Cat Deck the Halls (17 page)

L
UCINDA
G
REENLAW
, leaving the house earlier that morning with the pottery shards safe in her pocket, smiled again thinking of Pedric wandering down the hill like some distinguished-looking mushroom hunter, kneeling among the neighbors' wet leaves and digging out the plastic bag of broken shards; as soon as he returned, she'd called Chief Harper. Her call had just caught him, he'd just come in and was about to leave again. She'd hurried down to the station, parking hastily among the courthouse gardens. As she headed in through the heavy glass door of the police wing, Mabel Farthy looked up from her realm of electronic communications.

“Lucinda!” Mabel swung out through the little gate to give her a hug, the pudgy blonde laughing, her dark uniform a bit tighter around the middle, Lucinda thought, not unkindly. “It's been a long time.” Mabel sniffed at the white plastic bag that Lucinda had laid on the counter. “What
did you bring? Some of your good Christmas cookies?”

Lucinda laughed. “Not this time. This is…” She did her best to look embarrassed. “I think it might be evidence. Well, fingerprints,” she said hesitantly. “This is so…so busybody of me, Mabel. I…”

Max came up the hall as they were talking, took the bag she offered, and led her back to his office. The tall lean chief poured her a cup of coffee and made her comfortable on the couch, sitting down beside her. She opened the plastic bag, still trying to appear embarrassed when, in fact, she wasn't at all, she was having a fine time. But her story required a certain shy reluctance, she was not in the habit of bringing in evidence, and she had to make this look good.

Well, she thought, amused at herself, she'd always wanted to do a little acting. As she laid out her story, she knew she was letting the three cats off the hook—Joe Grey was right, the timing would have been way too pat if the snitch had called about this evidence: The cats are in the office, the chief says he'd give a lot for Betty Wicken's fingerprints, and not an hour later the snitch calls, telling him where to find those prints. “With that scenario,” Joe had said, “everything would hit the fan.”

“I know it's meddling,” Lucinda said now, looking at Max shyly. “But that woman in the rental, the woman our housebreaker was spying on? You said last night, if you could get information on her…Well, I was afraid if I didn't slip right over there when I saw her break this flowerpot, if I didn't snatch up the pieces before she threw them away…I don't even know if a flowerpot can hold fingerprints, but…Am I making any sense…?”

Max looked into the bag, didn't touch the broken shards.

“When she dropped it on the drive…She looked in such a hurry…It shattered and she just left it there, got in her car and drove off. Can you take fingerprints from this? Will that help find out about her?”

Max was silent for so long that Lucinda began to get nervous. She looked at him uncertainly, and sipped the coffee he'd poured for her. “Those photographs of the children, Max. I worried about that all night, I find that really frightening.”

“As do we,” Max said. He watched Lucinda so intently that she grew increasingly uneasy. She knew she was gushing, and that wasn't like her. Max put his arm around her as if, she thought, he meant to humor her, to tell her kindly that what she had done was very clever of her, and then send her away.

But instead, he had beeen interested in what she told him about Evina Woods.

“If we can lift some prints,” he said, “and if we can get anything from AFIS on them, if the woman turns out to have a record, we'll have something to work with.”

Max rose to refill their coffee cups. “So far, on those three tenants, we have false names, false IDs, falsified car registration. That in itself might give us reason to bring them in for questioning, but it leaves a lot of holes.” He picked up the plastic bag. “We have a call in to Arkansas, to check on Evina Woods's story. I'll take this back to Dallas, see if he can lift clear prints. If not, we'll send it along to the lab, where they have more sophisticated equipment.”

“I feel so sure,” Lucinda said, “that Evina was telling the truth.”

Max took her hand, helping her up. “You were bold to go down there and talk with her, Lucinda—I won't say foolish.”

“She didn't threaten me, Max, she seemed really scared. When she saw I wasn't going to call the police, she calmed down. I know that could all have been an act, but…Call it a gut feeling. I think she's telling the truth.”

She looked intently at him. “I'm not a soft touch, but once in a while, you have to take a chance on someone. This is one of the times…If I'm wrong, I expect I'll pay for it. This gamble,” she said, “is one I choose to take.”

