Trigger Yappy

by Diana Orgain

On her nightstand was something familiar and I gasped to see it.

  My journal!

  I reached for it, but Max stopped me.

  “Maggie, we shouldn’t touch anything!”

  “It’s my journal, Max. She’s the one who broke into my apartment.”

  He chewed his lip. “I think you should leave it. Let Brad admit it into evidence.”

  I snatched it off the nightstand. “No!”

  Max looked shocked. “What are you doing?”

  “Do you know the things I’ve written about him in here?”

  Max burst out laughing. “I’m sure he’ll be very flattered.”

  I shoved the journal into my bag. “Don’t say anything about it. Promise?”

  Max nodded. “I don’t know what good it would do now anyway. She’s dead.”

  We hurried out of the room together. Pulling my phone out, I dialed Brad. He picked up immediately.

  “Hey, is this about another missing dog?” he joked.

  “I wish.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  I told him about Darla and he instructed Max and me to leave the building and to wait for him and Ellington in the parking lot.

  As Max and I headed out of the winery, we spotted a dark van rumbling up the hill.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I grabbed Max’s arm. “Oh, no, it’s Hendrick! What do we do?”

  Max’s eyes grew wide, both of us thinking the same thing. If Hendrick was the murderer, neither of us wanted to be on his bad side; but if he wasn’t, one of us was going to have break the news to him.

  I groaned. “Oh God, I don’t want to tell him. He just proposed to her.”

  Hendrick parked in the green parking lot, next to Max’s pickup truck. He smiled and waved happily at us as he got out of the van.

  Brad and Ellington’s police cruiser appeared on the horizon. For the first time in my life I would actually volunteer to keep my mouth shut and hop into the back of the police car.

  Max seemed to have the same idea, because he shifted uncomfortably as Hendrick approached.

  “Maggie! Sorry to keep you waiting. Did you come to pick up the wine?” He pointed at the van. “I could have delivered it. Or maybe Darla helped you?” He looked around, past us into the tasting room. “Is she here?”

  Oh, she is here alright!

  Brad’s cruiser came to a stop in front of us, and he stepped out. It was all I could do not to jump into his arms.

  “Good afternoon,” Brad said formally to Hendrick.

  Hendrick frowned. Then, when Ellington popped out of the passenger side, Hendrick stiffened.

  His shoulders thrust back suddenly, as if expecting the worst. “Officers. What can I do for you? More questions about Fran? Do I need an attorney?”

  Ellington glanced from Hendrick to Max and me. I shrugged ineffectually.

  “We were alerted that this might be a crime scene,” Ellington said.

  A white vehicle crested the horizon.

  The crime scene team.

  I shivered and stood. “I’m sorry, Hendrick,” I said simply.

  Hendrick looked confused, Brad stepped in. “Hendrick, please come with me.” He gestured for Hendrick to step away from the house. Together they walked a short distance, Brad calling over his shoulder. “Maggie and Max, wait for me in the cruiser.”

  Relieved, Max and I jumped into the backseat.

  I leaned my head onto Max’s shoulder. “God, this is awful!”

  He rubbed the top of my hair playfully. “It could always be worse.”

  “It doesn’t get much worse,” I said.

  “You’re wrong. Brad could have found your journal.”

  * * *

  While Brad talked to Hendrick, Ellington came over to knock on the window of the backseat of the cruiser.

  Nervous energy coursed through me as I saw his stern face.

  “Oh, no,” Max said. “What now?”

  Ellington motioned for us to get out.

  “We’re going to need to escort Hendrick down to the station. Can I count on you two to drive yourselves?” he asked.

  “Certainly, Officer,” Max said agreeably.

  Ellington’s eye landed on me. “You’re heading out of town, right?”

  Resentment enveloped me. Why did Ellington have to push my buttons?

  “I’m not going out of town,” I said. Suddenly I regretted not being on the cruise yesterday. What had I gained? The editorial spread for the Wine and Bark was still undetermined, Rachel was still in the hospital, and now we’d found poor Darla dead.

