"My pups? I was the one who wanted to take those two to the pound. I wanted to let the pound feed them and find homes for them. But not you. Mr. DoGooder. No, you couldn't bear the thought. 'Look at the poor babies, Joe. Look how they're starving. How could you lock them in cages? Oh, just wook at the oootsy wootsy doggies.' And now look at them; you've already spoiled Selig rotten."
"Well, at least I… " Clyde stopped, looked again at the paper. Picked it up, jerking it from under Joe's paws. "What's this?"
"What's what?"
"The Letters-to-the-Editor column. You didn't read it?"
"How could I read it? You've been picking at me all morning. When did I have time to read it?" Leaping to Clyde's shoulder, he balanced heavily, scanning the three columns of letters.
SHOPLIFTING LOSSES TRIPLE IN RECENT WEEKS
What is Captain Harper doing to prevent the sudden increase in crime in our village? Molena Point relies heavily on the tourist trade, on its reputation for a slow, people-friendly, low-crime environment. We don't need shoplifters and petty thieves. The sudden outbreak of such crimes seems to have received no response from Police Captain Harper. Local businesses are losing money, our visitors have been approached by confidence artists, and the police are doing nothing to arrest and detain the lawbreakers.
Joe snorted. "Who wrote this? Some guy who doesn't like Harper. Probably some clown who lives on the wrong side of the law himself. Some cop-hater with an ax to grind." He dropped from Clyde's shoulder to the table and ripped his claws down the letters column. "The Gazette has no right to print such trash. If I paid for this paper, I'd cancel the damn subscription."
And he left the house, stopping to rake the living-room rug, then shouldering out through his cat door.
But, trotting quickly up the sunny street, he forgot the petty letter-writer, and fixed again on the tragedy of last night, on the dark, rainswept hill, on the swinging lights of the police torches.
Who else had been on Hellhag Hill last night, before the cops arrived? Who would want to kill Newlon Greenlaw and hurt Pedric? And Joe Grey wondered, would the little, wild tortoiseshell kit succeed in picking out the attacker?
But even if she did identify the man, still they needed proof. They couldn't drop a killer in Harper's lap without some hard facts, without enough solid physical evidence for Harper to take to the grand jury and for a prosecutor to take to court.
And Joe Grey moved on into the village, turning over in his sly feline mind every possible method he could think of for snaring the murderer.
19
THE TORTOISESHELL kit stood high up Hellhag Hill, above the cave, atop the pale rocks that flanked it. Joe and Dulcie saw her at once as they came up from the village onto the grassy verge along Highway One. The moment she spied them she lashed her bushy tail as if she had been impatiently waiting. The two cats, watching her, hurried across the empty two-lane highway and started up the hill. After the rain, the tall grass through which they padded was fresh and sweet-scented, alive with insects buzzing and rustling. Over their heads, sparrows and finches zoomed, diving low in the watery sunshine.
"Do you suppose," Dulcie said, slitting her eyes, "do you suppose it was Dirken on the hill last night?"
"Why Dirken?"
"He's the one doing all the digging and tearing the house apart. Whatever he's looking for, did Newlon and Pedric find it? And Dirken went after them? And did he think he'd killed Pedric, did he leave Pedric for dead?"
Pedric was still in the hospital, while Newlon waited in the morgue, duly tagged and examined by forensics. The official word was that he had died from a blow to the head, not from an accidental fall. Fragments of Molena Point's soft, creamy stone, which was used all over the village for fireplaces and garden walls, had been found in Newlon's abraded scalp, deep in the wound. The specific piece of stone that killed him had not been retrieved. The natural outcroppings on Hellhag Hill were granite.
"Interesting, too," Dulcie said, "that Cara Ray buttered up Newlon, then dumped him, and now he's dead."
She paused, glancing at Joe. "Maybe Dirken's looking for a will, to override Shamas's trust and leave the house to him? If he is, he wouldn't want Newlon and Pedric snooping around."
"Not likely there's a will," Joe said, "with the trust. Not in California, not according to Clyde. He says it isn't needed-unless you're disgustingly rich, as Clyde puts it."
"Well, but Shamas could have written one?"
"I suppose. What are you thinking?"
Dulcie flicked her ears. "Could Shamas have been fool enough to write Cara Ray into a will-and stupid enough to tell her?"
Joe smiled. "And to hurry the process along, she slips out on the deck of the Green Lady that night and pushes him in the drink."
"Possible," she said. "Would Cara Ray be strong enough to push a man overboard?"
"So someone helps her; she say's she'll cut him in."
"Newlon," Dulcie said. "Or Sam. Take your pick."
She glanced up to where the kit waited. "She is impatient." The dark kit was fidgeting from paw to paw, her ears back, her yellow eyes gleaming. The cats broke into a gallop, leaping through the grass; they were nearly to the cave when they crouched suddenly, low to the earth.
They felt the vibration first through their paws, like an electrical charge. At the same instant the insects vanished, and all around them flocks of birds exploded straight up into the sky.
The jolt hit. Shook them hard. As if the world said, Iam the power. They saw the kit sprawl, clinging to the boulder.
Then the earth was still.
The three cats waited.
Nothing more happened. The insects crept out and began to chirp again. The birds spiraled down and dived into the grass, snatching up bugs. An emboldened house finch sang his off-key cacophony as if he owned earth and sky.
And the cats saw that someone was on the road below them. Down on the black ribbon of asphalt, two small figures were rising-Wilma helping Lucinda up, dusting themselves off.
The two women stood talking, then climbed quickly toward the outcropping where they liked to sit- where the kit had been poised. Where, now, the rocks were empty.
The two cats moved away, intent on finding the kit-they hadn't gone far when the little mite was right before them, stepping out of the grass.
"I found him," she said softly. "A white trailer with a brown door."
"How do you know it's the killer's?" Joe said.
"He left his shoes on the stoop. I can smell the blood. He wiped them with something wet, but I can still smell it. He washed his shirt and hung it on a chair, where the sun shines in through the screen. It still smells of blood."
They rose and followed her up the hill, across the trailer park's brick walks, across a narrow, scruffy bed of poppies and beneath half a dozen trailers, trotting between their greasy wheels.
"This one," the kit said, slipping underneath, losing herself among the shadows.
Joe sniffed at the wheels and then at the little set of steps, flehming at the man's scent. "It might be Fulman; I never got a good smell of him. He's always with other people."
"He was alone with Cara Ray," Dulcie said.
"In the middle of a geranium bush, Dulcie, everything smells like geraniums."
"Well, if-" she began, then hushed as footsteps drummed overhead. They heard water running, heard a man cough.