Joe pushed in through his cat door and headed for the kitchen, toward the cacophony of good-natured male voices and the click of poker chips. He heard someone pop a beer, heard cards being shuffled. When he heard Clyde belch and politely excuse himself, he knew there were ladies present. And that meant a better-than-usual spread from Jolly's Deli. He could already smell the corned beef, and wished he hadn't eaten so much of that big cottontail rabbit.
As he quickly shouldered into the kitchen, the good smells wrapped him round, the thick miasma of smoked salmon and spiced meats and crab salad, this gourmetic bouquet overlaid with the malty smell of beer, and, of course, with a fog of cigarette smoke that he could do without. His first view of the group as he pushed in through the kitchen door was ankles and feet among the table legs: two pairs of men's loafers below neatly creased slacks; a pair of well-turned, silk-clad legs in red high heels; and Charlie Getz's bare feet in her favorite, handmade sandals. Clyde, as usual, was attired in ancient baggy jogging pants and worn, frayed sneakers. On beyond the table, Rube lay sprawled listlessly across the linoleum, the big Labrador's eyes seeking Joe's in a plea of lonely grieving.
Slipping between the tangle of feet, Joe lay down beside Rube, against the dog's chest. He tried to purr, to comfort the old fellow, but there was really no way he could help. He could only be there, another four-legged soul to share Rube's loneliness for Barney. Rube licked his face and laid his head across Joe, sighing.
Clyde had buried Barney in the backyard, but he had let Rube and the cats see him first. Dr. Firetti said that was the kindest way, so they would know that Barney was dead and would not be waiting for him to return. He said they would grieve less that way. But, all the same, Rube was pining. He and Barney had been together since they were pups.
Joe endured the weight of Rube's big head across his ribs until the old dog dozed off, falling into the deep sleep of tired old age, then he carefully slipped out from under the Labrador. Rube didn't stop snoring. Joe was crouched to leap to the table when he glanced toward the back door and saw the latest architectural addition to the cottage: Clyde had installed a dog door. He regarded it with amazement. The big plastic panel took up nearly half the solid-core back door, was big enough to welcome any number of interested housebreakers. Clyde had evidently reasoned that Rube would need something to distract him from grieving. Surely this new freedom, this sudden unlimited access to the fenced backyard, couldn't hurt. Too bad Barney wasn't here to enjoy it.
The other three cats would certainly find the arrangement opening new worlds. They had, heretofore, been subject to strict supervision. They were kept shut away from the living room so they couldn't go out Joe's cat door, and Clyde let them into the yard only when he was with them. In the mornings and evenings he let them have a long ramble, but strictly inside the yard. With the aid of a water pistol, he discouraged them from climbing the back fence. Two of the cats were elderly, and disadvantaged in any neighborhood fight, and the little white cat was so shy and skittish she was better off confined. Joe wondered what they'd make of their new liberty. Clyde must have been really worried about Rube to instigate this drastic change in routine.
As for himself, he had never been confined, not from the very beginning of their relationship, when he was six months old and Clyde rescued him from the San Francisco alleys. For the first week he'd been too sick to go out, too sick to care, but when he was himself again and wanted access to the outer world, and Clyde refused, he'd pitched one hell of a fit. A real beauty, a first-class, state-of-the-art berserker of snarling and biting and raking claws.
Clyde had let him out. And from that moment, they'd had a strict understanding. They were buddies, but Clyde would not under any circumstances dictate his personal life.
Leaving Rube sleeping, Joe leaped to the poker table, gave Clyde a friendly nudge with his head, and watched Clyde deal a down card. This group seldom played anything but stud. If the ladies didn't like stud, they could stay home. Max Harper glanced at his hole card, his expression unchanging. Harper had the perfect poker face, lean, drawn into dry, sour lines as if he held the worst poker hand in history.
Harper had gone to high school with Clyde-that would make him thirty-eight-but his leathery face, dried out from the sun and from too many cigarettes, added another ten, fifteen years.
The other officer was Lieutenant Sacks, a young rookie cop whose dark curly hair and devilish smile drew the women. Sacks had recently married, the heavily made-up blonde with the nice ankles and red shoes had to be his new wife. Joe thought her name was Lila. Absently he nosed at Clyde's poker chips until the neat round stacks fell over, spilling chips across the table.
"Oh, Christ, Joe. Do you have to mess around?"
