Dogs, Lies, and Alibis: A Humorous Cozy Mystery (A Workings Stiffs Mystery Book 5)

by Wendy Delaney

  “Okay, but I probably don’t know much.”

  Given how observant she seemed, I doubted that. “May I have your name?”

  “Anna Maxwell.”

  “And how well did you know Mr. Ziegler?”

  “Not well. We only moved here a few months ago. He seemed good with kids, and Lily loved his dog. Really seemed to fill the void after leaving all her friends in Chicago.”

  “Any signs of trouble that he might have been having with any of the other neighbors?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  The apartment door opened and I knew that I’d need to choose my words carefully with the smaller pair of ears entering the room. “How about other visitors to the apartment? Any issues that you noticed?”

  “No, nothing.” Anna’s expression softened as her daughter sidled up next to her. “You probably have some homework to do, don’t you?”

  Lily’s long, walnut brown hair hung down over her cheeks as she stared at her canvas sneakers. “This is about Colt not coming home last night, isn’t it?”

  “Honey, you should go to your room and—”

  “Yes, it is,” I interjected, meeting the imploring gaze of a mom who wanted to spare her daughter the anguish of losing another friend. “Lily, how do you know that Colt never came home last night?”

  She kept her head bowed, enviably thick lashes obscuring her eyes. “I didn’t hear his car. It’s loud and always wakes me up when he comes home late.”

  “Really loud,” her mother added.

  “And I didn’t see it parked in front of his apartment this morning.” Lily glanced up at me. “So I thought that Fozzie might—”

  “Wait a second,” Anna said to her daughter. “Where’s the dog right now?”

  Lily cringed. “I know I’m not supposed to let Fozzie in or out without asking first, but since no one’s come to pick him up…”

  “I assumed that some family or friends might come get him,” Anna explained to me. “You know, because…”

  “Because Fozzie got out?” Lily pulled back, her volume increasing. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”

  I didn’t want to get in the middle of what could develop into a difficult mother/daughter conversation. At the same time I needed this kid to tell me everything she knew. “Those are good questions and sound an awful lot like some of the things I’m wondering. If it’s okay with your mom, I bet you could help us sort some stuff out.”

  Nodding her okay, Anna took Lily’s hand.

  I locked gazes with Lily. “Are you saying that Fozzie was able to get out of the apartment?”

  She shrugged. “I guess somebody let him out.”

  “Maybe it was Colt. He knew he was going to be late coming home and—”

  “No. That’s why he asked me to dog-sit last night. I fed Fozzie dinner and then took him for a walk.”

  “Okay, what happened after you got back from your walk?”

  Lily gave me a look as if I’d asked a stupid question. “I brought him back home.”

  “When was this?”

  “I dunno.” She turned to her mother.

  “After we had our dinner, so probably around six-thirty,” Anna said.

  I made a note of that for the timeline of last night’s events. “Did either of you see Fozzie later? Maybe before you went to bed?”

  They both shook her heads.

  “How about this morning?” I focused on Lily. “Since you didn’t see Colt’s car in the parking lot, I imagine you’d want to let Fozzie out to go potty.”

  “I was going to, but the police officer told me he wasn’t there.”

  Then Colt had either walked back here after he delivered the limo to Bassett Motor Works, or someone who had access to his apartment had let the dog out.

  Lily worried her lower lip. “Did Colt have an accident? Was that why Fozzie was up by the school?”

  “You saw him near the school?” That was almost a mile away.

  She nodded. “When I was walking home. And he was all by himself, so I knew somethin’ was wrong.”

  Something was wrong, all right, and it was feeling more wrong by the minute.

  I met Anna’s gaze. “When did you get home today?”

  “Around three-fifteen. She usually beats me home, but not today.”

  Lily’s lips curled into an impish smile. “Fozzie didn’t have his leash on, so he slowed me down.”

  Which explained why she had been holding the dog by the collar. “I noticed he wasn’t on a leash when I got here.”

