“I will check to be sure the coast is clear,” said Pepe, running ahead of us.
“You know, you really should have him on a leash,” said Felix. “For his own sake. He might run into the street and get hit by a car.”
“Pepe has a lot of street sense,” I said.
“I could work with you on training him,” Felix offered.
“I don’t think Pepe would like that,” I said. We had caught up with him. He was sitting outside my front door and glaring at Felix.
“Really, it’s just an excuse. I want to see you again,” said Felix, taking both of my hands in his. He gazed down at me with those dark eyes, and I felt a little dizzy. The yellow light from the street lamp and the overcast sky behind it made it look like we were in some noir film. He leaned in to kiss me. His lips were just brushing mine when Pepe barked.
“Geri! Watch out!” he said. “Danger!”
He was right. The kiss was dangerous. Some kisses are primarily physical, all lips and mouth and tongue. This one started out that way but then shifted into the other type of a kiss—magical, where the kiss is a portal to another world, where it is only the two of you merging and dissolving and melting together.
Felix let go of my hands and drew me closer to him, wrapping his arms around me. We could have been on a beach on a tropical island, or floating in the warm ocean waters, lapped by waves, with a velvety sky spangled with stars overhead. We could have been the only two people in the world.
Except for Pepe. He was barking furiously. “Geri! Stop this at once! Attention! I need your attention!”
I tried to block out the sound of Pepe’s voice. I just wanted to fall into the sweetness of the kiss. But I couldn’t ignore his increasingly frantic cries.
“Danger! Danger!” said Pepe.
“What is it?” I pulled away from Felix and looked down at Pepe, who was clawing at the front door.
“I smell an intruder!” he said. “Someone has been in our house while we were gone.”
Chapter 30
“How do you know that?” I asked Pepe.
“I can smell it!” he said, sniffing all around the door.
I bent down to look at the doorknob. There were scuff marks around the door jamb and the plate, as if someone had pried it open.
“What’s going on?” Felix asked.
“It looks like someone might have broken into my condo.”
“Do you think they’re still inside?” he asked.
“What do you think, Pepe?” I asked.
Pepe looked up. “They have gone,” he said. “The scent is old. Perhaps an hour ago.”
“Pepe seems to think they’re gone,” I said.
“I can go in and check it out for you,” Felix offered. “I have training in martial arts.”
“As do I!” said Pepe. “Let me in! I will defend my territory!” He scratched at the door.
I opened the door with my key and both of them charged in, almost getting tangled up in the hallway. Pepe ran from room to room, sniffing. Felix flung open all the doors, including the door to the shower and all of the closets. He even checked under the bed. I followed behind, looking to see if anything had been disturbed. The only thing that seemed to be disturbed was Albert. He was standing in the middle of my pink chenille bedspread. His fur was all bristled up—he looked twice his normal size—and his tail swished back and forth.
“If only you could talk,” I said to him. “You could describe the intruder.”
I picked him up and carried him around with me, hoping to soothe him.
“It doesn’t look like anything’s missing,” I said. My home is small. You enter directly into the living room, which has two doors—one leads into a narrow kitchen and the back porch and the other opens into my tiny bedroom and its adjoining bathroom. It didn’t take long to inspect everything, even the broom closet and the cupboards under the sink.
“Perhaps someone tried to break in and didn’t succeed,” Felix suggested.
That made the hairs rise up on the back of my neck. But it wasn’t as bad as what Pepe said next. “No, there was someone here. The intruder went into the bedroom, and into your bathroom, then looked through your closet and finally came in here.”
Pepe sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor and gazed at the refrigerator.
“Hungry again, Pepe?” I asked. “You just ate.”
“No, I am not hungry, Geri,” Pepe said. “Well, actually I am hungry. But that is not why you must look in the refrigerator.”
“OK,” I said. “I give up. Why must I look in the refrigerator?”
“Because the intruder put something there.”
I set Albert down on the sofa and went into the kitchen to look in the refrigerator. I didn’t see anything unusual. A carton of eggs. A loaf of bread. A box of Chardonnay. Could it be poisoned now? A half-empty can of dog food for Pepe. Maybe the miscreant tampered with that.
“It all looks the same to me,” I said.
“The smell is coming from higher up!” said Pepe.
I opened the freezer, which is always a mistake at my house. I have an old pink refrigerator (one of the reasons I bought this particular condo) and it needs to be defrosted by hand every month or so. It’s a task I tend to put off. A bag of frozen peas tumbled out. It hit Pepe on the head, then fell to the floor where it split open and the frozen peas came rolling out.
“Ow!” said Pepe, dancing around, and slipping and sliding on the peas. “Ow!”
I scooped him up and kissed the top of his head and each one of his little paws. That seemed to calm him down. Meanwhile Albert came running in and started hunting down the rolling peas. Felix stood in the doorway, an amused smile on his face.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Pepe thought there was something in the freezer,” I said, looking back at the freezer compartment. “And it looks like he was right.” I saw the glitter of gold, back behind the bag of frozen french fries and an old carton of strawberry ice cream.
