Cat Playing Cupid (14 page)

Joe supposed that, after Carson disappeared, the department had checked Lindsey's bank accounts and net worth. He knew Dallas would now do that again.

Soon Dallas finished with his questions, checked his watch, and rose. Shoving some papers in his briefcase, he told Lindsey he had an appointment, thanked her for coming in, nodded to Mike, and left the office.

Mike and Lindsey remained only a few minutes, idly talking, and then followed Dallas out. Joe thought Mike should be more relaxed with her now, since he wasn't running an investigation, but instead he seemed ill at ease.

But then, as Joe followed them up the hall, Mike said, “You want to have dinner tonight? Maybe Lupe's Playa—if you still like Mexican?” And Joe didn't know whether to read romance into the question, or whether Mike wanted to pursue more questions on his own, or whether he had
doubts, maybe new ones, that kept him operating in cop mode.

“I'd love to have dinner,” she said. “Of course I still like Mexican, and I love Lupe's.”

And that was fine with Joe Grey. At Lupe's he could settle comfortably atop the patio wall above Mike and Lindsey's table, get their attention, pour on the charm until they'd fixed a plate for him, and then comfortably eavesdrop while enjoying an appealing selection of his favorite Mexican delicacies.

D
INNER AT
L
UPE'S
P
LAYA
didn't turn out as the tomcat had planned. While Mike and Lindsey enjoyed an array of delectable Mexican dishes, Joe left the restaurant with a hollow belly, feeling grossly neglected. Heading hungrily home over the rooftops, followed by the aroma of enchiladas and chiles, he prayed fervently that Clyde and Ryan would be home soon so he could once more indulge freely in the delicacies to which he was accustomed.

The minute Mike had left the house, tonight, in Clyde's yellow roadster to pick up Lindsey, Joe had hightailed it over the rooftops to Lupe's, to crouch on the patio wall, concealed among the branches of a bottlebrush tree, waiting for them to arrive and be seated. At Lupe's he couldn't drop down to the patio's brick floor and wind charmingly under the tables mooching handouts. Unlike other village cafés with outdoor dining, Lupe's frowned on cats among the guests' ankles. At Lupe's he had to wait atop the wall for Clyde to hand him up his supper—and
tonight he'd expected to do the same. Expected to yowl at Mike and make up to Lindsey until the two shared their orders with him, passing up a bit of tamale, or enchilada, or chile relleno.

But not so. When the couple entered, they were seated not against the wall, as Clyde always requested, but near the center of the patio, next to a table of loud folks in a partying mood.

There was no way he could cadge a treat. Worse, with the surrounding talk and laughter pounding at him from dozens of tables, he had to strain to hear even snatches of their conversation; he could barely make out Mike's questions, or Lindsey's soft answers.

He heard Lindsey say, “It's a shock, but…,” then something more, then “…know where she got…” Then again something the tomcat couldn't hear. And then during a lull in the surrounding noise Mike said, “If not Nina, do you have any idea what other woman might have gone with him?”

Loud laughter from the four couples at the next table drowned out Lindsey's answer. They were celebrating the skinny brunette's birthday, and her laughter was the loudest. When at last they quieted, Lindsey was saying, “…but did the sheriff
look
for a second body?”

Mike said something Joe couldn't hear, then during another short silence he caught snatches of Lindsey's words. “If that woman…her clothes in his pack?” Another loud burst from the happy diners, then Mike said something that made Lindsey look the way she had in Dallas's office as she read the plastic-wrapped letter, made her go pale and still and rigid. Joe was watching her so
intently, pushing out from among the bottlebrush leaves, that he almost fell off the wall. There was more laughter from the party table, then two waiters appeared with loaded trays and began serving the revelers—and soon all was still there, as the diners concentrated on their sizzling platters, and Lindsey was saying, “…didn't know her that well, she would never have confided something like that. If she'd had a gun, with California's strict gun laws, surely she wouldn't tell anyone.”

“Was she coming on to Carson, back then,” Mike asked, “despite the fact that her husband and Carson were partners?”

“That could have been,” she said, looking down, twisting her hands in her lap. “I didn't see much of her, she was my boss's wife, but I didn't like her much, and I guess she felt the same.” At the next table several people were talking at once. Mike leaned closer to her, lowering his voice. He looked at her for a long moment, then put his arm around her, his words soft and private. Joe crouched on the wall for a few moments more, but when the large party of diners had demolished their dinners enough to start talking again, even louder, he gave it up, abandoned his supperless vigil, and headed home ravenously hungry, royally out of sorts, and having learned very little of interest.

