Cat Playing Cupid (18 page)

Had
Lindsey killed him, despite how nice she seemed? Did Lindsey have the missing gun that they hadn't yet found in Gibbs's condo? And the romantic little tabby thought,
Oh, if Lindsey turns out to be a killer, that will break Mike Flannery's heart.

“I'll see if I can lift latents from the letter,” Davis was saying, “or get it off to the lab.” And as Davis hung up, Dulcie dropped down to the counter.

Now, with this new piece to the puzzle, with two anonymous notes in the mix, Dulcie burned to bring the box of stationery to the detectives. And she burned to slip into the condo again, look in the remaining boxes for a laptop and maybe a small printer, for a gun, and for samples of hand printing. And she left the station beside Kit thinking, with sweating paws, about another break-and-enter within those confining walls.

I
T WAS JUST
dawn when Ryan's red pickup headed up the hills on the narrow dirt road that led to the Pamillon estate. Sunrise stained the green slopes and sent a rosy glow into the cab. Ryan drove, her dad sitting in the front beside her. Behind them Rock rode restlessly in the backseat of the king cab, his short tail wagging madly: Adventure lay ahead, he sensed Ryan's intensity, and the big dog quivered with anticipation.

Mike sat turned, watching him but thinking about Lindsey, who had gone on an errand with Dallas this morning, and the Scots Irishman was as restless as the Weimaraner. Ryan watched her dad with amusement, knowing that he was jealous, jealous that Lindsey was with Dallas, and she turned away to hide a smile.

Dallas, now that he had an ID on Carson Chappell, had wanted a look at Chappell's belongings, which Lindsey had stored in a locker up the valley. A perfectly straightforward errand, but it had Mike fidgeting.
Dad, you're getting serious,
she thought, grinning.

The day before yesterday, when Ryan and Clyde had gotten home from the wine country, her dad had swung by the house to bring Rock home, to drop off Clyde's roadster, and to pick up his clothes; Lindsey had followed him in her Mercedes. He'd said they were off to the dealerships, that it was time he bought a car, that they'd have an early dinner up the coast. In Ryan's opinion, when a guy took his date with him car shopping, he was hooked—and now this morning Lindsey was off with Dallas on a perfectly innocent errand and he was as jealous as a kid.

But as Ryan came up over the last hill below the Pamillon estate, she thought she'd have her dad's full attention very soon. That for the next hour, Lindsey would take a backseat to what was about to happen.

Mike thought this venture to “test” Rock's tracking skills was foolish, he'd made it clear it could do more harm than good, could create problems with Rock's future training—but early this morning, in the dark hour before dawn, Clyde and Joe Grey had left home in the roadster, heading up here to the ruins to execute their part of the plan.

Mike didn't have a clue to what he was about to witness. He knew Clyde had laid a trail, but he thought he was going to see a confused, uncertain dog or a dog running crazily off after squirrels or deer, that he was going to see a very embarrassed handler. But in a few minutes, her good dog was going to prove Mike Flannery way wrong. Was going to show Mike the impossible—and was going to win her a hundred-dollar bet. She could already feel that crisp bill lining her pocket.

Mike didn't often gamble. When he did, his bets were
penny ante, never for a hundred bucks, but this morning he knew he couldn't lose.

He believed he couldn't lose, Ryan thought smugly. Yesterday she and Clyde, and Joe Grey, had worked with Rock up at the Harper ranch, with only Charlie to witness their bizarre training session as, quickly and efficiently, the gray tomcat had instilled in Rock a hunger for tracking, an intent focus, that would have taken a human trainer months to accomplish.

Joe's tutoring was inspired. The tomcat employed a brilliant show-and-tell method that no human trainer could ever duplicate.

Rock already knew the word “Find” that Clyde and Ryan used around the house: “Find Clyde,” or “Find Ryan.” Before Joe's first training session, Rock had considered the command a word to be obeyed, or not, depending on his mood.

