Cat Under Fire

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  Below them from the hall the old man shouted, "Come out of there. You're in the complex illegally." His voice was raspy, very loud for such a small man. "Come out now, or I call the cops." He began to pound on doors. "You won't be arrested if you come out now."

  "How can he think anyone's here?" Dulcie whispered. "The doors are locked from outside."

  "The empty ones wouldn't be locked."

  "But…"

  They heard him open one of the lockers, then another, heard him rattling padlocks; and warily they moved away again, along the top of the wall. "Let's get out," Dulcie said softly.

  "Be still. He'll be gone in a minute. If we go out the vent now…"

  "What if he has keys?"

  "He can't see us; he'd have to climb to see us. And what if he did?"

  She shivered.

  "We're cats, Dulcie. He'd just chase us out. I've never seen you so jumpy."

  She leaned against him. "I've never been afraid quite like this. I don't know why."

  "Nerves," he said unhelpfully. But then, as they crouched atop the wall, the lights went out and the footsteps headed away again. The outer door rattled as it was pulled down and they heard the padlock snap closed.

  Alone again in the warm dark they relaxed, basking in the heat from the roof, feeling their thudding hearts slow, breathing more easily.

  "He didn't waste any time getting out," Joe said. Stretching, he trotted away around the top of the wall, heading toward the vent. There he waited, listening. Dulcie followed. They heard a light scuffing along the alley as if the old man was shuffling away, but then silence, as if he had stopped.

  "He's up to something," Joe said.

  She moved to look out through the vent, but he pulled her back.

  "Now who's acting nervous?"

  "Keep your voice down. He didn't walk away- unless he took his shoes off."

  "We could go out the back vent." But suddenly from below came the hush of tires on concrete, the soft rolling sound of a car pulling down between the buildings.

  The engine stopped. They heard a second car, then the static of a police radio.

  "He called the cops," Joe said incredulously. "Before he ever came out here, he called the cops."

  "That crash, when I knocked the crate off. He called them then. Who knows how long he was standing out there-who knows what he heard."

  They listened to car doors opening, men's voices mixed with the harsh radio voices. Again the outer door rattled up, and the overhead lights flared on like a gigantic third degree. Quickly they slipped away along the top of the wall toward the back. They heard the cops enter the little hall, hard shoes on concrete.

  "Police. Come out now."

  Doors were flung open as officers checked the empty lockers. Locks rattled. But then at last, silence. A softer voice. "There's no one in here, sir. The locks and hasps are all in place, nothing looks tampered with. You must have…"

  "I heard someone talking. Not my imagination. Maybe they got locked in from outside. Maybe someone's sleeping in here, got locked in… "

  "If there's anyone trapped here, they're mighty quiet about it."

  The footfalls receded, the men's voices became fainter. But the lights remained on, and the officers left the outer door open. The cats listened to a long silence broken only by the rasping crackle of the police radio.

  Joe said, "They're waiting for something. Or planning something."

  Dulcie had started on toward the back when a new sound froze them. The scrape of wood on concrete. Then a little click. They crept up to the front, to look.

  Below them in the hall the watchman had set up a wooden stepladder, and an officer was climbing. They backed away and ran, heading for the back vent.

  They were crouched by the vent when the officer rose above the wall of the first locker. Tilting his head sideways, pressing his forehead against a rafter, he managed to look over into the first little room, peering down through the six-inch gap.

  "This one's empty, some furniture but nothing to hide under."

  The minute he vanished again, presumably to move the ladder, they clawed a hole in the screen and pressed through. Poised on the sill, they stared down at the concrete walk nine feet below. They leaped together, landed hard, jolting every bone. And they ran, skirting along beside the fence. They were crouched to swarm up the six feet of chain link when Joe stopped and turned back.

  "What?" She remained poised to leap.

  "Idea," he said, briefly trotting away around the far end of the building. She followed him, puzzled and excited, toward the alley where the patrol cars were parked. When Joe was silent, some wild plan was unfolding.

