Cat Seeing Double (6 page)

Charlie nodded. “If that old man is Gerrard Farger's father—Curtis's grandfather…They've had a warrant out for him. Max and Dallas were sure the two ran the lab together, but when they busted Farger the old man was gone, not a trace. Now, if there's a connection to San Andreas, that's a whole new track to follow. We may not make it to Alaska.”

“I'm sorry.”

Charlie shook her head. “Whatever Max decides is okay. We can take the cruise later. That old man needs
to be stopped. At the time of the drug raid, the second bedroom in the Farger cabin had been cleaned out, where he might have bunked with the boy. Nothing but a bare cot against the wall and an old mattress on the floor, and the kid's clothes. Juvenile officer picked those up after the bust, when he took the kid down to his mother. Not a sign of the old man, and during the trial Gerrard wouldn't say a word to incriminate his father.”

Ryan shrugged. “Nothing like family loyalty. Were they part of a bigger operation?”

“Max doesn't think so. More of a family business,” Charlie said wryly. “Farger apparently thought he could run a small operation without alerting the cops or the cartel.”

Ryan laughed. “Sooner or later the cartel would have known about it—would have destroyed the lab or taken it over, made Farger knuckle under and follow their orders.” Both young women were very aware of the powerful Mexican drug cartel that operated in the Bay Area. “He's lucky Max made the bust, he's safer in jail. Was he farming marijuana too?”

“DEA is investigating,” Charlie said. The cartel used its meth profits to bankroll marijuana operations across the state—a behemoth of criminal activity as dark and invasive, in the view of law enforcement, as if the black death were creeping across California destroying families and taking lives. In the national forests and other remote areas, the marijuana patches were guarded by gunmen who shot to kill, so intent on protecting their crops that a deer hunter or a hiker venturing into the wrong area might never be heard from again.

And the toxic waste from meth labs was dumped
down storm drains so it went into the sea, or was poured into streams so it got into the water supply, or was poured on the ground where it could stay for years poisoning fields and killing wildlife. Whoever said doing meth didn't hurt anyone but the user didn't have a clue.

“You
are
pale,” Ryan said softly. “We shouldn't be talking about this stuff. You want to get out of the crowd, go somewhere quiet and lie down?”

“I'm fine,” Charlie said crossly. “I don't need to lie down.”

But she wasn't fine, she couldn't get over being scared. She'd thought she was okay until, walking up the grassy aisle, with all their friends, everyone she knew and cared about, standing like a wall to protect her, she kept imagining the grass exploding in front of Dallas and Wilma, exploding with all those people crowding close.

She felt ice-cold again. Her hands began to shake.

Ryan put her arm around her, hugging Charlie against her shoulder.

Charlie shook her head. “I'm sorry. Delayed reaction.”

“I guess that's allowed. You don't have to be stoic and fearless just because you married a cop.”

“It would help.”

They looked at each other with perfect understanding; but they glanced up when Clyde and Wilma approached their table.

Wilma was wrapped in a blue cashmere stole over her pale gown, against the night's chill. She carried a woven shopping bag that bulged and wriggled.

Clyde carried two paper plates heaped with canapés and salads and sliced meats. As he set one in the center of the table and the other underneath, Joe and Dulcie slipped beneath the table; and from Wilma's shopping bag the kit hopped out, strolling purposefully under the table to claim her share.

“Cora Lee's fine,” Wilma said. “Apparently something hit her in the head, but no concussion. They want her overnight, though.” When, early in the spring, Cora Lee had walked into the middle of a robbery and murder, she had been hit by such a blow to her middle that her spleen had ruptured and had to be removed. The dusky-skinned actress told them later she was terrified she would never sing again. But she had sung, the lead in the village's little theater production of
Thorns of Gold.
With the kit as impromptu costar during the entire run, the play had sold out every night.

“Dallas is trying to get Curtis Farger remanded over to juvenile,” Clyde said. “But since the fire, with their building gone, they're not eager to take any kids. Kids scattered all over, in temporary quarters, and not great security.” He looked at Charlie. “Max would be smart to get a move on, before you decide to enjoy the cruise without him.”

“Maybe we'll just do a few days in San Francisco, and book the cruise for next spring.” Their reservation at the St. Francis gave them three days in the city before boarding their liner for the inland passage. At the moment, that sounded pretty good to Charlie.

“Can you cancel a cruise like that?” Wilma said. “Even Max…” She watched Charlie, frowning. She
wanted her niece and Max to get on that ship and be gone, to be away from the Farger family.

“Max knows someone,” Charlie said. “When he made the reservations, that was part of the package, that if something urgent came up, we could cancel.” She glanced beneath the table where the cats feasted, Joe and Dulcie eating fastidiously, the kit slurping so loudly that Ryan looked under too, and laughed.