He gave Clyde an innocent gaze. Clyde's second card was a four of clubs, and Joe wondered what he had in the hole. With Clyde's luck, probably not much. He tried to think what he'd done on poker nights before he understood the game. Just lain there, playing with the poker chips. The smell of the feast, which had been laid out on the kitchen counter, was making his stomach rumble. Clyde always served fancy, in the original paper plates and torn paper wrappers. He tried to remember his manners and not dive into Clyde's loaded plate, which sat on the table just beside him, but the smell of smoked salmon made his whiskers curl. Watching the bets, he studied the two women.
Charlie Getz was Clyde's current squeeze, a tall, liberally freckled redhead, friendly and easy, the kind of woman who did most of her own automotive repairs and didn't giggle. She wore her long red hair in a ponytail, bound back, tonight, with a length of what looked like coated electrical wire in a pleasant shade of green. Charlie tossed in her chips to raise Harper, and absently petted Joe, then handed him a cracker piled with smoked salmon. Across the table the little blonde watched this exchange with distaste.
He tried to eat delicately and not slop salmon onto the table, but when he took a second cracker, this time off Clyde's plate, the blonde shuddered, as if he'd contaminated something. Who the hell are you, to be so picky?
Though the fact did cross his mind that he'd recently been gnawing on a dead rabbit and had, moments before that, bitten and ripped at a flea-infested rat.
Sacks bet his king, and Lila folded on a six of hearts. On the last card, Clyde dealt himself another four. Across the table, Max Harper's lean, leathery expression didn't change. There ensued a short round of bluffing, then the hole cards came up and Harper took the pot on a pair of jacks. Charlie made a rude remark, rose, and filled her plate. She prepared a plate for Harper, too, and set it before him, then fixed a small plate for Joe, a nice dollop of crab salad and a slice of smoked salmon cut up small so he needn't make a mess, so he wouldn't have to hold it down with his paw and make a spectacle of himself chewing off pieces. Charlie did understand cats. He feasted, standing on the table beside her, thoroughly enjoying not only the fine gourmetic delicacies, but the scowling blonde's disgust.
When he had finished, he gave Lila a cool stare and curled up next to Charlie's chips, ducked his head under one paw, and closed his eyes. He was dozing off when Charlie said, "Oh, hell," and tossed her three cards toward the center of the table.
Joe reared his head to look. Harper had a pair of aces showing. With Harper's luck, probably his hole card was an ace. Clyde started to bet, glared at Harper, and changed his mind. He folded. Sacks and Lila folded.
"Bunch of gutless wonders," Harper said, gathering in the few chips. "What kind of pot is this?" He did not turn over his hole card, but shuffled it into the deck.
"His luck won't last," Sacks said. "It's the full moon- screws up everything." Sacks rose and opened the refrigerator, fetched five cans of beer, and handed them around.
Lila gave her bridegroom an incredibly sour look. "Honey, that's such a childish idea. I wish you wouldn't talk like you really believe in that stuff."
Harper looked at her. "Believe in what stuff?"
"In these silly superstitions-that the full moon changes your luck. The moon can't affect people. The moon-"
"Oh, it can affect people," Harper told her. "You'd better read the arrest statistics. Full moon, crime rate soars. Moon's full, you get more nutcases, more wife beatings, bar fights."
Charlie, petting Joe, had discovered his wounds. She sat examining them, parting the fur on his paw and leg, holding his head so she could see his cheek. Anyone else tried that-except Clyde-he'd get his hand lacerated. But for Charlie, he tried to behave, waited patiently as she rose, opened the kitchen junk drawer, and fetched the tube of Panalog. Returning to her chair, she began to doctor him, drawing from Lila a look like Lila might throw up.
"The presumption is," Harper said, "that the increase of crime is caused by the pull of the moon, same as the moon's pull on the ocean causes the tides. That people emotionally or mentally unstable lose what little grip they have on themselves, go a little crazy, teeter on the edge."
Lila studied Harper as if he had suddenly started speaking Swahili.
"It's the same with animals," Charlie said. "Ask any vet. More crazy things happen, more cat fights, runaway animals, dog bites during the full moon."
Lila looked at them as if they came from the moon. Joe had never seen a more closed, disgusted expression. The woman had no more imagination than a chicken. He wanted badly to set her straight, tell her how he felt when the moon was full-like he was going to explode in nine different directions. The full moon made him wild enough to claw his way through a roomful of Doberman pinschers.
But he couldn't speak; he could tell Lila nothing. She wouldn't buy it, anyway. She stared at Charlie and Max Harper as if they were retarded. "You can't really believe that?"
"Come down to the station," Harper said. "Take a look at the stat sheets, check them with the calendar. Right now, today, full moon. Seven domestic violence, five dog poisonings, and one little old lady brought in a human finger."
Lila shuddered.
Joe raised his head, watching Harper.
Clyde said, "A finger?"
