"You are not invited, Joe. You are not wanted in this house when my friends are here playing poker. No more snooping. You're done listening to private police business."
"You have to be kidding."
"Not kidding. No cats on or near the poker table. No cats in the house tonight."
"You're making crab-and-olive sandwiches, you know that's my all-time favorite. And I'm not invited to the party?"
"You can take a sandwich with you. Brown-bag it."
Joe looked at Clyde intently. "You're serious. You are turning me out of my own home."
"Very serious. No more eavesdropping." Turning his back, Clyde resumed spreading crab and green olives.
"I see what's wrong. You have your nose out of joint because I was right about that wreck in Hellhag Canyon."
"Don't be silly. And even if there was something strange about that wreck, whatever Max Harper might, in the presence of his officers and closest friend, find fit to discuss in this house, will be restricted to those human listeners, and to no other. No tomcats. No lady cats. No snooping. Comprende?"
Joe drew himself up to his full, bold, muscular height, his growl rumbling, his yellow eyes blazing. "For your information, if that wreck turns out to be a murder, I'm the one who put Harper onto it. Me. The tomcat you're booting out of his own home for no conscionable reason. Without yours truly, without the information that I tipped to Max Harper, the killer would go scot-free."
Clyde turned from the counter to glare at him. "You don't have much respect for the abilities of our local law enforcement. You don't seem to think that Harper is capable of-"
"I think Harper is very capable. Why should I expect one of your limited reasoning to understand that if the brake line was switched, and the billfold was removed before the police got to the scene of the accident that morning, and if the wreck looked in every other way like an accident, and Harper had no information to the contrary, he would have no reason to search for evidence.
"That is a dangerous curve," Joe explained patiently. "There has been more than one wreck there. The morning was foggy. Thick as canned cream. Without my help, Harper would have no reason to think the wreck was any more than an accident."
"I've had enough, Joe. I don't intend to argue with you. You are out of the house. Don't come home until Harper leaves. Go now. Go hunt. Go hang out on Lucinda's fence with Dulcie. Get out of here."
Joe leaped down, so incensed that, stalking through the living room, he paused long enough to deliberately, maliciously rake his claws down the arm of Clyde's new leather chair, leaving long, deep indentations just short of actual tears.
And, shouldering out through his cat door in a mood black and hateful, within three minutes-never reentering Clyde Damen's pokey little cottage-he was set up to listen to every smallest whisper from Clyde's sacrosanct poker game.
He, Joe Grey, would miss nothing.
Dulcie discovered Joe's hideaway when she came along the fence from Lucinda's. The night had turned chill, and Dirken had closed the windows. Annoyed at being shut out, she had left the Greenlaws, galloping along the fence top to see if Joe wanted to hunt.
Clyde's kitchen lights were all burning. She smelled cigarette smoke and heard Max Harper laugh. She was about to go on, knowing Joe wouldn't budge on poker night and miss some juicy bit of police gossip, when she saw the two pups behaving so strangely that she stopped to watch them.
Instead of pawing at the back door to get inside and join the party, the pups were down in the dirt beside the back porch, teasing at a vent hole, a little rectangular opening in the foundation that should have had a screen over it but was yawning, the screen cover pushed aside.
Both pups were crouched, heads down, their backsides high in the air, their tails wagging madly as they tried to push in through the small space. Dulcie, leaping down and racing across the lawn, slipped in between their noses-and caught Joe's scent, over the reek of damp earth.
Peering into the musty blackness, she saw a flash of white-two white paws and white chest, where Joe Grey crouched atop a furnace duct, just below the kitchen floor.
A blanket of fiberglass insulation hung down, as if Joe had clawed and torn it away to bare the floor joists. Atop the heat duct, he stared up toward the kitchen, his ears cocked, his expression sly and triumphant. The voices came clearly to Dulcie.
"I'll call," Harper said. They heard the clink of poker chips dropped on the table.
Lieutenant Brennan said, "I'll raise you two." Dulcie could imagine Brennan sitting back a little from the poker table to accommodate his ample stomach. A woman's voice said, "No way, Brennan. I fold." That would be Detective Kathleen Ray, the dark-haired young detective who had worked the Winthrop Jergen case.
Not all men liked to play poker with women. Not many male cops liked women on the force. Well, these guys were okay. But just for eveners, Dulcie hoped Kathleen Ray went home a huge winner-cleaned them out, even if they were only playing penny ante.
A loud groan announced a pot won. Clyde laughed, and they heard chips being raked in.
"Why are you down here?" Dulcie whispered. "Did you and Clyde have a fight?"
Joe cut her a scowl as sour as yesterday's cat food. "Clyde shut me out."
"He what? You can't be serious. Out of the house? But why?"
"Said he didn't want me spying on Harper."
Dulcie stared at him. "What's the matter with Clyde?"
"The minute I left, he went right out to the living room and slid the plywood cover into my cat door. Talk about cheap… I could claw the plywood off, go on in the living room, and listen, but I'm not giving him the satisfaction."
"I can't believe he did that. Maybe he isn't feeling well," Dulcie said softly.
"He feels just fine. His usual bad-tempered self. Earlier, when I first got down here, Harper said something about fingerprints. Clyde interrupted him-just in case I was listening." Joe gave her a narrow-eyed leer. "Well, Clyde can stuff it. I'm hanging in here until I know what Harper's found."
Dulcie snuggled next to Joe on the warm, softly insulated heat duct, settling down to listen to endless rounds of poker talk punctuated with scattered gems of police intelligence. Only when the pizza delivery guy arrived, to augment the crab sandwiches, did the ringing doorbell trigger a round of frantic barking from the backyard, and some of the conversation was lost. But then, soon, Harper's dry, slow voice seeped down through the kitchen floor again, along with the scent of pepperoni pizza.
Besides the infrared photos that Harper had taken the night he went down Hellhag Canyon, and some casts of partial footprints that Detective Ray had made, the department had one fingerprint, which Detective Ray had lifted from the engine near the brake line.
The department, contacting Landrum Antique Cars in L.A., had learned that the Corvette had been purchased only a few days before, a cash sale to a Raul Torres. "Torres," Harper said, "gave them a Portland, Oregon, address that turned out to be a vacant lot. Very likely the name is just as fake. We're waiting for the fingerprint ID. State lab's weeks behind as usual, even for a possible murder investigation."
The information should have cheered Joe; he remained dour and silent.
Clyde's poker games had been one of his best sources of information. Four or five cops playing stud poker could do a lot of talking. Clyde was the only civilian, but Harper trusted him like another cop. Maybe, Joe thought, that was why Clyde felt embarrassed to let him sit in. If Joe was lying on the poker table nibbling at the chips and dip, Clyde could hardly halt the conversation, could hardly tell Harper and his officers not to talk in front of the cat.
"So what the hell," Joe said softly but angrily, as the poker game resumed. "All I've ever done is help Harper. Without the evidence you and I turned up, several of those no-goodniks sitting in state prison right now would be out on the street, to say nothing of Troy Hoke cooling his heels for murder in the federal pen."