Cat Raise the Dead (24 page)

As the door opened, the cats streaked from the darkroom, through Renet's dressing room, and out onto the balcony, and crouched against the wall beneath a spindly iron chair. There were no potted ferns here to conceal them. They heard the outer door close, and as footsteps crossed the room, Dulcie peered around through the glass—and went rigid.

“That's not Renet. That's—oh my God. She hasn't come here. What colossal nerve.”

“
Who
hasn't?” He pressed against her, to look.

“Your cat burglar. That's your
cat burglar
.”

The frowsy old woman was dressed, today, not in her tentlike black raincoat, but in a tan model, equally voluminous. A floppy, matching rain hat was pulled down over her straggling gray hair—perhaps she found the fog just as distasteful as a pouring rain. She crossed the room as brazenly as if she owned the place. Joe watched her with blazing eyes, enraged by her nerve—yet, highly amused. He felt a sudden, wild admiration for the old woman. Talk about chutzpah.

She had walked right into the Prior household, and in the middle of the day. Walked in, with who knew how many maids and other household help on the premises, walked in here bold as brass balls on a monkey.

“And where did she get a key?” Dulcie whispered. “From one of the maids? Did she bribe one of the
maids? And didn't the yardman or anyone see her, didn't anyone wonder?”

Entering Renet's dressing room, the woman pulled off her raincoat and laid it carefully on the metal worktable. It was lumpy, its inner pockets loaded. Her baggy black skirt and black sweater made her look even more ancient. She stood looking around the room, then approached the dressing table.

Staring into the three-way mirror at her wrinkled old face and shaggy gray hair, she winked. Winked at herself and grinned. Seemed as pleased with her reflection as if she were young and beautiful.

Sitting down at the dressing table, making herself right at home, she removed the floppy hat, shook out her long gray hair, and eased off her shoes. She seemed unafraid that someone would burst in and find her. She undid the waistband of her skirt, rose, and pulled it off.

“What's she doing?” Dulcie breathed.

“Maybe she's planning to wear some of Renet's clothes when she leaves.” As he reared up for a better look, he glanced down over the balcony and saw the horse and rider crossing the drive, headed up toward the cemetery. “There's Harper.” And he grinned, his yellow eyes gleaming. His voice in her ear was barely audible. “Perfect timing. We'll get Harper up here. She's a sitting duck; Harper will nail her.”

The woman tossed her skirt onto the table, atop her coat. She removed her black sweater, and her blouse and slip, then turned back to the dressing table. Stood in her pants and bra, looking in the mirror. The cats were so amazed they couldn't have spoken, if their lives depended on speech.

But the cat burglar did not seem distressed. The shocking contrast between her young, firm, smooth body and her ancient wrinkled face seemed not to phase her.

She looked like a young woman wearing the mask—the living mask—of a Halloween witch.

She sat down at the dressing table, lifted up her gray hair, and removed it with one smooth motion as casually as she had removed the floppy hat. Beneath the vanished wig, her own pale hair was wispy and matted. She brushed it and tried to fluff it, and sighed.

Putting the wig in one of the hatboxes, she arranged it as if the box might contain a little stand, perhaps one of those white Styrofoam heads with no face. The cats crept closer to see, moved in through the balcony door, into the room, staying behind the metal table.

Lifting a large bottle, she uncapped it, releasing a smell like nail polish remover. Pouring the clear liquid into a little dish, she soaked a cotton ball and began to scrub at her eyebrows, then rubbed the sharp-smelling liquid into her wrinkled face.

She did this several times, and then, working quickly, she peeled away her thick gray eyebrows and began to peel off her wrinkles, wadding them in handfuls, dropping the refuse in the wastebasket. Revealing young, smooth skin beneath.

Slowly Renet's face emerged, smooth and plain. A face totally unremarkable, as quickly forgotten as bland generic cat food.

Halfway through this task she stopped her work and turned, looking nervously around the room. Behind the table, the cats froze. Did she sense someone watching?

