She looked into the fire, sipping her toddy, then looked back at him, her hazel eyes dark in the dusky light. "It's good to be back, Mike. Despite all that's happened, despite having to face this pain and ugliness again."
"Why did you leave, Lindsey? You've given me excuses. But why, really?"
She looked at him for a long time. The waiter appeared, then turned away again as if loath to interrupt their intimate exchange.
"To simply say you were all mixed up," Mike said, "that left me pretty uncertain. Mad as hell one minute, ready to fly down there the next minute and demand some straight answers-and then the next minute resolving to put it behind me, to forget you and move on."
"And you did move on," she said softly. "Why did you, Mike, why did you let me go?"
His jaw hardened. "What the hell? You were doing no more than playing hard to get?"
"No, I…I didn't mean…"
"I didn't think you were that childish, Lindsey. I didn't think…" He stopped and turned to look behind him, where she was staring, watching the couple who had come down the five steps from the street. A big, scruffy-haired man in black jeans and black leather jacket, and Ryder, wearing a short, low-cut black dress, her tawny hair fluffed around her shoulders; Mike noticed again how closely Lindsey resembled her sister.
Seeing Lindsey, they paused at the bottom of the short stairs, and the man's voice rose. "What the hell is this, Ryder!" He clutched her shoulder, spun her around, and dragged her back up the short flight. "Christ! Sitting there waiting for us! What did you do, tell her you were coming here?"
"I didn't tell her anything, I didn't know where we were going! I hardly speak to her!" Ryder hissed. She mumbled something more that Mike and Lindsey couldn't make out as Gibbs hurried her away.
Behind them, Lindsey had gone pale. Mike put his arm around her, and she leaned into him. He searched her face sharply.
She shrugged. "Ray never liked me."
"He was your boss, one of your bosses."
"He…came on to me once, pretty roughly. In the file room. I told him if he did that again, I'd tell Carson-and that I'd file charges against him.
"He pretty much left me alone after that."
Mike took her hands to warm them, they were cold and shaking-but whether from distress or from a harsher anger, he couldn't be sure.
BACKING DOWN the oak tree to the roof of Gibbs's condo, the cats licked bits of oak bark from between their claws, but Joe couldn't wash away the sour taste of Ray Gibbs's stubbly face.
"I wish," Dulcie said, "you'd slashed his throat, down to the jugular."
Joe smiled, wishing he had, too.
"Gibbs shot Carson Chappell," Dulcie said. "He accused Ryder to make himself look innocent. Is there a gun hidden in there? Or is it buried in that Oregon forest? I guess," she said with distaste, "I guess we'll have to go back and toss the rest of the place."
"Not tonight," Joe said. He wasn't going in again with Gibbs there. And more important was to deliver the box of stationery. He tried to decide where was best to leave it. At the back door of the station? Haul it through the window of Dallas's Blazer and drop it on the seat?
How many pieces of evidence, over the years, had they dragged across the village to deliver to Molena Point PD-each time increasing the unease of Max and his officers over the identity of the unknown snitch? How many times had they made that delivery just hours after someone in the department expressed a need for such evidence? Or after some development that cried out for additional information?
It wasn't half a day, now, since Ryder had brought in the letter-in front of Joe Grey. Then an anonymous someone provides the detectives with a lead to the source of the letter. The cats looked at each other, thinking about that. And they left the condo hauling the black T-shirt over the dark rooftops, taking turns dragging it, moving directly away from Molena Point PD.
Carrying it perilously between them across spreading oak branches above the narrow streets, taking a circuitous route above the dimmest streets to avoid being seen from below, they at last backed down a pine tree in Wilma Getz's garden and, with difficulty, were just able to force the package through Dulcie's cat door, into the laundry.
They could hear Wilma in the kitchen, at the sink, could hear the water running. Dragging their prize through, they dropped it by the kitchen table.
"What?" Wilma said, turning from the sink where she was washing salad greens. She eyed with suspicion the wad of black T-shirt, lying like something dead on her clean blue linoleum. "What?" she repeated.
The cats looked up at her innocently.
"What?" she said a third time, not liking their wide-eyed stares.
"Evidence," Joe said. "We need to leave it here for a while."
"What evidence? Evidence to what? What have you two stolen now? Who's going to break in here looking for it?"
Joe said, "You can't steal evidence. Evidence, by its very nature, is-"
Wilma wiped her hands on her apron, her look stern, her eyes never leaving Joe. Dulcie was silent, watching the two of them, thinking that over the years Wilma had grown as acerbic as Clyde-though she knew very well that, in the end, Wilma would join them in hiding the box of stationery.
The upshot was that Wilma put the black package in a shoe box and hid it at the back of her closet until the cats chose a more opportune time to deliver it to the law. Then, returning to the kitchen, she fixed them a snack of crackers, Havarti cheese, and deli turkey. "I have," she said as she added a plate for herself and poured a cup of tea, "I have something to tell you."
It was now that Sage woke and came hobbling out to the kitchen, encumbered by his cast and bandages. Kit padded sedately beside him, quiet and responsible, quite unlike herself. When Wilma lifted Sage into a chair, Kit leaped up beside him.
Wilma set the cats' plates on their chairs. "While Charlie sat with Sage and Kit this afternoon, I did some research in the library." She looked very pleased with herself.
"I looked first in the computer index of local history, and then went to the microfilm reader. My arm's sore from cranking through back issues of the Gazette. I thought I'd find it in the society pages, hoped I would…"
She paused to sip her tea. "And there it was," she said with excitement.
"There what was?" Dulcie and Kit said together, lashing their tails with impatience.
"A picture of the same rearing cat."
"In the society pages?" Dulcie said.
"The society pages. I thought I remembered it. I had an idea about what year it was from helping a patron research Molena Point in the 1920s. And there was the picture, just as I remembered. A photograph of Olivia Pamillon, a close-up of four women dressed for a charity ball."
"And?" Dulcie said, fidgeting. She hated it when Wilma dragged things out, and she knew Wilma did it on purpose.
"She was wearing the bracelet," Wilma said. "The rearing cat was quite clear."
"Then that is Olivia's body," Dulcie said. "But why would they bury her in that little courtyard and not in the family cemetery?"
"That I haven't found out," Wilma said. "I did find her obituary, and it says she's buried in the family plot."
"Did her family change their minds at the last minute?" Kit said. "Why would they?"
"Or," Joe said, "did someone move the body?" The tomcat looked around at their unlikely little group, four cats in chairs and one human with her silver hair looping out of its ponytail. "Or," Joe said, "is that not Olivia, in the grotto? Is that not Olivia, wearing her bracelet?"