“Daddy!” Chloe stretched her chubby arms in his direction.
“Nicole,” he said, eyes trained on his wife as she transferred their child to him and the little girl giggled as he broke eye contact and swung his daughter around. “Hey, there, princess,” he whispered against her neck, and she laughed, her curly hair bouncing, her eyes bright as she wrinkled her nose.
“Arlo!” Chloe proclaimed, pointing at the cage in the back of Nikki’s car. “Mikado’s friend.”
“Arlo,” he repeated, arching an eyebrow at his wife, who in turn stubbornly lifted her chin.
“Uh-huh!” Chloe nodded sagely as he stopped the twirling.
“Well, Mommy and Daddy need to talk about this.”
Nikki nodded. “We do. At home.”
“Fair enough,” he said, deciding to argue later. They did not need another dog. But he bit his tongue for the time being as he loaded Chloe into her car seat.
After he’d buckled in his daughter securely, he straightened and found Nikki standing beside him. She handed him a plastic bag with what looked like a dozen or so silver pellets.
“Bird shot,” she explained. “Taken from the dog.”
He slid a glance at the animal. Vicious and snarling last night. Demure and quiet now. Possibly still sedated?
“Dr. Vasquez had actually neutered him a couple of years ago.Also, I met with Huber’s daughter, Janelle, who, by the way, told me to keep him. She has no use for him and had planned to give him to a rescue.”
“Which wouldn’t be that bad of an idea.”
She ignored him. “Will the pellets help in the investigation?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” he admitted, “but they won’t hurt.”
“Do you think the killer shot the dog?”
Pierce lifted a shoulder.
“Mommy!” Chloe said through the open door of Nikki’s Outback.
Nikki nodded. “Coming.” To Pierce, she said, “We can talk about this at home.” She slammed the hatch to the cargo compartment closed, while Pierce said to his daughter, “See you at home,” before closing the open door.
Nikki paused to look over the roof of her car. “Arlo is really a sweet dog, and he’s going to be a great pet, once he trusts us.”
“And he’s still under the effects of anesthesia?” Pierce asked, peering at the shepherd and noticing that the dog’s back and hips had been shaved to expose the stitched wounds where the bird shot had been removed. The dog eyed him, and he said, “Looks like you’ve got a new home,” as Nikki slammed the cargo door shut.
Nikki smiled up at him from behind the wheel.
Resigned to another pet to add to their ever-growing menagerie, Reed stepped back onto the curb and watched his wife wheel out of the lot.
Pick your battles, he reminded himself, as he climbed into his Jeep and started the engine in order to roll down the windows and turn on the AC. He figured this particular fight was lost before it even got started. Did he really care about another animal joining the family? Not really. As long as the dog—Arlo, he reminded himself—was healthy and not dangerous.
But as he rammed the gearshift into drive, he remembered the snarling beast of the night before with his suspicious eyes and flashing teeth. That wouldn’t do. Nor would the fact that Nikki was always challenging him, sometimes to the point of going behind his back.
Chapter 9
“… I’m just saying that it’s time,” Ina insisted on the other end of the wireless connection. As Nikki’s literary agent, Ina was always pushing Nikki to write another book. “Surely, you have some ideas, probably lots of them!”
Phone to her ear, Nikki eyed the books she’d written, the spines visible on the bookshelf in her office. They were all true crime, all about cases in which she’d been personally involved.
“The Third Gravecame out last summer,” Ina prodded, and Nikki pictured the fiftyish woman with jet-black hair, dark eyes, and a throaty, cigarette-raspy voice. “I thought you might have a new project.”
“Maybe, but I’m not sure,” she admitted, thinking there might be an interesting angle to Billy Huber’s murder. “A case is developing, but it’s still in the beginning stages.”