I pulled it out. It was a gold case, with the initials DPT engraved on the cover in fancy calligraphy.
“What is this?” I asked. “I’ve never seen it before!”
“The intruder put it there,” Pepe said.
I set Pepe down on the floor. He looked at the cat—Albert was still batting peas back and forth.
“Small amusements for small minds,” said Pepe. He strolled out of the room with a swagger. I think he was still feeling sorry for himself. It is not very dignified to be hit on the head by a bag of frozen peas.
“What is it?” asked Felix, coming close, but being very careful to avoid the peas. Albert had swatted most of them beneath the cupboards.
“I don’t know.” I flicked open the clasp at the front and saw that it was filled with business cards. The one on top read
REBECCA TYLER
PRODUCER
DANCING WITH DOGS
“Oh my God!” I dropped it like a hot potato. Business cards went flying everywhere, scattering into the corners along with the peas.
“What is it?” Felix asked.
“I believe it belongs to David Tyler,” I said. He looked puzzled, so I went on. “The man who was murdered the other day.”
“Oh!” Various expressions crossed Felix’s face. First confusion, then doubt, and finally concern.
“What was it doing in your freezer?” he asked.
“Don’t you see?” I asked. “The intruder must have hid it there.”
“But why?”
“A warning or an attempt to blackmail you, Geri,” said Pepe who was standing on the threshold. He had recovered some of his jauntiness.
I bent to pick up the cards. I did not recognize most of the names, but here and there was a name I did know: Sherman Foot, lawyer, and Stewart Gerrard, CEO of Gerrard Enterprises. Then I froze. There was my card staring up at me. Only it wasn’t my old card, it was one of the new cards I had made to please Pepe: SULLIVAN AND SULLIVAN, PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS.
I went into the dining room. The box of cards was on the table. It didn’t look like it had been opened. But when I handed it to Pepe to sniff, he nodded. “The intruder touched this box, Geri! It is the same horrid smell as I smelled in the bushes and on the glove!”
“I just made these cards today,” I told Felix, “at a copy shop in the U District, right before you picked me up. There’s no way David Tyler could have had one of these cards in his card case.”
“What are you going to do?” Felix asked.
“Do you think I should call the police?”
“No policía,” said Pepe.
“What would you tell them?” asked Felix. “That you believe someone sneaked into your house to hide a card case that belongs to a murder victim?”
“I just don’t understand why someone would do that,” I said.
“To frame you for the murder, Geri,” said Pepe.
“If that’s true,” I said, “then the police may be coming to search my house.” I took the case out of Felix’s hands and snapped it shut. “What should I do with it?” I looked around. “Put it back in the freezer?”
“No, that is where the police will look for it!” Pepe said. He seemed to have a good grasp of how a deviant mind would work. Perhaps it was from watching all those true-crime TV shows.
“The police have no reasonable cause to search your house,” said Felix. It sounded like he watched those shows, too.
“So you think I’m safe for tonight?” I asked. And then I realized how absurd that sounded. Someone had broken into my house while I was gone. Someone who had been in David Tyler’s house. Undoubtedly the person who had murdered him.
And suddenly I was shaking and crying. The enormity of all that had happened hit me. The fright of finding Mr. Tyler’s body and my suspicions of his wife. The stress of the horrible Easter dinner. Even the weirdness of having a talking dog.
Felix took me in his arms. “It’s OK,” he said. “It’s OK. You’re safe now.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder and let my tears fall. I felt a funny tickling feeling on my ankle and looked down to see that Pepe was licking my ankle, the only part of me he could reach.
“I’m just so scared,” I said. “What if the person is still outside? Watching me?”
“Do you want me to stay?” Felix asked.
What could I say?
“No, we do not,” said Pepe. “I can take care of her.”
“That would be great,” I said.
“Make him sleep on the couch,” Pepe said.
“I can sleep on the couch,” Felix said.
“Of course,” I said. Although I had been imagining how nice it would be to be wrapped up in his arms.
“But first, come and sit down,” Felix said. He led me over to the sofa and we settled down. Felix turned on the radio. He found a Spanish music station, with lots of slow ballads and sexy rumbas. Pepe jumped up and settled in my lap. Albert sat on the arm of the sofa, watching us out of his golden eyes.
We talked a little, trying to figure out what to do next. Felix thought I should turn the card case over to the police in the morning. Pepe thought I should sneak it back into the Tyler residence the next day. I think it was Albert who suggested I should simply give it back to Rebecca. I’m not really sure about that because by then my brain was pretty foggy. I also imagined that we wandered through a dark labyrinth, searching for a golden treasure, only to find Siren Song at the center, all alone, waltzing in a blue tulle skirt.
When I woke up the next morning, I was in my own bed, with Pepe curled up beside me and Albert snoring at the end of the bed. I got up thinking—hoping, really—that the whole day had been a dream. Except for the part where Felix kissed me. Then I smelled the scent of freshly brewed coffee. I wandered out into my kitchen to find Felix, barefoot, who looked like a dream even though his clothes and dark hair were slightly rumpled from a night spent on my sofa.
“I’m fixing breakfast,” he said. “Where’s the bacon?”
