9 The Hitwoman's Downward Dog

by JB Lynn

  "Dammit, Maggie, I’m a lizard, not a private investigator," God declared.

  "What about Operation Poisoned Apple?" Piss drawled sarcastically from her hiding place beneath the couch. "Then you were all Mr. Superspy."

  "Fine," God agreed. "If you need me, I’ll go."

  I picked him up out of terrarium. "But you can’t talk while Zeke’s around."

  "Squeak chest," the dog declared with a big grin that the average person would have found frightening considering how many of her teeth showed.

  "I won’t speak if you don’t do anything stupid," God bargained as he scampered down the strap of my bra and settled into the hammock-like space between the cups.

  I let the dog out the storm doors so she could relieve herself before getting in the car, and made my way back to the dining room where Susan was spouting forth everything she expected to do to make Katie’s arrival a momentous occasion.

  "Ready?" I asked.

  "You bet." Zeke pressed a quick kiss to my aunt’s cheek. "As always, thank you for your hospitality, Susan."

  She patted his hand where it rested on her shoulder. "You’re always welcome, Zeke. Anytime."

  Zeke acknowledged each of the Griswald men with a brief nod and then walked out.

  I half-expected Brian to utter another warning about staying away from the Armani investigation, but he stayed silent as I moved away.

  Wordlessly, Zeke got into the passenger seat of my car while I got the dog settled in the back. He didn’t speak until I’d pulled out of the driveway. "I could tell her no."

  "Tell who no?"

  "Whitehat. I could stay here, help you."

  I shook my head. "No. Go do what she needs you to do. I’ve got this."

  "You can’t do this alone. It’s dangerous."

  His concern was sweet. Instinctively, I reached out to pat his knee. "I’ve got DeeDee riding shotgun."

  "Shotgun!" the dog barked for emphasis.

  "Technically, she’s in the back seat," Zeke pointed out.

  "I’ll be careful," I promised.

  "And I’ll get back as fast as I can from whatever this mysterious assignment is." His voice crackled with barely contained bitterness.

  A twinge of guilt twisted in my gut. He was miserable under Whitehat’s thumb, and I hadn’t done anything to help him get out of the situation. Yet.

  We drove the rest of the way to his car in silence, each wrapped up in our own thoughts. He seemed surprised when I slid to a stop behind his car.

  "Promise me, Maggie," he said, his voice ragged with worry.

  "Promise you what?"

  "That you’ll be careful." He grabbed my right forearm and squeezed it for emphasis. "That you won’t do anything stupid."

  The intensity of his request made me uncomfortable.

  I patted his fingers curved around my arm. "I think I’m genetically inclined to do stupid things," I joked, trying to lighten the mood. "You know my family."

  He frowned, not playing along.

  "But I promise I’ll be careful," I pledged seriously, trying to assuage his concern. To seal the promise, I leaned across the gearshift and kissed his cheek. Settling back into my seat, I searched his face to see if he believed me.

  "I’m going to hold you to that," he murmured, pressing his lips firmly against mine for the briefest moment before jumping out of my car and stalking over to his.

  As I watched him go, the urge to do something to help him was strong. Knowing I was helpless to do anything at that moment left me grinding my teeth.

  He waved good-bye and drove off.

  As soon as he was out of sight, I bent over to retrieve the gun Ms. Whitehat had kindly provided.

  "Any farther forward and you’re going to smother me," God complained from my chest.

  I snapped back upright. "Sorry."

  "You forgot about me, didn’t you?"

  I had, but I wasn’t going to give the lizard the satisfaction of knowing that. "Of course not."

  "Liar."

  "Shotgun?" DeeDee panted hopefully, wedging her head and chest between the two front seats.

  Since I wasn’t driving and her ungainly maneuvers wouldn’t cause me to crash my car, I said, "Sure."

  Wriggling awkwardly and slamming into my shoulder more than once, the Doberman huffed and puffed and finally got her butt into the front passenger seat.

  "You could have just opened the doors for her," God groused.

  "What’s the fun in that?" I countered.

  "Fun!" DeeDee yipped.

