Cat Playing Cupid (24 page)

A
S
D
ALLAS AND
Mike ran for the Blazer, Joe raced to its far side and leaped at the door handle, pawing awkwardly, trying to flip it up and open. Blazer handles were not made for cat paws. Had Dallas locked the vehicle? In his frantic assault, would he set off the alarm? He'd had enough of that. As he flew at the latch, the two men came pounding—and just as he'd feared, the horn blasted suddenly in a heart-stopping cacophony that sent him flying for cover under the adjacent cars.

Dallas halted and circled the car, ready to move on a foolish burglar. Finding no one, he shoved his key in the door, swung in, and started the engine, silencing the din. As Mike opened the passenger door, Joe slipped behind him, crouching to bolt inside.

Mike was too fast, slamming the door as the tomcat leaped clear. Better left behind than crushed like an insect. Slinking away defeated, under the line of concealing vehicles, he watched the Blazer back out and move away through the parking lot, heading for San Francisco.

He was alone. In the vast, unfriendly airport. Alone in a strange city. Crouched on the cold, hard concrete trying to think what to do.

 

M
OST OF THE
San Jose officers had left. Two forensics officers were working the scene, photographing Lindsey's car inside and out, lifting prints. They had already walked a large grid through the parking area, and despite the contamination of other officers, had looked for anything dropped, had photographed visible footprints, and, around the car, had used a spray chemical to pick up unseen shoe marks. Now, working the inside of the Mercedes, Joe watched them vacuum, then use a sticky roller to pick up trace evidence. Slipping away behind the officers, Joe steered clear of the few law enforcement cars that were still heading out. None of them was from MPPD, they were all strangers. Taking shelter in the shadows beneath a red Honda Civic, he tried not to panic.

Clyde didn't know where he was. Nor did Dulcie. And Kit was too involved with mooning and sulking over Sage to think of much else. He was alone. Stuck in an unfamiliar and unfriendly airport. He didn't know whether he was more scared or more angry.

How do I get out of this one? How the hell do I get home?
He was almost tempted to slip into one of the remaining patrol units, hitch a ride to San Jose PD.

Oh, right. Just his luck to link up with a cop who, finding a presumably stray cat crouched in the back of his unit, would take him straight to the pound.

He listened to the casual exchanges between the two forensics officers. He licked his sweating paws. He tried to ignore the chill in his belly that was fast turning into panic. This was the way an abandoned pet would feel when it was coldly dropped on some unfamiliar street miles from home. Torn away from home and hearth, from its humans and its blanket and food bowl. Set adrift, expected to survive among strangers in a heartless world. And he was filled with the same panic he'd known as a homeless, starving kitten in San Francisco alleys.

Except, now he was far more familiar with the cruelties a cat could encounter in the human world.

But only for a few moments did the tomcat indulge himself in his dramatic bout of self-pity before he remembered the old, horse-scented pickup truck with Ryder's cell phone hidden behind the crates.

He took off running under the rows of parked cars, almost forgetting to listen and look for moving vehicles, praying the pickup with the cell phone was still there, that some disembarking passenger hadn't thrown his bag in the back and taken off for a far-flung farm.

He smelled the truck before he saw it. The sweet scent of horses that made him nostalgic for the Harper ranch. The truck was still there, and the driver wasn't, and he leaped into the metal bed scrabbling for the phone. Half expecting it to be gone, half expecting that Ray had somehow found and retrieved it. He hadn't seen him do that, Ray hadn't had time; but for a moment Joe let his imagination run wild, he envisioned Ray finding another phone hidden in the Audi, imagined Ray slipping back to cruise the parking lot, windows down, calling Ryder's phone
and following the familiar ring tone to its source in the pickup.

But of course nothing like that had happened. The phone was where he'd left it. He pawed it free of the crates and dialed Clyde's cell number.

He listened to it ringing. Tried not to think about what would happen later if the cops investigated Ryder's phone bills, checked out the numbers called on this date and wanted to know why Ryder had called Clyde.

One ring. Two…If it got to the fifth ring, it would go on message. Did Clyde have the phone off? Joe waited, growing cross.
Turn your phone on! Turn it on, Clyde!

Or was Clyde looking at the incoming number and, not recognizing it, wondering with his usual annoyance if this was some unwelcome sales pitch?