  “I looked for it when I let Fozzie in to give him some water, but I couldn’t find it.

  Anna groaned. “You let yourself into that apartment a second time today?”

  Unlike her mom, I didn’t care that Lily had violated a house rule. I just wanted to know how she had access to Colt’s apartment. “Do you have a key?”

  She shook her head. “Colt showed me where he hides it so that I could walk Fozzie when he’s not around.”

  “Would you show me?”

  Anna and I followed Lily to where a carved wooden statue of a bear wearing a brown hat stood outside apartment 3.

  “It’s in Fozzie Bear,” Lily said, reaching around its back while the noisier Fozzie barked on the other side of the door.

  She fitted the key into the lock and pushed the heavy door open. “It’s just me, Fozzie.”

  The overgrown teddy bear dashed into the kitchen, where two stainless bowls sat empty under the counter, and barked.

  “It’s not dinnertime yet.” She turned to me. “Colt and Fozzie always eat dinner together.”

  I exchanged glances with her mother because that wasn’t going to happen tonight or any other night.

  With a nod she stepped out of the apartment. “I’ll call animal control.”

  “What’s that?” Lily asked, closing the distance between them.

  “Someone who will come pick up Fozzie.”

  The girl’s eyes widened. “What?! Why?”

  Anna placed her hand on Lily’s slender shoulder. “Because something happened and Colt won’t be coming home.”

  Lily stood very still. “Like ever?”

  “I’m afraid not. That’s why we need to call someone to—”

  “But I can take care of Fozzie,” she protested, her voice breaking.

  “Sweetheart, you know that won’t work.” Anna met my gaze. “I have asthma. Can’t handle pet dander.”

  Lily sobbed, her sweet face crumpling like wet newspaper. “But Fozzie needs me!”

  The dog came to her side as if she had called him, and Lily wrapped her arms around his neck. “You don’t have anyone else now.”

  That’s when he aimed his big brown eyes at me.

  Don’t even think about it, dog.

  A dog needed a yard—a place to run.

  I looked around the dump of an apartment—empty beer cans and Roadkill Grill takeout bags littering the stained shag carpeting, dirty dishes in the sink.

  Of course, no one could say that Fozzie had anything close to an ideal home here.

  He also wouldn’t have much of a future.

  Unless…

  Crap.

  Anna touched my sleeve. “I’ll go make that call before it gets too late.”

  It was already too late.

  “No, don’t,” my mouth blurted out before I could put a muzzle on it. “I’ll keep him tonight, and then I’ll find out what Colt’s family would like to do with him.”

  Lily looked up, blinking away tears. “You’re keeping him?”

  Yeah, I couldn’t believe I’d said it either.

  Chapter Seven

  AFTER I LOADED Fozzie’s dog bowls, his toys, and an almost empty sack of dog chow into the trunk of my car, I slid behind the wheel and listened to the voice message from the call I missed.

  “You’re needed at home as soon as possible,” my mother said while the giant fur ball in the passenger seat panted in my other ear.

 
She hadn’t injected much of a sense of urgency into her message. In fact, given Marietta Moreau’s flair for drama, the one-liner had been delivered in an uncharacteristic monotone.

  “She’s up to something,” I told Fozzie.

  He poked his nose out the passenger window and looked back at Lily, waving to him from the door of her apartment.

  “Yep, not our biggest problem at the moment.”

  I gave Lily a wave as we pulled out of the parking lot. “I’ll find out what’s going on, and then we’ll head home.”

  Ignoring me, Fozzie sniffed the air, heavy with the food smells venting from all the burger and pizza joints on Main Street gearing up for the dinner crowd.

  “I won’t be long,” I told him a few minutes later, when I parked in front of the two-story Victorian where I’d grown up.

  I cracked the windows to give him plenty of air and then headed up the steps bordered by yellow and violet crocuses. It wasn’t until my grandmother stepped out from behind the giant rhododendron blooming in front of the den window that I saw her.

