Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

by Suzann Ledbetter

  Jack and Dina exchanged a silent "Oh, hell." Their eyes averted to Harriet, blithely nibbling an asparagus spear. Phil's nose crested the corner of the table near Dina's ribs, as if her sudden paralysis was an excellent opportunity to clean her plate for her.

  "Some nights," Harriet said, "a sliver of a crack in a patio door lets in more than a couple of moths. But raise your bedroom window of an afternoon? Why, it's downright fascinating what'll drift in on the breeze."

  Dina yelped, "You've been spying on us?" She appealed to Jack, as though expecting him to march off her mother to the gallows.

  "How else am I supposed to find out anything? Both of you treat me like the dog." A finger jabbed the air. "I didn't say a dog, Dina Jeanne. I said the dog." Harriet pinched off some fish and lobbed it to Phil. She recited, "Finish your dinner. Drink your milk. Time to get up. Time for a nap, a poop, a pill."

  "Hey, that's not fair!"

  "Wasn't when I treated your daddy that way, either." Harriet's lips curled under, then smacked. "Like he wasn't a person anymore. Just a thing with not a brain in his head, long before his failed him.

  "I didn't tell him about the bills. About borrowing from Peter to pay Paul for groceries. Troubles you and Randy were having none of that, for fear it'd upset him."

  She dragged deep on the oxygen cannula and exhaled a sigh. "Earl would've fretted somethin' fierce, too. What I didn't know is, upset's what keeps you feeling alive, instead of like the dog underfoot that can't think, or talk, or help fix a blessed thing."

  A dozen emotions were reflected in Dina's expression. Resentment, sure. Guilt, admiration, despair, fear, love, regret, obstinance—those and others mirrored in her mother's face.

  "You're right," Jack said. "Except on my part, maybe the secrecy was to protect me, not you. Whatever you may think of me, I don't want you to think any less."

  Harriet harrumphed and stabbed a boiled baby carrot. "There you go, calling me stupid again."

  "Mo-ther. He did no such thing."

  "Did so." She glared at Jack. "If I believed you killed your ex-wife, do you think you'd have slept on my floor Monday night?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "Would your bony knees be under my table now?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "All right, then." She rounded on Dina. "As for you, missy, do you believe I'm so addlepated, I can't divine that McPhee caught you burgling that woman's house Sunday night? And her being murdered is why you two have been in cahoots ever since?"

  The hand Dina rubbed over her mouth didn't quite hide a grin. "No, ma'am."

  "Humph. You did till a second ago."

  The Queen Mom, as Dina called her occasionally, had spoken. Harriet's official membership on the Save Jack's Ass Committee humbled him. He'd imploded the proverbial glass house she'd pretended was granite, along with the illusion that her daughter was a Rapunzel who spun gold from dogs' hair.

  The collapse was inevitable without Jack instigating it. Delete him from the Calendar Burglar equation, and Dina's almost untenable disgust with herself and increasing carelessness would have proved her undoing.

  Not for the first time of late, Jack thought about predestination. He used to joke about it being DFW, O'Hare, KCI—whatever airport you ran through or wasted hours in for a connecting flight to wherever you were going.

  His definition never failed to get a laugh, particularly from a bored shmuck on the bar stool beside his in an airport lounge. It probably still would, though somehow, the punchline seemed flatter than it once did.

  "McPhee." Harriet's tone insinuated it wasn't her first attempt to get his attention. His fork screeched across an empty plate he'd swear was half-full a moment ago. Seated on the floor beside him, Phil cocked a flop ear expectantly.

  "I said, why do the police think you killed Mrs. deHaven?"

  Starting with the .38, he related the evidentiary arrows pointed at him. Several were unwittingly self-inflicted. The majority were impossible to explain without implicating Dina and others, or violating client confidentiality.

  Dina cleared the table, while he encapsulated the holes in McGuire's theory. "Homicide investigations hardly ever nail down every detail. A preponderance of evidence, beyond reasonable doubt—those come into play in the prosecutor's office long before a judge instructs a jury."