  Sensing the tension between Ellington and me, Max said, “I’ll be sure to drive Maggie and myself down to the station.”

  Ellington took a deep breath. “Head straight there. I’ll message Sergeant Gottlieb to make sure he can greet you.”

  “We’ll head straight there,” Max agreed.

  “Right after we pick up the floor polisher,” I said.

  Ellington shot daggers at me with his eyes.

  I smiled coolly. “It’ll only take us a few minutes, and it’s on the way.”

  “No way,” Ellington said. “I can’t have you two running errands all around town. Report directly to the station, or I’ll call another cruiser out here to escort you.”

  Max held up his hands. “No, no. No problem. We’ll head straight there.” Max grabbed me and whirled me around in the direction of his truck. “Stop arguing with him, it’ll only make matters worse for us.”

  * * *

  We got into Max’s truck and tore off down the hill. I offered Brad a wave, but his back was to us and he was still speaking with Hendrick. Max and I rode in a somber silence, each of us lost in thought. Despite the sun casting a warm reflection all around, I shivered. Then a tear slipped down my face.

  Max glanced at me. “You okay?”

  I wiped away the tear. “I can’t believe we found Darla like that. I think I’m in shock.”

  “Me, too,” he admitted.

  Suddenly sobs burst out of me and I buried my face and wept for Darla and Fran. Max pulled over and parked the truck, offering me a box of tissues that nested in his side door pocket.

  “I’m going to swing by and pick up the floor polisher, but I swear if you let Ellington know, I’ll never speak to you again,” he said.

  I laughed through my tears. “Right. Now you want to play hooky?”

  “They’re going to take forever up here. If we head straight to the station, they’ll eat our whole afternoon,” he said. “Plus, I gotta distract you a little, or you’ll completely fall apart.”

  I punched his arm and he smiled. He maneuvered the car toward the freeway and I thought about the black van.

  I sniffed and blew my nose. “Why would Darla break into my house?”

  Max shrugged. “Well, we don’t know that she did, right?”

  “She had my journal,” I reasoned.

  “Or Hendrick did,” Max said.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I admitted.

  He smiled. “That’s why we’re supposed to leave the investigating to the professionals.”

  We both chuckled, probably more to relieve our stress and nerves than anything else.

  “What about Cornelia?” he asked. “She was pretty sketchy when we picked her up earlier.”

  “What? Do you think she’d just gotten home from murdering Darla?”

  “I never can tell with women,” Max joked. He exited the freeway and pulled onto our destination street. He parked in front of the floor polisher rental storefront and turned to me. “She had a bone to pick with Fran, right? What if she killed Fran and then Darla somehow figured it out.”

  “She said she went to see Brenda about her rights to the store. We should probably ask Brenda about it. It makes sense, you know. She could have a really clear motive. I wish Brenda would tell us what exactly she was advising her on.”

  Max shook his head. “There’s no way she’ll tell us anything. Attorney-client privileges. She’s
strict about that,” he said.

  Suddenly an evil thought struck me. “You don’t happen to have a key to Bradford and Blahnik, do you?” I asked.

  His eyebrows shot up. “You’re a little devil! Are you suggesting I break into my girlfriend’s business and peek at her clients files?”

  I feigned innocence. “No! Not break in. Use the key, you dolt!”

  “I have a key,” he confirmed. “But I would never jeopardize the trust of the hottest girl I’ve ever dated.”

  I sighed. “Oh, boy. A romantic.”

  He got out of the pickup truck and glanced over his shoulder. “However, I can’t always vouch for the company I keep. If someone were to swipe her key out of my glove box while I was, say, picking up a floor polisher, well, there really wouldn’t be anything I could do to stop them. Especially, if I didn’t know about it.”

  He rapped on the side of the truck and waved.

  As soon as he was in the store and out of sight, I fiddled with the glove compartment. A ring of keys immediately sprang into my lap.

