Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

by Suzann Ledbetter

  "His deceased owner," Jack reminded.

  "Okay, but—Look, I trusted you to help me last night. Why can't you just trust me to help you?"

  "You didn't trust me. You just didn't want to go to jail."

  "I told you everything. I didn't have to. Once I was home, you couldn't have proved I was ever inside your ex-wife's house. Or anyone else's."

  She had him there. And knew it. "Let me think about it while you give me a lift to the office to get my car."

  They started down the steps, Dina coltish in dress shoes likely boxed in a closet for months, and loath to let them set the pace. "One condition," she said.

  Why wasn't he surprised? "Hey, I can take a cab."

  "Phil can't go back to the animal shelter."

  "He has to." When Jack dragged himself home from the Wexlers, he absolutely had not wished Phil was there, wagging a welcome home. Or stuck a cold, dog-snotty nose in his face this morning and whined to go out. First thing, he'd washed the hair-clotted towels and given the blow-dryer to Ms. Pearl. No bonds to break, no regrets.

  "My apartment is small," he said. "Phil is not. Plus, I have a feeling I won't be spending much time there in the immediate future."

  "Pets are therapeutic. It's clinically proven they can alleviate stress, depression, hypertension "

  Jack looked at her. "You want him?"

  Dina shook her head. "Temporary custody. Fifty bucks a week for his care and feeding, and a promise you'll keep him when I can't anymore."

  "Deal," blurted a voice that sounded exactly like Jack's.

  * * *

  Dina saw the car first. She and Jack were in the crosswalk at midblock that led to the visitors' parking lot where she'd left the Beetle. She lagged behind a couple of steps, the tissues wadded in the toes of her shoes as hardened and rough as papier-mâché. Size-four-and-three-quarter pumps didn't exist; fives were nearly impossible to find. Seldom in her life had she worn shoes that weren't a half size too big.

  Now skating along more so than walking, she glimpsed a blur streak from the parking lot's exit, turn wide and swerve into the southbound lane. Mouth agape in a silent scream, she slammed into Jack, pushing him forward with all her might.

  The burn of skinned knees and the palms of both hands registered before Dina realized she'd fallen. As an added insult, her hobo bag swung up and clouted her in the head.

  "Dina!" Jack hoisted her to feet and hugged her tight. "Jesus, darlin', are you okay? Are you hurt?"

  Stepping back, he smoothed the hair from her face. He looked her over, as though expecting to see bones sticking out, or arterial bleeding.

  "I'm fine." She tottered a little, feeling at once hollow and capable of wrenching up the redbud tree in the parkway and hurling it at well, something.

  "Are you sure?" At her wobbly nod, Jack wrapped an arm around her, smushing her against him. It felt pretty wonderful, except she'd really have liked to sit down on the curb a second.

  He called across the street, "Hey, kid. Yeah, you. Did you see that car?"

  A teenager in what appeared to be chainsawed sweatpants and a T-shirt pointed north. "He cranked a left at the corner. Haulin'."

  Jack muttered, "No shit, Sherlock," then louder, "Gimme a make, a model."

  "You mean like Ford, or sumthin'?" The teen waved dismissively. "I dunno, dude. It was like, you know, like dirty white, I think. Maybe tan."

  Behind them, a reedy voice said, "It was a Chevrolet. No doubt about it."

  Jack turned, taking Dina with him. The speaker was a well-dressed woman with lilac-tinted hair and the bearing of a retired elementary teacher. "The car was just like my granddaughter's, only hers is blue, and she takes far better care of it."

  The woman clucked her tongue at Dina. "That was quite a tumble you took, miss. As crazy as people drive anymore, it's a miracle you weren't killed." She looked at Jack and flipped up her clip-on sunglasses. "In my day, a gentleman walked beside a lady to cross the street, not in front of her."

  Dina suppressed a chuckle at his contrite "Yes, ma'am." She ducked from under his protective wing as he reverted to the woman's original comment. "Your granddaughter's car. Do you by chance know the model?"

  An apologetic no prompted, "What about the driver? Male? Female?"

  The woman pursed her lips and looked down the street. "It happened so fast A man, I'd say, but I really can't be certain."

  Jack asked for and received her name and phone, then gave her a business card. "Thanks, Mrs. Norton. If you think of anything else, please let me know."

  Dina banked her curiosity until they were out of earshot. "The man in the white Chevy," she stated. "He was trying to run you down, wasn't he?"

  Expression stony, refusing to meet her eyes, Jack replied, "What makes you think that?"

  "Because he timed it, and he didn't hit his brakes, even going around the corner."

  "Mighty observant for a dog groomer." Jack's scowl deepened, as though deciding whether to leave it there or continue. "Assuming it was a Cavalier, the driver's name is Brett Dean Blankenship. I turned him down for a job last week. Saying he doesn't take rejection well is like saying the ocean's wet."

  He pulled the Bug's driver's-side door handle, grunted, then reached in the open window and pulled up the lock. "He's stalked me on and off ever since."

  "Stalking? Ye gods, McPhee. How about hit-and-run?"

