by Lauren Carr
“Everyone plays games,” Bogie said. “Some play fair and some don’t. The trick is to figure out early on what your opponent’s end game is and adjust accordingly. If you can figure that out, then you’ll always win.”
“That’s very profound, Bogie,” David said.
“Wish I could take the credit for it,” Bogie said with a grin. “I read it in Gnarly’s book. Third chapter.” He gestured to the other side of the table.
Sitting at the table, Gnarly rested his head on the tabletop. The dog rolled his eyes to peer up at Mac.
“You have read Gnarly’s book, haven’t you, Mac?” Bogie asked.
Mac looked down at Gnarly, whose expression indicated he was wondering the same thing. “I’ve had stuff to do.”
With a “humph” Gnarly turned away from the table.
Two hours later, David O’Callaghan was slipping into his jacket with the Spencer police chief’s gold shield on his breast pocket when Tonya tapped on his office door.
Like David, she was packed up to leave for the day. “Heading out to meet Mac and Bogie at the Inn, Chief?” She tucked a folder she had in her hand under her arm and knelt to pet Storm.
Together, they descended the stairs to the squad room and reception area.
“I’m going home to feed Storm and change first,” David said. “I think I’m going to have to leave her home tonight. Neither Bogie nor I will be in uniform, and it’s going to be a stretch to explain what she’s doing attending a party at a five-star hotel. Are you making any headway in your investigation?”
“Like a rushing train.” Her face flushed with excitement, she waved the folder in his direction. “I’m going to try to catch Mac and Archie at home before they leave. They’re going to want to know what lives right next door to them.”
David opened the folder to scan the report. His eyebrows rose upon seeing what the desk sergeant had uncovered in a matter of hours. “Looks like Constance Kleinfeld is trouble with a capital ‘T.’”
“Which is why I’m going to stake out Spencer Point to catch her red-handed when she tries to set Gnarly up.”
“I recommend setting up your headquarters in the guest cottage.” David unhooked a key from his keychain. “You’ll have a clear view of her house from the window in the loft.” He tossed the key to her. “Go get ‘em, Tonya.”
“You can count on me, Chief.” A woman on a mission, she spun on her heels and rushed out the door.
All was quiet. Being a small town, the police station kept regular business hours except in cases of emergency.
Bogie had left to prepare for his weekend undercover—in more ways than one. The sixty-five-year-old deputy chief had been behaving like a twenty-five-year-old since he had gotten together with the county’s forty-year-old medical examiner, Dr. Dora Washington. With her flawless figure and long blue-black hair that she wore in a ponytail down to the center of her back, Doc resembled a fashion model.
Maybe one day … David would find himself musing when Doc Washington dropped by the police station to deliver lunch or coffee or another goodie to Bogie. Her visits always brought a wide grin to the deputy chief’s face—especially when he’d notice the younger deputies drooling when she’d sashay in her high heels past the squad room to his office. At an age when most men would think that they were past the age of finding love, Bogie was enjoying his second shot at it.
Looking down at Storm, who gazed up at him with complete admiration, David recalled the day that past spring when Dallas announced that she was going to Paris to pursue a lead she had come across at a writer’s conference. The story was simply too good for her to pass up for her next true crime book. Dallas Walker’s departure from his life marked the latest in a long string of bad relationships.
As much as David hated to admit it, Mac had been right all along. He needed to take a break from women. Too many rebound relationships had messed him up.
Since he was the last one leaving the office, David did a quick check to make sure everyone was gone, everything that needed to be powered down was indeed off, and the security system activated. With Storm at his side, he strolled down the corridor and checked inside each office. He opened the door at the end of the hall and peered down the stairs into the file room where old case files were kept. The room was dark. He closed the door and turned around.
Everything was quiet—until David heard the door in the reception area open and shut. He heard footsteps.
With a whine, Storm trotted down the corridor.
“Hello?” Receiving no response, David placed his hand on his service weapon and made his way toward the reception area.
“Well hello there, pretty lady,” he heard a feminine voice say. “What’s your name?”
As David stepped out of the darkened hallway, she came into view. Storm’s tail was wagging as she pawed at the kneeling visitor’s flight jacket.
Upon seeing David, the woman rose to her feet. Her brown eyes didn’t leave his face. His didn’t leave hers either. They stared at each other in silence.
Seemingly unaware of the tension that had blown into the room, Storm gazed up at her.
Her hands trembled while she adjusted the maroon scarf that she wore under the collar of her jacket and finger combed her cinnamon-colored hair, which fell in wavy layers to her shoulders, out of her eyes.
“Hello, David,” she said in a soft voice while peering at him through her lush eyelashes. “You’re as handsome as you ever were.”
Chapter Three
“Are you going to wear that tie?”
Mac paused in sipping the cocktail he had prepared while waiting for Archie to finish getting ready for the bachelor party at the Spencer Inn. He examined the blue silk tie he was wearing. Finding no issues with it, he cocked his head at Archie, who was standing on the top step leading down to the dining room. She was clad in a ruby red silk dressing gown.
“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.
