Never Con a Corgi

by Edie Claire

  Tall and solidly built.

  She chastised herself for the thoughts that swam in her head. She had no reason to act like a child who'd seen a scary movie. Hadn't she suspected that Courtney was mixed up with some bad-news guy in Chicago?

  She had. But that was before. Before Courtney had invaded her space. Her children's space.

  Gray hair. Dark eyes.

  Leigh stifled a shudder. She clucked to Chewie and started to run. The corgi was game, as always, and by the time they reached her back door his momentum once again outstripped his brakes, making his backside swivel and bump against the house. "You nut," Leigh said fondly, letting him inside and locking the door behind her.

  They should keep all the doors locked for a while.

  All the time.

  She looked into the family room for Warren, but hearing the water running, realized he must be in the shower. She checked to make sure the front door was locked, then started to put out the lights. When she reached the doorway of the dining room, she saw Allison.

  The girl was sitting at the computer in her nightgown, quiet as a mouse, so absorbed in the screen that she hadn't seemed to notice her mother's approach. Leigh opened her mouth to remind her daughter that bedtime had long since passed, but the words stopped in her throat.

  Allison was looking at pictures of dead things. The bodies of animals in varying states of decay. Road kill. Deer carcasses. She scrolled down and paused on the skeletal remains of a dog. She enlarged the picture and zoomed in on the hindquarters.

  "Allison!" Leigh croaked, finding barely enough air in her lungs to form the words. "What on earth are you doing?"

  The child startled, then immediately closed the page. "I was just doing some research, Mom," she said meekly, shutting down the whole computer. "I know I shouldn't be up so late, but I couldn't sleep. I'm sorry."

  Leigh tried to slow her heart rate. She still could barely talk. "Researching what?"

  Allison didn't answer immediately. She slipped past her mother and headed down the hall toward her room. "Just something animal related I'm working on," she said vaguely. "Sorry—I know pictures like that gross you out. I'm going to bed right now, promise. Goodnight!"

  The child disappeared.

  Leigh stood in the hall, staring after her daughter, her feet frozen to the floor.

  A good night, indeed.

  Chapter 21

  Leigh walked frantically along Carson Street on the South Side, looking in the window of every tattoo parlor, every bar, her pulse throbbing in her ears. Where was she? Where had she gone?

  Drunks spilled out of doorways; cars crashed and burst into flames; manhole covers exploded into the air releasing droves of rats who scurried up and onto the pavement around her feet. "Allison!" she screamed. "Allison!"

  "What is it, Mom?" a lethargic voice drawled.

  Leigh whipped her head toward the sound and walked down the trash-strewn alley. Tripping over crumpled beer cans and discarded syringes, she tried to reach the voice, but the refuse deepened until she was wading in it waist high. "Allison!"

  "Will you chill?" her daughter said coolly as she emerged from an upright coffin leaning against a downspout. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

  "I... I came to save you," Leigh sputtered.

  "Save me from what?" protested the girl, who was at least seventeen, but looked thirty five. She was dressed entirely in black leather, though her arms and half her torso were bare, covered only by grotesque, elaborate tattoos of reptile skeletons. Her hair was a solid mass of spiky gel, black tinted with purple, and her lips and fingernails were green. "The dark master treats me well enough," she said with a shrug.

  "You have to come home with me!" Leigh pleaded.

  The girl considered, tapping her stiletto-heeled boots on pavement that smelled like a urinal. "I don't know," she said with a whine. "Maybe if you'd let me lease a horse..."

  "Anything! Anything!"

  "Mom? Do you know where my half chaps are?"

  Leigh's mind turned cartwheels. She sat straight up in bed, her heart pounding.

  Allison stood next to her, creamy-skinned and ten years old, dressed in riding pants and a pink top that said "Mustang Love" in silver glitter. Her hair was in a ponytail. She was shoeless; her socks were covered with blue horse silhouettes.

  Leigh blinked, and her mind cleared. It was only a nightmare.

  Thank God.

  "Mom!" her son's voice erupted from the doorway. "You didn't throw away my old skateboard, did you?"

