Shirley Murphy - Cat Seeing Double

"No," she said. "But Rupert was. Right?"

Flannery nodded.

"Dallas knows her, she's on me list he's investigating. I think she's one of the two supposedly out of the country. The Bahamas, I think he said." And she felt cold again, icy.

The Garza cottage clung to the side of a steep hill north of the village, its front windows looking down on rooftops and oak trees that now, at night, were a black mass broken by only a few scattered lights from the houses tucked among them. At the back of the cottage, the kitchen windows faced the rising hill, the steep backyard softly lit by ground-level lamps that Joe and Dulcie avoided as they approached the back steps- two neighborhood cats checking out the garbage cans.

No lights were on in the kitchen, but a glow from deeper in the house suggested that Garza sat at his desk, perhaps catching up on paperwork.

Approaching the back door, with quick paws Joe tucked the little purse under the mat. And as Dulcie curled down on the cool earth beneath the bushes to watch the door, Joe nipped down the hill to the lower-level guest rooms-family bedrooms from the time when they all came down for weekends.

Crouched on the windowsill he reached a paw through the burglar bars and through the hole in the screen, product of his own handiwork some months back, when he'd done serious spying on Garza himself. Flipping the latch and sliding the screen open, he jiggled the window until its lock gave.

He was through the bars and inside. Leaping to the small desk, he touched the phone's speaker button. This was the only phone in the house with two lines. The upstairs fax, and the main line, were on different instruments, the fax tucked away, he hoped, in a cupboard in the desk where Garza wouldn't see its telltale light blinking. Hitting line two, he pawed in the main phone number that he had long ago memorized. Joe's talents didn't extend to writing down phone numbers, he was forced to keep all such urgent information in his head-a living computer that, over time, had become strong and reliable.

Garza answered on the second ring.

Dispensing with polite formalities, Joe kept his message short. "I've shoved a little purse under the back doormat; it contains items taken from Marianna Landeau's closet that I hope will reveal her fingerprints.

"You may find the prints are also those of a Martie Holland. I don't know who this person is, but perhaps that information will be of interest when the lab has finished with the rug-the one you picked up from the Coldirons. And when you've had a look at the mantel in the Landeau cottage.

"You should find four more chips from the mantel on a leaf under a lavender bush just south of the Landeau front door. Those were removed from inside the fireplace before Marianna vacuumed there. She used the hand vac from the kitchen, and I don't believe she emptied it when she finished."

He felt as if he was spelling the steps out too clearly, insulting Garza's intelligence. But if Garza nailed Rupert's killer, that was all that counted. Police work was a cooperative undertaking, a team effort-even if part of the team was irrevocably undercover. He had hardly hit the speaker button to end the call when he heard Garza cross the room above him, and hit the stairs. And Joe was out of there, out the window sliding it closed, diving into the bushes as Garza switched on the light. Had the phone made a telltale click? Why did Garza suspect the caller was down there?

Checking out both bedrooms, and bam and closets, Garza cut the lights again and turned to the window. Standing just above Joe behind the burglar bars, looking out, he was still for a long time. Below him, crouched in a tangle of prickly holly, patiently Joe waited until at last the detective turned away. Joe heard him mount the stairs.

He waited until he heard the kitchen door open then close again. When he knew that Garza had the little evening purse and the compacts, he beat it up the hill to Dulcie.

Above them the kitchen light was on. Rearing up in the hillside garden, they could see Garza sitting at the table wearing cotton gloves, opening the little purse.

He didn't touch the compacts, he simply looked. He looked out the window at the rising yard, and sat for a long moment doing nothing. At last, rising, he fetched a folded paper bag from a kitchen drawer, dropped the purse inside, and marked the bag with his pen.

"What now?" Dulcie said. "Can he send the prints to AFIS electronically?" She thought the automated fingerprint identification system that California used should take only an hour or two.

"I think he can. But it will show only a California record. Maybe he'll send it to WIN too, for the western states. But if she had only a federal rap, it could take weeks."

The Western Identification Network, which supplied fingerprint identification for the eight western states, was usually prompt, as well. But if an officer got no results there, and had to go through the FBI that covered the entire country, he'd better be prepared for a wait.

"You think Marianna and Martie Holland are the same person?" Dulcie said softly.

"I'm betting on it. I think Larn Williams either works for Marianna, or they're good friends."

"You think she planned the bombing? But why? And how does that connect to Rupert? She knew Rupert in San Francisco, but…"

"My guess is, the bombing was all the Fargers' doing, payback for Gerrard's prison sentence." He turned to look at her. "But my gut feeling, Dulcie, is that Marianna killed Rupert. We just don't know, yet, why she killed him.

"Something tore up that fireplace, after the three niches were painted. If the mason had left it like that, she'd have pitched a fit. I think she installed those three pieces of sculpture to hide the flaw in the concrete that she tried to fix."

"But the woman is a stickler for perfection. Why didn't she do a better job?"

"If she was trying to get rid of the body, maybe she didn't have time. She wanted to be gone, out of there before anyone knew she was at the cottage. Maybe that plaster job was the best she could do, in a hurry to get it dried and painted. Maybe, in the artificial light, she didn't see the flaw. I didn't see it until the moonlight slanted at an angle. And remember, she had to sponge his blood out of the rug too. And dump that bottle of wine, trying to cover her tracks."

"But how did she get the body out of there? She looks strong, but-if she dragged it to her car, then dragged it into Ryan's garage, there'd have been marks."

"There were marks-those narrow tire tracks along Ryan's drive. Dallas photographed them. By now he has to know those weren't bike tracks. Maybe a wheelbarrow, or more likely a hand truck. Maybe she brought it with her from the city."

"Grisly. She loads a hand truck into her expensive car, knowing she'll soon have a body to haul away. If the cops find it, and check out her car too, there should be plenty of traces for the lab."

"And before that," Joe said, "there should be replies on Marianna's fingerprints, and the lab report on the rug. I wonder how long that will take." He narrowed his eyes. "And what was the dog on about, when he pitched that fit there in the driveway? It sure wasn't Eby Coldiron who made him so mad."

Police dispatcher Mabel Hammond saw the gray tomcat slip into the station on the heels of two officers returning from lunch, strolling in behind them through the security door with all the assurance of the chief himself.

Glancing down over her counter, Mabel grinned at him. "Come on up, Joe Grey. I have fried chicken." The officers looked around laughing, and went on down the hall.

Mabel was fifty-some and inclined to be overweight. Her curly white hair was dyed blond. Her thick stomach didn't allow her to lean too far over the dispatcher's counter that defined her open cubicle on three sides. On the back wall was an array of computer and video monitors, radios, and other state-of-the-art electronic equipment that Mabel commanded. She not only handled emergency calls and dispatched officers, relaying all urgent communications, she juggled incoming faxes and the computers for vehicle wants and warrants and for wanted persons, and indexed officers' reports.