by Emily James
“I’ll clear it with Erik, but I should be able to have the photos over to you later this afternoon.”
I jigged a happy dance around my kitchen. I might have lost my puppy, but I could still help other people get theirs back.
As soon as I hung up with Officer Dornbush, I called Bonnie. “Get the group together. I have great news.”
The next evening Bonnie met me at her front door, dislocated a couple of my ribs with her hug, and dragged me down the hall.
“Everyone’s here,” she said.
She released my hand and sailed into the living room. Her excitement loosened the knot that’d been wrapped around my heart since the Humane Society took my puppy. Last night, after the euphoria of being able to help return dogs to their owners wore off, and I found myself in my dogless bed, I’d cried myself to sleep.
I kicked my shoes back down the hall toward the front door and continued on into the living room after her.
I stuttered to a stop one step into the room and my heart felt like it tumbled out of my chest and hit the floor.
Mark sat on the same side of the love seat as he had when we came to the first meeting together. This time, though, he sat as far toward the arm as the sofa would allow. And he didn’t look at me, like we were back in high school pretending not the notice the person we secretly had a crush on.
The others in the room were all looking at me and smiling or calling out greetings. I couldn’t keep hovering here in the doorway.
The only remaining seat was next to him unless I wanted to stand or sit on the floor. And I was not sitting next to Mark on that love seat since last time it’d been determined to dump me into his lap.
I moved over to the coffee table in the middle and poured the photos out. You’d think I’d poured out candy with the feeding frenzy of grasping hands. Part of it was probably a desire to see if their own missing dog was among them. “There are a lot of them, so I hope you all brought the files from last time. We can all start picking out the ones that look like they might match and comparing them.”
“I was telling my husband that I can’t believe this was happening here in Fair Haven,” the young mom—I think her name was Dana—said. She rocked the car seat holding her baby with one foot while sifting through a handful of photos. She reminded me a bit of an octopus with her multi-tasking. “But I feel like getting some of these dogs back to their owners is just the start of great things. It’ll help raise awareness for what we’re trying to do.”
I crouched down and reached for a few of the remaining photos on the table at the same time as Mark did. Our fingers bumped, and a tingle shot up my arm like I’d touched an exposed wire instead. We both jerked our hands back.
My gaze snagged on his. I wanted to say I’m sorry. I wanted to say It’s not you, it’s me. I wanted to say so many things, but there couldn’t have been a worse time to say any of them even if they wouldn’t have sounded clichéd.
“It’s Toby!” Bonnie screeched.
I lost my balance and toppled backward, landing soundly on my backside and feeling as graceful as an upended crab. From now on, no squatting for me. I could either stand or sit. I was tired of tumbling over and bashing my butt.
Bonnie had turned the picture around and was showing it to everyone. “I knew it. I said the reason we weren’t finding our dogs was Paul. I knew he had to go if we wanted to get them back. Everything’s been better since Nicole took over.”
Dana and the elderly man sitting next to Mark were suddenly talking over each other, agreeing with her about how the shelter would be in much better hands, but all I could hear was the way she’d phrased it.
I knew he had to go…
She’d said something very similar the first time I met her.
Numbness spread through my limbs. It couldn’t be. Bonnie was sweet and gentle. She baked fudge and cookies and put bowties on her dog. She wasn’t a killer.
Everyone is capable of murder, my dad’s voice said in my head. The only difference is in what it takes to push them to it.
“Nikki?” Mark’s voice cut through my haze. “Are you okay?”
The tsunami of attention shifted in my direction.
Bonnie hovered over me and her hands fluttered around me, the picture of Toby still flapping along with them. “Geez-o-pete, she’s pale. What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t tell them the truth. It might not even be the truth. And I couldn’t think here on the floor with all of them staring at me and talking at once.
I lifted my arm. “I think I might have twisted my wrist when I fell.”
Mark knelt down beside me. I guess an injury trumped his desire to pretend like I didn’t exist. “I’ll take her to the kitchen for some ice and have a look.”
Bonnie patted him on the shoulder. “Oh, that’s a good idea. We’ll let the doctor handle it.”
Mark gave a wry smile that barely made him dimples peek out. “Live people aren’t exactly my specialty, but I think I can handle a sprained wrist.”
He helped me to my feet, the warmth of his hand eating through my clothes to my skin like acid and fogging my brain even further.
Bonnie’s kitchen and living room were separated by one of those old-fashioned doors that swung both ways. We pushed our way through and the door whapped back and forth in progressively tinier movements until it finally stopped.
Mark reached for my wrist, and I stepped back. I couldn’t think straight with him touching me, and I needed to think clearly because my suspicion was horrible. Almost as bad as when I’d suspected Russ of killing Uncle Stan.
Mark’s expression darkened.
Crap. He’d completely misinterpreted my actions.
He shoved his hand toward me, palm up. “Look, I know that—”
“It’s not what you think.” The words eerily echoed the ones I’d said to Erik about him not that long ago. I flopped my wrist around. “I’m not hurt.”