“You’re wearing way too many clothes.” With a giggle, she dropped the robe to reveal that she was dressed only in a pair of ruby lacey thong panties with a matching bra.
“You’re the boss.” Mac tossed back the drink and ripped off his tie.
She tore at his shirt while he fumbled with the buttons. They were still half-dressed when they tumbled onto the table. Passion overriding decorum, clothes flew everywhere. Mac’s tie ended up in the crystal chandelier. One of Archie’s shoes slid to the head of the table.
They were in the heat of passion when the door chimes erupted.
In the master suite above their heads, Gnarly howled. His four paws sounded like a herd of stampeding horses on the stairs. He charged into the foyer as if intending to break down the front door.
Mac covered Archie’s mouth with his hand. “Be quiet. Maybe they’ll go away.”
“Our cars are right out front.” Archie rolled off the table and reached for her discarded panties. Frantic, she searched for her bra.
Receiving no response to his order to answer the door, Gnarly bound across the living room. He leapt from the top step—landing square in the middle of Archie’s robe. The silky material became a sled to send the dog across the floor. He missed Mac, who was slipping on his shoes, by a hair before colliding into the patio doors.
Upon seeing Tonya on the other side of the glass doors, Archie let out a shriek and wrapped her arms across her naked bosom.
“Oh, dear, heavens!” Tonya spun around. She ordered the pack of tan and white corgis at her feet to do likewise, but they refused to obey. Instead, they cocked their heads at the half-naked couple.
Her shoes dangling from her fingertips, Archie gave up in her search for the bra and raced up the stairs to their bedroom. Gnarly rolled on the floor to extract his front paws from the sleeves of her robe. Mac turned his back to the door to zip up his pants.
Tonya was one of those peopl
e in Mac’s and Archie’s lives who they saw only at the police station. Concluding she had driven to Spencer Manor for important business, Mac hurried to invite her inside. The little dogs descended on Gnarly like a pack of hyenas attacking a rhino. He attempted to escape into the living room. Nipping at his heels, they followed.
“I’m sorry to drop in unannounced, Mac,” Tonya said with a slight stammer. Her face was red. “I mean, I felt it was important. It never occurred to me that you and Archie—”
“We are happily married.” Mac yanked his tie down from the chandelier.
“I am so sorry I Interrupted—” Her eyes flicked down to Mac’s unbuttoned shirt—revealing his firm chest. Mac spent enough time playing golf and tennis, a sport at which he was infamously bad, to keep in impressive shape. “Maybe not that sorry.”
Aware of his bare chest, Mac buttoned his shirt. “Is there something I can do for you, Tonya?”
“The chief asked me to investigate your nasty neighbor, Constance Kleinfeld.”
“And? Did you find anything?”
“Did I ever!” Dragging an overnight bag on wheels behind her, she pushed past him and trotted up into the living room. “She is setting Gnarly up. I don’t know if she’s in cahoots with his political opponents or if she’s doing this simply because she’s a psychopath. I suspect the latter.” Upon finding the sofa filled with dogs, she opted to sit on the loveseat and extracted her computer tablet from her oversized purse.
“Tonya, why did you bring your dogs?”
Mac grabbed Archie’s bra off the head of a wooden pelican statue and followed her. There was no logical place in the living room to place Archie’s undergarment. So, he folded it up and stuffed it into the umbrella stand.
“Because I can’t trust my kids to take care of them while I’m gone on a stakeout.” Her fingers flew across the screen of her device. “Oh, you haven’t met my fur babies, have you?”
His hands full tying his tie, Mac shook his head.
She stood up. “Well, then you need a formal introduction.” With a clap of her hands, she ordered the corgis into a line along the edge of the sofa with Gnarly in the middle. “Mac, allow me to introduce you to Foxy, Loxy, Moxy, and Roxy. Babies, I want you to meet our host, Mac Faraday.”
Slowly, Mac repeated their names. Not only did their names sound similar, but the four tan and white dogs looked identical to each other. “How can you tell them apart?”
“You sound like my son.” With a sigh, she returned to the loveseat and picked up her tablet. “Do you know how Edward and Constance Kleinfeld came to move in next door?”
“Edward’s uncle, Harlan Beckett, left the house to him,” Mac said. “Harlan had been a workaholic. Never married. Had no kids. I think he regretted it in his old age—especially when he got terminally ill. Gnarly and I spent quite a bit of time with him that last year. He used to brag about his sister and her family.”
“His lawyer told me that Harlan didn’t know where Edward was when he did his will a while back. But then, they must have reconnected because Edward’s address was right there in his address book when he died. Edward had set up an Internet business in Minneapolis, buying and selling things online. Him and Constance have been married for two years.”
“From what I can see, she’s closer to her cats than she is to him.”
“She’s a fruitcake,” Tonya said. “Their cleaning lady, Penny Atwater told me that Constance and her cats have trashed that house. She treats her husband like dirt. He’s threatened to toss her out on her ear since the house is his and she’ll come back saying that if it wasn’t for her, he’d have nothing.”
“What did she mean by that?”
