Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

by Suzann Ledbetter

  A massive understatement for Harriet's finding out about her double life. When Dina was a kid, she'd known those everyday commandments like "I'm doing this for your own good" and "What you don't know, can't hurt you" were monumental lies. You have to be an adult to rationalize that they're true and actively ignore why the proverbial road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

  "Is Harriet all right?" Gwendolyn asked.

  "The paramedics checked her over and were pretty sure it was an anxiety attack, not a heart attack. They still wanted to transport her to the E.R., but Mom refused."

  McPhee voting with Dina and the EMTs contradicted the precept of majority rule. Harriet insisted she'd been excited about "having company," and should have gone back to bed instead of becoming overtired. Her elevated blood sugar she'd blamed on the decaf coffee she'd barely touched. The real culprit, a stress-induced adrenaline spike, has a corresponding effect on anybody's insulin level. Diabetics are just more sensitive to it.

  "Mom's up and around this morning," Dina said, "but she's a little shaky."

  "You're afraid to leave her alone," Gwendolyn stated, followed by a pensive sigh. "I would be, too, if it was my mother, but—"

  "You have a boarding kennel to run," Dina finished for her. "And I have a grooming appointment scheduled in a half hour."

  The line hummed a moment. Gwendolyn couldn't quite mask the edge in her tone when she inquired, "So, how soon can you be here?"

  From the living room, Harriet called, "Di-na. Come here, quick."

  Stretching the phone cord to its limit, she leaned around the corner, saying, "I hope before noon " Her voice trailed away as she saw what her mother was pointing at on the TV. "Oh, dear God."

  Dina dropped the receiver on the counter and rushed into the living room. Aiming the remote, Harriet upped the volume on a local station's breaking-news report.

  The anchorman doing a stand-up at the end of a residential driveway looked about sixteen and forcibly grim. "A spokesman for the Park City Police Department has confirmed the city's latest homicide victim is Belle deHaven, wife of nationally known investment counselor Carleton deHaven.

  "According to unnamed sources close to the investigation, sometime between early afternoon and midnight yesterday, Mrs. deHaven sustained an execution-style gunshot wound to the head. Death was believed to be instantaneous."

  The anchor took a breath. "To repeat," he said, "the Park City police have confirmed—"

  Dina clapped her hands over her ears. "Turn it down, for God's sake."

  The noise level ratcheting down several decibels had no effect on the clamor inside Dina's head. DeHaven. Belle deHaven. The name pounded like a drumbeat. There was no mistaking it or the house with the soaring wall of windows diagonally behind the reporter.

  She'd broken into the deHavens' house before midnight last night. Skulked through the eerie, unrelieved darkness as far as the living room, then lost her penlight along with her nerve—for lack of a better term.

  A dead woman's house. A murdered woman's house. Jack McPhee's ex-wife's house.

  That's why he was there. Why he'd hustled Dina from the scene, instead of turning her over to the police. He'd shot Belle deHaven and

  And what? Give or take a few minutes, the first police officer arrived at the deHavens' house around midnight. Jack must have killed his ex-wife some time earlier. He'd then gone back to his car and waited for the Calendar Burglar to spring the trap he'd set that afternoon. What better alibi was there than to pin a murder on a notorious thief?

  Dina snorted at the thought. Jack McPhee was a lot of things, not all of them complimentary. But a diabolical, cold-blooded killer? Not.

  On the heels of that assurance came a shattering realization. If Jack hadn't been at the deHavens' last night, hadn't practically kidnapped Dina to evade the police, she'd be the prime suspect in the homicide of a woman she'd never even met.

  Her knees buckled. Staggering backward, Dina clutched the back of a dining room chair, her eyes shut tight against a swirling ochre-gray haze. What if Jack was at the police station right now, telling them he'd caught her escaping out the dog door? Speculating that Mrs. deHaven must have confronted the Calendar Burglar, aka Dina Wexler. Dina panicked and shot the woman, then ran virtually into Jack's arms.