Mark cocked an eyebrow. “Okay. You want to tell me what we’re doing back here, then?” A ghost of his old smile slipped out, complete with heartbreaking dimples. “Surely it’s not because you were desperate to be alone with me.”
A little bubble of hope rose up in me that maybe we could find a way to coexist in Fair Haven and be cordial when we encountered each other even if a friendship was out of the question.
Bonnie’s loud laugh carried from the other room, and the bubble deflated.
If I was right, I was about to lose yet another friend.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I lowered my voice. “I think Bonnie might have killed Paul.”
The expression on his face was what I would have expected if I’d made a lewd joke. “That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“I thought the organizer of the dogfighting ring killed Paul.”
I filled him in on what I’d learned the night before.
Mark sat heavily on one of Bonnie’s kitchen table chairs. “You could be wrong. We were wrong about Russ.”
We had been wrong about Russ. But I didn’t think that was the case this time. All the clues I should have seen were falling into place in my mind like a row of dominoes that’d been tapped on one end.
“When she came to the animal shelter my first day there, Paul’s death hadn’t been announced publicly yet, but she still knew about it.”
“That doesn’t mean she killed him. News in this town spreads faster through the gossip mill than it ever has through real news channels.”
True enough. This time, though, Erik had been carefully trying to keep it quiet for as long as possible because he hadn’t wanted to deal with the speculation surrounding why Paul had died. “My employees didn’t know until it came out in the paper. And later on, when the other shelter employee, Craig, died, Bonnie didn’t know about it ahead of anyone else. I don’t think she’s tapped into an underground gossip society that gives her the info first.”
Mark’s shoulders slumped like all the evidence against Bonnie
was piling up on top of them. “If Al Cahoon had killed Paul, he would have taken the Great Dane puppy with him at the same time.”
Why he hadn’t taken the Dane puppy was the question that we’d been stumbling over since we figured out she played some part in this. We couldn’t answer it because we were asking the wrong question. Paul’s killer didn’t take the puppy because she didn’t care about the Dane puppy at all.
“Cahoon likely would have shot Paul as well. The syringe was more a weapon of opportunity.” Mark had his elbows up on the table now like he wanted to lay his head down. “But why would Bonnie kill Paul?”
I turned my back to Mark, unable to bear the look on his face. Hurting him seemed to be what I was best at. “I think it has to do with Toby.”
“We don’t have proof,” Mark said.
We didn’t have proof. She’d have to confess to the crime. “I wish I could walk away from this one and leave it unsolved.”
But if I did that, I’d be no better than my father, who spent his life helping murderers go free. The truth and the law either mattered or they didn’t. I couldn’t pick and choose when they did. Look what happened when I thought I should let Craig get away with what he was doing because it sounded like a good thing.
Maybe the best thing for me to do would be to help Bonnie get the shortest sentence possible. The police had nothing on her. As terrible a criminal defense attorney as I’d been, I’d been an equally good negotiator. As long as we didn’t go to court, I had a decent chance of helping her.
I turned back around and Mark looked up at me, his face drawn. “What do we do?” he asked.
“I still have my license. I need to talk to her alone.”
He looked confused for a second, then his expression cleared. “Because if she says anything to me, I could be asked to testify against her, but her lawyer couldn’t.”
I nodded.
The door to the kitchen swung open, and Bonnie stuck her head in.
“We’ve matched all the dogs we can.” The brightness of her grin burned my heart. “Do you want them left on the coffee table?”
Mark got to his feet. “How about I paperclip each match together?”
The cheerfulness in his voice sounded forced to me, but maybe I was the only one who would notice, like how grape soda tastes like grape right up until the moment you drink grape juice.
He managed to maneuver Bonnie around so that he stood next to the door and she stood next to me. “Will you stay with Nicole? I’ll see everyone out for you.”
“Oh, of course.” She did her bird-flap flutter with her hands. “We wouldn’t want her alone if she’s feeling poorly.”
Mark slipped out the door, and I licked my lips.
If I was wrong, I was going to lose her as my friend anyway. No one would want a friend who thought them capable of murder. Just like Mark didn’t want a friend who thought him capable of adultery.
“Before I came to Fair Haven, I worked as a defense lawyer.” My voice cracked and I swallowed. “I need to ask you something about Paul’s death, but first I want to offer to be your lawyer.”
Bonnie’s lower lip did this in-out thing like it was trying to pout and quiver at the same time. My last mental wall standing in her defense crumbled. Her guilt was emblazoned across her face.
“Being my lawyer means you can’t share what I tell you with anyone, right?” she said. “Not even the police.”
I took her hand and led her to the table. “Not even the police. Not unless you tell me I can.”
“I’d like you to be my lawyer.” She slumped into her chair and held my hand in an embrace as tight as her hugs. “I didn’t do it on purpose. You have to know that. I didn’t go there meaning to hurt him. One minute we were arguing about why he wasn’t doing more to find the missing dogs, then he ordered me to leave and turned his back on me. The next thing I knew, the syringe was in his neck. I didn’t even know what was in it for sure.”
I patted her hand. My parents would have lectured me about professionalism and emotional distance, but Bonnie wasn’t a normal client. I wasn’t even getting paid. “We’ll make sure to tell the police that. It means it wasn’t premeditated. At worst, you’ll get second-degree murder.”
