Читать книгу Let Sleeping Dogs Lie - Suzann Ledbetter - Страница 11

“Oh, this is so exciting,” chirped Ms. Pearl. The confirmed spinster—her word, not Jack’s—foisted a pink, doll-sized overnight case on him. “My little girl is going to be a spy.”

Actually her loaner Maltese was a four-legged shill. It wasn’t Jack’s fault that his across-the-breezeway neighbor heard “undercover sting operation” and thought James Bond with fur.

Four hours’ sleep had converted last night’s genius pretext into a blue-ribbon stupid idea. It would have worked, sure. Then the minute the connection was broken, pissed-off burglary victims would confront the neighbors, demanding to know which one initiated the barking-dog complaint.

And who wanted to waste a day chained to a desk making phone calls? Especially a private investigator who spends more time on the phone than a phone-sex operator.

Jack forced a smile. Not easy with a yappy eight-pound dog in the crook of his arm, two fingers hooked on the handle of its luggage and a leash dervishing at his crotch like a noose in need of exorcism.

The stuffed Maltese toy he’d given his niece for Christmas one year had come with a key in its butt that when wound, played “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” Instead of a music box, the real deal squirmed and lunged, as though it had springs where its bones were supposed to be.

“I really appreciate this, Ms. Pearl.” Which would be true as soon as Jack dumped her wacko dog at TLC, the city’s most expensive boarding kennel. “But remember our, uh, arrangement has to stay between us.”

Ms. Pearl’s penciled eyebrows lofted, enhancing an already eerie resemblance to Olive Oyl. “It will, Officer McPhee. I won’t tell a soul.”

He’d never told her he was a cop and hadn’t been for many a year. Busting a gangbanger peddling Ecstasy to a middle-schooler in the complex’s parking lot was strictly a citizen’s arrest. Attempts to correct an assumption that Jack was a plainclothes narc were one of those doth-protest-too-much things. Between his reclusiveness and the weird hours he kept, tenants could just as easily suspect he was a vampire.

Ms. Pearl made oochie-coo noises and crouched down to say goodbye to the Maltese. “I don’t know what I’ll do without my Sweetie Pie Snug ’Ems. I surely don’t.” She kissed the dog’s button nose. “But I packed your favorite toys and a special treat, so we’ll have to be brave girls, won’t we? Oh, yes, we will.”

Thankfully, Jack’s eyes unstuck from their backward roll before he reached the flight of plank stairs leading down to ground level. He loved dogs. His best buds when he was a kid were a brainless Irish setter and a three-legged beagle.

“No offense,” he told the wriggling furball playing peekaboo with his tie. “But just because the AKC says you’re a dog, you’re too short to drink out of the toilet and you couldn’t catch a Frisbee with a net.”

The parking area behind his building was as empty as it had been full when he’d bailed out of his car around three-thirty. In daylight, the Taurus looked a hundred miles closer to the rear entrance than it had last night. It only seemed farther away with a panting Maltese zigzagging in front of him like a duck in a shooting gallery.

The minisuitcase thumped on the rear floorboard where it would stay until its return to Ms. Pearl—minus the treats. Leave them inside and she’d know the luggage hadn’t made the whole trip.

He’d promised to strap down the dog in her safety harness for the ride, too. It wouldn’t have joined the suitcase on the floorboard if the white blur now bouncing all over the friggin’ car responded to “Sit.” Or “Heel.” Or “For God’s sake, stay, you psycho little son of a bitch!”

Bellowing “Hell with it,” Jack snagged the leash on the fly and wrapped it around his leg. “Gotcha.”

Sweetie Pie Snug ’Ems shot him an “oh, yeah?” glare. Her glittery pink toenails dug into the upholstery. She tugged backward, whipping her pouffy head. When the collar hung up on her ears, she bared her teeth and growled at him.

“Think you’re scary, huh?” Jack tilted down the rearview mirror. “Check it out. You look like an attack hamster with a bad perm.”

The Maltese stared at her reflection, then blinked her beady eyes. She tucked her feather-duster tail and sat down like the lady Ms. Pearl had raised her to be.

