“Oh, Tracy, I’m so sorry. Tell me all about it.” And why didn’t you call me right away? But I stayed silent. The poor thing was already riddled with guilt. And I couldn’t blame her—completely—for my own sorrowful situation.
She began talking solemnly and sadly, crying over her iced tea. Her missing pet client was a little wire-haired dachshund. And, yes, there had been a note similar to mine.
“Have you heard again from the kidnapper? Learned what he or she wants as ransom?”
“Not yet. Oh, Kendra, I feel so awful.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. Who’s our fellow victim?”
“Wanda,” Tracy said with a gulping sigh as she sipped some soda and stopped crying.
“Wanda? I’m surprised she didn’t get in touch with me.” Either. Wanda and I had bonded right away, since she, too, had a Cavalier—Basil, a red and white one, the color combination known as Blenheim.
“She wanted to, but our ransom notes said not to tell anyone.”
“Mine only mentioned cops,” I informed her. “But you posted info about yours on the website anyway?”
“Members only,” she reminded me, “so I figured that, if I told everyone not to let it get any further, the thief wouldn’t find out.”
That assumed no one in the club was involved—or might inadvertently know the napper and whisper their new knowledge to exactly the wrong person. But I didn’t mention that. “In any event, no matter what the notes said, you knew about Wanda.”
“Only when she called me, after she saw my web post.”
“Well, once the cats—or, in your situations, dogs—were out of the bag, you could have called all the members. Certainly everyone on the board.” Like me. I’d have appreciated a heads-up. And as soon as lunch was over, I’d check on all my other pet-sitting clients. Warn their owners. Not that I anticipated it would happen to me again, but who knew? “Who all is aware of this now?” I asked when Tracy didn’t respond to my comment.
“As many members as possible. As soon as I heard from you and realized this had happened three times, I called a bunch of people and told them to call others and let them know.”
Good thing our food was served right then, since I was getting a mite miffed. Why not spread the word right away—and possibly save me a pet-napping?
Tracy had ordered a pastrami sandwich that looked to die for—and probably did add to unhealthy fats in anybody who dared to ingest it. Tracy’s included, assuming she ate it after her proclaimed reduced appetite. But, boy, did it look good.
And me? I’d ordered a salad. A very nice-looking one. And tasty. Chinese chicken—yes, at a deli. But it sure didn’t compare with pastrami on rye.
It also didn’t ease my irritation. I took a forkful of lettuce and chow mein noodles doused in soy dressing and watched Tracy bite into her sandwich. She caught me looking at her and reddened as she chewed. I was certain her embarrassment had little to do with her choice of food.
Sure enough, when she swallowed she said, “Kendra, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you right away, no matter what the ransom note said. I mean, you’re a lawyer. You could have given me advice on what to do.”
“I couldn’t represent the club on this. But right now, as a board member, I suggest we call a special meeting.”
“Great idea. You know we’re all so glad you agreed to be secretary.” She was obviously buttering me up now to try to soothe over this matter that had burned my buns. Of course there’d been lots of arm-twisting to try to get me to take over as vice president when the last one left. We’d compromised on secretary.
“Sure thing,” I said. “I’d suggest you call the meeting ASAP. That way, you can make sure everyone knows what’s going on, even if we tell the group to keep it low key, not let anyone else in on it or risk further harm to the stolen pets. I’m the third victim in just a few days. Who’s to say there won’t be more? Everyone needs to be warned.”
“You’re right, Kendra,” Tracy conceded with a deep sigh. “I’ll send out a bigger and better post on the loop. Warn everyone to take special care of all their pet clients because of what’s been going on. Get everyone together tomorrow evening. Is that soon enough?”
“No, but it’ll have to do.”
SO WHAT DID I do then? Undoubtedly something I shouldn’t. But I could hardly sit and twiddle my thumbs while the cops were the only ones trying to find my missing clients.
I had to return to the office, sure. But I did it by way of the Dorgan home.
Rather, the Dorgan street. I knew the crime scene folks would be displeased if I did anything to disturb the site where my charges had been, so I instead walked the winding road and knocked on doors.
And met some irritated, some interested, and some peeved neighbors. They’d been through all this with the cops. And no one, at least none who happened to be home that afternoon, had seen anything helpful.
I nevertheless passed my business cards around and begged those with whom I spoke to let me know if they thought of anything helpful. Perhaps even before they informed the authorities—or at least I so implied. I didn’t want to be accused of actually obstructing an investigation, even if that was kinda what I was up to.
I felt scared for the personable Shar-pei, and indignant and unnerved over the disappearance of the iguana.
And I wasn’t at all certain that the cops would put the manpower into this case necessary to discover the whereabouts of the missing pets. Even when their last name was Dorgan.
One way or another, I had to find them.
Fast.
Chapter Three
WHEN I GOT back on the road, on a continued frantic foray to visit all my remaining pet clients and assure myself of their safety, I finally received the phone call I’d been both awaiting and dreading.
My cell phone sang its usual song of Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life.” The caller ID said it was Jeff. I answered with anticipation, ignoring my swirling nerves.
