"Would you like to meet me at the station? I can be there in five minutes."
"I'm not at home, I'm in Sacramento. I fly back tonight."
"How did you know about the article?"
"My daughter called me. She thought it was strange."
"When can you come in?"
Betty Eastmore made an appointment with Garza for the following morning. He offered to meet her at the airport, at the time her plane was scheduled to land, and give her a ride back to the village.
Was that really very professional, Joe wondered, meeting her away from the station to take her report?
For the rest of the afternoon, lying on the mantel behind Garza's head, Joe listened to the detective play back interview tapes and record his observations. He did not play Crystal's tape. Just before dinner, Garza played his interview with Max Harper. The detective's questions, and his dictated notes, were upsetting. By the time the tape was finished, Joe didn't want any supper. Garza had really bored into Harper. Oh, he'd started out very friendly, all buddy-buddy cop stuff, but when he couldn't make Harper change his story, he had come down hard, taunting Harper.
Harper had handled the interview calmly, with no change of voice, and of course no discrepancies in the facts. But later when Garza played back his own recorded memos, he had constructed a scenario where Harper could have galloped up the mountain the short way, meeting the Marners at the crest. Garza had calculated that Harper would have had time to kill them, get home again, change clothes, and get to the station by five. The tape was made before Betty Eastmore called him. The detective made it clear that there was no witness to Harper's whereabouts between four and five, when Harper claimed to be watching Stubby Baker's apartment.
During Harper's interview, Garza had questioned the captain's relationship with Crystal Ryder and with Ruthie Marner-he had asked a good many questions about Ruthie, and about how her mother viewed their friendship.
"She viewed it just fine. We were friends, riding companions, Crystal and the Marners and Dillon-I rode with them because of Dillon, because I didn't want to be riding alone with a minor."
"I can understand that."
But later, in his notes, Garza discussed in some detail Harper's leave schedule for the past two years. Harper had taken three short vacations down the coast to Cambria, where he could have met either Crystal or Ruthie or Helen, could have spent several days with any one of them.
Nonsense, Joe thought. That is totally reaching for it. But only once did the tape make Joe's fur stand rigid.
During the time that Garza and Harper walked the Pamillon estate, while Garza taped their conversation, they had seen the cougar's pawprints, and had discussed the possibility that the lion might have found Dillon as she hid from the Marners' killer. The discussion sickened him. He wondered if he should go back there and search again.
But what good? He and Dulcie had been all over that property, and so had the search teams.
And what did Garza intend to do with the Eastland woman's statement? The detective's interview of Harper left him feeling decidedly irritable.
Dropping down from the mantel, he retired to the window seat, all claws and bad temper. He was lying on his belly, sulking, when Kate and Hanni returned. Hanni, setting her camera and purse on the dining table, stopped to stroke him. Angry and out of sorts, he hissed and slashed at her.
She jerked her hand away, her brown eyes widening.
He hung his head, ashamed. And Kate descended like a whirlwind, grabbing him by the nape of the neck.
Hanni stopped her. "Don't, Kate. Maybe he hurts somewhere. Maybe I touched a wound from fighting."
"I doubt it. Let me feel, Joe. Are you wounded?" Kate glared at him and poked him, pushing and prodding with a familiarity that even Clyde would hesitate to inflict. "You growl at anyone again, Joe Grey, you're dog meat."
He wanted to claw Kate as well.
"Can't find anything," she said lightly. "I'll watch him for swelling. Probably he has a hair ball." She gave him another scowl, her amber eyes blazing with such a catlike temper herself that he wanted to yowl with laughter.
But later at dinner, Kate and Hanni together fixed him a nice plate of lamb chops, cutting the pieces up small. Serving him on the window seat, Hanni reached again to stroke him.
He gave her a purr.
"Friends?" she said.
He rubbed his face against her hand; though, in truth, his mood hadn't brightened much.
Why hadn't Garza tossed Stubby Baker's apartment? Why hadn't he searched Crystal's duplex? Did he not have sufficient cause? Didn't he think the judge would issue warrants?
Or did he have no need to do those things?
Did Garza already know where Dillon was?
Watching the detective, he told himself he was letting his imagination run crazy, that he was too emotionally involved. But he felt as restless as bees on a skillet.
Well, maybe Garza didn't have probable cause to do those searches. But not every player in this game needed a warrant.
Giving Kate a look of urgency, as if he really needed to go out, he headed for the back door.
20
THE TIME was 9:30, the night sky clear, the slim moon and stars as bright as polished diamonds. On the village sidewalks, traffic was beginning to thin, late diners emerging from the restaurants, heading home or to their motels. While the tourists dawdled, looking in the shop windows, Joe Grey hurried along, brushing past their ankles, dodging across the narrow streets between slow-moving cars until soon he had left the shops behind and was among the crowding cottages. Passing Wilma's house and moving up the north slope of the village, he paused before Crystal Ryder's duplex.
Above the two double garages, with their closed, unwelcoming doors, Crystal's windows were ablaze. In the far unit, only a faint light burned. Two different kinds of music came out-modern jazz from Crystal's side, country from her neighbor, the two mixing in nerve-jangling discord.
Padding up the tall flight of wooden stairs, he leaped to Crystal's window.
The screen was still loose, but the window itself was locked. He was peering between the curtains when the garage door rumbled open below him. Dropping to the deck, he looked over, watching Crystal's black Mercedes back out, the top down, Crystal's amber hair catching the light from the overhead. Behind her, as she headed down the hill, the door rumbled closed again. He watched until she was out of sight, then tried the front door, leaping up to swing on the knob.
Locked.
Galloping down the stairs, he fled around the building and up the grassy hill, to where the back windows might be accessible.
From the steep slope, he peered across a six-foot space to a lone window, very small, perhaps the bathroom window. The top half was open a few inches.
No light burned in the bathroom, but light seeped through from the studio. Springing across to the sill, he leaped for the top of the double-hung. Under his sudden weight, it crashed down so hard it nearly sent him flying. Scrambling over, he dropped down inside, narrowly missing a cold bath in the commode. He was just congratulating himself on his graceful entrance when the garage door rumbled up again and he heard the Mercedes pull in.
Had she forgotten something? If he only waited a few moments, would she drive away again?
Since he and Dulcie had followed the kit and found the tapes and escrow papers, he hadn't been able to shake his uneasy feeling about this apartment. Call it overactive curiosity, call it senseless fear. Joe thought of it as the kind of feeling a cop got-he'd heard plenty of stories over the poker table as he lolled across the cards, getting in the way. Sometimes an officer just knew something was amiss. Knew that the perp had a gun stashed in the seat behind him. That the innocent-looking high school girl batting her eyes at him from the driver's seat had a trunkful of drugs. No rhyme or reason. Just a feeling. He had it now, about this apartment.