But she did not look in their direction, her glances across the room were higher up—looking for a human spy. And as she rose and turned, the cats slipped away to the balcony again, sliding beneath the questionable shelter of the lacy iron chair, into its thin, openwork shadow.

She tried the door leading to her bedroom and seemed relieved that it was securely locked. She stepped to the darkroom and stood in the doorway, looking in, then returned to the dressing table. The cats hunched close together, watching her cup her hands over her face and lean down, removing her contact lenses.

She cleaned the contacts carefully, put them in their little plastic box, and slipped that into the small drawer of the tiny chest. Her face was red and blotched from the harsh chemical.

Now, still in her cotton pants and bra, standing at the worktable, she removed from the coat's inner pockets a handful of glitter, flicked on the gooseneck lamp, and held to the light several gold bracelets, three gleaming chokers, four pairs of glittering earrings. She studied each, then turned away, leaving the jewelry scattered across the table.

Unlocking the door to her bedroom, she moved inside. They heard her open the cupboard, but from this vantage they couldn't tell what she was doing. Not until they slipped in again, to the bedroom door, did they see that she was holding the doll, cuddling it.

For the first time, Dulcie could see the doll clearly. She crept close, halfway into the room, took a good look. As they slipped away again to the balcony, she whispered so close to Joe's ear that her breath tickled.

“That's not the doll Mae Rose gave to Renet; that was a regular child's doll. This is something else. It's so real, like a real person. That's one of the stolen dolls, those valuable collector's dolls.”

They watched Renet return to the dressing room, carrying the doll, touching its cheek with one finger. Sitting down again before the mirror, she propped the doll at the end of the dresser against the hatboxes, then began to work cream into her own chapped, red skin, using little round strokes as one might learn from a beauty magazine article on correct skin care. They were watching her with interest when, in the mirror, Renet's eyes caught theirs.

From the glass, she stared straight at them. Her eyes locked on their eyes.

They backed away, crouching to leap to the next balcony. She ran, dived for them. Before they could jump she was between them, cutting them off from each
other and from the rail. Joe streaked between her legs into the bedroom. Dulcie fled toward the darkroom, swerved, slid behind the dressing table. Renet slammed the balcony door shut and turned, began to stalk them.

Carrying the rotten meat in his handkerchief, Harper approached the old adobe stables that Adelina had converted to a maintenance building and garages. The structure was designed for maximum cooling, its rows of stalls set well back beneath deep overhangs, and its four sides facing an inner courtyard fashioned to trap the cool night air and hold it during the heat of the day. Entry to the stable yard was through an archway wide enough for a horse and wagon, so would easily accommodate any car. One row of stalls now served as garages—their inner walls extended out to the edge of the overhang, and individual garage doors had been added—providing a roomy eight-car area to house the Prior vehicles. All of the garage doors stood open, and a push broom leaned against the wall halfway down.

The spaces nearest him were empty; one of these probably belonging to Adelina's new Rolls, one to Renet's blue van, and a space likely reserved for Teddy's specially equipped van, for the times when he chose to stay here. The other vehicles showed him only a bumper, a bit of rear fender.

The courtyard was wet and slick where Carlito Vasquez was hosing down the wheels of the big riding mower. Vasquez was a middle-aged, lean little man, likable and generally responsible, who did not talk, as far as Harper knew, about his employer, about details of
her estate management, or about any personal business he might be privy to.

Moving across the courtyard to where the hose hissed and splattered, carrying the package of rotten meat, Harper paused only briefly to take a better look into the open garages.

A surge of surprise hit him. And a deep excitement.

In the last stall stood a blue '93 Honda. The plate, where dried mud had flaked away, was partially legible: California plate 3GHK…

It was days like this, when something unexpected and significant was handed to him almost like a gift, that made all the dirt he had to deal with seem worthwhile.

As he moved on toward Carlito, the groundskeeper turned off the hose at the handheld nozzle. Harper handed him the handkerchief-wrapped, stinking meat. “You put this in the garbage, Carlito. You know what this is. Show me where you keep the cyanide.”

