Clyde grinned. "The night my stupid cat got shut in. You saying this woman made the call from the gallery? That the cats got in when she entered?"
"No, I'm not saying that," Harper snapped. He stubbed out his cigarette and fingered the half-empty pack, then laid it aside, started in on the label again, working at it absently with his thumbnail. "I'm not saying that at all. Simply stating the sequence of events.
"And it was that same day," he said, "midafternoon, when the new witness turned up. The one who saw the white van in Janet's drive."
Clyde watched the beer label taking shape, Harper's thumb forming a crude, lumpy head.
Harper finished his beer, draining the glass. "You know I don't believe in coincidence. But the strange thing is-that witness who saw the white van, she turned out to be the mother of one of the burglars."
Clyde frowned, shook his head as if trying to sort that out. He had to swallow back a belly laugh. Despite Harper's obvious distress, this was the biggest joke of all time on his good friend. And he couldn't say a word.
Harper still hadn't told him about the watch. It was the watch that was really bugging Harper.
"Yesterday the informant called, asked if we'd found Janet's paintings. She seemed pleased that we had.
"She told me that when we found Kendrick Mahl's watch, that could wrap up the case. She said it was in a drainpipe up in the hills, that we'd have to dig down and cut through the pipe. She thought if we cut straight down into the pipe, we wouldn't disturb the evidence, could still photograph it before we moved it. She gave me the location of the marker where we were to dig, a little pile of rocks, up the hill from the mouth of the drain."
He looked a long time at Clyde. "The drainpipe turned out to be just up beyond the burglarized house, and not fifty yards from where we arrested James Stamps. He'd run up the hill chasing his dog. Dog bit Thompson real bad."
Harper grinned. "Thompson was crawling around in the bushes taking pictures of these two perps, and the dog jumps him.
"We got Thompson to the hospital, took the dog to the pound for observation. Don't know what it got mixed up with, but its face was one bloody mess, Thompson didn't think he did that. Long scratches down the dog's nose and ear."
Harper gave the head on the O'Doul's label two pointed ears, pushed the wet paper again, starting to form a tail. "No one," he said, "could have known what was in that drain. You couldn't see a thing from the opening, not even with a flashlight. The watch was maybe fifteen feet back inside.
"But my informant knew. Knew where the watch was, knew whose watch it was. She described the stone marker exactly. Little pile of rocks pressed into the earth in the form of an X, where the grass had been scraped away."
"Pretty strange," Clyde said. "Makes you wonder. You don't think she's a psychic or something?"
"You know I don't believe in that stuff. It was some job digging down into the drainpipe, and I didn't believe for a minute we'd find anything. I thought this would end up a big department joke."
"Then why did you do it?"
"There's always that chance. Better to be the butt of a joke than miss something. We dug down seven feet to the metal pipe, then cut through the metal with an acetylene torch, kept the flame small as we could.
"Broke down into the pipe two feet above the skeleton of a dead cat."
Clyde wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"The cat had a collar around its neck with Janet Jeannot's name on it." Harper was very still, looking at Clyde. "Kendrick Mahl's watch was buckled to the collar."
Clyde shook his head, did his best to look amazed. He'd had to listen half the night to Joe bragging about the damned watch, and about the paintings.
"We photographed the watch and got it and the skeleton to the lab. Lab found Mahl's prints on the watch, underneath Janet's prints.
"We have photographs of Mahl wearing the watch a week before Janet was killed. And a shot of him the night of the museum opening wearing a different watch, a new Rolex.
"We found the store where he bought the Rolex, a place on the other side of San Francisco from the St. Francis, little hole in the wall. They sold it the day of the opening. The customer fit Mahl's description. He paid cash." Harper grew still as the waiter brought another round of beers, the round little man moving quietly, leaving quickly.
"After we arrested Mahl we searched his apartment. Found the bolt cutters he used to cut the lock off at the storage complex. Found the keys to Janet's studio and to her van, under the liner of his overnight bag. And he had a set of keys to Rob's Suburban. The way we see Mahl's moves, he had already brought the substitute paintings down to Molena Point, sometime before that weekend, and put them in the locker. On Saturday he checks into the St. Francis and puts his car in the underground parking.
"Saturday night he uses his parking ticket to take out Janet's van-he knew she was out to dinner with friends, probably had a good idea she'd make an early evening of it. He drives down to the village, gets the fake paintings, switches them for Janet's, rigs Janet's oxygen tank, and drops some aspirin in her coffeemaker. Stashes her paintings in the locker and hightails it back to the city before daylight.
"He puts Janet's van back in the parking garage, uses that entry ticket later to retrieve his own car. He'd have had to put the van back in the same slot. Probably he pulled his own car into her slot, to reserve it while he was gone. Counted on Janet's not coming down at some late hour; he knew she didn't like to party.
"Who knows when he missed his watch? We're guessing he didn't miss it until he was back in the city, and then it was too late to turn around and go back. He had to be seen at the St. Francis for breakfast, be seen around town that weekend, and, of course, at the opening Sunday night.
"But when he gets back to Molena Point after the opening late Sunday night he takes Rob's Suburban while Rob's asleep, goes to get his watch."
"But he's too late," Clyde said. "Janet's already up in the studio. And no one saw him switch the paintings, no one saw him around the locker?"
"Caretaker says there were two men nosing around outside the fence a couple of nights earlier. He didn't see them clearly, didn't see their car." Harper opened his menu, looked it over. "There were some pieces of sculpture in the locker with the paintings, probably he'd put them in some time before. Early work that, Sicily said, Janet hadn't liked much, that she'd left behind when she split from Mahl and moved out. Maybe Mahl thought they'd be worth something now."
He closed the menu. "Think I'll have the filet and fries."
Clyde grinned. This was Max's standard order, filet medium rare, fries crisp, no salad. "It's a weird story, Max. Don't know what to make of it."
Max shaped the wet label more carefully, its front paws tucked under, its long tail curved. "Informant sees a watch where it's impossible to see it. Night watchman hears voices, but no one there. Call comes over a unit radio, and no trace of the caller.
"But we've got a positive ID of the handwriting on the locker file card and lifted a nice set of Mahl's prints from it."
"Then you've wrapped up the case," Clyde said. "Mahl's in jail. You have solid evidence. And you told me Marritt is off the case and in a bad light with the mayor."
"You bet he is."
"And a new trial pending. Sounds like you're in good shape."
"That watchman can't have heard voices."
"So if no one was there, was the old man lying?"
"One theory is, he was nosing around the lockers for his own purposes, maybe stealing. That when he looked over the wall into K20-or maybe picked the lock to K20-he realized the paintings were Janet's and knew he'd better report it to avoid trouble, so he dreamed up the voices routine.