Joe just looked at her. She was so hardheaded. "And where are we going to look for the paintings? Don't you think Mahl would have taken them back to the city that night?"
"He had to be in a hurry, he had only a few hours to get down here, switch paintings, load up Janet's canvases, stash them somewhere, and get back to San Francisco, to the hotel. San Francisco is huge," she said. "Would he have time to hide them somewhere in the city? Don't forget he lives miles north, across the bridge." She gave him a clear green look. "Maybe it would have been faster to hide them in the village."
"Sure. Right here in his Molena Point condo."
Mahl had kept the condo after he and Janet were divorced; he used it on weekends, and had seemed to enjoy running into her in the small village.
"If we can get into the condo," she said patiently, "maybe we can find some receipt for a warehouse or locker. The receipt for Charlie's rental locker has the name and the locker number on it. Coast City Lockers, up on Highway One." She nuzzled his neck. "We could try. We got into the gallery, that wasn't hard. So we can get into Mahl's condo."
Joe looked at her a long time, then rose and prowled up the hill above the buried drainpipe. Pausing on the tallest of the three little hills, he cocked his head, studying the mound and the way it nestled up against the big hill behind.
Below at the mouth of the pipe she sat in the sun watching him, curious-she had no idea what he was up to, but she could almost see the tomcat's wily mind ticking away, turning over some wild idea.
From the little hill, Joe smiled. "Go up the tunnel, Dulcie. Stand beside Binky and yowl-scream like the devil himself is tickling you."
"Do what?"
"Sing, baby. Make a ruckus, scream and wail-sing like I sang to the Blankenships."
She cocked her head, let her eyes widen. She smiled. She vanished within the tunnel, running.
And atop the little hill, Joe bellied down, his ear to the earth, listening.
He heard her, her voice louder than he'd imagined. Down there her yowling song echoing along the pipe must be loud enough, even, to wake poor Binky. He followed the sound beyond the little mound, where the earth curved down again, against the larger hill. Pausing to listen, he soon pinpointed her exact location, and there he clawed the grass away, inscribing a large ragged X.
When she joined him, racing up out of the tunnel, he was still picking up little stones from among the grass, carrying them in his teeth to drop them into the X. She helped him, pressing the stones down with her paw deep into the earth, constructing a sturdy hieroglyph.
And then, finished, they headed down the hills to pay an unannounced visit to the weekend apartment of Kendrick Mahl.
23
Kendrick Mahl's apartment occupied the third and highest floor of a casual Mediterranean condominium three blocks above the ocean, on the west side of Molena Point. The complex did not have a locked security door as Joe had envisioned, but was a structure of open, sprawling design, with gardens tucked between its rambling wings. Against the pale stucco walls, flowers bloomed all year in blazes of orange and pink and reds, and at occasional junctures, trellises of bougainvillea climbed to the roof, heavy with red blossoms.
Each first-floor unit opened to a terrace, and the glass doors of the upper apartments gave onto walled balconies set about with redwood chairs and potted plants. At one end of Mahl's veranda, a bougainvillea vine clung to the rail, providing from the ground below a comfortable vertical highway, an access tailored to the use of any inquisitive feline.
Joe and Dulcie, having checked the mailboxes in the open, tiled entry patio, headed for apartment 3C. Two floors straight up from 1C, Mahl's balcony was an easy climb. There was no one on the surrounding balconies to notice them, no one in the gardens below. The condo compound, this late afternoon, seemed to provide no visible witness.
From high up the vine they could see a small parking area, down between the buildings, surrounded by trees and flowers. But as they dropped down from the vine onto Mahl's balcony, they drew back. Classical music was playing softly, and the glass door stood wide-open. Deep within the bright living room, Mahl sat at a large, richly carved desk.
He was talking on the phone. They could not hear much of his conversation above the soothing music, something about delivering a painting. He seemed to be trying to arrange a suitable hour for his truck to arrive.
A skylight brightened the room, sending a cascade of sunlight down the white walls and across the whitewashed, polished oak floors. The room's furnishings were a combination of white leather and chrome set off by several dark, carved antique tables and chests, and half a dozen small potted trees. The pillows tossed on the long white sofa were deep-colored antique weavings. A Khirman rug in soft shades of red and rust graced the sitting area, nicely mirroring the fall of red bougainvillea on the balcony. And on the pristine walls, seven large paintings provided brilliant pools of color. None, of course, was by Janet Jeannot. Nor were any of the works by Rob Lake.
As the cats watched, peering in through the glass, Mahl hung up the phone and bent to some paperwork. In the instant that he turned to pull a file from the desk drawer they slipped in and fled, swift as winging moths, across to a white leather couch and behind it. Crouching in the dark between couch and wall, they looked out, assessing Janet's ex-husband.
Mahl was dressed in immaculate ivory slacks and a blue silk shirt, but the sleek clothes seemed too fine for his sour, owlish face, for shoulders hunched forward in an owlish manner. The cats grinned at each other, watching him, amused by his big, round, blank glasses. Even Mahl's nose was too much like a beak; Dulcie found him so humorous she had to hold her breath to keep from laughing aloud. And though Mahl was large and wide-shouldered, he did not look strong. His oversize form seemed put together carelessly, perhaps in haste. One had the impression of a creature that might be nearly hollow inside, of a thin, frail, loosely connected bone structure without strength.
They waited impatiently for Mahl to finish whatever work occupied him. At last he rose and retired to the kitchen; they heard the refrigerator door open and close, the sounds of metal cutlery on a plate. As Dulcie leaped to the desk, Joe slid behind a planter, where he could keep an eye on Mahl. From his leafy cover Joe watched Mahl make a roast beef sandwich, piling on thin, rare slices from a white deli wrapper. The rye bread and beef smelled so good he had to lick drool from his chin. But soon the smell was spoiled by the sharp scent of mustard. He never would get used to humans spreading all that smelly goo on good red meat.
Atop the desk Dulcie pawed through Mahl's in-box and stacks of papers, looking for some record of a rented locker or warehouse space. Most of the papers were letters, some about painting sales. She scanned them, but did not find them useful. None mentioned any kind of storage facility. None, of course, mentioned Janet's work. She left a few cat hairs clinging to the papers, but one could not help shedding. Mahl used as paperweights a small bronze bust of a child, a piece of jade as round and large as a goose egg, and a small pair of binoculars. All were hard to move as she perused the papers, all were hard to put back again. She had just moved the binoculars back into position and was fighting open the top desk drawer when Joe hissed.
She leaped off the desk, leaving the drawer open four inches, and slid underneath into the dark kneehole. The desk was a heavy mahogany piece with ball-shaped, carved feet that left a three-inch space beneath the back and sides. If she had to, she could just squeeze under.