  "Missed and ran," he corrected.

  Dina stowed her hobo bag on the rear floorboard. She sat down gingerly, the blistering-hot upholstery upstaging her tender, stinging kneecaps. Jack had slid into the passenger's side and was collapsing the windshield's sunscreen, when she turned and said, "But you were in front of me in the crosswalk. Blankenship swung into the other lane, not into the curb."

  The folded sunscreen skimmed over her head and flopped on the backseat. "And lucky for me, you throw a pretty mean tackle for a girl."

  "You're welcome." Dina depressed the clutch and keyed the ignition. The VW fired up and shuddered in place and coughed exhaust the approximate shade of Mrs. Norton's hair.

  Pulling out of the lot, her thoughts flittered like dust motes, a frightening few of them consigned to operating a motor vehicle. "Why did you ask everybody but me about the car and the guy driving it? It was a man, by the way. A big man."

  "You were involved. An adrenaline dump sharpens, distorts and narrows perceptions. If you aimed a .22 peashooter at a convenience store clerk, he'd see Godzilla armed with an AK-47 with tiny nicks inside the barrel."

  Thinking back, Dina allowed it was true. The car was light colored, but not necessarily white. The driver's silhouette filled the space above the dash and the roof. In the V-dub's passenger's seat, Jack almost fit that description and he wasn't a big man. And an impression of size automatically translated to male.

  What Dina couldn't shake was the feeling she, not Jack, was the intended target.

  "Left at the next corner," he said, pointing. "Then a right when you get to Danbury."

  "Was Blankenship stalking you last night?"

  "No."

  "You're sure?"

  Jack glanced at her, then looked away. "Positive."

  Good, Dina thought. Because if he had and the guy was insane enough to try to hurt me, simply because I was with Jack, I'd wonder if he'd

  So did he. She could feel it. Equally strong was the sense Jack hadn't lied about last night.

  "Left-turn lane," he directed. "See that strip mall? My office is next door to that diner at the end."

  Nodding, she downshifted to slow for an oncoming truck and the turn, then wheeled onto the side street.

  "Well, I'll be damned."

  "What? This is where you meant, isn't it?"

  "You made the light." It sounded like an accusation. "Blew right through it, slick as a friggin' whistle."

  "It was green," she said. "That means go."

  "So I hear. Just pull in beside my car—no, make it a space over, so I can open the door all the way."

 
Jack unlocked the office for her, where she could, as he said, powder her nose in the bathroom. Her mental picture of a real P.I.'s office wasn't clear, but McPhee might as well have been a tax preparer. A very neat tax preparer, who liked maps, but was too cheap to have them framed.

  The sofa was almost as ugly as her mother's. Magazines on a side table were years old. The fake ivy and ferns looked wilted, but the air conditioning was set well under eighty.

  A call home wakened Harriet from a chair nap, though she strenuously denied it. "Where are you? The box thing on the phone said, 'Private number.'"

  The corded desk phone was as quaint as the kitchen wall unit at home. Dina had given no thought to the box thing, otherwise known as Harriet's cordless model's caller-ID screen. Odd, that McPhee Investigations—or in digitalese, "MCPH INVSTIGNS"—wasn't programmed into a business phone's menu.

  A cordless desk unit Dina hadn't noticed earlier was fed by a separate phone line. A third, detached phone cord inferred he could juggle more conversations than he had ears, as did a multiplug cell-phone charger.

  Harriet muttered, "What'd she do, hang up on me?"

  "I'm here, Mom. Will you be okay by yourself for a little while longer? An hour, probably less?"

  "Well, of course, I will. Stop fussing over—"

  "Do I need to pick up anything on my way home? Library books, more juice "

  "Oh, for pity's sake." The line clicked and went dead. Dina interpreted it as a "No, thank you, sweetheart, but it's so thoughtful of you to ask."

  The office's half bath smelled of cleanser and Jack's aftershave. The commode's lid was down. The spindled roll of toilet paper dispensed from the front, not the back. A wrapped, spare roll was on the tank.

  The sink's chrome fixtures were apparently spot proof, and the liquid soap dispenser, drip proof. A motel-style rack held a box of tissues, stacks of trifolded hand towels and facecloths.

  Mr. Clean's wastebasket was empty. Dina took out the plastic liner and flipped over the container on its top. The metal base made a plinkety-pop sound under her weight, but the medicine chest's mirror was now visible. And snoopable.

  And boring, apart from a box of condoms. Two hermetically sealed tampons, a razor, shaving cream, deodorant, toothbrush and paste, mouthwash, comb, a travel bottle of shampoo and first-aid items said Jack was equipped for most emergencies and not prone to floss during office hours.

  After Dina washed her face and knees, and fingerbrushed her teeth, she found Jack rifling a wide metal storage cabinet. Several of the desk's previously locked drawers were hanging open.

  Her "What are you looking for?" was answered with a curt, "Let's go."

