Shirley Murphy - Cat Spitting Mad

Maybe he was some harmless ogler. Nothing more threatening than that.

As she drew opposite where he'd stood, he moved back between the two houses and was gone. Peering across, into the narrow side yard, she saw only a hedge and a patchy scruff of lawn.

And now, up the hill, rose the red rooftops and huge old oaks of the museum. She hurried up toward them, eager to be among people.

But then, as she turned into the museum gardens, it wasn't people who surrounded her, it was the museum cats. Cats sunning under the flowers and bushes and atop the low walls, all of them watching her as she entered along the brick walk and through the wrought-iron gate.

What kind of cats these might be would not be public knowledge-would be the museum's most sheltered secret, if even the museum staff knew.

She wandered the paths for a long time among lush masses of flowering bushes, tall clumps of Peruvian lilies, densely flowering tangles. The scents of nasturtium and geranium eased her nerves. She felt so uncertain about asking to see McCabe's diaries. She was sure they had them, yet had been reluctant even to ask if Hanni knew-because she would have to give Hanni an explanation. And she might, in a weak moment, confess to Hanni that she thought McCabe could be her grandfather. It was all so complicated.

I will simply ask, she told herself. Ask, and look at what is there, and not make it complicated. Moving toward the door, she pinched a sprig of lavender, sniffed at it to calm herself, stood looking in through the museum's leaded windows at the white-walled galleries.

But as she turned toward the main entrance, she was facing the man in black. He stood just beyond the door, beneath an arbor, his features in shadow, his muddy eyes on her.

Catching her breath, she hurried in through the glass doors and fled to the reception desk, begging the pudgy woman curator to call a cab. She felt hardly able to speak. She stood pressing against the desk, waiting for the taxi to arrive, then ran out to it, sat stiffly in the backseat, unable to stop shaking. She was so cold and shivering that when she got home she could hardly fit her key in the lock. Safe at last in her apartment, she threw the bolts on the doors and turned up the heat.

It had been Lee Wark. She'd seen him clearly. His eyes, the same muddy-glassy eyes.

What if he'd followed her home, in a second cab? Or maybe he took her cab's number, would find out from her driver where she lived? She had to call the police. Report that she'd seen him. Wark was a wanted felon, a convicted killer.

Most of all, she had to get out of San Francisco.

CLYDE DAMEN'S white Cape Cod cottage shook with the stutter of jackhammers and the thud of falling timbers, enough racket to collapse a poor cat's eardrums. Joe Grey sat on the kitchen counter, waiting for Clyde to make his breakfast, and watching through the window the handsome Victorian home behind them being torn down and fed, timber by splintered timber, to a series of large metal Dumpsters that stood in the wide front yard.

The house's finer fittings, the crown molding, the stained-glass windows, the hand-carved banister and carved cabinets, had long since been sold to an antique dealer, as had the fine Victorian furniture. Seventy-year-old Lucinda Greenlaw had no need any longer for large pieces of furniture since she had married Shamas and moved into his travel trailer and set out to see the world-or at least see more of the West Coast.

All the houses behind Clyde's had been sold. Both sides of that street were being cleared to accommodate a small, exclusive shopping plaza. The constant noise of the tear-down had been too hard on the other cats-on the three ordinary kitties who could not understand the source of the threatening racket, and on old Rube, the elderly Labrador. Clyde had taken them up to the vet's to board.

Clyde and Dr. Firreti had an arrangement involving hospital and boarding bills swapped for auto repairs, an agreement that worked to everyone's advantage except that of the IRS. Clyde didn't talk about that.

"Another few weeks," Clyde grumbled, staring out at the destruction, "we'll be looking out the window at a solid three-story wall smack in your face. The house will be dark as a tomb. No sunrise. No sun at all. You want to look at the hills? Forget it. Might as well have the Empire State Building in the backyard."

"A handsome stucco wall," Joe said, quoting Dulcie, "to define the back garden-turn it into an enclosed patio."

"That view of the hills was the main reason I bought this house-that and the sunrise. A three-story wall will destroy them both."

"It won't destroy the hills and sunrise. The hills and sunrise will still be there. You just…"

"Shut up, Joe. Here, eat your breakfast. Kippers and sour cream. And don't growl. You don't have to kill the kippers. You may not have noticed in your enthusiasm that the kippers are already dead."

Clyde set his own plate of eggs on the table beside a bowl of Sugar Pops. The phone rang. Snatching it from the wall, he answered through a mouthful of egg.

He grew very still.

Joe padded across the table to press against Clyde's shoulder, his ear to the phone.

Max Harper sounded grim.

"I have an appointment with the city attorney. Ten A.M. Going to take administrative leave."

"Because of the Marner case? But-"

"Because of Bucky's shoe, Bucky's hoofprints all over the scene. And because of new evidence."

"What new evidence?"

"I just got the report from Salinas. The lab rushed it through. They have the murder weapon."

"Oh. Well, that's-"

"Remember that bone-handled butcher knife that Millie's aunt sent her from Sweden?"

"I remember it. A big, stubby knife with silver inlay."

"One of my detectives found it in my hay shed, under a bale of alfalfa."

"But-"

"The dried blood on it was a match for both Helen and Ruthie."

"That's insane. No one would commit a murder and hide the weapon in his own barn. Where are you? I'll come over. If you step off the case-"

"I've already stepped off. I'm going to ask Gedding to appoint an interim chief until this thing gets sorted out."

"Max, if someone's out to frame you-"

"I've removed myself from the case. There was nothing else I can do. I'm not giving up the search for Dillon. I'll keep on with that, acting as a civilian. And I'm going to have to look for witnesses."

"I can take some time off, help you talk to people. Help you look for Dillon."

"I-we'll talk about it. Every cop on the central coast is looking for her. Every law enforcement agency in California."

"But-"

"I see Gedding at ten."

"Meet for lunch?"

"Say, one o'clock at Moreno's."

"One o'clock." Clyde hung up, glancing toward Joe.

But Joe Grey wasn't there. Through the kitchen window Clyde saw a gray streak vanish over the fence, heading into the village. Clyde stood looking, swearing softly, but he didn't open the door to shout after Joe.

What good would it do? He couldn't make Joe come back. And, under the present circumstances, he guessed he didn't want to.

If Joe could help Harper, Clyde promised himself he'd never again make one disparaging, discouraging, cutting remark aimed at the tomcat. Would never again tease either Joe or Dulcie. He was, in fact, so upset about Harper that he poured coffee on his cereal and had eaten half the bowl before he realized how strange it tasted.

By the time Max Harper entered Lowell Gedding's office at ten, the two sleuths in question had concealed themselves handily behind a Chinese planter of maidenhair fern, on the wide ledge inside the city attorney's bay window.