He wanted to call the station again, tell them to send a backup. But when he leaped down to head for the bedroom, Clyde unbelievably reached up and removed the kitchen phone from its hook.

Joe wanted to shout at Clyde, to explain to him that he needed to call, but Wilma started talking about Lucinda Greenlaw, and Clyde turned his back on Joe. He couldn't believe this was happening. Didn't Clyde understand? Didn't Clyde care about Harper?

The phone stayed off the hook as Charlie dished up the plates. Wilma looked around at Joe, where she stood tossing the salad. "Where's Dulcie?"

"She didn't want to come," he lied-he had to talk in Charlie's presence sometime. And to Charlie's credit, she didn't flinch, didn't turn to look, not a glance.

"We stopped by Jolly's alley earlier," Joe said. "Dulcie's full of smoked salmon, and too fascinated with the Greenlaws to tear herself away."

Wilma gave him a puzzled look, but she said nothing. When Wilma and Clyde and Charlie were seated over steaming plates of linguini, Wilma said, "Lucinda and I had lunch today. She was pretty upset. Shamas's lover is in town. She's been to visit Lucinda."

Charlie laid down her fork, her eyes widening. "Cara Ray Crisp, that bimbo who was on the boat when he died? That hussy? What colossal nerve. What did she want?"

"Apparently," Wilma said, "Cara Ray had hardly checked into the Oak Breeze before she was there on Lucinda's doorstep, playing nice. Lucinda really didn't know what she wanted."

"I hope Lucinda sent her packing," Charlie said. "My God. That woman was the last one to see him alive. The last one to-"

"She told Lucinda she came to offer condolences."

Charlie choked. Clyde laughed.

That midnight on the yacht, when Shamas drowned, Cara Ray told Seattle police, she'd been asleep in their stateroom, she'd awakened to shouting, and saw that Shamas was gone from the bed. She ran out into the storm, to find Shamas's cousin, Sam, frantically manning lines, and his nephew, Newlon, down in the sea trying to pull Shamas out. They got lines around Shamas and pulled him up on deck, but could not revive him. Weeping, Cara Ray told the police that when the storm subsided they had turned toward the nearest port, at Seattle. George and Winnie Chambers, the only other passengers, had not awakened; Cara Ray said they had not come on deck until the next morning, when the Green Lady put in at Seattle.

According to the account in the Gazette, the storm had come up suddenly; evidently Shamas had heard the wind change and gotten up to help Newlon furl the main sail. On the slick deck, he must have caught his foot in a line, though this was an unseaman-like accident. As the boat lurched, Sam and Newlon heard Shamas shout; they looked around, and he was gone. Newlon had grabbed a life jacket, tied a line on himself, and gone overboard.

He told police that he got Shamas untangled, got him hooked onto a line to bring him up. When they got him on board, they saw that he had a deep gash through his forehead, where he must have hit something as he fell. Seattle police had gone over the catamaran, had thoroughly investigated the scene. They did not find where Shamas had struck his head. The rain had sloughed every surface clean. They found no evidence that Shamas's death had been other than an accident. According to Seattle detectives, Cara Ray had been so upset, weeping so profusely, that no one could get much sense from her. She had given the police her address and flown directly home to San Francisco, leaving Newlon and Shamas's cousin Sam and the Chamberses to sail the Green Lady back to Molena Point.

And now Cara Ray was in Molena Point, making a social call on Shamas's widow.

"Poor Lucinda," Charlie said. "Mobbed by his relatives hustling and prodding her. And now his paramour descends."

Wilma nodded. "Apparently Cara Ray is as crude and bad mannered as the Greenlaws."

"They are a strange lot," Clyde said.

Wilma pushed a strand of her white hair into its clip and sipped her wine. "Every time I see a Greenlaw in the village, my hackles go up."

Clyde grinned. "Retired parole officer. Worse than a cop."

"Maybe I'm just irritable, maybe it's this temporary job at Beckwhite's. It's no picnic, working for Sheril Beckwhite. I wouldn't have taken the job except to help Max."

At Max Harper's urging, Wilma had been running background checks on loan applicants for the foreign-car agency. Beckwhite's had had a sudden run of buyers applying for car financing with sophisticated bogus IDs and fake bank references. They had lost over three million dollars before Harper convinced Sheril of Wilma's investigative prowess.

"Other than her visit from this Cara Ray Crisp person," Charlie said, "how's Lucinda getting along?"

"She'll do a lot better," Wilma said, "when Shamas's relatives go home."

"Seems to me," Charlie said, "that being Shamas Greenlaw's widow would be much nicer than being his wife."

Wilma laughed.

"She's certainly a very quiet person," Charlie offered. "She seems… I don't know, the few times I've talked with her, she's seemed… so close to herself. Secretive."

"I don't think-" Wilma began when, in the backyard, the pups roared and bayed, their barks so deafening that no one heard the front door open; no one heard Max Harper until he loomed in the kitchen doorway.

"What the hell is this? The county pound?" He glared at Clyde. "What did you do, get more dogs? Sounds like a pack of wolfhounds."

Clyde rose to open a beer for Harper and dish up his plate, liberally heaping on the pasta and clam sauce. Skinny as Harper was, he ate like a field hand. Clyde had known him since boyhood; they had gone through school together, had ridden broncs and bulls in the local rodeos around Sacramento and Salinas.

Dropping down from the kitchen counter, Joe took a good sniff of Harper. The captain's faded jeans and old boots bore traces of dirt and of bits of leaves and grass, and carried the distinct combination of scents one would encounter in Hellhag Canyon.

"So what's with the cat killers?" Harper said, glancing toward the back door.

"Stray pups. Followed my car," Clyde lied. "Up along Hellhag Hill."

The police captain looked at Clyde narrowly for a moment, perhaps sensing a twisting of the truth. He sat down in his usual chair, facing the sink and kitchen window, his back comfortably to the wall. For an instant, his gaze turned to Joe Grey, who had returned to the counter and was busily licking clam sauce off his whiskers.

"How sanitary can it be, Damen, to let your cat sit on the kitchen sink?" Harper scowled. "Is that a little place mat? Did he have his dinner up there?"

"That's Charlie's doing. And you know I don't lay food on the counter," Clyde said testily. "You know I use that plastic breadboard and that it goes in the dishwasher after every meal." He looked hard at Harper. "So what's with you? Bad night picking up hustlers? Ladies of the night make you late to dinner?"

Harper brushed the dry grass and leaves from his jeans. "Took a swing down Hellhag Canyon."

Clyde stiffened; Joe saw his jaw clench. He did not look in Joe's direction.

"The brake line was burst, not cut," Harper said.

Clyde cast a look of rage at Joe Grey.

"I took some photographs of the surround, though. Infrared light and that new film. Shot some footprints that my men may have missed-the few they didn't step on," Harper said uneasily.

"What are you talking about?" Clyde said.

Harper shrugged. "Maybe someone messed with the car. Maybe someone switched brake lines. If so, it would be nice to have some evidence, wouldn't you say? I have a crew down there now, working it over."

Clyde closed his eyes.

It must be hard, Joe thought, working a crime scene when the uniforms had already been over it, under the impression it was an accident. And, washing his paw, he hid a huge feline grin. At his word, Harper had not only gone down Hellhag Canyon, he had called in the detectives.