In the photograph Wark wore his hair trimmed short and neat. Joe had seen it only shoulder length, always greasy. Wark’s current legal address was San Quentin State Prison.
Wark’s interests while in prison had included reading lurid space operas, girlie magazines, and Celtic history. He took no more exercise than the prison demanded. He had socialized with only two other inmates: James Clayton Osborne, Kate’s ex-husband and Wark’s partner in the murder of Samuel Beckwhite, and Kendrick Mahl, whom apparently neither man had known before they were incarcerated. Both Osborne and Mahl were serving life without parole.
Joe knew from the newspapers that the guard whose throat had been lacerated with the prison-made garrote was still hospitalized but that doctors now thought he would survive.
At the bottom of the stack of files and reports was a document Joe had not expected. It was not a police report but a three-page memo from LAPD, on a witness in a seven-year-old fraud trial.
He forgot to listen for anyone approaching the cottage. He forgot he wasinthe cottage. He did not realized he was digging his claws into the page. He read avidly, his stub tail twitching. The witness was Helen Marner.
While art dealer Kendrick Mahl, now serving time in San Quentin, was married to Janet Jeannot, whom he later murdered, he had an affair with Helen Marner, a society reporter and aspiring art critic for theLos Angeles Times.
Joe and Dulcie had helped Max Harper amass the evidence that would convict Mahl-including the decisive clue, which the police would never have discovered without the curiosity of someone small enough to crawl twenty feet through a mud-filled drainpipe.
The memo said that Mahl saw Helen Marner whenever he flew down to L.A. to conduct business with clients. During this time, Helen realized that Mahl was accepting part of the sales price for each painting under the table, thus circumventing the artist. She had blown the whistle on Mahl. In the case that ensued, she had testified against him.
Mahl had not been convicted; he had received only a reprimand and probation and had had to pay restitution. At about that time, as Joe remembered, Mahl’s marriage to Janet had started to go awry.
Later, when Mahl went to prison for killing Janet, he had not kept in touch with Helen Marner. But he had kept in contact with the woman he was then dating. Joe was so fascinated that he startled himself with his loud, intense purring. If ever he’d hit the jackpot, he’d hit it this morning.
Or, rather, Garza had hit the jackpot.
The question was, what was Garza going to do with this information? Mahl and Crystal Ryder had been hot and heavy when Mahl was sent to Quentin. Joe couldn’t wait to hear the phone tapes-if he got to hear them.
Joe was still on the desk chewing over the facts when a car pulled into the drive. Glancing through to the kitchen windows, he saw Garza heading for the back door. He was crouched to drop to the floor behind the desk, when he changed his mind-if Garza had come home to work, he wouldn’t see much from the floor. Leaping to the mantel, he settled above Garza’s desk in his classic improvisation of deep, deep sleep.
The back door opened. He listened to the detective moving around the kitchen. Sounded like he was making a sandwich. Refrigerator door, sound of knife on cutting board, sound of a jar being opened, the smell of pickles. Lying limp as a rag, Joe considered the suspects, to date.
Kendrick Mahl had to hate Helen Marner for blowing the whistle that he was ripping off his artist clients. Mahl was mean-tempered anyway, a vindictive sort who had made Janet’s life miserable.
Lee Wark and Jimmie Osborne had both been in residence at San Quentin when Mahl was convicted. Very likely the three men had been drawn together by their mutual connections in Molena Point and their mutual hatred of Max Harper.
And Mahl’s contact on the outside, Crystal Ryder, was a friend of Stubby Baker, who also had no love for Harper.
Garza came into the study carrying a plate and a cup of coffee. The smell of ham and cheese and pickles filled Joe’s nose. Setting his lunch on the desk, Garza opened the morning paper, then turned to look at Joe. Joe kept his eyes closed, didn’t flick a whisker, but he felt his heart pounding. He imagined Garza’s intense black gaze on him, a penetrating cop look. Couldn’t a little cat catch a morning nap?
Only when Garza sat down at his desk did Joe open the old peepers enough to peer over the detective’s shoulder.
He didn’t see the two miniature tapes he’d been hoping for. Were they still in Garza’s pocket? Or had he left them at the station, properly checked into the evidence vault? He was wondering if he’d ever get to hear them-how he could manage to hear them-when the phone rang.
Pressing the speaker button, Garza continued to enjoy his sandwich.
“Detective Garza, I got your number from the newspaper. I don’t understand. Why does the paper keep saying there were no witnesses to where Captain Harper was the afternoon of the murder? Except that man who said he saw Harper on his horse, following the riders?”
“He is the only witness we have,” Garza said, laying down his sandwich.
“I made a report the day after the murders. You must have a record of that.”
Garza clicked the phone’s record button. Joe could see the tape rolling. “Could you give me your name, please?”
“This is Betty Eastmore. I manage Banton’s Jewelry, across the street from where the captain was parked, the afternoon of the murder.”
“And you made a police report to that effect?”
“Yes, I gave it to Officer Wendell while he was on patrol. He had some blank report forms, I filled it out right there in my shop and signed it. He said he’d take care of it for me. Is it just that the paper didn’t want to say there was a witness? In case-”
“Would you like to meet me at the station? I can be there in five minutes.”
“I’m not at home, I’m in Sacramento. I fly back tonight.”
“How did you know about the article?”
“My daughter called me. She thought it was strange.”
“When can you come in?”
Betty Eastmore made an appointment with Garza for the following morning. He offered to meet her at the airport, at the time her plane was scheduled to land, and give her a ride back to the village.
Was that really very professional, Joe wondered, meeting her away from the station to take her report?
For the rest of the afternoon, lying on the mantel behind Garza’s head, Joe listened to the detective play back interview tapes and record his observations. He did not play Crystal’s tape. Just before dinner, Garza played his interview with Max Harper. The detective’s questions, and his dictated notes, were upsetting. By the time the tape was finished, Joe didn’t want any supper. Garza had really bored into Harper. Oh, he’d started out very friendly, all buddy-buddy cop stuff, but when he couldn’t make Harper change his story, he had come down hard, taunting Harper.
Harper had handled the interview calmly, with no change of voice, and of course no discrepancies in the facts. But later when Garza played back his own recorded memos, he had constructed a scenario where Harper could have galloped up the mountain the short way, meeting the Marners at the crest. Garza had calculated that Harper would have had time to kill them, get home again, change clothes, and get to the station by five. The tape was made before Betty Eastmore called him. The detective made it clear that there was no witness to Harper’s whereabouts between four and five, when Harper claimed to be watching Stubby Baker’s apartment.
During Harper’s interview, Garza had questioned the captain’s relationship with Crystal Ryder and with Ruthie Marner-he had asked a good many questions about Ruthie, and about how her mother viewed their friendship.