Carlito cringed, as if he'd been hit, and pointed toward an open stall. Harper could see bags of fertilizer piled inside and, along one wall, a shelf of cans and bottles, probably garden sprays, vermin poison.

“Leave the cyanide where it is, Carlito. My men will take a look. Don't even go in that stall until I tell you.”

Carlito nodded.

He gave the caretaker a long look, then waved him away. “Go put that meat in the garbage. Put the lid on real tight so nothing can get at it.
No mas animales muerte. Comprende
?”

Carlito nodded again, dropping his glance before Harper's angry stare. And, Harper thought, the man had only done what he was paid to do.

“No matter what kind of orders Ms. Prior gives you, if I find any more poison anywhere on this property, you're going to find yourself sleeping in
la carcel. Comprende
? Now vamoose, get rid of this stuff. I'll speak to Ms. Prior.”

Carlito left, carrying Harper's redolent handkerchief,
took off across the stable yard fast for the narrow arch at the back that led behind the stalls. The estate kept its garbage cans there, secured to the wall to keep local dogs and raccoons from overturning them.

When Carlito had gone, Harper moved on over to the garages. The ceilings were low, the shadowed spaces exuding cool air. He could hardly tell where the walls of the old stable ended and the new adobe had been added on, the work matched so well. Adelina didn't stint when it came to builders and construction work.

Scraping the remaining mud off the last three numbers, he stood grinning.

This was the one.

Feeling like a kid at Christmas, he circled the Honda, looking in through its closed windows, touching neither the glass nor the vehicle itself.

A flowered hat lay on the backseat beside a woman's blue sweater and a pair of flat shoes. He used the tail of his shirt to open the passenger door and the glove compartment and lift out the registration.

The car was registered to a Darlene Morton of Mill Valley. This was neither the name nor the address registered in Sacramento to this particular California plate.

Turning up his radio, he spoke to the dispatcher, asking for a team to dust the Honda and collect other evidence. When he signed off, he moved out through the arch again, stood idly watching the house, considering the possibilities of who the car might belong to.

He knew of no old, gray-haired woman in the Prior household, except that maid he'd seen.

That would be a gas, one of the maids into burglaries on her day off.

He found it impossible to imagine Adelina rigging herself up as the cat burglar; Adelina wouldn't waste her time on such foolishness. These burglaries were more like a lark, someone's idea of a little profitable recreation, B and E for a few laughs. And he didn't think
Adelina would stand for that misbehavior from her sister, not when it might cast a shadow on her own image.

Or would she?

Unless maybe they had some kind of trade-off.

The animal poisonings were another matter, and were easy enough to explain if Adelina didn't want dogs digging up the old, historical cemetery. She was big on historical landmarks, on civic pride; that stuff impressed other people.

As he stood watching the house he heard shouting and someone running inside on the hard floor. Renet's voice, shouting again. And a shadow that looked like Renet ran across the living room. At the same moment a streak of darkness fled, low, inches from the floor: out the door and across the terrace, disappearing into the bushes. One of those cats had sneaked in, he thought amused, and Renet had chased it out.

The next moment, Renet stepped out through the patio door, stood studying the terrace and bushes and the lawn beyond, then looking away toward the oak wood and graveyard.

When she turned at last, she seemed to see him for the first time. She gave him a friendly wave, and moved back inside.

Across the grove, he could see Buck standing easy now, only fussing idly at his rope, trying to get a mouthful of grass. He watched with interest the azalea bushes where the cat had disappeared. But when, after some minutes, nothing moved there, he turned away and headed back through the courtyard toward the back of old stables, where the garbage cans were kept, to make sure that Carlito had done as he'd been told—had put that poisoned meat where nothing could get at it. But, crossing the stable yard, he kept seeing the cat running from Renet, seeing that swift, low shadow.

Dulcie crouched high among the branches of an oak tree, looking down on the old graves and watching out through the dusky leaves to the Prior house. Watching for Joe. Nervously, she listened to Renet shouting, heard Renet running through the house across the hard floors—surely she was still chasing the tomcat.

