Cat Seeing Double (15 page)

Crossing to her truck as Hanni locked the house, Ryan was just getting into the cab when the Coldiron truck arrived, Louise driving. Hanni waved to her. “Good shopping?”

“Awesome,” the little woman said, laughing.

“You want a rug for one of your rentals?” Hanni gestured toward the ten-by-ten square of beige shag. “It's nearly new. A bit damp. It smells like pinot noir.”

“Added bonus,” Louise said as Eby came up the drive.

The cats watched Ryan turn out onto the street as Louise and Eby and Hanni rolled up the rug. And still they hadn't called Dallas to tell him they'd seen the old man, to give the detective the make and license of the unlikely car Gramps was driving.

 

“Senior citizens,” Ryan told the big silver dog as she turned out of the drive, glancing back at the Coldirons. “Tough as old boots.” Of the half-dozen older people she
had met since she moved to the village, the Coldirons were not unusual. Theirs was a tough generation. She wondered if her own age group could half keep up with them, or with Charlie's gray-haired aunt Wilma who walked miles every day, and could hold her own on the pistol range. Or with Cora Lee French or with sixty-some Mavity Flowers who still did forty hours a week cleaning houses. “Those folks were the depression children, the children of war, the survivors,” she told Rock. “Tough as alligator hide.” And she kept talking to the big dog to avoid thinking. She did not want to go home and face Dallas's ballistics report.

 

“She's scared,” Dulcie said, watching from the bushes as Ryan's red truck pulled away. “Scared to go home, afraid of what Dallas has found. If Rupert was shot with her stolen gun…”

“So someone set her up. Question is, what other contrived evidence did they leave for the police to find?” Joe watched Hanni help the Coldirons load the rug. When the truck and Hanni's Mercedes pulled away, he rubbed his face against a warm boulder then leaped atop the smooth granite, looking around the garden. “What was the dog on about? What did he smell?” He stood looking, then dropped down again and trotted back along the drive sniffing at the concrete.

He picked up Eby's scent, then that of Hanni and of the dog. He found the fainter scent, perhaps days old, of a woman, most likely Marianna Landeau. Nothing else. Whatever the dog had smelled, escaped him. His mind
still on getting access to a phone and calling Dallas, he turned to look at Dulcie.

“It's only ten blocks to Ryan's place, and the day's getting warm. Maybe she'll leave the truck window down for a few minutes—right there in her own driveway. Maybe we can call Dallas while he's still at her apartment.”

“Just a nice run,” Dulcie said, and she took off through the woods heading downhill toward Ryan's duplex. Leaping bushes or brushing beneath them, she was thankful that she and Joe had been given more than the usual amount of feline stamina; most cats were sprinters, your average housecat was not made for long-distance running. Careening down the last hill to the back of Ryan's apartment and around to the front, she wasn't even panting hard.

A squad car sat in the drive beside Ryan's truck. The cats smelled fresh coffee. They circled both vehicles, but all the windows were up; and the covered door handles were beyond a cat's ability to manipulate. Joe leaped at them, trying, but it was no good. There was no chance of using either phone to call the detective. Joe gave her a sour look and they fled around the side of the duplex to the back, where the tiny bathroom window waited.

Leaping at
the sill, Joe snatched and clung, hanging by his claws, peering down into the empty bathroom, then dropping to the sink and to the linoleum. As Dulcie followed, faintly they heard Ryan and Dallas talking, their voices so solemn that Dulcie shivered.

She liked Ryan Flannery; the young woman was bold and bright. She liked her because Clyde did, and because she was Dallas Garza's niece. Liked her because Ryan had taken hold of her life and straightened out the kinks, exercising an almost feline degree of sensible independence: If you're not welcome, if you're badly treated, make a new start on life.

Now that Ryan was just into her new life, she didn't need this malicious attempt to ruin her.

From behind, Joe nudged her. “Get a move on.” She'd been crouched as still as if frozen at a mouse hole, overwhelmed by her own thoughts. Trotting into the studio, out of sight of the kitchen, they slipped beneath Ryan's daybed.

The hardwood floor was admirably clean, no sneeze-making dust, not a fuzz ball in sight. That was another
plus for Ryan. There was something really depressing about finding the underside of a couch thick with stalagmites of ancient, congealed dirt, the dusty floor littered with bobby pins, lost pencils, and old gum wrappers, with tangles of debris that clung to the whiskers or was gritty to the paws.

Looking across the big room to the front windows, they could see neat piles of papers stacked on Ryan's desk but they couldn't see much of the kitchen, just the end of the table and Dallas's shoulder. They could smell, besides fresh coffee, the greasy-sugar scent of doughnuts, and could hear the occasional cup clink against a saucer. Dallas said, “I wish your dad were here.”

“Please don't call him, there's no need for him to think about the murder just now, to take his mind off what he's doing. I'll tell him when he gets home, when he's done with this training. You're my dad too, you and Scotty. Except,
you
can't play that role just now.”

“I can play any hand I like. But it would be nice to have Mike here. You sure you don't want to stay with me or with Hanni, not be alone?”