  Jack drew finger doodles on his crumpled paper napkin. "The case against me isn't quite tight enough for a murder charge. Not yet. That's why they bounced me this morning."

  Harriet flinched at a serving bowl whanging off the kitchen faucet. "Lord have mercy, girl. There won't be a dish left in the house if you don't quit slinging them around."

  Dina's cheeks reddened, but she acted as though she hadn't heard. Silverware crashed on the bottom of the sink. A saucepan's lid clanged like a cymbal.

  Harriet sniffed and tugged the cuffs of her sweater over her wrists. Back to business, it implied, and not her daughter's monkeyshines in the kitchen. "All right, McPhee. If you didn't kill that woman, who did?"

  "Three candidates: Mr. X, a mope named Brett Dean Blankenship, or Belle's husband, Carleton deHaven."

  More or less thinking aloud, he went on, "Mr. X is an UNSUB—an unknown subject. Someone with a personal motive, say a jilted lover, or an impersonal hired gun.

  "Several problems with that. The biggest, it makes no sense for a lover to lay the murder on me. From my interviews with Belle's friends, it's a wonder they didn't hint she was cheating, even if she wasn't."

  Harriet said, "Friends like that, you don't need enemies. Or maybe you do. Folks that wish you ill are honest about it."

  Jack agreed. "As for a contract killer, he could have stolen my .38, provided that was part of the deal. Belle was shot execution style, but—" he shook his head "—I just don't buy it. Among other things, why shut off the electricity? Better yet, why leave it off?"

  From the kitchen, Dina said, "I thought it was to confuse the time of death."

  "The killer may have thought that," Jack said, "but immersion in jetted, hundred-some-degree water would have affected it, too. Possibly more."

  "Why would a hit man care about the time of death?" Harriet said.

  "He wouldn't. Whether the power was on or off goes to establishing an alibi."

  Dina said, "Either way, Brett Dean Blankenship as the killer doesn't make sense, either. Why steal your gun, murder your ex-wife, then try to run you down with his car outside the police station?"

  Harriet gasped. "Run you down?"

  Noting Dina's neat subtraction of herself from the crosswalk incident, Jack said, "Aw, he missed me by a mile." He winked at her. "Excellent question, though. If he had the smarts to set me up, he'd have planted more evidence, tipped McGuire to Cherise Taylor's involvement with the kennel setups—plenty of loose ends available to wind around my neck."

  "If," Dina said, "he knew about the kennels."

  "He tailed me too often not to. Much as I'd like to believe I spotted him every time, there are thousands of small white cars in this town."

  "Okay," she said, "except I still don't understand why you bothered talking to his mother."

  "Process of elimination." Jack couldn't articulate the sensory cues a personal space exudes. Home isn't merely where the heart's supposed to be. It's where it beats loudest.

  The house's jazzy exterior trim and Mary Blankenship's sporty red car were at odds with someone still enamored of hewed-plank paintings and rooster lampshades. The decor was as time-warped as her life. Brett Dean had commandeered the recliner—the dad chair—but remained the lazy, indulged kid she'd supported, cooked for and cleaned up after since the man of the house disappeared from the pictures atop the piano.

  That contrast jibed with Mary's "boys will be boys" lilt when she said Brett Dean blamed the traffic accident on the other driver. As if he'd fibbed about an in-school detention, not causing what could have been a multifatality collision.

  "Blankenship's an overfed brat," Jack said. "Also a freak, but how much initiative does it take t
o follow me in his car? Steer with one hand, slam Ding Dongs with the other. No sweat.

  "But frame me for murder? Hell, Moby Dick—er, he'd have gotten more exercise than he's had in years. Plus, it required the stones to kill a woman in cold blood."

  Jack thought Harriet's frown disapproved of his vocabulary.