 

When the cats had demolished their quiche, seafood salads, rare roast beef, curried lamb, and wedding cake, they stretched out between the feet of their friends for a leisurely wash, grooming thoroughly from whiskers to tail. They could have trotted over to the jail and had a look at Curtis Farger, but they were too full and comfortable. And Joe didn't think they'd hear much. Very likely Curtis had already been questioned as much as he could be, until a juvenile officer arrived in the morning to protect the kid's rights. Sleeking his whiskers with a damp paw, Joe Grey thought about the legal rights of young boys who set bombs to kill people.

No one liked to believe that a ten-year-old child had intended, and nearly succeeded in, mass murder. In the eyes of the law, Curtis and his grandfather were innocent until proven guilty. But in Joe Grey's view they were both guilty until proven otherwise. If you attacked innocent people with all claws raking, you should know that your opponent would retaliate.

Charlie said, “This afternoon at the church—before the bomb—I felt like I was nineteen again, so scared and giddy. And then after the bomb went off, it
was…I wasn't nineteen anymore, couldn't remember ever having been so young.” She chafed her hands together.

“There was some reason,” Ryan said, “some profound reason, why that bomb went off prematurely. What made the kid turn and run? What made him trip and fall? You couldn't see much under those overhanging trees. He was lucky he didn't break something, falling off that roof. Just bruises—and those scratches on his face from the branches.” She looked at Clyde. “Do you think he
would
have set off the bomb if he hadn't fallen? Do you think he
would
have pressed that little button?”

Clyde and Charlie and Wilma avoided looking at each other. All were thinking the same. Had no one seen Kit attack the boy?

“The boy went to a lot of trouble,” Clyde said, “to suddenly abandon the idea. Whether he made the bomb or the old man did, don't you think a ten-year-old would do what he was told to do? If the old man forced the kid to go up on the roof, if he threatened Curtis…”

“You're saying he
would
have done it,” Ryan said. “But then fate stepped in—as if Max and Charlie's guardian angel was looking after them, looking after all of us.”

Wilma lifted her champagne glass. “Here's to that particular angel. May our guardian angels never desert us.” And Wilma did not need to look beneath the table to know that the guardian angel was pressing against her ankle. That particular angel purred so powerfully that she shook both herself and Wilma.

The platters
of party food were empty, the wedding cake had all been eaten or small pieces wrapped in paper napkins and carried away as little talismans to provide midnight dreams of future happiness. The empty champagne bottles had been neatly gathered and bagged, the tables and chairs folded and loaded into waiting trucks. In the quiet night the grassy, tree-sheltered median was empty now and silent and seemed to Ryan and Clyde painfully lonely. As they headed for the few parked cars, Ryan took his hand.

The bride and groom had left for San Francisco, for the bridal suite at the St. Francis, the loveliest old hotel in the city. They had joked about arriving in Max's Chevy king cab, and had talked about renting a limo but considered that extravagant. The pickup wasn't fancy but it was safe on the highway, and in the city they would put it in storage during their cruise. They had three days to enjoy San Francisco before they moved into the stateroom of their luxury liner and sailed for Alaska—or before Max realized that he couldn't leave, with the bombing case working, that they'd have to head home again.

“Maybe only a three-day honeymoon,” Ryan said sadly, already certain of what Max would do.

“Whatever they do,” Clyde said, walking her to Dallas's car, “they're happy.” He gave Ryan a hug by way of good night, watched her settle in beside Dallas, then swung into his yellow convertible to drive the three blocks home, leaving Ryan and her uncle heading for her place to collect what little evidence might remain in the bed of her truck. Strange about the kid hitching a ride, hiding under the tarp where he couldn't be seen through the rear window—he had to know exactly when she'd be leaving San Andreas. He had made his way into the town itself, maybe hitchhiking, to wait for her there.

Clyde drove home thinking uneasily about Joe, and about the kit and Dulcie. The cats would be into this case tooth and claw.

A bombing was a different game than shoplifting, or domestic violence, or even domestic murder. A bomb investigation of any kind could be more than dangerous—and you could bet Joe Grey would be onto it like ticks on a hound.

Short of locking the cat up, there wasn't much Clyde could do to stop him.

Joe claimed he had no right to try. And maybe Joe was right. As much as Clyde wanted to protect Joe, the tomcat was a sentient being, and sentient beings had free choice. Joe could always argue him down on that point.

Parking in his drive, Clyde took a few minutes to put up the top of the antique Chevy. Following the slow, cumbersome routine, pulling and straightening the can
vas and snapping the many grommets in place, he thought how strange and amazing, the way his life had turned out. Who would have imagined when he was living in San Francisco walking home from work that particular evening, when he paused to kneel by the gutter looking at that little bundle of gray fur among the trash and empty wine bottles. Reaching to touch what he was sure was a dead kitten, who could imagine the wonder that lay, barely alive, beneath his reaching hand?

