Tapped Out

by Emily James

  Still, if Dean was involved in something illegal, Elise should know. Her job—my job as their future “aunt”—was to protect those kids.

  “You’ll tell me everything, and then I’ll decide whether Elise needs to know or not. For now, get my dogs back.”

  We ended the call. Just in time, too. A Fair Haven police cruiser stopped in my driveway.

  Please be Erik. Please be Erik.

  I pocketed my phone and met Mark at the door he’d already opened.

  The man who climbed out of the police cruiser wasn’t Erik. It was Grady Scherwin.

  His gut hadn’t gotten any smaller than the last time I saw him and still looked out of place with his oversized arm muscles. Maybe he took steroids. I gave myself a mental pinch. There was no need to be mean, even in my mind, and even if I was under stress. Grady was mean enough for the both of us.

  I turned to Mark. “I’m not trusting Grady Scherwin to find my dogs. He won’t even take this seriously.”

  Mark hit a button on his phone. “You’re not. Don’t worry. I’ll handle this.”

  He stepped away from the door, and I went out onto the front steps. I placed myself on the top step so that Grady Scherwin couldn’t come up without pushing past me.

  He squinted up at me even though the sun was behind him. “I hear you need to report a theft.”

  A theft. As if my dogs were nothing more than stolen property. “My dogs were kidnapped.” I emphasized kidnapped. “Is Sergeant Higgins working today?”

  “If you want to make a report, I’m willing to take it”—he crossed his arms, making his biceps look even larger—“but don’t waste my time asking about other officers. This isn’t The Bachelor or something.”

  From the corner of my eye, I caught movement behind me. I glanced back, and Mark motioned for me to join him.

  I held up a finger to Grady. “I’ll be right back.”

  I might have taken a bit too much enjoyment from the annoyed look on his face.

  Mark led me to the far side of the room. “Erik and Quincey are both off today, but I talked to Chief McTavish. He’s sending Troy.”

  I pressed a hand into my forehead. Troy was at the bottom of the Fair Haven police totem pole as far as seniority was concerned. He’d only been out of the academy for two or three years, and Fair Haven had been his first posting. Because I’d never worked with him on a previous case, I didn’t know if he was even any good at his job. In fact, this might be the first serious case he’d ever worked. If I was remembering correctly, he mainly worked traffic. I didn’t even know him on a personal level the way I did many of the other officers.

  “There’s no one else?”

  Mark shook his head. “Everyone else is busy. Quincey’s back in tomorrow, and McTavish promised to give him the case then, but today our choices are Troy or Scherwin.”

  “Troy it is.”

  “I figured as much. He’s on his way.”

  I leaned around Mark. Grady Scherwin’s ears were now a reddish-purple, like the only thing keeping him from throwing his proverbial weight around was Mark’s presence. Other than Chief McTavish, Mark was the only person I’d ever seen Scherwin show respect to. Given that the man seemed to think wearing a badge made him better than everyone who didn’t, that was saying something. Mark wasn’t an officer.

  “What do we do about Scherwin?” I asked. “Do we wait for Troy and hope he takes the hint?”

  “McTavish said he’d have him called back to the station, but I’ll talk to him anyway.”

  My phone vibrated in my pocket. Maybe Erik had heard about what happened—Fair Haven shared news faster than Facebook or Twitter—and he was going to offer to come in.

  The screen displayed Mandy’s name. I should have known better than to think I’d get away with hanging up on her. I shouldn’t have done it. It wasn’t a nice way to treat a friend. Dave, thankfully, would assume I’d walked into a cell phone dead zone. We’d been disconnected that way more than once before.

  I touched the screen to answer. “I’m sorry about earlier,” I said in lieu of hello.

  “Are the dogs okay? What’s going on?”

  Her voice had the same tone to it as when she’d discovered a puddle of blood in one of the rooms of her bed and breakfast. It was that my-sanity-is-held-together-by-Scotch-tape sound.

