Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

by Suzann Ledbetter

  She sniffed, raised her head, feigned a smart-aleck grin. "My hero."

  The stubbled, battered face that had never been handsome arranged into a pensive expression. "How much of McGuire's and my conversation did you hear in the kitchen?"

  "Zero. I really tried, but the food service and pill dispensing made too much noise."

  "I didn't think so. Harriet caught my cue that it was a two-man discussion."

  "Because ?"

  "There've been some new developments in the fatality robbery McGuire responded to from the park Friday night. The cops have kept a lid on, pending notification of next-of-kin. The victim's sister and her husband were on a cruise to somewhere tropical. She was contacted about an hour before McGuire left his office to come here."

  Dina shook her head. "The poor woman. Being thousands of miles away and finding out her brother had died of natural causes would be devastating enough."

  Jack's fingers tightened on her hand. "I kept the volume low on purpose. With McGuire here, I was afraid how you'd react if you heard the vic was Wesley Martin Shapiro."

  The name didn't register for a second. Dina hadn't known it, until she and Jack were en route to Shiffen Park. Before then, the man driving the Lexus was an intentional blur who meted out cash for medications and treatments her mother couldn't survive long without.

  "But we just—" A shudder rippled down her spine. She and Jack were probably the last people to see Wesley Shapiro alive. Except for his killer.

  "It looked like an armed robbery gone south. McGuire had barely arrived at the scene when he picked up the cell-phone help call from me."

  "Thank God he did. Or " She waggled her head. "No ors allowed. Ifs and buts, either."

  "Timing is everything, kid. If more elapsed after the meet at the park ended, McGuire would've let it go to voice mail."

  Jack asked for and received a drink of iced tea, though the cubes had melted to chips. "It's procedure to search a homicide vic's residence. Shapiro's place was a moonlight shopper's warehouse. Electronics, guns, high-end power tools—"

  "And jewelry." Dread welled in Dina's chest. He must have somehow convinced McGuire to delay the handcuffs and Miranda warning for a while.

  Jack tugged her hand. "Don't go all pale and scared on me. Just listen."

  "I already know what you're going to say."

  "Doubt it. At least, the way you look, I hope not." He cleared his throat, hesitated. "Me and Harriet talked it over last night, while you were in the shower."

  Last night? Dina frowned, wondering if she'd heard him wrong. McGuire hadn't told him about Shapiro until an hour or so ago.

  "I'm not completely off the hook for Belle's murder. If deHaven is charged, his attorney may try to hang it on me. There's still a giant motive problem, but those kinks in my alibi McGuire referred to can't be straightened out without implicating you.

  "The Shapiro homicide adds a new dimension. Property crimes think he was the Calendar Burglar and fenced merchandise on the side. The theory is, one of Shapiro's crew took exception to his slice of the pie and sliced up Shapiro instead."

  Dina struggled to absorb what Jack was telling her. Even if the police believed Shapiro was the Calendar Burglar and a fence, what difference did it make? What she'd done was wrong, and not just legally. Harriet Wexler didn't deserve to be punished for being sick and broke, but that didn't excuse stealing to make ends meet.

  "As it stands," Jack said, "one or both of us is involved in two unrelated homicides, multiple burglaries, harboring a fugitive—Lord knows what else. But a husband can't be compelled to testify against his wife, and a wife can't be compelled to do likewise against her husband."

  A loopy grin suggested he was falling under the spell of Morpheus in pill form. "Neither of us will be completely in the clear, but no implicating, no perjury to avoid it. So what do you say?"

  "Well," she replied, "I'd say one of us has lost his mind."

  "Nope." His hand slithered out from between hers. The index finger raised. "For better or for worse. We've had mostly nothing but worse. Even worser will be better with you."

  The middle finger unfurled. "For richer or for poorer. Poorer, we've nailed pretty much. Richer, we'll work on together. I have a feeling Abramson's gonna call to kiss and make up tomorrow. He can be the first to know—second, since I already told Harriet—that McPhee Investigations is expanding to McPhee Investigations and Poodle Parlor."

  Jack's ring finger joined the others. "In sickness and in health. You've gotta stay healthy until they crack off my zombie suit. Then we'll both take care of Rocky. And Phil."

  He reached to caress her cheek. "Look, everything I just said sounded fine, until I said it out loud. It doesn't help that I'm the least romantic guy on the planet. I also happen to love you so much, it scares me. What I'm not scared of is twenty-five to life with you and no chance of parole."

  "I can't," Dina whispered. "I want to. But I can't."

