Cat Playing Cupid (20 page)

C
ORONER
J
OHN
B
ERN'S
bald head and glasses caught the light as he turned to look at Lindsey. “Who did you say this is?”

She stood at the edge of the freshly turned earth looking down at the grave, at the frail dark bones, at the thin legs in their heavy boots, at the skeletal arm and gold bracelet. “I said I don't think this is Olivia Pamillon.”

She was surprised when Bern nodded as if agreeing with her. “This is a far younger woman. The incomplete fusion of the skull, the lack of degenerative changes…We'll do some studies in the lab, but this can't be Olivia. She was active in the village well into her seventies.” He looked at her questioningly. “Do you know who this might be?”

Everyone was still, watching Lindsey. She glanced across the grotto to Dallas. “Nina Gibbs?” she said hesitantly, looking back at Bern. “Could this be Ray Gibbs's wife, who went missing?”

Above, on the roof, Joe watched her with interest. De
spite the hesitancy of her response, he thought she was very sure.

“But that has to be Olivia,” Ryan said. “The bracelet…I remember now, I read about it when I was doing research for the Stanhope studio renovation. She always wore it, didn't she? A gold bracelet with a cat on it, a one-of-a kind piece that was designed for her.” She'd started to say, that seemed to have some special meaning, then realized what she would be saying, and became silent.

Dr. Bern shook his head. “I don't know about the bracelet, but this isn't Olivia. These are the bones of a woman half her age, maybe thirty to forty.”

“And,” Lindsey said, “
Nina
has…had the bracelet. She wore it long after Olivia died. She told me there was only one, that her aunt had left it to her.” She looked at Dallas, and glanced toward the Blazer.

“We have pictures,” Dallas said. “From Lindsey's locker, shots of Nina wearing it.”

“Nina told me once,” Lindsey said, “…it was at a party, when she'd been drinking…that the bracelet held the key to great wealth. I have no idea what she meant. She said it as a sort of drunken bragging, but of course she didn't explain.”

John Bern looked away toward the distant rose garden, where its overgrown bushes crowded among the Pamillon family headstones. Saying nothing, he moved toward the old, neglected cemetery. Everyone followed him but Dallas, who remained with the grave—and Joe Grey on the roof above.

The tomcat watched across the far rubble as Bern eased in among the tangled rosebushes, carefully pulling
aside thorny branches to examine the old headstones and marble slabs. Three ornate marble angels stood up among the sprawling bushes and the figure of a little winged child. Bern moved among the Pamillon dead slowly until at last he paused, not beside a headstone but at an unmarked patch of earth that, Joe could see, had settled into a shallow concavity. The tomcat, dropping down a honeysuckle vine, out of sight, fled through the morning shadows between the fallen walls and up onto a pile of stones where he could see better—could see that at one end of the unmarked, sunken grave the soil had been disturbed. As if a marker had been removed?

Both Bern and Davis photographed the area from many angles, capturing shadows and indentations. Then they both dropped to their knees as if praying for the souls of the surrounding dead, and carefully searched the hard earth around the unidentified concavity for fragments, for minute shreds of cloth or a lost button, for footprints or any foreign debris.

Watching from among the tumbled stones, Joe grew increasingly impatient because he couldn't examine the grave site himself to sniff out scents that no human would discover. He waited, fidgeting, for nearly an hour before Bern and Davis returned to the grotto and the body to finish labeling and boxing up the bones.

Only when everyone had left the family cemetery did Joe conduct his own investigation. Sniffing every inch of the unmarked grave and its surround, he found very little. Once he caught a whiff of an unfamiliar perfume or shaving lotion, but it was so faint and so entwined with fresh human scents now, and with the smell of the few roses that still
bloomed, that even a cat couldn't sort it out; he returned at last to the roof above the grotto, having learned nothing.

Bern and Davis were packing up their equipment, preparing to leave. Joe watched Dallas cross the grotto, dropping into his pocket a small paper evidence bag containing the last item Dr. Bern had found: two minuscule lumps Bern had unearthed beneath the body, at the bottom of the grave.

If these were what Joe thought, they must have settled during the preceding years, possibly falling as the flesh decayed around them. He'd gotten a clear look as Bern bagged them, and he was sure they were bullets crusted with detritus and earth.

