"Dulcie's in the house," he growled.
"And Kit?"
Sage shrugged. "With her, I guess."
Charlie looked at him for a long time, then picked him up and settled him in the car. "Stay here, Sage. Be still and stay here." Her voice said she would brook no nonsense. And she went in to find the lady cats.
She found Dulcie sitting on the desk, but Kit was huddled behind the couch. When Charlie hauled her out, and got to the cause of the argument, she insisted Kit come up to the ranch with the young tom.
"I mean to show Sage my book, Kit, with the drawings of you. I'm thinking of doing some drawings of Sage, and of you two together." This was what Charlie called a white lie, but it forced Kit's attention, bristling with jealousy.
"You wouldn't draw him," the tortoiseshell whispered.
"Why wouldn't I? He's a very handsome young cat."
"Because…Because he's all in bandages. You don't want-"
"That might be quite interesting," Charlie said. "I might even do a book about Sage and how he was attacked."
"You wouldn't!" Kit hissed, flattening her ears, glaring up at Charlie. "You wrote a book about me. Why would you want to write one about Sage!"
"Well, of course if you don't want me to take him up to the ranch and take care of him…Don't want me to fix him a big bed and special treats, if you don't want to come up and share the nice shrimp I bought, and the roast beef and rum custard, and make sure I change his bandages the way Wilma does-if you want Sage to be all alone, to go back alone to the clowder and never see him again…"
Glowering at Charlie's blackmail, Kit stalked through the house and out the cat door to the car, her ears flat, her tail low. When Charlie opened the door, she leaped in past Sage like a streak, over the back of the seat and down onto the shadowed floor among a tangle of bridle parts and sketch pads. There, crawling under a strong-smelling saddle blanket, she rode in sulking silence.
Kit didn't know how she felt. She cared for Sage, but he enraged her. She wanted to be with him, but she didn't. She felt a terrible disappointment in him for wanting to destroy the beautiful book. And why did he have to admire and try to be like Stone Eye? Wasn't there more to Sage than that hard and narrow view? Hunched in the dark under the horse blanket, Kit put her chin down on her paws and tried not to think about Sage, and could think of nothing else.
And when they got to the ranch, the moment Charlie parked and opened the door, Kit leaped out and raced straight to the barn and burrowed in a pile of straw. There she spent the rest of the morning, wishing Sage would come out and apologize, and ready to tear him apart if he tried.
26
CORONER JOHN BERN'S bald head and glasses caught the light as he turned to look at Lindsey. "Who did you say this is?"
She stood at the edge of the freshly turned earth looking down at the grave, at the frail dark bones, at the thin legs in their heavy boots, at the skeletal arm and gold bracelet. "I said I don't think this is Olivia Pamillon."
She was surprised when Bern nodded as if agreeing with her. "This is a far younger woman. The incomplete fusion of the skull, the lack of degenerative changes…We'll do some studies in the lab, but this can't be Olivia. She was active in the village well into her seventies." He looked at her questioningly. "Do you know who this might be?"
Everyone was still, watching Lindsey. She glanced across the grotto to Dallas. "Nina Gibbs?" she said hesitantly, looking back at Bern. "Could this be Ray Gibbs's wife, who went missing?"
Above, on the roof, Joe watched her with interest. Despite the hesitancy of her response, he thought she was very sure.
"But that has to be Olivia," Ryan said. "The bracelet…I remember now, I read about it when I was doing research for the Stanhope studio renovation. She always wore it, didn't she? A gold bracelet with a cat on it, a one-of-a kind piece that was designed for her." She'd started to say, that seemed to have some special meaning, then realized what she would be saying, and became silent.
Dr. Bern shook his head. "I don't know about the bracelet, but this isn't Olivia. These are the bones of a woman half her age, maybe thirty to forty."
"And," Lindsey said, "Nina has…had the bracelet. She wore it long after Olivia died. She told me there was only one, that her aunt had left it to her." She looked at Dallas, and glanced toward the Blazer.
"We have pictures," Dallas said. "From Lindsey's locker, shots of Nina wearing it."
