Shirley Murphy - Cat Spitting Mad

Stubby Baker's apartment was a handsome penthouse on the third floor above a row of exclusive clothing shops. The kit led Joe Grey and Dulcie there as if she had invented surveillance. "That's where he lives," she hissed, clinging to an oak branch beside Joe, three floors above the street. "Right in there across that balcony behind those big glass doors, the man who kicks cats."

From the tree in which they crouched, the cats looked down on a long tiled balcony and a pair of many-paned French doors. Despite the bright day, a light was on within. Baker sat at a dining table littered with papers, just inside the glass doors. He was a tall well-knit man totally unlike his nickname, his dark hair neatly trimmed, his smooth skin well tanned. A man the women would find appealing.

The apartment had high, dark beams against a white plaster ceiling, white walls, a skylight through which the sky shone blue and clear. Used brick formed the floor and the corner fireplace, beside which hung eight small, well-framed reproductions of Richard Diebenkorn's landscapes, gleaming rich as jewels. An opening behind the fireplace apparently led to a bedroom. Before the fire, three tan leather couches formed a luxurious conversational group, their cushions deep and inviting, perfect for kneading claws.

Baker seemed totally absorbed in the official-looking documents he was reading, making occasional notes or corrections. He wore clean chinos and a tan golf shirt. Expensive sandals graced his thin, tanned feet. He gave every impression, both in his person and in his environment, of a well-to-do businessman of some stature, not an ex-con with a laundry sheet that would stretch a city block.

The cats, slipping along the branch closer to the window, had a fine view down onto the papers that occupied him: documents marked with seals and notary stamps, and a land map marked off into individual parcels. Pens and a ruler were aligned beside it. Joe read the larger print upside down, a talent he had developed during interminable breakfasts when Clyde hogged the front page.

"Deeds of trust," he said softly. "Copies of wills and property transfers." He studied the land map. "The way the coastline runs, that could be the Pamillon estate."

On an end table, among a clutter of dog-eared paperbacks, lay a stack of bills. The paperbacks didn't seem to fit Baker's image; the covers looked like lurid, cheap fare. The utility bills were of greater interest, particularly the phone bill on top, showing half a dozen long-distance calls to one Marin County number.

Joe peered closer, committing the seven digits to memory just as he had committed his own phone number, Dulcie's, and several numbers for Max Harper.

He might not want to explore some of his more bizarre inherited talents, but the memory bank within his gray sleek head was of considerable use to the tomcat.

Marin County, some thirty miles north of San Francisco, was the home of San Quentin State Prison. And Lee Wark hadn't been the only convicted murderer incarcerated there thanks to Harper.

Repeating to himself the number and prefix, he was trying to figure how to get inside the apartment and paw through the rest of the bills when Dulcie hissed, staring down at the street.

Almost directly beneath the balcony, in the line of halted traffic waiting for pedestrians to cross, sat an open black Mercedes convertible, its radio blaring rock music, its driver staring above her up toward Baker's windows. Her honey-colored hair was tied back with a yellow scarf. Her tan shorts revealed long, tanned legs. Her brown eyes scanned the portion of French doors that she must be able to see above the angle of the balcony. Beside her on the front seat sat three loaded grocery bags. The cats could see peanut butter, a jar of jelly, some kind of cereal. The traffic moved on.

Dulcie watched narrowly as the convertible slid away. "What was she looking at?" Dulcie said.

"Maybe at us." Joe leaped to the roof, away from the branch and Baker's windows. "Maybe she's a cat lover."

"Oh, right." She joined Joe and the kit on the roof, her green eyes glowing. "Could she be checking on Baker? Is there a connection between Crystal and Baker?"

"I don't-" Joe began. But Dulcie was gone, streaking across the rooftops, following Crystal's convertible as it crept in the line of slow-moving cars. Joe saw her disappear over the edge and reappear on the roofs of the next block, lashing her tail with annoyance-very likely after dodging too close to slow-moving wheels. He wished she wouldn't do that. The village's daytime streets, though crowded and slow, belonged to the cars of upscale tourists. That, he had pointed out to Dulcie, was why they used the rooftops.

The early-morning village streets, before the tourists were out of their beds, boasted more careful drivers. Those streets smelled better, too. Smelled of the sea and of newly watered gardens, while the midday village smelled, to a cat, of exhaust fumes-deodorants-shaving lotion-perfume-chewing gum-restaurant cooking and too many human bodies.

Joe caught up to Dulcie, the kit crowding close, and they followed the black Mercedes for eight blocks, crossing the streets twice among the feet of the tourists, enduring endless remarks about the cute kitties and constant attempts to pet them, dodging away from reaching hands.

But when Crystal's car turned right, traffic moved swiftly again and the cats couldn't keep up; they ran until they were panting. Standing on the sidewalk, Joe stared after the Mercedes, frustrated. Joe and Dulcie didn't see the black SL again until the following week.

But the kit saw Crystal's car later that evening and followed it, alone. Galloping along the sidewalk, dodging between tourists' feet, she was wildly excited to be on a trail that the two big cats had lost.

The time was just dusk. She had been out for a prowl through Jolly's alley, because no matter how well Wilma fed her, she could never get filled up, and Jolly's had such delicious offerings, all that lovely smoked salmon.

Leaving the alley licking her whiskers, she saw the open Mercedes go by, saw Crystal's tawny hair blowing and smelled Crystal's perfume. She followed, running seven blocks after the car but careful about crossing streets, followed until Crystal pulled into a drive and parked before a closed garage door.

Crystal hurried up the wooden stairs, the kit following so close on her heels that when Crystal pushed in through the front door it slammed in the little cat's face. Backing away, the kit leaped to the windowsill, pressing her nose to the glass. There was a curtain drawn across.

Rearing up, she couldn't see over it.

Taking the direct approach she mewled at the door, her cries ever louder and more desperate, in the age-old classic plea: I am abandoned, I am starving, I am so terribly hungry and cold. She worked herself into a such a frenzy, convinced herself so well of her plight, that she was all a-tremble when Crystal flung open the door and dumped a pan of water in her face.

The kit fled for Wilma's house.

DALLAS GARZA arrived in Molena Point at 8 A.M., the morning after the three cats spied on Stubby Baker. He was a big, broad-shouldered man dressed in civilian clothes-faded jeans, a tan shirt, charcoal V-necked sweater, and a tan corduroy sport coat, clothes that blended well into the milieu of Molena Point, comfortable layers to be removed as the fog burned off and the day turned warm. Garza's thick black hair was trimmed short, in a well-styled, no-nonsense haircut. His chiseled, square face, brown as oak, seemed carved into lines that were all business-a look that won immediate confidence from law enforcement and nervous reluctance from those who would screw with him.