Joe found it interesting that as Ryan and Clyde helped carry the coroner's cases to his car, the newlyweds moved close together, as if, in the face of death, they needed to touch, to reassure each other of their own well-being and safety. And when Joe looked at Mike and Lindsey, they were behaving the same, Lindsey leaning into the tall, lanky Scots Irishman, his arm protectively around her. They glanced up when Detective Davis looked in their direction, then turned away as Davis headed for Detective Garza.

Joe watched Davis slip a small plastic bag from the pocket of her dark uniform. He could see a half sheet of paper inside. Was that the note Ryder had brought in earlier? But why bring it here? It was already logged in, and Lindsey had already seen it. The look on Davis's face was one of half annoyance, half amusement. As she handed Dallas the small evidence bag, Joe slipped silently along the edge of the roof until he was just above them.

Whatever this was, it wasn't the letter Ryder had
brought, this wasn't hand printed, but typewritten on smooth white paper.

“Brennan found this at the back door this morning,” Davis said. “Just after change of watch. No one saw who left it, and there are no latents.” The look between the two detectives was one the tomcat knew well, that wry glance of frustration that heralded another anonymous tip, both welcome and highly frustrating.

But this wasn't Joe's tip. Nor, surely, anything Dulcie or Kit would have taken to the station. Edging farther over the lip of the roof, Joe read the letter over Dallas's shoulder, watched Dallas glance across the grotto at Lindsey, much as Davis had done.

Lindsey was watching them, the end of her scarf thrown back over her shoulder, her tan very appealing against the white tank top. At that moment, Joe would have given a brace of fat mice to know her thoughts.

But he would give a lot more to know them if the detectives shared the letter with her.

The letter was indeed like something the real snitches might have discovered and stolen and taken to the detec
tives, and that angered Joe. He wanted to know who had left this, wanted to know if the message was true or if the killer had written it to lay the blame on Lindsey.

He didn't want to think she'd killed Carson. Despite his uneasy questions about her, he wanted to believe her.
Wanted
her to be telling the truth. Below him, Dallas was saying, “I'd like Lindsey to read this.”

Davis said, “You think that's wise?”

“In this case, yes.”

She nodded, and he motioned Lindsey and Mike over. They read the printout together. Lindsey stood a moment staring at it, then looked up at the detectives, flushed and scowling.

“Who gave you this? Where did you get this?”

“It was left at the station this morning,” Davis said. “We don't know who left it.”

“Can you fingerprint it?”

“I tried,” Davis said. “There's nothing—we'll see what the lab can pick up.”

“It's not typed,” Lindsey said, examining the paper through the plastic. “It's too even. Looks like a printout. Is there some way you can trace a printer?”

“We'd have to have something to go on,” Davis said. “Another example from the same printer, and even then…
Were
you out of town the week Carson disappeared?”

“No. That was the week of the wedding. May I see the receipt?”

Davis turned the plastic over, to show the Visa receipt. Lindsey looked at it, and nodded. “That's my credit card number. But there've never been any forged charges against it, I check carefully. I've never had any theft.”

“Would you still have that Visa bill?” Davis said, clearly not expecting that she would.

“I would if there were any business expenses on that one,” Lindsey said. “And there usually are. It would be in my tax returns for that year.” She looked at Dallas. “They're in the locker, in the file cabinet.” Her hazel eyes were still angry, her cheeks flaming. “This is…What's he trying to do?”

“Who?” Davis said.

“Ray Gibbs,” Lindsey said, looking at Davis. “If that body is Nina, then this note has to be from Gibbs. Or…” After a moment, she said, more quietly, “Or…Oh, not my sister?”

“What makes you think it was Gibbs?” Davis said. “Or your sister? This could have nothing to do with them.”

“It has to do with Carson's death, and maybe with Gibbs's wife, with Nina,” Lindsey said, glancing away, toward the grave.

Davis said, “Why are you so certain the body is Nina?” Davis had taken over the interview, and Dallas seemed content to let her run with it.

“She always wore that bracelet, I don't think I ever saw her without it. Wore it all the time, just as her aunt did, before her. Unless…,” she said, “unless the story about there being only one bracelet wasn't true, unless there was another.”

“Or,” Davis said, “unless Nina gave it to someone.”

Lindsey frowned at the detective. “That doesn't seem likely. Nina seemed to place some special, almost mystical value on it.”

“Can you explain?” Davis said.