  I was a horrible friend. She loved me, and she loved my dogs, and no matter how scared I was, I shouldn’t have left her hanging. I filled her in on what had happened.

  “I’m coming over.”

  That was the last thing I needed. Mandy would have a bunch of crazy theories about who took my dogs, from a rogue taxidermist to kids pulling a prank. None of them would be anywhere close to accurate, and all of them would only make me feel more like throwing up all the food I ate at Stacey’s shower than I already did. “You don’t need to come. Mark’s here, and the police are on their way.”

  No need to feed the rumor mill by telling her I’d rejected the first police officer who showed up. Grady Scherwin already didn’t like me, and his pride wouldn’t take a public slight well.

  “I can find them,” Mandy said. “I’m coming. Don’t let the police leave until I get there.”

  “Mandy, you can’t—”

  The line went dead. For a second I fantasized about throwing the phone across the room. But that wouldn’t do me any good. Then I wouldn’t have my dogs or my phone.

  15

  I sank down onto one of the stools by my kitchen island, lowered my head onto my arms, and prayed. Praying should have been the first thing I’d done if I’d been thinking more clearly.

  I must have lost track of time because, the next thing I knew, a hand that could only belong to Mark rested on my back.

  “Scherwin’s gone, and I showed the note to Troy. He’ll need you to give him the names of anyone you think might want to see Dean go to prison without a trial.”

  So far, that could be almost anyone. His partner might want to see him skip the trial because that would keep attention off of their possibly illicit business. Any of their “clients” would have the same motivation. If the trial had been going in our favor, I might have even suspected Nadine of trying to make sure justice was done for her sister. Since we hadn’t started the trial, she seemed the least likely. It could also be whoever had killed Sandra, a list that could include one of Dean’s clients or his partner but wasn’t exclusive to them.

  I slid from the stool. My front door still hung open. Troy waited at the bottom of the steps, his notebook in his hand.

  Before I could reach him, Mandy’s car wheeled into my driveway. Stones shot from under her tires.

  For a second, I thought she was going to slam straight into Troy’s cruiser. I flinched backward, but her car skidded to a stop less than a foot from his bumper. Troy lunged forward at the same time as Mandy half jumped, half tumbled out of her driver’s side door.

  She held her phone in the air. “They’re not moving.” The words came out in a huff. “We can catch up to them.”

  Troy glanced back at me with a look that said he wasn’t sure whether to talk to Mandy or arrest her. I had a suspicion that if she’d been clocked driving over here, it’d be the latter.

  But she seemed so certain. My heart took a flutter-step into my throat. “How do you know where they are?”

  She waved her phone in the air. “You know how Velma is. She gets away from me almost every time I walk her, and you said I couldn’t keep walking them if I couldn’t control her.”

  That had been an uncomfortable conversation. Mandy loved walking the dogs, but twice we’d lost Velma for over two hours. Mandy stopped walking them for about a week, came back with a gift of another new collar for Velma and a chew toy for Toby, and we hadn’t had problems since.

  Maybe that should have been my tip-off. It wasn’t like Mandy would have been negligent with Velma before and suddenly responsible after our talk. It also wasn’t like a single lesson from a dog trainer would have improved matt
ers. I’d convinced myself that she simply stopped letting either dog off their leash since Velma would have yanked away if she released only Toby.

  Now, though, the itch at the back of my mind that had warned me something was wrong leapt to the forefront. “And how does that help us find them now?”

  Mandy sucked one edge of her bottom lip between her teeth, making her look more like a sixteen-year-old who’d wrecked her parents’ car than like a mature, independent sixty-year-old. It was quite a feat given Mandy was taller than most men.

  “I didn’t tell you before because I knew you wouldn’t like it. I bought a collar for Velma with a GPS tracker in it. She’s still been getting away from me, but I’ve been able to trail her until Toby and I catch up.”

