Chapter 11
I don’t usually take the back stairs. They’re a little too “condemned building” for my taste, but: desperate times.
I lock the back door behind me, and then the guys and I slowly make our way down the creaky wooden stairs, descending past
into the alley, and while I wouldn’t exactly call the dogs chill, I’m glad we’re at least all moving in the same direction.
As soon as we turn the corner onto the sidewalk, though, they start straining at their leashes and wheeze-panting and yanking
me almost out of my shoes. I can see Claudia up there on my corner wearing a thankfully unfamiliar (and clean) lemon-yellow
bucket hat.
But as we close in, it becomes clear that the dogs are fangirling about the person she’s with: a surprisingly hot guy closer to my age, with a nice set of exposed forearms and impressive pecs that are currently fighting for their life against his T-shirt.
For a moment, this whole Claudia thing has a silver lining.
Me, a down-on-her-luck crossing guard and him, a stupid-hot city lumberjack!
What a classic meet-cute! My recently dumped brain can’t help but imagine us telling the story of how we met: Brought together by conspiracy and tragedy! Adorable! Sad! Sexy!
I’ll admit, two crushes in two days makes me feel like a massive traitor, but until Chris wakes up from this nightmare and
realizes he made a terrible mistake, maybe a crush here and there is okay?
The dogs drag me over, the guy takes his index finger and points down, and holy shit, all three dogs sit obediently in a line
in front of him.
Extra hot.
Apparently I’m not the only dog wizard in town. He squats down and pets them, while they nuzzle him affectionately.
“How did you do that?” I ask as he appears to inspect them.
“Did anyone follow you?” Claudia asks, trying her best to interrupt my fantasy where this guy falls for me right here on this
street corner, and I have to tell him that I already have an imaginary government girlfriend and an actual boyfriend, at least
as soon as that boyfriend comes to his senses.
Ooooh, maybe all three of them will fight over me. Could happen.
“I wasn’t checking,” I say.
“Amateur,” she mumbles.
“Look, Claudia,” I say, as diplomatically as possible. “I’m a crossing guard because I need insurance. Like, health care.
I’m just trying to live my life. Please don’t put me in charge of a so-called murder investigation.”
“In charge?” she scoffs. “Not on your life. You’re lackey material.”
“Well, thank you, I think,” I say.
The guy stands up from where he’s been playing with the dogs, brushes his hands off on the thighs of his, phew, really nice-fitting jeans, and in addition to that and the forearms, he’s got these bright green-blue eyes, and—
He thrusts half a pepperoni in my face. “Did you feed these dogs pepperoni? Are you kidding me?”
Hmm. Maybe we could do, like, an enemies-to-lovers sort of thing.
“The dog food hasn’t been delivered yet,” I say, flirting. Fine, I’m a bit rusty.
“Pepperoni is dangerous for dogs,” he says passionately. He points at them dramatically. “Claudia, on top of everything else, we now also have an
attempted murder on our hands.”
Okay, he’s working the enemies angle pretty hard.
Claudia puts a hand on his shoulder. “Easy there, Benny, I made her take the dogs, remember?”
“Right. About that,” I say. “I would like to return them.”
“Oh, that’s not an option,” Claudia says.
“Maybe it should be,” Benny says, stepping up to me.
“Yeah,” I say, giving it right back.
“Okay, kids,” Claudia says with a sigh. “Let’s walk.”
So Claudia, who previously wouldn’t let me or my stop sign anywhere near her—who would in fact hide behind a tree to evade me—makes me walk out into the street and pretend to cross her and Benny, who takes the leashes for the dogs. She
tells us we’re going to go all the way around the intersection, until we’ve walked in a full circle.
“Just to be clear, I’m not a crossing guard at the moment. I don’t have my vest or my stop sign,” I say. “And school isn’t
in session.”
“Well,” she says, “you wouldn’t come to my house, so here I am, doing this on your turf. If you have complaints, then next
time, make different choices.”
I sigh as I step into the intersection. Next to me, she makes Benny hold her arm while she fake-hobbles at an unbearably slow pace, and next to him, the dogs form a unified front.
After a few steps in silence, Claudia whispers, “Benny, this is Mo,” and—wait. How does she know my name? I don’t remember
telling her my name.
Benny, she says, continuing with the introductions, is Buffalo Park’s most sought-after dog trainer. “Tons of experience,”
the old woman adds. “Used to work for Cran, as a matter of fact. The poodles love Benny.”
Unlike you, Pepperoni Pockets. It’s like she’s rubbing it in my face. You’ll only ever be able to bribe someone to love you.
“Great,” I say to Benny. “Then you take the dogs.”
“No can do,” Benny says.
“Maybe Mo would feel closer to them if you told her their names,” Claudia prompts.
Benny points at the pepperoni lover. “That’s GCH CH Bellevie Qu’ils Mangent de la Brioche CGC.”