Now, after Joe's training, that word brought the big dog to full attention. The command was no longer arbitrary.

Now, they must never again use “Find” in a casual or unthinking way. Now, “Find” must be reserved only for Rock's serious work.

Yesterday afternoon, before Ryan and Rock arrived at the ranch, Clyde had walked a complicated trail through the Harpers' pastures, leaving his scent in the air and on the low grass and earth, a trail that only an animal could detect, then he had vanished into the woods.

When Ryan and Rock arrived, her command to “Find Clyde” had garnered only a happy, doggy smile. Not seeing Clyde nearby, Rock had laughed up at her and was
about to race away to the pasture to play with the two Harper dogs when Joe Grey took command.

The tomcat moved in front of Rock, fixing him with a bold gaze.
“Find Clyde!
Find Clyde
now
!”

Rock had always paid attention to Joe. The phenomenon of a talking cat had never quite lost its shock value. Now, when Joe commanded, Rock cocked his head, staring down at Joe, his ears up, his short tail wagging. Of course he had caught Clyde's scent, but Clyde wasn't in sight, so what was all the fuss?

Joe put his nose to the ground, sniffing up Clyde's scent, and again he told Rock to
“Find! Find Clyde now!”
and he set off on the trail in a passion of excitement, the tomcat's every move meaning business—and Rock came to full alert. Touched with doggy awe of the tomcat, the Weimaraner put his own nose to the ground and fell in beside Joe, drinking up the scent, huffing with Joe's challenge: This strange tomcat was, suddenly, keenly fixed on matters of mysterious importance.

Following Joe's lead, Rock stayed intently on Clyde's trail back and forth along every turn and backtrack that Clyde had made. Joe's intense concentration was the key. This predatory pursuit of the trail by another animal awakened in the Weimaraner's blood all the skills he was bred to. Soon he was racing ahead of Joe, nose to the trail, caught in the deep animal thrill of tracking, experiencing an explosive epiphany in his doggy soul—this pursuit spoke to the Weimaraner's deepest needs, to a genetic hunger older than the breed itself, to an imperative as ancient as Rock's wolf ancestors. He knew nothing but the scent he tracked, he flew after it, he wheeled and doubled back and plunged
ahead through the woods, cutting sharply around the oaks and pines. He never wavered onto a rabbit or deer track, though Joe said later that those smells had been fresh and enticing.

When at last Rock found Clyde hiding in the woods, he keened a sharp, quick series of barks and plowed into Clyde, leaping on him, yipping and whining. The two of them tussled roughly, Clyde laughing and Rock barking with pleasure. The word “Find” had become a red flag of fierce excitement, the lesson imprinted so sharply on his keen Weimaraner mind that it would never be forgotten.

That same afternoon, under Joe's direction, Rock had tracked Ryan with equal focus and joy. And just before supper he'd tracked Charlie. When he found her hiding in the hay barn, he was all over her—manners were on hold when it came to tracking, manners would be considered later, under different circumstances. Right now the key was enthusiasm and joy, and the team let Rock know he was the most wonderful dog the world had ever seen.

Ryan had been so thrilled with the performance that she had hugged Joe Grey, nearly smothering him, hardly knowing what to say to him. “If you weren't so valuable to the department, you could be a professional dog trainer. Except Detective Davis, for one, would rather you stayed on as snitch, forever.”

“What?” he said, shocked. “She doesn't know! What did she say?”

“She doesn't know,” Ryan said, laughing, teasing him. “But after Christmas, after you three helped nail the man who killed that little girl's father, Juana said she didn't care
who the phantom detectives were, she just hoped they'd be on the job until hell froze over.”

Joe smiled hugely, couldn't stop smiling. He watched Ryan stroke Rock as the big dog leaned happily against her. “He's ready for tomorrow,” he'd told her. “More than ready.”

