Cat Fear No Evil by Shirley Rousseau Murphy Page B

Joe’s opinion, was one of the great inventions of mankind.
    â€œCould have been accidental death,” Harper said. “Could be manslaughter. No way to tell, yet. He died of blunt trauma, a blunt blow to the head.”
    â€œBut there wasn’t…” Charlie began. “No one…” She grew quiet, letting Max continue.
    â€œAs near as Dr. Bern can tell, so far, the blow occurred three or four days ago. There was slow bleeding within the skull where multiple small capillaries had ruptured. The pressure can build up slowly, over time.” He took a bite of salad. “Pressure pushing down around the spinal cord. Bern thinks that happened over several days. At the last, while he was serving drinks at the party, the increase of blood became rapid.
    â€œWhen Bern called, he was still looking for the sudden rupture of an artery or vein, which would have been the final event in a long drawn-out trauma.” He spooned more dressing on his salad and took a sip of beer, a frustrated frown touching his face. Harper had quit smoking over a year before, but sometimes Joe saw him itching to reach for a cigarette, his fingers moving nervously, the creases along his cheeks deepening.
    â€œThe guy’s ID was faked,” Max said. “He’s been using the social security number of a man who died three years ago. Strangest thing, his prints are not on record in any of the western states. It’ll take us a week or two, maybe more, to get fingerprint information for the rest of the country. Department of Justice is always backed up.”
    Charlie said, “He could have been hit in the head anywhere, then? Several days ago?”
    Harper nodded. “There’s a rectangular bruise on the side of the head, the shape of a brick. It was already fading, but there were brick particles in the skin. Could have been an accident, maybe he stood up under a low flight of stairs, for instance, and cracked himself on the head. Or it could have happened in a fight, some guy bashed him with a brick. He was using the name Sammy Clarkman. He’s worked for George Jolly for three months, has done several catering jobs during that time.”
    Ryan leaned forward, looking at Max. “Lucinda Greenlaw knows him.”
    Max gave her his full attention.
    â€œI knew I’d seen him in Jolly’s Deli,” Ryan said. “I’d forgotten, until just now, that last month when the Greenlaws were here, Lucinda and I were in there, and she knew the guy.”
    Max listened quietly. The whole table was silent. Beside Joe, the kit was so alert and still that he kept an eye on her—he never knew when the kit would show too clearly her eager enthusiasm.
    Lucinda and Pedric, a pair of tall, bone-thin eighty-year-olds, had married just a year before, after Lucinda’s husband Shamas died in an unfortunate manner for which one of his nephews went to prison. On the day of their wedding the Greenlaws had adopted the kit. They knew her special talents, they knew that she, like Joe Grey and Dulcie, was not in any way ordinary. The kit’s command of the English language, her off-the-wall ideas, and her opinion on almost every subject were, in the eyes of the Greenlaws, deserving of admiration and respect.
    Setting out to travel at their leisure up and down the California coast, they had planned to have the kit with them, but she was so prone to car sickness that she had turned wan and miserable. For the kit, the pleasure of travel wasn’t worth the distress. The Greenlaws had arranged that she stay for a while with Dulcie and Wilma. Just at the end of September they had returned to the village for a short layover before the holidays, had stored their RV in Wilma Getz’s driveway, and, scooping up the kit in a delirium of pleasure, they had checked into a suite at the Otter Pine Inn, the nicest of several village hotels that catered to pets. The kit had spent a delirious week enjoying herself