When he took up the little limp bundle and wrapped it in his wool scarf and headed for the nearest vet, who could have dreamed the off-the-wall scenario that would soon change his life? That he was holding in his hand a creature of impossible talents, a beast the like of which maybe no other human had ever seen, at least in this century.

No other human, except Wilma.

It didn't bear pondering on, that Joe Grey and Dulcie had ended up with him and Wilma, who had been fast friends ever since Clyde was eight years old and Wilma was in graduate school. Through all of Wilma's moves in her career as a parole officer, and through Clyde's own several moves, they had remained close.

But how and why had the two cats come to them?

Dulcie said it was preordained. Clyde didn't like to think about that stuff, any more than Joe did. The idea that some power totally beyond his comprehension had placed those two cats where they would meet, not only kept him awake at night but could render him sleepless for weeks.

And yet…

Fate
, Dulcie said.

Neither Clyde nor the tomcat believed in predestination, both were quite certain that your life was what you made it. And yet…

Entering the living room and switching on the lowwatt lamp by the front door, he found Joe fast asleep in his well-clawed armchair. The gray tomcat lay on his back, snoring, his white belly and white chest exposed, his four white feet straight up in the air. Obviously overfull of party food. He must have left the reception early and hiked right on home and passed out, a surfeited victim of gluttony. Clyde turned on a second lamp.

Joe woke, staring up at Clyde with blazing eyes. “Did you have to do that? Isn't one lamp enough? I was just drifting off.”

“You were ten feet under, snoring like a bulldog. Why aren't you hunting? Too stuffed with wedding cake? Where's Dulcie?”

“She took the kit home, she doesn't want her out hunting.” Joe flipped over. Digging his front claws into the arm of his chair, he stretched so deeply that Clyde could feel, in his own spine, every vertebrae separate, every ligament loosen. “She's worried about Kit, afraid that old man saw her jump the boy and will come back to find her.”

Clyde sat down on the couch. This thought was not far-fetched. Already Joe and Dulcie had been stalked by a killer because of their unique talents. If the kit had foiled the old man's plans, wouldn't he wonder what kind of cat this was? Wouldn't his rage lead him back to her? Clyde looked intently at Joe. “So where are you going to hide her?”

“I was thinking about Cora Lee French, when she gets home from the hospital. Since the play, she and the kit are fast friends. And that big house, that the four senior ladies bought for their retirement, has a thousand hiding places. Sitting there on the edge of the canyon, it would be a cinch for a cat to escape down among the trees and brushes—that old man would never find her, it's wild as hell in those canyons.”

“Right. She can just slip away among the bobcats and coyotes, to say nothing of a possible cougar.”

Joe shrugged. “We hunt that canyon now and then, we've never had a problem.”

Clyde headed for the bedroom, pulling off his suit jacket and loosening his tie. You couldn't argue with a cat. Behind him Joe hit the floor with a thud, and came trotting past him into the bedroom. Glancing up at Clyde, he clawed impatiently at the sarouk rug, waiting for Clyde to turn back the spread.

Share and share alike was okay, cat and man each claiming half the bed. But one couldn't expect a poor little cat to turn back the covers.

Grumbling, Clyde pulled off the spread. At once Joe leaped to the center of the blanket and began to wash, waiting in silence for Clyde's inevitable lecture.
You don't need to take your half in the middle. And as to that canyon, you can't possibly foresee all the dangers in that canyon. You do remember the mountain lion? And we can all hear the coyotes at night yipping down there. And those bands of raccoons…

When Clyde's words of caution were not forthcoming, Joe stopped washing to look at him.

Clyde said, “You are very cavalier when it comes to the kit's tender young life.”

“That isn't fair. That is really insulting—to me, and to the kit. Kit can smell another animal, she knows how to slip away.”

Clyde didn't answer.

“What would
you
do,” Joe said, “if you were out on the hills and a cougar came prowling? You would simply keep your distance, use a little common sense.”

“I'd get the hell out of there. And I'm not seven inches tall.” He glared at Joe. “You can be so—cats can be so…

“Irritating,”
Joe Grey said, smiling.
“Cats can be so maddening and unreasonable.”
Turning his back, he pawed his pillow into the required nest shape for absolute comfort. He was just settling down, warm and purring, when Clyde pulled off his shirt. Joe sat up again, staring at Clyde's bare back, at the dried blood and raw, red wounds. “What happened to you? You look like you had a really wild night.”

“Don't be crude.” Clyde twisted around pressing against the dresser to look in the mirror. “That's the kit's handiwork—when she jumped on me to warn us about the bomb.”