She'd hugged him again, and kissed his ear. “This is a miracle, Joe. And Dad thinks our test is going to bomb.” And she and Joe Grey grinned at each other. This time, this one time, Mike Flannery would have egg on his face.

 

S
O IT WAS
that early this morning, before daylight, before Mike and Ryan set out, Clyde and Joe had driven up to the ruins where Clyde walked a circuitous, wandering path that ended at last within the grotto beside the unknown grave. There, with a stick, Clyde had uncovered one bony hand so that Rock, and then Mike, couldn't miss the body.

Joe, losing himself among the fallen walls, had stayed well away from Clyde's trail so as not to lay his own scent and divert Rock. As the sky began to lighten, stained by the brilliant sunrise, Clyde could just see the tomcat atop a far wall, a gray shadow, rearing up for a moment to watch Ryan's red truck make its way up the narrow dirt road.

Quickly Clyde scattered a few leaves over the skeletal hand, then settled down on the mossy bench with a book, waiting for Rock to find him.

But he didn't read much, he was too interested in the
drama about to unfold. In the cool little grotto surrounded by overgrown jasmine vines and camellia bushes entangled with the weeds, he listened to the truck pull in among the fallen walls. Standing concealed among the shadows, he watched Ryan and Mike swing out, Ryan holding Rock on a short lead. They were perhaps a third of a mile away. Clyde watched Ryan open a plastic bag containing one of his own dirty socks and present it to the Weimaraner. She would be saying,
“Find Clyde. Find Clyde now
.”

He watched Rock sniff the sock, then sniff the ground, then stare up at Ryan. Rock circled, and circled wider, pulling her along—and suddenly, his short tail wagging madly, he took off fast, his nose to the ground, forcing Ryan to run; as the big dog sped along the scent, Clyde could hear Ryan's occasional encouragement, hear Rock's faint huffing, and hear pebbles being dislodged as Rock scrambled among the fallen walls.

He'd catch it tonight, he thought, grinning, for the rough route he'd laid, for every one of Ryan's scratches and bruises. He watched the two disappear and reappear beyond tangled walls and fallen trees and then among the sheltering wings of the house itself, watched Mike following at some distance, an incredulous frown on his face, a hard look of disbelief—as if sure that his daughter was scamming him.

Clyde could still see Joe among the far rubble, observing the unfolding drama from atop a pile of broken concrete, his gray coat barely visible as he watched Rock's sure and steady progress. Clyde found it hard to believe that that lovely woman leaning back on the lead, that beautiful, lithe woman with the short, dark hair, her lovely green
eyes lifting up to him once, that beautiful woman in the faded jeans curving so enticingly over her tight little butt was his wife. That tough, gentle woman speaking so softly to Rock and with such contained excitement as the big dog pulled her along between the fallen walls and dead trees.

He watched the Weimaraner make a sharp turn around the broken gate just as he, himself, had done earlier, then circle the remains of a collapsed toolshed, then wind twice through the tangled, half-dead fruit orchard—and head straight for the grotto. Rock's nose was up now, air scenting Clyde, as sure and skilled as any seasoned tracker—then suddenly Rock saw him. Jerking the lead from Ryan's willing hand, he streaked for the grotto, leaped on Clyde, barking and roughhousing. Ryan hurried in, Mike behind her, saying exactly what they'd expected.

“You've been training him! This is no test, you two! This is a seasoned tracker. This is a scam! The bet's off, my girl.”

“How could I train him?” Ryan said indignantly. “When have I had the time? We've been on our honeymoon, in case you hadn't noticed.
You've
had the dog all week.” She sat down beside Clyde on the bench, hugging and praising Rock, then looked up at her dad again. “The bet's not off. I've had no time to train him.”

Mike looked at his daughter patiently. He knew he'd been scammed but he didn't know how.

Ryan smiled and shrugged, looking blank. She daren't look at Clyde, she knew they'd both laugh and they couldn't afford to do that. This was not a joke that could be told later, this was a secret they must keep forever, that they could never share.