  I drove over to Armani’s home. There were no longer any neighbors gawking, or a police presence. The only giveaway that something was potentially wrong was the yellow and black strip of police tape tacked across her door. It fluttered in the night breeze, mocking me.

  "I’ve got to go in there," I said.

  "Too me," DeeDee panted.

  "What are you waiting for?" the lizard urged. "Let’s go find a clue."

  Slowly, I got out of the car, glancing around to see if anyone seemed to notice. I didn’t see any curtains move in the surrounding houses. DeeDee didn’t wait for an invitation. She bounded out of the car, forcing me to scramble to grab her leash.

  "Take it easy." I stumbled after her.

  "Don’t you dare fall and squash me," God warned, scrambling up my bra strap and perching on my shoulder.

  "Inside?" DeeDee asked.

  "No," God mocked. "We’re just going to stay out here all night and hope clues come marching out the door."

  I started to regret bringing him along. I sighed heavily before telling the dog, "Yes, we’re going inside."

  Unperturbed by the snarky lizard, DeeDee led the way to the door.

  I eyed the crime scene tape I’d have to duck under.

  God began to hum a limbo tune.

  "Party?" DeeDee panted hopefully.

  "How low can you go?" God challenged before returning to his limbo tune.

  Glancing around to make sure no one was looking, I stuck out my hips and shimmied under the tape.

  "Woohoo!" God called, hanging from the bra strap with one hand and waving another like a rodeo rider on a bucking bull.

  Clearing the tape, I reached for the doorknob.

  "Impressive," a gravelly voice said from behind me.

  I froze as my heart skipped a beat or two, when it picked up again, thundering faster and louder than a locomotive; I whirled around and found Jack Stern watching me.

  "Uh-oh," DeeDee whined softly.

  "Do you have any other party skills I should know about?" the reporter asked.

  Chapter 10

  "What are you doing here?" The adrenaline coursing through me made my tone belligerent.

  He arched his eyebrows. "What are you doing here?"

  "I’m trying to find my friend," I said defensively. "Are you going to call the police?"

  "Patrick!" DeeDee barked excitedly.

  Jack took a step back, watching the Doberman nervously. "I’m not going to call the police unless your dog attacks me."

  I looked down at DeeDee, who looked up at me hopefully.

  "Sit," I ordered. For once, the dog obeyed. I looked back at Jack. "You haven’t told me what you’re doing here."

  "Waiting for you."

  "Me?"

  He nodded. "Watching the way you spoke to Detective Griswald, I figured you’d come back."

  "Who is this interloper?" God demanded imperiously.

  To me it sounded like a bossy command, to Jack it sounded like squeaking.

  Squinting, he leaned forward, trying to identify the sound. "Do you have a lizard on your shoulder?"

  "Can’t get anything past the crime beat reporter," I replied dryly, answering both him and the little guy.

  "Ooooh," God gasped with undisguised delighted wonder. "A crime reporter."

  "Why’s he squeaking?" Jack wanted to know.

  "He doesn’t like strangers," I replied.

  "I do not squeak!" God bellowed.

>   "Too do," DeeDee growled softly.

  Jack, thinking the growl was meant for him, backed up another step, keeping a watchful eye on the dog as though he expected her to leap up and devour him like he was an oversized rib eye. "Call her off."

  "I can tell he’s a reporter," God opined. "He’s getting his pronouns right. He didn’t call me it, and he knows the beast is of the female persuasion."

  Jack’s eyes widened as the lizard droned on, but he wisely kept his mouth shut and his gaze fixed on the dog.

  "Stop scaring him, DeeDee," I ordered firmly.

  Chastised, she hung her head and relaxed her body posture.

  "I wasn’t scared," Jack corrected. "I was just being cautious."

  "You shouldn’t stand out here all night chitchatting," the lizard said. "We’re here to find clues."

  Knowing he was right, I reached again for Armani’s door. It swung open when I touched the knob. I stepped inside cautiously, DeeDee on my heels.

  When I realized he wasn’t following, I looked back at Jack. "Are you going to stand there exercising caution or are you coming in?"

