But then, as darkness drew down and the glow of shop lights shone up from the street, Ray started talking about dinner and soon the couple left the couch, to dress. Joe, waiting impatiently for them to get out of there and leave him to search the place, could see into the bedroom and could hear them talking about an evening on the town, and that suited the tomcat just fine.
He watched Ryder shimmy into a short black dress, pulling it down over black panties and bra. Ray seemed to think that straightening his black T-shirt and brushing off his jeans was all the cleaning up necessary-that, and pulling on a pair of lethal-looking black boots with metal toes that could kill a cat with one kick.
Just before they left the condo, Ryder called the kitty into the kitchen again, where she unwrapped half a cold hamburger, scraped off the mustard and onions, broke it up, and put it on a paper towel on the floor next to a stack of packed moving boxes. "You be a good kitty, okay?"
"You're not leaving that cat inside. Put it out, Ryder, before it makes a mess and stinks up the place."
"He has no home, Ray, or he wouldn't be here. It's getting cold out. Look at how beautiful he is, just the color of that silver satin dress you bought me." She looked up at Ray, batting her mascaraed lashes. "Someone's dumped the poor thing, or has moved away and abandoned him."
"The way Nina left me," Ray said. His laugh made Joe shiver.
"We can leave the balcony door open," Ryder said, "so he can go out if he needs to. No one's going to climb in here over the roofs. And what would they take?"
Ray glanced toward the bedroom, scowled at her as if she'd lost her mind. But he left the sliding screen cracked open, turning once to stare at the apparently sleeping tomcat, a hate-filled look that made Joe's fur crawl. The moment they were gone out the front door Joe was up again, ready to toss the place.
Padding out the open slider to the edge of the terrace, he peered down between the decorative wrought-iron rails watching them cross Ocean and turn in at the first restaurant that had a bar. When they'd disappeared he reentered the apartment, heading first for the bedroom where he could see several stacks of movers' boxes jammed in the corners and around the door, all apparently sealed tight.
He didn't much want to shred the tape and rip the boxes open, leaving awkward evidence. First, he tossed the room, clawing open the drawers in the nightstand and dresser looking for letters, for anything with hand printing like the letter Ryder had brought to the station. They hadn't unpacked much. He found a wadded-up grocery list in a neat, cursive handwriting; he prowled the closet and its high shelf, searched under the bed and behind the pillows, and under and between the mattress and box spring as deep as he could reach. He left the sealed cartons for the moment and headed for the kitchen, where the boxes were already open.
Yes, five cartons stood on the floor by the dinette table, their flaps loose but still filled with dishes and pots and pans jumbled together with cans of food and a few articles of clothing that had been used as packing, and that smelled of Ryder's musky perfume and of Ray's sweat. Did Ryder intend to put all this directly in the cupboards, or did she mean to wash them first? No cat would eat food smelling of human sweat, to say nothing of human feet.
Burrowing down into the nearest box, he knew this venture was a real long shot. And yet…What if he did find the same hand printing-or found a gun?
The odds were great against finding a gun in this tangle-and greater still that it would be the murder weapon after all these years. Ridiculous odds. And yet…That twitching sense of needing to do this kept the tomcat digging.
He was tunneling between bottles of cleaning liquids, trying not to spill any on himself, when he found, tucked among a stack of Ryder's hastily folded sweaters, a small box of linen stationery, its lid embossed with a logo and with BARTON'S FINEST LINEN-WEAVE LETTER PAPER, SINGLE FOLD. Pawing off the lid, excitement making his fur twitch, he inspected the envelopes and felt his heart pound. This looked like the same kind of paper as Ryder's letter, and when he eased the envelopes aside, the pages with their rough edges looked to be an exact match. Same color, same weave, same feathered borders. So good a match that he wanted to yowl with success-fate had smiled on him, big time.
Or he hoped it had.
With velveted paws, trying not to leave claw marks or paw prints, he worked the lid back onto the box then eased the box into one of Ray's T-shirts, wishing, as he so often did, that he had opposing thumbs for these complicated maneuvers.
But with agile claws, and using his teeth, he managed to twist the ends of the shirt into a crude knot. Dragging his smelly package through the condo and out onto the balcony, he crouched beneath the overhanging oak. And, with the knot of the T-shirt clenched tight between his teeth, he leaped up the trunk, dragging his burden between his forelegs. He climbed awkwardly, the bundle scraping along under his belly. One last leap, from the tree to the roof, the package swinging precariously over empty space, and Dulcie reached out with fast claws and snatched it-and snatched Joe, too, to safety. He landed in her face, the package between them.
She nosed at the T-shirt, grimacing at the smell, but clawing with curiosity at the knot Joe had tied. "It stinks, Joe. Stinks of Ray Gibbs."
"Couldn't help it. Look what's inside-it's the stationery. At least, it looks the same as what Ryder said she found."
"Oh, my. If it is, we have proof she was lying."
"But it isn't enough," Joe said.
"But if it's the same, if it can prove that Ryder wrote the letter-"
"Forgery, if that's what the letter turns out to be, isn't evidence of murder." He looked at her intently. There was a sample of Nina's handwriting in the cold file, but could that help identify hand printing? "I want to find the gun, Dulcie. I'm going back in. There are open boxes I can get through in a hurry, and then a whole stack of unopened ones." Dragging the dark package beneath the oak's overhanging limbs and out of sight, he said, "If I can open those boxes from underneath and crawl up into them, maybe they won't notice for a while."
She peered over the edge of the roof to the patio's open door. "I'll come, it'll be faster." And she crouched to leap down.
Joe stopped her with his teeth in her shoulder.
"Come on, Joe, before they get back."
"If you come, we won't have a lookout," Joe said reasonably. "If Kit were here instead of-"
"Well, she isn't," Dulcie said shortly. "Come on. We can listen for them." And as they leaped down to the balcony, she said, "How could that slob Gibbs be an accountant? That's a respectable profession, or supposed to be."
Joe padded to the rail again, scanning the village for any sign of the absent couple.
"Gibbs owned half the firm," Dulcie said, pausing by the open screen, "but he looks and talks like he just wandered in off skid row."
"Whatever Gibbs is, Chappell is up there in Oregon, apparently shot twice, and if we can find the gun…"
"If he has a gun, won't he be carrying it?"
"You don't think he'd carry the same gun, do you? If he gets caught with that one on him…If he has that gun, Dulcie, it'll be hidden somewhere."
Dulcie looked at his determined scowl, refrained from pointing out that the murder had been nearly ten years ago, that a lot of gun trading could occur in ten years, and slipped beside him into the condo, through the open screen.
19
IT TOOK ALL of Joe's and Dulcie's strength to tip over a box, at an angle against the dresser, slice the tape with rigid claws, and rip open the bottom of the carton. Tunneling up inside, they dug among layers of clothes and sheets and towels and through a tangle of dog-eared paperback novels. They found no gun. They had reached the top, nearly smothered, when they heard footsteps on the outside stairs, then Ray's enraged voice just outside the front door, Ryder's angry retort, and a key turn in the lock.