And it was then, as she pummeled Rock and looked up secretly at Clyde, that the dog swung suddenly away from her, scenting eagerly toward the bushes. She grabbed his collar.

“What?” she said softly. “What is it?”

Rock was at full alert, huffing in deep breaths.

Snapping on his lead again, keeping the big dog close, she let him pull her. Rock was on perfect point, steady and intent, his attention focused on a few small, frail bones barely visible beneath the rotting leaves.

R
YAN KNELT BESIDE
Rock, holding him while Mike pulled aside the overgrown bushes. “What do you have, boy?” she said softly, trying to sound puzzled. “What's there?”

But when Mike, parting the overgrown camellia branches, saw the small dark bones of the fleshless hand he grabbed Ryan's shoulder, pulled her and Rock back so they would disturb nothing more.

“What the hell?” Clyde said, moving up beside them, looking down at the frail hand then looking up at Mike as if his father-in-law could explain this. “He's found…Someone's buried here?”

“Apparently,” Mike said, frowning at Clyde. He looked at Ryan for a long moment without expression, and she felt her heart sink. He knew something was going on, her dad could smell a scam a mile away. Why had she thought they could pull this off?

But they had to make him believe this was an innocent discovery, they had no choice. “Could this be a family
grave?” she said, looking beneath the branches as if for a grave marker or tombstone. But again Mike pulled her back. “Let the department look, Ryan.”

“I didn't think…,” she said, and stood with her fist to her mouth, as if embarrassed that she might have disturbed evidence, and distressed by the grisly discovery. She watched Mike flip open his cell phone to call the department, listened to his short discussion with Dallas when Mabel had patched him through.

“Dallas is still up the valley,” Mike said. “He and Lindsey—headed this way.”

The three of them stood in the silence of the ruins staring at the dark, frail bones and at the gold bracelet half covered with earth. The only sounds were an occasional birdcall, and the scrambling of a squirrel among the crumbling walls. At last Mike turned, studying Ryan again. “Rock did great. But that was no test, he's had training.”

“I swear. We just got home! I haven't had time to do any training. This was the test! To see if we
want
to train him.”

Mike was silent.

“I
know
he did great. I'm so proud of him,” she said, kneeling to hug Rock again. “But he's bred to this, and he's so bright and eager—and he did track Charlie when she was kidnapped. Maybe that's all it took, that one time of being really committed, and he settled right in.”

Mike looked at her coolly, knowing as well as she that her explanation wouldn't wash. “Whatever you've been doing,” he said quietly, “it's working just fine.” And he turned away from them as if listening for the sound of tires on the dirt and gravel road, though Dallas should be another fifteen minutes or more.

“I'll have a look around,” he said, “meet Dallas around front, show him where we are.” And he moved off toward the building, walking slowly and studying the ground. Behind him, Clyde gave Ryan an uneasy look, and she shook her head with concern. Not only did he not believe her, he was hurt that she would lie to him, and that in turn hurt Ryan.

From the roof above, Joe Grey watched and listened uneasily, his paws kneading with distress because Flannery wasn't quite buying this. The tomcat, having made his way up a dead oak to the roof of the two-story mansion, was crouched, now, on the lower roof of the bedchamber wing concealed by overhanging branches, as worried as Ryan and Clyde by Mike's skepticism.

Earlier, watching Rock find Clyde, he'd wanted to cheer, had felt wild with the thrill of the big dog's eager skill and of his own training technique. He'd watched Rock find the grave, then listened as Mike called Dallas to report the body. Now, listening to Mike tramp away over the fallen rocks, he watched Clyde cuddle Ryan close.

“Did he buy it?” Ryan was saying softly, trying to reassure herself.

“He'd better have,” Clyde said. “Why wouldn't he? Rock was sensational. He might argue that you've been training him, but he'll never guess the truth.”

