Cat Spitting Mad

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Had she caught a glimpse of his eyes beneath the dark brim? Lee Wark's cold gray eyes? She couldn't help it, she was overwhelmed again with that terrible panic.

  Maybe she should drive down to the village with Hanni, for the week. Hanni had business there, and her family had a weekend cottage. They were so busy at work, it would be difficult for both of them to go.

  "So we take a week off," Hanni had said. "While we wait for fabric orders and the workrooms. That won't kill any of our clients. Relax, Kate. I'm the boss, I say we drive down. You know the movers and shakers in the village better than I. You can help me, it's for a good cause." Hanni had whirled around the studio, kicking a book of fabric samples, twirling her long skirt, her short white hair and gold dangle earrings catching the studio lights, her brown Latin eyes laughing. "We need the time off. We deserve it!"

  Kate had known Hanni only slightly in Molena Point when the family was down for weekends. She had always envied Hanni's looks, her prematurely white, bobbed hair, a woman so sleek and slim-those long lean lines-that even in faded jeans and an old sweatshirt, she could have stepped right out of Saks's window.

  Strange-if Hanni hadn't been involved with the Cat Museum, very likely they wouldn't be considering the trip home just now.

  It was Hanni who had awakened her interest in the Cat Museum, who had shown her photographs of the galleries. Hanni was on the board, deeply involved in the charitable institution's pending sale.

  "We have to move somewhere, we're about ready to go into escrow. Twenty million for that Russian Hill property-and the taxes are skyrocketing. And so much pressure from the city-from some friend of the city, you can bet, who wants to build on that land."

  Hanni shrugged. "For that kind of money, why fight it? We can build a lovely complex of galleries and gardens, and I think the old Pamillon estate, those old adobe walls and oak trees, might be perfect. That's the way the present museum was built; McCabe started by combining four private homes and their gardens. You need to go up there, Kate. You need to see it."

  "Did you say McCabe?"

  "Yes. You've read about him? He-"

  "I… suppose I have. The name's familiar."

  Only since she'd moved back to San Francisco had she tried to trace her family, from information the adoption agency was finally willing to release. Her grandfather's name had been McCabe. The agency said he'd been a newspaper columnist and an architect; they said he had not used a first name.

  "If we don't find a place soon," Hanni had said, "the art collection will have to go into storage, and we'd rather not do that." Taking her hand, Hanni had given her that infectious grin. "Come with me, Kate. Jim and the kids don't care if I go, and you don't have an excuse. Come help me. You know Molena Point, you know realtors there. I want your opinion of that land."

  "But I don't need to go there to tell you what I already know."

  "You need a vacation."

  Hanni, the mover and shaker. Kate's boss was a top-flight interior designer and a more-than-shrewd businesswoman. Kate loved working with her, she loved Hanni's enthusiasm. She loved telling people she was assistant to the well-known designer, Hanni Coon. And if Hanni wanted a week in Molena Point, what better excuse than a multimillion-dollar real estate deal?

  Striding up Russian Hill, she saw no more "suspicious" men. The morning was bright, the blowing clouds sending running shadows before her across the pale, crowded houses and apartments. Climbing, she was short of breath. Out of shape. Had to stop every few blocks. If she were back in Molena Point for a week she'd walk miles-along the beach, through the village, down the rocky coast.

  It would be so embarrassing to go back. She hadn't been home since the afternoon she threw her clothes in the car and took off up 101, escaping Lee Wark. And escaping her own husband. It was Jimmie who had paid Wark to kill her. That came out in the trial.

  Everyone in the village knew her husband had gone to prison for counterfeiting, for transporting stolen cars, and as accessory to the murder for which Wark had been convicted-and for conspiracy to kill his own wife.

  How had San Quentin let those killers escape? How could a maximum security prison be so lax? The three had overpowered a guard, taken him hostage, using prison-made weapons. A garrote made with sharpened silverware from the kitchen and strips of blanket. That must have embarrassed prison authorities. The guard was not expected to live. They had dumped him in a ditch in Sausalito, where authorities thought the men had split up. Two had apparently stolen cars, and may have taken clothes from the charity Dumpster of a local church.

