Cat Seeing Double (27 page)

The pan-broiled
steaks were two inches thick, crisp and dark on the outside, deep pink within, so juicy and tender that Ryan almost groaned. She had left the curtains open so they could enjoy the sunset that blazed beneath the dark clouds. Sitting across from her dad at the kitchen table, tasting her first bite of steak, she sighed with a fine, greedy pleasure. “You can do, with a plain black skillet, what most chefs can't manage even with their fancy grills.”

Mike Flannery grinned. “I've heard that line.”

She laughed, but she watched him carefully too. He wasn't even home yet, this was only the last leg of his trip, he had come down here to help her, worried about her, and she was going to dump these ugly rumors on him, lay out all Larn Williams's lies to cheer him.

But she had to talk about this if she were to resolve her own uncertainty, her own fears. Thinking about Williams's vicious story, on top of his tampering with her billing, she had grown increasingly frightened of what else he might plan to do, of what his ultimate goal might be.

Was Williams's mind simply twisted, was he an impossible mental case? Or had he killed Rupert? But why would he draw attention to himself?

Maybe his actions were a carefully planned harassment designed to keep her off-center and perhaps complicate the murder investigation? Designed to throw the police off track and protect someone else?

Her father put down his fork, watching her, his expression half amused at her fidgeting, half a frown of concern. “Whatever's bothering you, Ryan, spit it out. Before you choke on it.”

“Something someone said. It's all lies. But…Well, lies that are hard to repeat.”

“If it makes you this edgy, if you're embarrassed to say it, it has to be about me. What have I done? What did someone say I did?”

She looked at him helplessly.

“It wouldn't be the first time someone told a lie about law enforcement.”

“He said it was common gossip in the city but I never heard anything like it, in the city or anywhere else.”

He waited patiently, buttering his baked potato.

Hesitantly she began, repeating Williams's accusations. Flannery listened without comment, without interrupting. When she finished he asked only, “Do you believe him?”

“Of course I don't believe him. But—what's he up to? Is there some strange little thread on which he could build such lies? And there's more.”

She told him about the break-in, about Larn cooking her books and switching the bills. “What's scary is, this has to fit in with Rupert's murder. That's what's scary.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You and Dallas always say, never believe in coincidence.”

“Have you told Dallas what Williams said, and about the billing?”

“I called him about the bills, the night it happened. But what Williams said…I didn't tell him that.”

“Why not?”

“Partly because I made a spectacle of myself in the restaurant when he told me those things. I lost my temper, big-time. Strong-armed him and marched him outside. I just…I suppose Dallas has heard that, by now. If Clyde hadn't come along and stopped me, I
would
have pounded him. What a weird bird. He just went limp, didn't try to fight me, didn't do anything. As if—”

“As if he likes the ladies to pound him?”

“That's sick.”

“Can you make any connection between Williams and Rupert? Or, even between Williams and the bombing on Sunday?”

“No, I can't. It's such a muddle. Except, it all seems to connect to San Andreas. Williams lives and works there. I just finished the Jakes job there. And Curtis Farger was staying up there before the bombing. He came down from San Andreas in
my
truck, hidden in the back with the dog.” She sighed. “Maybe one thing just led to another, but…”

“Go over it step by step, the relationships. Begin with your job in San Andreas.”

“I had remodeled a house for the Jakeses in the city, so it was natural for them to come to me for their vacation addition. They approached me, in fact, before I left
Rupert. After I left, I told them I didn't want to take the job away from the firm, but they said they wanted me, that they didn't want to deal with Rupert. So I agreed.

“Then when I moved down here to the village, the Jakeses recommended me to the Landeaus because Marianna and Sullivan had bought a teardown here. The Landeaus came down and we talked. She sort of scared me, she was so…austere. One of those gorgeous natural blondes, but without any warmth. Intimidating. We went over the property, I gave them my assessment, and I ended up remodeling the teardown.

