Chapter 4
Four
When David left me 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 the National 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?”
Maybe so. But— “I’m sure a coincidence is all it is. Even if Steven is having an affair with the girl, why would either of them kill Mrs. Grimshaw because of it?”
“She called the police,” Rachel said.
“On me. It had nothing to do with them.”
“They wouldn’t know that,” Rachel pointed out. “There you were, looking very official in your black SUV. Official enough that Mrs. Grimshaw calls the police to report you. And here’s Mendoza, in his cop car. He talks to you, and he talks to Mrs. Grimshaw, and then Steven leaves and you follow him.”
I nodded. “But why would they worry about any of it? Sleeping around isn’t a crime. Mrs. Grimshaw can call anyone she wants. If all they’re doing is cheating on Diana, there’s nothing I or anyone else can do about it.”
“Steven might not think about it that way,” Rachel said. “He might have recognized you and figured you were spying on him for Mrs. Morton.”
“But if so, wouldn’t he shoot me and not Mrs. Grimshaw?”
Unpleasant idea. It gave me a little frisson of fear down the back of my spine. It wasn’t that long ago that I’d found myself facing the business end of a pistol. I had no desire to repeat the experience.
Rachel shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t recognize you. Maybe he recognized Detective Mendoza and thought the detective would tell Diana.”
“Same question,” I said. “Why shoot Mrs. Grimshaw and not Mendoza?”
“Maybe he’s planning to shoot Mendoza. Maybe Mrs. Grimshaw was just the beginning.”
It had a crazy, overblown sort of logic. “Maybe I should call Mendoza,” I said.
Rachel nodded. “I think you should.”
“I’ll go do that right now. Keep an eye on—” I looked around. “Where is she?”
“She went that way,” Rachel said, jerking her thumb down the hallway toward the offices.
“And you didn’t think to mention it?”
I scurried down the hallway after the dog.
She wasn’t in my office. She wasn’t in the spare room, where Farley and David had kept their files.
She wasn’t in the bathroom or the kitchen.
I finally tracked her down in Zachary’s office.
At first I didn’t think she was there, either, but then I heard a snuffling, wet sort of noise, and followed it to find her hidden in the space under Zachary’s desk, flat nose buried in a pizza box.
The wet, snuffling noise was the sound of her licking at the grease and cheese stuck to the bottom of the box.
It looked like the Michelangelo’s box from last night. Maybe Zachary had brought in the leftovers to have for lunch. Hopefully the dog hadn’t eaten them.
I disposed of the box in the kitchen, and took the dog into my office, where I dropped her on the sofa. “Take a nap.”
She gave me a look.
“Or you can just stay there. As long as you’re quiet and don’t get into any trouble.”
Fat chance, her expression said. She was kind of cute, in an annoyingly pop-eyed, flat-nosed way.
Or she would be, if I were in the market for a dog.
As it was, she would probably end up going to Mrs. Grimshaw’s next of kin.
She must have been married at some point—or she’d be Miss or Ms. Grimshaw, not Mrs.—so there might be a child or children who’d inherit everything, including the dog.
Maybe the murder had nothing at all to do with Steven and the girl next door. Maybe Mrs. Grimshaw was obscenely wealthy, or even moderately wealthy, and her next of kin had killed her for the inheritance. It happens.
Nonetheless, I called Mendoza. Just in case it wasn’t the next of kin and someone had it in for him.
Or me.
The phone rang a couple of times, and then he answered. “Mrs. Kelly.”
He obviously had my name and number programmed in his cell phone. I wondered whether I should feel encouraged by that, or whether he did it for all his suspects. I wasn’t a suspect this time—at least I couldn’t think of a reason why I would be—but I had been one not too long ago.
“Detective,” I said. “I just wanted to update you.” And hopefully get an update in return. “The dog is clean. She’s here at the office with me. I’ve had to change my clothes twice.”
I could hear amusement in his voice. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
“She’s a pain in my butt. How long do I have to keep her?”
“Not sure,” Mendoza said. “I haven’t done anything about notifying next of kin yet. I’m not sure who next of kin is. But by the end of the day I should know whether one of Mrs. Grimshaw’s relatives will be willing to take the dog or whether it’ll have to go to the pound.”
The pound? I glanced across the room at the little thing, sniffing the crevices of the sofa, snuffling in the folds of leather. “I don’t feel great about that.”
“It’s life,” Mendoza said. “If the relatives don’t want the dog, and we can’t find someone else willing to take it, it’ll end up at the pound. Someone might see it and adopt it.”
And someone might not. It wasn’t a puppy. I have very little experience with or knowledge of dogs, but I could tell it was fully grown. It even had a few gray hairs among the black and white on the snout and batty ears. Most people don’t like to adopt older dogs.
“I’ll keep it for now. Her. Although I’m not sure I can bring myself to call it Edwina.”
“Call it anything you want,” Mendoza said. “Who’s going to know the difference?”
The dog might. But before I could say so, I heard a sound in the background, on his end of the phone, not mine, and then he came back. “I have to go.”
“Just one more thing.”
“The ME just showed up to take the body. I don’t have time for chit-chat.”