The problem now was, should she take it to the police, or keep the papers to herself as Hesmerra had done? Maybe at some future time, she thought uneasily, the papers would serve as a payback? A payback for Hesmerra’s death?
“And what,” Joe said, stretching out along the juniper branch where the rain didn’t reach, “what do I tell the department? I just happened to crawl under Sammie Davis’s deserted house? I, a grown human, just happened to squeeze through a space not big enough for a miniature Chihuahua?”
“Tell them . . . that the cellar door was standing open and you smelled something. I can’t call, they might think it’s Emmylou. She’s been in that house, nosing around. That would sure make her a person of interest.”
“Maybe she is a person of interest. I have to tell them the cellar door was open, how else would the killer, or the snitch, get in? So how come it’s locked now? What, I tell them I locked it when I left, after discovering the body? Oh, right.”
“We’ll have to unlock it,” she said sensibly.
“You’re going to pick the lock. Like some trick movie cat? Jimmy the lock with your clever little claws.”
She narrowed her green eyes at him, the tip of her tabby tail twitching. “Maybe that’s what the key in the kitchen was for. You think? It looked like a padlock key.” Scrambling backward down the tree, she disappeared around the corner, was up the back steps in an instant and in through the cat door, leaving the little square of plywood banging in Joe’s face.
This was a long shot, but who knew? Joe watched her leap to the counter and open the cupboard, watched her ease the key off its hook with a delicate paw, trying not to smear any existing fingerprints. Maybe the killer had used this key. Or not, Joe thought. Maybe he had a key of his own. Either way, they didn’t need paw prints. Cat prints might be just as unique as human fingerprints, if any of the three detectives decided to follow a hunch and check out the markings they found.
So far, they had been lucky no one had thought to compare paw prints found at a scene, with prints an officer could lift within the department itself. Joe imagined Juana or Dallas offering them little treats, and then restraining them long enough to ink their paws, to produce a set of fingerprint cards that would go into the office files. The idea gave him chills. Could he get used to wearing gloves? Pulling on little cat mittens?
Dulcie, taking the key carefully in her teeth, dropped to the floor looking smug, and they beat it out again, down the steps and around to the cellar door. Carefully Joe took it from her, and climbed up through the brittle branches of the nearest bush, trying not to drool, not get the key wet and slippery. Clinging within the bush, he found a steady position and pulled the lock to him with a careful paw.
Holding it steady, turning his head at an angle, he tried to ease the key in. Just a little finesse, and he’d . . .
He dropped it.
Silently Dulcie retrieved it, and climbed up through the bush; he took it, and tried again, but it wouldn’t go. He turned his head, adjusted his balance. Another try, but it didn’t fit. This wasn’t the right key. Ears back, he tried forcing it, but still it wouldn’t go. He turned around in the branches, poised to leap down.
“Try again, Joe. Is the lock rusty?”
Of course it was rusty. This baby’d been out in the weather since locks were invented.
“Take your time,” she said. “Try just once more.” In the female mind, any impossible problem can be solved with sufficient patience. Ducking lower, he tried again, bowing his back so the key wasn’t angled, giving it a straighter approach.
Nothing. Nada.
“Turn it over.”
He’d already tried that. It wouldn’t fit. He couldn’t talk with his mouth full, couldn’t even hiss at her. He was fighting it, the metal hard against his teeth, when he dropped it again. Dulcie gave him a look, dove into the bushes, rustled around, and came out with the key safe between her teeth.
Motioning with her head for him to get down, she climbed, silent and quick. Around them, the rain had quickened again, they were both soaking wet, the raindrops on Dulcie’s back pale and icy. His paws felt like blocks of ice. Above him Dulcie was fiddling and fussing as she eased the key up to the lock. Females were so nitpicky, not direct like a tomcat.
Within minutes she had it open. With a quick paw she pulled the padlock off, let it fall, the key still protruding, a rustle and dull thud as it dropped to the ground among the bushes.
She didn’t brag or tease him. “What shall we do with it?”
“Lose the key, keep the lock. If anyone else knows the key was inside the locked house, that leads right back to Emmylou. Maybe she’s innocent,” he said doubtfully. “Maybe she’s not.” He watched Dulcie remove the key and, with it safe between her teeth, they scrambled up the nearest pine and headed across the roofs.
They carried it six blocks away where two steep peaks angled together, and tucked it down beneath the overlapped shingles. Then shoulder to shoulder they headed for Dulcie’s cottage, and a phone.
“I just hope Wilma’s asleep, we don’t need to drag her into this, in the middle of the night.”
“You don’t want to listen to her scold,” Joe said, grinning. Though, in fact, Dulcie’s housemate was as tolerant of the cats’ involvement with the law as a human could be. Wilma had been, for twenty-five years, a federal parole officer, she knew very well the intense fascination of sorting out a crime, she knew how it felt to be deeply involved with a case.
But that didn’t stop her from worrying, she knew the disasters, too. She worried because they were small and vulnerable, and because they were, in her opinion, far too brash and bold. Worry made her overprotective, and so she fussed at them. Joe followed Dulcie in through her cat door, stopping midway to ease the plastic flap down along his back, to keep it from swinging, thump, thump, and waking Wilma. She slept attuned to that sound, to any small noise that would herald Dulcie’s return home.
Crossing the laundry, they left wet paw prints on the blue kitchen floor, left a wet trail across the oriental rug in the dining room, and when Joe leaped to Wilma’s desk, again a damp row of prints incised across the blotter. As he pawed at the phone’s speaker, pressing the arrow down until the sound was as soft as it would go, Dulcie slipped down the hall to the bedroom, peering in, to make sure Wilma was asleep.
Yes, she slept, breathing deeply, her back to the phone on the night table. Dulcie, watching her, decided she really was asleep and not faking, that she wouldn’t see the phone’s flashing light. Trotting back through the dim house and leaping to the desk, she watched Joe key in 911 and prayed, as she always did, that Wilma’s ID blocking was working as it should. She’d heard a number of stories where the service had failed, incidents too alarming to bear thinking of, at that moment.
The night dispatcher came on, a young man they didn’t know well. Joe asked for the chief or whichever detective was on duty.
“If this is not an emergency, you—” the dispatcher began.
“It is an emergency. Do it now. Max will be mad as hell if you fool around. And no, I won’t give my name. Just do it!” There was a short silence, then Kathleen Ray came on. She knew his voice, she didn’t interrupt as he described the location and probable condition of the body.
“In the crawl space of a dark cellar? How did you find that?”
“I was walking my dog, he smelled something. The body must be pretty rank.”
“You crawled back in there, to look?”
Joe went silent, and clicked off. “Does she have to be so damned nosy?”
“She’s a police detective. That’s her job.”
He hissed at her companionably and they waited, listening, looking out at the cold night. The raindrops had turned suspiciously white and slushy. Dulcie said, “It’s going to snow.”