It was Saturday, and at Harper's suggestion, Clyde planned to take Selig up to Harper's pasture to work on the pup's obedience training in a large, open area. The two pups were impossible together; Charlie had taken Hestig home to her apartment. She and Clyde couldn't even attend the same obedience class; the pups did nothing but taunt each other, play on each other's foolishness. Joe had been shocked out of his claws when Clyde actually signed up for the class at the community center.

Surprisingly, both pups had learned to Sit, to Come on command, and, sometimes, to take the sitting position at Heel-except when they were together. Then they were oblivious, had never before heard those words, had no notion what they meant.

So that afternoon Harper, still in uniform, had taken a few hours off, left his unit parked in front of Clyde's, and he and Clyde had headed up the hills in Clyde's '29 Chevy, the convertible top folded down, Selig securely tethered in the rumble seat-and Joe and Dulcie concealed on the little shelf behind the seats, beneath the folded leather top.

It was hot as sin in there, but, crouched just behind the men's heads, they could hear every word.

"You started to tell me about this accident victim," Clyde said, turning up Ocean. "Torres, you said?" He seemed far more willing to talk with Harper about the case when he thought Joe wasn't around.

"Raul Torres. He did give the antique car agency his right name. Torres was a PI working out of Seattle. I don't know why he used the fake address. Maybe he used that routinely, for security reasons." Even Max Harper, Joe thought with interest, seemed more comfortable relating information in a supposedly cat-free environment.

"I called Torres's office a dozen times before I got his secretary. She was closemouthed until I identified myself. Said she'd call me back While I waited, she called the station, checked me out. Called me back to say Torres was on vacation, that she didn't expect to hear from him for maybe another week She'd gone in to do the billing.

"I told her Torres was dead. Took her a few minutes to take that in. When she felt like talking again, she said she'd made reservations for Torres at the Oak Breeze, in Molena Point, beginning last Saturday. That he'd gone down to L.A. on a case, had planned to leave there Saturday, was meeting someone in Molena Point Saturday night, a woman-girlfriend, she said."

"You find a motel registration?" Clyde asked as he turned up the long dirt road leading to Harper's acreage.

"Nothing under Torres, not in Molena Point. But the fact he was a PI keeps me digging."

"So he was a PI," Clyde said. "That doesn't mean he was murdered."

"Of course not," Harper said, amused. "But it does make me wonder."

The house at the end of the lane was white clapboard, with a four-stall barn behind and an open, roofed hay shed. The stable yard was shaded by three huge live oak trees, the garden weedy and neglected since Harper's wife died. They pulled up beside the barn, and while the two men were occupied tying a long, thin line to Selig's choke chain, the cats, panting from the heat, slipped out from under the folded leather top and beat it for the hay shed.

Scorching up the stacked bales to crouch high beneath the shadowed roof, they watched Harper head for the house and return carrying two cans of Coke. The slam of the screen door started Selig barking, and Clyde couldn't shut him up.

One word from Harper, and the pup was silent.

Clyde scowled at Harper and led Selig out into the pasture; the puppy pressed his nose immediately to the ground, jerking on the lead, ignoring Clyde, snuffling deeply at the delicious scent of horse manure.

Dulcie made herself comfortable on the baled hay, raking her claws deep. "Torres died Sunday morning,'' she said softly.

Joe rolled over, slapping at straws, and turned to look at her.

"If Torres drove up from L.A. Saturday," she said, "and if he was with a woman in the village on Saturday night, as his secretary told Harper, then what was he doing driving south again, before dawn on Sunday?

"And who was the woman?" Her green eyes narrowed. "Cara Ray told Lucinda she arrived Saturday. Don't you think it strange that Torres and Cara Ray would come to Molena Point on exactly the same day?"

"Dulcie…"

"Torres worked in Seattle. Shamas still had a business there."

"So?"

"Lucinda told Wilma that when Shamas went up to Seattle she was sure he took a woman with him, not someone from Molena Point but someone he'd meet at the San Francisco airport-Lucinda did keep an eye on his phone bills."

Dulcie smiled smugly. "Cara Ray lives in San Francisco, not too far from the airport. Shamas flew to Seattle, out of that airport, about once a month.

"So?" Joe said.

"Cara Ray was Shamas's lover. But was she Torres's lover, too? Did she see Torres, as well, when she was in Seattle? She must have been busy."

Joe rolled over again, scratching his back against the rough straw; he looked at her upside down. "Say you're right, Torres was in Molena Point to meet Cara Ray. What was he doing on the highway, Sunday morning?"

"Maybe they had a fight. Maybe he drove off mad, and that's why he skidded."

"What about the other car-the second car I heard, just before the crash?"

"Could someone else have known he was here? Cut his brake line, then-maybe phoned him, brought him out on some wild-goose chase, maybe something to do with the case he was working on in LA? That might explain why he was headed south again. Then they followed him, in the heavy fog, and honked to confuse him?"

"That's really reaching for it, Dulcie."

"Whatever the truth, there's a connection. Cara Ray and this Torres didn't just happen to arrive in the same town, on the same day. And why was Cara Ray snooping through Lucinda's papers?"

Joe sighed at the monumental tangles that female logic could weave. "Even if there was a connection, we can't pass on that kind of shaky guesswork to Harper."

"Maybe no one's mentioned Cara Ray to him. Maybe he has no reason to be interested in her. If he doesn't know about the Seattle connection…"

"Dulcie…"

"We'd only be telling him the name of the woman Torres may have met. What harm in that?"

"Maybe. But we can't call Harper from here."

"Why not? There's a phone on his belt."

"Do you see a phone in this hay shed?"

She gave him a sweet, green-eyed smile. "There in the dinette, you can see it through the bay window; the phone's right there on the table."

Joe sighed.

"Go up on the shed roof, Joe. Where I can see you from the house. Signal me if he heads that way." She leaped down the baled hay and was gone, streaking for the screen door.

Joe rose and shook the hay off. Sometimes Dulcie was impossible. He swarmed up a post to the roof of the shed. Impossible, clever, and enchanting.

Clyde thought that he, Joe Grey, got rabid over a robbery or suspicious death. But Dulcie set her teeth into a murder case as if she were fighting rattlesnakes.

Keeping low, out of the men's view, and trying not to let his claws scritch on the galvanized roof, Joe slipped to the edge, where he could see the house.

Behind the bay window, a small shape moved, padding across the table.

Watching her paw at the phone, he remembered the night they'd memorized Harper's various phone numbers from Clyde's phone file. Clyde had pitched a fit because they'd left a few tooth marks in the cards; he could be so picky. It was a huge stroke of luck that Pacific Bell had recently offered free blocking for that insidious caller ID service that so many phones had subscribed to-including Molena Point PD.

Harper had caller ID blocking for his own phones, and with a little encouragement Clyde had come around-it was free, wasn't it?