  He crouched at the corner, listening to the police radio. Carefully he peered around, down the alley toward the patrol cars.

  "They're still inside. Come on."

  She sped beside him toward the two squad cars. The drivers' doors stood open, maybe to give quick access to the radios. They slipped beneath the first car.

  "Keep watch," he said, and slid up into the driver's seat, sleek and quick, a vanishing shadow.

  She pictured him inside, stepping delicately among the cops' field books and gloves and radio equipment, then she heard him talking, his voice soft.

  But when he pressed the button to talk, the voices and static were silent. Those cops would hear him, they'd come charging out. She crouched shivering beneath the car's open door, ready to hiss at Joe, ready to run like hell.

  But the caretaker's raspy voice filled the air, steady and loud, as he told the three officers some long involved story. No one glanced toward the squad car.

  Joe went silent, slid out and from the patrol car, a swift shadow, and they streaked away up the alley. Around the corner they sat down and made themselves comfortable beside the wall, to wait.

  The third patrol car parked beside Mahl's locker. Not ten minutes had passed. They watched Captain Harper emerge. He was not in uniform but dressed in jeans and a Western shirt. Detective Marritt was with him, fully in uniform, his expression sour. As the two men moved inside, the cats approached, slipping down the alley close to the wall, crouching just outside the big open door, to listen.

  Harper was puzzled, then angry. He went up the ladder for a look. Which officer had called in? No one had. Well why hadn't they? Didn't anyone wonder about those paintings? Didn't anyone look at them? What was the ladder for, if you didn't look at what was there? You could see two of the paintings clearly. Didn't anyone wonder about those big splashy landscapes? Didn't anyone recognize them?

  When Harper sent the watchman to get a pole, the cats crouched under a squad car out of sight. The small, wiry man trotted by, looking half-afraid. He returned quickly, carrying a six-foot length of door molding.

  They watched Harper climb the ladder and reach his pole to move the leaning paintings; he would be gently flipping them back one at a time, looking. Soon his voice, always dry, took on a quality of both excitement and rage.

  "Didn't any of you connect this locker to Janet? Did you forget there's a case in court involving her death? Didn't you think it strange that so many of her paintings are here?

  "Don't tell me that not one of you three recognized her work, after all the damned fuss and publicity. Didn't any of you remember the Aronson testimony, that there are only a few of her paintings left?"

  Dulcie and Joe glanced at each other. Harper was really steamed.

  "Didn't you think when you saw this stuff that it was worth checking out? What were you doing in here?

  "And who called into the station, which one of you?"

  None of the three had called.

  Harper centered on the caretaker. "Did you use the police radio? Did you call in when you went to get the ladder?"

  The old man swore he hadn't. Harper said if none of them had called, then who did? Why did he have to rely on some anonymous informant, and how the hell did an informant get hold of a police radio? The cats could tell he was itching to get back to the station and get to
the bottom of the puzzle.

  When Harper began on the watchman, boring in, the cats felt sorry for the old fellow. Little Mr. Lent said the man who had rented the locker was a Leonard Brill, Brill had given a San Francisco address. Mr. Brill was, Lent said, extremely nice and helpful. When the compound had been broken into a few weeks ago and the outer gate padlock cut off, it was Mr. Brill who saved the day, he had happened by shortly after the occurrence.

  One of the officers remembered the incident. Lent had put in a call when he had found the lock cut off, but nothing had seemed disturbed inside the complex. They thought the break-in had been an aborted attempt, that perhaps the burglar had run off when the watchman showed up, had never actually gotten inside.

  "And then Mr. Brill happened along," Mr. Lent said. "Just after the officers left. He'd seen the police cars, and wondered if there was trouble.

  "Well it was dark, and most of the stores were closed. I didn't know where I was going to get a lock for the night, and I didn't want to leave the place open. Mr. Brill had a lock in his car, a brand-new heavy-duty padlock. He said I could use it. I told him I'd return it, soon as I got a new one, but he said, no need. Said he'd bought it for his garage down in Santa Barbara but then he'd changed his mind, had decided to put in a remote door opener. More secure, he said. Said he was always losing keys." Lent laughed. "I know about losing keys. If I didn't keep 'em chained to my belt, I wouldn't have a key to my name.