“I was glad to get your message, Kendra,” he said in his deepest and sexiest all-masculine voice. It sent shivers of excitement slinking down my spine.
I shrugged them right off again. Reconciliation hadn’t been the reason for my call. Er, well, not the whole reason . . .
I was sailing along Riverside Drive in my Beamer and decided that drowning in that voice could cause me to slide into someone. I pulled over into the nearest strip mall parking lot.
“I need your services, Jeff,” I told him hurriedly. Then, hearing how that could sound if the guy was sex-starved—as he should be by now—I added, “Professional services. Private investigator services. I have a big problem, and I’m not the only one.” I quickly told him about the kidnapped pets—all of them pooches except for Saurus, the iguana. “The cops are involved, but that’s not good enough.” I quickly went through the ransom note dichotomy and dilemma. “I want to make sure the pets are found and returned safely. The Pet-Sitters Club of SoCal is meeting tomorrow night to talk about it. Can you come?”
“Sure thing.”
“But please start your hunt for the missing pets right away, will you?”
“For you, anything.”
My heart soared, then dove into the pool of my mixed emotions. Without inflection, I intoned, “You’ll need to get into the house to look around. I know you’ll love to hear this, but Ned Noralles can get you the okay to check it out. I think his crime scene folks are finished.”
“Ned? Was someone killed?”
“Only my sense of pet security.”
“Okay. I’ll get started. But I want to hear all the details about this pet-napping from you tonight. Over dinner.”
“Well . . .”
The thing was, the major hurdle keeping Jeff and me apart had been eliminated weeks ago. I’d helped to clear his ex-wife of a murder accusation. In exchange, Amanda Hubbard had sworn never to darken Jeff’s doorstep again. And Jeff had seemed mighty pleased. Had acted ready to settle down for good. Had renewed his invitation for Lexie and me to move
into his home with his dear Akita, Odin, and him.
And how had I responded?
With confusion. After all the aggravation caused by Amanda, I’d considered a life without Jeff in it.
Had even started seeing someone else along with him: a really nice veterinarian named Dr. Tom Venson. Tom and I had a date planned for that weekend, in fact.
And I hadn’t had a date with Jeff in over a month, partly because of his normal and extensive travel schedule. I watched Odin for him when he was gone, while Lexie and I stayed at his home, but I’d moved out, like the coward I was, as soon as Jeff was due back. That was the reverse of earlier, happier days between us, when I’d simply stayed around and spent many delightful nights with Jeff when he was in town.
Reconciliation? Hah! No way was I ready for that.
“I’ll bring in Thai food,” he coaxed. Our traditional favorite. Between us, it acted as an aphrodisiac.
It sounded damned enticing.
Jeff sounded damned enticing.
But if I agreed, I’d probably wind up in bed with him.
Well, hell, I hadn’t had sex for weeks. Until I figured out this situation with two guys in my life, I’d intended not to complicate things further by jumping into bed with both.
Maybe serial monogamy was a mistake. Only, it didn’t seem fair to compare them both that way, too.
Did it? Well . . .
“All right,” I said. “Lexie and I will be by for dinner and discussion. As long as you understand that’s all.”
“Sure,” he said, and we said goodbye.
But not before I’d told myself, As long as you understand that’s all, too.
I DROPPED IN to see two more perfectly happy pups—Alexander, the pit bull, and Cicely, the Shih-tzu—and a couple of persnickety but otherwise healthy cats, Abra and Cadabra. All were fine.
All were there. And none even had the temerity to tease me by hiding upon my arrival, thank heavens.
I jotted down my visits in my official pet-sitters’ log, which was obviously going to fill up a lot faster now that I had to drop in on my charges more often to see to their safety.
I also called my assistant Rachel to ensure that the pets she sat for were also where they belonged and that she, too, noted their well-being in writing. “Everyone’s fine, Kendra,” she assured me. “And I’ll check on them often, like I promised. I just got done walking Widget, and I’m worn out!”
“No wonder, with that wild terrier.” I thanked her, and felt a whole lot happier for me than for her when she said she’d no auditions scheduled this week to sweep her from her sitting obligations at a moment’s notice. Like many youths in L.A., my pet-sitting employee was a wannabe actress who filled in time and took in work while waiting for her elusive, maybe unattainable, big break. She’d had a tiny part in a feature film that required her on location briefly a few weeks back. She had no idea when the movie would be released but was still excited—and hoped it presaged oodles of future roles.
In any event, except for the disaster at the Dorgans’, all fortunately seemed well with Critter TLC, LLC, and its sitters and clients.
I made more calls, too, including to Detective Ned Noralles, to see if there were any leads about the location of Zibble and Saurus. There weren’t. But he had heard from Jeff and given the go-ahead for my favorite P.I. to poke around the crime scene.
With nothing more I could do at that moment to find them, I spent another couple of hours as a practicing attorney, sent the e-mail I’d been dreading to the Dorgans, then headed off to pick up my own pet.