Rock, at the sound of his name, pressed close against their legs. Both Clyde and Ryan were quiet, petting him and staring down at the dirt-stained bones, wondering what, exactly, Mike Flannery did think. And above them Joe crouched, wondering the same, then wondering about what he'd heard earlier at the far end of the grounds where
a stand of eucalyptus trees sheltered an old, half-fallen garden shed.

Twice he'd thought he heard noises among the rubble, but when he galloped across the broken walls to look he'd seen nothing move, and had smelled nothing unusual among the sharp, nose-tingling scent of the eucalyptus trees. Deciding it had been only a squirrel scrabbling about, he hadn't gone on to the decrepit shed, he'd hurried back to the wall, not wanting to miss the moment when Rock found the body.

Below him, Clyde and Ryan sat down close together on the moss-covered concrete bench, Rock leaning against their knees, the three of them happy just to be together, content in the peaceful surround. For a moment, watching them, Joe felt a sharp pang of loneliness—or was it a stab of jealousy?

It was at this moment that Ryan looked up at him. She wasn't surprised to find him there. She grinned at him, and winked. Clyde looked up, the three of them shared a long look filled with pride in Rock, and in what they had accomplished. The little family remained so, Joe on the roof, the three below quietly snuggling, until they heard from down the hill, beyond the mansion, tires on the gravel road.

They listened to the vehicle approach and then pause, its engine idling, and they could hear another car behind it. They heard men's voices, then the crunch of tires again. And in a moment Dallas's tan Blazer came into view around the far end of the mansion, careening over the rough ground, followed by the coroner's white Ford van and then Detective Davis's car. They could see Mike in the backseat of the Blazer, showing Dallas the way.

As they parked near the grotto, Lindsey got out, too. She was wearing a white tank top and jeans, a Levi's jacket thrown over her shoulders. She paused as if asking Dallas a question. He nodded, and they headed for the grotto while Davis backed her car around, for easy access to her trunk, to the evidence chest and her several cameras. The coroner pulled up beside her as Juana stepped out; the detective was in uniform as usual, dark skirt and jacket, dark hose and black Oxfords. Dr. Bern wore an old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.

The darkly clad, square Latino woman and the younger, bald-headed coroner made several trips carrying their equipment into the grotto, setting it down on the brick paving, away from the grave. As Dallas asked questions of Ryan and Clyde and Mike, Lindsey stood some distance away, staring across at the grave. Joe could read nothing in her expression.

Was she imagining those other weathered bones, up in Oregon, thinking about Carson Chappell's skeleton, lying alone in that remote forest? Thinking about Chappell dying there, alone?

As Joe watched, the abandoned grotto that had lain peacefully for so long with little intrusion was suddenly alive with activity, with the bustle that always seemed out of place as the living intruded on the silent and helpless dead.

Yet only this controlled invasion by police investigators could help the dead now. Only this obsessive examination of the remains, and the accompanying prodding into their personal lives, could vindicate the dead.

But suddenly Joe's attention centered again on Lindsey.
What was wrong? She had taken a step forward to see better, was pressing her hand to her mouth, staring down into the grave.

Dallas, looking across at her, shook his head slightly. Their glance held for only an instant. Neither spoke. What was this, what was happening? Surely something about the scene engendered a shock of recognition.

Why did the hand of a skeleton evoke that alarmed response? Was it something about the bracelet? What did Lindsey and Dallas know that seemed to be secret? And, watching them, Joe realized he'd been making some huge assumptions.

He'd been thinking of the body as a victim, but they didn't even know if this was a body, it might be only a buried hand. If a body was there, no one knew yet if it was a murder victim or a natural death, only John Bern could determine that. This woman might, indeed, be a peacefully demised member of the Pamillon family, duly laid to rest in her own private garden.