Below her, at the base of the tree, the doll sat on the grass. Dulcie had gotten the lady out, had dragged her down the stairs and across the lawn despite the wild chase Renet gave them.

Renet shouted again, and Joe burst out the patio door, streaking across the terrace. As he dived into the bushes, Renet came flying out behind him, her robe flapping half-open over her pants and bra. As she hit the terrace, Dulcie saw Max Harper standing beyond, at the stables, watching her with interest.

Renet didn't see Harper, stood looking for Joe. Not until she headed for the bushes did she spot Harper. She stopped, waved to him, maddeningly casual, then turned away and went back into the house, her search foiled. Dulcie smiled, and watched Harper to see what he would do.

Earlier, when Renet attacked them on the balcony, driving them apart, she had fled straight for the dressing table. Leaping up, she had snatched the doll in her teeth. She was desperate to take away some evidence,
somehow to alert Harper—short of shouting the whole story at him.

For a split second, as she grabbed the doll, her eyes locked with Joe's, then they fled in opposite directions, Joe leading Renet away, racing into the empty photo studio. The minute they were gone, Dulcie dragged the doll out, down the hall, and down the stairs, jerking it along in a panic of haste, clumping down the steps, terrified she'd break the delicate lady. But she had no choice. She needed the doll—this was the only plan she could think of. As she gained the bottom stair she could hear Renet running, just above her, chasing Joe through Adelina's room. She prayed he could keep safe.

But if Renet caught that tomcat, she'd be sorry. She'd be hamburger. Unless…unless he made a mis-step, unless she threw something heavy and had good aim. She heard Renet double back, shouting, could picture Joe dodging beneath the bed, beneath the white leather chairs, pictured him leaping from one balcony to the next and back again as Renet raced from room to room in hot pursuit. If she hadn't been so terrified for him, despite his claws and teeth—and so busy dragging the heavy doll down the stairs—she'd have found the humor in this, would have watched the charade, laughing.

Pulling the doll along through the living room, she had reached the terrace and managed to jerk the doll across into the azaleas. It seemed to grow heavier, every step. She hardly paused to catch her breath; she raced away again across the lawn, jerking the doll along and praying no one was watching. When at last she dragged it in among the tombstones, her insides felt as if they were ruptured.

She felt better when she reached the hidden squares of new turf. Working carefully, she had placed the miniature lady between two squares of sod, arranged her so she sat just on the crack, leaning over to touch the grass. The lady's pale skin and white petticoats and
blue silk dress shone brightly against the dark woods. Dulcie had smoothed the doll's skirts with her paw and carefully pressed the doll's little hands down into the earth, into the thin seam between the sod squares.

Then she had scorched up into the oak tree.

As she watched the terrace, Joe burst suddenly from the bushes, a gray streak flying across the lawn and into the woods, crouching behind a headstone, staring out toward the house, wild-eyed. Renet must have given him a real chase.

“Here,” she whispered, moving so he could see her.

He raced to the wood and stormed up the tree and onto her branch, his ears flat, his yellow eyes huge. He crouched beside her, panting, his sides heaving.

She licked his ear, but he shook his head irritably and backed away.

“Hot. About done for. That woman's as full of fight as a bulldog.”

She was quiet until he had rested and caught his breath. At last he moved closer, settling against her. “You'd never think it to look at her. Three times she nearly creamed me, throwing things. She even threw a camera—damn thing could have killed me.” He scowled down at the doll sitting on the turf below them.

“Very pretty bait, Dulcie. But even if Harper finds it…”

“I can hardly wait.”

“He'll dig up the turf, all right. He'll find whatever's hidden underneath. But he won't connect the doll to Renet.”

“He'll
know
it's one of the stolen dolls. You said the Martinezes gave him a good description.”

“They did. Of course he'll know the doll is evidence, and Harper told Clyde those dolls are worth plenty. But that doesn't connect to Renet. And even if he did suspect her, he can't search the house without a warrant.”

