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Horndog was a peach-and-white Moluccan cockatoo, a relative of the bird Robert Blake used to have in his TV series Baretta But Horndog was nofeathers fro his head to squahenever the door to the pet shop opened

“He’s depressed,” Seth said “He needs a ho will let you know”

So Horndog had been rena with Cindy he was no longer depressed Visibly happier, he now perched on Cindy’s shoulder, chewing a pencil into wood chips and softly chuffing to himself It took a week or two for Cindy to finally translate that , repeatedly, “Kill the bitch Kill the bitch”

“Pretty bird, pretty bird,” Cindy answered distractedly, sure that if she said it enough tiram her bird

Tonight Peaches and Cindy were at her computer in her hoine: “home fires fatalities,” “home fires fatalities Bay Area,” “home fires cause unknown” But each time she pressed the enter key, too much information flooded her screen

Cindy scratched the bird under its chin, refreshed her tea with hot water from the kettle, and went back to her desk The clock icon in the bottom corner of her screen read 10:32 and she was still nowhere She refined her search, typed “home fire wealthy couple”

“It’s unreal, Peaches,” she said, as dozens of links appeared on her screen “Too much information!”

Nearly all of the links led to the same fire, a house outside San Francisco that had been torched four years before As Cindy scanned the articles, she remembered the story of the victims, Emil and Rosanne Christiansen, who had died before she was assigned to the crime desk

Emil Christiansen had been the CFO of an office ht out by a computer company The Christiansens had become instant multi up the coast According to the articles, the house had burned down before firefighters could reach it, and the Christiansens had died

The fire had been classified accidental by the firefighters at the scene, but when the couple’s son did an inventory of the re property, he reported that his father’s coin collection wasand a sapphire-and-diamond bracelet that was alone worth fifty thousand dollars were gone

At the bottoator, who had told the reporter, “A candle tipped over, papers caught fire, the curtains went up, and so went the house I haven’t found any trace of fire accelerant, so right now I can’t say if the fire was accidental or intentional”

Cindy typed, clicked, followed the links, found the iven the cause of death as smoke inhalation and the manner of death “undetermined based upon the fire marshal’s report”

“Hey, Peaches What about thejewels? Hmmmm?”

“Kill the bitch Kill the bitch”

Cindy’s mind churned with questions The Christiansens had been robbed, so why, she wondered, had the arson investigator said he didn’t know if the fire was accidental or intentional? And here was a thought: Was it a coincidence that the arson investigator orked the Christiansen fire was also working on both the Malone and Meacham homicides?