Кроха - Dedication

No, Max doesn’t know. Maybe he’s just mellowing, growing more comfortable with his longtime snitches, easing into a more direct relationship. That’s it, Joe thought, and the idea pleased him. If Max really believed his snitches were cats he would have challenged them straight-out, would have made them speak to him in person.

Whatever the case, I’m not solving anything prowling the desk messing up Clyde’s tax receipts. Leaping up to the rafter, he pushed out into his tower. He’d just gallop across the rooftops to Ben’s apartment, for a little break and enter. The notebook and phone had to be in there, and somehow Juana had missed them.

But Juana seldom missed anything. Like all Harper’s detectives, Juana Davis was nosy and thorough, prodding and snooping until she had found every last thread and torn fingernail. No, Joe thought at last, to search Ben’s apartment after Davis was finished was an exercise in futility. He sat down in his tower among the pillows, stared out through windows at the streaks of sunset trailing above the Pacific. He thought about Ben, who never forgot or misplaced those two items. Why, this morning, would he have left them at home? He thought about Ben at work, the phone and notebook safe in his pocket. The sun just pushing above the eastern hills. Ben, alone, up on the ladder nailing down the new roof gutter . . .

He glimpses a shadow move in the yard below? Maybe hears the click of the automatic as a shell slides into the chamber? He turns, sees the gun, sees the killer? He knows in that split second that he will die there, so his gut reaction is to hide whatever evidence he carries, leave it for the cops to find. He turns, shoves the notebook and phone—not in the gutter but hides them under the roof tiles, slips them under those pliable composite shingles.

Now certain where the phone and notebook had to be, Joe fled out his window, racing across the rooftops heading for the remodel. He could almost see the two items tucked down under the black shingles. As thoroughly as Dallas Garza would have searched the scene, Joe thought this time the detective had missed that small hiding place. Had missed Ben’s message that lay waiting. With stubborn certainty he knew Ben had seen his killer and had left a trail for the law to find.

14

Ryan and Rock arrived home fresh and sassy from their walk, both smelling of the sea and the tide pools, and covered with wet sand. She took the big Weimaraner around into the backyard and gently hosed him off. She dried him with a towel, dried his feet. She removed her own shoes and socks, and in the privacy of the walled patio she pulled off her jeans, shook everything out in the flower bed. Leaving Rock sunning on a lawn chair, she rolled up the wet items, carried them in through the kitchen to the laundry and dumped them in the washer. Her face burned from wind and sun; her short, dark hair was sandy and windblown. Rock had chased half a dozen seagulls, threatened a big Rhodesian Ridgeback until she called him off, and had run her some three miles up the hard, wet shore. She wished she had more time with her dog. She envied Clyde the mornings that he took Rock running, pulling on his sweats, returning an hour later feeling just as high as she felt now, and of course just as hungry.

But in the kitchen, meaning to fix herself a snack, she stopped, shocked at the sight of Joe Grey: the tomcat lay on the table on his belly, his head down between his paws, his ears down, his eyes closed in misery. She hurried to him, but she touched him only gently. “Are you hurt? Oh, Joe! What is it, what’s wrong?”

He stared up at her, forlorn.

“Where do you hurt? What happened? Was there an accident?” She slid soft fingers down his side and his legs, feeling for an injury. “Talk to me! I’ll call Dr. Firetti.” Leaving him she stepped to the phone.

“No.” Joe shook his head and closed his eyes again.

“What’s the matter?” she repeated. Then, alarmed, “Is it Dulcie?” She turned back to the phone, but Joe grumbled and sat up.

“Dulcie’s fine.” He stared grimly at Ryan. “Prescience, hell,” he said. “Cop insight is all rubbish, I don’t buy that stuff!”

Ryan sighed and sat down. “What? You act like you’re dying, and all that’s wrong is . . . some investigative glitch? You made a wrong guess?”

He scowled at her, ears and whiskers flat. She was getting as cranky as Clyde.

“Joe, every cop has bad days! Just because you’re a cat, why should you be any different?”

Silence.

“Tell me!” she snapped, losing patience.

“I thought . . . Dulcie says sometimes I have the same precognition as a cop. A subconscious thing . . . putting together vague hints . . . coming up with a solid fact.” Joe looked up at her balefully. “Sometimes she has me believing it.”

“So what happened? You had an idea, you put things together and . . . it didn’t fly?” Ryan willed herself to speak softly.