“A man after my own heart,” Pepe murmured.
Chapter 31
Felix was pretty gracious about the lack of bacon. A lot more gracious than Pepe who complained all through breakfast, even though I sneaked him several bites of the spicy hash browns that Felix served up along with some perfectly scrambled eggs, topped with cheddar cheese.
Felix gave me another one of those long dreamy kisses before heading off for an appointment at a client’s house. He offered to take the card case away for me but I had decided to return it to Rebecca and see how she reacted. Almost as soon as he left, there was a sharp knock at the front door.
“Open up, police!” said a loud voice.
“What am I going to do?” I asked Pepe, glancing at the coffee table where I had left the card case. It was gone.
“Do not worry, Geri,” said Pepe. “I have taken care of it. Go answer the door.”
“Open up or we’ll break the door down!” said the voice at the door.
“I’m coming!” I said, moving towards the front door. I was still in my bathrobe and fluffy bunny slippers.
I opened the door to find a cop with his gun drawn on my right and another on the left side of my door. Out in the street, blue lights blinked on the top of several cop cars. I could see a little knot of onlookers gathered on the sidewalk across the street.
“Can I help you?” I asked in my most mild-mannered voice.
An older man in a suit strolled out from behind the officers. I recognized Detective Larson, the older of the two homicide detectives who had questioned me the day I found David Tyler’s body. He tapped the uniform cop on the shoulder and said, “Put the guns away.”
“Good morning, Miss Sullivan,” said Detective Larson. “May I come in?”
I decided to avoid the question. “What’s this about?” I asked.
“We got a tip that we will find evidence linking you to the murder here.”
“A tip? From who?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, trying to keep my voice as calm as possible though I was shaking. “I had nothing to do with David Tyler’s death.”
“Then a search would clear your name,” he said in a mild tone.
“I don’t think I have to let you in,” I said, trying to remember what Felix had said the night before. “Do you have a search warrant?”
“As a matter of fact, we do.” He pulled some papers out of his pocket.
“Ask to look at it!” said Pepe, who had come up behind me.
“Can I see it?”
“Certainly,” he said. I tried to read the pages but my hands were shaking so much, the words blurred. What to do?
“Let them in, Geri,” said Pepe. “You have nothing to hide.”
“You’re welcome to come in and search,” I said, stepping aside. In a few moments, several officers swarmed into my little house. Detective Larson went straight to the refrigerator. In fact, he went straight to the freezer. He took every item out, setting each thing on the counter, and looked puzzled when the freezer compartment was empty and he had found nothing.
Another officer had pulled out the trash from under the sink and was going through it.
“A bag of frozen peas in here,” he said to the lead detective.
“Why is that?” Detective Larson asked me.
“Why is what?”
“Why the frozen peas in your trash?”
“Because you opened up the freezer compartment, and they fell out and rolled all over the floor!” Pepe prompted.
“Yes,” I said. “Because they fell out of the freezer compartment and rolled all over the floor. I didn’t want to eat them after that.”
“Why were you looking in the freezer compartment?” the detective asked.
“Why do you think?” I said, beginning to get annoyed. “I was looking for something to cook for dinner.”
“We’d like to search your entire house,” the young cop said.
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p; “Go ahead,” I said.
And so the search began. They poked through all my drawers, emptied all the wastebaskets, turned over all the cushions on the sofa. Pepe suggested I distract myself by watching old episodes of Paraiso perdido but it was hard to concentrate on the travails of Conchita and Hector when at any moment, the police could turn up the gold card case and I would be hauled away in handcuffs.
They noticed the scuff marks around the door and asked me about that. I told them there had been a break-in but I hadn’t reported it because nothing appeared to be missing. That, at least, was true.
After about two hours, the police left. I watched out the front window until all the cars were gone. They had tried to put everything back where they found it but I knew I had a lot of work to do before I would feel comfortable in my space again.
“Where is it?” I asked Pepe, after they were gone.
“I hid it!” he said proudly.
“Where?” I wanted to know.
Pepe looked a little bit embarrassed.
“A place they would never look,” he said.
“Yes, where is that place?” I asked.
“It is in your bathroom,” he said.
“Let’s see!” I said. Pepe trotted into my bedroom and then into the small adjoining bathroom. There wasn’t much room for anything. I had managed to squeeze Albert’s cat box in between the toilet and the cupboard under the sink.
“Under the rug?” I asked, pulling up the shaggy pink carpet.
Pepe shook his head.
“Not in the cupboard! You couldn’t open it!” I said, pulling it open anyway to look. My hair dryer spilled out. I stuffed it back in.
“No, I can’t open that,” said Pepe.
“In the bathtub?” I peered in there. Nothing, except some water stains around the drain.
“Not the toilet!” I said. “That could ruin the plumbing.”
“Do you consider me a dog of no brain?” Pepe asked. “The one place no one but that evil cat would ever go.”
“No, Pepe!” I said. “You didn’t!”
“Sí!” he declared, and he seemed very proud of himself. “I hid the gold case in the litter box.”
Dial C for Chihuahua Page 15