Shirley Murphy - Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Coming_Home_BookFi

Max nodded. “Fingerprints. Photographs. Thirty-seven years old. Five ten, about 140 pounds. Jet black, straight hair. Shoulder length, in a forties-style pageboy. Unusually white skin. Lean, bony face. Dark brown eyes, almost black. Some ten years ago, she worked the blackjack tables at Harrah’s, in Vegas. California driver’s license, no rap sheet.”

Listening to the description of Pearl, Joe grew as edgy as if he had ticks in his fur. Tall woman, thin, bony face. How long had that tall blonde been at the motel? How long had she been in the village? In his opinion, if this was Pearl Toola with a bleach job, a short haircut, and a permanent, she hadn’t improved her looks much. He thought about the photographs of Benny’s lean, sour-looking mother. Why hadn’t he recognized her tonight, after having looked at Maudie’s album? Why hadn’t he known the sharp-faced blonde at once, despite the straw-colored hair?

Max said, “Pearl embezzles nearly a mill, keeps a second set of books, and before she skips she kills the one coworker who might know enough to turn her in. She already hates Caroline, for presumably stealing her husband, so she does a thorough job of it, and kills them both.”

When Max and Lakey hung up, Max filled Kathleen in.

“So Pearl,” Kathleen said, “thinking Maudie might have seen her the night she shot them, follows Maudie here.”

“But why didn’t Caroline blow the whistle on Pearl at once?” Max said. “Turn her in when she first found out?”

“Because of the child?” Kathleen said. “Because with the trauma of the divorce, she didn’t want that dumped on the kid, too? To know his mother was a criminal and was in jail? Maybe she meant to wait until the missing money was discovered, and then hand over the evidence?”

“Or was Caroline already blackmailing Pearl?” Max said. “And that was why Pearl killed her?”

On the bookshelf, Joe Grey was thinking that the only thing the two hadn’t nailed down—and he felt sure they were right on target—was Pearl’s connection to the invasions. If that really was Pearl in the motel, if he wasn’t imagining the likeness. Had Dallas picked up any prints in the motel? But Pearl had no record, so there’d be nothing on her in AFIS. And why would Pearl, arriving in Molena Point following Maudie, take part in a series of attacks that seemed to have nothing to do with the murders or the embezzlement? What exactly was her connection to the invasions?

But that was puzzling only until he remembered that Pearl knew Kent Colletto. That she’d been coming up to the village every summer for years, with Maudie’s family, ever since Benny was a baby, that Pearl had known the Colletto boys from the time they were little kids. The tomcat, sandwiched among the volumes of the California Penal Code, sat thinking.

So far, the police had no reason to compare the blonde’s prints—provided they’d found any—with the prints on L.A.’s report. No reason to connect the invasions to Pearl, no lead to Pearl in AFIS. The tomcat fidgeted with his need to join the discussion, to suggest to the chief they compare Pearl’s prints to the woman in the motel. And the only way he could communicate with the chief was by phone, unseen, unrecognized. He thought about the dark, empty offices opening along the hall, all those unattended phones so quickly accessible. He had only to slip into any office and place a call to Max.

Right. As far as he knew, all these phones were on one central system; he’d never heard an officer mention a private line. The minute he pressed the speaker button, June Alpine would see the light flashing up at the front and, knowing the offices were empty, she’d pick up to see who was there.

No, he’d have to hightail it back to Wilma’s house. Or go on home and hope everyone was asleep, that he wouldn’t have to listen to one of Clyde’s lectures. Sometimes he wished Max would discover he could talk, so he could stop breaking his butt trying to find a phone. Yawning, attempting to look bored, he dropped from the bookshelf to the floor. He guessed Max had known he was there, because the chief didn’t look surprised. Joe sat lazily washing his paws, trying to calm his pounding heart, then sauntered sleepily past the desk to the door and padded away up the hall.

At the dispatcher’s counter, the problem was how to get out of the building. If Mabel Farthy had been on duty, she would have risen from her desk at his first yowl, would have let him out at once, complaining with good-natured amusement. He glanced toward the holding cell, but that ten-foot jump from the bunk across the room up to the high window was different from dropping down; that leap would be a killer. He could imagine himself falling flat on his face on the concrete, splattering like a cartoon cat.

Yowling stridently at June, he fussed and paced until at last she scowled over the counter at him, rose, and let him out. “You keep up that kind of behavior, the chief’ll nail your hide to the wall.”

No he won’t, Joe thought smugly as the petite young dispatcher opened the glass door for him.

“Go catch a mouse,” she said flippantly, “cats don’t belong in a cop shop.” As she locked the bulletproof glass behind him and flounced back to her desk, Joe Grey ran like hell, heading for home and a phone.

30

IN THE DAMEN kitchen, the sun’s first light shone through the bay window brightening the granite counter and warming Joe Grey’s back, where he sat watching Ryan flip pancakes. She was dressed in work jeans, a yellow sweatshirt, a frilly apron, and fuzzy pink slippers, her heavy boots waiting in the living room by the front door. The smell of pancakes, frying bacon, and warming syrup was so strong it made the tomcat drool. The table was set with three places, two with the conventional mats, napkins, and silverware, one with Joe Grey’s plastic place mat printed with a motif of running mice, a gift from Ryan that might be a bit cutesy, but that amused the tomcat. Clyde, in their bachelor days, had never thought to offer him a place mat. Except maybe the want ads, which neither of them ever read. Across the room on the flowered easy chair, little white Snowball lay curled up alone, purring with the warmth of the cushions into which she had burrowed, waiting for her can of gourmet cat food to be served up. Beside her chair Rock waited, too, held in place only by Ryan’s earlier command to “Down. Stay.” His pale yellow eyes never left the stove, his sighs were frequent and dramatic.

“Don’t forget the kippers,” Joe told Ryan, licking a front paw. “Pancakes are nothing without kippers.”

She turned to look at him. “Pancakes with kippers are as disgusting as it gets. You’re lucky Clyde and I put up with the smell of fish first thing in the morning. And what about poor Rock? You know he loves kippers, and you know he can’t have them. I think you eat them just to tease him.”

“Rock understands,” Joe told her.

“He doesn’t understand at all. He thinks it’s unfair that you get treats that he can’t have. It’s hard enough for him to deal with a cat giving him orders, without tormenting him with your dietary indulgences. Don’t you ever think how he feels?”

“He’s happy—he loves obeying my orders,” Joe told her smugly. A less intelligent dog might have problems with a speaking cat giving him obedience commands, but Rock had learned early on to accept Joe’s strangeness with good will. The big Weimaraner, at first shocked and then curious when the gray cat spoke to him, had come to respect the tomcat’s talents, though still he liked to tease Joe, with a keen, doggy humor.