  "Okay, you don't love me yet. I understand that. Sorta expected it. After all, I've only been around a week, week and a half—"

  "That isn't it. I do love you. Have for—" she smiled "—a week, week and a half."

  His eyes held hers. "Life isn't fair. You told me that, the first night."

  "And nothing's changed."

  "The—" He groaned softly and leaned back. "Sorry. I'll never take sitting up for granted again."

  "You need rest. We can talk later."

  "No." He grasped her arm. "Listen to me. And I mean listen, not just hear. Where's the fair in your and Harriet's situation? Where is it in Shapiro cheating you fifty cents on every dollar, so you had to steal twice as much to pay for Harriet's prescriptions?"

  "Jack, that's—"

  "Where's the fairness in people denying ownership of most of that jewelry in Shapiro's house, because the appraisals were inflated and they want the insurance money not the sparklies?"

  He paused, as if his words might need time to sink in. "In all of that, where's the fairness in you being the one and only fall guy?"

  Dina looked away. "Somebody has to be. If I'd been a guy named Dean Wexler, you'd have handed me over to that patrolman at the deHavens' house."

  "Absolutely. And by now, Dean's mama would be in a nursing home's Medicare ward and I'd be in a jail cell booked on first-degree homicide."

  All things being equal, that was probably true. The police would have arrested Dina's alter ego, then Jack, when Belle's body was found. Among myriad other things, no one would have sneaked Phil from the kennel and erased Belle's name from the registration book.

  Murderers were seldom granted bail, or it was set higher than Jack could have paid. From jail, he couldn't have collected the raft of circumstantial evidence against deHaven. At Jack's direction, his attorney might have found some of it, but the frame would be tighter, if not impossible to break.

  He could have been convicted of killing his ex-wife. Carleton deHaven could have gotten away with murder. From what Lt. McGuire said, he might anyway, but if it went to trial, Jack's testimony as a private investigator and prosecution witness would be damning.

  "I can see your gears turning, darlin'. Won't do any good. I've thought through every angle. You can move the pieces around on the chessboard however you want. Add some. Subtract some. There's no fair and square outcome. What is, is exactly how it was meant to play out."

  "Like fate?" Dina chuckled. "Love at first tackle?"

  Jack didn't reply. Not in words.

  She sighed. "What about the money? Whether the people I stole from want their jewelry or not, I have to pay back what I took. Not just what Shapiro paid me. All of it. Every dime."

  Jack smiled. "Some would say being Mrs. Jack McPhee for the rest of your life is punishment enough."

  "It isn't. Not even close."

  "There are different interpretations of restitution. Direct. Indirect. Community service. Steal a lawnmower and a Solomon-style judge might sentence you to cutting the grass for low-income seniors."

>   "What? Now I know you're—" Dina raked back her hair and clutched it in her fists. "Another Harriet Wexler. That money could fill the doughnut hole for somebody else. A lot of somebody elses."

  "Funny, that's exactly what your mom said you'd say." Jack pulled her to his fiberglass-armored chest. "She also said you'd accept my proposal at the drop of a hat."

  "I keep trying to tell you, we're nothing alike."

  "Dina Jeanne. For crissake."

  "Yes, I'll marry you. For better, for worse, for whatever happens, happens." Awkwardly, carefully she stretched to kiss him gently on the lips. "Except for McPhee Investigations and Poodle Parlor."

  "Too breed specific? Okay. McPhee Investigations and Dog Grooming, then."

  "No."

  "McPhee Investigation and Clip Joint?"

  "God, no."

  "You're right. Negative connotation."

  "Let me try." Dina feigned deliberation. "How about McPhee & McPhee Investigations?"

  Jack eyed her warily.

  "Somebody has to fill in at the office, while your shoulder heals. I'm already your assistant. Not much difference between that and an apprentice."

  "The hell there isn't."

  "You'll be here with Mom, so I'll keep on grooming for the kennels, too. But just until you're on your feet."

  "I am on my feet. Just not at the moment."

  "You said yourself, I'm a natural snoop. A year under your wing and I'll ace the test for my license."

  "Aw, Jesus. Not the wing thing again." Jack's grimace and pallor would have been alarming, had Dina not known the cause. "See, it's like I told Blankenship. The agency's always been a one-man operation."

  Dina grinned and kissed him again. "That's the beauty of McPhee & McPhee, kid. It still is. And always will be."

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-2937-6

  LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE

  Copyright Š 2009 by Suzann Ledbetter.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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