“I'm fine. If the killer had wanted me dead, he'd have come after me instead of Rupert. I need to do a ton of desk work, clean up a stack of letters, pay my bills. I did manage to do the Jakeses' billing, I have that almost ready to mail.”

“I'm glad you've got this big guy.” The cats heard Dallas patting the silver dog.

“What did Captain Harper say when he called, when you told him there'd been a murder? I can imagine he wasn't happy.”

“He didn't say much, took it in stride. Said he and
Charlie are having a great time in the city. They're taking a couple of days to drive home, through the wine country. And before they leave San Francisco he's going to make a contact for me. Something I'd rather he did in person.”

“About Rupert?”

“A couple of guys on the force owe me. Good friends. You remember Tom Wills and Jessie Parker.”

“Of course. They were partners. Tom's wife teaches second grade.”

“I'm giving them a list of the women I know Rupert was involved with. They can do a rundown on them, and on their husbands and boyfriends. Here's the list. Anyone you'd care to add? Or any facts that would help?”

The cats heard paper rattle, then a little silence. Then, “You were very thorough, all these years. I don't know half these names. Barbara Saunders? Darlene Renthke? June Holbrook? Martie Holland? I haven't a clue, I never heard of these women. My god. How many were there? And you never told me. This makes me feel so unclean. Well here are five I know, all right. And you can add Priscilla Bloom. She drives a little red Porsche with, very likely, marks from a tow chain on the rear bumper, and a citation on record for blocking traffic on the street in front of my house.”

Dallas laughed.

“So Max will spend his honeymoon getting that line of the investigation started,” Ryan said. “And on the way home, they'll swing through San Andreas to check on the Fargers? I'll bet Charlie's thrilled, having to cancel a dream voyage.”

“I imagine they made that decision before they left the
village. Doesn't matter,” Dallas said. “Those two will have a long and happy honeymoon no matter where they are.”

There was longer silence, broken by doggy chuffing as if someone was feeding the weimaraner doughnuts. Ryan said, “I feel so stupid not to have heard anything that night, not to have waked up. You're going to make him sick with doughnuts.”

“Why don't you call Charlie on their cellular, see if she'll let you put up a fence out back. It's not the optimum yard but it'll do.”

“I told you, I don't plan to keep him.”

“Of course you'll keep him. I wouldn't want to try to take him away. When I touch him, you're jealous as a hen with chicks.”

“Why does everyone in the family always know what I'm thinking! And what I intend to do!”

“He's a stray, Ryan. He's been abandoned. You going to take him to the pound, like you told Curtis? If he'd been lost, the owner would have been looking all over San Andreas for him.”

She sighed. “You look tired. Have you eaten anything this morning besides doughnuts? Did you have breakfast?”

“Eggs and bacon. I'm fine. Davis took the evidence up to the county lab herself, the casts of footprints, the dried mud she bagged, the garbage. She wasn't happy with Bonner walking through the mud behind the garage. Between the gun and bloody rags in the trash, of course the footprints were important.”

The cats had heard that before, that police officers were too often the biggest contaminators of a crime
scene. Cops walking through the evidence, maybe in a hurry to apprehend a prowler. It just went to show, life wasn't perfect. What was a cop supposed to do, fly around on little angel wings?

“Davis did a good job photographing the prints,” Dallas added. “
She
stayed out of the mud.”

“You're stalling. Was it my gun that killed him?”

“It's Sunday, Ryan. I had to get a ballistics man off his fishing boat. He wasn't happy. The only reason I did was to keep from having to arrest you and set up an arraignment.”

“If it wasn't my gun, you'd have told me right away.”

“I'll have the full report tomorrow. But ballistics turned up enough to keep from booking you.”

“
What!
It
wasn't
my gun? Why didn't you tell me!”

“The two bullets in your garage wall were fired from your gun, but ballistics doesn't think they killed Rupert. There was no blood or flesh on them.”

“But how…? Those holes in the wall were so small. They couldn't be my loads, mine would have done more damage. The holes in the back of his head…” she said sickly. “What am I missing here?”

“Forensics says Rupert was shot at about six feet by a hard case thirty-eight bullet or maybe a thirty-two.”

“But I load hollow points. You know that.”

There was a long silence.

“What?” she said. “You know I load with hollow points.”

Another silence. They heard the dog's toenails on the linoleum. Dallas said, “Are you sure of your load? Are you certain what you loaded?”

“Of course I'm sure.”

Another heavy pause as if each word took great effort. “Your thirty-eight, registered to you, with your prints on it, was loaded with hard case. Four rounds and two empty cylinders.”

“No. I loaded hollow point, that's all I use except on the range.”

“Maybe you forgot to reload out there? Left the…”

“You know I use wad-cutters for practice. You know I wouldn't leave those loads in.”

“Anyone can make a—”

“Didn't,” Ryan said. “I remember reloading—with hollow point.”