  "Well, if this Blankenship fella didn't do it," she said, "who did? Everybody knows her husband was in Arkansas when she was murdered."

  "It does look that way."

  "That man on the news said the police had confirmed he was."

  Harriet sat up straighter, as though a lesson were about to be taught. "Time was when divorce was nigh as bad as murder. Then it made no nevermind to anybody if a couple bothered to take vows at all. Now it seems husbands and wives are killing one another right and left, like a divorce is worse than murder."

  Dina laid her mother's pharmaceutical dessert course and water to wash it down with in front of Harriet. "I wanted a death certificate stapled to my divorce decree." She laughed. "Best of both worlds."

  "What I'm trying to say is," Harriet snipped, "if you listen sharp, you can tell when the newsman is fudging. He'll say Mr. So-and-So was 'allegedly' here. Or 'reportedly' there. Hear either one of 'em, and ol' So-and-So's guilty as homemade sin."

  She rolled a gel cap between her fingers. "But confirmed? Especially after a day or two's allegedly and reportedly? That's a sign to stop looking at poor So-and-So like he's a monster and start baking hams and a carrot cake to take to the house."

  Green bean casserole was Jack's mother's comfort food. Canned onion rings, cream of mushroom soup and Italian-cut green beans on the counter harbinged a death outside the family as much as his dad's black suit hanging on the closet door.

  Belle. They didn't know she was gone. The funeral. They'd probably fly up for it. For Jack, and to pay respects to the daughter-in-law they'd loved and still sent birthday and Christmas cards to.

  Images strobed in Jack's mind. In one frame, Bill and Norma McPhee exited a jetway, smiling and waving, then blanched, remembering why they'd come and embarrassed they'd forgotten for a moment. The next was of a casket resting on a skirted bier. Belle's leg crooked over the lip of the tub. A wall of gladioli, roses, lilies arranged by height and color spanning the width of a chapel. A cloudy green eye hooded and lifeless; the other a dark empty socket.

  "DeHaven shot her." The guttural declaration startled Jack, as well as Harriet and Dina. His breathing was ragged, sour. "I'm—"

  He stared down at the table, unashamed of the tears rising in his eyes and fighting to stanch them. He couldn't make up for anything he'd failed to give Belle in life. She didn't need his grief now. She needed his help.

  A swallow of iced tea melted the jagged burr in his throat. "It had to be deHaven. Nobody else stood to gain from Belle's death." He looked up at Dina, then Harriet and down again, his composure still less than trustworthy.

  "Gain motivates domestic homicides." A thumbnail planed a defect in the table's shellac finish. "Money tops the hit parade—no pun intended. An anticipated windfall or to prevent a financial loss. Second is an emotional motive. Jealousy, revenge, to remove an obstacle, a threat and the ever popular 'If I can't have her, nobody can.'"

  "Money," Harriet said, as if selecting a game-show category. "Rich people can afford lots of life insurance. Beneficiaries get twice as much if the departed didn't die natural."

  Dina nodded at her mother. "Double Indemnity. It's one of her favorite movies."

  "Mine, too. Except Belle didn't have any life insurance." Back on safe, factually solid ground, Jack added, "That would have been the first thing the police checked. Next was the prenup. A divorce would cost deHaven a half million."

  "Dollars?" Dina slumped in her chair. Money in a lump-sum, six-figure denomination was beyond her comprehension.

  "Spare change, it isn't, but nowhere near a straight-up division of marital assets. Which also assumes an amicable split, instead of, say, deHaven auditioning the next wife in advance. No apparent money motive and a Tupperware alibi is why his name fell off the suspect list and mine zoomed to the top."

  An investigation always focuses on the obvious suspect, because in the majority of cases, the obvious doer is the guilty party. If cleared, the direction shifts to the next most obvious. As Belle's former husband, Jack would have been questioned had he moved to Nova Scotia after their divorce. An airtight alibi for his whereabouts would logically swing attention to deHaven again, albeit indirectly. An impatient or disappointed mistress; a business associate Belle suspected of malfeasance; a competitor choking on deHaven's dust.

