Shirley Murphy - Cat Playing Cupid

Ryan laughed, and blushed a little. "I expected someone would. I didn't think Clyde would remain a bachelor forever, he didn't seem the type-despite his philandering ways."

"That's in the past for Clyde," he said reassuringly. "Where will you put the new studio? You plan to enclose the deck over the carport?"

"No, the studio will go just behind it." She crossed Clyde 's study to the glass doors that led to the upstairs deck. "We'll leave the deck, put the studio back there, over the dining end of the kitchen-if we can get the permit."

She turned, pushing back her short, dark hair. "After the battle I had on the last job, I'm not looking forward to another hassle with city planning-to a fight that has nothing to do with standard building codes. I should be used to it, it goes with the territory. But I never will be." She looked up at him, her green eyes angry. "I understand sensible restrictions to protect the lovely setting of the village, but-"

"But what you can't abide," Mike said, "is high-handed authoritarianism for no reason but personal power."

She laughed. "Those people don't own the world," she said. "But they sure like to think they do." Molena Point's building codes and the patronizing attitude of its building inspectors were a sore point among most of the village contractors, except for those few who passed sufficient sums under the table.

"What if they won't okay the studio?"

She studied him. "We're not buying them off, if that's what you're thinking. I can take over the downstairs guest room, though I'd rather not. Clyde likes having a guest room, and so do I. And I really want a studio with a view, I like to look down on the rooftops when I'm working. That's why I like the apartment.

"If they flat-out refuse the permit," she said, "if I get tired of fighting them, and if you've found a place of your own by then, I'll keep the apartment as my studio. Not as convenient for late-night fits of inspiration, but I can have a small setup here, in a corner of the study. I really do need the apartment's downstairs garage for equipment storage. If I don't have that, I'll have to rent space somewhere."

She pulled a blueprint from a stack of papers on Clyde 's bookshelf and unrolled it on the desk; as Mike looked over the studio's floor plan, she studied her dad. "You had a little tiff with Dallas?"

He looked at her and shrugged. "A small difference of opinion, nothing important."

She waited.

"Something about the Carson Chappell cold case," he said.

Ryan hid a smile. "Lindsey Wolf is lovely."

Ignoring that, he studied the blueprint intently, looking over the interior elevations, nodding with approval at the high, slanted ceiling with its long skylights and the small, raised fireplace in the far corner between the glass walls, its stone matching that in the bedroom.

"Plenty of room for my drafting table," she said, amused by her dad, "for file cabinets, computer, and a deep storage closet here for drawings and blueprints." Was he getting serious again about Lindsey? Ryan thought Lindsey was the only woman he had ever really cared about since her mother died.

"The plan's perfect," Mike said, "and it would be nice to be able to work at home. Not to mention my being able to keep the apartment," he teased. "I'll think good thoughts."

"Maybe the construction gods will smile. Maybe, by the time Clyde and I get back from our honeymoon, the permit will be waiting for us. But I'm not holding my breath." Her green eyes searched his. "Are you okay with staying here while we're gone, taking care of Rock and the cats? I could take Rock up to the Harpers'."

"I'm looking forward to having a dog again, even if he is only on loan. Looking forward to long runs on the beach, walks around the village, taking our meals at the patio restaurants. With that handsome fellow at my side, I can pick up any good-looking woman I choose."

"You're an old rounder, you know that? Tell me more about the cold case." Watching him, she curled up comfortably on the leather couch, sipping her beer.

Mike stretched out in the club chair, his long, lanky frame easy in his worn jeans and faded T-shirt. "You're pumping me, but okay."

He felt uncomfortable telling her about meeting Lindsey on the street earlier that evening. "I'd already read the file," he said. "I wasn't sure I wanted to work this case, but it has the best contacts. Not only Lindsey, but her sister and some of the crowd they ran with when Chappell disappeared, quite a few of their friends still in the village."

"I always thought that was a strange thing to do," she said, "to go off camping just before his wedding." Glancing down at her engagement ring, she frowned.

"That won't happen to you and Clyde-you couldn't drive Clyde away with a club."

"I know," she said, smiling smugly. But still a coldness held her, a sudden sense of misfortune, and she saw again the day of Charlie and Max's wedding. The explosion in the church, debris suddenly hanging in the sky then starting to fall in slow motion, and a split second later the deafening boom of the blast. Parts of the church walls flying everywhere, mixed with white flower petals floating down and bits of silver fluttering all around her, silver foil that forensics would later identify as the elegant wrapping paper in which a "wedding gift" had been detonated remotely.

She thought, shivering, about her own wedding day tomorrow, about the gathering at the Harpers' house-so many law enforcement people in the wedding party, so many prime targets. And for a long moment, an unreasonable wave of dread held Ryan cold and still.

D ON'T LET THE EXPLOSIONat the Harpers' wedding eat at you," Mike said. "Things like that don't happen twice. Or…" He looked at her more closely. "Is there something else bothering you?" Sounds of the party drifted upstairs to them, and to the tomcat listening from the adjoining room beneath the king-size bed. "You don't have second thoughts about marrying Clyde?" Mike asked. "You're not regretting this new step in your life?"

"Oh, it isn't anything like that. It's just…Maybe I'm a bit tired."

There was something else, of course, something she couldn't share with her dad, ever. "It's…someone else's secret," she said inadequately, "that I'm committed to keep."

"Well, that's okay, then," he said easily. Then, "You care if I take Rock in to the station now and then? He'll be bored out of his mind if I leave him here all day, this breed was never meant to be idle."

"Take him, if Max doesn't mind. Rock loves a crowd, it would be good for him." She studied her dad. "Dallas and I've talked about training him to track. He tracked Charlie when she was kidnapped, he figured it out on his own, and showed a fine natural skill. But then, he loves Charlie."

"No question he's smart and eager," Mike said. "He's how old? Three? It's easier to start a puppy. But Rock…the way he watches a person, wanting to be part of the action, wanting to do something. He needs some kind of work."

She knew that too well. A dog like Rock, with so much desire and drive-he was too fine an animal to be lying around doing nothing, or looking for trouble. But she never seemed to have the time to give him what he needed, there weren't enough hours in the day.

From the shadows beneath the bed, Joe Grey listened first with amusement, then with rising interest at the idea of training Rock to track, to find felons or lost children. This, the tomcat realized, might solve the problem that had been eating at him. The dilemma for which, until this moment, he'd had no solution.

Rock could find the body that neither Charlie nor the secret snitches dared report. I can teach Rock to track! I can train a tracking dog in ways no human ever dreamed! And then…