Free Cat on the Edge by Shirley Rousseau Murphy Page A

mornings later, Max Harper had shown up at the agency just before opening time, and that was when the real nightmare began.
    The police chief had pulled his patrol car into the covered drive between the showroom and the shop. Harper’s thin, lined face had been more than ordinarily glum.
    He’d known Max Harper since they were in high school; they had done some ranch work together, summers, and had rodeoed together, riding the bulls. Harper had joined the police force after four years at San Jose State. He’d married while still in college; his wife, Millie, had been in the criminal justice program at San Jose, too, and had gone into law enforcement. She died two years ago, of a brain hemorrhage. Thepain of her death was still raw for Harper. You could see it hidden behind his natural wariness.
    Harper didn’t get out of the squad car, but sat behind the wheel frowning at him. “Beckwhite won’t be in this morning.”
    â€œSo? How come you’re relaying the message?” But he’d felt a chill begin. “What happened?”
    Harper reached into his uniform pocket for a pack of cigarettes, and shook one out, and gave him a level look. “Beckwhite’s dead. He was killed last night.” Harper watched him carefully, at the same time seeing every movement within the shop where three mechanics were laying out tools preparing for their morning’s work.
    His first thought, a trite reaction, was that Beckwhite couldn’t be dead, that he’d seen Beckwhite only yesterday. No, any minute now Beckwhite would come strolling into the shop from the showroom, carrying a paper cup of coffee from the machine, his close-cropped military haircut catching a gleam from the overhead lights, his grin self-satisfied even at this early hour. No, Samuel Beckwhite wasn’t dead.
    â€œGeorge Jolly found his body this morning, in the alley behind the deli. He’d been hit on the head, his skull cracked.” Harper struck a match and cupped his hand around the flame, though there was no wind. He blew smoke out through the opposite window. “No sign of anything that Beckwhite could have hit his head against. And it was too hard a blow for that. The coroner’s looking at it. He’s been dead since eight or nine last night.”
    It had taken him a while to respond. “Has—has someone told his wife? Told Sheril?”
    Harper nodded. “I went on up there.” He got a funny look on his face, but said nothing more.
    The shock of Beckwhite’s death had left the agency staff confused, had thrown the conduct of day-to-day business into chaos. The murder had been all over the papers, local and San Francisco.
    And the murder, for various reasons, had left him feeling uneasy. That unease was heightened considerably when, yesterday morning as he was looking for Joe Cat, he discovered that someone had tried to break into the house through the living room window.
    When he saw the splintered wood, he had barged outdoors in his shorts and found a larger hole on that side, ragged and broken as if gouged by a tire iron or by a large screwdriver.
    He had hurried back inside, staring around the living room. Nothing was gone—TV and VCR were there, CD player, all the electronic equipment. And then, because Joe Cat wasn’t nearby yowling for his breakfast, he grew concerned for all the animals. He headed for the kitchen; but when he flung open the kitchen door, the dogs were rarin’ to go, charging past him straight for the living room. Leaping at the window, roaring and snarling, they had put on an amazing surge of adrenaline for two fat old farts.
    The window was so freshly splintered that it still smelled like new lumber. He had found no other damage to the outside of the house, and no sign that anyone had gotten inside. When he checked the study, nothing was amiss. The one item thatconcerned him was still on the desk, the small notebook lay in plain sight beside