Chapter 2
The Hendersons' golden retriever needed a sanitary trim and a blowout, the Castelluccis' pair of standard poodles were due for full grooms, and Mrs. Whitfield's ancient Shih Tzu required the kind of patience usually reserved for hostage negotiations.
Dana ran the list in her head as she pulled the Pampered Paws van through the gates of Emerald Cove Estates, mentally sorting alarm codes and temperaments and which dogs needed the muzzle she kept in the side cabinet but almost never used.
Tuesday mornings were her bread and butter.
Three houses in the same gated community, back to back, keys and codes entrusted to her by women who'd tested six groomers before they found the one who didn't make their dogs shake.
It had taken Dana three years to build that trust, one anxious purebred at a time, and it was the foundation her entire business sat on.
The van handled the curved streets like the workhorse it was—custom-fitted with a grooming table, a raised tub, a dryer that could hurricane-blast a Saint Bernard dry in twenty minutes, and storage for every blade, shampoo, and calming spray she'd accumulated since she'd scraped together the down payment and told her old salon boss exactly where he could file his commission structure.
The van was her shop, her office, and on the bad days her therapist's couch.
She'd slept in it twice during the early months when rent was a suggestion and clients were scarce.
It smelled like lavender dog shampoo and independence, and she loved it the way some people loved houses.
She turned onto the Hendersons' street and her foot came off the gas.
Two cars sat in the circular drive that didn't belong there.
Dark sedans, unmarked but unmistakable—the kind of cars that screamed authority even without lights on the roof.
A man and a woman stood on the front porch in the morning shade, both in blazers despite the heat, both watching her van roll up the cul-de-sac like they'd been timing it.
Dana's stomach dropped through the floorboard.
She parked at the curb because pulling into the driveway felt like walking into a trap, and by the time she killed the engine the older detective—fifties, thick through the middle, with a cop's permanent squint and a tie loosened against the Florida morning—was already crossing the lawn toward her.
"Dana Merritt?"
"That's me." She kept her voice level. Her hands were shaking against the steering wheel and she pressed them flat against her thighs where he couldn't see. "Is something wrong with the Hendersons?"
"The Hendersons are fine." He produced a badge and held it long enough for her to read it.
Volusia County Sheriff's Office, Major Crimes.
The woman behind him did the same. Younger, sharper, watching Dana's face like she was cataloging every micro-expression for evidence.
"I'm Detective Alderman. This is Detective Soto.
We'd like to ask you about some burglaries in the area. "
The word landed like a brick on glass.
"Burglaries," Dana repeated.
"Seven homes in the last four months. Emerald Cove, Harbour Village, Riverbend Estates." Alderman tilted his head, studying her. "All neighborhoods you service, Ms. Merritt. Some of them homes you have keys to."
The cul-de-sac was immaculate around them.
Clipped hedges and terracotta rooflines and driveways that cost more than her van.
Sprinklers hissing on emerald lawns. A neighborhood where she'd always been the help—welcome in the service entrance, invisible at the front door—and now she was standing on the curb being questioned like she'd robbed it.
"I service dozens of homes in this area," Dana said carefully. "I'm a mobile groomer. That's my job."
"We're aware." Soto spoke for the first time, her voice clipped and precise. "Your van has been flagged in the vicinity of multiple targeted residences in the days before the break-ins occurred."
"Because I was grooming their dogs."
"You have access to alarm codes, entry schedules, and house keys for a number of the affected homes. Is that correct?"
Dana's mouth went dry. She could hear it now—the shape of the thing they were building. Not a question. A frame. Every piece of access her clients had given her out of trust was being recast as evidence, and the two people standing in front of her had already decided which story fit.
"My clients trust me with their homes," she said. "That's how mobile grooming works. I let myself in, I groom the dog, I lock up and leave. I've never taken anything that wasn't mine."
Alderman's face didn't change. That was the worst part—not hostility but the flat certainty of a man who'd already written the ending.
He looked at her van with its cheerful paw-print logo and its racks of shampoo visible through the rear windows, and Dana could see him filing it away as a prop. A cover story on wheels.
"We're not charging you with anything today, Ms. Merritt." He said it like he was doing her a favor. "But we'd appreciate your cooperation. A full list of clients, your schedule for the last four months, and any documentation of your access arrangements."
"Am I required to provide that?"
His eyebrows went up a fraction. Soto's pen stopped moving.
"Not at this time," Alderman said. "But I'd think an innocent person would want to help us clear this up."
The oldest trap in the book, and Dana recognized it because she'd grown up watching people with money and authority use that exact tone on people without either.
If you've got nothing to hide, why won't you cooperate?
Because cooperation meant handing them her client list—the same list someone had apparently already weaponized—and trusting that two detectives who'd showed up at her first appointment with their minds already made would use it to find the truth instead of bury her in it.
"I'll think about it," Dana said.
Soto's mouth thinned. Alderman produced a card from his breast pocket and held it out between two fingers. Dana took it because refusing would look worse than accepting.
"Don't travel far, Ms. Merritt. We'll be in touch."
They walked back to their sedans with the unhurried confidence of people who had time and authority and didn't need to rush.
Doors closed. Engines started. They pulled out of the cul-de-sac one after the other and disappeared around the curve, leaving Dana standing on the curb in the bright morning sun with a business card in one hand and the sudden, suffocating understanding that her careful life had just been kicked out from under her.
She got back in the van.
The Hendersons' golden retriever was waiting inside that house, probably already parked by the door with his tail going, expecting the same woman who came every Tuesday with treats in her apron and a voice that made everything okay.
Mrs. Castellucci's poodles needed their faces scissored. The Shih Tzu needed its nails.
Dana sat behind the wheel and didn't start the engine.
Seven burglaries. Her neighborhoods, her clients, her access.
Someone had watched her routes, mapped her schedule, and used the trust she'd spent three years earning to rob the people who'd given it.
Every alarm code she'd memorized, every key on the ring in her console, every vacation schedule a client had mentioned in passing while she bathed their dog—all of it had been turned into a tool, and she was the handle.
The detectives hadn't charged her. They hadn't needed to.
The cage was already built—her prints inside every house, her van on every street, her name on every client's access list. Whoever had done this hadn't just framed her.
They'd made her the perfect suspect using the perfect life she'd built, and the worst part was that she couldn't see a single piece of it that wasn't true.
She stared through the windshield at the clipped hedges and the money and the sprinklers arcing diamonds across lawns she'd never be invited to walk on as a guest, and for the first time since she'd scraped herself out of poverty and built something that was hers, Dana Merritt had no idea what to do next.
The business card sat on the passenger seat. Detective Alderman, Major Crimes.
Her van smelled like lavender shampoo and the life someone was stealing from her, and Dana couldn't make her hands stop shaking long enough to turn the key.