Joe watched Davis shoot several rolls of black-and-white film and then some color, and then record the scene again with the video camera. Then, kneeling, Davis helped the coroner with the slow process of uncovering the frail bones.

They bagged and labeled the fragments of rotting garments, too, gently brushing away the dirt with a small, soft brush in order to discover minute debris, though after this length of time, given rain, wind, and small animals, perhaps nothing useful remained. Watching their tedious work, Joe glanced at Clyde and saw that he didn't look well. He was pale and seemed ill. Leaning out over the
edge of the roof, Joe studied his housemate with alarm. A dead body shouldn't upset Clyde, he was used to crime scenes.

Unaware of Joe's scrutiny from above, Clyde was totally fixed on the body that was slowly being revealed. And suddenly he didn't like watching.

He had, indeed, in his lifetime witnessed any number of crime scenes and considered himself an unemotional observer. But now, as John Bern worked the earth and rotted cloth away from the skeleton's frail leg bones, a shock turned Clyde's stomach queasy: The thin femur bones encased in a pair of heavy hiking boots seemed as surreal as a scene from some science fiction movie.

The leather laces were still tied, and he thought crazily, how could a skeleton untie its own boots? Fragments of dirty hiking socks were stuck to the thin bones, and the incongruity, the sense of the unreal, turned him cold. He glanced at Ryan, expecting her to respond with equal unease. But his bride just stood looking, quiet and unruffled.

“Did Olivia hike?” she asked Dallas. “How strange. I imagined her…She was so into social functions. Fundraisers, high tea, charity bazaars. I didn't picture her tramping the hills. The photos I've seen of her…they were all in elegant dresses.”

“The Pamillons had horses,” Bern said. “Haven't you seen pictures from the thirties, of riders wearing laced-up boots over those flaring pants?”

“I guess I have,” Ryan said. “But why would they bury her in riding clothes?”

During this exchange, Lindsey had moved out of the
way of the coroner and detectives, and stood pressing close to Mike. He had his arm around her, but she was so rigid that Joe thought she must be trembling. The tomcat was so interested in her reaction that he nearly lost his footing on the roof's rotting edge—hastily he backed away.

Wouldn't that be a crock, Clyde's tomcat falls off the roof smack in the middle of the crime scene—a cat who should be down in the village hunting mice, doing cat things. Clyde would have to explain why he had brought his cat up here, and Mike would want to know if Clyde had needed his cat for Rock's tracking test, would want to know if Clyde had used cat scent to lay the trail, and wouldn't that blow it!

John Bern was numbering and labeling the bones, while Dallas examined the space around the grave in widening circles, collecting samples of earth and debris, his square face serious and intent. He was reaching beneath the overgrown camellia, carefully sorting through dead leaves, when he froze, his hand in midair.

“Something's here,” he said softly, lifting away dead leaves. John Bern turned to look, then knelt beside him.

Carefully the two men cleared away leaves and earth until they had revealed a slab of pale marble, rectangular and precisely cut.

“‘Olivia Pamillon,'” Dallas read, “‘1880 to 1962.'”

Ryan looked at Clyde, stricken. Above, on the roof, Joe Grey crouched low, his ears down. This was a legitimate grave? A proper internment into which they had no business digging? The three of them had fabricated their complicated ruse, had brought Bern and the detectives up here for this? Had brought the law up here for nothing?
And now they must watch, hiding their shame, as the frail bones were covered again—must hope, Joe thought crazily, that Olivia Pamillon's spirit could still rest in peace and wouldn't haunt them for the rest of their living days.

“Why,” Davis said, “would they bury a family member here, and not in the family plot? And why without a casket?”

“These bones—” Bern began.

It was then that Lindsey stepped forward, touching John Bern's arm. “That is not Olivia Pamillon,” she said softly. “That body is not Olivia.”

“No,” Dallas said, “it doesn't appear to be Olivia. Unless…” He looked at Lindsey. “Unless there were two bracelets.”