"Miami, Florida."

"Yeah, that's right. I remember now."

He was studying the trip sheet as though it were a pack of Tarot cards in some tricky configuration. "You know what this is?" He was tapping the paper. "You want to know why this fare is so high? Look at that. Sixteen bucks. It doesn't cost that much to go from Via Madrina to the airport. She made a stop and had me wait maybe fifteen minutes with the meter running. An intermediate stop. Now, just let me think where it was. Not far. Some place on Chapel. Okay, yeah, I got it now. That clinic down near the freeway."

"A clinic?" That took me by surprise.

"Yeah, you know. An emergency facility. For the cat. She dropped him off for some kind of emergency treatment and then she got back in the cab and we took off."

"I don't suppose you actually saw her get on the plane, did you?"

"Sure. I was done for the night. You can see for yourself from the trip sheet. She was my last fare so I went upstairs to the airport bar and had a couple of beers out on the patio. I told her I was gonna be up there so she even turned around and waved at me when she was walkin' out to the plane."

"Was she alone?"

"As far as I could tell."

"Had you ever picked her up before?"

"Not me. I just moved up here from L.A. in November last year. This is paradise. I love this town."

"Well," I said, "I appreciate your help. At least, we know she got on the plane. I guess now the question is, did she ever reach Boca Raton?"

"That's where she said she was going," he said, "though I tell you somethin'. With that fur coat, I told her she ought to head someplace cold. Get some use out of it. She laughed."

I felt myself hit the pause button mentally, a quick freeze frame. It was odd, that image, and it bothered me. I pictured Elaine Boldt with her fur coat and turban, on her way to warmth and sunshine, waving back over her shoulder-to the taxi driver who'd taken her to the airport. It was disturbing somehow, that last glimpse of her, and I realized that until now I hadn't really pictured that at all. I'd been weighing the possibility that she was on the run, but in my heart of hearts,

I'd pictured her dead. I'd kept thinking that whoever killed Marty Grice killed her too. I just couldn't figure out why. Now the uncertainty had crept in again. Something was off, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

Chapter 16

Well, at least now I had a tiny mission in life. When I left Nelson, he was taking his temperature with a digital thermometer, confessing sheepishly a secret addiction to gadgets like that. I wished him a speedy recovery and hopped in my car, circling back around to Chapel.

The veterinary clinic is a small box of glass and cinderblock painted the color of window putty and tucked into the dead end formed when Highway 101 was cut through. I love that whole series of dead-end streets-relics of the town as it used to be, a refreshing departure from the pervading Spanish look. The small frame houses in that neighborhood are actually Victorian cottages built for the working class, with hand-turned porch rails, exotic trim, wooden shutters, and peaked roofs. They look like shabby antiques now, but it's still possible to imagine a day when they were newly constructed and covered with fresh paint, the full-grown trees no more than slender saplings planted in the midst of newly seeded lawns. The town then must have been dirt roads and carriages. I'm not above wishing more of it remained.

I parked in the lot behind the clinic and went in through the back door. I could hear dogs barking hoarsely somewhere in the rear; shrill cries for mercy, freedom, and relief. There were only two animals in the waiting room, both bored-looking cats who had formed themselves into bolster pillows. Their humans spoke to them in what was apparently cat-English, using high-pitched voices that made my own head hurt. Now and then when some dog set up a howl in the back, one or the other of the cats would appear to smile faintly.

There must have been two vets working because both cats got called at the same time and were carted on down the hall, leaving me alone with the receptionist behind the counter. She was in her late twenties, blue-eyed, pale, with an Alice-in-Wonderland blue ribbon across her straight blond hair. Her name tag read "Emily."

"May I help you?"

She spoke as though she'd never progressed beyond the age of six; a breathy, wispy tone, softly modulated, perhaps especially cultivated to soothe distressed beasts. Occasionally I run into women who talk like that and it's always puzzling, this perpetual girlhood in a world where the rest of us are struggling to grow up.

Dealing with her made me feel like a linebacker. "I wonder if you could give me some information."

"Well, I'll try," she whispered. Her voice was sweet and musical, her manner submissive.

I was going to show her the photostat of my P.I. license but I worried that it would seem brutal and coarse. I decided to hold off on that and whip it out if I had to turn the screws.

"Back in January, a woman brought a cat into the clinic for some kind of emergency treatment and I want to find out if she ever came back to pick it up."

"I can check our records if you like. Can you tell me the name, please?"

"Well, the woman's name was Elaine Boldt. The cat was Mingus. It would have been the night of January ninth."

Two patches of mild pink appeared on her cheeks and she licked her lips, staring at me fixedly. I wondered if she'd sold the cat to a vivisectionist.

"What happened?" I asked. "Do you know which one I'm talking about?"

"Well yes, I know which one. He was here for weeks," she said. Her speech had taken on a nasal cast, coming out through her nostrils now as though by ventriloquist. She wasn't exactly whining, but it was the tone of voice I've heard kids use in department stores when their moms accuse them of misbehavior and threaten to jerk their arms off. It was clear she was feeling defensive about something, but I wasn't sure quite what. She reached for a small tin box and walked her fingers through a file of index cards. She pulled out the record, snapping it onto the countertop self-righteously.

"She only paid three weeks' board and care and she never responded to any of our postcards or calls, so in

February the doctors said we'd have to make other arrangements because our space is so limited." She was really working herself into a snit here.

"Emily," I said patiently. "Is that your name, or somebody else's tag?"

"It's Emily."

"I really don't care where the cat is. I just need to know if the woman came back."

"Oh. No, she didn't."

"What happened to the cat? I'm just curious."

She stared at me for a moment, her chin coming up. She brushed her hair back across her shoulder with a flip of her hand. "I adopted him. He's really a fabulous cat and I just couldn't turn him over to the pound."

"That's fine. Hey, that's great. I've heard he was terrific and I'm glad you found a place for him. Enjoy. I will take your secret with me to the grave. If the woman shows up, though, would you let me know?" I put my card on the counter. She read it and nodded without another word.

"Thanks."

I went back to the office. I thought I better give Julia Ochsner a call and tell her I'd located the cat, thus saving her an unnecessary canvass of Boca kennels and vets. I left my car in the parking lot out back and came up the rear stairs. When I reached my office there was a man standing in the corridor, scribbling a message on a scrap of paper.

"Can I help you?"

"I don't know. Are you Kinsey Millhone?" His smile seemed superior and his attitude amused, as though he had a piece of information too precious to share.