“I don't really know. Maybe sentimental value. I think she was truly fond of her aunt. She said once that the bracelet was the one thing that Olivia Pamillon treasured.” She looked toward the now empty grave. “Olivia's bracelet, circling that bare bone.” She shivered. “Like a manacle holding Nina there.” And she turned away, into the shelter of Mike's arms.

Above, on the roof, Joe watched her intently. What a strange thing to say, to read into a simple bracelet with an innocent cat embossed on the band. Below him, both detectives watched Lindsey without expression. And Joe thought,
A bracelet embossed with the emblem of a secret that Olivia Pamillon carried all her life?
And as Clyde and Mike and Ryan turned to leave, the tomcat, staying out of sight, headed fast across the roofs toward Clyde's roadster, Lindsey's words repeating in his head,
Like a manacle holding Nina there…like a manacle…

But, galloping across the roofs trying to put Lindsey's comment in perspective, he stopped suddenly and crouched, very still, watching the jutting wing of the mansion beyond the grotto, where he'd glimpsed a figure slipping away. Darkly dressed, visible only for a second, moving fast. Someone near the grotto, listening, and watching.

There! He saw the figure again moving swiftly to vanish beyond the broken walls, moving toward the old shed, and then gone.

A
LONE IN THE BARN
,
wishing Sage would hobble out and apologize to her and say he'd been wrong, say that Stone Eye
had
been an evil tyrant and the clowder
was
better off without him, and knowing Sage would never do that, Kit began to smell a lovely aroma from the kitchen. Charlie's delicious shrimp casserole. Crouching in the straw feeling lonely and neglected and sniffing that heady scent, growing hungrier and hungrier but unwilling to go in the house and face Sage and make up—he'd have to apologize first—she waited. Maybe Charlie would come out and would understand and would maybe bring her some nice shrimp to eat and tell her she was right and Sage was wrong. Listening across the yard to little sounds from the kitchen, she longed to hear the door open and Charlie's footsteps approach. She felt sure Charlie could make everything all right.

But Kit waited a long time before Charlie appeared in the barn, calling out to her. Then she waited a long time
more, letting Charlie call and call, before she came out from her hiding place in the pile of straw.

Immediately Charlie picked her up, scowling down crossly but gently stroking her. Charlie did not apologize for Sage's behavior. Nor did she sympathize with Kit. She simply headed for the house.

But before they went inside, into the big kitchen, Charlie sat down on the steps, holding Kit tenderly. “You're hurting, Kit. You feel all alone, and Sage doesn't understand.”

Kit sniffed.

“Do you think Sage feels alone, too?”

Kit didn't care.

Charlie took Kit's wild little black-and-brown face in her hands, looked into her angry yellow eyes. “Do you think he understands why you're angry? Really understands?”

Kit didn't care about that either. If Sage didn't understand now, he never would. She'd said it plainly enough.

Hadn't she?

“Do you think,” Charlie said, “that you might have been thinking like a kitten who expects to be understood but never
really
explains what's wrong?”

Kit glared at her.

“Do you think, if you explained to him that the way
he
sees life is a threat to the freedom
you
see in life, that he would understand?”

Kit was quiet, thinking. Charlie said nothing more. She rose, carrying Kit, and in the kitchen she set her down on the window seat, at the far end, as far as possible from where Sage was tucked up among the cushions. His head was down, his eyes closed in misery.

Charlie served each of the cats a plate of warm shrimp casserole, each in their own corner, then set her own plate beside a green salad and sat down at the table. She didn't talk as she ate, didn't seem to notice them. She sat enjoying her early lunch and reading some manuscript pages from the book she was working on. The cats ate in grim silence—though anger didn't seem to spoil their appetites. They ate fiercely, as if tearing at fresh kill, glancing at each other only occasionally.

After a long while, as Charlie ignored them, their glances grew more frequent and then gentler. And as the soothing effect of the warm shrimp eased and cheered them, they looked at each other more kindly. Charlie gave no sign that she noticed. When she'd finished, and rinsed her plate, she left them alone and headed back to her studio. But in truth, she was so upset by the cats' battle that she wasn't sure she could work, not sure she could put herself back into the fictional world that she built around her as she wrote.