  Stop it. Stop it. He knows you didn't have a gun on you. Would have heard the shot if you'd fired one inside the house. Knows you're a thief, yes, and that the deHavens' wasn't the first house you broke into, got scared and left without taking anything. Most of all, he damn well knows you're as steel nerved and vicious as a rabbit.

  Dina sucked in a slow, tentative breath through her nose, then another and another deeper one. They ebbed the nausea, but not the sour, burning taste permeating her mouth. She swallowed it back and licked her lips.

  Gradually, her vision began to clear. A muffling sensation, like swimming underwater, gave way to the staccato bleats of an unhooked phone receiver, and her mother's disgusted " this world, this town coming to? Fourteenth murder this year, that TV boy said. Like it's a baseball game, for pity's sake, and we're a couple of RBIs from tying up the score."

  Harriet threw a wadded tissue at the screen. "Return to regular programming, my foot. First they barge in on my favorite show with the same claptrap they'll have on noon news, then they tack on a string of commercials."

  Dina looked from her mother to a national auto-parts franchise advertisement. The relief crashing over her was as dizzying as Jack's imagined police report. She was positive they'd mentioned the deHaven name last night. More than once. Harriet either hadn't heard them or hadn't connected it to the murdered woman's identity.

  "Your show will be back on in a minute," Dina said, her voice steadier than she expected. "It's nothing to get upset about."

  "Ha! You watch. The clue J. B. Fletcher found that'll nab the killer was in the part they skipped." Harriet's thumb tapped the channel-changer button. "I'll just bide my time with something else till it comes on again on cable at three."

  "That'll teach 'em," Dina said, chuckling. Picking up the receiver to call back Gwen Ellicot sobered her immediately.

  TLC's owner had been unbelievably tolerant of Dina's frequent and typically last-minute tardiness, let alone no-shows. Mondays were also routinely drop-off days for dogs who reeked from paddling around in the lake all weekend.

  Other kennel employees could handle basic shampoos and blow-drys. It was the add-ons, the nonchalant "I know I don't have an appointment, but while he's here, can you trim his nails, scale his teeth, trim his ears, and gosh, the way he's been dragging his bottom, his anal glands might need to be expressed" chores that required a trained groomer.

  "Hey," she said when Gwendolyn answered the return call. "I am so sorry I dropped the phone. Mom yelled, and I thought she'd fallen, or—"

  "Listen, Dina, don't worry about coming in today." A pause, then, "In fact, well, I wanted to discuss this with you in person, but I've hired a full-time groomer. He wasn't supposed to start till Wednesday, but he's on his way here to cover for you."

  Dina was too stunned to speak.

  "It's not fair," Gwendolyn went on. "I know it isn't. You're the reason business has picked up. I just can't afford to lose it again because something comes up at home and appointments have to be canceled or rescheduled."

  How much business would be lost when the Calendar Burglar's apprehension was splashed across the newspaper's front page? When word spread that a thief had used TLC's, Merry Hills's and Home Away's clientele like a hit list?

  It wasn't as if Dina never thought about getting caught. What mental images she'd allowed herself were ridiculously contained and Hollywood scripted: her handcuffed wrists, the prodigal Randy's forced return to take care of and support their mother, her guilty plea before a judge, a prison cell with an X chalked on a wall to mark off her sentence.

  "I'm sorry, Gwendolyn," she murmured. "For everything."

  The phone receiver she cradled seemed to weigh a hundred poun
ds.

  * * *

  The turn signal ticked off the seconds Jack waited in traffic at the intersection of Eleventh and Danbury. He couldn't recall ever making the damn light. No once in all the years he'd owned the agency.

  Equally immutable was the sallow Methuselah who lived across the street from Jack's office. Rain or shine, summer and winter, the old man sat on his porch smoking cigarettes and flipping the butts into a rusty coffee can. He couldn't see his sneaker laces and wouldn't hear Armageddon, but he waved at passing pedestrians and cars like the hereditary King of Danbury Street.

