Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

by Suzann Ledbetter

"Abdullah, otherwise known as Carleton Jr." She made a gagging noise. "Who's in Florida humping his harem."

  "Still?" Jack remembered Belle mentioning the afghan hound's mating marathon last week at lunch. How a dog's life was perceived as a negative, he couldn't imagine.

  "I'm sorry, Jack, but I've got to go. I'll call later in the week, okay? Collect on that rain check for a drink you owe me."

  "I'll hold you to it, babe. One last thing, though. What kennel do you use for Carleton Jr.?"

  "A kennel for an AKC champion stud-muffin?" She chortled. "Abdullah has a nanny, deah boy. She can't speak a word of English, but then, neither can he." A pause, then, "I heard somebody recommend Merry Hills once. It's south of town, off the bypass."

  Jack would love to know who that somebody was, but his ex-wife's soon-to-be-empty house solved his location problem.

  The Park City phone book had two columns of businesses that rented everything from bulldozers to bridal gowns. For a price, a portable wire dog pen was available, but not a dog to put in it. Local breeders also proved less than cooperative. Jack was reverting to the semiferal-cat-in-a-dog-suit idea when he noticed a small boxed ad at the bottom of the page.

  * * *

  The city animal shelter's desk attendant peered at him through her round, gold-rimmed glasses. "You want to borrow a dog," she said, in precisely the same tone Belle had used on the phone.

  "Just overnight." Jack beamed his best "trust me" smile.

  "I'll bring it back safe and sound, tomorrow afternoon." The bemusement in her eyes hardened to anger. "If that's a joke, mister, it isn't funny." Her arm swept toward a metal door with a vertical glass window above the handle. "Sixty-eight cats, kittens, dogs and puppies in there need homes. Most were dumped like last week's garbage. Ten percent might be adopted before their time on this Earth ends."

  Lips pursed, she shook her head. "If there's anything more cruel than taking one of them out on a field trip," she said, a quaver in her voice, "I can't figure what it'd be."

  Jack couldn't, either. The dogs he'd loved as a boy were rejects pushed from a vehicle during the night. He'd known that, yet finding the three-legged beagle in the yard, then later the Irish setter, were like extra Christmases. Both mutts were scrawny and flea-infested, but Jack's loathing for anyone who'd leave a dog to fend for itself or die trying, quickly became fear they'd accidentally wandered from their real homes and their owners would come and take them away.

  "I'd give anything to have a dog again," Jack found himself saying. "I kind of envy a couple of friends their dogs, even though one's a Maltese with a Napoleon complex, and the sheltie thinks he's Muhammad Ali."

  The attendant's expression softened. "Live in an apartment, do ya? Single. Full-time job."

  Taken aback, he said, "So are you psychic, or a really good guesser?"

  "After seventeen years, I could spot a dog lover from the far side of the moon. This cockamamie notion about borrowing one comes from wanting a dog for all the right reasons, but you're afraid that by midday tomorrow—before you get attached—you'll have to admit what you think you already know. Your place is too small, the dog will suffer without a yard to play in and it'll drive the neighbors crazy whining the minute you leave for work."

  Hearing her vocalize the arguments he'd had with himself and lost—or won, depending—had Jack's hand reaching to scratch the back of his neck. The loaner dogs weren't his bowl of kibble, but K-9 and assistance animals were often apartment dwellers. Rode to work with their owners. Hung out with them all day at the office, keeping them company

  "Except like you said, it'd be cruel to—" Jack looked up, then around. The small room was a warehouse for pet food sacks, buckets of cat litter, baled newspapers, stuffed toys and boxes full of old sheets, blankets and towels.

  "Where in the hell did she go?"

  The metal door that resembled a drunk tank's swung open. A blast of frantic barks and warm, fetid air accompanied the attendant's reentrance. Beside her, a Wookie attached to a nylon leash lumbered along on all fours.