“Good doggy.” He loosened the leash a few inches. She hesitated, then sighed and snuggled against his thigh.

He’d told her owner a rumor was circulating about boarding kennels using customer lists for purposes other than mailing Christmas cards. The disclosure was nearer his hunch than he’d cared to admit, yet it hadn’t satisfied Ms. Pearl. She’d pushed for specifics. He refused to slander the three, thus far noncomplicit kennels that catered to an upscale clientele: TLC, Ltd., Home Away and Merry Hills.

“You’ll just have to trust me on the details,” he’d said. To his surprise, she had.

To the Maltese now sniffing at the air conditioner’s exhaust, he said, “You’re gonna love this gig. In-room movies, an exercise pool, story hour.” Jack grunted. “At forty bucks a day, you’d better love it.”

The morning rush hour on Denton Expressway was beginning to congeal. The female driver in the car ahead of him was applying mascara and slaloming between the roadway’s painted lines. Jack checked his passenger’s side mirror, then the rearview. In the inner lane, a Hummer was several cautious yards behind a pickup, as well as Jack’s rear bumper. The compact sedan lagging in the Hummer’s considerable shadow had a spidery crack in the upper quadrant of its windshield.

Jack’s lips curled tight over his teeth. He hugged the dog to his thigh. The speedometer’s needle stuck a hash mark past sixty-five, as though it were glued on. Constantly monitoring the mirrors, a half mile clocked past, then three quarters, then…

He punched the accelerator and veered into the gap in front of the Hummer. Tapping the brake pedal, Jack timed the swerve onto Madison Road’s off-ramp like a NASCAR contender. The maneuver earned a horn blast from the exiting car he’d cut in front of. Swooping in from nowhere probably scared its driver, but expertise separated careless and reckless from a controlled, slick-as-hell evasion.

Loosening his grip on the Maltese, Jack slowed for the traffic light at the top of the ramp. Below on the expressway, Brett Dean Blankenship’s dented Cavalier now tailgated the Hummer like a pesky baby brother. The not-so-ace detective would take the next exit and circle back, for all the good it’d do him.

Jack took a stab at feeling smug. Outwitting the jerk didn’t change the fact that four days had elapsed since Blankenship crawled out of his cave and into Jack’s car at the motel. Seldom did one ever go by without Jack pissing off somebody, but Blankenship had definitely crossed the line from harassment into stalker territory.

“Lucky for him, you’re riding shotgun,” he told the dog.

It sneezed and wiped dog snot on his trousers.

“Oh, I hear ya. Moby Dickhead’s just begging to get his blubber whipped.” Jack signaled for a turn onto Lincoln Avenue. “But a man’s got to choose his battles, and Ms. Pearl wouldn’t be happy about you seeing me shred that creep like a head of cabbage.”

He was still talking tough-guy trash out the side of his mouth and pleased with the effect when he almost drove past Euclid Terrace. Its four double-long blocks surrounded by a crumbling fieldrock wall were a tiny suburb back when lawn tennis and badminton parties were in vogue. By the ’70s, the Victorian mansions were shabby white elephants too costly to heat, cool or maintain.

Some chopped up into student apartments were now being restored to their single-family glory, but it was even money which would will out: regentrification or blight.

TLC, Ltd. occupied the former carriage house and stable spared from a suspicious fire that destroyed the main house ten or twelve years ago. Inside the home’s granite footprint was a lush, multiflora rose garden with a tiered bronze fountain at its center.

“Looks more like a funeral home than a boarding kennel,” Jack said, pulling into the graveled parking area.

It was nearly as quiet as one, too. A Sherwood Forest of evergreens meted the property’s lot lines. Disembodied barks and yaps filtered through dense privets enclosing the chain-link runs, but evidently, a customer the dogs couldn’t see or smell was nothing to get excited about.

Until the Maltese sounded off. Wriggling against Jack’s chest, she yipped and snarled like a streetfighter with a serious anger-management problem.

“Jesus Kee-rist,” he yelled, struggling to control the yipping, snapping ball of fur with teeth.

