"Will you quit that? You didn't kill him and you're not going to jail." He took her hand. "You figure a month to do my upstairs. You were right on schedule with my patio construction, so I'm guessing you will be with this. Long before that, Dallas and Harper will have Rupert's killer behind bars."
She just looked at him.
"Believe me. You have no faith in those guys? In your own uncle?" He winked at her. "You'll have to stay out of jail if you mean to be on time, so you can get on with the next project." They had agreed early on that ripping out one downstairs wall, opening Clyde's seldom-used dining room to the kitchen to make one big space for casual entertaining, fit Clyde's lifestyle. Clyde and his friends played poker in the kitchen, and enjoyed their potluck meals there, or on the new enclosed patio.
"And you still want the little tower at one end of the new upstairs?"
"Absolutely. Joe would feel slighted if he didn't have his own place."
Ryan laughed. "You don't spoil your animals." "Of course not." A private cat tower, Joe Grey had said, with glass all around. Sun warmed, with an ocean view. A private feline retreat, off-limits to humans.
But as he joked with Ryan and tried to reassure her, Clyde kept wondering if the cats had called her from her apartment. And wondering if someone had followed her. Wondering if they might have doubled back when they were sure the apartment was empty, maybe used a duplicate key? And that worried him. If someone was in there, he prayed the cats had left.
The gray hatchback did return to Ryan's place while the cats were still crouched on the desk. They were poised to leave when the same car passed below the windows, coming slowly up the hill, and parked half a block up the street.
A tall man emerged moving swiftly toward the building and silently up the wooden stairs. He was maybe forty, with soft brown hair in a handsome blow-dry and, in his right hand, a small leather case the size of a cell phone. As he approached the door the cats dropped off the desk and under the daybed. They were beginning to feel like moles, or like a pair of fuzzy slippers abandoned beneath the mattress. He knocked, knocked again, waited a few minutes, knocked a third time. Then faint scratching sounds began.
"Picking the lock," Joe said.
He was inside within seconds, moving directly to Ryan's desk. Pulling the curtain across the broad windows, he switched on the lamp to low and reached to a pile of files. But then he shoved them back, laughing softly, and picked up the bills and the copy of her billing for the Jakes job, that lay on the blotter. Chuckling, he turned on her computer. The cats glanced at each other. What had these no-good types done before the invention of computers? Seemed like every kind of villainy, these days, required electronic assistance.
But Dulcie couldn't be still, she kept fidgeting and glancing away toward the bathroom window, thinking about going home, thinking about the kit. Joe laid his ears back, hissing.
"Will you cut it out? She's fine."
"We don't know that. We don't know where she is. I don't like when she's gone for hours and hours. We haven't seen her since breakfast."
Joe hissed again gently to make her shut up, and watched their burglar bring up Ryan's bookkeeping program. He went immediately to the Jakes account.
He made a disk copy of the pages, then changed the figures on her hard drive, making them higher, adding several thousand dollars to the bill. Cooking Ryan's books, setting her up for some kind of swindle. Turning on her copy machine, he made two sets of her lumber and supply bills. He put one set in his pocket, and worked on the other with an eraser and Wite-Out, apparently inserting new figures to match the higher numbers in her computer. He made fresh copies of these. As he ran a printout of the doctored billing, the cats could only puzzle over where this was leading. Ryan had taken her completed bill with her, ready to mail. Had the guy guessed that? Had he seen her through the window working at her desk? Did he plan somehow to intercept the envelope after she mailed it?
Or had she not had time to mail it? Was the envelope still in her truck? If he had followed her to the restaurant, he'd know she didn't stop at a mailbox. Maybe he'd strolled by her truck and seen the envelope lying on the seat.
Shutting down the machine and slipping his various sets of bills and the printout into his pocket, he was out of there quickly, locking the door behind him. The cats fled to the desk watching him descend the stairs, walk the half block up the bill, and swing into the gray hatchback. He headed back toward the village.
"What now?" Dulcie said. "If she's already mailed her bill, what's he going to do with that stuff? Do you think that was Larn Williams? That he called earlier just to see if she was going out this evening?"
Joe didn't answer. Knocking the phone off the cradle, for the second time that night he pawed in the number of Ryan's cell phone.
Ryan was enjoying the last of her flan when her cell phone rang. She didn't want to answer, she pushed it across the table to Clyde.
"R. Flannery, construction," he said between mouthfuls.
"May I speak to R. Flannery? I called earlier, I have an urgent message for her."
"I can take the message," Clyde told Joe, trying not shout with rage.
At the other end, Joe sighed. "All right," he said. "I think the guy who followed her is going to break into her truck, within the next few minutes. It's kind of complicated."
Clyde stared at the phone. "Just a minute." He handed the phone to Ryan. "You'd better take this." But he leaned close to listen.
"It's me again," Joe said. "I believe someone is intent on falsifying your billing for the Jakes addition in San Andreas. Have you mailed that bill?"
"I… who is this? How do you…? What are you talking about?"
"Have you mailed the bill or is it still in your truck?"
"No. Yes. It's in my truck. What…?"
"The person who followed you earlier returned to your apartment and broke in. With lock picks. While you've been having dinner he changed the billing on your computer and made copies of the original bills and doctored them. He ran a new printout, made copies of the doctored bills, and left. I'd guess he's headed your way."
"Who is this? How could you know such a thing?"
"He prepared the new statement for considerably more than your original cost-plus numbers. If you've mailed the bill, probably no harm done-unless he is able to intercept it at the other end. If you haven't mailed it, I think he'll try to break into your truck, open the envelope, and switch billings. In other words, he wants to set you up, add embezzlement to the possible charge of murder."
"Why would he bother? Isn't murder enough?"
"Maybe he thinks embezzlement would in some way strengthen the murder charges."
"What does this guy look like, who's supposed to be doing all this?"
Listening to the caller's description of the burglar, she felt all warmth drain from her hands and body.
"Don't let him get that envelope," the caller said. "There isn't much time." And he hung up.
Hitting the disconnect, Joe dropped to the floor and headed for the bathroom window. Ahead of him Dulcie, balanced on the windowsill, said, "I'm going home first, see if the kit's there. She…"
"There's not time," he said, leaping past her. "We'll miss the action."
"Can't help it. Go watch Ryan's truck. I'll be along when I know the kit's safe."
"But…"
Dropping from the window she fled around the building and raced down the sidewalk heading for home, filled with worry.
17
The rusty wire netting of the chicken houses was half falling down like those the kit had seen long ago in her travels when she was small. She longed to push inside and have a look but the smell stopped her, burning and stinging her nose. The stink came strongest where the dirt floor of the pens was covered with sheets of rotting plywood. In the darkening evening she could see that one of those had been shifted aside. A black emptiness loomed beneath, a hole big enough for a man to slip through. Why would a man want to go down there? Padding around the side of the pen, she could see down into the pit where heavy timbers stood against the earthen walls. Rough steps led down.