  I suddenly felt guilty. I couldn’t really break into an attorney’s office and riffle through her files, could I?

  The image of my apartment being broken into flashed through my mind. Someone had already done that to me, and left me a threatening note to boot. The killer had struck again. I had to do something to stop him or her. I pocketed the key ring and decided to park the guilt along with it.

  As soon as Max came out of the store, he heaved the floor polisher into the back of the truck and started up the engine. He said nothing further about Brenda’s keys and neither did I.

  * * *

  At the police station, Max and I waited on hard plastic chairs in the hallway as Brad, Ellington, and Gottlieb had some sort of powwow. Two uniformed officers sat at their computer stations down the hallway, giving us the impression that we were being watched.

  “I hope we don’t get stuck getting questioned by Gottlieb,” Max said under his breath. “He’s got eyebrow game.”

  I chuckled.

  “If he looks at me and furrows his brow, I think I might lose it. That will either make me look guilty or like I’m cracking up or something.”

  Nervous giggles coursed through us. One of the officers from down the hall looked up from his computer screen. Max and I stifled our snickers. The attempt to hold back our laughter only made us want to laugh harder. When the officer lost interest in us, we sagged against each other in fits of snorting.

  “We are cracking up,” I said. “How can we laugh at a time like this?”

  Max nodded his head. “I know. I’m the worst. As soon as anything heavy happens I start laughing like a jackal. Last girlfriend I had, dumped me. When I went into a complete psycho fit of laughter, she thought I was mocking her—but I was really heartbroken. Just couldn’t process it, I guess. I must be demented.”

  I patted his knee. “It’s just a way to release the anxiety.”

  “It’s a little cuckoo,” he said.

  “Well, you are a little bonkers, but we all probably are.” We sat in silence for a moment, the severity of the situation descending upon us again.

  Max finally asked, “Do you think the same person that killed Darla also killed Fran?”

  “I would say. It can’t be a coincidence. I think the police think it’s Hendrick.”

  Max shook his head. “I can’t believe Hendrick could kill his fiancée and his ex-girlfriend. Seems so wrong.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe he wasn’t in love with Darla at all. Maybe he proposed to make it look like he wasn’t the bad guy—”

  Max shook his head. “He seemed totally in shock when he saw the police. First he was all happy to see us, and I don’t think he’d be that way if he knew she was lying dead in their bedroom. Then, when the cops arrived, dude went into complete shock.”

  As far as I knew, Brad hadn’t let Hendrick inside the house. In fact, my guess was that Hendrick was now sitting in the stark interrogation room with the two-way mirror.

  But, what did I know? Maybe he called his attorney.

  Which remind me of the keys to Brenda’s office burning a hole in my pocket.

  “Should we call Brenda and ask her to join us?” I asked Max.

  Max shook his head. “She doesn’t do criminal stuff. Besides, we don’t need an attorney, we’re witnesses.”

  Now, I regretted having driven up to the vineyard. Why hadn’t I had the wines delivered?

  My phone buzzed. It was a text from Yolanda checking in with me. I discreetly texted her back.

  Darla’s been murdered!

  She immediately fired back.

  I told you Hendrick was shady.

  I replied to her that Max and I were at the police station and to bring Brenda. Even though I knew Max didn’t feel she could be helpful here, I figured it was always better to have legal ears on the team.

  While we waited, I ruminated on the motive for Darla’s murder and depression weighed me down.

  “Why would Hendrick kill his fiancée?” I asked. “It makes no sense.” I was sick with the thought of it. “He’d proposed to her. He loved her,” I said. “He told me as much.”

  Max sighed. “Unfortunately, just because someone told you something doesn’t make it true.”

  “But why would he kill her in the bed and leave the winery? Wouldn’t he think that someone was bound to show up sooner or later?”

  “Maybe he didn’t think it through,” Max said. “What if he was going to get the van so he could dispose of the body and we just sort of interrupted things? He wasn’t expecting you at a certain time, right?”