  Had Lee Wark come across the Golden Gate bridge into the city? He could have walked across.

  Well, he wouldn't go to Molena Point, wouldn't show his face in the village while Max Harper was chief of police. Harper had come down on Wark with a vengeance, had seen that the prosecuting attorney was aware of every dirty detail, every smallest piece of evidence.

  I could go back for a few days. So safe at home. And none of my real friends care that Jimmie's in prison-not Wilma, certainly not Clyde.

  The thought of Clyde gave her a silly little thrill that surprised her.

  Well, there had been something between them, an attraction that she'd never let get out of hand while she and Jimmie were married.

  And then when she left Jimmie, Clyde had learned about her double nature, and that had turned him off big time.

  As she climbed higher up Russian Hill, the steep sidewalk turned brilliant with sun; the sun on her back felt as healing as a warm, gentle hand. Hurrying upward, stopping sometimes to rest, she fixed her attention on the subtle tone combinations of the many-colored Victorian homes. San Francisco's painted ladies. But, nearing the crest, she stopped suddenly.

  He was there. Stepping out from between two houses. The man in the black topcoat.

  She swallowed and backed away, ice cold. Wanted to run. Wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

  She couldn't see his face. Black hat, pulled low. Black topcoat, collar turned up even in the hot sun so his eyes were nearly hidden. Swallowing, trying to make her heart stop pounding, she casually crossed the street.

  Maybe he was some harmless ogler. Nothing more threatening than that.

  As she drew opposite where he'd stood, he moved back between the two houses and was gone. Peering across, into the narrow side yard, she saw only a hedge and a patchy scruff of lawn.

  And now, up the hill, rose the red rooftops and huge old oaks of the museum. She hurried up toward them, eager to be among people.

  But then, as she turned into the museum gardens, it wasn't people who surrounded her, it was the museum cats. Cats sunning under the flowers and bushes and atop the low walls, all of them watching her as she entered along the brick walk and through the wrought-iron gate.

  What kind of cats these might be would not be public knowledge-would be the museum's most sheltered secret, if even the museum staff knew.

  She wandered the paths for a long time among lush masses of flowering bushes, tall clumps of Peruvian lilies, densely flowering tangles. The scents of nasturtium and geranium eased her nerves. She felt so uncertain about asking to see McCabe's diaries. She was sure they had them, yet had been reluctant even to ask if Hanni knew-because she would have to give Hanni an explanation. And she might, in a weak moment, confess to Hanni that she thought McCabe could be her grandfather. It was all so complicated.

  I will simply ask, she told herself. Ask, and look at what is there, and not make it complicated. Moving toward the door, she pinched a sprig of lavender, sniffed at it to calm herself, stood looking in through the museum's leaded windows at the white-walled galleries.

  But as she turned toward the main entrance, she was facing the man in black. He stood just beyond the door, beneath an arbor, his features in shadow, his muddy eyes on her.

  Catching her breath, she hurried in through the glass doors and fled to the reception desk, begging the pudgy woman curator to call a cab. She felt hardly able to speak. She stood pressing agai
nst the desk, waiting for the taxi to arrive, then ran out to it, sat stiffly in the backseat, unable to stop shaking. She was so cold and shivering that when she got home she could hardly fit her key in the lock. Safe at last in her apartment, she threw the bolts on the doors and turned up the heat.

  It had been Lee Wark. She'd seen him clearly. His eyes, the same muddy-glassy eyes.

  What if he'd followed her home, in a second cab? Or maybe he took her cab's number, would find out from her driver where she lived? She had to call the police. Report that she'd seen him. Wark was a wanted felon, a convicted killer.

  Most of all, she had to get out of San Francisco.

  9

  CLYDE DAMEN'S white Cape Cod cottage shook with the stutter of jackhammers and the thud of falling timbers, enough racket to collapse a poor cat's eardrums. Joe Grey sat on the kitchen counter, waiting for Clyde to make his breakfast, and watching through the window the handsome Victorian home behind them being torn down and fed, timber by splintered timber, to a series of large metal Dumpsters that stood in the wide front yard.