  Its dirt-brown coat was short in some places and cowlicked in others. The tip of a parenthetic tail pointed at its droopy, shoulder-long ears, as though such colossal wind flaps might be overlooked. Overall, genetics seemed to have fused a retriever's legs onto a basset hound's torso. How the dog ran without kicking its front legs from under itself defied all laws of aerodynamics.

  Jack backpedaled, palms aloft. "Uh-uh, no way, ma'am. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but—"

  "Twenty-four hours." The attendant held out the leash. "If you change your mind by then, bring him back." A wicked smile exposed a gold-capped molar. "The seventy-five-dollar fee is nonrefundable."

  "But I—"

  "Will that be cash or check?" she inquired. "Sorry, but we don't take credit cards."

  * * *

  Stripped to his underpants, Jack goosed the dog into the tiled walk-in shower. "Atta boy. Sorry to put you through this, but whatever you rolled in since your last bath, it wasn't roses."

  In deference to the dog, water generously described as tepid parted at the back of Jack's head, sluiced into his mouth and up his nose. Puffing and spitting, he dumped a bottle of shampoo on the mutt's head, then smeared it around. The stuff wasn't much for lather, but smelled nice and the label said it wouldn't sting a baby's eyes.

  "Feels good, eh, boy? Just don't go getting your hopes up. Nothing personal, but this is strictly a one-night stand and you're spending most of it at Merry Hills."

  The dog's muzzle tilted up. A speckled blue eye and a cinnamon-colored one expressed naked adoration. If ever a woman looked at Jack like that, he'd be a goner. A big, seriously ugly, homeless mutt didn't tug any heartstrings. Nope, not a one.

  Jack scrubbed the sticky fur on its neck and chest. "I know a con when I see one." He step-pivoted to soap the dog's rump, belly and tail. "Now, Cherise Taylor, my old girlfriend? She's a different story. When she gets here, it might be worth your while to give her a 'you are my goddess' look when she picks you up."

  A mournful groan reverberated off the ceramic tiles. The mutt's head hung so low, its ears drooped on the floor.

  "Cut it out, damn it." Jack unhooked the handheld showerhead for the rinse cycle. "Like I told you, my jewelry-salesman cover is wearing thin and there's no reason not to take full advantage of the deHavens' little trip down south.

  "Cherise is taking you to Merry Hills and signing in as Mrs. Carleton deHaven. Belle's never boarded a dog there, so nobody'll know the difference, and I promise, the joint's swankier than anyplace you've ever seen."

  Jack shut off the water, saying, "I don't know if they have story hour or not, but I'm talking chopped steak for dinner."

  After toweling off both himself and the dog, he threw on a robe and sat tailor fashion on the bathroom floor. He'd never used a blow-dryer in his life, but the clerk at the drugstore offered a few tips.

  Careful not to aim the nozzle at the dog's face, it suddenly dawned on him that it needed a name. "We'll leave that to Cherise." Echoes of Sweetie Pie Snug 'Ems and Butch thrummed in Jack's ears. "No, we won't. Being female, she'll stick you with Truffles, or Dijon."

  Wookie, his first impression, sounded worse than Truffles. Beast? Appropriate, but a little harsh. Skippy? No. Brownie? No. Cocoa? Fudgesicle?

  Jack scowled and muttered, "Shit" under his breath. The dog's ears pricked—a relatively massive undertaking. "Yeah, I'll bet you've heard that one before."

  Leaning back, he studied the mutt, like an artist examines a bowl of fruit. God only knew why, but it looked like a Phil. Now that Jack thought about it, even filthy, he'd looked like a Phil.

  "Phil McPhee it is." He sighed and shook his head. "Phil. No adoption, no last name required. Just Phil."

  His thumb pressed the blow-dryer's toggle switch. "And just till tomorrow afternoon."

  7

  The slow, monotonous drizzle had commenced at dusk. All day, overcast skies suggested a possibility of rain. While some native
Ozarkers may have washed and waxed their vehicles to up the chance of precipitation, they didn't skimp on watering their vegetable gardens and porch plants.

  Rain shellacked the streets and burbled along the sloped concrete curbing. Pyrotechnic thunderstorms drew watchers to windows and doorways. Tonight's sporadic quivers of cloud lightning and muted rumbles fostered scant, if any supervision.