  The doorbell rang.

  Leigh glanced at the clock and swore under her breath. How could she possibly have slept so late? She knew perfectly well that Cara was coming early this morning—the girls had a horseback riding lesson and the boys wanted to spend the time at the park.

  "That skateboard had a broken wheel, remember?" she answered her son, jumping hastily out of bed. "You threw it away yourself when we got the new one."

  "But I need two for the new trick Matt wants to show me!" Ethan lamented.

  "So borrow your sister's," Leigh suggested, throwing on a robe and stumbling to her dresser for a hairbrush. She could hear Warren's voice in the living room; he was letting Cara in.

  "But it's pink!" Ethan protested, clearly offended. But in the next second he shrugged it off. "Oh, Matt and I can just trade off, I guess. His new ramp is going to be so cool!"

  "Mom?" Allison piped up calmly. "My half chaps?"

  Leigh gave up on her hair, which nothing short of a shower would make a dent in. She had tossed and turned all night, and it showed. "I think you left them in the garage last week. They were pretty dirty, remember?"

  Allison's small face broke into a broad smile. "Oh, yeah! Dozer's pee splashed everywhere."

  Leigh grimaced. "We'll try to clean them when you get back."

  "Okay." The girl scampered off after her brother.

  It was only a dream, Leigh reminded herself. She stepped into the bathroom, splashed some water on her face, and brushed her teeth. By the time she deemed herself presentable enough to enter the living room, Cara was ushering the Pack out the door.

  "Don't worry about us, Leigh," Cara said cheerily, looking more like her old self than she had since before the murder. "Just finish that project for Gil. He seems really anxious about it." Her eyes twinkled as she spoke, and Leigh was sure her cousin was onto them both. But mercifully, she didn't seem to mind. She was too happy about finding a witness to Gil's alibi—not to mention the discovery of a new and promising alternative suspect.

  The plans for the day were discussed, the Pack filed out, and Cara closed the door behind them. Leigh dropped onto her couch, and her lap filled immediately with cat. Mao settled and began to purr, and Leigh stroked her absently. She was frustrated. She and Warren had planned to have a talk with Allison first thing this morning. Now it would have to wait.

  "I guess neither one of us slept well last night," Warren commented, straightening his tie in the living room mirror. "If it weren't for Ethan deciding to practice his trombone, I might still be sleeping myself."

  Leigh's eyebrows rose. "Ethan was playing trombone?"

  Warren chuckled. "Evidently, you had an even worse night than I did."

  "It was horrific," Leigh admitted, describing her nightmare. At the end of it, Warren dropped down on the couch beside her. "You know you're making way too much of this," he said sensibly. "Allison wants to be a vet. She's positively brimming with natural curiosity. And with everything that's gone on lately, her thinking about death a little more than usual is perfectly understandable."

  "I suppose," Leigh said skeptically.

  "However," he continued, "I have to confess that you aren't the only one having creepy dreams. I couldn't stop thinking about Allison asking whether women could be serial killers. I got chased around by women all night."

  "What kind of women?"

  "The really scary kind," he said soberly. "The ones that look like nice, ordinary, efficient office workers." />
  "But really they're libidinous skanks who only want to steal you away from your wife so they can get at your money?" Leigh suggested.

  "No. Really, they're blue-skinned, white-haired Andorians with antenna ears, and they're firing at me with disrupters."

  Leigh groaned. "You seriously dreamed that?"

  "I seriously did," he responded. "But at least I know that it was ridiculous. Only a Romulan or a Klingon would use a disrupter." He leaned over and hugged Leigh's shoulders, earning himself a resentful hiss and a swipe from Mao Tse, who hopped off Leigh's lap and stomped away into the kitchen. "That cat has never liked me," Warren bemoaned, standing up. "Don't worry about Allison. She's fine. But we'll have a talk with her tonight anyway—make sure she shares whatever's going on in that warp-speed mind of hers. Okay?"

  "Okay," Leigh agreed.

  "So, what are you going to do today?" he asked as he grabbed his briefcase.