  Jack's gaze swung to the strip mall's parking lot. Scanning for Brett Dean Blankenship's car was becoming habit. Its absence was less notable than its presence—unless the jerk finally got bored or Mommy had cut off his allowance Saturday night and he couldn't afford the gas.

  What gave Jack pause was the white Crown Victoria cozied between a Subaru and a Honda Accord. In law-enforcement parlance, "unmarked" referred to an official vehicle without light bars, pinstripes and shield decals. Though stripped of the obvious trappings, flattops radiated an aura. At fifty yards, most people could distinguish a civilian Crown Vic or Chevrolet Caprice from a city motor-pool model.

  Crime-unit investigators drove unmarkeds. Specifically, property-crime detectives eager to hear why Jack McPhee and an unknown individual had fled the scene of a residential trouble call last night. The urge was almost overwhelming to abort his left turn onto Eleventh, proceed west on Danbury, then circle around to his attorney's office three hours early for their appointment.

  Jack's standard procedure was to notify the cops of a surveillance location in advance. It was a courtesy, sure, but mostly it prevented a stakeout being shot to hell by a uniform responding to a suspicious-vehicle complaint. Dispatch was informed of the prior two traps laid for the Calendar Burglar. He hadn't notified them of Belle's address, for good reason or reasons he couldn't recollect at the moment. After the interview with Dina Wexler, the lapse seemed prescient.

  "Up till now." Jack nosed the Taurus into his usual parking spot. "Just play it cool, kid. If that doesn't work, go for dumb. God knows you are or you wouldn't be in this mess to begin with."

  Recognizing the investigator exiting the Crown Vic brought a grin to Jack's face. "Corned Beef?" He stuck out a hand. "Man, I haven't seen you in, what, about fifty pounds?"

  "Thirty-five. The diet the new wife's put me on has knocked off nearly twenty." Andy McGuire's smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "Nobody's called me Corned Beef in so long, I'd forgotten about it."

  The police academy's alphabetical order had McGuire preceding McPhee in everything from seating assignments to drills. Before the first day's training session ended, one of the instructors dubbed them Corned Beef and Cabbage.

  McGuire, an African-American, had laughed louder than anyone. At the graduation after-party, the two Micks, as they were also known, contributed a keg of Guinness. Arms draped on each other's shoulders, they'd sung multiple choruses of "Too-A-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral," because "Danny Boy" was cliché and the lyrics had actual words in them.

  "Those were the days." Jack eyed McGuire's tight-fitting summer-weight suit. "So, what plainclothes unit are you with now? Last I heard, you were undercover drug enforcement."

  "That was a long time ago, too." McGuire's features hardened, as though their history had gone the way of his uniform and Sam Browne belt. "Homicide. Four years, next month."

  The sweat sticking Jack's shirt to his shoulder blades chilled around the edges. He motioned at the office door. "Come on inside. I'll buy you a cup of bad coffee."

  "Another time. Right now, I'd appreciate you coming down to the station with me and answering some questions."

  "Oh, yeah? In regard to what?"

  "Your ex-wife." McGuire studied him a moment. "Don't tell me you weren't aware that somebody shot her yesterday."

  "Belle's ?" Jack backed away, stammering, "N-no. Uh-uh. I don't know what the fuck you're trying to pull, but that's bullshit. Total bullshit."

  "There's a stack of scene photos on my desk that says otherwise." McGuire asked if Jack was carrying a weapon, then patted him down to confirm he wasn't. "Now get in the car. Please."

  Not a word was exchanged as the Crown Vic flowed with the traffic to Fifth, then toward Central Avenue. Jack stared out the passenger's-side glass without seeing the lines of parked cars, storefronts, alleyways or cross streets. Behind his eyes, a tall, willowy redhead pelted him with snowballs, slept on her stomach after they'd made love, glided down the aisle in a white lace gown. She screamed curses with a fist upraised, laughed, cried and jerked her clothes from dresser drawers and crammed them in suitcases. Later, outside the courtroom where the divorce was granted, she kissed him, then promised to always love him and be the friend she should have stayed.

