Cat to the Dogs by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

cab.
    Sitting on the cab floor behind Harper, peering up between the bucket seats, Joe Grey could see through the windshield thelittle pantomime in Cara Ray’s lighted motel room, and he had to smile. Max Harper, spying on Cara Ray’s strip act like some cheap voyeur, would be enjoying every rousing minute—free entertainment served up with his takeout dinner, all in the line of duty.
    The fish and chips smelled so good that Joe was tempted to slash out with a quick paw and snag a nice warm chunk of fried cod. Maybe Harper wouldn’t miss just one piece. Why was it that, so often when he did a bit of surveillance, the watchee enjoyed a nice meal, while the watcher ended up faint with hunger?
    As Cara Ray stepped to the window, Harper drew back behind a lifted newspaper. She stood looking down at the street, then turned away again, a towel over her shoulder as if she were headed for the pool: a little break between her callous and bad-mannered visits to Lucinda Greenlaw. She’d been to see the old woman three times in three days, the last encounter stretching into dinner and on to midnight—Dulcie said the sleek little blonde had made herself very much at home among the male Greenlaws, drawing the cousins and nephews to her like flies to honey, despite the fact that the Greenlaw clan didn’t take quickly to strangers. She said Newlon and Dirken had been all over Cara Ray. “No queen in heat, with a dozen toms raking around her, has any more nerve than that one.”
    Cara Ray had pulled up at Lucinda’s that first day in a gleaming new Jaguar, wearing a fur wrap against the chill of Molena Point’s ocean breeze. The mink and the car, Dulcie said, were very likely gifts from Shamas. Lucinda had answered the door wearing a voluminous apron and wiping flour from her hands.
    â€œI’m Shamas’s friend, Mrs. Greenlaw. From the boat. I was there the night Shamas died.”
    Talk about brass. And Lucinda too polite to send her packing. The older woman had asked Cara Ray in and even made tea for her. Dulcie had watched, disgusted, as they settled down before the fire. But the day was chill, and through the closed windows, she couldn’t hear a word; it wasn’t necessary, though. From theirexpressions and Cara Ray’s body language, even a dunce could see that the little blonde was buttering up Lucinda shamefully.
    The moment Lucinda rose to make fresh tea, Cara Ray had gone into action.
    She was swift and thorough, riffling through Lucinda’s desk and through her checkbook. She had begun on the books that lined the fireplace, reaching behind the lower rows to feel along the walls, when she heard Lucinda return.
    Lucinda entered the room to see Cara Ray sitting innocently cuddled in her chair beside the hearth.
    Of course Dulcie couldn’t leave that little episode alone; since Cara Ray’s arrival, Dulcie had hung on the fence every waking moment. If Molena Point Library had a resident cat, she was not currently in residence; she hardly went home for meals. Cara Ray returned the next day and the next, and Dulcie was there. Again on the third day Cara Ray stayed until midnight.
    Now, with Joe and Dulcie’s “meddling,” as Clyde would put it, with Dulcie’s anonymous suggestion to Harper, the captain was—pardon the pun—taking a good look at Cara Ray. It had begun earlier that afternoon, when Harper had stopped by Clyde’s and mentioned he had a make on Raul Torres, and Joe and Dulcie decided to take a ride.
    It was Saturday, and at Harper’s suggestion, Clyde planned to take Selig up to Harper’s pasture to work on the pup’s obedience training in a large, open area. The two pups were impossible together; Charlie had taken Hestig home to her apartment. She and Clyde couldn’t even attend the same obedience class; the pups did nothing but taunt each other, play on each other’s foolishness. Joe had been shocked out of