  With the cabinet, desk, then front door secured, he stalked to the Taurus and opened the trunk. A camera's long lens was replaced with a stubby one. The trunk's lid, inside and out, was photographed. Moving to the front passenger's-side door, Jack clicked off two shots of the window, adjusted the lens and snapped several more.

  "Care to let me in on what you're doing?"

  Elbow now propped on the seat, he said, "Not from clear over there." When Dina stepped closer, he informed her that his gun was missing.

  The lens whirred forward and backward as the glove compartment was photographed inside and out. "The supply cabinet, a desk drawer—I've put it in both a few times. Just not lately. Normally, it's in the trunk."

  With a pen, Jack indicated the glove compartment lock's misshapen keyhole. "That, I should have noticed sooner." Of a slit in the passenger window's weather stripping, fine scratches and chips at the top the glass and scuffs on the window ledge, he said, "As for those? Well, I don't ride shotgun in my own damn car."

  The Beetle was a one-driver vehicle, too. On occasion, she loaded a bulky or fragile thing in the passenger's seat or floorboard, but usually hoisted them over from the driver's side.

  "Your car doesn't have an alarm?" she asked.

  "Who pays attention to them, other than getting pissed when they go off? Not real helpful for surveillance, either. A stray cat pussyfoots across the hood and whoop-whoop, I'm the center of attention."

  "Can you tell when the gun was stolen?"

  Jack shook his head. "No way to determine if the slim-jimmed window is related to the punched glove box. Or the scratched trunk lock, either."

  "Common sense says they are."

  "Common sense isn't proof." He returned the camera equipment to the trunk. "What I do know is that my .38 was in the glove box a week ago Sunday."

  The trunk lid slammed so hard, Dina jumped. "And if McGuire obtains a search warrant, telling him I didn't discover it'd been stolen until an hour after he questioned me about Belle's murder, will make him laugh."

  "How many people knew where you usually keep it?"

  "It's a pretty easy guess for anyone who knows how I make my living."

  Dina did, but hadn't given a gun a thought. Much less, where he'd keep it. "Anyone," she said, "such as that Blankenship guy?"

  No answer.

  "Okay, then. What are we going to do?"

  "We?" He snickered. "Stick with me, kid. I'll get you twenty-five to life on an accessory-to-homicide rap."

  "I'm serious."

  "You think I'm not?"

  "Sure you are," she said. "But if I'd never burglarized anyone, the insurance company wouldn't have hired you, you wouldn't have boarded Phil in Mrs. deHaven's name, wouldn't have been at her house last night and couldn't have left your fingerprint on the back door, so it's all my fault you're a suspect in her murder."

  She sucked in a deep breath. "That's why it's we."

  Jack just stood there, slack jawed, as if someone had slim-jimmed his brain and absconded with it. Presently, he said, "I can't decide which one terrifies me the most. When something you say is a couple of quarts low on logic, or when it kind of isn't."

  12

  Jack was trudging up the steps to his apartment when his cell phone rang. If it's Cherise, again, he thought, extricating the cell from his jeans pocket, it's going to voice mail.

  He wasn't being ungrateful or mean. There were just so many times you can reassure someone and so many ways to promise not to involve her, before it became white noise.

  Dina's name and number flashed on the ID screen. He'd tweaked her original plot to smuggle Phil out of Merry Hills. It put the onus entirely on her, but she had a legitimate excuse to be at the kennel. Jack didn't.

  Now either all was well, or shot to hell. "McPhee," he said, and braced for the latter.

  The worst-ever Desi Arnez impersonator replied, "Honey, we're home."

  He blew out a breath. "No problems?"

  "Oh, I'm good," Dina said. "I am golden."

  Jack grinned at the smugness in her voice. He leaned against the exterior wall, grateful the breezeway lived up somewhat to its purpose. "Convince me."

  "Would you believe, nobody was in the front office or in the kennels when I went in? Kind of disappointing, actually. I had my lines down cold, but it was cake getting Phil out of his pen and into the reception area."

  "How's his dermatitis?"

  "Much improved, thanks to me." A pause, then, "I paid the fee, checkmarked the register, then I realized that wasn't enough. Not with Mrs. deHaven's name still there for anyone to see."

  Jack's back stuttered down the siding, and he sat down hard on the step. Impending doom tended to have a weakening effect on his knees.

  Dina went on, "I licked my finger and tried to smudge the ink. All that did was leave a dirty streak on the paper. I was about to tear out the whole page, when I saw this open can of soda on the counter. I figured if it ate through the gunky stuff on my battery cables, it was worth a shot."

  Cola dissolves rust off bumpers, cuts through windshield grime and cleans toilets, too, but Jack kept his "Heloise Hints" fandom to himself. Tough guys don't read her column or "Dear Abby."

  "I splashed soda all over the page, like it spilled. Everything it touched smeared a little. In one particular spot, a dab here and a rub the
re pretty much wiped you-know-who off the map. So to speak."

  "You are golden." Jack shook his head, convinced that whatever guardian angels watched over Dina the Calendar Burglar had smiled on Dina the Phil-napper, as well. "Couldn't have done better myself."