I blink. “That’s a name?”
“He goes by Jean Valjean for short.”
“Oh, does he?”
Finally, Benny looks chagrined. “Well, Jean for short.”
“Right.”
Next, he points at the sneezer. “GCH CH Bellevie Liberté égalité Fraternité CGC.” He pauses. “AKA, Louis XIV.”
As if on cue, Louis sneezes.
“Sure, why not,” I say.
“And finally,” Benny continues, “GCH CH Bellevie Après Moi Le Deluge CGC. But you can call him Jacques Cousteau.”
“Wow, enchanté, obviously,” I say. “And why, again, do I have to keep them? Why aren’t we giving them back to someone, anyone else?”
“If Cran was murdered, the dogs will know who did it,” Benny says, looking around cautiously, like someone might be listening
to us. Out here. In the middle of the wide-open street. “They were always with him, they would have sensed something dangerous.”
“You just said ‘if’ he was murdered,” I point out.
But Benny doesn’t take the bait. “I didn’t see the accident, but I trust Claudia’s gut on this. And I knew Cran. He loved
his car. And his poodles. He wasn’t a drive-into-a-sinkhole, Thelma-and-Louise-but-with-dogs kind of guy.”
Sure, I think. More like a drive-into-a-crossing-guard guy.
“Poodles are really smart,” Benny says. “We just need to get them in front of the murderer and they’ll tell us.”
“Poodle detectives, why didn’t I think of that!” I try to keep a straight face. “So how’s this going to work? Are we doing
a dog lineup? Are they going to look through a one-way mirror at all our suspects?”
“Of course not.” Benny rolls his eyes. “They’ll tell us by sniffing, or whining, or pawing at the guilty person, something
like that.”
“So by doing generic dog things, got it.”
Claudia holds up a hand. “Mo, I’ve known Benny for a long time. There’s no one I trust more. You’re new to the neighborhood,
so to help you on the case—”
“Look, I love neighborhood gossip as much as the next guy, but I’m not ‘on the case’—”
“—you’ll need a little background. Cran Johnston and his brother are the ones building that hideous parking monstrosity.”
Claudia waves her hand at the construction site across the street, the one all the kids like to sneak through. “I’ve been
digging into their business dealings. Very shady.”
She starts talking about rezoning things and I do my own personal rezoning. Zoning out, that is. Ooh, sick burn, Claudia.
But seriously, does Benny work out all the time, or are those forearms a good-genes thing?
Also, for a lovesick person, why am I so horny all the time now? It’s really confusing.
Oops. They’re both looking at me.
“Oh no,” I say, vaguely.
“Exactly,” Claudia says.
“So the Johnston brothers have been pressuring Claudia to sell her house,” Benny explains. “They want to put up fancy condos
attached to the garage.”
“That’s my place.” Claudia points to the little bungalow next to the construction site. “But I won’t budge. I bought that
house when I got my first job and so help me, I’m gonna die in it. No communal living for me, I’m not a hippie.”
She spits, which seems unnecessarily harsh on hippies.
“It wouldn’t be the worst thing for you to downsize,” Benny mumbles, and I can instantly sense this is not the first time
they’ve had this conversation.
“Plus,” Claudia says, pretending she didn’t hear, “all this construction has opened up that sinkhole, which proves my point. And Cran was not well-liked. He’s pissed off some very important people.”
“Like who?” I ask.
“Like me, for one,” she says indignantly. “Benny too.”
“He fired me a couple weeks ago,” says Benny with a shrug. “Guess he thought the dogs didn’t need me anymore.”
“So you two killed him?”
“That is not what I’m saying,” Claudia huffs. “I’m explaining that he was very murderable! Why are you deliberately misunderstanding
me?”
“Because nobody murdered him, Claudia!” I say.
“Then where did the radium poisoning come from?” she asks, like she’s got me.
I throw my hands in the air—enough is enough. “You guys are nuts. Cran was an angry dick who drove too fast, and when I saw
him yesterday, he was swerving and stumbling, slurring his words, and making drunk guy faces. Clearly he liked to start his day off with a one-man party and it should be no surprise to any of us that he ended up in a sinkhole.
Okay? Can we all just let this go?”
We’ve made a full circle and reached our final corner, thank goodness, but Claudia looks at Benny, whose eyes widen.
“Mo,” Benny says. “Cran didn’t drink alcohol. Ever.”
I roll my eyes. “How could you possibly know that?”
“I know it,” Claudia says. “Every time Cran saw me with my afternoon Chardonnay and ice, he said that he ‘wouldn’t touch it with
someone else’s lips,’ and I needed his homemade sauerkraut to detox my liver.”
She smiles, giddy, and this feels like very bad news for me.
“So what does that mean?” I ask reluctantly.
“It means you just gave us our first clue.”
Shitballs.
I came here to end this.
And somehow, I’m making it worse.