Cat Spitting Mad by Shirley Rousseau Murphy Page B

If that doesn’t make you look guilty—”
    â€œThere’s nothing else I can do. That’s protocol, to do that. Nothing guilty about it. If I stayed in the department, I could manipulate my people, cook the papers, cook the evidence. It’s not ethical, Clyde. You know that.”
    â€œI’ll clean up the spare room. But what about during the day—I can’t baby-sit you, Max, while I’m at work.”
    â€œI’ll make myself visible in the village. And I’m not finished looking for Dillon. I can move around, be seen, keep my eyes open but stay out of the department’s way. If I ride out with the searchers, I’ll stay with a group. Some of them keep their horses up at Campbell’s.”
    â€œThe department’s searched the old Pamillon place?”
    â€œWe were all over it that first night and the next day. The detectives have been back three times, have climbed down into every dark, musty cellar that ever existed on that land.
    â€œThis morning they had tracking dogs in there. One of them scented something; it started on a trail, then kept doubling back—sniffing around a puff of animal hair caught on the rocks. Dogs got all confused. I don’t think they ever did get Dillon’s scent, I think it was just a fox or something—maybe that cougar. The cougar’s pad marks were back and forth through the old house—that’s what has me worried.”
    From beneath the table, the cats couldn’t see their faces. Nor did they need to.
    Harper said, “If there was some trace of Dillon up there that the dogs couldn’t find, it’s beyond what any human could detect.
    â€œEvery department in California has her description and photo,” Harper said. “The local TV channels will keep running her picture, along with a recording of her voice, that her mother gave us. Whatever son of a bitch has her, Clyde, whatever son of a bitch hurts her, I’ll kill him.”

10
    M ax Harper’s words kept ringing in Joe’s head. If there was some trace of Dillon, that the dogs couldn’t find, it’s beyond what any human could detect.
    Had Harper been unwittingly asking for other-than-human assistance?
    Not likely. Not Max Harper.
    But as the two cats emerged from the grass at the edge of the Pamillon estate and trotted beneath the chain barrier, Joe’s mind was filled with questions. The scarred horseshoe, Harper’s boot prints, the anonymous phone calls to Harper and then to Gedding.
    Behind them down the hills, the red village rooftops and dark oaks shone in a bright patchwork against the blue sea—a chill winter day, clear and sharp and filled with potential.
    Slipping in among the fallen walls, their whiskers sliding across broken bricks, threading between overgrown rosebushes whose thorns caught at their fur, they knew that something had drawn them here. Ascent left undetected? Some small clue overlooked? Something that puzzled them and pulled them back.
    Springing up the trunk of a broken oak tree, they studied the massy growth below them, the jungle of tall, wild broom and upturned tree roots. Vines woven across a rusted wheelbarrow. A wrought-iron gate standing alone, slowly being pulled down by vines. A world as impenetrably green and mysterious as Rima’s haunted Green Mansions, in the book that Wilma and Dulcie liked to read.
    Seeing nothing below them to draw their specific attention, they dropped down again among the foliage where the afternoon light filtered to jade.
    Scenting along through the bushes, they could detect no human trail. Only wild green smells and animal smells, filling every pocket of air. They had to rear up, every few steps, to see their way.
    Where the ancient adobe bricks had been dished out by fifty years of wear, rainwater was cupped, and the cats drank, lapping among the leaves. Down beneath crushed leaves and broken foliage, the earth was a mass of crisscrossed