Three rings, four. Desolation drowned Joe. Maybe he should ride home to the farm with the driver of the pickup. Better that than the city pound, than a cage, dry cat kibble, and forced adoption or the gas chamber.

“Damen,” Clyde said gruffly, just before the fifth ring.

“I'm in San Jose,” Joe said. “I need a little help here. No money for a cab, or a bus ticket,” he said, hoping to get a laugh out of Clyde.

No laugh. Only a long silence. A heavy, demoralizing silence.

“Clyde? I'm at the San Jose airport. I need a ride. Do you think—”

“We're on our way,” Clyde said before Joe could grovel and beg. “We just passed Gilroy.”

“How did you…? What're you doing in Gilroy?”

“Hold on,” Clyde said none too sweetly. There was
some muttering, then Ryan came on. “Joe, are you all right? Where are you, exactly? Where at the airport? How do we find you?”

“How did you…?”

“Dulcie figured it out. How will we find you?”

He gave her directions from the A tunnel entry. “I am, at the moment, in the bed of a 1999 Honda pickup. Green, with three wooden crates tied in the back, and smelling of horses. If the pickup's gone, I'll be…” Rearing up, he looked around short-term parking for a likely retreat. “I'll be near the shuttle stop, under a bench. Did this number show on your screen?”

“It did,” she said. “We'll call you when we get there. It's nearly supper time. We brought you a little something. Wait, Clyde wants to talk.”

Another silence while she handed the phone back. Joe heard her whisper, “Be nice. The poor cat's scared, all alone in that place. I'd be scared silly.” And Joe thought,
My God, I love this woman
.

Clyde came on. “I wish, Joe, when these things happen, you would use a little judgment. That you would at least call me. What did you do, stow away in Lindsey's car?”

“Ryder Wolf is dead,” Joe told him. “Gibbs shot her. Dallas and Mike are on their way to San Francisco to meet Lindsey—she followed Ray. Hopefully SFPD will find him first.”

There was another long silence that made Joe wish he hadn't tried to sort it out on the phone. “Sometimes…,” Clyde began, then, “Where did you find a phone?”

“It's Ryder's phone.”

Clyde sighed and didn't ask any more questions. “If we
can't find you, we'll call that number. That's a big airport. Stay put if you can. Hold on.” There was another pause as Ryan took the phone.

“Fast-food burger okay? With fries?”

“Sounds like heaven,” Joe said, licking his whiskers. If Clyde had ever shown good sense, it was when he asked Ryan Flannery to be his wife. He hung up thinking fondly of a hot, greasy hamburger and greasy fries.

Pushing the phone back among the crates, he curled down on the hard metal floor of the pickup, yawned, and closed his eyes. He'd be sure to wake if the driver appeared. Cats are light sleepers, a cat hears every slightest sound, senses every movement. And, curling his front paws under him, Joe Grey dropped into sleep.

G
ULLS SWOOPED LOW
over Fisherman's Wharf, winging beneath the low clouds. Circling and screaming they dropped down among the rich smells of raw and frying fish to land on a restaurant roof; there they strutted, stomping softly like little thumping drumbeats, directly above Lindsey Wolf's head where she sat inside at a window table.

Having angled her chair behind a potted palm, she was out of sight from the hotel across the street. Distracted for a moment by the pitter-pat above her, she abandoned her surveillance, looking up—she looked back just in time to see Ray Gibbs pull aside the second-floor curtain, as he had done twice before.

Standing in plain view, he peered down at the narrow, crowded street, watching the wandering tourists, then looked across at the restaurant windows. She was sure he couldn't see her behind the palm and crammed among other diners. The interior of the restaurant, despite its big windows, was shadowy in contrast to the bright street.

He had the TV on, she could see its light flickering behind him through the thin curtain. She wondered, shivering, if the shooting was on the news yet, if that was what he was watching.

If she'd hesitated when he shot Ryder, she'd be dead, too. She was certain Ryder was dead, she couldn't have lived, the way she was shot. She grieved for Ryder, guilt had ridden with her as she hailed a cab, following Ray. Praying for Ryder, and riven with hate for Gibbs, she wanted to see him burn. Burn for Ryder, and for Carson, and for Nina Gibbs.

Why had he come
here
after he shot Ryder? Why not catch his flight, for which they must have had last-minute reservations? Or head up the coast among the small fishing and lumbering towns of northern California and southern Oregon, with all the open land and woods where he could disappear?

