Shirley Murphy - Cat Playing Cupid

"Why were you afraid?" Harper looked increasingly uncomfortable with her standing so close, but he refused to back off and give ground.

"If anything terrible had happened to Carson, I was afraid this letter would make Lindsey appear to be a suspect."

"Why is that?" Harper was having trouble keeping his temper. A nerve had started to twitch at the side of his face, matching the spark of impatience deep in his brown eyes.

"When you read the whole letter, you'll see. Nina told Lindsey she feared that her husband meant to kill her and Carson, that Ray would come after them, and that Ray had a gun. She begged Lindsey's forgiveness for going away with Carson, and asked Lindsey to take the letter to the police, said there was no one else she could trust to do it.

"Apparently, Lindsey didn't do that," Ryder said. "She must have received this right after they left. If she had brought it to you then, you might have extended the search for Carson. And I don't think I'd have found the letter. Wouldn't you have kept it as evidence?

"After Lindsey reported Carson missing, I was interviewed by one of your detectives. I didn't know about the letter then, of course. The detective mentioned nothing about Nina, didn't question me about her. Wouldn't he have, if he'd seen this?"

Harper remained silent.

"Then, when I found the letter, I was certain she'd never shown it to you. That upset me because if she'd brought it to you right away, you might have stopped whatever happened. I thought that because she didn't, that would make her look guilty, like some kind of accessory."

"So you thought all along," Harper said, "that something had happened to Carson?"

"I thought it might have. And then yesterday when I saw that newspaper article, the hiker's body up in Oregon…You said you had a copy of that?"

Harper nodded.

"I thought…I wondered if that could be Carson. That's why I came now, because of that hiker, because maybe this letter is right, maybe Ray did follow him and kill him."

"Why come to me at all if you're afraid Lindsey will be implicated?"

"I…I guess my conscience," she said demurely. "Though certainly Lindsey would never kill anyone, certainly she wouldn't follow Carson, no matter what he'd done. That's not in her nature.

"I'm sure she never owned a gun," Ryder said. "Like me, she's afraid of guns."

"Do you have the envelope this came in?"

"I didn't find it. Just the letter, tucked among her sweaters."

Harper was silent, his thin, leathered face as expressionless as stone.

"I know Lindsey would never deliberately withhold information. I think she was so upset, she just didn't think about what she should do. But…" She stepped so close to Max that Joe expected her to reach up and touch his face with those long, well-manicured fingers. Ryder Wolf's cherry nail polish exactly matched her red lipstick; when she looked up at Max, all Joe could see was lipstick and mascara-and all he could think was that he wanted a look at the letter.

Max tucked the plastic-wrapped letter into a file on his desk and moved toward the door, effectively herding Ryder Wolf out; she was moving reluctantly when Joe heard Mike Flannery's voice up at the dispatcher's counter, and a softer female voice-and immediately Ryder stepped back into the office, slipping around Max, putting herself out of sight of the hall.

But at this little maneuver, Max took Ryder's elbow and moved her firmly into the hall-where she came face-to-face with her sister.

Joe, slipping out from under the credenza, crouched behind Max in the doorway, watching.

Yes, this was the way he'd imagined Lindsey Wolf. Peaches and cream subtle, a treasure of cleanliness and soft tones that contrasted with her sister's bright, attention-demanding packaging.

Lindsey Wolf was a woman to turn heads, a woman any man would want to follow. Soft brown shoulder-length hair that changed color with the light. Hazel eyes lighter than Ryder's, with no harsh makeup, kind eyes touched with a smile. Her oval face was creamy smooth, and she wore only pale lipstick.

There was a strong resemblance in height and build, in the shape of their faces, and in their fine bone structure, but there the likeness ended in the two sisters. They looked at each other for a long moment, Lindsey's expression puzzled and questioning, Ryder's look stony. She drew herself up stubbornly, as if expecting Lindsey to scold or attack her.

"Why are you here?" Lindsey asked her.

"To inquire about that article in the paper." Ryder looked at her archly. "To see if there could be some connection with Carson Chappell. You have seen the article? A lost hiker, a man who was never found…"

"I saw it," Lindsey said. " Carson wasn't hiking in Oregon, he was here in California."

"That's what he told you."

"And you know differently? What do you know, Ryder?"

"I just thought I'd ask. See what the police might know. I didn't mean to step on any toes-or get you in trouble."

"Why would you get me in trouble? And why, after all this time, would you care?"

Captain Harper took in the exchange without expression, but Mike Flannery clearly showed his annoyance. Lindsey stepped back as Ryder edged past her up the hall toward the front door.

But when Max had seen her out, and Mike was escorting Lindsey down the hall toward Dallas 's lighted office, Max called Mike back. "Why don't you buy Lindsey a cup of coffee?" Max said, nodding toward the conference room. "Take a little break, give me a few minutes with Dallas on several matters."

Mike took Lindsey's arm, his eyes meeting Max's with a question that received only a level look, then guided her back up the hall toward the conference room, toward the smell of overcooked coffee.

I N CHARLIE'S BIGfamily kitchen, the coffee was freshly brewed; Wilma and Charlie had finished their pastrami sandwiches and were feasting on the first strawberries of the season, gleaming in a glass bowl on the table and liberally dusted with powdered sugar.

"This is a good time for you to start riding again," Charlie said. "Of course you don't forget. All your childhood years on a farm before you moved here, how could your body forget? Come on, finish your lunch and let's head out."

Wilma was not a timid person. And how often in the past years had she toyed with the idea of having a horse again? Now that Charlie had offered a place to keep a mount, how could she do otherwise than return to that freedom she'd known in childhood?

"The two of us together," Charlie said, "going up to the ruins, really would look less suspicious if Max finds out. Not that I mean to tell him, but…"

"It's been hard," Wilma said, "keeping secrets."

"As if I had a choice." Charlie rose to carry their dishes to the sink. "When Max proposed, you know that was my one concern, that I'd have to lie to keep the cats' secret." She looked desolately at Wilma. "I didn't know, then, half how hard that would be."

She put the remaining strawberries in the refrigerator and unplugged the coffeepot. "I'd always believed that in a good marriage you wouldn't ever have secrets, would never have to lie, that a solid marriage is based on trust.

"I still know that's true. But here I am lying to him nearly every day, or holding back information, which is the same thing."

"Most marriages," Wilma said wryly, "don't involve this kind of secret." She put their dishes in the dishwasher, they grabbed their jackets, locked the door behind them, and headed for the barn.

In the fenced-in pasture, the two big, half-breed Great Danes raced to the gate, anticipating a run, but Charlie, rubbing their ears, told them they had to stay home. They watched longingly as their master disappeared into the stable-she didn't want them following, nosing around the ruins and sniffing out the buried corpse. While that would be a natural way to "discover" the body, those two would tear up the grave, scatter the bones before she could stop them.