"Same dog?" she called to Susan when they were still half a block apart.
Susan nodded, holding Lamb on a short lead. "Same dog. Where did you find him?" She hurried to them and knelt to inspect the dog, looking at his collar. "Same three long overlapped spots on his left ear. Same thin face and frightened expression. Jobe, Lenny called him." She looked along the street as if Lenny might suddenly appear, then looked up at Wilma. "He wasn't with anyone? You didn't see Lenny?"
"No, no one on the beach. He was frantic, running, doubling back and forth. I couldn't leave him there, even if I'd wanted to. He's clung to me like glue. Do you think Lenny was the man in your breakfast room?"
"I keep wondering. I saw only the back of the man's head, but he was like Lenny. Same color hair, same general build. Lenny always wore-wears a cap, usually with his collar turned up." Susan hugged the dalmatian, drawing a disapproving glare from Lamb. "This poor dog. Has he been wandering for two days, trying to find his master?"
"Harper will want to know about him."
Susan nodded. "Is it all right to bring him to your house? We can put him in the garage. I brought plenty of food for Lamb. Or we could put him on a long line in the drive, leave the garage door open, make him a bed inside."
Wilma was glad she had finished her garage enclosing the carport. It had come in handy. Her English-style cottage had no backyard at all, only a narrow stone walk between the house and the hill behind that rose in a steep, unfenced wilderness. "Of course it's all right." Certainly Susan respected her front flower garden as off-limits to canine romping and digging. Lamb was always a gentleman, although it hadn't been easy for him having no fenced yard to run in.
"Oh," Susan said, watching the two dogs play, "Lamb does like him. But we can't have them together in the house, not romping like that."
"He'll settle down when he's eaten," Wilma said.
Susan snapped Lamb's leash on the dalmatian, handed it to Wilma, and commanded Lamb to heel. Heading home to Wilma's, they soon turned up the stone walk through her deep garden, the air cool and still beneath the giant oaks. The pale stone cottage, with its steep slate roof, mullioned windows, and stone chimney, sat against the hill behind as if civilization ended at its back door, the well-maintained house with its carefully tended flowers an abrupt contrast to the hill's wild tangles. They took the dogs inside through the back door, which opened to the street at the opposite end of the house from the front door, and into the kitchen. Susan fed both dogs while Wilma heated the skillet and laid strips of bacon in it. She had already made the pancake batter. Balancing the cordless phone in the crook of her shoulder as she cooked, she called Max Harper at home before he left for the station. The phone rang five times.
"Did I wake you?"
"I'm in the stable feeding the horses. Had a loaded pitchfork in my hands. This a social call?"
"We-Susan and I-have the dalmatian that belonged…"
"Have you? Hang on to him, I'll be down in twenty minutes. Sure it's the same dog?"
"Susan says so. He was running the beach, lost."
"Did you look around? See anyone?"
"I scanned the beach. Didn't beat the bushes. He acted like he'd been left."
"Be right down. No, I haven't had breakfast," he said to her unasked question.
Wilma hung up, laughing, made fresh coffee, and put more bacon in the skillet.
When Harper arrived, Lamb greeted him with dignity. But the dalmatian was all over him, whining and leaning against him. Harper looked him over, feeling him for wounds, looking at the pads of his feet. Removing his collar, he examined it. He looked in the dog's eyes, his ears, his mouth-wanting to know the dog was all right, Wilma thought, simply because he was that kind of man. But, as a cop, wanting to find anything unusual about the lost animal.
Apparently he found nothing of note. Buckling the collar on again, he gave the dog a pat. The dalmatian lay down by the door, full of breakfast and attention, sighing deeply.
Harper sat at the table between Wilma and Susan, looking with appreciation at the tall stack of pancakes on his plate, and the eight slices of bacon. Max Harper still ate like the wild young bull rider he'd been at eighteen; and he weighed about the same. Clyde claimed Harper took in enough groceries for three men. Everyone had said he'd gain weight when he quit smoking, but he hadn't.
"We have no line on a Lenny White," he told Susan. "No one by that name or fitting that description was treated in the hospital emergency room. We do have a response on the other set of fingerprints-which could belong either to the victim, or to whoever attacked him."
Susan stopped eating, watching Harper.
"There was a fair set of prints on the computer. None on the hammer we picked up, though it appears to be the weapon. Traces of blood and flesh embedded in the creases of the metal. The prints belong to a man named Augor Prey. Does that name mean anything?"
"No." Susan shook her head.
"We'll have a picture later today. Prey's father is a professor of history at Cal, Berkeley. Dr. Kenneth Prey. He taught at Davis while the son was in grammar school. Augor's description fits your dog-walking friend. Thirty-four, slim, about six feet, brown hair, hazel eyes."
Susan nodded uneasily. "If that is Lenny, he gave me a false name. And it's strange. He said he'd moved out from New York, but he didn't sound like the New Yorkers I know."
"Prey seems to have spent his adult years bumming around up and down the coast, working here and there. Never been in real trouble. A few minor arrests, fighting, tearing up a beer tavern, petty theft. No record of burglaries. He ran an antique shop in Salinas for eight months, and worked in a San Francisco book store. He's been living in a cheap room in Half Moon Bay, sometimes works in an antiques shop up there. He's also worked here in Molena Point, for Richard Casselrod, when Casselrod or Fern has taken time off. When he does that, he sleeps at the shop. Casselrod said he hasn't needed extra help recently, hasn't seen Prey for six months.
"If Augor Prey is your Lenny White," Harper said, "it's possible he may have been staying somewhere else in the village. We've found no motel registration in either his name or for Lenny White."
"You've been very thorough," Susan said, "considering that we don't know whether this was a murder or an assault, considering the only charges I could make were for breaking and entering, and vandalism-not for theft."
"It could turn into murder," Harper reminded her. "Meanwhile, the detectives have been over your place again. They have everything they're going to get, pictures, prints, blood. You can go ahead and get someone in to clean up, get your life back in order."
Susan smiled. "I'll call Charlie this morning."
"Please let us know if you find anything missing when you get back home. You still have no idea what they might have been after?"
"No. The only thing I've bought recently that wasn't in the house was the carved chest I called you about. That was in my trunk."
"I'd like to see it."
Taking her keys from her pocket, Susan stepped out to the drive. In a moment, they heard her car trunk slam. She returned carrying a small wooden chest, perhaps eighteen inches long, its lid shaped like a peak, with the top cut off to form a three-sided slab. She set it on the table before the police captain.
"There's an old chest like that in the mission museum," Harper said. "Only much larger-made to use as a saddle rack. Just fits a stock saddle."
The sides and lid of the chest were roughly carved with geometric patterns and simple medallions. The wood was oak, apparently unfinished, darkened by age. One end had split through the carvings. The inside of the box was so rough they could see the chisel marks.