Right. Mike comes out and catches him pawing through the file, and then what? Could he pretend to be sniffing the scent of mouse in the department's archived papers? Well, sure, that would explain a cat's interest.
He waited impatiently until Mike returned, wearing navy pajama bottoms and a short robe; he watched the tall, lanky Scots Irishman light the gas logs in the stone fireplace, set the glass screen in place, and then slide into bed, propping the pillows behind him. Then Joe, making a show of stretching and yawning, sauntered up the bed to Mike's pillow. Yawning again, he curled up beside Mike purring with such sudden affection that Flannery did a double take, frowning down at him.
"What's with you? You miss Clyde already? Is that why you're not out roaming the streets? You're lonesome? Well, dogs get lonely, so I guess cats do, too." And Mike spent a few moments scratching Joe's ears.
But soon, still absently stroking Joe, he was scanning the Chappell file-and Joe, sprawled among the pillows near Mike's left ear, was just as eagerly soaking up additional details of Carson Chappell's disappearance and of Lindsey's search for him.
But as Joe read, he watched Mike, too, and was slyly amused.
Where the original report discussed Lindsey and Carson's relationship, Mike's expression changed from interest to what surely resembled jealousy. In the ten-year-old report, Lindsey had assured the interviewing detective that she and Chappell were very much in love and that he would never have left her. They had planned a honeymoon in the Bahamas, they'd had their plane tickets and hotel reservations and had intended to go directly from the church to the airport. They had planned, on their return, to move into a cottage in the village, on which Carson had made a sizable down payment-they had intended to move their furniture and other belongings in two days before the wedding, the day that Chappell was due home from camping. Lindsey said they had wanted, when they arrived back, to be already comfortably settled in their new home.
In the short quotations that had been included among the dry sentences of the case file, it wasn't hard to read Lindsey's shock when Carson didn't return; Joe could detect nothing contrived or uneasy in her recorded answers, though without the sound of her voice, the intonations, and the facial expressions, it was difficult to make such an assessment. It wasn't hard, though, to imagine a bride-to-be's growing despair when there was no word from the intended bridegroom.
At that time, neither Lindsey nor the police had found the plane tickets, not in Chappell's apartment nor in his office, these had disappeared as surely as had his passport.
Halfway through, Mike set aside the file and sat quietly staring into the fire, a deep and preoccupied look, almost a dreaming look, that Joe studied with interest. Was Flannery keener on finding Chappell? Or on rekindling his relationship with Lindsey?
But that was unfair. Maybe Mike wasn't sure, himself, where his conflicted emotions wanted to lead him.
Only when Rock stirred in his sleep and turned over did Mike come back to the present, reach for the steno pad, and begin making notes. Joe, easing higher up on the pillow, positioned himself where he could read them clearly. Mike glanced at him, frowning, but didn't push him away.
Most of Mike's notations were questions, or lines of investigation that he meant to pursue, and many were the same questions Joe had. When at last he put down the pen and sat staring at the fire again, Joe wished he could read this guy's mind, wished he could follow Mike's thoughts and not just the words on the paper.
But soon the tomcat's own thoughts turned back to that one perplexing connection, to the unlikely coincidence of the two bodies coming to light in the same week. Why did he keep imagining a relationship between them? There was nothing to hint at that, except the timing of the two discoveries.
Or was there some clue in the file, or in something he'd overheard, that he didn't know he was aware of? Some minute detail, caught in his memory, that kept him returning to that improbable conjecture?
No one knew, yet, even if that was Chappell up there in Oregon. Only Lindsey Wolf seemed convinced. And, the tomcat thought, why was she so sure? Did Lindsey know something that was not in the report, and that she might not have told the law?
But why would she hold back information, when she seemed so committed to finding Chappell?
Was she, in some way, covering up her own guilt? Certain that Oregon would identify Chappell, and trying to establish her own innocence?
Dulcie would tell him he was chasing smoke, batting at shadows, that he was way off, on this one-but he couldn't leave it alone. His gut feeling was that there was a relationship between the bodies, and that maybe Lindsey knew that.
Or was he as batty as if he'd been bingeing on catnip?
He watched Mike open the file again and flip to several handwritten pages tucked at the back: three pages of notes on plain white paper, and a yellow, lined sheet with different handwriting. Having to shift against Mike's shoulder again to see around his arm, Joe pretended to scratch his ear.
"You better not have fleas," Mike said absently, knowing that Clyde had the animals on medication against such small, unwanted passengers. The white pages were dated six years ago, the yellow one three years later. That one was signed by Officer Kathleen Ray. That would be about the time Kathleen had come to work at Molena Point PD, Joe thought, not long after he, himself, started hanging around the department when he'd first discovered he could talk and could read and, most alarming, that he was thinking like a human-and, more alarming still, was thinking like a cop.
Mike shifted position again. And again Joe craned to see the file, wondering what Lindsey might have told Kathleen, who was a kind, sympathetic person, that she wouldn't share with a male officer. But as he read Kathleen's notes, he had to remind himself that Lindsey wasn't under suspicion here, that she was the one who had filed the missing-person report.
Lindsey had repeated to Kathleen the gossip about Carson having had several women on the side while Lindsey and he were engaged, including Lindsey's sister, Ryder. Kathleen's interviews with Lindsey's friends had produced the same comments. When Kathleen asked Lindsey about the wife of Carson 's partner having left her husband, Lindsey said she doubted there was any connection.
Partner Ray Gibbs, when he had originally been questioned about Carson 's disappearance, had seemed open and cooperative. He had been straightforward about Nina leaving him, and had produced a letter from her saying that she would not be back. She did not mention divorce, and Gibbs had speculated that she might not want a divorce, hoping one day to inherit his share of the firm. He said she didn't know that wasn't possible, he was sure she didn't know the terms of the incorporation agreement. A photocopy of her letter was in the file, and the original had been booked in as evidence.
The plane tickets for Lindsey and Carson 's honeymoon turned up several months after Carson disappeared; they had been used for a reservation in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Carson Chappell. Neither the flight attendants or airport personnel had been able to describe the boarding couple. Officers had, a week after Chappell disappeared, found Nina Gibbs's car in short-term parking at the San Jose airport, but had turned up no flight ticket issued in her name.
Joe thought the simple solution, that Chappell and Nina Gibbs had run off together, should have resolved the case for Lindsey. But not so. She had kept after the department to search for him, and then later had continued the search on her own. It was during this time that Lindsey and Mike began to date.
Joe thought she must not have involved Mike in trying to find Carson or he would have gone into the department and read the file then. Maybe because Mike worked for the federal courts, his reading of the file might have presented a conflict of interest somewhere down the line? So Mike had deliberately kept his distance from the ongoing investigation? He watched Mike turn back to Kathleen's notes.