ON THE STREET of the robberies, lights burned in all four houses and in the neighbors’ houses, where people stood in their yards in little knots asking questions of one another and watching as officers secured the four yards with crime tape. Police cars crowded the street, their radios cutting through officers’ voices. Two detectives and three officers worked the houses, searching, photographing, lifting prints, vacuuming for trace evidence. One burglary might not have commanded this degree of attention. Four, with a possible link to murder, was another matter. The Becker house, where Charlie had released Joe and Dulcie and Kit from the closet, seemed to have fared the worst, stripped of all the smaller furnishings.
Juana had emerged from the Longley house when she took a call from the dispatcher. Glancing up at Charlie, in the roadster, she gave her the thumbs-up then stepped over to the car and punched in a single digit on her cell phone, turning on the speaker.
Max was saying, “I’m on my way, just turned off Ocean.”
“You’ll like this,” Juana told him. “Prints from all four burglaries match those from the swimming pool.”
Max chuckled. “Very nice. Charlie’s okay?”
“She’s right here.” She handed Charlie the phone.
“Fine,” Charlie said. “I’m fine.” Down the block, lights turned onto the street, moving toward them, and in a moment Max’s pickup double-parked beside a police unit. As Charlie hurried to the driver’s window, and Davis returned to the Longley house to finish lifting prints, behind Clyde’s and Ryan’s backs, Joe Grey slipped out of the roadster and through the shadows, and into the house behind Juana.
WHAT HE’D LIKE to do was stroll casually up to Davis and say, I told you so! I told you there was a body at the bottom of the swimming pool! And I had a pretty good idea, all along, that our burglar was the same guy!
But of course Davis had listened to him, as the detective always did. She might complain about the anonymity of the phantom snitch, but she paid attention. And now, with the matching prints, with burglary and apparent murder linked together, both detectives would be working different aspects of the case. Following Juana into the master bedroom, he slipped under the dresser to watch her lift prints in the adjoining bath, handling with gloves the cosmetic bottles, the toothpaste tube, though these were items the burglar probably hadn’t handled. The bath was done in shades of cream-colored marble; countertop, floor, shower, and the walls were painted a pale cream. Slipping up behind Juana, Joe used his nose to work the scene in his own way, sniffing for the elusive medicinal scent that so resembled catmint. If the smell was of a medicine, and if he could find one bathroom among the four houses where it was stronger, that might be the best lead yet. It was the combination of crimes that was the teaser.
Did this guy kill the woman because she knew he was planning the burglaries? Maybe she confronted him and threatened to call the law? Or had it been an accident, had she found out and confronted him, he’d lost his temper, hit her, and she fell? And then he was too scared to call for help, didn’t want to tangle with the cops? Maybe he had a record, maybe he was on parole. So he’d hauled her out of there, hosed down the pool, loaded up the body, and…and what?
Where was the body now? He had to stash it somewhere before he proceeded with his burglaries. Or was the corpse tucked away in his RV all the time, while he loaded the stolen goods in with it?
He watched Juana leave the room, then he trotted into the bathroom to sort more carefully through the scents. If the scent he was looking for was medicine, maybe he should check all the bathrooms. Here he smelled lemon soap, mint toothpaste, spicy shaving lotion-he thought he caught the catmint scent but, mixed with everything else, he couldn’t be sure. He checked the other two bathrooms, then headed for the Watermans’, intent on covering all the bathrooms in the four houses if he could avoid the two detectives and the officers, who wouldn’t take kindly to a tomcat walking through the evidence.
IT WAS AN hour later when, having accomplished his task but gained nothing, Joe saw Clyde coming up the street, peering among the bushes looking for him. The time was well after midnight, pushing dawn, and Clyde was yawning. Joe, scrambling up a pepper tree, didn’t intend to go home. Vanishing into the roof’s shadows, he raced away over the neighbors’ roofs toward the hills. Kit’s hasty retreat, and then Dulcie taking off so fast, had left him increasingly uneasy as he prowled the four houses. Kit was so charmed by that half-grown kitten-if Kit had gone after her, Dulcie would have followed; and a sharp nervousness filled his belly, a shaky unease that sent him flying toward the dark hills.
30
JOE WAS HIGH up the hills making his way through a tangle of fallen oaks when the wind shifted and he smelled the stink of coyote. Slowing to a trot, he scanned the slopes around him. He didn’t see the beast, and he caught no glimpse of Dulcie or Kit. The rolling mass of open land remained empty, and he went on warily through the dark, tangled grass.
When he smelled the coyote again it was way too close, somewhere in the black valley just below him. Ducking into a maze of boulders he backed into a hollow between them just as the beast lunged. He backed deeper, pressing down among the granite rocks. The coyote pushed its nose in and began to dig, reckless and fierce. Joe raked him twice. The beast ignored him and kept digging. When Joe struck for its eyes and bit its black nose, it yowled and backed away. He was poised to charge out at it when the coyote spun around and ran.
Slipping out to look, Joe watched it race away with a cluster of cats clinging to its back, raking into its thick coat. Joe stood up on a boulder, laughing, as the beast went tearing off into the night with its unwelcome passengers. Then Dulcie was there beside him, frantically nosing at him.
“Are you all right?”
“I am now,” he said. They heard the coyote scream, heard dry bushes breaking, saw the beast vanish over the high crest.
Moments later a dozen cats emerged from the night, crowding around them. These were the clowder leaders: white-coated Cotton, tabby Coyote with his tufted ears, and pale Willow of the faded calico coat and green eyes.
“Come on,” Willow said. “That was a yearling pup, three of them are off hunting on their own and it isn’t safe. We were hunting wood rats for…” She paused uneasily. “To take back to the clowder when we saw him stalking you.”
“Hunting wood rats for who?” Joe said. Only a sick or injured cat didn’t hunt on his own. “What’s wrong? Where’s Kit?”
“She’s fine,” Dulcie said.
“Tansy, then?” he asked, thinking guiltily of that scrawny little mite who had led them through the empty houses and then run away so frightened.
“Sage is hurt,” Dulcie said. “I think he found the missing body, I think he found the killer.” She turned, and she and Joe followed the clowder cats up the hills toward the Pamillon mansion, Joe filled with questions that she insisted must wait.
As long as they could remember, the mansion and its acreage had stood abandoned, home for raccoons, deer, the occasional bobcat, but more recently for the wild clowder. Soon they were crowding in through the fallen front wall of the two-story house, where the parlor, and the nursery above, stood open to the world like a vast stage ready for a theatrical production.
To the wild clowder, this shelter was a palace. The slate roof was sound, the rooms dry enough, and not only did the big house offer protection, but its acreage with all its cellars and outbuildings provided uncounted places for a cat to hide from danger and to hunt the smaller beasts that sustained them.