  The house's finer fittings, the crown molding, the stained-glass windows, the hand-carved banister and carved cabinets, had long since been sold to an antique dealer, as had the fine Victorian furniture. Seventy-year-old Lucinda Greenlaw had no need any longer for large pieces of furniture since she had married Shamas and moved into his travel trailer and set out to see the world-or at least see more of the West Coast.

  All the houses behind Clyde's had been sold. Both sides of that street were being cleared to accommodate a small, exclusive shopping plaza. The constant noise of the tear-down had been too hard on the other cats-on the three ordinary kitties who could not understand the source of the threatening racket, and on old Rube, the elderly Labrador. Clyde had taken them up to the vet's to board.

  Clyde and Dr. Firreti had an arrangement involving hospital and boarding bills swapped for auto repairs, an agreement that worked to everyone's advantage except that of the IRS. Clyde didn't talk about that.

  "Another few weeks," Clyde grumbled, staring out at the destruction, "we'll be looking out the window at a solid three-story wall smack in your face. The house will be dark as a tomb. No sunrise. No sun at all. You want to look at the hills? Forget it. Might as well have the Empire State Building in the backyard."

  "A handsome stucco wall," Joe said, quoting Dulcie, "to define the back garden-turn it into an enclosed patio."

  "That view of the hills was the main reason I bought this house-that and the sunrise. A three-story wall will destroy them both."

  "It won't destroy the hills and sunrise. The hills and sunrise will still be there. You just…"

  "Shut up, Joe. Here, eat your breakfast. Kippers and sour cream. And don't growl. You don't have to kill the kippers. You may not have noticed in your enthusiasm that the kippers are already dead."

  Clyde set his own plate of eggs on the table beside a bowl of Sugar Pops. The phone rang. Snatching it from the wall, he answered through a mouthful of egg.

  He grew very still.

  Joe padded across the table to press against Clyde's shoulder, his ear to the phone.

  Max Harper sounded grim.

  "I have an appointment with the city attorney. Ten A.M. Going to take administrative leave."

  "Because of the Marner case? But-"

  "Because of Bucky's shoe, Bucky's hoofprints all over the scene. And because of new evidence."

  "What new evidence?"

  "I just got the report from Salinas. The lab rushed it through. They have the murder weapon."

  "Oh. Well, that's-"

  "Remember that bone-handled butcher knife that Millie's aunt sent her from Sweden?"

  "I remember it. A big, stubby knife with silver inlay."

  "One of my detectives found it in my hay shed, under a bale of alfalfa."

  "But-"

  "The dried blood on it was a match for both Helen and Ruthie."

  "That's insane. No one would commit a murder and hide the weapon in his own barn. Where are you? I'll come over. If you step off the case-"

  "I've already stepped off. I'm going to ask Gedding to appoint an interim chief until this thing gets sorted out."

  "Max, if someone's out to frame you-"

  "I've removed myself from the case. There was nothing else I can do. I'm not giving up the search for Dillon. I'll keep on with that, acting as a civilian. And I'm going to have to look for witnesses."

  "I can take some time off, help you talk to people. Help you look for Dillon."

  "I-we'll talk about it. Every cop on the central coast is looking for her. Every law enforcement agency in California."

  "But-"

  "I see Gedding at ten."

  "Meet for lunch?"

  "Say, one o'clock at Moreno's."

  "One o'clock." Clyde hung up, glancing toward Joe.

  But Joe Grey wasn't there. Through the kitchen window Clyde saw a gray streak vanish over the fence, heading into the village. Clyde stood looking, swearing softly, but he didn't open the door to shout after Joe.

  What good would it do? He couldn't make Joe come back. And, under the present circumstances, he guessed he didn't want to.

  If Joe could help Harper, Clyde promised himself he'd never again make one disparaging, discouraging, cutting remark aimed at the tomcat. Would never again tease either Joe or Dulcie. He was, in fact, so upset about Harper that he poured coffee on his cereal and had eaten half the bowl before he realized how strange it tasted.

