“Any word on the fire?” I asked.
“Arson is confirmed,” Adam said, “though there seems to be some confusion about the accelerant used. Whatever it was, it got really hot, really fast.”
“Do you think he’s done this kind of thing before?” I asked.
“The fire investigator seemed to think so. We’re looking for suspicious fires tied to an overzealous lover. We’re also looking at the European angle. There’s another trail, too. Warren got descriptions of this man’s dogs out of Christy. Looks like they are some sort of mastiff. She said they were valuable and difficult for anyone except Juan—her stalker—to handle.”
“That doesn’t sound like a mastiff,” I told him. “There’s a guy in the Montana pack who was breeding all sorts of big dogs. The mastiffs were mostly big sweeties.”
“I’m not sure she’d know a poodle from a sheepdog. But Juan Flores apparently took special pleasure in pointing out that both of his dogs outweighed Christy, who is a hundred and ten pounds.”
Hah. Christy was at least twenty pounds heavier than that.
“Hah.” Honey snorted with derision. “Christy is at least one thirty or one thirty-five.”
“Big dog,” I said.
Adam laughed. “I’ll let you know if there is anything new, and Mercy?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t do anything too interesting.”
He disconnected before I could reply.
“Don’t underestimate Christy,” Honey said. “She’s not nearly as helpless as she pretends to be.”
“I know that,” I said. I glanced at Honey, then looked back at the road. “I thought you liked her.”
She growled. “Helpless bitch had the whole pack—Adam included—hopping to her tune. Couldn’t mow the lawn, change a tire, or carry her own laundry up the stairs. Even Peter fell for it, and he usually had better sense. She didn’t like Warren—I thought at the time she was worried he was going to make a play for Adam, but mostly, I think, he didn’t fall over himself to be her slave. Darryl’s helpless against her, but at least he knows it. All that might not have been too bad, but she played them all off each other. I had my own private celebration when she left Adam.”
Her lips twisted. “I don’t like you,” she told me, but there was a lie in her voice, and she stopped talking, looking almost surprised. She started again, her tones softer than they had been. “I don’t enjoy change,” she said. “And you are change, Mercy. I am comfortable with the old ways, and you are tossing them aside whenever they don’t suit you, while Adam looks on with satisfaction. But one thing I’ve always known is that you were trying your best to make things better. Christy, she looked out for herself first. I don’t imagine that has changed. Only a fool would say the same about you—though I frequently disagree with your methods and goals.”
I cleared my throat. “So. Do you want to see a man about some dogs?”
5
I PULLED INTO JOEL’S DRIVEWAY, AND OUR PRESENCEwas announced by a chorus of barking fit to wake the dead. Joel might work in the vineyards and fix cars as a hobby, but dogs were his passion. He and his wife bred, showed, and trained dogs. I figured that he might be able to help us figure out what kind of dogs Christy’s stalker had. It was a shot in the dark, but I was willing to do anything to shorten Christy’s time in my house. I’d called Joel, and he’d told me to meet him at home.
Mostly, the dogs barking at us were just excited, but I heard the true anger of a dog whose territory is breached in at least one bass voice.
“Maybe I should wait,” Honey said. “Dogs are afraid of me.”
I shook my head. “Most dogs get over their fear of werewolves pretty fast, given a chance.”
I hopped down out of the Vanagon. While I waited for Honey to come around the vehicle, the front door opened, and a small woman came out of the door with a leashless dog that was nonetheless at heel. The dog was white, female, and looked to be a purebred Staffordshire terrier. The woman greeted me in Spanish.
I get mistaken for Hispanic a lot.
I shook my head, but didn’t bother objecting to her assumption. “Sorry.No hablo Español. ¿Esta Joel aqui?”
She stopped when she was about ten feet away, and the dog sat as soon as she quit moving. All of the dog’s attention was on the woman.
“No,” the woman said, then paused. Maybe she’d had to take a moment to switch languages. “You must be Mercy. Joel called and told me what you wanted. I told him to stay at work because I know the dogs as well as he does.” Her English was good, with only a touch of accent.
She gave Honey a slightly wary look, and the dog focused on her, too. “I am his wife, Lucia. Joel tells me that you are the Mercy who keeps him in parts for his old cars. Come into my house, and I will help you as much as I can.”
Her house, when she ushered us in, was not fancy or large, but it was clean enough that I would have eaten off any surface. We sat on an old leather couch while Lucia retreated to her kitchen.