“He can
get
a warrant, call the judge. He's done that before. Judge Sanderson—”

“Harper finds a doll in the cemetery. Sanderson is going to issue a warrant on that?”

“If he dusts the doll for prints, finds Renet's prints—”

“That takes lab time. Computer time. And even then, there might not be a record. If she's never been arrested, then those prints from the burglarized houses will match those on the doll, but neither set will link to Renet.”

Dulcie sniffed with impatience. Tomcat logic was so pedestrian. “First he has to find the doll. Then we'll take it from there. If he comes this way, he can't miss it. If he doesn't come into the grove, I'll lead him here.”

“Fine. That's a clever move.”

“
I
think—” She paused, looking past him. “He's coming.” They watched Harper swinging toward them across the lawn. But at the same moment, two squad cars pulled down the front drive. The first black-and-white parked in front of the house. The other car moved on down the drive to the back, stopping beside Harper. The police captain stood leaning on the door. They couldn't hear much of the conversation over the static of the radio. When the car pulled away, Harper turned back toward the house.

Dulcie wasn't having that; she hadn't planted the doll for nothing. Like a flash, she dropped out of the tree, fled for the tethered gelding. Puzzled, Joe watched her from the branch, then realized what she was up to. He tensed to charge down and defend her as she leaped at the gelding's head, then raced around his hooves. Darting in, she slapped at his legs and spun away, harried him until he snorted and began to rear, jerking on his tie rope. When she jumped up at his neck, clawing him, the buckskin squealed and bucked.

Harper came running.

The horse jerked and squealed. When Dulcie saw Harper, she vanished. She was gone, behind headstones, behind trees.

Harper was totally intent on getting to the buckskin,
he'd never see the doll. Joe let out a bloodcurdling yowl, a caterwaul that should stop a battalion of fast-moving cops.

Harper paused; he was not six feet from the doll. He stood looking.

Glancing away to the buckskin, seeing that the horse had begun to quiet, Harper knelt, studying the little seated lady, looking at her tiny hands tucked down into the seam between the squares of sod. His thin, lined face showed no emotion, not surprise, not incredulity. It was a cop's face, stony and watchful.

But his fingers twitched as he carefully parted the grass, studying the line in the dark, rich soil.

He didn't touch the doll. He moved to several positions, looking at the thin creases where sod met sod. The gelding was quiet now, was, Joe decided, a sensible horse not given to unnecessary histrionics. When the danger passed, he forgot it.

As Harper walked the excavation, following the nearly invisible lines, finding the cross seams, behind him, among the headstones, Dulcie slipped past, returning quietly, swarming up the tree without sound, not even a whisper of her claws gripping into the thick oak bark.

They crouched close together watching Harper step off the breadth and width of the excavation. When he lifted his radio from his belt, Dulcie crept out along the branch, flicking her tail with anticipation.

Harper called for two more squad cars. When he told the dispatcher to patch him through to Judge Sanderson, Dulcie grew so excited, waiting for the judge, shifting from paw to paw, that she nearly lost her grip on the branch. Joe nosed at her, pressing her back against the trunk to a more secure perch, glaring at her until she settled down.

By the time the two police units arrived, Harper had bagged the doll for evidence, had posted a guard beside the two-by-six sod-covered excavation, and had stationed
another guard at the stables. The cats burned to know what was there. Harper had not mentioned, to the judge, anything about the stables, had told Judge Sanderson only that he needed to excavate further in the cemetery, and that he had new evidence about the string of burglaries. When Harper left the grove, so did Joe and Dulcie. Slipping along behind him, keeping to the cover of the headstones, they followed him toward the house.

Slinking from gravestone to gravestone in swift dashes, streaking across the lawn behind Harper, they gained the azalea bushes. Then under a chaise lounge, working their way across the terrace toward the kitchen, and past.

A tan Ford was parked by the back stairs. They slipped up the narrow steps, listening. Beside Renet's door they scrambled up a support post to the roof.