  "I have work to do at the office," she responded. "If I can concentrate. If I can't, I'll probably start investigating the case myself. Tail some suspects, steal some evidence, inject myself in the middle of some high-tension confrontations, thwart the police. You know. The usual."

  Warren smiled and kissed her goodbye. "Have a good day, then."

  "You too," she returned.

  He headed downstairs for the garage, and Leigh got to her feet. She needed a shower and a very large cup of coffee, not necessarily in that order. She watched Warren's car through the window as it pulled out into the driveway and away toward town. She knew that he would indeed worry about her—but he was unlikely to say so. It was one of the reasons she loved him so much.

  He had never tried to clip her wings.

  ***

  Diana looked disdainfully at the selection of shoes Courtney Lyle had left in the back of Brandon's bedroom closet. If any of them were decent, she'd filch them. But they were all a couple years old, and the heels were scuffed. No wonder Courtney had left them in the first place. Same thing with the clothes. Nothing but sweats and hoodies, which no human besides Brandon had probably ever seen Courtney wear. Worthless.

  Diana sighed and moved to Brandon's dresser drawers. The whole apartment was a mess—the police had searched it thoroughly, and Courtney had doubtless been through it as well.

  What Diana was looking for, she didn't know herself. All she knew was that she'd woken up in a foul mood, and it only stood to get fouler. The work that Courtney was ridiculously overpaying her for would not last long, and her efforts to identify a new job prospect had thus far been fruitless.

  This, she blamed on Brandon Lyle. Her hands rifled through his underclothes—he was a boxer man, of course—even as her cheeks flushed with ire at the thought of him. He was such a fake. He had pretended to be so rich, so successful... and by rights, he should have been. His family had money: big money, going way back. She had checked that out before she ever signed on. Brandon had the kind of old-money connections that could generally be counted on to keep any single idiot offspring from dragging the family name down into the ranks of the—gasp—middle class in one generation. But somehow, Brandon had managed it.

  The man's financial incompetence boggled the mind. Diana pulled out a pair of cufflinks: slightly tarnished, but likely gold. She threw them in her duffel along with the rest of her things and moved on to the next drawer.

  Brandon owed her. She had been fooled into thinking that he had money, that he would always have money, no matter how much of a moron he was. But she had found out otherwise—and all too late. Lyle Development was in deep doo-doo, so deep that what was left of Brandon's personal fortune would be swallowed up by his creditors in a trice. There was nowhere left for him to turn; he had already torched every single bridge that had connected him to his parents' wide circle of wealthy friends, including his unsympathetic father-in-law.

  Diana's hand paused over Brandon's wide selection of ski liners. Of course he had freaked over the Nicholson project; it had been his absolute last chance to turn things around. The night Brandon went to that church meeting, he had been as desperate as he could possibly get. If the Nicholson project failed, not only would Lyle Development go bankrupt, but he himself would be personally destitute... not to mention profoundly humiliated.

  Boo hoo.

  Diana slammed the drawer closed with a scowl. Who in the world needed sixteen pairs of long underwear? Stupid playboy couldn't even ski!

  She left the bedroom and moved to Brandon's desk. No doubt the police had already searched it thoroughly, but still, she had to try. There had to be something of use to her. She deserved it, after the way Brandon had screwed her over. In more ways than one.

  She hadn't been stupid; she had prepared for contingencies. All along she'd been constructing a list of benefactors to whose even larger ships she could jump should things with Brandon ever go sour. But now her name would be forever associated with Lyle Development. With failure. No one had mentioned the word "fraud" yet, but she wouldn't put it past Brandon, especially at the end. Never mind that she was an administrative assistant and not a financial advisor—the fact was, it looked bad. Nobody who knew anything about Lyle Development would ever want to hire her.

  Damn the man.

  In a bottom drawer she spotted some address books, including a fraternity alumni roster. She flipped through it, her eyes narrowing as she read the entry for which she sought: Trevor Gil March.

  Damn him, too.