Slamming the car door with his knee, he held the pint-sized Cujo at arm’s length. “Listen up, sister.”

She licked her bared chops. Her earsplitting barks subsided to motorboat growls.

“I’m operating on four hours’ sleep. A three-hundred-pound loony tune’s stalking me. If this hunch of mine doesn’t pan out or the cops nab the burglar before I do, I’m screwed and so’s McPhee Investigations.”

If a Maltese could look thoughtful, the one dangling in midair seemed to be taking the situation under advisement.

“So are you with me on this? Or do I take you home and tell Ms. Pearl her spy washed out in the damn parking lot?”

Sweetie Pie blinked, then her head drooped and she heaved a shuddering sigh.

“Good doggy,” he said, cradling her under his arm. “And you’d better stay good while you’re here, too.”

Few vestiges remained of the building’s original purpose, apart from the redbrick exterior and the interior ceiling’s hewed beams and support posts. The plastered walls were painted a soothing willow-green and hung with framed hunt scenes, greyhounds in repose and a huge watercolor chart illustrating more dog breeds than Jack knew existed.

A high counter and a wrought-iron gate divided the reception room from a larger concrete-floored area. Jack supposed the second gate barred a hallway leading to the kennel proper. His apartment should be as clean as this canine hotel—and might be, if it had brass floor drains to hose it out with.

At a rubber-matted, stainless-steel table, a ponytailed twelve-year-old wielded a spiky comb and a blow-dryer. Standing at attention in front of her was a burly Rastafarian with paws. The dreadlocked dog seemed to be in a vertical coma, while she nimbly sidestepped across the row of metal milk crates to offset the height advantage.

A sharp rap drew hers and Jack’s attention to a glass partition set in the back wall. A fortyish brunette jabbed a finger at the phone held to her ear, then at Jack.

Nodding, the groomer switched off the blow-dryer, called “Be right with you” over her shoulder, then snapped her fingers. The Rastafarian she was grooming didn’t lie down on the table as much as it melted into a prone position.

The girl’s soccer-style kick sent a milk crate skirring across the floor. “Sorry I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, climbing on top of it. “I keep forgetting the door buzzer is broken and that dryer’s so loud I can’t hear myself think.”

“It’s okay.” Jack made a mental note to get his eyes and perhaps his head examined at the earliest opportunity.

The groomer with the megawatt smile, soft brown eyes bracketed by laugh lines and womanly curves hadn’t seen puberty for a couple of decades. Which was terrific, since otherwise, his visual appraisal would be morally reprehensible.

A vague smell of wet dog and flea shampoo was strangely pleasant, exotic even. Most of all, the definitely adult groomer was short. Very short. Short enough for a guy who measured five-ten in leather lace-ups to feel like John Wayne bellying up to the bar in a Deadwood saloon. If Jack had a cowboy hat to doff, he’d have drawled, “Well, hello there, li’l lady.”

“Cute dog.” She scratched the Maltese’s wispy goatee. Not even a suggestion of a wedding band blemished the appropriate ring finger. “What’s her name?”

For the life of him, Jack couldn’t remember. Then he did, and wished the amnesia were permanent. “Fido.” He swallowed a groan. “Yep, good ol’ Fido. No middle name or anything. Just…you know…Fido.”

“Uh-huh.” She chuffed. “Sure.”

“No, no, really. It is.” Jack stopped himself before swearing to it, but his tone dripped with sincerity—although it was a bit soprano for any kinship to the Duke. A deeper, manlier chuckle preceded, “You’ve been around dozens of dogs, right? Hundreds, maybe. But I’ll bet this is the first, the only one you’ve ever met that was actually named Fido.”

On closer inspection, her velvet brown eyes were older, wiser and sadder than a thirty-something woman’s should be. It aroused Jack’s curiosity and an inner Don Quixote he thought was deader than Cervantes.

“Okay,” she said, “no bet. I’ve never met anybody who named his dog Fido.” Her expression implied she still hadn’t. “Do you have a reservation?”

“Uh, no.” Dogs needed reservations?