"Nina told me once," Lindsey said, "…it was at a party, when she'd been drinking…that the bracelet held the key to great wealth. I have no idea what she meant. She said it as a sort of drunken bragging, but of course she didn't explain."
John Bern looked away toward the distant rose garden, where its overgrown bushes crowded among the Pamillon family headstones. Saying nothing, he moved toward the old, neglected cemetery. Everyone followed him but Dallas, who remained with the grave-and Joe Grey on the roof above.
The tomcat watched across the far rubble as Bern eased in among the tangled rosebushes, carefully pulling aside thorny branches to examine the old headstones and marble slabs. Three ornate marble angels stood up among the sprawling bushes and the figure of a little winged child. Bern moved among the Pamillon dead slowly until at last he paused, not beside a headstone but at an unmarked patch of earth that, Joe could see, had settled into a shallow concavity. The tomcat, dropping down a honeysuckle vine, out of sight, fled through the morning shadows between the fallen walls and up onto a pile of stones where he could see better-could see that at one end of the unmarked, sunken grave the soil had been disturbed. As if a marker had been removed?
Both Bern and Davis photographed the area from many angles, capturing shadows and indentations. Then they both dropped to their knees as if praying for the souls of the surrounding dead, and carefully searched the hard earth around the unidentified concavity for fragments, for minute shreds of cloth or a lost button, for footprints or any foreign debris.
Watching from among the tumbled stones, Joe grew increasingly impatient because he couldn't examine the grave site himself to sniff out scents that no human would discover. He waited, fidgeting, for nearly an hour before Bern and Davis returned to the grotto and the body to finish labeling and boxing up the bones.
Only when everyone had left the family cemetery did Joe conduct his own investigation. Sniffing every inch of the unmarked grave and its surround, he found very little. Once he caught a whiff of an unfamiliar perfume or shaving lotion, but it was so faint and so entwined with fresh human scents now, and with the smell of the few roses that still bloomed, that even a cat couldn't sort it out; he returned at last to the roof above the grotto, having learned nothing.
Bern and Davis were packing up their equipment, preparing to leave. Joe watched Dallas cross the grotto, dropping into his pocket a small paper evidence bag containing the last item Dr. Bern had found: two minuscule lumps Bern had unearthed beneath the body, at the bottom of the grave.
If these were what Joe thought, they must have settled during the preceding years, possibly falling as the flesh decayed around them. He'd gotten a clear look as Bern bagged them, and he was sure they were bullets crusted with detritus and earth.
Joe found it interesting that as Ryan and Clyde helped carry the coroner's cases to his car, the newlyweds moved close together, as if, in the face of death, they needed to touch, to reassure each other of their own well-being and safety. And when Joe looked at Mike and Lindsey, they were behaving the same, Lindsey leaning into the tall, lanky Scots Irishman, his arm protectively around her. They glanced up when Detective Davis looked in their direction, then turned away as Davis headed for Detective Garza.
Joe watched Davis slip a small plastic bag from the pocket of her dark uniform. He could see a half sheet of paper inside. Was that the note Ryder had brought in earlier? But why bring it here? It was already logged in, and Lindsey had already seen it. The look on Davis's face was one of half annoyance, half amusement. As she handed Dallas the small evidence bag,
Joe slipped silently along the edge of the roof until he was just above them.
Whatever this was, it wasn't the letter Ryder had brought, this wasn't hand printed, but typewritten on smooth white paper.
"Brennan found this at the back door this morning," Davis said. "Just after change of watch. No one saw who left it, and there are no latents." The look between the two detectives was one the tomcat knew well, that wry glance of frustration that heralded another anonymous tip, both welcome and highly frustrating.
But this wasn't Joe's tip. Nor, surely, anything Dulcie or Kit would have taken to the station. Edging farther over the lip of the roof, Joe read the letter over Dallas's shoulder, watched Dallas glance across the grotto at Lindsey, much as Davis had done.
Lindsey was watching them, the end of her scarf thrown back over her shoulder, her tan very appealing against the white tank top. At that moment, Joe would have given a brace of fat mice to know her thoughts.
