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“There’s… no chance that Harper, under some kind of stress, in a moment of rage…?”

“Max Harper?” Charlie felt her face go hot. “Kill that woman and her daughter? No way in hell Max could do such a thing.” She rose, refilled the teakettle, and put it back on the burner. Turning, she looked at Kate. “You can’t believe drat.”

Kate smiled.“No. I don’t believe that.”

“Still a fishing trip.”

Kate shrugged.

From the couch, the cats watched this exchange with amused interest.

Kate took two more cookies, ate them quickly.“Do you remember when three men escaped from San Quentin?”

“Yes. From death row? You’re talking about the one from Molena Point. The one who was sent to prison at the same time-”

“The same time as my ex-husband.”

Kate swallowed half a cup of tea.“I think I may have seen him in San Francisco. Someone in the city is murdering cats. He did that, Lee Wark did that.” She shivered. “He liked to kill cats.”

On the couch, Joe and Dulcie moved closer together, their blood going icy. The tortoiseshell kit turned wide yellow eyes on Kate.

Kate looked back at them sternly.“You would stay far away from a man like that. A tall, thin man, Kit. Thin and hunched and pale, with muddy eyes.”

The three cats shivered.

“The man in San Francisco,” Kate said, “had a black coat that made him look squarer and broader. A black goatee. Black hat. But his eyes were the same. Like a dead fish.”

The kit crowded closer to Kate.Frightened,Dulcie thought.Frightened down to her little black paws. And so am I.And she watched the kit, terrified for her.

Lee Wark had tried to kill Dulcie and Joe just as he had tried to kill Kate. And if he got one look into the kit’s eyes, Wark would know that she, too, was not an ordinary cat.

But Wark was not there in the village, he would not come there. The very thought made her fur crawl.

“Dallas will be here in the morning,” Kate said. “He’s very aware of Wark.”

“What’s he like? What kind of man?”

“I work with his niece, I’m her design assistant. Dallas helped to raise Hanni and her sisters after their mother died. Hanni says he’s totally honest. But…” Kate laughed. “I guess that’s like asking what kind of man your father is. What are you going to say?”

“I… have another source, too,” Charlie said.

“Your aunt Wilma? She worked with Hanni’s father at one time.”

“Yes, in the San Francisco probation office, before he was appointed chief. She knows Garza by reputation. Wilma says he’s okay.”

“Hanni says no little girls ever had better raising. They learned to ride, to hunt, to handle firearms-and to clean house and cook. Hanni says Dallas is a wonderful cook. Kate, he has to be a good man, to take such care in raising his dead sister’s children.”

But Joe Grey, watching the two young women, thought,Even crocodiles take care of their helpless young. Even Mafia parents see that their kids learn what they want them to know.

Charlie said,“Whoever’s out to get Harper, I hope Garza sees them burn him in hell.”

Joe Grey hoped so, too. Though the haste with which the city attorney had suggested Garza, and the pressure that Gedding had put on the chief in San Francisco to get Garza left him wondering-hoping the source of this cold-blooded setup to destroy Harper didn’t reach clear to San Francisco via Molena Point City Hall.

The balance of Max Harper’s life now lay in the hands of Dallas Garza. And Joe Grey, stretching out across the daybed, considered how best to monitor Detective Garza’s moves.

Meantime, he’d like a look at confidence artist Stubby Baker, Harper’s unwitting and apparently useless alibi.

12 [????????: pic_13.jpg]

A CAT COULD travel for blocks above the village of Molena Point never setting paw to the sidewalk, crossing the chasms above the streets on twisted oak limbs or by leaping the narrow alleys between skylights and attic windows, by trotting between shingled peaks so precipitous that even with all claws out, one couldn’t help but slide, landing on a swinging sign below or a roof gutter. At only a few streets must the feline traveler come to earth like a common tourist and run across behind the wheels of slow-moving cars.

Stubby Baker’s apartment was a handsome penthouse on the third floor above a row of exclusive clothing shops. The kit led Joe Grey and Dulcie there as if she had invented surveillance. “That’s where he lives,” she hissed, clinging to an oak branch beside Joe, three floors above the street. “Right in there across that balcony behind those big glass doors, the man who kicks cats.”

From the tree in which they crouched, the cats looked down on a long tiled balcony and a pair of many-paned French doors. Despite the bright day, a light was on within. Baker sat at a dining table littered with papers, just inside the glass doors. He was a tall well-knit man totally unlike his nickname, his dark hair neatly trimmed, his smooth skin well tanned. A man the women would find appealing.

The apartment had high, dark beams against a white plaster ceiling, white walls, a skylight through which the sky shone blue and clear. Used brick formed the floor and the corner fireplace, beside which hung eight small, well-framed reproductions of Richard Diebenkorn’s landscapes, gleaming rich as jewels. An opening behind the fireplace apparently led to a bedroom. Before the fire, three tan leather couches formed a luxurious conversational group, their cushions deep and inviting, perfect for kneading claws.

Baker seemed totally absorbed in the official-looking documents he was reading, making occasional notes or corrections. He wore clean chinos and a tan golf shirt. Expensive sandals graced his thin, tanned feet. He gave every impression, both in his person and in his environment, of a well-to-do businessman of some stature, not an ex-con with a laundry sheet that would stretch a city block.

The cats, slipping along the branch closer to the window, had a fine view down onto the papers that occupied him: documents marked with seals and notary stamps, and a land map marked off into individual parcels. Pens and a ruler were aligned beside it. Joe read the larger print upside down, a talent he had developed during interminable breakfasts when Clyde hogged the front page.

“Deeds of trust,” he said softly. “Copies of wills and property transfers.” He studied the land map. “The way the coastline runs, thatcouldbe the Pamillon estate.”

On an end table, among a clutter of dog-eared paperbacks, lay a stack of bills. The paperbacks didn’t seem to fit Baker’s image; the covers looked like lurid, cheap fare. The utility bills were of greater interest, particularly the phone bill on top, showing half a dozen longdistance calls to one Marin County number.

Joe peered closer, committing the seven digits to memory just as he had committed his own phone number, Dulcie’s, and several numbers for Max Harper.

He might not want to explore some of his more bizarre inherited talents, but the memory bank within his gray sleek head was of considerable use to the tomcat.

Marin County, some thirty miles north of San Francisco, was the home of San Quentin State Prison. And Lee Wark hadn’t been the only convicted murderer incarcerated there thanks to Harper.

Repeating to himself the number and prefix, he was trying to figure how to get inside the apartment and paw through the rest of the bills when Dulcie hissed, staring down at the street.

Almost directly beneath the balcony, in the line of halted traffic waiting for pedestrians to cross, sat an open black Mercedes convertible, its radio blaring rock music, its driver staring above her up toward Baker’s windows. Her honey-colored hair was tied back with a yellow scarf. Her tan shorts revealed long, tanned legs. Her brown eyes scanned the portion of French doors that she must be able to see above the angle of the balcony. Beside her on the front seat sat three loaded grocery bags. The cats could see peanut butter, a jar of jelly, some kind of cereal. The traffic moved on.