  “I didn’t make an appointment. That much is true. But he wouldn’t leave the winery wide open like that, right? I mean we just walked in.”

  Before Max could reply, Brad entered the hallway. The two uniformed officers at their computer stations looked up. One waited expectedly, the other had a bored expression on his face. When Brad bypassed them and approached us, the officers lost interest and returned their attention to their screens.

  Brad walked up to us. “Hey. I’m sorry you two had to find Darla.”

  We all three hung our heads in a moment of silence for her. Then, Brad turned to me and asked, “May I have a word?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Brad ushered me down the stark corridor and into his office. Despite his desk being covered with paperwork the office appeared tidy. There was a slick laptop and black phone handset that completed the tone of effectiveness. Inside my purse, my phone rang loudly. I ignored it.

  Brad said, “Go ahead and check it.”

  I frowned, but dug out my phone and glanced at the screen to see a text from him. “Why are you texting me when you’re standing right next to me?” I asked.

  “I wanted to make sure you had my phone number.”

  Confusion swept through me. “Of course, I have your number.”

  “Just wanted to be sure, because sometimes it feels like you think you need to stumble over a dead body before you call me.”

  Something behind my left eye throbbed. “I don’t think that,” I squeaked.

  Brad squared his shoulders. “You didn’t go up to Verdant Vines to investigate, did you, Maggie?”

  “No, no! I went there to pick up wine I’d ordered for the Wine and Bark.”

  Brad took a sharp inhale of breath. “Maggie—”

  “I swear! I was there to—”

  Brad shook his head. “You knew he was a person of interest. I specifically asked you not to go to that winery.”

  Guilt overwhelmed me, my heart sinking. While it was true I’d needed the wine, I’d really wanted to be the one to figure out what had happened to Fran.

  “You could have walked right in on the killer,” Brad said, anger reverberating in his voice. “What would you have done then? Did you even think it through?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “You could have had the wine delivered, right?” Brad insisted.

  “
Yes,” I said. “But if Hendrick was out to kill me, then wouldn’t he have killed me when he delivered the wine?”

  Brad shook his head and leaned back on his desk, as if overwhelmed by either my stubbornness or stupidity. “I don’t think anyone is out to kill you. But if you interrupt a murder, you might get yourself—”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have gone into the winery if I thought I was interrupting a murder!” I said, although my defense sounded hollow. “Besides, I was with Max.”

  “Oh, right,” Brad said sarcastically. “Like that’s supposed to help.”

  “We didn’t see anything that tipped us off—”

  “Yeah?” Brad said. “What about the blood in the hallway? Did you stop to think that the murderer might be hiding somewhere in a closet or the bathroom?”

  I gasped. “Was someone there?”

  “That’s not the point,” Brad growled. His handsome face was now red with anger.

  Distress to see him so upset bubbled up in my chest, and it felt even worse knowing I was the cause of it all.

  I reached out for his hand, but his grip was tight around his desk, his knuckles white. I backed off. “I’m so sorry, Brad. We didn’t see anything that made us think we were in danger. Max is the one who wandered down the hallway…”

  Brad stood and retreated behind the desk, putting some distance between us. I resisted the urge to follow him and wrap my arms around his waist.

  “Did you see any vehicles leaving the winery on your way in?” he asked. It was an official question now. His tone was serious and formal. He was now just a cop asking a question of a witness. And I was just a witness.

  Sadness overwhelmed me.

  Have I blown it with him?

  “I didn’t notice any vehicles,” I said. “We can ask Max—”

  “No! Damn it!” Brad exploded. “Not we, Maggie! I will ask Max. I will ask him because I’m the investigating officer. You will not ask him. I don’t want you discussing this death or Fran’s murder with anyone.”

  “I understand,” I whimpered. Even as I said it, I fought the compulsion to ask him what he meant by death. Was it still unclear whether Darla had been murdered? Could she have killed herself?

  Brad turned his back to me and looked out the window. “People think this job is easy,” he grumbled.