I cleaned him up. Had what looked like quirt marks on his side and rump. I thought he'd been rubbing himself again. And his bridle was hung up differently than I hang it. I thought that strange, thought I'd been preoccupied.” Harper paused, then, “Pretty unobservant, for a cop.”

Clyde said nothing.

“The bridle. The saddle marks, Bucky's condition. The boot prints and hoofprints. And Gedding has received two anonymous phone calls—he thinks from the same man—that I was seen leaving the restaurant at noon riding Bucky up the mountain, in the opposite direction from my place. Following the Marners and Dillon.

“The day after the murder, Davis walked the trail that the Marners and Dillon rode. The first half mile above the restaurant, they rode on deep gravel. No prints of any value. But where you can see hoofprints, there's the same scar-marked print, coming along behind their three horses.

“Not a lot of people ride that trail, it's rough and
steep. Davis said that deer trails crossed the hoofprints in two places, heading down to water and back again up toward the forest.”

Joe tried to imagine a stranger riding up that mountain following the three riders. A stranger riding Harper's horse? A stranger who had taken Bucky after Harper left for work, and beat it down to the restaurant, to leave hoofprints following the Marners. Then followed them, killed them, and took out after Dillon. And then brought Bucky home, put him back in his stall.

“I've turned the department over to Brennan. Likely Davis and Ray will be off the case when Gedding's man gets here. Dallas Garza. San Francisco PD. I've moved the horses up to Campbell Ranch, and the pups, too. They'll be fine. I need a place to stay—where someone will know what I'm up to.”

Clyde was silent for some time. When he spoke, his voice was low and angry. “You're quitting. Just quitting—stepping back like that. If that doesn't make you look guilty—”

“There's nothing else I can do. That's protocol, to do that. Nothing guilty about it. If I stayed in the department, I could manipulate my people, cook the papers, cook the evidence. It's not ethical, Clyde. You know that.”

“I'll clean up the spare room. But what about during the day—I can't baby-sit you, Max, while I'm at work.”

“I'll make myself visible in the village. And I'm not finished looking for Dillon. I can move around, be seen, keep my eyes open but stay out of the depart
ment's way. If I ride out with the searchers, I'll stay with a group. Some of them keep their horses up at Campbell's.”

“The department's searched the old Pamillon place?”

“We were all over it that first night and the next day. The detectives have been back three times, have climbed down into every dark, musty cellar that ever existed on that land.

“This morning they had tracking dogs in there. One of them scented something; it started on a trail, then kept doubling back—sniffing around a puff of animal hair caught on the rocks. Dogs got all confused. I don't think they ever did get Dillon's scent, I think it was just a fox or something—maybe that cougar. The cougar's pad marks were back and forth through the old house—that's what has me worried.”

From beneath the table, the cats couldn't see their faces. Nor did they need to.

Harper said, “If there
was
some trace of Dillon up there that the dogs couldn't find, it's beyond what any human could detect.

“Every department in California has her description and photo,” Harper said. “The local TV channels will keep running her picture, along with a recording of her voice, that her mother gave us. Whatever son of a bitch has her, Clyde, whatever son of a bitch hurts her, I'll kill him.”

M
ax Harper's
words kept ringing in Joe's head.
If there was some trace of Dillon, that the dogs couldn't find, it's beyond what any human could detect.

Had Harper been unwittingly asking for other-than-human assistance?

Not likely. Not Max Harper.

But as the two cats emerged from the grass at the edge of the Pamillon estate and trotted beneath the chain barrier, Joe's mind was filled with questions. The scarred horseshoe, Harper's boot prints, the anonymous phone calls to Harper and then to Gedding.

Behind them down the hills, the red village rooftops and dark oaks shone in a bright patchwork against the blue sea—a chill winter day, clear and sharp and filled with potential.

Slipping in among the fallen walls, their whiskers sliding across broken bricks, threading between overgrown rosebushes whose thorns caught at their fur, they knew that something had drawn them here. A
scent left undetected? Some small clue overlooked? Something that puzzled them and pulled them back.

Springing up the trunk of a broken oak tree, they studied the massy growth below them, the jungle of tall, wild broom and upturned tree roots. Vines woven across a rusted wheelbarrow. A wrought-iron gate standing alone, slowly being pulled down by vines. A world as impenetrably green and mysterious as Rima's haunted Green Mansions, in the book that Wilma and Dulcie liked to read.

Seeing nothing below them to draw their specific attention, they dropped down again among the foliage where the afternoon light filtered to jade.

Scenting along through the bushes, they could detect no human trail. Only wild green smells and animal smells, filling every pocket of air. They had to rear up, every few steps, to see their way.