He was in the kitchen morosely eating dry, tasteless kibble when the two came in, the heady scent of Mexican food wafting in with them to further enrage the tomcat. At the sound of the front door opening, a commotion of barking rose from the patio where Mike had left Rock for the short time he'd been absent. Joe sat in the center of the linoleum floor listening to Rock scratch at the locked
doggy door. He scowled up at Mike and Lindsey as they came through to the kitchen smelling unkindly of Lupe's Playa—scowled until he saw that Lindsey was carrying a small, white Styrofoam box.

Abandoning the kibble, he rubbed against Lindsey's ankles, purring loudly.

She stood holding the box, looking uncertainly down at him. “You
sure
this won't hurt him? It's awfully spicy.”

Mike shrugged. “Clyde says to give him anything he wants. Chinese, curry, Mexican. Says the cat's never sick.” But Mike, too, regarded Joe with misgiving.

Joe, leaping atop the counter, yowled demandingly in their faces. He wished he had a tail to lash. Having lost his tail when he was a kitten, he missed it only when a wildly switching appendage could augment a repertoire limited, temporarily, to imprecise yowls and hisses.

“He's so hungry,” Lindsey said. “The poor thing. If you're sure it's all right…”

“It's what Clyde said to do. If he gets sick,” he said, grinning, “you get to clean it up.”

She opened the box. Joe rubbed against her arm, purring louder than ever. When she set the container on the counter before him, he shoved his face into the still warm enchilada, lapping and slurping. Heaven couldn't be better than this.

But did the two have to watch him? Did they have to laugh? Didn't it occur to them to give a cat a little privacy?

Joe didn't emerge from the Styrofoam carton until he'd licked the plastic clean, until he was replete and purring with enchilada, chile relleno, and beans. Outside the back
door, Rock was still pawing and yipping impatiently. Mike had sensibly left him there until Joe finished his supper—Rock's digestive system, unlike Joe's, couldn't handle such rich treats. Joe remained on the counter washing his paws and whiskers as Mike let Rock in, gave him some kibble, then fixed cappuccinos for himself and Lindsey. When the couple retired to the living room, where Mike lit a fire, Joe sauntered in past Rock, who had stretched out on the rug, and leaped into his own clawed and fur-covered easy chair, where he curled up pretending to doze as the couple settled cozily on the couch. Mike was saying, “You and Ryder have always been at such odds? Even when you were children?”

“We never got along, it was always war.”

“That had to be stressful. Is that why you never told me much about your childhood?”

“It's painful to talk about, painful for me to go back to that time. Even when we were little, Ryder always demanded to be boss. She'd pitch a fit to get her way, and it was easier to let her have it.”

She sipped her cappuccino, her hazel eyes sad. “She'd get me into trouble for something she did, and Mama never believed me. I guess that's a common enough scenario, the world over. But even so, it hurts.”

“And you didn't fight back, didn't stand up for yourself?”

She shrugged. “Ryder was two years older, and she was the beautiful one, she was Mama's girl. Our father died in a highway accident when I was five, he was a trucker. After he died, I had no one to stand up for me, no one who really cared. I was the throwaway child.

“Later, the few men Mama dated, none of them made friends with me. It's strange—they were all weak men, nothing like my dad. Almost as if Mama didn't want them to compete with him? I never knew the answer.

“But then George came along,” she said, the sadness leaving her face. “She started dating George Afton. They were married when I was twelve. He was older than she, a coach at a private academy in Sacramento, and we moved there. It was a coeducational academy, but boys and girls had separate classes. Ryder didn't like that, she didn't like any of the rules. She didn't like wearing a uniform, didn't like being separated from the boys. I liked it all—the rules made me feel safe, as if someone cared about me.”

Tears glistened in her eyes. “George was the first person who ever stood up for me after Dad died.” She found a tissue in her pocket, was silent a moment, shook her head with embarrassment. “He defended me against Ryder and against Mama. He made Ryder back off, and he showed me how to stand up for myself.” Joe could see this wasn't easy for her. “He taught me how to get back at Ryder, to give as good as I got. He showed me how to do that quietly if I could, or,” she said, grinning, “sometimes, not so quietly.”

She sipped her drink, leaning comfortably against Mike when he put his arm around her. “When George entered our lives, Ryder started treating me with some respect. It didn't make her like me more, but it got her off my back.”

She gave him a wry smile. “She's never forgiven George for that change in me. She's never forgiven me.