  The gloomy weather, in other words, couldn't be more perfect for a burglary. And less so, for the increasingly narcoleptic private detective parked near the deHavens' highfalutin rock pile.

  Slumped in the Taurus's driver's seat, Jack bugged out his eyeballs, rolling them around in isometric tandem. A nest of candy bar wrappers was batted away to grope for the foam drink cup wedged in the holder. Rubbing slushy chunks of crushed ice over his face and neck, he whistled backward, as the runoff trickled down his back and chest, paused ever so briefly at the dam that was his jockey shorts' waistband, then forged onward and irrevocably downward.

  He gnawed on the drink straw, yearning for a cigarette. He couldn't light it if he had one, which is why he'd quit years ago. For a while, smokeless tobacco provided the nicotine buzz without the telltale orange glow. Hating the taste was stimulating in itself, until that dark, unstormy night when he mistook a spit cup for his coffee cup.

  The memory alone cleared some of the brain fog. Jack swished a mouthful of diluted soda, as his gaze arced from the driver's side mirror to the rearview, then the passenger's side mirror. His butt and legs were numb. The crotch of his jeans was damp and clingy from the crushed-ice baptisms. He was bored out of his gourd, but at least he hadn't been followed this time.

  After Cherise Taylor dropped off Phil at Merry Hills, she'd met Jack at the mall's food court. They'd split a sub sandwich, exchanged keys and vehicles, then traded back at an abandoned farmstead five miles from town.

  Great gal, that Cherise. Posing as Belle deHaven at the kennel had been a lark for her. Jack's blip of jealousy at hearing all about the fantastic guy Cherise went out with Friday night and Saturday was reflex, not regret. So what if her first date with Mr. Wonderful was a lousy four days after she and Jack broke up on the phone?

  "Live and let live." His fingers bobbed for another clump of ice. "I'm happy for—"

  He tensed, his eyes riveted on the deHavens' bowed, two-story front window. The drapes, if there were any, hung outside the bronzed metal frame. Belle always had believed the fishbowl effect discouraged intruders.

  "Close the blinds and the curtains and a creeper can't tell if you're home or not," she'd agree, then add, "but the neighbors can't see some jerk carting off everything you own, either. Unless he closes them, and if they're always open, that's a tip-off right there."

  The opposing schools of thought had equal numbers of fans and detractors—law enforcement and insurers included. Twenty-four-hour convenience stores were constantly warned about plastering advertising posters over exterior windows. Maintaining a clear, well-lit line of sight didn't prevent robberies, but did discourage them.

  The deHaven house was dark, inside and out. Jack supposed in her dash to make her afternoon flight, Belle had neglected to switch on any lamps or the exterior lights. Illumination from the solar-powered landscape lights wouldn't attract a self-respecting moth.

  Odds were that tiny interior flicker he'd seen was an electronic thermostat cycling on or off. A wink of lightning reflected in a picture or in a mirror. Ninety-nine to one, it was a miserable private detective's imagination begging for an excuse to bail out of his car.

  He exited the Taurus, staying to the soggy shadows. His stride was brisk, but as normal as a man could fake whose feet felt as though they'd been encased in concrete. That juke-and-weave-between-the-tree-trunks crap was for spy movies and TV gumshoes. Act like a rational, law-abiding reason exists for walking around in the soup at midnight, and unseen witnesses will assume you're just a schmuck out looking for an escaped cat.

  A wide berth was given the motion-detector lights trained down on the three-bay garage doors. The soffit overhanging the solid side wall had no security devices; one lurked under the rear corner, monitoring the gate accessing the backyard.

  "Contemporary rustic" was Belle's term for the joint's overall design. Jack figured the thick, six-foot fieldstone wall enclosing the back half of the property met the rustic specs, but it was almost as easy to climb as a ladder.

