"She's scared," Dulcie said, watching from the bushes as Ryan's red truck pulled away. "Scared to go home, afraid of what Dallas has found. If Rupert was shot with her stolen gun…"
"So someone set her up. Question is, what other contrived evidence did they leave for the police to find?" Joe watched Hanni help the Coldirons load the rug. When the truck and Hanni's Mercedes pulled away, he rubbed his face against a warm boulder then leaped atop the smooth granite, looking around the garden. "What was the dog on about? What did he smell?" He stood looking, then dropped down again and trotted back along the drive sniffing at the concrete.
He picked up Eby's scent, then that of Hanni and of the dog. He found the fainter scent, perhaps days old, of a woman, most likely Marianna Landeau. Nothing else. Whatever the dog had smelled, escaped him. His mind still on getting access to a phone and calling Dallas, he turned to look at Dulcie.
"It's only ten blocks to Ryan's place, and the day's getting warm. Maybe she'll leave the truck window down for a few minutes-right there in her own driveway. Maybe we can call Dallas while he's still at her apartment."
"Just a nice run," Dulcie said, and she took off through the woods heading downhill toward Ryan's duplex. Leaping bushes or brushing beneath them, she was thankful that she and Joe had been given more than the usual amount of feline stamina; most cats were sprinters, your average housecat was not made for long-distance running. Careening down the last hill to the back of Ryan's apartment and around to the front, she wasn't even panting hard.
A squad car sat in the drive beside Ryan's truck. The cats smelled fresh coffee. They circled both vehicles, but all the windows were up; and the covered door handles were beyond a cat's ability to manipulate. Joe leaped at them, trying, but it was no good. There was no chance of using either phone to call the detective. Joe gave her a sour look and they fled around the side of the duplex to the back, where the tiny bathroom window waited.
15
Leaping at the sill, Joe snatched and clung, hanging by his claws, peering down into the empty bathroom, then dropping to the sink and to the linoleum. As Dulcie followed, faintly they heard Ryan and Dallas talking, their voices so solemn that Dulcie shivered.
She liked Ryan Flannery; the young woman was bold and bright. She liked her because Clyde did, and because she was Dallas Garza's niece. Liked her because Ryan had taken hold of her life and straightened out the kinks, exercising an almost feline degree of sensible independence: If you're not welcome, if you're badly treated, make a new start on life.
Now that Ryan was just into her new life, she didn't need this malicious attempt to ruin her.
From behind, Joe nudged her. "Get a move on." She'd been crouched as still as if frozen at a mouse hole, overwhelmed by her own droughts. Trotting into the studio, out of sight of the kitchen, they slipped beneath Ryan's daybed.
The hardwood floor was admirably clean, no sneeze-making dust, not a fuzz ball in sight. That was another plus for Ryan. There was something really depressing about finding the underside of a couch thick with stalagmites of ancient, congealed dirt, the dusty floor littered with bobby pins, lost pencils, and old gum wrappers, with tangles of debris that clung to the whiskers or was gritty to the paws.
Looking across the big room to the front windows, they could see neat piles of papers stacked on Ryan's desk but they couldn't see much of the kitchen, just the end of the table and Dallas's shoulder. They could smell, besides fresh coffee, the greasy-sugar scent of doughnuts, and could hear the occasional cup clink against a saucer. Dallas said, "I wish your dad were here."
"Please don't call him, there's no need for him to think about the murder just now, to take his mind off what he's doing. I'll tell him when he gets home, when he's done with this training. You're my dad too, you and Scotty. Except, you can't play that role just now."
"I can play any hand I like. But it would be nice to have Mike here. You sure you don't want to stay with me or with Hanni, not be alone?"
"I'm fine. If the killer had wanted me dead, he'd have come after me instead of Rupert. I need to do a ton of desk work, clean up a stack of letters, pay my bills. I did manage to do the Jakeses' billing, I have that almost ready to mail."
"I'm glad you've got this big guy." The cats heard Dallas patting the silver dog.
"What did Captain Harper say when he called, when you told him there'd been a murder? I can imagine he wasn't happy."
"He didn't say much, took it in stride. Said he and Charlie are having a great time in the city. They're taking a couple of days to drive home, through the wine country. And before they leave San Francisco he's going to make a contact for me. Something I'd rather he did in person."
"About Rupert?"
"A couple of guys on the force owe me. Good friends. You remember Tom Wills and Jessie Parker."
"Of course. They were partners. Tom's wife teaches second grade."
"I'm giving them a list of the women I know Rupert was involved with. They can do a rundown on them, and on their husbands and boyfriends. Here's the list. Anyone you'd care to add? Or any facts that would help?"
The cats heard paper rattle, then a little silence. Then, "You were very thorough, all these years. I don't know half these names. Barbara Saunders? Darlene Renthke? June Holbrook? Martie Holland? I haven't a clue, I never heard of these women. My god. How many were there? And you never told me. This makes me feel so unclean. Well here are five I know, all right. And you can add Priscilla Bloom. She drives a little red Porsche with, very likely, marks from a tow chain on the rear bumper, and a citation on record for blocking traffic on the street in front of my house."
Dallas laughed.
"So Max will spend his honeymoon getting that line of the investigation started," Ryan said. "And on the way home, they'll swing through San Andreas to check on the Fargers? I'll bet Charlie's thrilled, having to cancel a dream voyage."
"I imagine they made that decision before they left the village. Doesn't matter," Dallas said. "Those two will have a long and happy honeymoon no matter where they are."
There was longer silence, broken by doggy chuffing as if someone was feeding the weimaraner doughnuts. Ryan said, "I feel so stupid not to have heard anything that night, not to have waked up. You're going to make him sick with doughnuts."
"Why don't you call Charlie on their cellular, see if she'll let you put up a fence out back. It's not the optimum yard but it'll do."
"I told you, I don't plan to keep him."
"Of course you'll keep him. I wouldn't want to try to take him away. When I touch him, you're jealous as a hen with chicks."
"Why does everyone in the family always know what I'm thinking! And what I intend to do!"
"He's a stray, Ryan. He's been abandoned. You going to take him to the pound, like you told Curtis? If he'd been lost, the owner would have been looking all over San Andreas for him."
She sighed. "You look tired. Have you eaten anything this morning besides doughnuts? Did you have breakfast?"
"Eggs and bacon. I'm fine. Davis took the evidence up to the county lab herself, the casts of footprints, the dried mud she bagged, the garbage. She wasn't happy with Bonner walking through the mud behind the garage. Between the gun and bloody rags in the trash, of course the footprints were important."
The cats had heard that before, that police officers were too often the biggest contaminators of a crime scene. Cops walking through the evidence, maybe in a hurry to apprehend a prowler. It just went to show, life wasn't perfect. What was a cop supposed to do, fly around on little angel wings?