“It’s a good thing she’s small. We’re full up on medium and large boarders.”

The groomer reached for a clipboard, paged through several sheets, then frowned. “Except if she needs to stay past the weekend…”

“Just overnight.” Jack McPhee, private investigator, finally nudged aside Jack McPhee the lovelorn nonromantic. “I’m a sales rep for LeFleur & Francois Jewelers in Chicago.” His shrug expressed a redundancy akin to specifying New York in reference to Harry Winston’s. “See, uh, our chief designer had an eleventh-hour brainstorm. The sales team’s flying in to decide if the piece will be included in the fall line, or held for next spring.”

His original cover bio would have been smoother without the impromptu embellishments. Then again, a bumbled inside-the-park homer still counted on the scoreboard.

“So, you travel a lot?” she asked.

“Constantly.” A gem—pun intended—of a detail clicked into place. “Normally I lug around a sample case.” He sighed. “Thank heaven for small favors, I can leave the case at home for once.”

The groomer regarded Fido née Sweetie Pie Snug ’Ems, then her presumed owner. “It’s none of my business, but if she hasn’t boarded at TLC before, what do you usually do with her when you’re out of town?”

An excellent question. Jack scrambled for an answer. “Ah, uh, um, well, Swe—er, Fido—was my mother’s dog, then she died. My mother, I mean. I sort of inherited her—the dog—but I do most of my traveling by car, so from now on she can go along and keep me company.”

A pause ensued, lengthy enough for Jack to reinflate his lungs and silently ask his perfectly healthy mother’s forgiveness. The explanation must not have sounded patently absurd, let alone bullshitic to the groomer, for she expressed condolences, then removed a blank registration form from a drawer.

At her prompting, he supplied his name and an emergency phone number. The given address was a vacant house furnished by the listing Realtor. Its chi-chi neighborhood hadn’t yet been scathed by the Calendar Burglar.

“How old is Fido?” the groomer inquired.

“Six” was Jack’s wild-hare guess.

“Any food allergies you’re aware of?”

A rash with minor welt action would be fair payback for the tie the Maltese was gnawing holes in. Having observed the teeth marks in Ms. Pearl’s furniture, throw pillows, shoes and handbag, Jack figured the dog’s tummy wasn’t particularly sensitive.

“Her shots are up-to-date?”

No doubt about that one. Ms. Pearl wasn’t the type to deny or delay her little darling’s wellness care.

“Veterinarian’s name?”

Aw, for crying out loud. The furball wasn’t applying for a seat on the next space shuttle. To Jack’s enormous relief, the groomer snagged the rabies tag dangling on Sweetie Pie Snug ’Ems’s collar and copied the vet’s name and office number.

A few minutes later, he walked to his car happily dogless and thoroughly edified in boarding-kennel protocol. Also bereft of TLC’s pretty, very short groomer’s name and home phone number.

An opportunity to pop those questions hadn’t presented itself. Such as her referring to Jack by name, so he could coolly, casually reply, “And yours?”

“Tomorrow, pilgrim.” He buckled the seat belt. “First you have to catch the bad guy. Then you get the girl.”

Dina cuddled the Maltese. Its button eyes goggled and darted, much like Harriet’s when waking in her chair, uncertain whether she’d nodded off or was kidnapped by Martians and returned in the blink of a tractor beam.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, sweetie,” Dina murmured.

The dog’s head swiveled upward. It looked at her, still a bit perplexed, yet oddly reassured.

She kissed the crown of its silky head, breathing in—

Dina took a second, deeper whiff. Pond’s cold cream and Estée Lauder perfume?

“What a cutie patootie.” Gwendolyn Ellicot swung open the gate between the hallway and the grooming station. “What’s his name?”

“Hers,” Dina corrected. “And it’s Fido, if you can believe that.”

“Not the dog’s.” The kennel’s owner grinned and pointed toward the parking area. “The guy who brought her in.” She moved to the counter and picked up Fido’s registration form. “By what I saw from my office, he took one look at you and forgot he owned a dog.”