Where the ancient adobe bricks had been dished out by fifty years of wear, rainwater was cupped, and the cats drank, lapping among the leaves. Down beneath crushed leaves and broken foliage, the earth was a mass of crisscrossed hoofprints, boot and shoe prints, small animal tracks, and the tracks of the hounds that had come searching.

Hours before the police teams arrived, before anyone knew that the Marners were dead, the civilian search party had ridden here, trampling any amount of evidence, so that later when Harper's people went over the land, they could record only fragments.

Joe and Dulcie came out of the weeds onto a broken terrace so covered with rubble that it was impos
sible to tell where the rotting timbers of the veranda ended and the decaying floor of the house began.

Carved mantels stood half devoured by creeping vines. Fragments of torn and curling wallpaper hung from broken walls, as delicate as butterflies.

Prowling the parlor through forests of nettles that thrust between the rungs of broken chairs and curtained crippled bookcases, one wondered why the locals hadn't long ago taken every piece of furniture. Vines covered a capsized table to form a den that smelled of raccoon. Scraps of water-soaked, mouse-gnawed sofa cushions had moldered into mush beneath a mass of yellow flowers. All around them, they saw the old house being sucked back into the earth from which it had sprung.

They found no footprints small enough to belong to Dillon Thurwell. They could detect no scent of Dillon. But Joe smelled the cougar, and warily they watched the shadows. And then, near the stink where the lion had sprayed, they caught the scent of the child. Dillon's scent, leading across the parlor and up the broken stair to the nursery.

The morning glories had arrived upstairs long ago, to festoon a cane-backed rocking chair and to crawl up the faded wallpaper across cartoon rocking horses, the vine's heart-shaped leaves and tendrils fingering out through the broken windows. Morning glory crept across the nursery fireplace that stood alone where the walls had fallen into landslides of timbers and bricks.

The fireplace stank of wet ashes spilling out onto the floor. Across the ashes led a trail of small, neat pawprints that continued beneath the fallen wall.

The cats were scenting among the rubble when they heard voices, someone in the garden below.

Padding to the edge of the broken floor, they watched two young women approaching. “Kate,” Joe said softly. “Kate Osborne.”

“What's she doing here?” Dulcie gawked at the other young woman. “That beautiful white hair. I've seen her before, in the village.”

“I think that's the woman Kate works for. Hanni something—this detective's niece. Maybe they came down with him. Detective Dallas Garza.” Joe sat down, licking ashes from his paw. “Maybe it was Kate who called Clyde last night. He got all excited. Shouted, ‘When did you get in town? Where are you?' I was half asleep. It's all right if he wakes me in the middle of the night. But let me scratch an itch or wash my face, jiggle the bed a little, and it's a federal case.”

“So when did Kate come down?”

“Last night, I guess. He made a date for breakfast—was off like a flash this morning, all polished and scrubbed, nearly forget to make
my
breakfast. And he's meeting her tonight for dinner. Didn't give a thought to Charlie. Apparently didn't wonder if Charlie would be jealous.”

“It would do Charlie good to be jealous,” Dulcie said darkly.

“Clyde called Charlie this morning before he left the house; I think Kate asked him to. Sounded like Kate wants to see Charlie's drawings. I didn't want to shove my ear in the phone; Clyde can be so bad-tempered in the morning.”

Below them, the white-haired woman had fished a
camera from her leather tote and was taking pictures of the ruined gardens and house. Kate sat idly on a broken wall in a patch of sunshine, her short blond hair as bright as silk. She was dressed in pale faded jeans and a creamy sweater; Kate always wore cream tones or off white. Hanni's sweatshirt was bright red, her earrings long and dangling.

“The walks could be repaired,” Hanni said. “This is a lovely patio, the way the old walls rise around it.” She kicked away some rubble to look at the brick paving. “This part looks good. And maybe even some of the old building could be kept and reinforced. And if these plants were pruned and cleaned up—a gardener could do wonders.”

“Hanni, I'm having trouble keeping my mind on this, with the murder and the missing child.”

“It's terrifying, I know. But there's nothing we can do, Kate. At least at the moment. The department will work overtime—every department in the country has the information, every search team is looking for the child. And Dallas will be down in the morning.”

“I keep thinking of Max Harper, suspected of murder. Keep thinking of Dallas investigating Harper as if he were a criminal. It makes me feel sick. Makes me want to rip and claw whoever did this.” Kate looked surprised at her turn of speech, looked embarrassed. “I…To think that someone has done this terrible thing, has killed and kidnapped people, in order to hurt Harper…” She looked hard at Hanni. “There can be no other explanation. Don't people know that!”