  "I had to argue with him before he'd let me pay him. But after all, the lock had never been used, it was still sealed in its plastic bubble, still in the hardware store bag with the receipt. So of course I paid him. Management reimbursed me later. Nice man, Mr. Brill, a real gentleman."

  Lent's description of Brill was large, hunched, and rather owl-like in appearance but handsomely dressed, a fine camel hair sport coat, and a nice car, a red sports coupe of some kind.

  "Maybe a rental," Joe said. This explained the bolt cutters in Mahl's closet. Explained nicely how, at three in the morning, Mahl was able to get into the complex. No problem, before ever he gave Lent the "new" lock, to carefully open the sealed package, have the key copied, then seal it up again with its keys.

  The men stopped talking, the ladder rattled. The cats nipped back up the alley, they were crouched below the chain-link fence when they heard car doors slam, heard the first car start. One big leap and they were up, clinging to the wire. Scrambling over, within seconds they were headed home, Dulcie purring so loud she sounded like a sports car slipping down the street.

  "I'm glad her paintings are safe. I told you we'd find them."

  He brushed against her, licked her ear. "Without you, Mahl would have gotten away with it.

  "And," he said, "Rob Lake might have burned for Janet's murder." And trotting along through the night, Joe grinned.

  So Clyde thinks we don't have any business messing around with a murder case. So we ought to be chasing little mousies or playing with catnip toys. He could hardly wait to say a few words to Clyde.

  25

  Moreno's Bar and Grill was a small, secluded establishment tucked along one of the village's less decorative alleys, a narrow lane two blocks above the beach. The carved oak door was softly lit by a pair of stained-glass lanterns, the interior carpet was thick, plain, expensive. The music was nonthreatening, tasteful, and soft. A patron entering Moreno's felt the stress of the day begin to ease, could feel himself begin to slow, to relax, to recall with deeper appreciation the small and overlooked details of an otherwise unpleasant afternoon. Moreno's offered fine beers and ale on draft and a deep emotional restorative to soften the rough edges of life.

  The interior of Moreno's was comfortably dim, the walls, paneled in golden oak, were hung with an assortment of etchings and reproductions highlighting the history of California, scenes dating from the time of the first Spanish settlements through the gold rush days. Max Harper sat alone in a booth at the back, sinking comfortably into the soft, quilted leather.

  He was not in uniform but dressed in worn Levi's, plain Western boots, and a dull-colored Western shirt. The old, unpretentious clothes seemed to belong perfectly to Harper's long, lean frame and dry, weathered face. He smelled of clean, well-kept horses; he had spent a leisurely afternoon riding through the Molena Valley, giving both himself and his buckskin gelding some much needed exercise. He tried to ride twice a week, but that wasn't always possible. He was smoking his third cigarette and sipping a nonalcoholic O'Doul's when Clyde swung in through the carved front doors, stopped to speak to the bartender, then made his way to the back As he slid into the booth the waiter appeared behind him, carrying two menus and a Killian's Red draft.

  Harper was not in a hurry to order. He accepted a menu and waved the waiter away with a brief jerk of his head. He had chosen the most secluded booth, and at this early hour there were only five other customers in Moreno's, three at the bar and a couple of tourists in a booth at the other end of the room. The dinner crowd would be moderate; the bar would begin to fill up around eight.

  Clyde sat waiting, fingering his beer mug, watching Max. Despite the bar's soothing atmosphere, the police chief was wound tight, the lines which webbed his face drawn into a half scowl. His shoulders looked tight, and he kept fidgeting with his cigarette.

  Harper eased deeper into the booth, glanced around the nearly empty room out of habit. Normally he wouldn't share this particular kind of unease with Clyde or with anyone. He sure wouldn't share this specific distress with another cop. He would have told Millie; they had shared everything. Two cops under one roof lived on shop talk, on angry complaints and on a crude humor geared to emotional survival. But Millie was dead. He didn't talk easily to anyone else.