  She wished they were both dead. Gil's rotting in jail would be some consolation, but to her annoyance, he still hadn't been arrested. How much fake evidence did those idiot detectives need to find? How much more motive did she have to shed light on? Would they get it if she hired a skywriter to blast "Gil March whacked Brandon Lyle" above the Golden Triangle?

  She slammed the book shut and threw it back in the drawer. Perhaps there was something left in the apartment that could incriminate the prig. Like nude pictures of herself in Brandon's bed... discovered in Gil's glove compartment?

  She laughed out loud. No such pictures existed at the moment, but it would be fun to take some. And how delicious for that saccharine wife of his to be the one who found them...

  Diana's grin faded. An image had crept into her head; an image that had, much to her annoyance, kept her tossing and turning all night. A silly thing, really, but disturbing. The female detective, the one who never talked, had in Diana's nightmares been sitting in a chair in the corner of her bedroom, staring at her. Who does that? Just sitting and staring, completely silent, but wearing that secretive, malicious, knowing smile...

  Diana's shoulders gave a shiver. "It was just a stupid dream!" she told herself, getting to her feet again. But she discarded the cheesecake photo idea. She was in no danger from the police at present; she had covered her tracks well. But there was no point in taking unnecessary risks. Particularly when the odds were—sadly—that Gil would eventually be cleared anyway.

  Her jaws clenched. She hadn't realized until yesterday that the accursed female detective was a friend of Gil's family. It figured he would get special treatment. He'd had family tied up in the land deal, and it was his wife's cousin who found the body—the same one who had been Brandon's contact at the ad agency. A little too coincidental, n'est ce pas? And why weren't the police out investigating her, pray tell?

  Diana's cheeks flared again. Damn Gil March! He was going to walk away from this whole mess scot free, while she was left twisting in the wind, jobless, with no payoff, her professional reputation permanently tarnished.

  Damn him to hell.

  "Well, hello there."

  Diana whirled toward the condo's front door. She had been an idiot not to lock it behind her. But it was too late now. The door had been opened, and a man was standing just inside of it.

  One of the best-looking men she had ever seen.

  "Well," she responded, matching his smooth, seductive macho tone with her own, equally expert femme fatale one. "Hello to you, too. Whoever the hell you are.
"

  The man smiled. Diana drank him in, noting every detail from his thick crop of silvery hair to his strong, square jawline, broad shoulders, washboard stomach, and well-toned everything else. He was dressed in the kind of outfit stores in New York would sell only to certain people and stores in Pittsburgh didn't bother to stock. His features were perfect in the same unnatural Hollywood way that Gil March was perfect, but whereas Gil was sunshine and sailboats, this man was fine wine and fast cars. He studied her with an equal lack of self-consciousness, his dark eyes glinting mischievously.

  "I could ask you the same question," he replied, his speech a bewitching blend of the urbane and the irreverent. "This is the home of Brandon Lyle, is it not?"

  Diana's heart beat wildly. She knew who the man was, of course. She had known it from the moment she set eyes on him. At best, he had anger management issues. At worst, he could be a murderer.

  Whatever.

  "It is," she replied. "But if you're looking for Brandon, you're out of luck. Permanently."

  The man showed no visible reaction. "So I heard," he admitted. "In fact, I was looking for... his widow. And who might you be?"

  Sometimes it was fun to lie. Other times, the truth was even better.

  "I would be his mistress," she said silkily. "Otherwise known as his administrative assistant. His widow doesn't live here anymore. Not that she ever did, really."

  Courtney should kiss her feet for that one. Why had she said it? She didn't know.

  "Do you have any idea where I might find her?" the man asked politely. He had taken no step forward, but remained stationary just inside the door as if, despite having barged into another man's condo uninvited, he felt obliged to follow some unwritten code of propriety.

  Diana's eyes drank in his solid form once more. She wondered if he was concealing a weapon. She had no doubt he'd be a better shot than Brandon.

  She had no doubt he did a lot of things better than Brandon.

  "I don't know where she's staying now," Diana admitted, feigning disinterest. "But I do hear from her occasionally. Any message?"