  His response was to duck beneath the crime scene tape, albeit without my limbo flair.

  "I don’t suppose you thought to bring something to see with," God mocked as we stood in the darkened space.

  As though Jack understood him, a thin beam of light cut across Armani’s foyer, emanating from the flashlight he held.

  "A man who’s prepared," God approved.

  "Talkative thing, isn’t he?" Jack remarked.

  "Shut up," I muttered.

  Despite the darkness, I sensed Jack stiffen beside me.

  "I didn’t mean you. I meant the lizard."

  "Okay." He cut a swath through the shadows with the beam, illuminating the evidence of a struggle I’d witnessed earlier. He let out a low whistle. "Something definitely happened here."

  "Glad your professional opinion concurs with my uneducated guess," I snapped.

  "Hey, I’m not the one who didn’t take you seriously. Detective Griswald is the one who blew you off. I wanted to find out what happened here."

  "For a story," I complained bitterly.

  "It’s my job," he replied without a twinge of guilt. "Take my hand." He held his own out, palm upward.

  "Why?"

  "Because I want to move farther inside, but I don’t want you falling on your face because you can’t see what’s in your path."

  "I won’t trip." I laced my fingers behind my back to emphasize I wouldn’t be putting my hand in his.

  "She’s light on her feet and full of grace," God drawled sarcastically.

  "You catch," DeeDee pledged on a pant.

  Jack let out an audible sigh of frustration. "So you’re the stubborn and independent type."

  "They serve me well."

  Swinging the light in wide arcs, Jack began to slowly creep deeper into Armani’s home. I followed closely behind, desperate not to trip and prove him right.

  "There’s a fine line between character strengths and character flaws," God reminded me.

  "Will you please be quiet?" I countered. "I’m starting to regret bringing you along."

  "Fine," he sulked.

  "You talk to him a lot?" Jack asked.

  "Lots of people talk to their pets."

  "True, but most don’t bring them to potential crime scenes."

  "I didn’t want to come alone," I admitted grudgingly.

  "I’m surprised your boyfriend didn’t come along."

  Thinking he’d somehow guessed my relationship with Patrick, I was thrown off balance and stumbled. I would have fallen in the dark, just as he’d predicted, but he turned quickly to catch me. I felt his muscles flex as he kept me upright and could smell his leather jacket as he held me against it.

  I hung on his steadying arm, trying desperately to come up with an excuse for what he’d witnessed between myself and my married hitman-mentor.

  "Okay you Maggie are?" DeeDee whined worriedly.

  I jumped away from Jack. "I’m fine."

  "Of course you are," he soothed, thinking I’d been talking to him.

  "We should find a purple bag," I blurted out, desperate to steer the conversation away from Patrick.

  "Okay," Jack agreed easily, pivoting away to continue his search. "How do you know the victim again?’

  He was in reporter-mode, but as long as he didn’t return to the subject of my almost-lover, I was more than willing to indulge his questions. "We’re friends. We work together."

  "At an insurance company?"

  "Yes. That’s right."

  "You don’t strike me as the type to sit behind a desk."

  "What type do I strike you as?" I asked curiously.

  He chuckled. "The kind who’d disobey a police detective and return to a potential crime scene, which is why I was waiting for you."

  "Aren’t you a smug know-it-all?" I teased.

  "Not really," he countered, "just someone who’s trying to figure you out."

  He could have meant the words flirtatiously, or he could have meant them in an investigative sense. Either way, my mouth went dry and I almost tripped again.

  Thankfully, at that moment, something in the flashlight’s path caught my eye.

  "There," I pointed at the purple cloth bag.

  We advanced on it cautiously.

  "Don’t touch it," I warned. "See if you see any tiles."

  "Kitchen tiles?" Jack asked, confused.

  "Scrabble tiles."

  "Like the little pieces of wood with letters on them?"

  "Exactly."

  He swung the beam around, searching. "Here they are."

  Together we studied the seven tiles that spelled out "L U C K Y O H."

  To Jack, the message would make no sense, but I understood it perfectly. It had to mean Lucky O’Hara, the adopted son of the head of the O’Hara crime family. I’d had one direct interaction with Lucky in Atlantic City and a couple of indirect ones here in town.

