He told police that he got Shamas untangled, got him hooked onto a line to bring him up. When they got him on board, they saw that he had a deep gash through his forehead, where he must have hit something as he fell. Seattle police had gone over the catamaran, had thoroughly investigated the scene. They did not find where Shamas had struck his head. The rain had sloughed every surface clean. They found no evidence that Shamas's death had been other than an accident. According to Seattle detectives, Cara Ray had been so upset, weeping so profusely, that no one could get much sense from her. She had given the police her address and flown directly home to San Francisco, leaving Newlon and Shamas's cousin Sam and the Chamberses to sail the Green Lady back to Molena Point.
And now Cara Ray was in Molena Point, making a social call on Shamas's widow.
"Poor Lucinda," Charlie said. "Mobbed by his relatives hustling and prodding her. And now his paramour descends."
Wilma nodded. "Apparently Cara Ray is as crude and bad mannered as the Greenlaws."
"They are a strange lot," Clyde said.
Wilma pushed a strand of her white hair into its clip and sipped her wine. "Every time I see a Greenlaw in the village, my hackles go up."
Clyde grinned. "Retired parole officer. Worse than a cop."
"Maybe I'm just irritable, maybe it's this temporary job at Beckwhite's. It's no picnic, working for Sheril Beckwhite. I wouldn't have taken the job except to help Max."
At Max Harper's urging, Wilma had been running background checks on loan applicants for the foreign-car agency. Beckwhite's had had a sudden run of buyers applying for car financing with sophisticated bogus IDs and fake bank references. They had lost over three million dollars before Harper convinced Sheril of Wilma's investigative prowess.
"Other than her visit from this Cara Ray Crisp person," Charlie said, "how's Lucinda getting along?"
"She'll do a lot better," Wilma said, "when Shamas's relatives go home."
"Seems to me," Charlie said, "that being Shamas Greenlaw's widow would be much nicer than being his wife."
Wilma laughed.
"She's certainly a very quiet person," Charlie offered. "She seems… I don't know, the few times I've talked with her, she's seemed… so close to herself. Secretive."
"I don't think-" Wilma began when, in the backyard, the pups roared and bayed, their barks so deafening that no one heard the front door open; no one heard Max Harper until he loomed in the kitchen doorway.
"What the hell is this? The county pound?" He glared at Clyde. "What did you do, get more dogs? Sounds like a pack of wolfhounds."
Clyde rose to open a beer for Harper and dish up his plate, liberally heaping on the pasta and clam sauce. Skinny as Harper was, he ate like a field hand. Clyde had known him since boyhood; they had gone through school together, had ridden broncs and bulls in the local rodeos around Sacramento and Salinas.
Dropping down from the kitchen counter, Joe took a good sniff of Harper. The captain's faded jeans and old boots bore traces of dirt and of bits of leaves and grass, and carried the distinct combination of scents one would encounter in Hellhag Canyon.
"So what's with the cat killers?" Harper said, glancing toward the back door.
"Stray pups. Followed my car," Clyde lied. "Up along Hellhag Hill."
The police captain looked at Clyde narrowly for a moment, perhaps sensing a twisting of the truth. He sat down in his usual chair, facing the sink and kitchen window, his back comfortably to the wall. For an instant, his gaze turned to Joe Grey, who had returned to the counter and was busily licking clam sauce off his whiskers.
"How sanitary can it be, Damen, to let your cat sit on the kitchen sink?" Harper scowled. "Is that a little place mat? Did he have his dinner up there?"
"That's Charlie's doing. And you know I don't lay food on the counter," Clyde said testily. "You know I use that plastic breadboard and that it goes in the dishwasher after every meal." He looked hard at Harper. "So what's with you? Bad night picking up hustlers? Ladies of the night make you late to dinner?"
Harper brushed the dry grass and leaves from his jeans. "Took a swing down Hellhag Canyon."
Clyde stiffened; Joe saw his jaw clench. He did not look in Joe's direction.
"The brake line was burst, not cut," Harper said.
Clyde cast a look of rage at Joe Grey.
"I took some photographs of the surround, though. Infrared light and that new film. Shot some footprints that my men may have missed-the few they didn't step on," Harper said uneasily.
"What are you talking about?" Clyde said.
Harper shrugged. "Maybe someone messed with the car. Maybe someone switched brake lines. If so, it would be nice to have some evidence, wouldn't you say? I have a crew down there now, working it over."
Clyde closed his eyes.
It must be hard, Joe thought, working a crime scene when the uniforms had already been over it, under the impression it was an accident. And, washing his paw, he hid a huge feline grin. At his word, Harper had not only gone down Hellhag Canyon, he had called in the detectives.
Harper's detectives were good; they'd probably remove the jagged shards of the driver's window, see if the lab could find cloth or leather fragments along the broken edges, probably try for fingerprints around the brake line.
Harper's confidence in the phantom snitch pleased Joe Grey so much that he almost leaped on the table to give Harper a purr and a face rub. But he quickly thought better of that little gesture.
He could see, beneath the table, Clyde's toe tapping with irritation; choking back a laugh, he turned his back and washed harder.
"Good linguini," Harper said. "Reminds me of that Italian place in Stockton, down from the rodeo grounds. So tell me about these dogs, Damen. Pups, you said? The way they're banging on the door, I'd say a couple of big bull calves lunging at the gate. Strays, you said? You plan to keep them?"
"If he keeps them," Charlie said, pushing back her wild red hair, "he's-we're taking them to obedience school."
Clyde did a double take. "We're what?"
She stuck out her arm, exhibiting a dozen long red scratches where the pups, in their excitement at having new and wonderful friends, had leaped up joyfully raking her.
"Obedience school," she said. "You can work with the happy, silly one. I'll take the solemn pup; I like his attitude."
Joe looked at Charlie, incredulous. There was no way she was going to get Clyde involved in dog-training classes. She'd as easily get him into a tutu and teach him to pirouette.
Well, she'd learn.
And Joe Grey sat grinning and washing his whiskers, highly amused by Charlie, and immensely pleased at his rise in stature with Max Harper. Harper had moved fast and decisively on Joe's phone tip, had beat it down Hellhag Canyon posthaste, and that made the tomcat feel pretty good. Made him feel good, too, that Harper was back from the canyon in one piece.
Though he would never let Harper know he cared. Stretching out on the cold tile, he gave the captain his usual sour scowl.
Harper returned his frown in spades. The two of them got along just fine with an occasional hiss from Joe, and Harper grousing about cat germs; anything less would spoil the relationship.
6
TWO NIGHTS later, as Clyde fetched the cards and poker chips and began to lay out a cholesterol-rich array of party food, Joe was all set for an evening of imbibing the fatty diet necessary to his psychological well-being and picking up interesting bits of intelligence courtesy of the Molena Point PD, when Clyde dropped the bombshell.