  That also explained why Mandy’s walks got longer. Normally, I would have been angry, but if it gave me a chance of getting my dogs back, I’d take it, and I wouldn’t lecture her. “Show me.”

  She passed me her phone. Mark and Troy moved in as well.

  A small red dot blipped on the screen, on a map that looked a lot like the GPS built into my car or like the Map My Walk app I’d been using to track how many calories I burned while walking the dogs. Mandy introduced me to that as well. Her penchant for enjoying mysteries also meant she liked to keep up-to-date on technology that could have multiple purposes.

  “If you tap the dot,” Mandy said, “it gives you the closest address, too. I’ve been watching it since I got in the car, and they haven’t moved in the last five minutes.”

  I tapped the dot. White Cloud, the town where Dean lived. And I knew the street address. I’d been there only a few days ago, talking to a man who I’d stupidly given one of my cards to. I’d practically drawn him a map to get to me. “This is the home of one of Dean’s construction clients.”

  Troy already had his phone out of his pocket. “That’s outside my jurisdiction. I’ll call Chief McTavish to get in touch with the local police.”

  “We’re not going to wait here, are we?” Mandy asked. She rocked back and forth like she wanted to speed down to White Cloud and take the dogs back by force.

  While I wouldn’t go that far—I’d had more run-ins with killers than Mandy, and I wasn’t interested in inviting more—I also didn’t want to wait around here and have the police put my dogs into a kennel somewhere. They might not even be properly equipped to transport them.

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll drive,” Mandy said.

  “No,” Mark and I both said in unison.

  I pointed at Mark’s truck to stop the inevitable argument. “He’s set up for the dogs, and I’ll want you to be watching the GPS in case they move them. If they do, I can call it in while you continue to watch.”

  That, and we both wanted to make it there alive.

  Mandy’s concern for the dogs must have overruled her tendency to micromanage, because she headed for Mark’s truck without another word in argument. She climbed into the back behind the safety screen for the dogs, and I took the front seat. If—no, when—we had the dogs back, we’d have to flip down the center console to form a third seat up front. That would be a tight squeeze, but I’d try to climb into a cardboard box right now if it meant having my dogs returned to me safely.

  Before I climbed in, I arranged to call Troy if anything changed. Since I didn’t have a contact on the local police force in White Cloud and Mark didn’t have any authority unless a death was involved, that was as good as we were going to get when it came to communicating with the police there. They probably wouldn’t take a dog kidnapping any more seriously than Grady Scherwin had unless an officer from another jurisdiction was asking them to look into it, anyway.

  “Make sure they realize this is connected to an active murder investigation,” I said over my shoulder as I scaled up the running boards.

  I made a point of not looking at the speedometer while Mark drove. If he was speeding, I didn’t want to know. If he wasn’t driving any faster than normal, I also didn’t want to know because I’d have been tempted to pressure him to go faster.

  Ten minutes from the address, Mandy sucked in a breath. “They’re moving again.”

  It took all my self-control not to drop a curse word. I wasn’t someone prone to swearing, but right now it was more tempting than it probably should have been.

  Mark took his foot off the gas. “Do I keep going or change direction?”

  If the dogs weren’t there anymore, we had no grounds to even look in the house at the original address, and we couldn’t prove they’d had anything to do with it. They must have, but our proof was leaving. The only person we could prove as guilty was the person who had them.

  “We follow the dogs. I’ll call Troy. Hopefully the police will still question Dean’s clients.”

  I dialed Troy’s number and put him on speaker phone.

  “Good timing,” he said. “The chief just called me. They’re sending someone, but they don’t think it’s a priority. It could be a while before they get there. You should hang back.”

  I explained what was going on.

  “Which direction are they headed?”

  Mandy leaned toward the dog grate and linked her free hand through the wires. “Fair Haven. Or at least generally that way.”

  She listed the road. Mark threw on his clicker at the last second and swung into a sharp turn. It was a good thing we weren’t being videoed. Mandy and I probably looked like actors on an old science fiction show who jerked to the left and right when the ship was supposed to be taking fire.