Joe watched Clyde dig through his top dresser drawer searching for the medication he used when one of the cats, or their elderly retriever, Rube, had a scratch. Clyde found the salve and, twisting and straining, began to spread it on the scratches.

“Dr. Firetti would be interested to know how you're using his prescriptions. Aren't you afraid of picking up something from old Rube or one of us cats? A
touch of mange? Ringworm? Poison oak? Some ancient and incurable—”

“Cool it, Joe. This is all I have. I don't handle this stuff carelessly. I don't…” He stared at the open tube, and at his fingers, and turned a bit pale.

“There's iodine in the medicine cabinet,” Joe said helpfully. “You used it on Rube when he cut his foot, but you poured it in a cup.”

Recapping the tube, Clyde went into the bathroom. Joe heard the shower running as if Clyde were scrubbing off the dangerously infected salve. When Clyde came out again he smelled sharply of iodine. Refraining from comment, Joe turned over and closed his eyes. He was soon deeply asleep while Clyde lay in the darkness worrying about ancient and unnamed diseases.

 

Two floodlights washed across Ryan's drive, shining down from the roof of the duplex onto her new red pickup—not new from the factory, the vehicle was a couple of years old, but new to her, in mint condition and with really low mileage. A handsome new workhorse with locked toolboxes along both sides, and a strong overhead rack to hold lumber and ladders.

In the six-foot truck bed Dallas knelt examining the tarp that she had so carefully shaken out the night before and neatly refolded, unwittingly destroying all manner of evidence.

A few long black hairs remained, which Dallas removed with tweezers, and there were some short gray hairs, that Dallas hoped might have come from the old man. “I'll need to take the tarp to the lab.”

“I have another.” She watched as Dallas finished up. As he packed away his fingerprinting equipment and locked the truck, she went up the outside stairs to make fresh coffee. Filling the coffeepot, she wasn't sure how much information she could supply about Curtis Farger or about his two friends. She tried to recall the other boys' names, tried to remember which direction they came from when they arrived at the trailer, and to remember any chance remarks that might help Dallas know where Curtis had been staying. It was nearly midnight. With so little sleep the night before, it was hard to keep her eyes open. As the coffee brewed she stepped into the closet and took off her suit and high-heeled pumps, pulling on a warm robe and slippers. The idea that that boy had hitched a ride for two hundred miles, and she'd never known, both angered and amused her. You had to give him credit.

Had
the boy set that bomb? Had he
wanted
to set it, or was he forced to do it?

The kid was old enough to know right from wrong, old enough to have refused to take part in such a deed, even when he was ordered by a grown-up. What kind of boy was this? A child terrified of crossing the old man? Or a twisted child, excited by the thought of murdering hundreds of people?

That was a hard thought to consider. A child warped and crippled by those who had raised him? She didn't like to think about that.

Returning to the kitchen, she watched Dallas pull a box of shortbread cookies from her freezer. He had his uniform jacket off, his collar loosened, and had poured the coffee and set the sugar and cream on the table.
They sat comfortably together the way they had when she was little, when she'd had a problem at school or when she wanted to hear for the hundredth time the old family stories about her dead mother, the tales about Dallas and her mother growing up on the little family acreage in the wine country east of Napa.

They remained talking until after 1:00, discussing the boy, and Ryan describing the Jakeses' mountain cabin where she had added a new great room, turning the old living room into a master bedroom. They both knew the foothill area well, the rolling slopes that were green in winter until the snows came, green again in spring until the summer sun burned the hills to the golden brown of wild hay, broken by the dark green stands of pine. Scattered vacation homes were tucked among the hills along with pockets of older shacks down in the gullies where the drainage was poor and there was no sweeping view. There were a few large estates too, back away from the main roads, like that owned by Marianna and Sullivan Landeau, the couple whose weekend house she had recently finished, here in the village. The Landeaus' San Andreas estate was huge, the house overbearing with its excessive use of marble. Not at all like the simple Molena Point cottage that Ryan had designed for them.

“Must be nice to have that kind of money,” Dallas said. “What, three houses—one in San Francisco?”

She nodded. “Nice, I guess. But they don't seem all that happy.”

Dallas broke a cookie in half. “And the boy—you have no idea where he lived, where any of those kids lived?”

“They came up the drive, but you can't see the road from the house. I never did see which direction they came from.” She named the other two boys but she didn't know their last names, she was certain she'd never heard them.

“The kids didn't talk about their families. They hung around the way kids do, showed up after school as if they were on their way home, and once or twice on the weekend. They seemed open enough, and friendly.

“Right in the beginning Curtis
was
sort of nosy, asking questions about where I was from, and did I do this kind of work for a living.” She glanced wryly at Dallas. “He looked…when I told him where I lived he did a little double-take, then immediately covered it up. We were busy surveying and laying out the addition, I didn't think any more about it.”