  "Ballistic proof that my .38 was the murder weapon suggests more than it appears to," Jack said. "The shot that killed her shows proficiency with a handgun. I am. Practice keeps me that way. Anyone with access to a weapon damn well should be, in the event he ever has to use it."

  Dina's eyes cut to Harriet. "Or should lose it." Her mother pursed her lips and picked at her sweater. "Go on, McPhee. Some of us are listening."

  Another Wexlergram had been transmitted and received. Jack didn't know the code, and neither of them seemed inclined to translate.

  "Handgun proficiency," he reminded. "McGuire told me deHaven isn't a registered gun owner. No weapons or ammo of any kind were found in the house. It isn't conclusive evidence he lacked the skill to fire the fatal shot. There just isn't any to the contrary."

  Dina asked, "Do you have to be a registered gun owner to go to a target range?"

  "You don't need a target range to practice," Jack said.

  "Well, if I was planning a murder, I wouldn't want anybody to see me with a cap pistol." Harriet hesitated. "But wouldn't he need to practice with your gun? To get accustomed to it."

  "An hour, maybe, if he was generally proficient already. The murder was premeditated. He may have jimmied my car the night of my last trip to the police range. If so, he had a week to practice with it."

  "DeHaven knew you kept it in the glove box?" Dina asked.

  Jack waggled a hand. "He's my ex-wife's husband. It's doubtful I monopolized their pillow talk, but drop a seed here and a seed there and pretty soon you have an orchard.

  "Belle knew I have a concealed-carry permit. Also that I seldom walk around with a gun, like Dirty Harry. It's common sense—I'm unlikely to need a weapon at the office, which I'm not in, as much as my car.

  "The clincher is, whoever stole my .38 popped the trunk first."

  "It is?" Harriet frowned. "Oh. If he'd opened the glove box first, he'd have found the gun."

  "Right."

  "Which is a silly place to keep one, if you ask me."

  Which made Harriet the second female to voice that unsolicited opinion. It went without saying that Dina agreed.

  Jack sighed. "Once upon a time, not long ago, a hardworking, conscientious P.I. was surveiling a department store's loading dock. Inventory was shrinking. The manager wanted a line on who was walking it out the door and how.

  "It's January, early evening, dark as midnight. Our hero was reviewing the symptoms of frostbite when a crowbar smashes the driver's-side window. There's a scuffle. Hero gets coldcocked and wakes up light a wallet, binoculars, camera equipment, etc."

  Absently, Jack massaged a bump below the bridge of his nose. The schnoz he was born with was serviceable, but beatings add character. "The mugger didn't get the .38, though. Since I didn't expect trouble, it was locked in the trunk, where, as Belle often pointed out, it did me a helluva lotta good.

  "Except blowing away a crack addict isn't my definition of self-defense and it might've happened from pure reflex. Yeah, he roughed me up, but hey. Nobody died."

  Dina rose to let out Phil, sniffing at the patio drapes in a manner usually reserved for trees, tires and fire hydrants. A hand chafing the nape of her neck told Jack that the story's epilogue wasn't lost on her. Ignoring Belle's urging to carry the .38 for protection had saved a mugger's life, and ended hers.

  "Her death wasn't your fault
," Dina said, walking back to the table. "DeHaven would have taken that gun somehow, no matter where you kept it. Get over it."

  "Dina Jeanne! That's an awful thing to say. The poor man—"

  "Is a professional investigator," Jack finished. He jerked a thumb at the ream of data divided by subject in file folders. "With a shitload of homework to do."

  And an able assistant who kicked him in the butt when he needed it most.

  17

  Jack buckled the seat belt. The abundant slack suggested its previous user was heftier than him, or the type who passively complied with rules and aggressively defied their purpose. Like a restaurant employee who obeys restroom signage about hand washing, then smugly dries them on a filthy apron.