  “If you can catch up to them,” Troy said, “give me the license plate number. I can stop them if they come into Fair Haven.”

  For the next few minutes, I gripped the arm rests while Mark took poorly signed gravel roads. He finally pulled back onto the highway and accelerated.

  The dog grate rattled as if Mandy were tugging on it. “They should be right ahead.”

  Mark pressed the gas pedal and the truck lurched ahead, making up ground. A dot of another car appeared on the road in front of us.

  I started praying that they’d head into Fair Haven…and that another police officer wouldn’t spot our vehicle and pull us over for speeding before we could get the license plate number.

  The car grew as we gained on it.

  A prickle went up the back of my neck. The car could be the identical twin to the one sitting in Dean Scott’s driveway.

  16

  I swiveled to see Mandy in the back. She watched the screen of her phone like I watched magicians, not wanting to miss the sleight of hand. “Are you sure the dogs are in that car?”

  Her head bobbed. “The dot turns from red, to yellow, to green as you get closer. It’s bright green now.”

  I tapped Dean’s number into my phone.

  “You might want to wait until we’re a bit closer before calling Troy,” Mark said without taking his gaze off the road.

  That crazy peripheral vision of his would come in handy when we had kids. “I’m not calling Troy. I’m pretty sure I know who’s in that car.”

  “Scott,” Dean answered. His voice had the loud, tinny quality that told me I was hearing him through the car.

  “It’s Nicole. We might know where my dogs are.”

  “Listen, I’ve been thinking about that, and I bet this was all a practical joke. I’m sure your dogs’ll be returned by the time you get home.”

  So that’s how he’d planned to explain the sudden reappearance of my dogs. We were close enough now that I could see the license plate, but I was more confident than ever that I wouldn’t need to give it to Troy. “Do you know who might have taken them?”

  “I’m guessing here. But I can’t imagine someone would want me to go to prison enough that they’d steal my lawyer’s dogs. That’s pretty risky and stupid.”

  The last part, at least, was true. I could, however, imagine quite a few people who seemed to dislike him enough to meddle with his freedom. I was done with this charade. I wanted my dogs back. �
��Pull your car over.”

  I would have sworn his car swerved a touch, and my heart whacked into the front of my chest. My dogs had no safety harness or anything in his car.

  “What?” he said.

  “We’re right behind you. I know you have my dogs. I want them safely in Mark’s truck, and then you’re going to follow him back to Fair Haven and tell me where you got them from and why that person took them.”

  Dean didn’t answer, but his brake lights blazed.

  Mark turned his hazard lights on and followed him over to the edge of the road.

  I unsnapped my seat belt as soon as the truck came to a stop. “I’m going to let you and Mandy take the dogs. I need to ride with Dean and have a lawyer–client chat.”

  Mark’s lips thinned. “I’m going to follow you back just in case.”

  Given that Dean had somehow figured out without a GPS tracker where my dogs were in time to beat the police and us there and then planned to smuggle them back into my house to make this all disappear, I couldn’t blame Mark for not trusting him. I didn’t trust him, either. The difference was that I didn’t feel he was a physical threat to me. He still needed me too much to hurt me.

  After I hugged both dogs long enough that Velma, my little attention hog, started to squirm, Mark and Mandy loaded them into his truck.

  I climbed into Dean’s car without asking permission. “You’re driving me home.”

  My dad always said that silence was one of our greatest tools if used properly. I let it stretch after Dean pulled back onto the road. I wanted him to worry about what was coming next. I didn’t let it go on long enough that he could come up with guesses for what I might say and work out lies that would pass for truths.

  “I made the rules clear when I took your case. If you did anything illegal, you were on your own. My dogs wouldn’t have been taken as leverage for me to throw your case if you were an innocent man. You have until we get back to Sugarwood to convince me that I shouldn’t drop you as a client and sleep better tonight for it.”