Shirley Murphy - Cat Spitting Mad

He wished he believed that.

Dropping the box and the boots in the truck bed, Harper closed the canvas cover. He looked more than tired. The minute he drove off, the cats trotted down to Ocean and over to Moreno's Bar and Grill where Harper was headed.

Padding down the narrow alley past Moreno's front door, they slipped in through the screened kitchen door, pawing it open behind the backs of a cook and two busboys. Past the bar into the restaurant, and through the shadows to the far corner, to Clyde and Harper's usual booth. Sliding beneath the table unseen, they cringed away from Clyde's size tens. The carpet smelled like stale French fries.

"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 department'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."

MAX 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.