She was so busy these days, spying uselessly on Lucinda Greenlaw. Maybe that was all that was wrong with her, watching Lucinda too much, feeling sad for the old woman; maybe it was her preoccupation with the Greenlaw family that had turned her so moody.

All day Joe hunted alone, puzzling over Dulcie. At dusk he hurried home, thinking he would find Dulcie there because Clyde had invited Wilma to dinner, along with Charlie, and Max Harper.

He saw Wilma's car parked in front of the cottage, but couldn't detect Dulcie's scent. Not around the car, or on the front porch, or on his cat door. Heading through the house for the kitchen, he sniffed deeply the aroma of clam sauce and twitched his nose at the sharp hint of white wine. Pushing into the kitchen, he looked around for Dulcie.

Clyde and Charlie stood at the stove stirring the clam sauce and tasting it. Charlie's red hair was tied back with a blue scarf rather than the usual rubber band or piece of cord. Her oversized, blue batik shirt was tucked into tight blue jeans. She had on sleek new sandals, not her old, worn jogging shoes.

Wilma was tossing the salad, her long white hair, tied back with a turquoise clip, bright in the overhead lights. The table was set for four. Two more places, with small plates and no silverware, were arranged on the counter beside the sink, on a yellow place mat. That would be Charlie's doing; Clyde never served so fancy. The sounds of bubbling pasta competed with an Ella Fitzgerald record, both happy noises overridden by the loud and insistent scratching of what sounded like a troop of attack dogs assaulting the closed doggy door.

He wondered how long the plywood barrier would last before those two shredded it.

"I just fed them," Clyde said defensively. "Two cans each. Big, economy cans."

Joe made no comment. He did not want to speak in front of Charlie.

Charlie knew about him and Dulcie-she had known ever since, some months ago, she saw them racing across the rooftops at midnight and heard Dulcie laughing. That was when she began to suspect-or maybe before that, he thought, wondering.

Well, so that one night leaping among the village roofs, they'd been careless.

Charlie was one of the few people who could put such impossible facts together and come up with the impossible truth. And it wasn't as if Charlie was only a casual acquaintance; she and Clyde had been going together seriously for nearly a year. Joe liked her. She treated him with more respect than Clyde ever did, and she was, after all, Wilma's niece. But still he couldn't help feeling shy about actually speaking in front of her, not even to ask where Dulcie was.

"She's on the back fence," Wilma said, seeing him fidgeting. "Where else? Gawking into Lucinda's parlor." Wilma shook the salad dressing with a violence that threatened Clyde's clean kitchen walls.

Joe, pretending he didn't care where Dulcie was, leaped to the kitchen counter and stared at his empty plate, implying he didn't need Dulcie, that he'd eat enough pasta for both.

"I talked with Harper," Clyde said. "About an hour ago. I want you to behave yourself tonight."

Joe widened his eyes, a gaze of innocence he had practiced for many hours while standing on the bathroom sink.

"Harper says he had another of those snitch calls this morning. Guy wouldn't give his name. Left the message with Brennan-something about a cut brake line." He gave Joe a long, steady stare.

Joe kept his expression blank.

"He says this one was a dud. Totally off track. Said that after the call, two officers went back down Hellhag Canyon for another look."

Joe licked his right front paw.

"The officers said the brake line wasn't cut. Said the line burst, that it was ragged and worn. That there was no smooth cut as Harper's informant described. They said they could see the thin place, the weak spot in the plastic where it gave way.

"Nor was there a billfold," Clyde said. "The officers didn't find a scrap of ID on the body, or in the car, or in the surround, as the snitch had said."

Joe could feel his anger rising. Which uniforms had Harper sent down there? Those two new rookies he'd just hired?

Or had the cut line been removed?

Had the man he scented in the ravine that morning replaced the cut, black plastic tube with an old, broken one, and lifted the driver's wallet?

Those two pups knew the guy was there. He remembered how silent they had grown, how watchful, creeping along sniffing the man's scent.

"So this time," Clyde said, "Harper's snitch was all wet."

So this time, Joe Grey thought crossly, Harper's men didn't have the whole story-and Max Harper needs to know that.

Staring at the dog door, then out the kitchen window, Joe managed a sigh. He looked at the two plates set side by side on the kitchen counter, then back to the window, his nose against the glass. He continued in this vein until Wilma said, "For heaven's sakes, go over there and get her. Quit mooning around. She doesn't need to spend all night watching Lucinda."

He gave Wilma a grateful look and began to paw at the plywood, seeking a grip to slide it out of its track.

"Not the dog door!" Clyde shouted. "They'll be all over the place."

Joe widened his eyes at Clyde, shrugged, and headed for the living room. Clyde said nothing. But Joe could feel him staring. The man had absolutely no trust.

He went on out his cat door, making sure the plastic slapped loudly against its frame.

But as he dropped off the front porch he heard Clyde at the living-room window, heard the curtain swish as Clyde pulled it back to peer out.

Not an ounce of trust.

Not until he heard Clyde go back in the kitchen did he beat it around to the backyard and up onto the back fence where he could see into the kitchen. And not until Clyde was occupied, draining the spaghetti, did he slip around to the front and in through his cat door again, stopping the plastic with his nose to keep it quiet.

Heading for the bedroom, he punched in the number. Quickly he explained the urgency of his message. He got a sensible dispatcher, who patched him through to Harper in his car. Probably Harper was already headed in their direction, on his way for clam pasta.

Joe told Harper that he had seen the cut brake line, that there were three little slice marks just above the cut. He said he'd heard someone else in the canyon, but couldn't see him in the fog. Said he had seen the billfold in the guy's back pocket, with a piece of the broken glass pressing into it.

He reminded Harper where the captain had gotten the information that nailed Winthrop Jergen's killer. Reminded him where he got the computer code word that opened up Jergen's files. He jogged Harper's memory about who identified the retirement-home killer months earlier, to say nothing of finding the arsonist who killed the artist Janet Jeannot. He said if Harper remembered who laid out the facts in the Samuel Beckwhite murder case, then Harper should take another look down Hellhag Canyon, before the wreckers hauled away the blue Corvette.

The upshot was that, five minutes after Joe nosed the phone back into its cradle and returned innocently to the kitchen, Harper called Clyde to say not to wait dinner, that he'd be late, that he needed to run down the highway for a few minutes.

Clyde hung up the kitchen phone and turned to stare at Joe, anger starring deep in his brown eyes, a slow, steaming rage that struck Joe with sudden, shocked guilt.

What had he done?

He had acted without thinking.

Max Harper was headed out there alone, to scale down Hellhag Canyon in the dark. With perhaps the killer still lurking, maybe waiting for the car to be safely hauled away? Harper without a backup.

Cops can be hurt, too, Joe thought. Cops can be shot. He was so upset, he dared not look back at Clyde. What had he done? What had he done to Max Harper?