The trailers were gone; the ledge was empty save for one green vehicle of some age, standing at the edge, with a view down Hellhag Hill to the sea.
On the abandoned concrete trailer pads between the brick walkways, small tables and umbrellas had been set up, surrounding George Jolly's sumptuous buffet table and the bar. The bride and groom sat at a table with Wilma and Clyde, and Charlie and Max Harper. On the table next to them, the three cats took their ease, Joe and Dulcie nibbling from their own party plates, the darkly mottled kit sitting up straight and wide-eyed, watching every amazing activity, hearing every astounding word, looking this way and that, her ears flicking in a dozen directions, trying to take it all in.
From George Jolly's alley, the kit had gone home with Dulcie. She liked living in a house. She liked life within warm rooms where one was allowed to sleep on soft furniture. She liked the wonderful smells and the surprising, whisker-licking food. She liked this new, loving relationship with humans.
Everything was new and wonderful and amazing to the small, ragged kit. There were no cold winds to bite her. No snarling, cold-hearted cats to haze and snipe at her, to slap her and drive her away from some small nest she had tried to make her own.
She had new friends. She would soon have a new home. Far more adaptable than a human, perhaps, she had launched herself into this new life with all claws grabbing.
But now suddenly she was all tired out. Too much ceremony. Too much talk. Too many new things happening. Surfeited with amazements, the kit curled up on the table and fell immediately and deeply asleep. She slept stretched out with great and trusting abandon, her long bushy tail hanging down over the side of the table, her whole being relaxed into a mass of ragged fur. She looked, with her black-and-brown fur sticking out every which way, more like a moth-eaten fur scarf lying across the table than anything alive.
Lucinda reached quietly to pet her. To Lucinda, the kit was a wonder, a sweet charmer who soon would be their own, hers and Pedric's. Stroking the kit, and looking around her at the shelf of land that would hold their new home, Lucinda felt deeply content.
The hillside setting would accommodate very nicely a small, rambling structure designed to fit their needs, just herself and Pedric and the kit and the feral cats they hoped they might care for.
Lucinda did not know that the tattered kit's clowder had moved on; it didn't matter, there would be other cats.
The house would be designed so the kit would have her own aeries and tall perches among the rough-hewn beams, and of course she would have soft couches to nap on.
Lucinda had not needed the cash soon to come from the sale of her house to Brock, Lavell & Hicks to buy this land; she had used other money for that. Money, she told most people, that she had saved, over many years, from her household allowance. And who was there to say different?
Max Harper listened with some interest to the couple's plans for their new home; but he was quiet. He seemed, to Joe Grey, particularly withdrawn. Ever since the capture of Sam Fulman-except for that grin of discovery and triumph that Joe had seen when Harper found the evidence in Hellhag Cave-Harper had seemed unusually edgy and stern.
Is that my fault? Joe wondered. Mine and Dulcies? Have we pushed Harper too far? Did we come close to the limit with Harper, leaping in Fulman's face the way we did? Have we gone beyond what Harper can accept?
Harper had once told Clyde that when a cop stumbled across facts that added up to the impossible, such a thing might put him right around the bend. That if a cop started believing some of this far-out stuff, he could be headed for the funny farm.
Harper's late wife, Millie, a detective on the force when she was alive, had handled the nutcases, the saucer sightings and souls returned from the dead. Harper said that when Millie got a case that she couldn't explain away rationally, it gave them both the creeps.
Clyde and Wilma had passed off the cats' attacking Sam Fulman as animal hysteria, triggered by the wild leaping and barking of the two pups: the frantic pups had gotten the cats so keyed up that their adrenaline went right through the roof. The two cats went kind of crazy.
Harper might believe them. And he might not. Harper knew animals, he knew that the overexcitement of one creature could infect the animals around him.
He had appeared to buy the story.
But with Harper, one never knew.
The cats watched the bride and groom depart in a flurry of confetti and rice, with tin cans tied to the bumper of Lucinda's New Yorker, setting out for a few weeks traveling up the California and Oregon coasts.
George Jolly served another round of champagne to a handful of lingering guests. Max Harper settled back, watching Clyde and Wilma and Charlie. The three were filled with questions.
"Long before Shamas drowned," Harper said, "Torres had gotten friendly with Cara Ray, as a source of information in his investigation of Shamas's swindling operations. Of course he was investigating Fulman, too, on the same cases.
"Somewhere along the line Torres, checking on Shamas's bank accounts in half a dozen names, must have realized that Shamas was taking in far more money than he was depositing or laundering, stashing it somewhere. Very likely he knew about Shamas's reputation among the Greenlaw family for burying money.
"Torres got pretty tight with Cara Ray, picking up bits of information from her. When he heard, from Seattle PD, that Shamas had drowned, he called her.
"Maybe he thought she knew about the money, knew where it was, maybe thought they could join up. That's the way we read it. If so, that was the moment he stepped over the line from investigation to the other side, thinking how to get his hands on Shamas's stash. What Torres didn't know was that Cara Ray was also seeing Sam Fulman."
Harper paused to light a cigarette. "Assume Cara Ray knew about the money and played Torres along. There's some indication that she thought Torres was tight with Seattle police, that he might suspect she and Fulman killed Shamas. Say she gets scared. Couple that with the fact that Fulman knew Torres was investigating him along with Shamas, and you have two people wanting Torres out of the way.
"When Torres takes off for L.A., on an investigation and to pick up the antique Corvette he'd bought from a dealer down there, they figure he'll make a little detour into Molena Point to look for the money. They decide to do him.
"Cara Ray honeys Torres up and makes plans to meet him in Molena Point on his way back from his LA. investigation, have a few romantic days together.
"That early morning, the motel took a phone call to Cara Ray's room. Operator heard a man answer. The call was from a woman, at about four A.M. There's no record of the caller's number; it was local. We have a witness who saw Torres leave the motel at four-thirty, in the Corvette.
"None of the maids had seen Cara Ray for maybe twenty-four hours. We found a note in her room: 'Honey, my sister's sick. Going to run down to Half Moon Bay. Back late tomorrow night.'
"She has a sister there, but she hadn't been sick, hadn't seen Cara Ray for several months. She lied at first to cover for Cara Ray, but then decided she didn't want her own neck in a noose."
Harper smiled. "So much for family loyalty.
"Very likely Cara Ray went up to Fulman's trailer, called Torres from there, said she had car trouble, wanted him to come get her.