  "Mean anything to you?" Jack asked.

  "Not a thing," I lied smoothly. "You?"

  "Maybe."

  "Maybe?"

  "I know of a guy named Lucky who’s involved with some shady dealings."

  "Me too," God groused. "He tried to drown me by tossing me in the Atlantic Ocean. Cretin!"

  Jack stared at the squeaking reptile, his expression both fascinated and repulsed.

  "Oh yeah?" Ignoring the lizard, I tried to sound nonchalant despite the nervousness blossoming in my chest, threatening to cut off my air supply. Things would be much less complicated if I could convince Jack that Lucky wasn’t a suspect. I mentally scrambled to come up with a plausible explanation that would throw him off trap. "I was thinking," I began slowly, "that maybe she was trying to figure out how to win the lottery."

  Even though I couldn’t see his face, I could practically hear Jack raising his eyebrows in disbelief.

  "She’s big into lucky things. She’s given me a horseshoe, a rabbit’s foot, and a shark tooth." That part was all true.

  "A shark’s tooth is considered lucky?" Jack’s voice cracked with disbelief.

  "Oh yes," I assured him. I wasn’t sure about the horseshoe or rabbit’s foot, but the shark tooth had helped to save my life once, so I considered it to be lucky. "She probably thinks zeros are lucky too."

  "But it doesn’t say zero," Jack pointed out. "It says oh, or o.h."

  "That’s because she always picks seven tiles at a time," I snapped. "That’s how she gets her messages."

  "Messages."

  "From the great beyond or wherever the hell they’re from."

  "So why not pull a blank? Why the h?"

  The man’s insistence on logic was infuriating.

  Afraid that if we continued along the line of conversation, I’d inadvertently reveal something I didn’t mean to, like the fact that I too knew who Lucky O’Hara was, I gave up trying to throw him off course.

  We didn’t find anything else h
elpful in Armani’s place, so we soon left (though this time I didn’t shimmy under the crime scene tape).

  Jack walked me back to my car. "So why did you boyfriend let you come here alone?"

  Thinking about Patrick in the hospital parking lot, telling me he couldn’t help me find Armani, I shrugged.

  "You could have run into someone dangerous."

  "I ran into you," I countered, knowing that the reporter could prove very dangerous if he kept snooping.

  "I’m just doing my job."

  "So you keep saying." I let DeeDee into the back of my car.

  "Besides, he’s not my boyfriend." It wasn’t a lie… exactly.

  "C’mon," Jack countered. "I saw you two together."

  I reached into the car to pat the dog in order to give myself a moment to think about how to react to his accusation. How much had he guessed about my relationship with Patrick? "I don't know what you think you saw," I began carefully, backing out of the car.

  "He couldn't keep his hands off you."

  Startled, I smacked my head against the doorframe with a solid thunk. "Ow!"

  Jack leaned his back against my car so that he could see my face as I emerged. "You're not going to deny that, are you?"

  "Deny what? Hitting my head?"

  "That your boyfriend was hanging all over you while Detective Griswald gave you the third degree."

  I blinked, as it dawned on me he wasn't talking about Patrick, but about Zeke. I exhaled a shaky sigh of relief. "Zeke and I are just friends."

  "You have an interesting definition of friendship."

  Chuckling, I shook my head. "We've known each other since junior high. Heck, in high school, he even lived with me."

  "You lived with him as a teenager?"

  I smacked Jack's arm playfully. "Not like that. My aunts own a Bed and Breakfast and he needed a place to stay for a while."

  He tilted his head to the side and studied me. I had no trouble meeting his studying gaze since I'd told the truth.

  "So I read the situation wrong?" he asked.

  I nodded.

  "Interesting."

  Something in those four syllables made me wonder what he was thinking, but before I could ask, he pushed himself away from the car and pulled something from his back pocket. "What's your plan now?"

  "I have to get back to the B&B." Again, it was the truth, I'd told Griswald I was taking DeeDee to the dog park to cover up my breaking and entering at Armani's house.