But he would give a lot more to know them if the detectives shared the letter with her.
Police Chief Max Harper:
Regarding the reopened investigation of Carson Chappell's disappearance: When Lindsey Wolf reported Chappell missing, she lied to the detective about where she was. She was not in the village. She rented a car from Avis and was gone all week. Here is a photocopy of the dated rental receipt in her name. I do not know where she went. Good luck in this investigation.
The letter was indeed like something the real snitches might have discovered and stolen and taken to the detectives, and that angered Joe. He wanted to know who had left this, wanted to know if the message was true or if the killer had written it to lay the blame on Lindsey.
He didn't want to think she'd killed Carson. Despite his uneasy questions about her, he wanted to believe her. Wanted her to be telling the truth. Below him, Dallas was saying, "I'd like Lindsey to read this."
Davis said, "You think that's wise?"
"In this case, yes."
She nodded, and he motioned Lindsey and Mike over. They read the printout together. Lindsey stood a moment staring at it, then looked up at the detectives, flushed and scowling.
"Who gave you this? Where did you get this?"
"It was left at the station this morning," Davis said. "We don't know who left it."
"Can you fingerprint it?"
"I tried," Davis said. "There's nothing-we'll see what the lab can pick up."
"It's not typed," Lindsey said, examining the paper through the plastic. "It's too even. Looks like a printout. Is there some way you can trace a printer?"
"We'd have to have something to go on," Davis said. "Another example from the same printer, and even then…Were you out of town the week Carson disappeared?"
"No. That was the week of the wedding. May I see the receipt?"
Davis turned the plastic over, to show the Visa receipt. Lindsey looked at it, and nodded. "That's my credit card number. But there've never been any forged charges against it, I check carefully. I've never had any theft."
"Would you still have that Visa bill?" Davis said, clearly not expecting that she would.
"I would if there were any business expenses on that one," Lindsey said. "And there usually are. It would be in my tax returns for that year." She looked at Dallas. "They're in the locker, in the file cabinet." Her hazel eyes were still angry, her cheeks flaming. "This is…What's he trying to do?"
"Who?" Davis said.
"Ray Gibbs," Lindsey said, looking at Davis. "If that body is Nina, then this note has to be from Gibbs. Or…" After a moment, she said, more quietly, "Or…Oh, not my sister?"
"What makes you think it was Gibbs?" Davis said. "Or your sister? This could have nothing to do with them."
"It has to do with Carson's death, and maybe with Gibbs's wife, with Nina," Lindsey said, glancing away, toward the grave.
Davis said, "Why are you so certain the body is Nina?" Davis had taken over the interview, and Dallas seemed content to let her run with it.
"She always wore that bracelet, I don't think I ever saw her without it. Wore it all the time, just as her aunt did, before her. Unless…," she said, "unless the story about there being only one bracelet wasn't true, unless there was another."
"Or," Davis said, "unless Nina gave it to someone."
Lindsey frowned at the detective. "That doesn't seem likely. Nina seemed to place some special, almost mystical value on it."
"Can you explain?" Davis said.
"I don't really know. Maybe sentimental value. I think she was truly fond of her aunt. She said once that the bracelet was the one thing that Olivia Pamillon treasured." She looked toward the now empty grave. "Olivia's bracelet, circling that bare bone." She shivered. "Like a manacle holding Nina there." And she turned away, into the shelter of Mike's arms.
Above, on the roof, Joe watched her intently. What a strange thing to say, to read into a simple bracelet with an innocent cat embossed on the band. Below him, both detectives watched Lindsey without expression. And Joe thought, A bracelet embossed with the emblem of a secret that Olivia Pamillon carried all her life? And as Clyde and Mike and Ryan turned to leave, the tomcat, staying out of sight, headed fast across the roofs toward Clyde's roadster, Lindsey's words repeating in his head, Like a manacle holding Nina there…like a manacle…
But, galloping across the roofs trying to put Lindsey's comment in perspective, he stopped suddenly and crouched, very still, watching the jutting wing of the mansion beyond the grotto, where he'd glimpsed a figure slipping away. Darkly dressed, visible only for a second, moving fast. Someone near the grotto, listening, and watching.
