Cat's Claw (A Pecan Springs Mystery)

damp, too. I frowned. Beer, the sandwich and chips, yogurt, a cigarette, a book—they all looked like they had been left out in the overnight drizzle. Yesterday’s supper? Yesterday’s lunch?
    I turned and looked toward the house. A pair of sliding glass doors opened onto the living-dining area. I went closer and called again, louder. No answer, so I stepped inside, noting that the voice I had heard was coming from a radio on the kitchen counter, tuned to KUT in Austin and broadcasting the usual NPR “Morning Edition.” I turned it off, called again, and listened. Not a word, not a sound. Where was Timms?
    I went quickly through the kitchen, which was equipped with the latest in stainless steel appliances; the vaulted living-dining area with a massive stone fireplace, carpeted in pale beige; a bedroom with a huge unmade bed, the walls hung with framed erotic photographs; a darkroom off the bedroom; a bathroom with shaving equipment laid out on the marble-topped counter. Upstairs, there was another bathroom and two loft bedrooms—both empty—with windows overlooking the tops of the trees in the canyon below. The entire place was beautifully and expensively furnished and completely deserted. But I spotted a telephone on the table beside the unmade bed in the master bedroom and another, with an answering machine, in the kitchen, the message light blinking.I picked up the receiver and was relieved to hear a dial tone. I could call out from here, rather than drive all the way back up the road to a point where my cell could pick up a signal. But first—
    But first, I needed to find Timms. I went back outside, shouting his name, listening for an answer and hearing none, more and more convinced that the man had met with—what? An accident? Or something else?
    I went down to the lower deck, where I saw a flagstone path slanting diagonally down and across the steep hill toward a silvery thread of creek forty feet below. I took the path, noticing that the hillside had been completely cleared of the usual underbrush, then terraced with native limestone rock and landscaped with yaupon hollies, madrones, Mexican buckeyes, cat’s claw acacia, and clumps of Lindheimer’s muhly. Agarita, lantana, salvias, and other native plants were growing in sculpted pockets of lush plantings along the path. Off to one side, what looked like a miniature concrete-bottomed stream was under construction, and an unobtrusive network of soaker hoses snaked through the shredded cedar mulch, ensuring that the plants would get a drink whenever they were thirsty. A drapery of tiny fairy lights festooned the trees, and I could picture the hillside illuminated at night. It would be quite beautiful. Timms had invested a great deal of effort—and spent some serious money—in destroying the real wilderness and creating a “wilderness look” in its place.
    The well-groomed imitation wilderness ended abruptly at the foot of the hill, where the authentic Hill Country wilderness began, with a thicket of snarled redbud saplings, elbow bush, and catbrier, under a canopy of live oaks and cedar elms so thick they almost shut out the early-morning light. A narrow trail continued on in the direction of the creek, hacked through the dense underbrush. The sloping ground,covered with loose leaf litter, was soft and moist, and if Timms had come this far, I should be able to see his footprints. I looked down at the path ahead and spotted the track of a running shoe, the sole deeply ridged. Then another and another, long strides, running strides, a man in a hurry. Chasing something?
    And then, ten paces farther on, I saw a red Texas Rangers baseball cap beside the trail. It looked as if it had been stepped on and pushed into the soil. It marked a spot where a heavy scuffle of shoeprints roughed up the path’s surface. I knelt for a closer look. I was seeing not one shoeprint, but two, very close together and deep, as if the man with the long strides had suddenly stumbled and was trying to regain his balance. Then another short, heavy step, almost a stagger, and the deep, unmistakable print of a hand, palm flat, fingers spread. Just off the trail, a cedar elm sapling was snapped off a foot above the ground, broken branches scattered as if there had been a struggle. On the other side of the trail, I saw a jagged, bloody rock with a scrap of silvery fur on it, and a dark stain, the size of a dinner plate. I bent over to smell it and knew immediately that the ground