  By the time Max Harper entered Lowell Gedding's office at ten, the two sleuths in question had concealed themselves handily behind a Chinese planter of maidenhair fern, on the wide ledge inside the city attorney's bay window.

  Gedding didn't like screens on his windows, nor were screens needed in Molena Point. The sea wind kept flies away. And the decorative burglar grid that covered the window offered ample security. The window could safely remain open, allowing access to no living creature larger than, say, your ordinary house cat.

  The morning sun washed pleasantly across the white walls of Gedding's office and across the pale Mexican-tile floor. A white, hand-woven rug was positioned on the amber tiles directly in front of Gedding's dark antique desk. Three walls were bare. On the fourth expanse hung five black-and-white Ansel Adams photographs: stark, hard-edged studies of sand dunes, magnificent in their simplicity.

  Gedding sat behind his desk, relaxed and cool. He was a slim, bald, deeply tanned man in his sixties, with the look of the military about him. His gaze was direct, his body well honed, easy in its nicely tailored business suit of a dark, thin fabric. His green eyes were intense.

  "Sit down, Max. I gather this is about the Marner murders."

  Harper nodded.

  "You have nothing further on Dillon Thurwell?"

  "Nothing. Search parties are out, her picture on the Web and to the wire services. We-the department has the murder weapon."

  Gedding leaned forward.

  "Detective Davis found it yesterday. They got the lab report back this morning. The blood of both victims was on it."

  "And?"

  "It is a butcher knife from my kitchen. It was found in my hay shed."

  "Is it a common make, a knife that could be duplicated?"

  "It is a one-of-a-kind carving knife made in Sweden. Swedish steel, hand-carved bone handle and silver inlay."

  Gedding looked deeply at Harper. "Why would someone set you up, Max, but do it so obviously? Had you missed the knife prior to the murder?"

  "I hadn't used anything out of that drawer in weeks except a couple of paring knives. It could have been gone for some time."

  "It's not like you not to remember details."

  "In your own house? In a place you're so used to, you stop seeing things?"

  "I suppose. So what now? You've already removed yourself from the case. You're not here to ask for administrative leave?"

  "Exactly why I'm here. Someone took that knife from the house. Someo
ne either borrowed my horse or came up with a set of matching shoes for his own horse, and marked both shoes. Someone with a pair of boots like mine, the soles worn into the same indentations."

  "You've checked the house for any signs of break-in."

  "The detectives have been over it three times."

  "No one has a key?"

  "No one."

  "Surely a houseguest or dinner guest could have taken the knife, anyone coming in. Have you made a list of who's been there?"

  Harper handed a list across the desk. "Everyone who's been in my house the last three months. A few close friends and the plumber. You can see I have a big social life.

  "I don't think the killer's name is there. No one comes in my place, Lowell, except friends I trust fully."

  "That include Crystal Ryder?"

  "She…" Max hesitated. "She's been up at my place three times, uninvited. She didn't go in the house any time-that I know of."

  "Could she have gone in?"

  "Yes, I suppose she could have. While I was feeding or working with the horses. I didn't like her coming up there. When she showed up, I went on with my work."

  "That's why she isn't on the list." Gedding's tone was cool.

  "Exactly why. Because she wasn't inside, to my knowledge."

  "That's not the way I heard the story. Talk in the village has you two pretty close."

  "Put her on the list," Harper said. "Make a notation that I never saw her go inside, never saw her inside the house."

  Gedding leaned back in his chair. "I've received two anonymous phone calls that when you left the restaurant, the day of the murder, you were seen riding your buckskin up the mountain following Helen and Ruthie and Dillon. Riding up the mountain, Max, away from your place, not down the hills toward home as you said in your statement."

  "There's nothing I can say to that, Lowell. It isn't true. I didn't do that. I went directly home, took care of Bucky and the other animals. Answered the phone-that tip about Baker. I showered and dressed, and headed for Baker's place. You've read my statement."

  Gedding sighed. "And you have no changes to make to that statement?"