Gwendolyn’s ruling passions were dogs and fix-ups. Trust her to slap a cutie-patootie label on any man who’s ambulatory, old enough to vote and bathes regularly.

There was nothing above average about Jack McPhee. Medium height, medium build. His medium brown hair had an eleven-o’clock part and was blocked in back a half inch above his shirt collar. Even the car rolling down the driveway was midsize and as medium blue as his eyes.

Dina couldn’t imagine why a funny feeling, like a hunger pang on spin cycle, had ziggled south of her rib cage when they made eye contact. And now, just thinking about it.

She sloughed it off along with her part-time employer’s incurable matchmaking. “Forget it, Auntie Mame. Even if I was interested, which I’m not, Mr. McPhee isn’t my type.” She patted Fido’s pouffy head. “And I’m pretty sure I’m not his type.”

Gwendolyn crossed her arms, as if fending off Cupid’s evil twin. “Then why was he flirting with you?”

“I wouldn’t call it—”

“All right, so that tie of his probably glows in the dark, but the suit was Brooks Brothers. My husband has one exactly like it—or did, until he gave up trying to lose thirty pounds and I took it to a resale shop.”

“Will you—”

“Jack McPhee lives on LakeShore Boulevard, Dina.” Gwendolyn tapped the registration form, emphasizing each syllable, as one might impress upon a small child a need to clean her room. “Starter homes in that development have four bathrooms.”

Not much of an incentive, since Dina couldn’t keep two bathrooms clean. She held up the Maltese. “See the collar?”

“Pink. So what? She’s female, it matches the leash and—”

“Check out the pedicure.”

Gwendolyn blanched a little, then flapped a hand. “You detest painting dogs’ toenails, but some groomers think it’s cute. And McPhee could have a daughter that thinks it’s cute, too.”

“Doubtful, unless she’s adopted.” Dina set Fido on the counter. “Smell her head.”

“What? Why?”

“Humor me.”

Gwendolyn leaned over, sniffed, recoiled, then sniffed again. “Well, hell.”

That’s pretty much how Dina felt, too, though she’d never admit it. Mother McPhee’s recent demise might explain the lingering aroma of cold cream and perfume, except Fido had been shampooed and trimmed in the past week.

“Life is so unfair,” Gwendolyn moaned. “Things were hard enough when all the good ones were either married or dead.”

Dina chuckled and handed off the Maltese. “If you wouldn’t mind paging Laura to get Miss Fido settled in and give her a snack, I have to finish Claude’s comb-out.”

The puli-Labrador mix snoozing on the grooming table was one strange-looking fellow. Claude’s owners spent a fortune keeping its ropy coat from matting into plaited scales, and it loved being fussed over. Using the table’s noose-like restraint on Claude was like tethering a dog-shaped topiary before clipping it. The trick was coaxing Claude down to the floor afterward.

As Dina toed the milk crate back into position, Gwendolyn said, “How’s your mom doing with the oxygen therapy?”

“Better.” Dina sighed. “When she stays hooked up to the machine, instead of using the portable tank in the living room like a rescue inhaler.”

“Then it won’t be a problem if Mrs. Allenbaugh is running a little late for her appointment.”

Gwendolyn’s tone entwined a question with a conclusion.

Dina consulted the antique Seth Thomas above the office window. Mrs. Allenbaugh was always a little late. When, of course, she wasn’t a lot early. If the daffy old bat owned a Chihuahua, instead of a standard poodle, the timing wouldn’t matter as much.

“How late is late?”

“She promised to be here before noon.”

Meaning eleven fifty-nine, but Dina couldn’t afford to kiss off her fee and a generous tip. She did some mental clockwork herself. “I’ll just have to race across town and give Mom her shot before Mrs. Allenbaugh gets here.”

Gwendolyn smiled the smile of a dog caretaker with a six-person staff. She squeezed Dina’s shoulder. “Relax, okay? I know Betty Allenbaugh’s a pain, but now you have a whole hour between your nine-thirty and ten-thirty to check on Harriet.”

Dina nodded and smiled back, as if a diabetic’s insulin injections were as mutable as a scatterbrained poodle owner’s watch.