“George tried to help Ryder, too, tried to get her interested in something that would deserve all her abundant
energy. But it never happened. All she cared about were boys, clothes, movie magazines—she had a terrible hunger for surface pleasures, a voracious hunger for glitz and glamour.”

Lindsey looked down again at her hands, as if only they were neutral, offering a calm focus. “It's a waste. Ryder's beautiful, but what's come of it? She's not happy, far from it. And I'm not happy when I'm around her. I wish she hadn't come back here, I wish she'd stayed in L.A.”

“She came because of Ray Gibbs?”

Lindsey nodded.

“And your opinion of Gibbs?”

“Oh, that he's…an opportunist.” She looked at Mike intently, then burst out laughing. “The guy's a sleaze. What else could you call him?”

Mike laughed, and touched her cheek. “That wasn't a pleasant childhood. After your father died, you were lucky to have a second chance, lucky that George came along.”

She looked grateful for his understanding. “George's friendship meant everything to me, he showed me the strength to grow up without losing myself. Without going off the deep end and getting into trouble.”

Mike looked at her for a long moment. She had tears glistening again, and she leaned into him. “It's silly to be so emotional,” she said, “after so many years. I just…I guess I'm easily undone, just now.”

He kissed her and held her. Embarrassed, Joe Grey dropped off the chair and padded silently out of the room, heading upstairs to his tower, to the cool, empty, impersonal winds of the roof. Private was private, he was not a voyeur.

But even so, he spent the next week listening to Mike's side of their increasingly romantic phone calls, watching Mike dress to take Lindsey out, or watching the two of them cook dinner together in Clyde's comfortable family kitchen, laughing and easy with each other. Who knew a romance could progress—or be rekindled—so quickly?

But they had been very close once. And he had to wonder if this reawakened romance was indeed mutual. Or if Lindsey, despite what seemed to be her genuine and honest caring for Mike, despite her quiet charm and the touching account of her childhood, was only putting Mike on, winning him over again after their long separation—winning the law to her side.

No one could be sure, yet, that Lindsey Wolf wasn't simply a very good actor. No one could be certain that she hadn't killed Chappell.

The most obvious scenario was that she'd found out he'd taken another woman with him to Oregon, had followed them in a rage and shot him. Or shot them both.

If so, where was the woman's body? Or had she not been shot, but escaped, seen the shooting and run?

And where did Lindsey dispose of the gun? He thought she wasn't bold and arrogant enough to have kept a murder weapon that could easily lead back to her.

Had she buried it in that Oregon forest, thinking it would never be discovered? And then, ten years later when she read that the body had been found, she'd panicked? Afraid of what the cops might find, had she, with practiced innocence, contacted Detective Garza wanting to learn what the department knew or guessed? Wanting to know if Oregon had any evidence pointing to her? Want
ing to know if she should run, but at the same time hoping to charm and distract the law? But that would be foolish, and would take more brassy nerve than Joe saw in Lindsey. If, indeed, he was seeing her clearly.

And what if Lindsey
hadn't
killed Chappell, but
had
received that letter? What if she'd suspected Chappell was in danger but hadn't gone to the law, if she'd simply let the murder happen? If so, then wasn't she as guilty as the killer, when that letter, in the hands of law enforcement, might have saved Chappell's life?

One minute the tomcat had the gut feeling that Lindsey, despite her gentle charm, was lying, that she'd known for ten years that Chappell was dead. And the next minute he wanted badly to trust her and thought it more likely that Ryder had forged the letter, that maybe Ryder, or Ray Gibbs, had killed Chappell.

And, sprawled among the cushions in his rooftop tower, Joe thought the quickest way to find out was to move in with Ray and Ryder. Play lost kitty. Move in as a homeless stray, get cozy with them, listen to their conversations, toss their condo, see what he could learn.

Right. Get cozy with Ray Gibbs and Ryder Wolf. Play up to Gibbs, and Gibbs snatches him up and rings his little cat neck, or tries to. And for all he knew, Ryder could be just as vicious.

But what the hell, he was a big, strong tomcat. Those two sleazeballs couldn't intimidate him. And it might be interesting, doing the lost kitty act.

He had soon talked himself into it, soon felt okay with the deception. “A piece of cake,” he said later when he told Dulcie his plan.

“Are you out of your furry mind? Move in with Ryder Wolf and Ray Gibbs? That Gibbs is a creep, Joe! He was Chappell's business partner. He could be the killer, he might have had plenty of reason to kill Chappell.” They were crouched on Dulcie's roof, watching for wood rats on the hill behind the house, speaking softly so as not to draw the attention of Wilma's neighbors.