 

I
N THE DIM
garage, as Betty Wicken and Leroy Huffman sorted tools at the workbench, packing them into a canvas bag, Joe approached the blue Chevy van. Slipping up onto a stack of cardboard boxes piled between the van and the wall, he balanced with a forepaw against the van's window, peering into the dim interior, his nostrils filled with the stink of automotive paint, from the amateurish blue paint job.

Pressing against the tinted glass, he saw not the pristine interior of Charlie Harper's van, no neatly built-in cupboards, no polished worktable running down one side. Only bare metal bracing and raw composition walls. This ancient, neglected interior had never had any care; it was stripped and ragged, only an empty hulk.

Dropping down to the garage floor, he studied the lettering painted on the van's side—the hasty, unprofes
sional logo, an amateurish copy of the more finely spaced C
HARLIE'S
F
IX-IT
, C
LEAN-IT
.

Somewhere, the Wickens had found another old Chevy van and had treated it to a home paint job on a par with what any active five-year-old kid could accomplish.

“Not Charlie's van,” Kit whispered, narrowing her eyes and lashing her tail.

But Dulcie smiled with relief. “Charlie's safe, and Mavity's safe. But why would anyone copy Charlie's van? What do they mean to do?” Her green eyes flashed. “Setting Charlie up,” she hissed. “But for what? For some burglary?” she said softly. “Or…could this be the missing vehicle that hauled away the dead man?” Her eyes widened. “Did you smell death in there?”

Joe slipped under the van, Dulcie and Kit beside him, and they reared up, sniffing among the axles and brakes. Trying, over the stink of grease and hydraulic and brake fluids, to detect the faintest scent of death; but there was nothing else, no foreign smell.

Dropping down again, they fled among the boxes as Leroy opened the side door of the van and tossed in two bags of tools, some cans of paint, and then ladders, drop cloths, everything one would need to renovate a house, or repair it.

“Are they horning in on Charlie's customers?” Dulcie whispered. “Pretending to work for her?”

“That doesn't make sense,” Joe said softly. “And there's no cleaning equipment, just the repair stuff.” The tomcat frowned. “Doesn't make sense, unless…Unless they've staked out Charlie's wealthy regulars, meaning to rob them—that would set Charlie up, big-time.”

They looked at one another, feeling sick. Law enforcement families were prime marks for any scam to embarrass or compromise them, to put them on the wrong side of the law. The cats remembered too painfully when Captain Harper had been framed for a double murder.

“That won't happen again,” Joe said.

But Kit shivered, pushing closer to Dulcie.

“Nothing has happened yet,” Dulcie said. “We won't let that happen!”

H
URRYING BY THE
station, loaded down with shopping bags, hoping Max was free for lunch, Charlie found him gone. “He had to meet with the judge,” Mabel said. “He went straight there from the Patty Rose School, from talking with Dorothy Street.”

“Another rain check,” Charlie said, laughing. It was well past noon, and she was starved.

“That's what you get when you marry a cop,” Mabel said good-naturedly. “Lucinda Greenlaw brought in some kind of evidence. They talked for a while, then he headed over to meet Dorothy. Leave your packages here if you want to get a bite.”

Charlie nodded. She didn't like to leave packages in her SUV, with no locked trunk. Not this time of year, when bright store packages containing free Christmas booty were all too tempting.

Tucking her packages out of the way in Max's office, she stood a moment wondering what kind of evidence Lucinda
discovered. She was headed out of the station, meaning to stop for a quick bowl of soup, when she saw Dorothy Street and Ryan coming out of the courthouse. Ryan was in jeans, work boots, and a red sweatshirt, Dorothy elegant in a soft gray suit, sheer hose, and Italian flats—succeeding very well in her new, businesslike mode. They waved, and Charlie went to join them. Ryan looked mad enough to explode. Meeting them on the steps, Charlie didn't ask what they'd been doing. This had to be about the permit for the children's home. “Have you had lunch? I'm starved.”

“I ate with Clyde,” Ryan said. “Scotty called me in the middle of lunch. They've denied the permit again. If I die young, of a coronary, you can blame that bunch of bigots!” She glanced at her watch. “I need to get back, meet the landscaper,” and with a wave she headed across the parking lot to her big red Chevy pickup.

