While all a cat had to do was walk along the rack, sniffing.
Joe looked at Kit. She was the only one who had been near the dead man, who would know his scent. He twitched an ear. Dulcie and Kit came fully alert, and the three cats leaped down mewling at Mabel until she opened the heavy glass door.
“You cats come to visit, just get settled, and you’re gone again-fickle as all cats, no sense of loyalty to old friends,” she said, smiling.
But even as Mabel turned back to her phones and radio, up on the roof above her head, the tortoiseshell kit looked at Joe, wide-eyed and uncertain. “What?” she said. “Why are you…What did I do?”
“You’re going to find the dead man’s clothes. If we hit the charity shops before Davis…”
“But…” Dulcie said.
“I…The only scent I caught from the roof,” Kit said, “was death. Nothing else, Joe. How could I smell anything else, over that stink?”
“He’d only just died,” Joe said stubbornly. “Try to remember, Kit. Or maybe the scent of the killer is on those clothes, too.”
“The dead man will be hard enough. But I was trying to track the little girl among the geranium smells and all the cops’ scents. I didn’t have time to sort out the killer’s scent. I wouldn’t know the smell of the killer if I stumbled over him.”
Kit smoothed her long fur with a rough tongue. “The child’s scent, yes. I could pick out her clothes from the racks of castoffs, but…Oh!” she said, lashing her tail with excitement. “Of course I can find the victim’s clothes! His scent will be on the little girl’s clothes-and her scent will be on his. She was in his arms, she was hugging him.” And Kit’s yellow eyes blazed with challenge. “I can do that, Joe. I can find both scents!”
31
T HE WOODS BEHIND the high school were dense, not much used except by students skipping class or crowding in at night to party. The narrow road that wound between the scraggly pines was littered with empty drink cans and debris of a less appealing nature. The old tramp wouldn’t ordinarily camp up here, but now, wanting to avoid the village, and never liking the homeless camps down by the river where things could get dicey, he found the woods inviting. After the cops picked him up yesterday, he’d slept in here last night, moving deep in behind a bushy stand of poison ivy where no one would see him, and high school kids weren’t likely to invade. Poison ivy didn’t bother him, he could roll in the stuff and never itch. He was sipping coffee, thinking to open a can of beans for his supper, and congratulating himself on not having encountered a living soul, when he heard a car coming. Breaking branches and crunching rocks.
Beyond the bushes, he watched a van pull in, heading toward him along the narrow dirt road, brushing overhanging limbs and side branches, a blue Chevy van. And a big tan SUV right behind it. Well, hell. Person didn’t have no privacy, nowhere.
Real fast, he scraped dirt over his little fire and rolled up his blanket, did up his kit preparing to move out. But then he hunkered down again, watching the Suburban as it backed around on the narrow road with a lot of hustle and fuss, until it was heading out. He knew he ought to get out of there, but he was too interested.
The Suburban parked with its tail just a few feet from the rear of the van. A tall woman swung out of the van and moved around to open the rear doors at the same time as a muscular guy stepped out of the Suburban and opened the tailgate. Then a smaller man slid down out of the Suburban and, at the woman’s direction, walked back a ways up the dirt road and stood as she told him, watching the street beyond the high school for cop cars.
When the big man and the woman began to transfer the van’s load into the SUV, pulling out panels that stood upright in the van but, going into the Suburban, had to lay flat, the old man was way too curious to leave, too interested in what they had there.
The big panels were pictures-blue, green, glimpses of a stormy sky. The woman was cranky and bad-tempered, the exact same scowling kind of female he’d never cared for. Like the women in his own family when he was a kid, loud and bossy and you couldn’t never trust ’em. She snapped at her partner the whole time as they lifted the panels. She’d pause between loading each, though, to stuff blankets between. Like they was real valuable.
When they closed the doors of both vehicles, real quiet, and got in and headed back the way they’d come, he decided he wouldn’t have to move along after all. It sure didn’t look like they meant to come back. The woman handled the van real nifty among the dense trees. She stopped by their lookout, the little guy. She stepped out, got in the SUV, left the little guy to drive the van.
Smiling, the old man unrolled his blanket again, and sat down. He listened as the two vehicles moved away to Highway One, sounded like they turned right, up the coast. Scraping the dirt off the hot ashes, he fed in a few twigs, hoping to get a blaze going again. The wind was up; he shivered, and sat thinking.
This was the kind of switch, back out of sight, that the cops sure would like to know about. If a fella liked cops well enough to tell ’em.
Them cops here in the village were okay. He’d rather deal with cops, sometimes, than some of the scum he met up with. Them cops yesterday, they’d taken him right on into the chief’s office, give him a cup of coffee. Keeping his shoes for evidence of some kind, they’d hustled up a fine pair to replace them. Fit him real good. And afterward that blond cop that picked him up, she’d bought him a real nice deli lunch before she sent him on his way. A real looker, that one. He wondered why she’d wanted to be a cop.
Getting the little fire going and wrapping his blanket around him, he thought about that body that was supposed to have been in the plaza, the stiff they’d lost and wanted the evidence for, wanted his shoes for-and wondered if this switch he’d just seen could have something to do with that.
He didn’t see how. But who knew? He wasn’t no cop.
Wondering, he covered the little fire again that he’d just got started, but didn’t shoulder his pack. He buried it among the poison ivy. Then, thinking about the cold supper he’d have when he got back, he left the woods. The sky above him was gray and dull, the winter evening cold. Shrugging down into his jacket, he headed for the center of the village wondering if that tall blond cop was still on duty. Wondering, if she was there at the station, she might buy him something hot from the deli, for his supper.
T HERE WERE FIVE charity shops in the village, all providing good used clothing, often with impressive labels, to the astute shopper, and offering, as well, an occasional antique treasure that would turn out to be worth considerably more than the buyer paid for it. The senior ladies hit these shops regularly and then sold their finds on eBay, always making a nice profit.
The treasure that Kit was after had nothing to do with monetary gain-and everything to do with nailing a killer. It was late afternoon when she left Molena Point PD heading for the small SPCA resale shop just a few blocks away. She would have maybe half an hour until the stores closed.
As she raced across the roofs and down to the sidewalk, her mind was half on finding the killer’s scent, and half worrying about Ryan lying unconscious in the hospital-seeing over and over again that woman and then Leroy hitting Ryan, seeing Ryan fall, seeing blood start from the wound across Ryan’s forehead.