Cat to the Dogs by Shirley Rousseau Murphy Page B

told Lucinda she arrived Saturday. Don’t you think it strange that Torres and Cara Ray would come to Molena Point on exactly the same day?”
    â€œDulcie…”
    â€œTorres worked in Seattle. Shamas still had a business there.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œLucinda told Wilma that when Shamas went up to Seattle she was sure he took a woman with him, not someone from Molena Point but someone he’d meet at the San Francisco airport—Lucinda did keep an eye on his phone bills.”
    Dulcie smiled smugly. “Cara Ray lives in San Francisco, not too far from the airport. Shamas flew to Seattle, out of that airport, about once a month.
    â€œSo?” Joe said.
    â€œCara Ray was Shamas’s lover. But was she Torres’s lover, too? Did she see Torres, as well, when she was in Seattle? She must have been busy.”
    Joe rolled over again, scratching his back against the rough straw; he looked at her upside down. “Say you’re right, Torres was in Molena Point to meet Cara Ray. What was he doing on the highway, Sunday morning?”
    â€œMaybe they had a fight. Maybe he drove off mad, and that’s why he skidded.”
    â€œWhat about the other car—the second car I heard, just before the crash?”
    â€œCould someone else have known he was here? Cut his brake line, then—maybe phoned him, brought him out on some wild-goose chase, maybe something to do with the case he was working on in L.A.? That might explain why he was headed south again. Then they followed him, in the heavy fog, and honked to confuse him?”
    â€œThat’s really reaching for it, Dulcie.”
    â€œWhatever the truth, there’s a connection. Cara Ray and this Torres didn’t just happen to arrive in the same town, on the same day. And why was Cara Ray snooping through Lucinda’s papers?”
    Joe sighed at the monumental tangles that female logic could weave. “Even if there was a connection, we can’t pass on that kind of shaky guesswork to Harper.”
    â€œMaybe no one’s mentioned Cara Ray to him. Maybe he has no reason to be interested in her. If he doesn’t know about the Seattle connection…”
    â€œDulcie…”
    â€œWe’d only be telling him the name of the woman Torres may have met. What harm in that?”
    â€œMaybe. But we can’t call Harper from here.”
    â€œWhy not? There’s a phone on his belt.”
    â€œDo you see a phone in this hay shed?”
    She gave him a sweet, green-eyed smile. “There in the dinette, you can see it through the bay window; the phone’s right there on the table.”
    Joe sighed.
    â€œGo up on the shed roof, Joe. Where I can see you from the house. Signal me if he heads that way.” She leaped down the baled hay and was gone, streaking for the screen door.
    Joe rose and shook the hay off. Sometimes Dulcie was impossible. He swarmed up a post to the roof of the shed. Impossible, clever, and enchanting.
    Clyde thought that he, Joe Grey, got rabid over a robbery or suspicious death. But Dulcie set her teeth into a murder case as if she were fighting rattlesnakes.
    Keeping low, out of the men’s view, and trying not to let his claws scritch on the galvanized roof, Joe slipped to the edge, where he could see the house.
    Behind the bay window, a small shape moved, padding across the table.
    Watching her paw at the phone, he remembered the night they’d memorized Harper’s various phone numbers from Clyde’s phone file. Clyde had pitched a fit because they’d left a few tooth marks in the cards; he could be so picky. It was a huge stroke of luck that Pacific Bell had recently offered free blocking for that insidious caller ID service that so many phones had subscribed to—including Molena Point PD.
    Harper had caller ID blocking for his own phones, and with a little encouragement Clyde had come around—it was free, wasn’t it?
    Wilma, always