“I'm sure they do. But the department has to do it by the book, Kate.

“This kind of tragedy goes with the territory. For every cop who does a good job, there are a hundred guys out there wanting to destroy him, and not caring who else they hurt.”

Kate sighed. “And Lee Wark's out there somewhere. He hates Harper.”

Hanni shook her head. “The whole state's looking for Wark. He'll have left the country by now.”

“I hope. Harper was very kind to me when Jimmie hired Wark to kill me, when I was trying to get away from them. This new city attorney—what's he like? How will he treat Harper?”

“I don't know anything about him. I haven't been down to the village for over a year.” Hanni removed a roll of film from the camera and inserted another. “Not to worry, Dallas will get to the truth. He won't let anyone railroad Harper.”

Kate rose, looking around her into the tangled bushes. The cats watched her with interest. Usually she was so calm, so in control. Now she moved with a lithe, almost animal wariness, nervous and watchful.

“
Is
there something about this place?” Dulcie said. “About the Pamillon mansion—some strangeness, the way the kit imagines?”

“
I
don't know, Dulcie. I don't feel anything strange. You and the kit—”

A small voice behind them said, “There
is
something. Something shivery.”

The cats turned to look at the kit where she sat atop a vine-covered dresser, her forepaws neatly together, her long fluffy tail wrapped around herself, her round yellow eyes intense. “Something
elder
, here in this
place.”

But Joe and Dulcie's attention was on the dresser top. They leaped up to see better.

Beside the kit's paw, half hidden among the green leaves, lay a piece of shiny metal. Joe pushed away the leaves.

“What is this, Kit? Where did you get this?”

A silver hair clip gleamed among the leaves, its turquoise settings blue as a summer sky. Joe sniffed at it and fixed his gaze on the kit. And Dulcie's green eyes widened. “Dillon's clip,” Dulcie said softly. “The barrette that Wilma gave Dillon.”

Joe pushed close to the kit. “Where did you find this?”

The kit looked across the jungly nursery to the pale stone fireplace that loomed against the afternoon sky.

“In the fireplace? Show me.”

The kit leaped away among the vine-covered furniture and vanished behind the fireplace beneath a heap of fallen timbers beside the chimney. Joe was there in a flash, a gray streak pawing and pushing in where she had disappeared. Shouldering under the timbers, he pushed his head beneath the partly open lid of a long wooden box the size of a coffin—the lid would open only a few inches. The kit crouched within, on the rusted floor. The interior was metal lined; had perhaps, at one time, held firewood.

“Here,” the kit said. “It was right in here.” Even the inside of the box reeked of wet ashes. They could not smell Dillon. There was nothing inside but the kit. Joe backed out again, where Dulcie pressed close behind
him.

“We have to get the barrette to Harper,” she said softly. “Or tell him where it is. I suppose whatever prints were on it are smeared with paw marks and cat spit.”

Joe Grey flattened his ears. “Harper mustn't have anything to do with finding this.”

Her green eyes widened. “But—”

“Prosecution could say he planted it.” He looked keenly at Dulcie. “The detectives need to find it here. The department detectives—or Garza.”

“Then we'll have to phone the station.”

“We're not phoning the station. An anonymous phone tip would make Harper look like dog doo.”

“Well what, then?” Dulcie hissed.

“Someone uninvolved could find it,” he said with speculation. “Find it and call the station.” He looked down into the garden.

“Kate,” she whispered.

“Kate,” he said and leaped down the broken stairs toward the garden.

Joe didn't know he was being watched, just as Kate and Hanni were being watched.

 

From higher up the hill above the ruined mansion, the three cats had been observed for some time, with keen and unwavering attention—as had two human creatures.

The movements and noises of the humans puzzled and interested the young lion. The mouth noises of his
small feline cousins puzzled him far more.

The cougar was uncertain about whether two-legged beasts should be considered food, but the three little felines were certainly edible. They were nice and fat, and were out in plain view waiting to be taken—except that these small cat creatures made noises like the two-legs, and he did not know what to make of that.

And as Joe Grey descended to the garden, to lure Kate away from Hanni and lead her to the hair clip, above them on the hill the cougar slipped closer, padding among dense cover and silently down the slope. Intensely curious, the lion stalked toward the patio, moving as smoothly and silently as a drifting cloud-shadow, his big pads pressing without sound among the vines and stones, his broad head cocked, listening, his golden eyes seeking to separate possible lunch from possible threat—his teeth parted to taste cat scent and human scent, trying to sort out another strangeness, in a world filled with dangers from the unknown.