Harper shook his head. "The man might have been creative with the numbers, but he didn't know much about disguise.
"And Bernine Sage has an excellent alibi for the night of the Sleuders' deaths. She was out with a member of the city council. She was," he said, winking at Wilma, "trying to work a deal to destroy the petitions the committee had collected for Dulcie."
"The library cat petitions?" Wilma laughed. "That was pretty silly. Didn't she know we'd have done them over again?"
In the shadows, the cats smiled, but at once they shuttered their eyes again, as if dozing.
Their private opinion was that though Bernine had an alibi for the night the Sleuders were killed, she had been instrumental in their deaths. If she had not pumped the Sleuders for information, then reported to Jergen that the couple meant to blow the whistle on him, Jergen/Cumming would likely not have bothered to kill them.
"I can't believe," Charlie said, "that I worked with Pearl Ann for three months and didn't guess she was a man. That makes me feel really stupid."
"None of us guessed," Clyde said. "Hoke put together a good act. I swear he walked like a woman-guys notice that stuff. And that soft voice-really sexy."
They all stared at him. Clyde shrugged. Charlie patted his hand.
"A guy in drag," Harper said, "slight of build, thin arms, slim hands-a skilled forger and a top-flight computer hacker."
Hoke, dressed as Pearl Ann, had been picked up in Seattle carrying eight hundred thousand dollars in cash, sewn into the lining of his powder blue skirt and blazer-money he had transferred from Jergen's accounts to his own accounts in two dozen different names in nine San Francisco banks. It had taken him some time to draw out the money in various forms-cash, bank drafts, cashier's checks, which he laundered as he traveled from San Francisco to Seattle, where he was picked up. The police had found no witness that Pearl Ann had boarded the San Francisco bus in Molena Point. But they located the car Hoke had rented in Salinas, under the name of William Skeel, after deliberately wrecking Mavity's VW and dumping Mavity in the alley beside the pawnshop.
"It looks," Harper said, "as if Jergen had come to suspect Pearl Ann's identity. As if, the day he died, he had set Hoke up.
"He told everyone he was going up the coast, then doubled back hoping to catch Hoke red-handed copying his files. He parked a few blocks away and slipped into the apartment while Hoke/Pearl Ann was working. The hard files he'd left on his desk were bait-three files of accounts newly opened, with large deposits. All with bogus addresses and names that, so far, we've not been able to trace."
Harper sipped his beer. "Hoke comes up to do the repairs, opens those hard copy files with three new accounts, all with large sums deposited, and he can't wait to get into the computer. Sends Mavity on an errand, uses Jergen's code, intending to get the new deposit numbers and transfer the money. We're guessing that he was about ready to skip, perhaps another few days and he meant to pull out for good.
"But then Jergen walks in on him at the computer. They fight, Hoke stabs him with a screwdriver…" Harper looked around at his audience. "Yes, we found the real murder weapon," he said gruffly. "Jergen was near death when Hoke stabbed him with the ice tray divider-maybe to lay suspicion on Mavity, to confuse forensics. Or maybe out of rage, simply to tear at Jergen. This is all conjecture, now, but it's how I piece it together.
"He hears a noise, realizes Mavity has returned, maybe hears her running down the stairs. Goes after her, snatches up one of those loose bricks that were lying along the edge of the patio." He glanced at Mavity. "And he bops you, Mavity, as you're trying to get in the car.
"After he loads you in the backseat, he realizes he has the bloody screwdriver. Maybe he'd shoved it in his pocket. He buries it down the hill, with the brick.
"He may have moved the VW then, to get it out of sight. He cleans up and changes clothes, then heads out. Takes his bloody jumpsuit and shoes with him-all we found in the duffle he left was a clean, unused jumpsuit. We may never find the bloody clothes. They're probably in the bottom of some Dumpster or already dozed into a landfill-the Salinas PD checked the Dumpsters in that whole area around where Hoke wrecked Mavity's car.
"It's still dark when he dumps Mavity into the alley by her car and leaves her. He walks to the nearest car rental office, waits until eight when it opens. Gets a car and heads north. He's left his own car in the storage garage a block from the Davidson Building where he kept it-registered in one of his other names.
"We'd like to find the bloody clothes, but even without them we have plenty to take him to court. The money trail alone is a beauty."
The FBI computer expert who had come down from San Francisco to trace Cumming's computer transactions had followed Hoke's transfers from Jergen's accounts, using the code words supplied by Harper's anonymous informer. The Bureau had put out inter-office descriptions of Hoke and of Pearl Ann. Two Bureau agents picked him up at the Seattle airport, in his blue skirt and blazer, when he turned in an Avis rental in the name of Patsy Arlie. He was wearing a curly auburn wig.
"But the strangest part," Harper continued, watching the little group, "is my finding the screwdriver the way I did, the day after Jergen was killed."
He had discovered it the next morning when he came down the stairs from Jergen's apartment after meeting with the Bureau agent. He had been late getting back from Salinas Medical that morning; the agent, using a key supplied by Clyde, was already at work at Jergen's computer. The weapon was not on the steps when he went up to the apartment, nor did Harper see it when he arrived.
But when they came down, it was lying in plain sight on the steps, flecked with dirt and grass seed.
"When we started looking for where it might have been buried-worked down the hill where the grass was bent and broken and found the loose dirt-and dug there, we found the brick, too. The dirt and grass matched the debris on the screwdriver, and of course the traces of blood on it were Jergen's.
"It had been wiped hastily, but there were two partial prints, both Hoke's. Whoever found the weapon," Harper said, "saved the court considerable time and money, and certainly helped to strengthen our case."
He knew he should be fully satisfied with the case against Hoke-they had plenty to hang the man-but this business of the screwdriver, of evidence turning up in that peculiar way, gave him heartburn. This was getting to be a pattern, and one he didn't live with easily.
No cop liked this mysterious stuff, even when the evidence led to a conviction. Unexplainable scenarios were for artists, for fiction writers, for those who dealt in flights of fancy. Not for law enforcement who wanted only hard facts.
The cats, having finished their fish and chips, lay stretched out on the bricks sleepily licking their paws, staring past Harper but watching with their wide vision Harper's frequent glances in their direction. Dulcie, washing diligently, carefully hid her amused smile. Joe, rolling over away from the police captain, twitched his whiskers in a silent cat laugh.
The morning after the murder, just moments after Wilma deposited an angry Dulcie at Clyde's house and Wilma and Clyde and Charlie headed for Salinas Medical, Joe and Dulcie had bolted out his cat door and doubled-timed up the hills to the apartments, where they settled down to wait for the FBI investigator. How often did one have a chance to observe a Bureau specialist at work?
Crouching in Jergen's kitchen, they had watched the thin Bureau agent deftly scrolling through Jergen's files using the code words Cairo and Tiger that Dulcie had given to Harper, tracing each money transaction that Hoke/Pearl Ann had hidden. Only when they heard the crackle of a police radio, and a car door slam, did they slip back down between the walls, trotting into the patio in time to see Harper going up the stairs.