The cats well understood about hollow-point ammo and why Ryan used it. If she ever had to shoot in self-defense, a hard shell could travel an incredible distance, the bullet might go right through the intended and hit someone beyond. They'd read about such cases. But a hollow point would stop in the object or person hit, and would be more certain to halt an attacker—and that was what defensive shooting was about. The only reason Ryan would shoot someone was if her life were threatened and she had no choice.

“Someone not only took my gun from the locked glove compartment,” she said in a shaky voice, “they reloaded it.”

“You want the last doughnut?”

“Eat it. Don't give Rock any more, you know better.”

“We searched every inch of the garage again, came back while you were with Hanni, went through every piece of that damned stuff you have stored down there. Did you ever think of taking that clutter to the dump?”

“That stuff's valuable, sooner or later I'll use every piece of those wonderful old details. I'll use it if I…if I'm still in the free world to use it.”

“Come on, Ryan. Your prints weren't on the trigger of the Airweight, though it had been fired.”

“Whose prints…?” she began excitedly.

“None. No prints on the trigger. Your prints were on the smooth parts of the grip and on the holster we took from the glove compartment.”

“I cleaned the Airweight last week. Scotty and I spent the afternoon at the San Andreas range, while we were waiting for the plumber. Cleaned it, loaded it with hollow point and holstered it. I did not,” she said as if Dallas was staring at her, “reload with practice ammo.”

“And what did you do with the gun?”

“Dropped it in my purse, kept it with me in the trailer, put it in my glove compartment when I started home. Locked the compartment when I left the truck to load the windows, and again when I stopped to eat.”

“It was there when you left the restaurant and hit the road again? Did you look?”

“No, I didn't look. The truck was locked. I could see it from the restaurant. No one bothered it. But I…I left the gun in the truck that night and the next—in the locked truck in the locked glove compartment. When I got home I was so tired, I just unloaded the windows and came up and fell into bed. And the next night, after the wedding, you were all over the truck. No one had bothered it.”

“I wasn't into the glove compartment, wasn't in the cab.”

“Someone,” Ryan said softly, “someone unlocked
my truck the night I got home, or the next night. Down there in the drive. Unlocked the glove compartment, took my gun, reloaded it, and either carried it away and killed Rupert, or killed him here, after you left—while I was right here asleep. Not ten feet from him.

“And where,” she said, “was Rock, that night? Where were you, big boy, while all this was happening? Out running the neighborhood chasing the ladies?”

“The better question,” Dallas said, “is what would he do if it happened again? He has a strong feeling for you, now.

“Except, you don't know his background or training. You don't know what he's trained to do. I'd feel better if you'd move in with me for a while.”

“You can't baby-sit me twenty-four hours a day. Whoever killed Rupert could break into your downstairs in the middle of the night, just as easily as into my truck and garage—even if Scotty's back, staying with you. He sleeps like…he wouldn't hear anything. Rock,” Ryan said softly, “Rock and I will do just fine.”

Joe glanced at Dulcie. Had Rupert's killer also prowled around the Landeau cottage that night? Was that what Rock had smelled this morning that sent him snarling and ready to attack?

Maybe the killer had been after Marianna too? Did he have some vendetta against Marianna Landeau as well as against Rupert and Ryan?

But what vendetta? What was the connection? Did the killer plan to murder Marianna, as well, and incriminate Ryan for that crime?

More puzzling still, Ryan had seen how the dog behaved at the Landeau cottage, but she hadn't told Dal
las. Did she think the dog's wariness wasn't important, that he had simply been startled by Eby Coldiron, by the sound of someone unseen approaching up the drive?

And that was only one crime, one set of players. What about the bombing? The cats needed urgently to pass on to Detective Garza the information about Curtis's uncle Hurlie who had perhaps sheltered the boy when he ran away to San Andreas, who had perhaps been involved in the bomb-making. They needed to call Dallas, or call Harper himself on his cell phone before he arrived in San Andreas, let him know about Hurlie, and that the address Curtis gave Dallas was probably as fake as a rubber rodent stuffed in a mouse hole.

The cats could see, from beneath Ryan's daybed, Ryan's phone sitting on the desk, its summons so strong that Joe was tempted beyond reason to creep across the room and try phoning Harper. With his voice drowned by Ryan and Dallas, could he make a quick call?

Oh, right. And see his entire life and Dulcie's irrefutably hit the fan.

Dallas said, “You're starting Clyde's job tomorrow, you'll be too busy to worry while we get on with the investigation.”

“I'm thinking of putting Clyde off. I don't want to start ripping into the roof, then have to leave him with the house torn apart.”

“Have you told him that?”

“No. We're having dinner. I'll tell him then.”

“Is your crew ready?”

“Two good men. But I don't like to…”

“Can you call Scotty? Does he have to stay up there?”

“He's just doing some landscaping, putting in some sprinklers and walks. I guess he could—”

“Call him,” Dallas said. “Get him down here and get on with the Damen job. I wish your dad was here. Call Scotty. You need to stay on schedule. Clyde's easy,” he said, his voice lighter, “he'll understand if we throw you in jail, if he has to live for a few weeks with the roof off his house.”

“'Specially if it rains.” Ryan returned his laugh shakily, sounding close to tears.