“I was so sure. Ben’s phone and his notebook are missing. When neither Juana nor Dallas found them, I thought—I had a clear picture of the phone and notebook tucked down under the roof tiles, I could almost see Ben shoving them there.” Joe sighed. “I bought into Dulcie’s theory and thought it was second sight, a cop’s intuition.”

“And you found nothing.”

“Only the smell of Dallas’s aftershave, where he’d already looked.”

“Then maybe he found them,” she said logically.

“He didn’t,” Joe said with certainty.

“Maybe the department is holding back.”

“They’re not,” he said with equal conviction. From the look on Joe’s face she didn’t ask how he knew that.

“Max would have told me,” he said. “Max . . . Max talked to me this evening. When I called. He answered my questions. A real two-way conversation,” Joe said, looking at her with amazement.

She was as surprised as Joe, then as uneasy. “He gave you information when he never has before?” She looked at him, frowning. “Why would he do that?”

“Trust?” Joe said hopefully. “He’s decided after all these years that I’m an informant he can trust?”

They looked at each other, questioning.

“It’s no more than that,” Joe said, feigning a conviction he didn’t feel.

“Yes,” she said uneasily. “But I’d call what you were thinking no more than common sense. Ben was on the ladder. He saw or heard something, maybe heard the gun click. If the phone and notebook do contain something of value, he hid them in the only place handy. But what could be so important about the notebook? Ben used it for measurements and lists.”

“And maybe other things,” Joe said. “I saw him more than once watching and listening to Tekla, frowning, moving away when she noticed him.”

“Maybe Tekla has some suspicion about who this assailant is, about why he’s doing this? Maybe she said something to Sam, and Ben overheard? Ben made notes, trying to figure it out, to make sense of it?

“But,” she said, “if Tekla had a suspicion, why wouldn’t she talk to the department? Why didn’t she speak up this morning, the minute she knew Ben was dead? Why didn’t she tell Dallas or Juana?”

“Tekla wouldn’t talk to a cop. All she could think of was how inconvenient and embarrassing the murder was for her. She doesn’t care who killed Ben. She doesn’t trust cops any more than she’d trust the killer.”

Ryan rose, took a glass from the cupboard, opened the refrigerator, and poured herself a beer. From a big covered bowl she dished up Rock’s supper, a concoction she cooked up every week for Rock and Snowball, and kept frozen in manageable portions. Setting the bowl in the microwave for a moment, she put it on the floor. She stood back as Rock rushed to his meal, scarfing up a mix of meat and a variety of steamed vegetables. She smiled when Snowball came trotting down the stairs, yawning, and tucked into her own bowl, close beside Rock’s gulping muzzle. Gently the big dog made way for her, not touching her food.

“Snowball might be getting on,” Ryan said, “but with this new diet you’d never know it.” She looked down at Joe, sprawled across the table patiently waiting for his own supper, for Clyde to get home and start cooking. Joe wasn’t having even the most artfully prepared dog food. Ryan was saying, “If you’d just try a few bites . . .” when the intercom buzzed. She turned on the speaker.

“It’s Charlie, we’re just headed home.”

Ryan buzzed Charlie and Billy in. Charlie’s red hair was tucked back into an intricate twist. She was wearing black tights and a long, many-colored, hand-knit shawl. “Kate and I were at the gallery,” she said. “A little private preview. The group show looks great, Kate loved it. And five of my large horse etchings have already sold. I’d hardly gotten there when Max called, wanted me to pick Billy up at the station. Something about a phone call just as they were starting home. He was headed up to talk with Celeste Reece and her sister,” Charlie said, puzzled.

At the mention of Celeste Reece, Joe Grey came to attention. So his phone call had been important, had sent Max up there double time to talk with Bonnie, and surely to have a look at the gun.

“Kate left the gallery and headed back to the shelter,” Charlie said, smiling. “She can’t leave it alone, has to make sure every detail is the way she wants it, has to pet and play with the few shelter cats that are already settled in, the few we’ve made room for. She’s up there more than the carpenters are. And . . .”

But Joe Grey hardly heard her as he dropped off the table and melted away through the living room. With his thoughts on Max Harper, on Celeste Reece and her sister, he bolted out his cat door, scrambled up a pine tree, over his own roof and the neighbors’ roofs, heading for Ocean Avenue and the roofs rising up the hills beyond. The scents from the surrounding restaurants followed him, the smell of steak and lobster reminding him that he’d left home without his own supper. On the other side of the divided main street he hit the peaks and shingles, streaking up over the little shops and crowded cottages; hoping he’d beat Max to Celeste’s house, and knowing he wouldn’t.