  The moment he dropped to the other side, he crossed the line between a blow-off trespassing charge and the real, indefensible deal. The difference could cost him his license. Fictional P.I.s can afford to play fast and loose with the law. Credentialed investigators don't jaywalk, much less break-and-enter presumably after the fact.

  The Realtor who'd listed the other decoy house had obtained permission from its owner for Jack's one-guy sting operation. Here, if worse came to handcuffs, Belle would lie for him. He was almost sure of it.

  Jack flattened himself against the house to evade any security camera's electronic eye. Sliding sideward, his windbreaker scraped the irregular stone surface—a noise louder by several decibels to his ears than it actually was. So was the slurp of his crepe-soled oxfords sinking in a shallow gully carved by the downspout's runoff.

  Progress halted at a heat-pump unit camouflaged by horseshoed shrubbery. Go around, and a motion detector would nail him. There was almost but not quite enough space to giant-step over the unit's conduits and slither behind it. From Jack's vantage point, the only visible exterior door was the metal-clad utility type that probably led into the garage.

  Which begged a question he should have asked himself long before now. If he was pinned to the friggin' wall by the deHavens' security system, how did an intruder slink past it?

  Answer—the brief glint of light he'd swear he'd seen inside a minute ago was an electronic thermostat control, a wink of reflected lightning, a hallucinatory figment of his imagination.

  Those still unsatisfactory conclusions and stubbornness had him twisting off a branch from the heat pump's hedge. Jack retreated to the corner motion detector and waved the stick to breach the monitor's invisible electronic beam.

  Nothing. A second box above the utility door scored the same nonresult. He about-faced and proceeded toward a pergola shading the terrace, thinking his suddenly airheaded ex-wife owed him huge for guarding the house she'd forgotten to secure.

  In a blinding flash, the patio, yard and the family room inside lit up like a prison compound during an escape attempt.

  Jack froze. Dilated pupils reduced the visual field to a fuzzy, round blur. As he whirled to run for the gate, a lower section in the utility door swung upward. Stunned, half-blind, he braced to fend off the dog for whom the pet door was intended. What emerged was a pair of gloved hands, then a stocking-capped head, followed by slender shoulders clad in a dark, long-sleeved shirt.

  Jack's wheezy "Hey, you—" was like a starter's pistol at an Olympic hundred-meter dash. The burglar was faster off the blocks, but no match for a flying shoestring tackle. Rolling together on the wet grass, the intruder seemed to have six elbows, knees, an extra set of teeth and no compunction against using them.

  Jack's fist hauled back to knock the son of a bitch into next Wednesday. Wrenching away, the burglar's cap fell off. A tangle of long, sweaty hair unfurled like a tent flap.

  "Holy—" He squinted at the glowering eye and face behind that hirsute veil. "Dina?"

  She kneed him in the groin, tucked, pushed up and took off.

  Cursing and cupping his crotch, Jack ape-loped after her.

  She was scaling the rock wall when he grabbed her shirttail. Yanking her backward on her butt, he straddled her, detonating fresh, all-inclusive paroxysms of pain.

  "Give it up, damn it. I don't wanna hurt you."

  Squirming like a ninety-pound wildcat, she panted, "Lemme go. I didn't take anything—I swear I didn't. Just let me get out of here and I promise, I'll never do it again."

  "Gee," Jack grunted. "That's original."

 
"I won't." With her wrists pinned to the ground, a gloved finger motioned the sign of the cross. "I'm not really a thief—"

  "Also original." Jack's head cocked at a siren wailing in the distance. By Dina's expression, she heard it, too.

  "Please, Mr. McPhee. Don't turn me in to the police. At least give me a chance to explain."

  Explaining his presence to the cops wasn't at the top of Jack's personal hit parade, either. The original plan was to tail the thief home, then tip the police. Nice, neat, unquestionably legal.

  The part-time dog groomer and presumed Calendar Burglar he was sitting on could implicate him in the thefts to plea-bargain the charges against her. Or charge, if she couldn't be tied to the prior burglaries. Jack's contract with National Federated Insurers should be a nol-pros on an accessory rap. As a rule, he preferred to not mix business with felony arrest warrants.