"Nettie Hales's mother-in-law called the station." Harper sampled the crab salad from the plate Charlie had fixed for him. "The Haleses live up the valley, a little five-acre horse farm up there. Her terrier brought the finger in-just a bare bone, dirt-crusted."
Harper tilted his beer can, took a long swallow. "The old lady didn't know where her dog had been digging. Said he'd brought the bone in the house and was chewing on it." Harper laughed. "Gumming it. Old dog doesn't have a tooth in his head. Still, though, even gumming it didn't please the lab. Bone was fractured, and covered with dog slobber. Don't know what kind of evidence it might have destroyed."
Lila's blue eyes had opened wide. "You mean it might be a murder? Al, you didn't tell me there'd been a murder. You didn't tell me anyone was missing."
Sacks gave his new bride a sour look. "The finger is old, Lila. Old and dark and brittle. And when do I ever talk about that stuff?" He glanced uneasily at Harper.
Lila grew quiet.
It was Joe's turn to study the blonde. This woman isn't only a snob, she isn't too bright. He didn't realize he was staring until Clyde began to stroke his back, pressing down with unnecessary insistence. He lay down again and shuttered his eyes, tried to look sleepy.
Clyde said, "What did the lab come up with?"
"Nothing yet. That finger'll be sitting under a stack of evidence until Christmas. They're so backed up, the place looks like a rummage sale. The court's putting all criminal investigations on hold, waiting for the lab. Victims' relatives can't even collect insurance until the lab is finished, can't do anything until they get a death certificate. Thirty investigators working the county lab, and still they can't stay on top."
Harper sipped his beer. "That Spanish cemetery up the hills, it may have come from there-that old graveyard on the Prior place. It's only a mile from the Haleses' house." For Charlie's benefit, because she hadn't lived in Molena Point long, he said, "It was part of the original Trocano Ranch from Spanish land-grant days. Family members were buried at home, tradition to be buried on family land. Even after the land passed down to the children and grandchildren, the family still buried their dead there. The funerals-"
"Isn't there a law against that?" Lila interrupted.
Harper looked at her, a hard little pause as expressive as an explosion. He did not like interruptions. "No one would enforce that law, with the Trocanos," he said shortly. "Long after Maria Trocano married Daniel Prior, they buried family at home. Both Daniel's and Maria's graves are there.
"When Adelina came of age she sold off all but five acres. Kept the original old ranch house and the cemetery, turned the house into servants' quarters," Harper said. "Built that big new house for herself and Renet, and I guess Teddy's there part of the time. Turned that fine stable into garages. Not a horse left on the place.
"That was quite some stable in its day," Harper said. "Some of the finest thoroughbreds in California came off the Trocano Ranch."
He drained his beer. "When Mrs. Hales brought in the finger bone, we had a look at the old cemetery. Thought the dog might have dug into one of the old Spanish graves, but not a clod disturbed. The Priors keep the grounds nice, the grass mowed and trimmed around the old headstones.
"We've got three men out walking that area looking for where the dog was digging, and I've ridden every inch of that land. So far, nothing." Harper lived on an acre up in the hills several miles north of the Prior estate. He kept only one horse now, since his wife died.
"I told Mrs. Hales to keep her terrier in before he picks up something worse than a finger bone. The dog poisonings were in that area, too. Three dogs this week, dead of arsenic poisoning. We've put two articles in the Gazette telling people to keep their animals confined." He looked at Clyde. "That would go for cats, too. If I recall, that tomcat's a real roamer." He studied Joe intently. Joe gazed back at the police captain. Harper was talking more tonight than Joe had heard in a long time; Harper got like this only occasionally, got talky.
But it wasn't until Lila left to use the bathroom that Harper told Clyde, "One good thing turned up this week, we got a line on that old truck that hit Bonnie Dorriss's mother."
"That's good news. Wilma will be glad to hear it, too, she's fond of both Susan and Bonnie. How'd you get the lead? Another anonymous phone tip?"
"No, not another anonymous phone tip," Harper snapped. Those phone calls were a sore subject for Harper. He hadn't a clue that his anonymous snitch was sitting on the table not a paw's length from him.
"That auto paint shop out on 101," Harper said. "They fired one of their painters, Sam Hart." He grinned. "Getting fired made Hart real mad. The guy plays baseball with Brennan, and he told Brennan about this pickup he'd painted. It was a job his boss wanted done in a hurry, and the truck's owner had acted nervous. Hart thought maybe the vehicle was hot.
"A week after he was fired, Hart spotted the truck up in Santa Cruz in a used lot. He was up there looking for a fender for a '69 Plymouth he was rebuilding. He saw this Chevy truck with fresh brown paint. Same model, same year. He could still smell the new paint, and when he checked the front bumper there was the same little dent. Looked like someone had scrubbed at it with maybe a Brillo pad.