“What?” Bonnie yanked her hand away. Her lips firmed into a hard line. “You said you couldn’t tell the police anything.”
It was the same mixed-emotion push-pull I’d seen in her when Craig insulted her. Except this time she clearly felt safe enough and confident enough to defend herself. I was her friend, after all, not someone who wanted to tear her down.
“I did a good thing.” She punctuated the words with a slap of her palm on the table. “You think I didn’t see the kinds of missing pets he was ignoring? I saw.” She snarled the word. “And then he tells me to mind my own? No. We needed someone else managing the shelter who’d care about all the animals equally.”
Sometimes I hated myself for seeing people’s pressure points and knowing how to push them. I knew now how to get her to agree to confess. I got up, walked over to the door to the living room, and held it open. Thankfully, Mark had made himself scarce.
I pointed to the pictures lying on the table, many of them now matched up with missing pet flyers. “I’m not the one who’s responsible to saving those dogs. Paul wanted you to leave it alone because he was investigating the dogfighting ring. He needed to keep it quiet until he found enough evidence to stop them.”
I might have fudged a little about why Paul wanted Bonnie to stop coming around the shelter. It might have been that she was simply making a pest of herself. But I decided to assume the best of a man who had proven his motives were good.
At the very least, I was going to present the best of him to Bonnie because she’d killed a good man.
Bonnie’s hands flittered up from the table and back down again.
And then, before I knew it was coming, she burst into tears. “Who’s going to take care of Toby if I go to jail?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Heavy snoring woke me with a jolt. I tossed a pillow off the bed in the general direction of the noise. The drone skipped a beat, then took up again louder than before.
I groaned and rolled to the side of the bed. Toby lay flat out on his side on his dog bed, his head tilted back at an angle that looked the opposite of comfortable. The first night he’d been with me, I’d tried to leave him in the laundry room, but he’d whined all night. When I asked Bonnie about it, she told me he’d never slept alone, and so of course he’d cry.
Promising to take Toby had ended up being the only way I could convince her to confess to Paul’s murder. Because she’d killed him in the heat of the moment, and because she hadn’t intended to kill him when she struck him with the syringe, I’d been able to get her voluntary manslaughter.
I stuck my feet into my fluffy purple slippers, pulled on my robe, and turned off the alarm that hadn’t had a chance to sound. I wasn’t getting back to sleep with the heavy snoring. Did they make CPAP machines for dogs? I’d swear he had sleep apnea with the way he sounded.
A board creaked beneath my feet. Toby snorted and lifted his jowly head. His tail flopped and he lumbered to his feet.
“Now you decide to get up?”
He cocked his head to one side. I don’t know if it was the heavy skin over his eyes or whether he had some sense of what had happened to his “mom,” but he managed to look mournful.
I scratched him behind the ear. “Come on, bud. I’ll get you some breakfast.”
He limped behind me. Based on his injuries and behavior after being rescued, the vet said he thought Toby had been used as a bait animal, basically a training toy for the dogs being conditioned to fight. His large size made him durable, but his good nature must have made him difficult to retrain as a fighting animal. As awful as the experience must have been for him, at least he shouldn’t have any lingering aggression issues. Not all of the rescued dogs had been as fortunate, physically and emotionally.
As I dished Toby out his breakfast as per Bonnie’s specific instructions, my phone vibrated on the counter. I checked the caller ID before answering. Erik.
I slid my finger across the screen. “How’s the shoulder?”
“Not healing fast enough.”
I still found it funny to hear even-tempered Erik complain, but being confined to desk work wasn’t agreeing with him. “You’ll be back on active duty soon.”
He made a grumbling noise. “I’m glad you’re up. I’m headed into work, but I wanted to swing by and drop something off on my way.”
I worried my bottom lip with my teeth. All the paperwork for Bonnie had been finalized long ago, and I no longer worked at the shelter since they’d hired three new full-time staff members. Whatever he was bringing, I couldn’t guess at.
I glanced down at my pajamas, peeking out from under my robe. They were powder blue and covered in butterflies. Finding anything sexy or even grown-up-looking in fleece was surprisingly hard, and I’d needed a warm set of jammies for moving here. Even though I wasn’t looking at Erik as boyfriend material anymore, a girl still needs to have standards.
If I hurried, maybe I could throw on a pair of jeans instead. “How long until you get here?”
“I’m actually already sitting in your driveway.”
Blue butterfly pajamas and robe it was.
I shuffled to the front door, Toby at my heels. I cracked open the door, and a gust of cold wind forced its way in. If the groundhog saw his shadow this year, I was going to catch him and eat him. This winter already needed to end.
Erik climbed out of his cruiser and opened the back door. A white-and-black dog jumped out.
He’d brought back my puppy.
I sprinted down the driveway, or at least did as close to a sprint as I could in floppy slippers. She wriggled and tugged at the end of her leash until he finally let her go. I met her a few feet in front of the cruiser and had to kneel down to keep from being bowled over. She drenched my hands and chin with her tongue.