Shirley Murphy - Cat Playing Cupid

Partner Ray Gibbs, when he had originally been questioned about Carson 's disappearance, had seemed open and cooperative. He had been straightforward about Nina leaving him, and had produced a letter from her saying that she would not be back. She did not mention divorce, and Gibbs had speculated that she might not want a divorce, hoping one day to inherit his share of the firm. He said she didn't know that wasn't possible, he was sure she didn't know the terms of the incorporation agreement. A photocopy of her letter was in the file, and the original had been booked in as evidence.

The plane tickets for Lindsey and Carson 's honeymoon turned up several months after Carson disappeared; they had been used for a reservation in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Carson Chappell. Neither the flight attendants or airport personnel had been able to describe the boarding couple. Officers had, a week after Chappell disappeared, found Nina Gibbs's car in short-term parking at the San Jose airport, but had turned up no flight ticket issued in her name.

Joe thought the simple solution, that Chappell and Nina Gibbs had run off together, should have resolved the case for Lindsey. But not so. She had kept after the department to search for him, and then later had continued the search on her own. It was during this time that Lindsey and Mike began to date.

Joe thought she must not have involved Mike in trying to find Carson or he would have gone into the department and read the file then. Maybe because Mike worked for the federal courts, his reading of the file might have presented a conflict of interest somewhere down the line? So Mike had deliberately kept his distance from the ongoing investigation? He watched Mike turn back to Kathleen's notes.

Lindsey told Kathleen that she'd known Nina Gibbs only casually, that because of Gibbs's and Chappell's partnership, they had attended the same functions, that Nina had been friendly on some occasions but withdrawn on others; in short, that they'd not been close. Joe was so intent on the notes about the Chappell & Gibbs partnership agreement that he didn't notice he was digging his claws into Mike's shoulder until Mike swore and pushed him away.

It took him a few minutes to get positioned on the pillow again, drawing a stern look from Flannery. According to the partnership agreement, if either partner became incapacitated, could not or would not participate as a working member of the firm, the court was to dissolve the company after a year, and the assets were to be sold. When Chappell didn't show in the allotted time, the firm was sold, Ray Gibbs received half the proceeds, and Chappell's mother the other half. Chappell & Gibbs had had a sound business, showing healthy annual profits, and there seemed to be no reason for either partner to have wanted out.

A recent notation at the bottom of the yellow sheet, written by Max Harper just a few months ago, said that Ray Gibbs had divorced Nina, who, as far as the department knew, had not reappeared, and that Gibbs and Ryder Wolf were living together, dividing their time between a San Francisco condo and an apartment on Dolores, in the village.

Finished with reading the memos, Mike set the file aside and leaned back among the pillows, lost in thought. From the look on his thin face, Joe guessed he was thinking not about Carson Chappell but about Lindsey; he sat stroking Joe so sensuously that Joe twitched and stared at him and backed away, his retreat jerking Mike from his reverie.

But it was some time before Mike rose to extinguish the fire. Joe, yawning, padded down to curl up against Rock, receiving a long, wet lick across his ears and nose. He'd grown almost used to dog spit, but soon his wet fur began to feel chilly. As he burrowed deeper against Rock to get warm, he wondered how long it would be before they had an ID on the Oregon body, wondered whether the Oregon investigators were thorough enough to come up with a sample of the DNA.

But DNA to match what ?

Was there, among the evidence the department had retained on Chappell, any item belonging to the killer that would produce the needed match to DNA found in Oregon? And, he wondered, when forensics began work on the body from the Pamillon ruins, could they get a match on that DNA? Would the lab find anything that might link that body to the Oregon corpse?

But why was he chasing after phantoms? Why was he so fixated on some relationship between two bodies that had lain, for so many years, some five hundred miles apart?

Well, he'd have his first look at the Pamillon grave in the morning, Joe thought, drifting off to sleep. And who knew what he and Dulcie and Kit would find?

He'd barely closed his eyes when he blinked suddenly awake, staring into the first light of dawn filtering in through the accordion shades. Rolling over, he looked at the clock-and came wide awake. Six bells. Dulcie would pitch a fit. He'd said he'd meet her and Kit before daylight-it was a long run up the hills to the Pamillon estate. Padding lightly across the bed, trying not to wake Mike, and only momentarily waking Rock, who sighed and rolled over, Joe fled down the hall, up the stairs to Clyde 's study, and onto the desk. Leaping to a rafter, he was through his cat door and into his tower-and smack into the stern faces of two scowling lady cats.

There they sat, chill and austere, coolly assessing him, their paws together, their ears at half-mast, regarding him as they would a rude and misbehaving kitten.

"Overslept?" Dulcie said. Her sleek, brown-striped tabby coat was immaculately groomed, every hair in place, her green eyes piercing him. Beside her, Kit's long tortoiseshell fur was every which way, as if she'd had no time to groom. Kit looked at him just as impatiently as Dulcie had, lashing her fluffy tail.

He thought of all kinds of excuses: that he'd overslept because he wasn't used to sleeping in the guest room, wasn't used to sleeping with a stranger whose snores were different from Clyde 's. But neither lady looked patient enough to listen to the shortest explanation, their twin stares said, We've been waiting an hour. The sun's nearly up! Come on, Joe. Move it!

Sheepishly he slipped past them and out through the tower window to the shingled roof and took off fast across the rooftops, Dulcie and Kit running beside him.

At Ocean Avenue they scrambled down a honeysuckle vine, crossed the empty eastbound lane, and turned to race up Ocean's wide, grassy median beneath the dark shelter of its eucalyptus and cypress trees, heading for the open hills, heading for the unidentified grave.

A BOVE THE RACING CATS,the Molena Point hills rose green with new grass, their emerald curves bright against heavy gray clouds; the damp grass soaked the cats' paws and fur as they raced ever higher above the village. If a cat had wings, Dulcie thought, running beside Joe and Kit, we'd fly over the hills, we'd see all our haunts below us, see all our world laid out…The scattered gardens and the dark oak woods, the red roofs of Casa Capri where those helpless old people were murdered. Janet Jeannot's studio, burned down when she was killed. We'd see Mama's house where I played lost kitty to spy on her crooked son, we'd see all the houses we've tossed, finding evidence. And just up there, she thought, pausing and rearing up to look, I'd see the broom bushes where Joe and I first met, where the moment we stood so close, face-to-face, after I'd watched him in the village, the moment he was so close to me, I knew that I loved him. And there above us, she thought, swerving closer to Joe through the fresh, damp grass, there where the ruins rise up like broken towers, there's where Charlie shot the man who kidnapped her.

Soon their paws pounded through the rubble of broken stone walls where they'd once seen a cougar, the beautiful prowling cougar that might have eaten them. The cougar, Dulcie thought, glancing at Kit, who so enchanted the tattercoat that she touched him while he slept-and then ran like hell.