"Brennan had filled him in on the green truck we were looking for, so Hart called Brennan, and Brennan hiked on up there."
Harper shook his head. "By the time Brennan got there, just a couple of hours, the dealer had sold it. Described the woman who bought it as a looker, tight leather skirt, long auburn hair.
"We ran the new registration but it came up zilch. False ID. And the previous plate was stolen, registered to an L.A. resident, guy with an '82 Pinto. Plate had been stolen three months before."
Lila had returned. Clyde rose, and set the sandwich makings on the table with a stack of fresh paper plates.
"We're trying to get a fix on the woman," Harper said. "Samson did a sketch from the dealer's description, but the guy didn't remember much about her face, he was looking at her legs."
Charlie grinned.
Lila looked annoyed. This woman, Joe decided, wasn't going to be a cop's wife very long.
There was a long silence while sandwiches were constructed. Rube went out his dog door, barked halfheartedly, and came back in again. Charlie fixed Rube a corned beef sandwich. It was near midnight when the poker game broke up and the officers and ladies left. Charlie's parting remarks had to do with an early repair to a rusted-out plumbing system; she seemed actually eager to tackle the challenge.
Clyde opened the back door and the window to air the kitchen, shoved the remains of the feast in the refrigerator, and emptied the ashtrays in deference to the animals who had to sleep there. Joe left him stuffing beer cans and used paper plates into a plastic garbage bag, and lit for the bedroom.
Pawing the bedspread away so not to be disturbed later, he stretched out on his back, occupying as much of the double bed as he dared without being brutally accosted. He was half-asleep when Clyde came in, pulling off his shirt. "So how was Pet-a-Pet day?"
"What can I say? Paralyzing."
"You are such a snob."
"My feline heritage. And why are you so interested?"
Clyde shrugged. "When you weren't home last night, I figured maybe you liked those folks so much you moved in with them, took up residence at Casa Capri."
"Slept in a tree," Joe said shortly. He did not like references to his nocturnal absences. He didn't ask Clyde about his late hours.
But then, he didn't have to. It was usually apparent where Clyde had been, the clues too elemental even to mention, a certain lady's scent on his collar, his phone book left open to a certain name, hints that did not even add up to kindergarten training for an observant feline.
He did not mention that he and Dulcie had searched the Nursing unit at Casa Capri, and had run surveillance on Adelina Prior in her private office. No need to worry him.
"Harper said, before you came slinking in tonight, they think the cat burglar is getting ready to move on up north."
"What made him say that?"
"This morning's police report had an identical operation in Watsonville, and another at Santa Cruz. Harper thinks she's testing the waters up there. That's what happened down the coast, a couple of isolated incidents weeks apart before she moved in for the action."
Clyde wandered around in his shorts, belatedly drawing the shades. No wonder the elderly matrons in the neighborhood turned pink-faced and flustered when they met him on the street. "The Gazette is going to do an article on the cat-lady angle. Max never did like keeping that confidential, but he didn't want to scare her away. Once that paper hits the street, she'll be gone." He picked up the remote from beside the TV and turned on the late news.
"Pity," Joe said, "that a police force the size of ours didn't have the skill to nail her. Do you think they'd like the make on her car?"
Clyde turned off the volume, turned to stare at him.
"Your mouth's open," Joe said, yawning. He burrowed deeper against the pillow.
"So what's the make? I won't ask the details of how you got it."
"Blue Honda hatchback. Late model, not sure what year. California plate 3GHK499 with mud smeared on it."
Clyde sighed and picked up the phone.
But he set it back in its cradle. "I can't call him now. Where would I have gotten that information, just a few minutes after he left?"
Joe gave him a toothy cat grin. "Where else?"
Scowling, Clyde settled back against his own pillow and turned up the volume, immersing himself in a barrage of world calamities, avoiding the subject he found far more upsetting.
Joe rolled over away from him, curled up, and went to sleep. But he did not sleep well, and in the small hours before the first morning rays touched the windows he rose and padded into the kitchen to the extension phone.
The time was 3:49 A.M. as he punched in the number of the Molena Point PD and gave the duty officer the make on the blue Honda: the color, style, and license number. The officer assured him that Harper would get the information the minute he walked into headquarters.
And that, Joe figured, would be the end of the cat burglar's long and lucrative spree. Harper would have her cold. And if a twinge of sympathy for the old girl touched him, it wouldn't last. Dulcie's the easy mark, not me. She's the sucker for thieving old women, not Joe Grey.