  He had told Clyde earlier in the day about finding Janet's paintings in the storage locker up near Highway One. Now he studied Clyde, trying to sort out several nagging thoughts. "I didn't tell you how we knew the paintings were in the locker."

  Clyde settled back, sipping his beer. "Isn't there a watchman? Did he find them?"

  "Watchman made the first call, asking for a patrol car. He'd heard a noise in one of the lockers, like something heavy fell.

  "But it was after the two units arrived, that the second call came in, about the paintings. That call was made from a unit radio."

  Clyde looked puzzled, sipped his beer.

  Harper watched him with interest. "Caller told the dispatcher that there were some paintings I ought to see, that they had to do with Janet's murder. Said I might like to go on over there, take a look for myself. Said the evidence was crucial, that the locker had been rented by Kendrick Mahl."

  He stubbed out his cigarette. "An anonymous call, from a unit radio. There is no way to identify which car the call was made from, dispatcher has no way to tell. I've been over this with every man on duty that night."

  He fiddled with his half-empty cigarette pack, tearing off the cellophane. "No one in the department will admit to making the call, and no one left his unit unattended except my men up at the locker, and they were right there, not ten feet away, with the big locker door wide-open. Anyone moved out in the alley, they would have seen him."

  "Sounds like one of your men is lying, that one of your own had to have made the call. Unless there's some sophisticated electronic tap on the police line?"

  "Not likely, in a case like this. What would be the purpose?"

  "Could the caretaker have slipped out to the squad cars, and lied about it? But why?"

  "The caretaker didn't make the call. Only time he left my officers was when he went to get a ladder, and I told you, they were watching their cars." He crumpled the cellophane, dropped it in the ashtray. "After we impounded the paintings we searched the locker complex. Found no one, nothing disturbed."

  He shook his head. "I trust my people; I don't believe there's one of them would lie to me. Except Marritt, and he's accounted for. And those paintings have blown Marritt's investigation, so why would he make the call?"

  "Well," Cl
yde said, "whoever made the call did the department a good turn. And the paintings are safe in the locker?"

  "We put new padlocks on the two doors and the gate, cordoned off that part of the complex, and left an officer on duty. It will leave us short, but we'll keep a guard there until the guard Sicily hired comes on duty, and until the canvases can be moved. Forty-six of Janet's paintings, worth…"

  "Well over a million," Clyde said. "But weren't painting fragments found in the fire?"

  "Lots of fragments-all with thumbtacks in the stretcher bars. We know, now, that Janet used staples. That's the kind of investigation we got out of Marritt. He had no clue that Mahl substituted some other artist's work. Sicily suggested Mahl might have used students' paintings, bought them cheap at art school sales."

  "But wouldn't Mahl have known about the thumbtacks? He knew Janet's work too well to… "

  Harper smiled. "When Janet and Mahl were married, Janet stretched her canvases with thumbtacks. It wasn't until after she left him, when her thumbs began to bother her from pressing in the tacks, that she started stapling her canvases." He fingered his menu, then laid it down. "But there's something else."

  Clyde waited, trying to look relaxed, not to telegraph a twinge of unease.

  "I told you we found Mahl's watch, and that it could be conclusive evidence," Harper said.

  "That was when you said we needed to talk. I thought… What about the watch?"

  Harper turned his O'Doul's bottle, making rings on the table. "The prosecuting attorney examined the new evidence this morning. Took a look at the paintings and talked to Sicily about them. Mahl's prints aren't on them, surely he used gloves. We sent his watch to the lab, and we've had two men searching out photographs of Mahl that show the watch."

  Harper peeled the wet label from his beer bottle. "Late this afternoon, Judge Wesley dismissed charges against Lake." He spread the label on the table, smoothing it. "And it looks like we might get a confession from Mahl. He's lost some of his arrogance; he doesn't like being behind bars, and he's nervous. Shaky. If he does confess," Max said, "it'll be thanks to our informant."