"My crews will be on the job the moment the police allow us to enter. I'll do the bid this evening, fax it to your motel. Will that be satisfactory?"
No other repair and cleaning service would put their jobs on hold in this way-a customer waited his turn. She wouldn't make this arrangement either, to be available at any time without notice, if she wasn't just getting started.
She hadn't told Beverly how short a time she'd been in business, and Beverly hadn't asked. She reminded herself again that she had better not lose her sense of humor. She prayed that she'd be able to find additional help for the job. One fifty-year-old, addle-brained cleaning lady and one male handyman of questionable skills were not going to cut it.
Under the bed, the cats glanced at each other. There was only one place Beverly hadn't searched. Her footsteps tapping across the tile were bold and solid.
She stopped beside the bed, her shoes inches from Dulcie's nose. Thick ankles in thick, pale stockings, burgundy high heels with wide straps across the instep. The springs squeaked and one burgundy foot disappeared upward, then the other, as Beverly climbed to kneel on the bed.
She had already pulled all the books out. Now a dry, sliding sound suggested that she was running her hand down the wall, maybe pressing along the moving shelf beneath which Janet had kept her tissues and clock and the missing journal. The springs complained as she shifted her weight.
They heard the movable panel rattle. Heard her suck in her breath, heard the shelf slide open.
They listened to her rummaging among the contents, but soon she closed the little niche again and eased herself down and off the bed.
When Beverly began to pull the sheets off, Dulcie snatched the diary in her teeth and they slipped out behind her, staying between the comforter and the wall. As she tugged at the bedding, jerking sheets and comforter onto the rug, they fled, streaking for the closet.
They peered out, ready to run again.
But she didn't turn, hadn't seen them. They watched her shake the bedclothes, drop them on the rug, then roll the bed away from the wall. As she searched behind it, her posterior bulged in the plum-colored skirt. At last she straightened up, brushed dust from her suit, and returned empty-handed to the living room.
The cats did not leave their shelter until they heard the front door close, heard the lock slide home, heard Charlie nailing up the plywood.
When an engine started down below they left the closet, trotted to the window, and watched Beverly drive away. Charlie left directly behind her, the Mercedes softly purring.
The apartment was still again, empty.
Crouching together on the rug with the diary lying between them, they pawed it open to the last pages.
Here were entries about the de Young opening, notes which Janet must have made only days before she died. Ironic that Kendrick is on the museum board which is giving me two awards. A jury with Kendrick on it wouldn't even have hung my work, so I guess he didn't have any say in the matter, it's the jury that decides, bless them.
She had tucked a clipping between the pages, a group photo of the board, taken a week before the opening. She had drawn beside Mahl's picture an owl that looked so like Mahl, Dulcie rolled over laughing. The dowdy bird had Mahl's hunched shoulders, Mahl's beaklike nose. Its eyes closely resembled Mahl's round, rimless glasses.
In the photo Mahl had his suit coat off and was holding a piece of clay sculpture, his white shirt cuff revealing, where it had pulled back, an expensive-looking watch, heavy and ostentatious.
Joe stared at it. "What kind of man would wear a watch decorated with cupids and those heavy wings sticking out. Pretty pretentious, for someone who's supposed to have the tastes of an artist."
"Where did you learn about the tastes of an artist?"
"Not from Clyde, you can bet."
The last entry in Janet's diary had been made the night before she died, a one-line comment which perhaps she had written just before she went to sleep.
Lovely night at the de Young. Two awards. Euphoria. All perfect. Except K. was there.
Behind that page she had tucked a newspaper review of the exhibit, her hotel bill, a charge slip for gas, and a plain slip of paper with some numbers jotted on it.
"Could be the van's mileage," Joe said. "For her tax records. Mileage when she left, and again when she got home." Janet had crossed out the beginning mileage and penciled in a new one, two hundred miles larger.
"Guess she wrote the original number wrong, then corrected it-put a three hundred where she should have had a five."
"She must have been in a hurry," Dulcie said. "What should we do with the diary? We can't let Beverly-or the police-come back and find it."
"We have to get it to the police, Dulcie. It could be evidence."
"But there are personal things in here. She wouldn't want this read in court."
"We don't have any choice, if it's evidence. And there are things in here about Rob Lake."
She laid a soft paw on the pages, on Janet's small, neat handwriting. "Would they read it out loud in court? If the papers get hold of this, they'll print everything-all the things she said about Mahl." She licked her chest, smoothing her fur. "Janet wouldn't want this made public, plastered all over the newspaper."
"It belongs with the police. Max Harper won't let the papers have it."
"Detective Marritt would, behind Harper's back."
"You think Harper would let anything happen behind his back?"
"Marritt messed up the investigation, didn't he?"
Joe sighed. "You're not really sure of that. We'll hide it for tonight, until we decide what to do." He rose and headed for the kitchen.
Pawing open the lower cupboard doors, he prowled among the pans until he found a supply of plastic grocery bags rolled neatly and stuffed in an empty coffee can.
Within minutes they had bagged the diary to protect it from the damp and rain, and had dragged it outside and hidden it beneath the deck, pushing it deeper under than the bowls which Charlie had left for the white cat.
"That was nice of her," Dulcie said. "I guess Charlie believes in the white cat."
"I didn't say I don't believe in him. I just think he's- Oh, what the hell. Maybe he'll show up and eat the damned kibble."
She gave him a long green stare, but then she snuggled close. "Come on, let's go con that old Mrs. Blankenship, see what we can find out."
10
"Suck in your stomach, try to look hungry." "I am sucking it in, I can hardly breathe." She let her ears go limp and forlorn, let her tail droop until it dragged the ground.
"Yeah. That's better, that's pitiful. You really look like hell."
"Thanks so much."
"A starving stray, not a friend in the world."
The plan was, she'd approach the old woman alone as this was definitely a one-cat job. One starving, pitiful little kitty could turn the hardest heart, while two cats tramping the neighborhood would give the impression of mutual support, of perhaps greater hunting options. A pair of cats could never achieve the same high degree of helplessness and neglect, elicit the same pity.
"She's still watching," Joe said, peering out at the old woman. "And even if she didn't see us come into the bushes, she's already seen us together, up at Janet's house. She knows you're not alone. I don't think this is going to work."