He just hoped he could get inside where he could hear what they talked about; he had a lot of questions about Bonnie Rivers. Above him the orange-streaked sky was darkening, the sun gone, the streets below him growing shadowed. Approaching Celeste’s freshly painted, bright ivory cottage, he saw above its dark roof the first stars begin to gleam. Max’s truck was parked in the drive.

15

Wilma, having hugged and cried over Kit and Pan home from their long journey, had made supper for them, then saw that they were tucked up on the couch in the folds of her quilt. She had served them leftover shrimp Alfredo heated in the microwave, warm milk, and a nice bowl of custard, all of which vanished swiftly. The poor cats were starving, and exhausted, too, from their long climb.

Now, full of their warm meal and happily back in their own world, they tried to tell her of their travels but all they could do was yawn—neither one could stay awake. Even as she stroked them, sitting on the couch beside them, the cats yawned and yawned and dropped into sleep. She sat looking down at them, so beautiful, Pan’s red-striped fur tangled against Kit’s mottled black-and-brown coat; the two cats so lovely but so small and vulnerable—and yet so bold and courageous in the adventure they had undertaken, in the dangers they must have faced. She wanted to grab them up again and keep holding them or to snuggle down warm between them. She left them at last, let them sleep and restore their strength, restore all that they had spent. She wanted to call Ryan and Clyde, call Charlie, call Kate, call the Firettis to tell them all that the cats were home, but she put that urge aside. Let them sleep, don’t encourage anyone to come racing over to love and hug them, to see for themselves that they were well and safe, to welcome and celebrate them. Let them sleep around the clock if they chose.

But she did call Lucinda and Pedric, they would be so relieved. She called from the bedroom, shutting the door, speaking softly. When she couldn’t get them on their cell phone she called the lodge in Anchorage.

The Greenlaws were in Denali, their cell phone out of range. The lodge called them on the radio, then put her through to them. Lucinda’s yelp of joy and her flood of questions wavered with static. When Pedric came on the line, his voice was shaking. Wilma couldn’t stop smiling. Now, their worries put at rest, Kit’s beloved housemates could get on with their own adventure.

“Don’t wake them,” Lucinda said. “We’ll talk later. We’ll call as soon as we’re back from Denali.”

Wilma, wishing them a happy journey, had hung up and headed for the kitchen when she heard the cat door flap open and Dulcie came bolting in. Glancing out the kitchen window, she saw Charlie’s red Blazer pulling away. Charlie waved, tooted the horn, and was gone. Wilma spun around at Dulcie’s excited mewl. In the center of the kitchen, Dulcie stood up on her hind legs, her ears up, her tail twitching, one paw lifted. She had caught Kit’s and Pan’s scent; she was poised to bolt for the living room when Wilma grabbed her up.

“Don’t wake them,” Wilma whispered, cuddling Dulcie. “They’re worn out. They had such a long, hard journey up those endless tunnels, let them sleep.”

“Oh, my,” Dulcie said softly. She slipped down from Wilma’s arms, padded silently into the living room and reared up, looking at the two cats so deeply asleep on the couch. She longed to reach out a paw and gently touch Kit, but she only looked, every line of her tabby body curved into pleasure, to see the two home again. Kit was safe, they both were home and safe. And won’t they be surprised when we tell them about the kittens? Oh, my, Dulcie thought, won’t Kit make over them and spoil them.

But maybe she would spoil them more than they needed, this tattercoat Kit who was still, in spirit, a wild and unruly kitten herself. What kind of influence, Dulcie wondered warily, will Kit be on our innocent babies?

From the shadows beside Celeste Reece’s front door Joe Grey could hear Max’s voice clearly. He wouldn’t need to find a way inside as long as Celeste didn’t close the windows. The front door was shut tight, but the tall glass panes flanking it stood wide to the evening breeze. Joe could smell coffee from within, and some kind of peanut butter confection that reminded him again he’d had no supper. The bright white room, clean and uncluttered, smelled not only of coffee and dessert, but a lingering scent of roast beef that didn’t help his emptiness, either. Max must have arrived just as they finished their meal.

The windowsills were so low he had to crouch down in the petunias so as not to be seen. Celeste and her sister, Bonnie, sat on the white couch, Max in a matching chair, his dessert and coffee beside him on a small table. He had just finished asking a question that Joe missed; he looked at Bonnie expectantly for an answer.

Bonnie, tanned and slim, was dressed in pale jeans and a light blue T-shirt, her metal brace snug to her left leg. “It was me they were after,” she said shakily. “Not my husband. They didn’t . . . they didn’t care who else they killed.”