Dorothy looked after her, shaking her head with sympathy. Then, “I guess Max stood you up. I rode over with him to pick up some papers. Come on, I'm hungry, too. Want to go back to the inn, have lunch in my office, where we can talk?”

When Charlie nodded, Dorothy flipped open her cell phone, hitting the code for the inn's kitchen. “The shrimp melt okay?”

Charlie nodded enthusiastically. “And hot tea?”

Dorothy gave her chef the order, and as they strode out together past the courthouse gardens, Dorothy glanced at her. “Those people taking pictures of our children…That really scares me. Max called me last night after the Greenlaws' break-in, and then, just now, he showed me the pictures—the copies he made—to see if I could add anything.

“I feel better knowing he's doubled his patrol around the school. But to take pictures of the children…In my book, that means only one thing,” Dorothy said with disgust. “I'm glad they have the woman's fingerprints—the tenant in that house where the pictures came from. Max said he was hoping to get an immediate hit on them, something about having to get an expert to examine them, and he didn't know how long it would take.”

Charlie hadn't known about the prints. Was that what Lucinda had brought in? But how had Lucinda gotten the woman's prints? Why had she…?
Oh,
Charlie thought,
maybe it wasn't Lucinda who retrieved that evidence.
And the scene in Max's office, earlier that morning, played back to her: The officers' mention of the prints. Kit's sudden excitement, the little cat hardly able to contain herself, she was so wild to race away.
This time,
Charlie thought,
this time, those cats sent Lucinda Greenlaw as their courier.

But to Dorothy she said, “It's great when AFIS can get back with an immediate reply, but if the prints aren't clear, someone does have to do a visual exam. And if the prints are close to a lot of others on file, finding a match can take some time.” She studied Dorothy. “Have you talked with the children, about those people?”

“Oh yes. As soon as we knew about the pictures. We don't like to keep things from the children. We all get together after breakfast in the central hall, before classes, talk over anything that needs discussing.”

She looked seriously at Charlie. “We told them about the pictures, and we described the two men and the woman as well as we could from the photos that the intruder shot. Described the car in their driveway, the old green Dodge.
Told them not to play alone, anywhere in the school yard. Not to leave the grounds without one of us, for any reason. It's hard to get the message across to the little ones, and not give them nightmares. Takes a lot of hugging and reassurance.

“But our kids are pretty wise,” Dorothy said. “They all know what to do if they're approached. That's part of the survival course Patty designed—self-protection, managing their money, good health practices, making positive choices in life—and, of course, values.”

Dorothy laughed. “We've had several teachers apply for jobs who said they wouldn't be caught dead teaching values to the children.”

“And? What did you do?”

“We sent them packing,” Dorothy said. “Values are a part of survival, and that was important to Patty, after her little grandson was so brutally murdered. She told me the main reason she left Hollywood was the brutality and glitz and false values, the way the entertainment industry changed, over the years she was a star.”

Turning in through the inn's wrought-iron gate, they crossed through the patio gardens. The sprawling, Spanish-style building, with its pale stucco walls, red tile roof, and generous inner patio, looked as if it might have stood during the days of the Spanish ranches and the first missions. It had, in fact, been built in the late years of the nineteenth century and had served as an inn since its beginnings, under half a dozen owners. Patty Rose had bought it when she retired from Hollywood and moved to a quieter environment. Having always loved Molena Point, she soon became a comfortable part of the village family.

They went in through the tearoom that wouldn't open until midafternoon, when formal tea would be served. The cheerful, chintz-curtained room was chilly, with no fire burning on the hearth to warm the little round tables and the Mexican tile floor. Dorothy led her on through, to her office.

Nothing had changed in Patty's office. Dorothy liked it just as Patty had designed it, the wicker-and-silk sofa, the big leather chair facing the desk, the hand-carved desk and bookshelves that had been made by a Mexican craftsman Patty had known during her Hollywood days. The carved screen behind the desk that, Charlie knew from talking with Joe Grey, concealed a wall safe where each day's receipts were held.

