Shirley Murphy - Cat to the Dogs

Harper smiled. "Eleven, most of them from the three cars we pulled over. Clothes, too. Big floppy coats and skirts. One of the women was in the midst of changing, Blake caught her with her skirt around her knees. Brennan and West are at Birtd's talking to witnesses." He settled back, sipping his coffee.

"Those are Greenlaw women."

Harper nodded. "I'm afraid so."

"My God, poor Lucinda. I wonder if she has any idea."

"They were booked in with all kinds of aliases. These people have been working up and down the coast for nearly two weeks. Here in the village, they've kept it low-key, until today. In most instances, the store owners thought it was just a couple of annoying customers. They didn't know what was coming down until the troublemakers left, and they found the cash drawer cleaned out."

"One of the drivers," Wilma said, "in the blue T-Bird, was a probationer of mine. Sam Fulman. Just a few minutes ago his car was parked over on Ocean." She gave him the license plate number that, earlier, she had given to Brennan.

Harper motioned an officer back to the desk and sent him to impound the T-Bird and bring Fulman in for questioning.

"I haven't seen Fulman in ten years."

"And he's a Greenlaw?"

"Shamas's cousin. A real loser. There are a few darker-haired, lighter-boned members of the family."

"We have two witnesses on store diversions up the coast that might be reliable. If we can ID the same women, here, and with your ID of Fulman, we might make something stick"

"Might?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Most of these cases walk, Wilma. You get them in court, no witness seems able to make a solid ID. Different hair color, different way of dressing, and the witness isn't that sure. And these people turn the courtroom into the same kind of circus, shouting, mouthing off in a language you can't understand."

Harper shrugged. "A judge can charge them with contempt and lock them up, but besides disrupting the whole courtroom, they'll trash the jail cells-those women can tear up a jail worse than a hundred male felons. And most times, the judge gets so tired of the noise and confusion in his courtroom and no solid witnesses, that he'll do anything to be rid of them.

"I've never seen you so negative."

"You've never seen me faced with one of these renegade families. You heard them up there at the desk, couldn't get anything intelligible out of them. That's the way they are in court. You can lock them up, but if your witnesses are uncertain, you've got nothing to hold them. Then usually, their hotshot attorney shows up and offers full restitution." Harper shook his head.

"All the shopkeeper wants is his money and the value of the goods they stole. Lawyer puts a little pressure on him and offers plenty of cash, and he'll drop charges."

Harper shrugged, and lit a cigarette. "Without charges, they walk."

He set down his coffee cup. "Your Sam Fulman-did he ever tell you anything about the Greenlaw family? Anything more than you know from Lucinda?"

"He said the clan is thick, that most of them come from one small town in North Carolina. Donegal, I think Three-story brick houses, long, curved drives, swimming pools and private woods, landscaped acreage. He claimed they practically own the town."

Wilma watched the officers settling back to their desks, the room calm now, and quieter. "Fulman told me the families all work together, but he never would say just what kind of work-the construction trades, I remember him saying once, rather vaguely. He said they all intermarry, all adhere to the family rules. Much, I suppose, like a tightly controlled little Mafia.

"Fulman is something of a renegade among them. He didn't knuckle under like the rest, didn't behave as the elders dictated. He moved out when he was young, came out to the coast, set up his own operation. I had him on probation for a chop shop. Later, at the time I got him revoked, he'd gone into business with Shamas."

"What kind of business?"

"Selling machine tools."

"What about Shamas's other business affairs?"

"When Lucinda and Shamas met, she told me, he was a rep for a roofing company in Seattle. Before they left Washington State, he had started the machine-tool company and entered into several related businesses- something about electroplating tools."

Harper swiveled his chair around, reaching for the coffeepot. "When they moved down here, he kept those enterprises?"

"That's what Lucinda told me, but she was pretty vague. Evidently Shamas didn't like to talk to her about business, would never give her any details. Never told her anything about bank balances, just gave her an allowance."

She looked at her watch. "Do you have anything on the Chambers stabbing? How is he?"

"He's doing okay. Doctors got the lung reinflated and repaired-he was lucky. He should be home in a few days. He says he didn't know his assailant, that he got only a glimpse. Said he'd stopped to use the phone, there by the rest rooms, that he was out walking and forgot he had an early appointment. The guy grabbed him from behind, a regular bear hug, and shoved the knife in his chest. Chambers fell and lay still, hoping the guy would think he was dead. His assailant heard someone coming and ran."

"Wouldn't that pretty well clear Lucinda? Grabbing him from behind hard enough to hold him and stab him?" Lucinda had been questioned as a matter of routine because she'd been in the area and had reported the body, but also because Chambers was on board the Green Lady when Shamas drowned.

"I'd think it would clear her. Though she's tall, almost as tall as Chambers; and the miles she walks every day, she has to be in good shape for…"

"For an old lady?" Wilma grinned. "But what would be her motive?" She glanced again at her watch. "Didn't know it was so late-Sheril will pitch a fit, want to know if I've been shopping on her time." She rose, picked up her sack lunch from his desk, looked hard at Harper. "She's such a bitch to work for. You don't know, Max, the bad luck I've wished on you."

Harper smiled, and rose, and walked with her to the front. The squad room was silent now, and half deserted, only a few officers at their desks. Wilma wondered, as she pushed out the door, how long the Greenlaw women would stay in jail before someone approached the Birtds with enough cash so they would drop the charges and Harper would be forced to release them. She stopped in a little park to eat her lunch, enjoying ten minutes of solitude, then headed for work. And it was not until the next afternoon that she learned, with amazement, that Clyde, too, had been arrested, that same afternoon. That her good friend had, uncharacteristically, also run afoul of Molena Point law enforcement-that about the time the Greenlaw women were set free, and Sam Fulman was picked up for questioning then released, Clyde, too, was cooling his heels behind bars.

THE TIME was past midnight. Rain beat against Wilma's shuttered bedroom windows; a fire burned in the red-enameled woodstove, its light flickering across the flowered quilt and the white-wicker furniture. Wilma sat in bed reading, Dulcie curled up beside her.

She had spent the evening at her desk, poring over a map of the U.S., tracking the locations of auto-loan scams across the country, using an NCIC list that Max Harper had printed out for her from the police computer. The report covered the last six months, but the operations that interested her specifically had occurred within the last few weeks.

Her map bristled with pins, but the work had gone slowly, as she had not only to locate the scams, but then to find routes according to dates, marking each route with different colored pins. Some of the trails were circuitous, moving back and forth among half a dozen cities or to several adjoining metropolitan areas.