  “Hi, Gram. What’s going on?”

  She set the watering can she was holding on the white wooden porch and planted her hands on her ample hips. “Don’t tell me your mother called you.”

  I kissed her on the cheek. “Okay, I won’t tell you.”

  Scowling, she squinted at my car. “What the heck is that in your front seat?”

  “A dog.”

  “And why is there a dog in your car?”

  I sighed. “It’s a long, sad story.” One that I didn’t want to bring to my grandmother’s doorstep. She had enough aggravation with my mother as an uninvited houseguest until her wedding. “I’m helping out a friend who can’t take care of his dog right now.”

  Sort of true.

  “Oh, that is sad. Anyone I know?”

  Probably. “It’s just a guy I know through work.”

  She gave my shoulder a pat and resumed watering the two baskets of pink and white impatiens hanging from the porch eaves. “You’re a nice girl to help out.”

  Not that nice. I’d just lied to my grandmother.

  And I needed to change the subject. “So, what’s the emergency?”

  “As far as I’m concerned there isn’t one, but perhaps you should speak with your mother.” Gram opened the front door for me and then went back to watering her flowers.

  “Aren’t you coming in?”

  She shook her head, carving creases into her upper lip as she puckered. “Not on a bet.”

  Stifling a sigh, I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. “Mom?”

  “Oh, good. You’re home,” the former Mary Jo Digby said, padding barefooted down the stairs in black leggings and a belted leopard print tunic. Since I usually saw her in five-inch stilettos, she seemed atypically short.

  Short could also be used to describe the way she whisked past me, leaving me in a vapor trail of musky jasmine.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, following my mother to the kitchen table.

  She picked up a white envelope and held it out to me. “See for yourself.”

  The thick linen envelope appeared to have been addressed in an elegant female hand, and not to anyone who lived here. “Why do you have Steve’s mail?”

  That my boyfriend lived across the street from my grandmother was very inconvenient at times. And this definitely qualified as one of those times.

  “Never mind that.” She tapped the back of the envelope with her finger. “Look at who it’s from.”

  I turned it over. “G. Campanella.” I locked gazes with Marietta. “So?”

  “Gina Campanella,” she said like I should recognize the name.

  I shrugged.

  “The Los Angeles news anchor.”

  I tossed the envelope onto the table. “I haven’t been living in LA like some people, so forgive me for never having heard of her.”

  Marietta ran a tongue over her glossy red lips like a vampire savoring the taste of fresh blood. “She used to be a reporter for one of the Seattle stations. I guess that’s how she and Steve met, when she interviewed him about some high-profile case he was working.”

  I didn’t like the direction this was going.

  “How do you know this?” Because there was no way that Steve would have gone out of his way to chat with her about when he worked for Seattle PD.

  “Your grandma. She met Gina when he brought her home to meet his mother.”

  Holy cannoli! Gina Campanella had to be the ex-girlfriend Steve almost married two years ago.

  And I’d had no idea that the feisty old bird outside knew anything about her. Which had to be by design, because Gram was the world’s worst when it came to keeping secrets from me.

  Or so I had thought.

  “Anyway,” Marietta said, inspecting a lacquered nail. “Gina’s quite the rising star in the LA market. And now that she’s marrying Chad Cornell—”

  “The actor?”

  “Director now, too, so her star is going to be so very shiny down there.”

  “Good for her,” I said, hoping that we could now stop talking about her fabulous life.

  “No kidding. The wedding will surely be quite the who’s-who affair.” Marietta picked up the envelope, her green eyes gleaming as she ran her fingers over it. “So, do you think you’ll be going?”

  “I have no idea.”

  She tucked the envelope into my tote. “Perhaps you could find out.”

  “Because you’d like Steve to make this a plus-two.” And add a little luster to her star.