“Ryan and I have an appointment with the mayor at three,” Dorothy said. “His secretary said he was at a meeting up the coast. I think that was an excuse, to give him time to talk with the building inspector and get their ducks lined up. Against us, of course. I did my best to—”

There was a knock at the door, and a tall young waiter wheeled in a cart bearing two covered plates of the inn's famous shrimp melt, a pot of hot tea, and a selection of small, rich desserts. Reaching deftly past Charlie, he pulled out the sliding tray at the back of the desk and set her place with a linen mat and napkin and heavy silver flatware, then he set Dorothy's place on her side of the desk. Charlie found it interesting to see Dorothy in this new light, all spiffed up and so businesslike, and yet so comfortable in her new role. Patty had trained her protégée well.

When the waiter had gone, Dorothy said, “Even though Max has more men patrolling, I'm hiring more guards. I
find it incredible that someone, planning to abduct a child, would have the nerve to come here in daylight and take pictures. Incredible that none of us saw him, that none of the children did.” She shivered. “But those telephoto shots of our little girls. You can tell just about where the photographer stood, behind the cypress trees across the street. Max said that Dallas photographed the area and made casts of some shoe prints.” She looked at Charlie. “Does everyone get this much attention? Is it because we're friends? Or because this involves children?”

“It's the children,” Charlie said. “The whole department is on the watch, they hate this kind of predator. I wish…This is just so sick. And now, at Christmastime, when little kids should be happy…When innocence should be a good thing, and not a safety problem.”

“We try our best to keep the kids informed, but not to scare them unduly. The little ones are tender, and kids dramatize everything. But they have to be alert, Charlie. We've stressed that they're better equipped than most children, if they use common sense and stay together. We have to trust what we've taught them. We're hoping, too, that the excitement of the Christmas pageant and the playhouse contest will give them a heightened sense of community, of being together.”

Dorothy was quiet for a moment; then, “It's less than a year since Patty's vindictive murder, and I keep wondering if someone wants to take out that same hatred on the school…”

They had all been at the theater that night, at a retrospective of Patty Rose's old movies. It was the one night that Patty herself hadn't attended. They returned from the
theater to find her dead, lying in blood on the exterior stairs that led down to the parking garage. It was Kit who had found her. It was the kit who, all alone, had tracked and found her killer—and had subsequently been locked in the house with him, trapped and terrified.

Charlie finished her lemon tart and sipped her tea, puzzling over her feeling of almost knowing something, something she wasn't seeing. She looked at Dorothy. “This is such a strange set of events. I keep wondering, Are we all missing something? Something right in front of us, that we all should recognize? Something I can't bring clear.”

Dorothy thought about that. “Did your cleaning girls mention anything unusual, when they were up here?” Ever since Dorothy lost three of her cleaning staff, in September, Charlie's crew had done most of the work while Dorothy interviewed for new hires.

“That's been a week ago,” Charlie said. “They cleaned up here the end of last week. Mavity didn't mention anything, but I'll ask.”

“They came back yesterday. I thought you'd changed the schedule. I'd just pulled in through the gate when I saw the van pull away from the curb, down by the studio. I wondered why they didn't park on the grounds as they usually do.”

Charlie frowned, puzzled. Maybe Mavity's crew had cleaned one of their accounts near the school, though she didn't remember anyone up there changing their standing appointments. And why would Mavity park down at the end of the school?

Charlie seldom went out on the work crews anymore, but she kept the schedules, paid the girls' salaries and benefits, and handled the paperwork. Her cleaning teams were
booked months in advance, and she could use more help, but it was hard to find competent new hires. Dorothy was proof of that, as hard a time as she was having finding acceptable people.

“I thought I saw one of the school's old cleaning women in the village, a few days ago,” Dorothy said. “She drove off before I could hail her. I wish she'd come back—though I wasn't sure it was the same woman. Her hair was black instead of mouse brown. Same tall, awkward look. She was a good worker. A rather sour sort, but she didn't mind heavy, dirty work. She did most of the cleanup when we bought the old studio, got rid of some trash and an invasion of mice. Good thing the paintings had all been moved out, long before. Those mice would have done hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of damage.”

They parted after their delicious lunch, and Charlie, walking back through the village to her car, thought about the old stone studio. It was easy to imagine the lovely isolation Anna Stanhope had enjoyed, living and working in that charming retreat.

She had to wonder about Anna's studio appearing, at different angles, in the background of several of the intruder's telephoto copies. Well, but the studio was
there,
she told herself. Of course it appeared; a photographer could hardly mask it out.