Oh, Kit,
she thought,
do you love Sage? Love him enough to follow him back into the wild despite your differences? To follow him even when you can't agree on what's important in life?
Indeed, two sets of their deepest beliefs were at cross purposes here, just as could happen with humans, one set of values deeply threatening the other.
Oh, Kit, don't go if you can't be happy. Don't go if you can't believe alike, don't go and leave us, only to be miserable…

But now all Charlie could do was leave them alone, so her interference didn't muddle their relationship, and hope they'd sort it out.

Getting back to work on the new book, soon immersed
in the tangle of the story, still Charlie was aware of the cats' softer voices, as if they were making up. Later, when she heard only silence she rose and went to look.

They were napping, curled peacefully together. She turned away, smiling, and soon she was deep in the book again, deeply relieved that silence reigned from the kitchen. Later, if she was aware of a soft metallic sound, she ignored it.

It was late that afternoon when, finishing her work for the day, she went into the kitchen and found the window seat empty and a glass panel above it open six inches. Alarmed, afraid the cats were gone, she had turned away to search the house when Kit came bolting in through the window behind her, her claws scrabbling on the sill, and raced to her, smearing dirty paw prints across the cushions.

“He's gone, Charlie. I woke up and he was gone, we were asleep and I was dreaming and then I woke up and the window was open and Sage was gone and I followed his scent that leads into the woods and I'm going back after him but I came to tell you so you wouldn't worry…”

Charlie grabbed her before she could leap away. “He's hurt, Kit. I'll come with you! He's awkward and clumsy in his bandages and cast, and it'll be dark soon. He mustn't be out there alone, he can't defend himself!” Carrying Kit, Charlie snatched up her jacket, shrugged it on while juggling the tortoiseshell, and they were out the door and heading for the woods.

“Now, Kit,” she said, setting her down. “Now you can track him.”

And Kit was off, following Sage's scent around the barn and straight into the heavy woods, tracking the crippled
cat while already the shadows of evening were running together toward night.

 

J
OE WAS IN
a dither to leave the ruins and get back to the village. Having seen the shadowed figure slip away among the broken walls, he paced the mansion's roof beneath overhanging limbs willing Clyde to hurry, willing the detectives and coroner and everyone to get back in their cars and leave so he and Clyde could search for the guy or follow him.

The dark intruder had been spying close enough to the grotto to know they had exhumed a body. If that mysterious presence was the killer, he'd surely run.

Had he known they'd be there looking for the grave? Joe wanted to alert the two detectives, but he could not.

And he couldn't alert Clyde or Ryan; they stood in a huddle by the cars with John Bern, Mike, Lindsey, Dallas, and Juana Davis. Joe couldn't even go up to them and yowl, couldn't make his presence known. He could just hear Mike:
You brought your cat up here, Damen? Rock was following cat scent! You laid a trail of cat scent! No wonder he tracked like a pro.

And he couldn't alert the dispatcher, Clyde had the phone on his belt. Even if he had a phone, how could he tell the dispatcher that Davis and Dallas had just missed a fleeing eavesdropper? It would look like the snitch was right up there in the ruins with them, that's how it would look.

And once he got Dallas and Davis wondering why the
snitch was here and how he'd known they were coming here, got them looking for him, combing the ruins to find him, that could be trouble, big time. For one thing, he hadn't covered his paw prints, he'd assured himself that after they left, the wind that softly blew across the hills would wipe away those telltale marks, would destroy his recent trail through the cemetery.

No, the only option he had was to slip through the rubble and into the open roadster without being seen, hunch down on the floor under the lap robe, and pray for Clyde to hurry. He was crouched to leap off the roof when he heard a car start from the direction of the old wooden shed, a soft, smoothly running engine. He reared up, staring through the falling dusk.

There! There it went, a small, dark car sliding away between the dead oaks, over the thick carpet of rotting leaves that covered the narrow back path—and it was gone, down the narrow back road, hardly more than a trail, that would lead out, north of the village. Faintly, he could hear rocks crunching under its tires where the leaves were thin.

When he turned to see if anyone else had heard, they hadn't, no one was looking in that direction. They were too far away, that faint hushing only a cat would hear.

He hoped the rough lane would tear out the underpinnings of the sleek, navy blue coupe, prayed the driver would get stranded in plain sight.

But no such luck. Already the car was gone, dropping down the hills where it would be lost among the narrow streets and small crowded cottages. Racing through the roof's shadows where trees overhung, he slicked down a dead oak and galloped across the rubble to the old shed.