  Averting her gaze, she smoothed her cropped auburn hair. “I never said that.”

  Not directly, anyway.

  “But I do have business that requires me to be down there next month, so depending on the date of the wedding…I might be available. You know, to get together while you’re in town.”

  I didn’t want to say Liar, liar, pants on fire to my mother, but flames should have been coming out of her butt by now.

  “I’ll give Steve the invitation.” Having no desire to join Gina as the newest member of Steve’s ex-girlfriends club, that’s all I was going to do.

  “I look forward to hearing what he says about it,” Marietta said, following me to the door.

  Me, too.

  * * *

  After I crossed the street to drop Steve’s mail in his box, I texted him to find out what his plans were for dinner, and then drove to the Valu-Mart to pick up a new leash.

  I’d be the first to admit that dating the only detective in town required a measure of flexibility when it came to meal planning. But a girl on a diet who has had a really bad day can be fresh out of flexibility when that cop finally calls her back after two hours of ignoring her texts and phone calls.

  As had become Steve’s typical greeting, the first word I heard was, “Sorry.”

  But he had nothing to be sorry for, because his day had to have been worse than mine.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, trying to keep up with my temporary roommate on a post-dinner walk toward a certain auto repair shop.

  “Did you eat?”

  “Yep.” Didn’t mean I wasn’t still hungry after wolfing down some leftover chicken, but I didn’t want his company at the moment. “How about you?”

  “I ordered a pizza. I know you’re on that diet of yours, but I could come over and you could watch me eat it.”

  “You really know how to tempt a girl.”

  “Hey, if you’re lucky I’ll let you lick my fingers.”

  “Now you’re just being mean,” I said over the motorcycle rumbling past me on the highway.

  “Where are you?”

  Within sight of the Bassett Motor Works sign, and there was no way I was going to mention that to Steve. “Out on a walk.”

  “When are you gonna be home?”

  “In an hour, and I’ll expect your fingers to be grease-free when you show up.”

  “Spoilsport.”

  Maybe, but I
pocketed my phone knowing that I’d bought myself some time at Bassett Motor Works without Steve asking me the inevitable question: What do you think you’re doing there?

  Much like this morning, I wasn’t sure of the answer.

  Was it simply to gain some understanding about what happened to the guy who should have been the one taking his dog for a walk?

  Did I need to bolster my faith that Georgie couldn’t have had anything to do with Colt’s death?

  Or did I just need to get a clue as to what to do next?

  As I stood in front of Bassett Motors’ padlocked gate and tried to glean some sense of the scene that played out early this morning, Fozzie looked up at me like he wished I would hurry up and get that clue.

  “I know they’re closed. We’re just going to look around.”

  Sounding eerily like a bored Marietta, he huffed a breath.

  “Come on,” I said, leading him toward the front corner of the yard, where the police report had indicated Colt’s body had been found.

  If the patch of weeds I found there truly was the crime scene, it sure didn’t look like much.

  Fozzie lingered over a rusty nail next to some old dog poo. Other than that, he seemed disinterested until his nose led him to a scrubby sapling bordering the chain link fence that he lifted his leg on.

  While I waited for him to finish his business, I listened to a truck’s chattering brakes as the driver slowed to make a right onto Madrone Way—pretty much the only sound on the block other than some birds roosting in the stand of fir trees populating the ravine behind the yard.

  As could be said about any patch of dirt in Port Merritt, come nightfall it would be a nice, quiet place to leave someone to die. At one or two in the morning, even quieter, but between the floodlight illuminating the row of cars parked on the other side of the fence and the outdoor light affixed to the auto glass building next door, not completely dark.

  The only way it made sense for Colt’s body to be found here was if he collapsed at this spot after being injured somewhere out of view from potential witnesses driving by.

  I peered through the chain links at a tall SUV that could have afforded Georgie perfect cover to bash Colt in the head with a bat, and shivered.

  “No way,” I said, tightening my jacket around me.