But maybe he thought, among the city's crowds of tourists, he wouldn't be noticed. The sidewalk below was jammed with gaudily dressed pedestrians moving back and forth across the narrow street, pushing around the fenders and bumpers of slow-moving cars, hungering to spend their money on little treats, or on useless wares to cart home as unique gifts for family and friends who would soon throw them away.

Gibbs moved again, letting the curtain fall back into place, and disappeared from view.
Had
he seen her, was that why he was staring across at the restaurant? She watched the street, praying to see Dallas's Blazer, praying they'd hurry. She was terrified Gibbs would come down, come across to the restaurant. Every time he left the window she drew farther back behind the palm, wanting to run.

When the waitress came to refill her glass of iced tea, she ordered a dessert that she didn't want, buying time. She couldn't sit there forever not ordering anything, the restaurant was too full. She had picked up her fork, was toying with the meringue when Gibbs stepped out the front door of the Argonaut. He stood a moment looking around, then headed across the street toward her, toward the door of the restaurant.

 

J
OE
G
REY WOKE
to the step of high-heeled cowboy boots, a distinctive sound one couldn't mistake. The next instant, the pickup bed shook as the cab door was flung open. He caught a whiff of male sweat, glimpsed the guy before he ducked back between the boxes—a squarely built man dressed in a faded western shirt and worn, western straw hat. There was a thud as he tossed something into the narrow space behind the driver's seat, maybe a suitcase or a duffel. Joe, snatching the phone in his teeth, leaped over the metal side of the truck bed just as the guy started the engine. Sailing to the roof of the next car, he leaped again to the top of a white Honda van, where he flattened himself against its roof, hiding the cell phone under him. The guy hadn't seen him, was busy backing out, looking over his shoulder, maneuvering the big pickup out of the tight space.

When the cowboy had gone, Joe rose up, hoping his weight hadn't punched any buttons on the phone that would send it into some incomprehensible mode that he couldn't figure out.

Should he call Clyde back, tell him he'd had to move? Or wait to see what happened? He hoped this van would stay in place for a while. It hadn't been there when he'd hopped into the truck. Hoped the driver wasn't just picking up a passenger. He must have been deep in sleep when it pulled into the parking space, he hadn't even heard a door slam.

He decided to stay where he was despite the fact that on the white van he was as visible as a dead rat on clean sheets. He was up high enough to see cars pulling in and out, to see the yellow roadster or Ryan's red pickup. He hadn't thought to ask what they were driving. He watched a beefy woman with three cranky, arguing kids approaching, heading straight for him, and he hunkered down again, praying the van wasn't theirs, trying to make both the phone and himself invisible.

And wouldn't you know it. Here they came, straight for him, the woman jingling her keys, the kids whining and arguing.

Maybe they were too busy arguing to notice him. He daren't move, they were feet from him. Frozen in place, he watched the flabby woman in her tight black pants and red T-shirt unlock the driver's door then slide the back door open. Crouched low, he was slowly backing away from that side when the tallest kid, a straggly girl of about ten, spotted him.

“There's a cat on top of the car! Ma, look! A cat!”

Hadn't she ever seen a cat before? What was it about innocent animals that made kids want to shout?

“Look, it's rearing up!” she screamed, running around the side of the van and jumping up, reaching. The kid was
a good jumper, he hadn't thought she could reach that high. Her hand grazed him, and before he could stop himself, he'd slashed her a good one. She dropped to the concrete, screaming, “It scratched me! Maaaaa, the cat scratched me!”

He'd hardly touched her. Hardly drew blood. Well, only just a drop or two, glistening on her dirty little fingers. He wished he hadn't done it, that hadn't been a smart move.

But it was too late now, and the woman was furious. As she lunged up, reaching to grab him, he abandoned the cell phone, leaped to the roof of the next car. He couldn't drag the phone with him and let her see it, that would tear it. As he sailed away from one car to the next, the woman ran between cars chasing him, screaming, “Catch it! Catch that cat! It attacked my baby.” Thudding and leaping across car tops, he glimpsed the flash of a red vehicle pulling in through the far gate.

Let it be them!
He paused, rearing up, hissing at the woman to make her back off. Praying that was Ryan's red truck.
Let that be Ryan and Clyde. Please God—and get this woman off me!