The smaller upstairs room with its paneling, high-peaked ceiling, and rafters, featured a long skylight along one slanting side, above which heavy clouds drifted, edged with light from the hidden moon. A fire was burning on the brick hearth. Bay windows formed three sides of the intimate dining room, looking down on the village's bright shops and dark oaks. A long table filled the room, draped with a white cloth and set with heavy silver, flowered china, and a centerpiece of red pyracantha berries. On a window seat in one of the bays, among a tangle of flowered cushions, three linen napkins had been laid open beneath three small flowered plates. There, no silverware was required. As the cats settled into their own places and the human diners took their seats, Max Harper hurried up the stairs, giving Charlie a grin, the two as delighted to be together as if they'd been parted for days.

"Dallas is still at it," Max said. "We just got the coroner's prelim."

"That was fast. What did he say?"

Harper's thin, lined face was expressionless, a cop's face that you had to know very well to decipher. He looked irritable, as if some vital question was still begging. Joe watched him so intently that Dulcie nudged him, pretending to nibble a flea. Immediately he stuck his nose in his supper, concentrating on his salmon mousse-the rich, creamy confection was far more delicious than any sweet dessert mousse that so delighted humans. Salmon mousse, in Joe's opinion, was one of the great inventions of mankind.

"Could have been accidental death," Harper said. "Could be manslaughter. No way to tell, yet. He died of blunt trauma, a blunt blow to the head."

"But there wasn't…" Charlie began. "No one…" She grew quiet, letting Max continue.

"As near as Dr. Bern can tell, so far, the blow occurred three or four days ago. There was slow bleeding within the skull where multiple small capillaries had ruptured. The pressure can build up slowly, over time." He took a bite of salad. "Pressure pushing down around the spinal cord. Bern thinks that happened over several days. At the last, while he was serving drinks at the party, the increase of blood became rapid.

"When Bern called, he was still looking for the sudden rupture of an artery or vein, which would have been the final event in a long drawn-out trauma." He spooned more dressing on his salad and took a sip of beer, a frustrated frown touching his face. Harper had quit smoking over a year before, but sometimes Joe saw him itching to reach for a cigarette, his fingers moving nervously, the creases along his cheeks deepening.

"The guy's ID was faked," Max said. "He's been using the social security number of a man who died three years ago. Strangest thing, his prints are not on record in any of the western states. It'll take us a week or two, maybe more, to get fingerprint information for the rest of the country. Department of Justice is always backed up."

Charlie said, "He could have been hit in the head anywhere, then? Several days ago?"

Harper nodded. "There's a rectangular bruise on the side of the head, the shape of a brick. It was already fading, but there were brick particles in the skin. Could have been an accident, maybe he stood up under a low flight of stairs, for instance, and cracked himself on the head. Or it could have happened in a fight, some guy bashed him with a brick. He was using the name Sammy Clarkman. He's worked for George Jolly for three months, has done several catering jobs during that time."

Ryan leaned forward, looking at Max. "Lucinda Greenlaw knows him."

Max gave her his full attention.

"I knew I'd seen him in Jolly's Deli," Ryan said. "I'd forgotten, until just now, that last month when the Greenlaws were here, Lucinda and I were in there, and she knew the guy."

Max listened quietly. The whole table was silent. Beside Joe, the kit was so alert and still that he kept an eye on her-he never knew when the kit would show too clearly her eager enthusiasm.

Lucinda and Pedric, a pair of tall, bone-thin eighty-year-olds, had married just a year before, after Lucinda's husband Shamas died in an unfortunate manner for which one of his nephews went to prison. On the day of their wedding the Greenlaws had adopted the kit. They knew her special talents, they knew that she, like Joe Grey and Dulcie, was not in any way ordinary. The kit's command of the English language, her off-the-wall ideas, and her opinion on almost every subject were, in the eyes of the Greenlaws, deserving of admiration and respect.

Setting out to travel at their leisure up and down the California coast, they had planned to have the kit with them, but she was so prone to car sickness that she had turned wan and miserable. For the kit, the pleasure of travel wasn't worth the distress. The Greenlaws had arranged that she stay for a while with Dulcie and Wilma. Just at the end of September they had returned to the village for a short layover before the holidays, had stored their RV in Wilma Getz's driveway, and, scooping up the kit in a delirium of pleasure, they had checked into a suite at the Otter Pine Inn, the nicest of several village hotels that catered to pets. The kit had spent a delirious week enjoying herself with her human family. And, to the kit's great joy, the elderly newlyweds had decided it would soon be time to fold away their maps of the California coast and build their Molena Point house as they had promised the kit they would do. The tortoiseshell had been ecstatic, a whirlwind of anticipation. When she spoke of the house, her round yellow eyes shone like twin moons, her bushy tail lashed and switched. She was a wild thing filled with exploding dreams: Their own home, a real home, her beloved Lucinda and Pedric forevermore near to her.

But now, what was this? What was the connection between the footloose Greenlaws and the dead waiter? Glancing at Dulcie, Joe intently watched those at the table.

"We had ordered a picnic," Ryan was saying. "We picked it up and spent the day on Hellhag Hill laying out their new house. Seeing how the sunlight falls, how to cut the prevailing winds. That hilltop house could be truly desolate and cold if it isn't set right on the land.

"When Lucinda and I stopped at Jolly's to get the picnic basket, that guy-Sammy-was behind the counter. You could tell he was new, didn't know where things were, like the small plastic containers. I thought maybe he'd just been working in the kitchen, not at the counter, he had to dig around in the cupboard forever to find what he needed.

"Lucinda called him by name," Ryan said. "He didn't seem to recognize her until she reminded him that they'd met in Russian River, and then he seemed pleased to see her. She told me later he'd worked at the inn where she and Pedric stayed this past summer.

"I thought," Ryan said, "that the guy wouldn't have acknowledged Lucinda at all, if she hadn't nudged him. That maybe he didn't want to be recognized."

Harper looked around the table, waiting to see if anyone else knew the man. No one did, and no one else had seen him at Jolly's. Kate had been in the village at the same time that Lucinda and Pedric were, but she hadn't been in Jolly's. Clyde said, "I ordered takeout last weekend, but Jolly's son made the delivery." He glanced inadvertently across the room to Joe Grey, as if wondering if Joe knew Sammy. The tomcat stared, wondering at Clyde's carelessness. The expression on Clyde's face, when he realized what he'd done, was embarrassed and shocked. To cover Clyde's social blunder Joe yawned hugely, pawed at his ear as if it itched, and belched.

That got a laugh. He'd have to talk to Clyde; his housemate was getting careless.

Harper studied Ryan. "Did Lucinda tell you anything about him?"

"She said he'd been interested in a locket she'd bought somewhere north of Russian River. That he'd wanted to know where she got it. She said she'd picked up several pieces of really nice costume jewelry in a little shop up around Coloma. She showed me the gold locket. It was set with topazes, and had a cat's face in the center. Beautifully made, rich, heavy gold all carved in leaves and flowers." She looked up at Kate. "It was, in fact, very like your choker. Same style, that heavy baroque look but… well, but different than baroque."