“As to Larn Williams, he just showed up when I was working on the Jakeses' place. Wanted me to bid on a job for one of his real-estate clients.” She looked helplessly at her father. “I can't see a connection. I didn't realize then how strange Larn is, I didn't see that.” She studied her dad's preoccupied frown. “What?”

Flannery was quiet.

“Do you know something about Larn Williams?”

“Would you have a picture of Mrs. Landeau?”

“No. Why?”

“How old would you say she is?”

“I…Maybe a beautiful forty-some.”

“I had a parolee who would fit that description. Let me do some checking. What do you know about her?”

“That they'd been living in L.A. for some years before they moved to the Bay Area, maybe a year ago.”

“Did she say that she'd lived in San Francisco before?”

“Marianna doesn't chitchat. But she does know the city. She didn't ask directions when Hanni and I sent
her to various out-of-the-way shops and decorator supply houses.”

“What does Hanni think of her?”

“Cold fish,” Ryan said, grinning.

“I had a woman on my caseload a few years back who would fit her description. She came out on parole after serving a conviction for bank fraud. I hadn't had her a month when she was into a complicated embezzlement operation. I told her to clean it up or she was going back. When she tried to make trouble, I
sent
her back. A vindictive sort. Served the balance of her sentence, when she came out I had no reason to keep tabs on her. I heard she'd moved down to L.A. and married into a fair amount of money, not all of it clean.”

He cut some scraps from his steak and put them on a plate for Rock. Ryan watched him spoil the big weimaraner in a way he would never have allowed for his own dogs. “Seems far-fetched,” he said, “but let me see what I can find out.”

“But why would she—”

“Let's see what I can turn up. If this
is
Martie Holland, I'll tell you the rest of the story.” Watching her expression, he laughed. “No, I wasn't involved with her.”

“No,” she said. “But Rupert was. Right?”

Flannery nodded.

“Dallas knows her, she's on the list he's investigating. I think she's one of the two supposedly out of the country. The Bahamas, I think he said.” And she felt cold again, icy.

 

The Garza cottage clung to the side of a steep hill north of the village, its front windows looking down on rooftops and oak trees that now, at night, were a black mass broken by only a few scattered lights from the houses tucked among them. At the back of the cottage, the kitchen windows faced the rising hill, the steep backyard softly lit by ground-level lamps that Joe and Dulcie avoided as they approached the back steps—two neighborhood cats checking out the garbage cans.

No lights were on in the kitchen, but a glow from deeper in the house suggested that Garza sat at his desk, perhaps catching up on paperwork.

Approaching the back door, with quick paws Joe tucked the little purse under the mat. And as Dulcie curled down on the cool earth beneath the bushes to watch the door, Joe nipped down the hill to the lower-level guest rooms—family bedrooms from the time when they all came down for weekends.

Crouched on the windowsill he reached a paw through the burglar bars and through the hole in the screen, product of his own handiwork some months back, when he'd done serious spying on Garza himself. Flipping the latch and sliding the screen open, he jiggled the window until its lock gave.

He was through the bars and inside. Leaping to the small desk, he touched the phone's speaker button. This was the only phone in the house with two lines. The upstairs fax, and the main line, were on different instruments, the fax tucked away, he hoped, in a cupboard in the desk where Garza wouldn't see its telltale light blinking. Hitting line two, he pawed in the main phone
number that he had long ago memorized. Joe's talents didn't extend to writing down phone numbers, he was forced to keep all such urgent information in his head—a living computer that, over time, had become strong and reliable.

Garza answered on the second ring.

Dispensing with polite formalities, Joe kept his message short. “I've shoved a little purse under the back doormat; it contains items taken from Marianna Landeau's closet that I hope will reveal her fingerprints.

“You may find the prints are also those of a Martie Holland. I don't know who this person is, but perhaps that information will be of interest when the lab has finished with the rug—the one you picked up from the Coldirons. And when you've had a look at the mantel in the Landeau cottage.