It was half falling down, evening light shining in through the cracks. Investigating the dry earth within, he found tire marks, then sniffed in and around the rough walls for human scent over the stink of lingering exhaust. He detected a trace of shaving lotion or perfume, but it was so mingled with car smells and the stink of lantana vines growing in through the roof that he couldn't make much of it. He wasn't sure he could recognize the same smell in another setting, or even on the human source.

The tire tracks were equally disappointing. Rows of chevrons that he committed to memory, but that were so common they didn't mean much. He could detect no nick or scar to further identify the tread. When he heard the faraway voices change and fade and engines start, he sped for Clyde's roadster.

Leaping in, he waited on the floor, suffocating under the lap robe as he tried to lay out a plan.

If he told Clyde what he'd seen, would Clyde try to find the vanished car? Or would he only demand that Joe leave this alone? Ryan wasn't riding back with them, she wouldn't be there to defend him. At last Clyde swung into the roadster, flipped the blanket aside, and looked down at him, smug and satisfied.

“That did go well. I have to admit, Joe, your scam was a stroke of genius. The coroner has the body, and Rock is now a trained tracker! I guess you know Ryan's way proud of you.”

Joe smiled. He decided not to mention the darkly clad eavesdropper and spoil the moment with a fresh argument. He did his best to look both modest and innocent.

Ahead, the line of cars pulled around the side of the
forlorn old mansion between the dead trees and broken walls, to the wider dirt and gravel road that led to the village. The coroner's white van, Juana Davis's blue sedan, then Dallas's Blazer. Then Ryan's big red king cab. Clyde's yellow roadster joined the end of the line, the tomcat crouched out of sight on the seat.

 

I
N THE KING CAB
,
Rock rode on the front passenger seat beside Ryan, his head out the open window, drinking in the wind. Ryan didn't usually let the big dog put his head out where grit and stones could injure his eyes, but just this once he deserved a treat.

In the backseat beside Mike, Lindsey was silent, deep in thought, looking so solemn that Mike wondered what she'd do once they'd dropped her off at the station to pick up her car. Her expression of hard determination made him uneasy, he preferred the smiling, soft-spoken Lindsey Wolf he'd grown to care about all over again—if he'd ever stopped caring. This angry, alert side of her was worrisome. Her whole take on the morning's events was worrisome.

She seemed so certain that the corpse was that of Nina Gibbs. Seemed just as certain that Ray Gibbs had killed Nina, as sure as if the coroner had already determined identity and time of death, or as if Oregon had found trace evidence of Nina in Carson's tree house. Mike had never known Lindsey to let her imagination run so wild. He didn't try to convince her otherwise, didn't argue with her, he only wondered how prone she might be, given the mood she was in, to doing something foolish.

No one could be that sure what she might be thinking. Did her stubborn certainty have some basis? Were there facts about the case she wasn't telling them?

As Ryan turned down Ocean and into the village, driving slowly, stopping for a group of tourists headed through the gathering dusk for the lighted shops and restaurants, Mike took Lindsey's hand. “You're going home when you've picked up your car?”

She nodded, glancing out the window. “I think I'll rest a little, then I have some work to finish up that I promised for tomorrow. I'll have a sandwich for supper, at my desk.”

Not until they pulled into the courthouse parking lot, when Lindsey was fishing her keys from her pocket, did she really look at him. She squeezed his hand, and smiled.

He looked at her levelly. “You'll be in the office, then?” he said uneasily. “You don't mean to do something foolish?”

She looked surprised and laughed, and swung out of the truck, turning to talk through the open window. “Because I said that was Nina, in that grave? Because I said…” She shook her head. “Even if that is Nina, what could I do?” She touched his cheek with gentle fingers. “I wouldn't know how to run some kind of investigation, if that's what you're imagining. And I know better than to interfere in cops' work.”

Her words eased him, made him think his own imagination had gone astray. And yet as Lindsey leaned in to brush a kiss across his cheek, then headed away toward her car, Mike watched her not with his usual lusty interest but with questions.

He had a strong urge to follow her, at least swing by
her office in a little while, see if her car was still there in the little parking alcove.

But he immediately chucked that. He wouldn't breach her trust and privacy. He didn't want to smother her any more than he'd want to be smothered. And, determining to do the honorable thing even while his instinct told him he was wrong, he settled back, riding home with Ryan to pick up his car.