“Penny wonders the same thing.” Tonya arched an eyebrow. “I think Constance Kleinfeld is a fraud. She had also made a comment about being a nurse and being on permanent disability due to a bad back.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean she’s a fraud,” Mac said. “I knew a lot of nurses when I was on the police force. It is a physically hard job. You do a lot of lifting. A significant percentage of nurses end up on permanent disability due to back injuries.”
“That’s not what worries me.” She wagged a finger at Mac. “Now, this is where I got worried. Shortly before her husband came into his inheritance, she hit the lottery when a dog bit her on the leg. She didn’t even need any stitches, but she sued the owners claiming emotional distress due to the attack.”
“It can be—”
“There were no witnesses to the actual attack,” Tonya said. “But the dog’s owner and several neighbors claimed that they had seen Constance Kleinfeld lurking around the neighborhood for months terrorizing and taunting the dog, who stayed on the property. She would blow airhorns and go into the yard with sticks, trying to beat the dog, when the owners weren’t home. There were numerous police reports from neighbors saying that they saw her trespassing. All of them, and even animal control, told the jury that they believed the dog snapped and bit her. But, because there were no witnesses and Kleinfeld swore that it happened out in the street, the jury awarded her a hundred thousand dollars for the bite and emotional distress.”
“What happened to the dog?” Archie asked upon overhearing the story on her way down the stairs.
“The owners considered themselves lucky,” Tonya said. “Kleinfeld was screaming for the dog to be put down, but he had no bite history and animal control was on the dog’s side. After she’d won the lawsuit, the neighbors turned against her. They harassed her and her husband within the boundaries of the law until Edward came into his inheritance and they moved here.”
“With her many cats that she keeps outside,” Archie said.
“She only got into rescuing feral cats after she moved here—next door to Gnarly.”
“And started filing complaints against Gnarly every time he chased her feral cats.”
“Exactly,” Tonya said. “I think she’s got an insane hatred for dogs, and she’s targeted Gnarly.”
“If he bit her or killed one of her cats, she wouldn’t just get a big pay day, but she’d ruin Gnarly’s reputation,” Archie said while stroking the German shepherd’s ears. “Good thing he hasn’t hurt any of those cats that she’s got running around here.”
Realizing he hadn’t had a chance to tell Archie about the attack that morning, Mac looked up at the ceiling.
“We’re really lucky there,” Tonya said. “I don’t think the cat Gnarly killed this morning belonged to Kleinfeld.”
“Cat Gnarly killed!” Archie spun around to face Mac. “What cat did Gnarly kill this morning?”
“We don’t know that,” Mac said. “No one has been able to find the body.”
“And no one has reported a cat missing,” Tonya said. “I checked with animal control. No missing cat. If it was Kleinfeld, she would have reported it, and she would have made damn sure she recorded it. I noticed on my way in here that she has a security camera aimed at your property. She’s been surveilling Gnarly.”
“Two can play at that game.” Archie pointed in the direction of the driveway. “I’ve matched that camera and upped it by one more. I’ve hidden a security camera in the birdhouse. It has a direct view of the entrance to our driveway. Plus, I stashed another camera in the tree at the far end of the stone wall. If she so much as sticks a toe on our property, I’ll have it recorded and she’ll go down for trespassing.”
“I think Constance Kleinfeld is suffering from what I’ve heard one political expert call Gnarly Derangement Syndrome,” Mac said. “Quite a few cat lovers were very offended when he got elected.”
“Just get over it already,” Archie said. “Being offended is no excuse for ruining a good dog’s reputation and framing him for something he didn’t do.”
“It’s not exactly a frame,” Mac said. “I saw Gnarly snap that cat’s neck. He was dead. At least, he looked dead to me.”
/>
“That cat couldn’t have been hers,” Tonya said. “The chief told me that he counted three cats with her this morning. The vet says she has four cats on record, but those are indoor cats.”
“She keeps three feral cats outside,” Archie said.
“That’s seven cats,” Mac said. “She is nuts.”
“But no one can own a feral cat, a status which conveniently frees her from financial responsibility if one of them was to cause damage,” Tonya said.
“It looks like her end game is to get Gnarly to bite her so that she can sue us, ruin his reputation. Then, if she’s lucky, have Gnarly destroyed,” Archie said.
“That’s why she didn’t report Gnarly’s attack on the cat,” Mac said.
“Why didn’t she?” Tonya asked.
“You said she has a camera pointed at our house,” Mac said. “This morning, that cat was on our property when he jumped Gnarly. Legally, Gnarly committed no crime. As a matter of fact, he was defending himself. This cat was attached to his face and biting him. If her camera captured it, the recording wouldn’t be of any value because Gnarly was defending himself on our property.”
“But it would be of value in proving to a jury that Gnarly is vicious if she succeeds in getting him to attack her or her cats on her property,” Tonya said.
“Oh, Mac, what are we going to do?” Archie asked.
“We’re going to stop her.” Tonya grabbed the handle for her overnight bag. “I’m going to keep this whack job under surveillance until we find the right leverage to use against her to convince her to stop her game and move elsewhere.”
“That will take time,” Archie said.
“And patience.” Tonya thrust her finger into the air. “Time and patience are the strongest weapons of every great warrior.”
