Below him, Dallas was heading for his car when he paused in the Milner drive, looking back up the street, watching as the boy happily rummaged.
Frowning, the detective headed there. Joe remained frozen as Dallas found a stick and began to rummage, too. The kid stared at him. “What you think you’re doing?” When Dallas opened his coat and thrust his badge at him, the kid took off for home. Methodically, Dallas sorted through garbage. After maybe ten minutes, he reached deeper in with the stick and eased out a small, crumpled tube.
Studying the tube and then bagging it, Dallas looked again at the garbage, then looked up and down the street as if wondering how this particular can had gotten tipped over, when all the rest stood undisturbed. Watching him, Joe could only pray that that little kid was royally scared of cops, too intimidated to venture forth with some story about stray tomcats.
You say a word about cats, kid, I’ll skin you. You think those blackberry stickers hurt! You haven’t a clue, what a tomcat’s claws can do.
Well, Dallas had hard evidence now. The gloves and hatchet, the paint can and tube and portion of drywall would go to the lab. Considering that Peggy’s husband had had access to the garage, Dallas would surely bring him in on suspicion, maybe would have enough to hold him. In the meantime, there was other unfinished business-the arraignment hearings in the other two murders; Greeley’s unexplained search, and learning what was missing from Cage Jones’s house-what Cage had stolen, and lost. If Joe was right, that theft had been, indeed, an audacious piece of work on Cage’s part. And, with a wry smile and a flick of his ears, Joe Grey left the scene of the Milner murder, his hunting instincts keening for action.
34
W ilma and Charlie worked all morning in the gath ering heat, straightening up Wilma’s trashed cottage; at noon, Charlie’s cleaning-and-repair van pulled up, and Mavity and two other members of Charlie’s team emerged carrying their cleaning equipment, ready to give the house a good polishing.
“I’m sure glad you went into this business,” Wilma said, hugging her niece. “I would never have sprung for having someone come in to clean, I’d be doing it all. But it’s so hot-should we take Mavity to lunch with us? She’s already done half a day’s work on their first appointment.”
Charlie considered, and shook her head. “Let her work, she wants to make the house nice again for you. We’ll bring back dessert for all of us, that will be a treat.” She stepped into the kitchen as little, gray-haired Mavity Flowers, in her ubiquitous and oft-washed white uniform, came in through the back door, loaded down with brooms, mops, and buckets; her two tall, younger crew members entered close behind her carrying bins of cleaners and polishes; both were strong young women dressed in jeans and T-shirts. Mavity hugged Wilma, then looked at her, frowning. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Wilma said. “We’re both just fine, now. They can’t put down the Getz women. We’re just going to run out for a bit of lunch, Mavity. If you’ll put on a pot of coffee, we’ll bring back some desserts. Crème brulée?” she said. “Key lime pie?”
Mavity grinned. “You know I love them both.” She put down her equipment, hugged Wilma again, then turned to get to work.
Stepping into Charlie’s SUV, Wilma carrying her dry cleaning to drop off, they headed toward the shore. “It’s Monday,” Wilma said, “the Bakery will have flan.”
Charlie glanced at her, laughing.
“I can’t get filled up. I know it’s all in my mind. I only missed lunch-and dinner by a few hours. You’d think…”
“Stress,” Charlie said. “I feel the same. I ate three bowls of chili last night, pancakes and bacon and eggs this morning. Panic hunger, or some fancier name. I only know I want one of the Bakery’s famous crab sandwiches.”
“I could eat two, and dessert.”
Moving up the steps of the old gray dwelling that now housed the Bakery, Charlie asked for a table on the wide, covered porch where they could cool off in the sea breeze and watch the surf a block away. Ordering iced tea, they settled back, looking at each other like two wanderers who had been lost, and had only just found each other again. It took a little while to ease back into the normal world. There was a strong family resemblance, two tall, slim women, one gray haired, one redheaded; the same lean features and steady eyes.
This morning while they’d cleaned, they had avoided talking about their ordeal. Now Wilma said, “You’re doing all right? About the shooting?”
“As good as can be expected. Max says everyone goes through this.”
“Everyone does. It gets better, with time. Just remember that he could have killed you, killed both of us and Max and maybe Ryan, if you hadn’t shot him.”
Charlie shivered. “We still don’t know what he wanted. What he thinks you took, what he had hidden.”
The waitress came with their tea. They ordered crab sandwiches, salads, and three kinds of dessert to go. When they were alone again, Wilma said, “Dulcie says Greeley searched the Jones house.”
“Is she saying Greeley’s involved in this? Those cats! Did he find anything? What did they-”
“Dulcie and Kit found a safe,” Wilma said. “Which, of course, they couldn’t open.”
“When was this?” Charlie said softly. “Greeley can crack a safe.”
“I’m not sure when. After we were kidnapped. I don’t have it all sorted out yet.”
“Weren’t Cage and Greeley in Central America together?”
“They were both down there, Greeley working in Panama. I can’t be sure when Cage was there-only times he was not was when he was under supervision or in prison. He was always secretive, said he couldn’t remember the dates. Said he was all over Central and South America, couldn’t remember exactly when and where. Even if he’d given me dates and places, it would have been hard to corroborate. Certainly, most of the time, Lilly didn’t know where he was.”
“The interesting thing is, why did Greeley show up here, just now?”
Wilma nodded. Their order arrived, and they were silent for a while. Charlie said, when her first pangs of hunger were appeased, “When Mavity called this morning to ask what time they should be at your place, she sounded really distressed. She said she’d kicked Greeley out, called the station and gotten a restraining order. She said he’d been so drunk, so loud that she didn’t have a choice. I let her talk it out, or try to.
“She really rambled,” Charlie said, “not at all like Mavity, said she was so embarrassed, the way he behaved in front of her friends. She confessed she’d gone through Greeley’s suitcase, she was embarrassed about that. She said he had some kind of little gold idol, an ugly little man. She called it a devil, said it gave her the shivers. Sounded like those museum copies that Greeley’s ex-wife brings back from her trips. But Mavity said this was far heavier. She said she’s looked at those, and they don’t weigh half what this did…”
Wilma had stopped eating. “Those little pendants that Sue brings back for the South American shop.” She was silent for a long time, looking at Charlie, and thinking. “Charlie, on the way home, let’s swing by the library. It won’t take a minute, I’ll just run in.”
Charlie nodded. Wrapping half her sandwich in her paper napkin, and asking for the bill, she quickly paid it, gulped her tea, and rose, picking up the cardboard box filled with the Bakery’s famous desserts.
They were back home at Wilma’s twenty minutes later, Wilma loaded down with half a dozen heavy coffee-table books on pre-Columbian art, Charlie carrying the bakery box. Pushing in through the front door, they smelled fresh coffee. It was not until the five of them had finished coffee and the desserts that Wilma sat down with Mavity in the living room surrounded by library books. Getting Mavity settled with the heavy books, Wilma thought, amused, that she’d set aside the next few days to be alone and quiet, to enjoy a little recuperative R and R, and instead, here she was, digging into clues, unable to leave the puzzle alone-every bit as curious as the three cats.