There! He saw the figure again moving swiftly to vanish beyond the broken walls, moving toward the old shed, and then gone.
27
ALONE IN THE BARN, wishing Sage would hobble out and apologize to her and say he'd been wrong, say that Stone Eye had been an evil tyrant and the clowder was better off without him, and knowing Sage would never do that, Kit began to smell a lovely aroma from the kitchen. Charlie's delicious shrimp casserole. Crouching in the straw feeling lonely and neglected and sniffing that heady scent, growing hungrier and hungrier but unwilling to go in the house and face Sage and make up-he'd have to apologize first-she waited. Maybe Charlie would come out and would understand and would maybe bring her some nice shrimp to eat and tell her she was right and Sage was wrong. Listening across the yard to little sounds from the kitchen, she longed to hear the door open and Charlie's footsteps approach. She felt sure Charlie could make everything all right.
But Kit waited a long time before Charlie appeared in the barn, calling out to her. Then she waited a long time more, letting Charlie call and call, before she came out from her hiding place in the pile of straw.
Immediately Charlie picked her up, scowling down crossly but gently stroking her. Charlie did not apologize for Sage's behavior. Nor did she sympathize with Kit. She simply headed for the house.
But before they went inside, into the big kitchen, Charlie sat down on the steps, holding Kit tenderly. "You're hurting, Kit. You feel all alone, and Sage doesn't understand."
Kit sniffed.
"Do you think Sage feels alone, too?"
Kit didn't care.
Charlie took Kit's wild little black-and-brown face in her hands, looked into her angry yellow eyes. "Do you think he understands why you're angry? Really understands?"
Kit didn't care about that either. If Sage didn't understand now, he never would. She'd said it plainly enough.
Hadn't she?
"Do you think," Charlie said, "that you might have been thinking like a kitten who expects to be understood but never really explains what's wrong?"
Kit glared at her.
"Do you think, if you explained to him that the way he sees life is a threat to the freedom you see in life, that he would understand?"
Kit was quiet, thinking. Charlie said nothing more. She rose, carrying Kit, and in the kitchen she set her down on the window seat, at the far en
d, as far as possible from where Sage was tucked up among the cushions. His head was down, his eyes closed in misery.
Charlie served each of the cats a plate of warm shrimp casserole, each in their own corner, then set her own plate beside a green salad and sat down at the table. She didn't talk as she ate, didn't seem to notice them. She sat enjoying her early lunch and reading some manuscript pages from the book she was working on. The cats ate in grim silence-though anger didn't seem to spoil their appetites. They ate fiercely, as if tearing at fresh kill, glancing at each other only occasionally.
After a long while, as Charlie ignored them, their glances grew more frequent and then gentler. And as the soothing effect of the warm shrimp eased and cheered them, they looked at each other more kindly. Charlie gave no sign that she noticed. When she'd finished, and rinsed her plate, she left them alone and headed back to her studio. But in truth, she was so upset by the cats' battle that she wasn't sure she could work, not sure she could put herself back into the fictional world that she built around her as she wrote.
Oh, Kit, she thought, do you love Sage? Love him enough to follow him back into the wild despite your differences? To follow him even when you can't agree on what's important in life? Indeed, two sets of their deepest beliefs were at cross purposes here, just as could happen with humans, one set of values deeply threatening the other. Oh, Kit, don't go if you can't be happy. Don't go if you can't believe alike, don't go and leave us, only to be miserable…
But now all Charlie could do was leave them alone, so her interference didn't muddle their relationship, and hope they'd sort it out.
Getting back to work on the new book, soon immersed in the tangle of the story, still Charlie was aware of the cats' softer voices, as if they were making up. Later, when she heard only silence she rose and went to look.
They were napping, curled peacefully together. She turned away, smiling, and soon she was deep in the book again, deeply relieved that silence reigned from the kitchen. Later, if she was aware of a soft metallic sound, she ignored it.
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