Shirley Murphy: Cat Raise the Dead

"Yes, and also an X-ray of an old multiple fracture of her left ankle."

"I remember that. She told me she broke her ankle when she was in college, on a ski trip. That old break pained her a lot in bad weather. And so the X-rays matched?"

"They did," Harper said. He supposed he was an incongruous figure, uniformed and armed, sitting at the delicate garden table in the beflowered patio of Casa Capri. At their small tea table, besides himself and Mae Rose, sat young Dillon Thurwell and Susan Dorriss. Susan had graduated from her wheelchair to a metal walker-it stood beside her chair-and the brown poodle lay beside it, napping. The entire Pet-a-Pet group was in attendance, the occasion a celebration hosted by the new management. At the next table were seated Clyde, Wilma, Bonnie Dorriss, and old Eula Weems.

"If the finger came from Jane's grave," Mae Rose said, "then the other grave, the open grave of Dolores Fernandez, that was just a red herring?"

"It was," Harper said. "After the dog dug into Jane's grave and took the little finger bone, Adelina had Dolores Fernandez's grave dug up to make it look like the finger came from there; and they put new sod on Jane's grave. Adelina must have had some wild idea- some silly hope, that we'd take the incident at face value, wouldn't bother to run the finger through the lab."

"But it didn't work," Mae Rose said with satisfaction. The little, doll-like woman amused Harper. Despite her fragile appearance, she'd been bull-stubborn in her insistence that Jane and the others had met foul play.

"When the dog dug up Jane's grave, that was when Adelina started putting out poison." Mae Rose shook her head. "Adelina had a regular shell game going, switching patients around."

"That's exactly what she had. It started when a Dorothy Martin died, fifteen years ago. We've identified Dorothy, too, from X-rays of her dental work. Adelina buried her secretly in the old cemetery, and told the other residents that Mrs. Martin had been moved over to Nursing, and she continued to collect the two thousand dollars a month for Dorothy's care. Though I guess the fee, now, is more like three thousand."

"Three thousand and up," Susan Dorriss said.

"Adelina did the same with the next two patients," Harper said. "It's possible both of those were natural deaths, forensics is still examining the remains. Neither death was reported, and the trust officers went right on paying.

"All three patients had bank-appointed trust officers looking after their incomes, paying their bills, people who had never even seen their clients. Bank trust officers aren't expected to visit their charges; they haven't the time, and they aren't paid to do that.

"And none of those three woman had any close relatives who might pop in for a visit. If a trust officer phoned to schedule a visit for some business reason, Renet did a stand-in, made herself up like the deceased."

"So Adelina buried her charges," Mae Rose said, "and went on collecting their monthly fees. No wonder she drives a new Bentley."

Harper nodded. "Adelina was able to keep most of her scam from her Spanish-speaking nurses, and she nearly doubled the salaries of the three supervisors. She's always hired nurses who wouldn't be apt to talk, who don't have much English and who've had a problem with the law. Women she can control through threats and blackmail." He sipped his tea, wishing he had a cup of coffee, and studied Mae Rose's overburdened wheelchair-all her worldly possessions. "That doll in your blue bag, Mrs. Rose, is that the doll that Jane had, where you found the note?"

Mae lifted the faded doll and fluffed its dry, yellow hair. "Yes, this is the doll I gave Jane. The doll that was Jane's cry for help." She gave Harper a long look. "A cry that didn't arrive until after she was dead." She stroked the doll sadly, and laid it in her lap beside the brindle cat curled asleep on the pink afghan. "Was there evidence of who-which one of those three-actually killed Jane? And of who buried her?"

"None," Harper said. "We know only that she was given a lethal dose of Valium mixed with other drugs. Drug traces in the body are a cause of death which is still detectable long after bruises and flesh wounds can no longer be found. We're assuming that either Adelina or Teddy buried her; forensics found hairs from both suspects around the grave. The lab had to separate them out from some animal hairs that forensics collected at the site, all of it was mixed together in with leaves and dirt and grass."

"What kind of animal hairs?" Dillon said.

"Cat hair," Harper said. "Some stray cat."

He did not look at Clyde, though Clyde was watching him. He was still ridiculously edgy about Damen's gray tomcat. The cat was, at the moment, perched above them in the orange tree, presumably asleep, though twice he had caught a thin gleam of yellow through its narrowly slitted eyes. Aware of the cat, he felt as he did too often lately, edgy, nervous, wondering if he was losing his grip.

The cat had got mixed into the case in a way that left him uncertain and short-tempered, left him so edgy he wouldn't care if he never saw another cat. Cats in the cemetery, some cat racing through the house with Renet in hot pursuit, cat hairs around the doll which had been set up for him to find. And the tiny indentations in the doll's arm, those marks, the lab swore, were the marks of a cat's teeth.

None of this helped his digestion. None of it was comfortable to think about.

If this had been the first time these two cats had got mixed up in a case, he'd shrug and chalk it up to coincidence, forget about it.

But it was not the first time. This was the third murder case within a year that, one way or another, these two cats had seemed to blunder into, leaving their marks, leaving their own perplexing trail.

And the worst part was, he had an uncomfortable feeling this would not be the last time.

Dulcie, lying on Mae Rose's lap, yawned and curled deeper into the pink afghan, pushing aside the doll. She had not looked up when Harper mentioned cat hairs on the grave, nor had she glanced up into the tree. Joe, crouched up there among the leaves, would be highly amused that Harper had sent cat hairs to the lab. If she dared look up at him, she'd see that stupid grin on his face. Grinning out through the leaves as smug as Alice's Cheshire cat.

Harper hadn't looked up at Joe, either. She hoped he wasn't putting some things together that were best left apart.

Still, if he was, she couldn't help it. He couldn't prove anything. She and Joe had, she considered, done an admirable job to assist Harper. But he'd never know for sure. If he insisted on feeling nervous, that was his problem.

"It's so strange," Susan said, "how the stolen doll got into the graveyard-and why Adelina's black book was hidden under her desk. Surely she'd have some better place to hide it." She glanced at Dillon. "It's almost like a child's prank, moving evidence around."

Dillon looked blank Harper helped himself to another slice of lemon cake from the plate in the center of the table. Some details of the case did not bear close scrutiny.

They had a solid case, but there were unanswered questions that could prejudice the prosecution. He just hoped defense didn't claim the notebook was tainted evidence. They'd have to wait and see. Certainly the department had done a fine job sorting out the information in Adelina's black book, checking its entries against the backgrounds of her nurses.

The black book had contained, as well as the dossiers of two dozen employees, a separate sheet of paper with a code list of the dead patients. No name, just a number, with a birth date, and apparently the date he or she was secretly buried. Some had a second date when that person was given a public funeral and some other body buried. He had, when he removed the coded paper, found caught in the spine of the book one short dark hair, a hair varied in color like the hair of a dark tabby cat.