Dulcie looked at Wilma uneasily, and nudged the subject back to Kit and the cream-colored waif. “Since the weather warmed, Kit and Lucinda and Pedric have been walking in the hills, and they’ve glimpsed this cat more than once. Every time she sees them she stands up on her hind legs, staring yearningly at them.” Dulcie laughed. “Until Sage hazes her away, forces her to turn back up the hills to the clowder, away from Kit.” Dulcie licked milk from her whiskers. “Looks like Sage has chosen another female who’s just as wild and willful as Kit. Why can’t he find a nice, docile, matronly young cat who will be content to do as he says, and who will be happy to give him lots of kittens? Poor Sage. Where will it end? He’s so…He’s so…”
“He and Kit weren’t well suited,” Charlie said. She didn’t say that Sage was a wuss, that he wasn’t the macho tomcat who should be destined to love and cherish Kit. But then she looked embarrassed. Who was she to criticize, even in her thoughts, anything about these rare creatures? Finishing her coffee, she rose and picked up her car keys. “I need to stop by the station. I’ve put off telling Max that my clients may have had a break-in. Now, with what may be a murder just two blocks away, I’ll have to tell him.” Leaning down to give her aunt a hug, she headed for the back door. “You cats want to come?”
“To the PD with you?” Joe said. “We stroll into the station escorted by the chief’s wife? Oh, right.”
“I’d let you off down the street,” Charlie said, laughing. “But I guess, with the noon traffic, you’d make better time over the roofs.”
“I guess we would,” Joe said, “and create a lot less interest.” But the tomcat was eager to sneak a look at Juana Davis’s report, and as Charlie headed for her Blazer, he and Dulcie lapped up the last of their milk, shared the remaining cookie, galloped out Dulcie’s cat door and across the garden, headed for the rooftops.
The detectives wouldn’t have much, yet, on the scene at the Parker house, not until they got some kind of match on any prints they’d been able to lift. But all the same, Joe wanted to see what was happening. Without some kind of official departmental input, he felt at sea about the case, felt left out of the loop. It was this contact with the officers of MPPD and his snooping access to the department’s investigative tools and information sources that served the cats as essential backup for whatever information they were able to discover. Without that supporting data and interdepartmental communication, a cat could work his paws off for nothing. Side by side, Joe and Dulcie leaped to the roof of Molena Point PD, their ever hopeful thoughts fixed on Detectives Dallas Garza and Juana Davis who might, with luck, already have information available for their covert attention.
14
POLICE DISPATCHER MABEL Farthy had brought fried chicken for her lunch, with extra servings in case any of the cats wandered in. The plump, blond, middle-aged officer loved to spoil the three freeloaders; she’d be happy to bring fried chicken for the whole department except that, the way these guys ate, she’d have to file for bankruptcy before the end of the week. She was sorting the mail when Joe and Dulcie appeared beyond the glass door. She looked up, smiling. Before she could step out from behind her counter to let them in, Officer Brennan came up the sidewalk and the cats slipped in behind him, crowding so close on his heels that they surely left cat hairs clinging to the dark trousers of his uniform.
Leaping to the counter, they peered over, sniffing at the shelf beneath where they knew she kept her lunch. The chicken smelled heavenly. When she reached for the bag, Brennan paused, giving her a woeful look. She grinned and shook her head and the portly officer moved on. The cats watched him turn into the conference room where there was always a box of doughnuts beside the coffeemaker, maybe fresh, maybe dried out, but sweet and filling. As Mabel unwrapped their own bite-size treats of fried chicken, down the hall Detective Juana Davis stepped out of her office carrying a CD and headed for Dallas Garza’s office.
“Take a look at these,” they heard her say as she entered. “We sure did have company this morning.”
The cats looked at each other, wolfed down their chicken, made a show of stretching and yawning, then dropped off the counter and trotted lazily down the hall as if wanting a noonday nap. It wasn’t easy to want to hurry like hell, yet move as slowly as a basset hound on downers. Envisioning Dallas inserting the disc into his computer, they slipped into his office and out of sight beneath his credenza. They couldn’t see the computer screen from where they crouched-it stood on the detective’s desk with its back to them-but at least they could listen.
“I’ll be damned,” Dallas said sharply, staring at the screen.
Juana had pulled up a straight chair next to Dallas ’s desk. “Turn that one back,” she said, frowning at the screen. “There, zoom it up. There, the jawline and ear, just beside that bush. Print it out. Can you make it lighter?” As the cats listened to the soft whir of the printer, Juana said, “There, by the window, behind the camellia bush. Print that one, too.”
Again the whisper of the printer, and the cats watched it spit out another sheet. When they had seven sheets and Juana was shuffling through them, Joe Grey strolled out from beneath the credenza. Staring sweetly up at her, he leaped to the desk beside her. She was so used to the cats in and out of the offices that she hardly looked at him; she stroked him absently as she fanned out the photos.
“Try enlarging this one,” she said.
Another click of computer keys and the printer whirred again.
“Is that a shadow?” Dallas said, picking up the picture. “Or is he wearing some kind of cap?” In all the shots, even the enlargement, the figure was only barely visible, a shadow among shadows within the tangled bushes.
“Looks like a cap,” Juana said. “He must have seen me pointing the camera his way when I shot the suntan oil bottle. Did he think he was completely hidden? Or that he’d be out of focus?” She smiled. “But what could he do? He couldn’t move, he was trapped there.”
And Joe Grey thought, Like a rabbit frozen in place trying to blend in with its surroundings, trying not to be noticed.
Dallas ran off one more enlargement and took the sheet from the printer. It was as murky as the rest. “Are we looking at the killer?” he said. “Provided there is a body. Why the hell can’t we have a nice simple murder, with a body on the scene?”
“Plus the murder weapon, prints, excellent witnesses, the works?” Juana said, laughing. “And what fun would that be?” Laying the pictures down, she rose. “I’ll get the film over to George, see what he can get with some high-tech enhancement.”
“I’ll get the blood off to the lab,” Dallas said. “And the prints we lifted. I don’t-”
They both looked up when Charlie appeared in the doorway. Joe had been so interested he hadn’t heard her voice up at the front, though she and Mabel usually talked for a while. She stood in the doorway, wisps of her red hair bright as flames in the overhead lights.
“I just stopped in to see Max for a minute. And to-” She glanced at the pictures. “Are those from the Parker house? May I see?”
“Come sit,” Dallas said. “Have a look.”
She sat down on the couch. Dallas handed her the pictures and said, “Someone was watching us while we ran the scene this morning-what appears to be a crime scene.”
Charlie was quiet for a minute, tilting the pictures this way and that for a clearer view, then she looked up at the detectives. “This could be the same man.”
They waited. Joe dropped off the desk and slipped up on the couch beside her. She glanced down at him and their eyes met for a moment, then she looked up again at the two detectives.