The oft-cleaned Doggy Indulgence Day Resort smelled of antibacterial cleaners overlaying accidents. Its spacious main room was laid out with several play zones for pets. As soon as she spotted me standing in the crowd by the sign-out desk, Lexie, my small, mostly black and white spaniel, lifted her little red eyebrows and tore toward me along the pine-look linoleum floor from her favorite canine play area, the one with all the people furniture in it. I knelt down and picked her up, nuzzling her furry snout as she laved my chin and neck with her soft, rough tongue. “Good to see you, too, Lexie,” I said with a laugh.
“You okay, Kendra?” asked a familiar male voice from beside me. I looked up at the long and lanky form of the biggest indulger at Doggy Indulgence, its owner and my dearest two-legged friend, Darryl Nestler. At his feet was a pack of the pups in his charge. His human assistants were busy playing with canine customers and helping their owners sign them out for the day.
In one of my earlier calls, I’d informed Darryl of my stolen pet torment. “Sure, I’m okay,” I replied. “More or less.”
He peered through wire-rimmed glasses down at my apparently transparent face. “Looks like less to me. You want a drink of something strong?”
“Really?” I was familiar with the facility’s kitchen. Darryl kept fixing me up with potential clients of both the pet-sitting and law persuasions, and our initial meetings were often held in that particular office away from home. I’d never noticed anything resembling alcohol there—a good thing, considering some of the screwball employees Darryl sometimes hired here.
“Sure. I’ve bought a bunch of those fitness waters with some really strong lemon flavor. You’ll pucker right up.”
“Lexie would like that.” I finally pulled that particular pup away from my now-wet chin and neck. “But I’d better go. I’ve already visited my pet clients twice today and want to do it again.”
“Any indication where the missing dog and iguana got to?” he asked, sympathy oozing from his already sweet face.
“Not yet,” I said. “But I’ve got both Ned Noralles and Jeff Hubbard on the case. There’s got to be a break soon.”
BUT WHEN LEXIE and I reached Jeff’s a couple of hours later—after my last call on my pet clients for the night plus a visit home to change from lawyerly clothes into casual—he’d learned nothing I didn’t already know.
It took a while for him to inform me of that. He greeted me at the door of his pseudo-Mexican hacienda in the wilds of Sherman Oaks, his sweet Akita, Odin, by his side. The two dogs exchanged happy sniffs. Concurrently, both Lexie’s long-haired white and black tail and Odin’s short-haired beige tail, curled up over his back, wagged amicably.
And Jeff and I? Well, the hunky and tall P.I., with a hard body that didn’t quit, held that very same hard body against mine and planted one heck of a kiss soundly on my lips, followed by some pretty sexy tongue action.
That was a whole lot more than amicable.
And made me consider tearing off his blue shirt and tight, sexy jeans. Better yet, turning my tail and running. But I did neither. I needed his P.I. expertise too much.
First things first. We walked Lexie and Odin along the flat streets of Jeff’s neighborhood, allowing them to do what came naturally in the twilight of near seven thirty P.M.
Then we entered Jeff’s house again, nuked our favorite take-out Thai dishes that he’d brought in—pad Thai and mee krob—and sat at the round, wood table in his small but functional kitchen.
I looked into his beautiful blue eyes, lowered my lids in my own attempt at sensuality, and said, “What do you have for me, Jeff?” I grinned at the smoldering stare that resulted, complete with his licking more than the taste of Thai off his lips, trying to ignore the melting of my own turned-on body. “About the missing pets,” I added.
Which iced that ogle immediately.
“Nothing yet,” he said in a tone so casual that I knew he was trying to torment me as much as I’d done to him. “I talked to Ned, got what little I could from him, and started my own investigation. I figured the police would have taken anything potentially useful from the crime scene, but I did a walk-through anyway. Nothing. I’ve got Althea”—that was his computer geek—“looking around online for anything helpful. And I’ve started canvassing the street, figuring some neighbor was bound to see someone who happened to have both a Shar-pei and a three-foot-long iguana with him, but so far I haven’t a clue.”
“Are you going to stay here tonight?”
I still had half a plateful of Thai before me, but I stood and glared. “Is that an attempt at extortion?”
His grin was so charming, boyish—and damnably sexy—in that great, angular face that I nearly melted and prepared to promise him anything. “Sure,” he replied. “I’m not proud. I’ll try anything.” But then his expression grew so serious that every muscle in my terrifically tense body tightened even more. “Kendra, you know I love you. I want you to stay tonight. I want you to move in. You know that, too. I thought everything was resolved when Amanda finally promised to stay away. She’s kept that promise, by the way, in case you’re wondering.”
I kinda had been—maybe more because if she hadn’t, I would have a better excuse for keeping Jeff at arm’s length this way.
And I couldn’t exactly use my old standard excuse, that I was rotten at selecting men suitable for a relationship, any longer. Jeff really was a pretty good guy. Even if he had allowed his ex to insinuate herself back into his life. She’d had reason: A stalker had terrorized her, and she had turned to her onetime best protector and P.I., Jeff, for security advice and anti-stalker assistance.
The stalker was dead now. He’d been the one Amanda was accused of killing, and I’d uncovered the actual culprit. And she was apparently fulfilling her end of her bargain with me and avoiding her ex.
The Fright of the Iguana Page 3