  Jack was vaguely aware of walking from the station's parking garage and the elevator ride to the fourth floor. Several quasifamiliar faces looked up from their desks in the homicide unit's bull pen.

  McGuire halted at a door with a small, wire-embedded window. He motioned Jack inside a drab, windowless cubicle. "Take a seat, McPhee. I'll be with you in a minute."

  Maybe it was hearing the door's automatic lock engage that parted Jack's mental fog. The flickering fluorescent glare of the ceiling lights. It couldn't have been Belle whispering, "Snap out of it, hon. Andy McGuire didn't bring you here to talk about the old days."

  Belle was dead. She'd never collect the rain check on that drink Jack owed her. Why he thought of that, why thinking it felt like an elephant crushing his chest, was incomprehensible.

  The song that went "I'd trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday" had it backward. Yesterdays with Belle were his to keep. Tomorrows were luxuries he'd lost forever.

  McGuire entered the room and closed the door behind him. He took the chair on the opposite side of a narrow rectangular table. "You're looking a tad green around the gills."

  Jack bit back an anatomically impossible remark. He was there to answer questions and extrapolate from them as much information as he could.

  The interview started with background information. How he'd met Belle, how long they were married, when they split up and why. Apart from the year of their divorce, Jack couldn't remember the date. Amicable understated their relationship since, but sufficed.

  "You were the last person she spoke with yesterday," McGuire said. Receiving no reaction, he added, "Why'd you call her?"

  "An insurance agency hired me to investigate some residential burglaries. Belle was acquainted with a few of the victims."

  Why that satisfied McGuire was clarified by his next statement. "Her husband says you've never contacted her on a weekend before."

  "Her husband is wrong." Jack nodded at one of the file folders McGuire had carried in. "If any of those are call records and they go back a while, you know I have."

  "Not often."

  "More than never."

  "Maybe Mr. deHaven was mistaken because he wasn't at home when those prior contacts were made."

  "Says Mr. deHaven." Jack crossed a leg at the knee. "Is 'contacts' his word or yours? I'm betting his."

  "Were you aware Mrs. deHaven planned to meet her husband in Arkansas later in the day?"

  "Yes." Gears began to turn in Jack's mind. "What time was her flight?"

  McGuire hesitated, then grasped that Jack had affirmed knowledge of her mode of transportation. "Four twenty-six."

  The way Belle drove, she'd have left home about three forty-five. Park City Memorial had tightened and complicated security, like every other airport in the country, but passengers soon learned the new, ninety-minute-preboarding rule meant protracted dawdling in the coffee shop. It must surely be a coincidence that visitor parking fees now doubled after the first hour, too.

  "The .38 Police Special registered to you," McGuire said. "Did you leave it in your other jacket this morning?"

  "C'mon, Andy." Jack chuckled. "I'm a P.I., not Dog the Bounty Hunter.
I don't pack heat 24/7."

  McGuire allowed a half smile. Cops watched Duane "Dog" Chapman's reality show for comic relief. "Then where's the gun? We'll need it for a ballistics test."

  "It's locked in the trunk of—" Jack reluctantly corrected himself. "It's in the glove box in my car. The weekend before last, I got bored and drove out to the practice range." Realizing how that sounded, he added, "I do, every couple of months or so."

  "You get bored?"

  "I target practice. If I ever do need to use it, I'd like to be able ." He cursed himself for running off at the mouth. "You want a ballistics comparison, get a search warrant."

  "Oh, really. Well, that may be easier than you think, McPhee."

  Two fingerprint-ident cards were removed from a file folder and laid side by side on the table. Placed above them was a photograph of an exterior door frame with a smudge circled in red. "Unless you can explain why your print was lifted off the deHavens' mudroom door."