I withdrew.With a final, “Call me.”Mendoza didn’t respond.
I put the dog in the passenger seat and walked around the car to the driver’s side.By the time I had backed down the driveway and was headed up the street, the dog was standing on my thighs with her nose against the window.I had one arm snaked over her back, and the other in front of her chest, with her head on top of my arm.It made turning the steering wheel difficult.
“This isn’t going to work,” I told her.
She ignored me, in favor of watching the world go by.Her nose was making a damp spot on the window.
I dumped her back in the passenger seat.She gave me a wounded look before turning to the other window.
“Oh, dammit!”
Those bloody little paws were leaving marks on my cream leather seat.And worse, they had marked my linen slacks, too.Blood’s impossible to get out, unless you do it right away.
“That does it,” I told the dog.“We’re going home.You can walk around in the bathtub while I soak my shirt.”
She didn’t answer, of course.Just kept looking out the window.Although I swear she was grinning.
Four
When David leftme for Jacquie —actually, before David left me for Jacquie—he bought himself a love nest on the top floor of the Apex, one of the new high-rise condo buildings in the Gulch, a neighborhood on the south end of downtown.I stayed on in the house in Hillwood, even after David died.Until someone set fire to the family room, directly below the master bedroom, and I had to jump out a second story window to save myself.I moved into the Apex after that.It was available, and felt safe, and the house needed repair before I could move back into it.
At this point, I thought I might not want to move back in.I had spent eighteen years in Hillwood, as David’s trophy wife.Now that I was single again, I just wanted to put my marriage behind me.What better way than to sell the house we’d shared and take over possession of David’s bachelor pad?
When I sailed through the front doors with Edwina under my arm, short legs scrabbling for purchase on my hip, there was a new guy behind the desk in the lobby, where Zachary used to sit.He didn’t say a word to me.I’m not sure he even saw the dog.All he did was glance up, confirm that I was someone whose face he knew, nod, and go back to whatever he was reading behind the desk.Penthouse,Marvel Comics, or theNational Enquirer.
I made my way through the lobby and up in the elevator.The first thing I did was fill the big tub with two inches of water and drop the dog in.The sides were too tall for her to climb back out—or so I hoped—and she could waddle around in the shallow water and clean the blood from her paws.
While she did that, I headed into the bedroom and stripped out of my clothes, which also had to soak.By the time I had changed into new clothes, and left the old ones in the utility sink in the laundry room, the dog had managed to roll in the water and get wet everywhere.I had to lift her out and wrap her in a towel—which she didn’t like; she barked at me—and then dry her with the hair dryer, which she liked less.By the time she was mostly dry, I was wet again, and had to change clothes for the second time that day.By now I had caught on to the fact that life with a dog was likely to keep me in a perpetual state of disarray, so I compromised by putting on a pair of jeans and a colorful tunic.Hopefully there was nothing too bad the dog could do to it in the next few hours.
That done, Edwina and I headed back downstairs to the garage.I put her in the backseat—which lasted about two minutes before she figured out how to jump over the console to the front—and we drove to the office.It didn’t take more than five minutes, but by the time we got there, I was already exhausted from keeping the dog off my lap and telling her not to drool on the windows.
I carried her inside and put her on the sofa in the lobby.“Do you know anything about dogs?”
“Not much,” Rachel said, eyeing Edwina.“I’m really more of a cat person.”
Me, too.Or if I had to choose, I’d probably say I liked cats better than dogs.Not that I’d had much experience with either.But dogs seemed like a lot of work.“What about Zachary?”
“He isn’t here,” Rachel said.
I had noticed the absence of his car in the lot.“I told him to go check out the university this morning.See if he could find the girl from yesterday and get an identity on her.He should be back soon.”I’d told him I’d relieve him in the afternoon.
Unless he’d found the girl and had struck up a conversation with her.Then he might not be back until dinnertime.
“Where did the dog come from?”Rachel asked.Edwina had jumped down from the couch and was investigating the corners of the office.
“Her name is Edwina.Mendoza gave her to me.”
Rachel got a funny look on her face.“Not what I’d call a romantic gift.”
Me, either.However?—
I shook my head.“Not a gift.And not romantic.We’re dog-sitting the witness to a murder.Edwina’s owner was shot last night.Mrs.Grimshaw.In the house next door to Steven Morton’s mistress.Or whatever she is.”
Rachel arched her brows.“That’s interesting.”
Was it?“How so?”
“I’m not sure,” Rachel admitted, “but it seems coincidental, doesn’t it?Yesterday you followed Steven over there, and last night the woman next door was shot?”