“You should find four more chips from the mantel on a leaf under a lavender bush just south of the Landeau front door. Those were removed from inside the fireplace before Marianna vacuumed there. She used the hand vac from the kitchen, and I don't believe she emptied it when she finished.”

He felt as if he was spelling the steps out too clearly, insulting Garza's intelligence. But if Garza nailed Rupert's killer, that was all that counted. Police work was a cooperative undertaking, a team effort—even if part of the team was irrevocably undercover. He had hardly hit the speaker button to end the call when he heard Garza cross the room above him, and hit the stairs. And Joe was out of there, out the window sliding it closed,
diving into the bushes as Garza switched on the light. Had the phone made a telltale click? Why did Garza suspect the caller was down there?

Checking out both bedrooms, and bath and closets, Garza cut the lights again and turned to the window. Standing just above Joe behind the burglar bars, looking out, he was still for a long time. Below him, crouched in a tangle of prickly holly, patiently Joe waited until at last the detective turned away. Joe heard him mount the stairs.

He waited until he heard the kitchen door open then close again. When he knew that Garza had the little evening purse and the compacts, he beat it up the hill to Dulcie.

Above them the kitchen light was on. Rearing up in the hillside garden, they could see Garza sitting at the table wearing cotton gloves, opening the little purse.

He didn't touch the compacts, he simply looked. He looked out the window at the rising yard, and sat for a long moment doing nothing. At last, rising, he fetched a folded paper bag from a kitchen drawer, dropped the purse inside, and marked the bag with his pen.

“What now?” Dulcie said. “Can he send the prints to AFIS electronically?” She thought the automated fingerprint identification system that California used should take only an hour or two.

“I think he can. But it will show only a California record. Maybe he'll send it to WIN too, for the western states. But if she had only a federal rap, it could take weeks.”

The Western Identification Network, which supplied fingerprint identification for the eight western states,
was usually prompt, as well. But if an officer got no results there, and had to go through the FBI that covered the entire country, he'd better be prepared for a wait.

“You think Marianna and Martie Holland are the same person?” Dulcie said softly.

“I'm betting on it. I think Larn Williams either works for Marianna, or they're good friends.”

“You think she planned the bombing? But why? And how does that connect to Rupert? She knew Rupert in San Francisco, but…”

“My guess is, the bombing was all the Fargers' doing, payback for Gerrard's prison sentence.” He turned to look at her. “But my gut feeling, Dulcie, is that Marianna killed Rupert. We just don't know, yet, why she killed him.

“Something tore up that fireplace, after the three niches were painted. If the mason had left it like that, she'd have pitched a fit. I think she installed those three pieces of sculpture to hide the flaw in the concrete that she tried to fix.”

“But the woman is a stickler for perfection. Why didn't she do a better job?”

“If she was trying to get rid of the body, maybe she didn't have time. She wanted to be gone, out of there before anyone knew she was at the cottage. Maybe that plaster job was the best she could do, in a hurry to get it dried and painted. Maybe, in the artificial light, she didn't see the flaw. I didn't see it until the moonlight slanted at an angle. And remember, she had to sponge his blood out of the rug too. And dump that bottle of wine, trying to cover her tracks.”

“But how did she get the body out of there? She looks
strong, but—if she dragged it to her car, then dragged it into Ryan's garage, there'd have been marks.”

“There were marks—those narrow tire tracks along Ryan's drive. Dallas photographed them. By now he has to know those weren't bike tracks. Maybe a wheelbarrow, or more likely a hand truck. Maybe she brought it with her from the city.”

“Grisly. She loads a hand truck into her expensive car, knowing she'll soon have a body to haul away. If the cops find it, and check out her car too, there should be plenty of traces for the lab.”

“And before that,” Joe said, “there should be replies on Marianna's fingerprints, and the lab report on the rug. I wonder how long that will take.” He narrowed his eyes. “And what was the dog on about, when he pitched that fit there in the driveway? It sure wasn't Eby Coldiron who made him so mad.”