Within moments they were prowling the warm tiles, the red clay expanse seeming as long as a city block. Below them, on the front drive, the two black-and whites were parked, and four officers stood talking with Harper. The other squad cars, behind the house, had stopped beside the stable.

They watched the long front drive, as an unmarked car turned in. Approaching the house it pulled up in front. The driver handed Harper a white envelope.

“Search warrant,” Joe said softly.

“I hope Renet hasn't already cleared out all the evidence, every necklace and bracelet. We could go down there, distract her. Give Harper a chance to search. We can just drop down onto her balcony and—”

“Yeah, right. We could do that.”

“But…”

“I've had enough of her. The woman's a fiend.” Whatever bland, innocuous presence Renet managed to exude in the course of everyday living, she was a Jekyll and Hyde when it came to cats.

Dulcie nudged him, and he turned to look. Away behind them, across the upper hills, two more police
cars were coming, making their way along a narrow, rutted back road. Behind them followed a dark, unmarked station wagon. The three vehicles turned downhill just above the grove, onto the dirt lane that bordered the cemetery on the far side, parking at the edge of the graves near the yellow police tape.

Four uniformed officers got out of the police units. The two men in dark suits who emerged from the station wagon each carried a backpack. Farther on, Harper's buckskin gelding, still tied to his tree, looked toward the men with interest. He didn't shy now; he was beautifully calm.

The six men stood talking beside the raw earth of Dolores Fernandez's grave, then moved on across the grove toward the patch of nearly invisible sod squares where Harper had found the doll, where he had left a yellow tape tied.

The two men in suits set down their packs and walked around the sod rectangle, then knelt to carefully probe at its edges. They worked at this for some time before one of the men fished a camera from his pack, adjusted some lens attachment, and began to take pictures.

Dulcie smiled with satisfaction, and settled more comfortably on the warm roof tiles. Joe yawned and curled down against the chimney in a patch of sun. When the photographer finished shooting pictures, both men walked the area, bending to pick up minute bits of evidence, dropping each into a little transparent bag. After some time, they produced long slim knives, working carefully at the sod, slipping the blades down into the hairline cracks. The cats were distracted only when two more cars came down the long drive: a black Lincoln and Adelina's pearl red Bentley, both vehicles squealing to a halt before the front door.

Car doors were flung open, two men in dark suits got out of the Lincoln, moving close to Adelina as she approached the house. At the same moment, as if she
had been watching the drive, Renet slammed out the front door to join her sister. The cats could imagine phone calls from within, down to Casa Capri, could just picture Renet's panicked phone summons to Adelina. The two men had to be Adelina's attorneys.

From within the house, Max Harper appeared behind Renet. And as Renet and Adelina began to argue, the two men lit into Harper. They wanted to know what business he had bringing his police up here. They informed him that if he didn't leave at once, they'd have him in court.

“Lawyers,” Joe said with disgust. “They'd better think again, if they plan to take
Harper
into court.” He might rag Max Harper, but no one else had better give him a hard time. Harper did not seem pleased with the attorneys' abrasive attitudes. The cats had never before seen him really mad. They watched, highly entertained, kneading their claws against the clay tiles, as Harper worked the two attorneys over. They watched him back the lawyers toward their car, watched the two retreat inside the Lincoln and drive away, watched Harper herd Adelina and Renet into the house. That was the last the cats saw of the Prior sisters until they were escorted out the front door an hour later to a patrol car, where they were locked in the back behind the wire barrier. “Like common drunks,” Dulcie said.

When the Prior sisters had been driven away, and the cats looked back toward the grove, the forensics team had removed two squares of sod and were lifting out a third, placing it on a plastic sheet, using tools as small as teaspoons. The two men stopped only long enough to pull on protective blue jumpsuits, to tie on white masks over their noses and mouths, and pull on rubber gloves.

Another half hour and the smell of decomposed flesh hit the air like a giant huff of fetid breath. Another hour more of tedious work, and the men had something new to photograph.