Paw Enforcement 02 - Paw and Order

by Kelly, Diane

  By the time I’d skimmed through dozens of reports, I’d found a couple of interest.

  The first was a felony record involving two women named Cheyenne Wembley and Mackenzie Purdue. Cheyenne had been a waitress at a local sports bar until their arrests a year ago. According to the reports, she would distract the bar’s female patrons with witty banter and free nachos while Mackenzie, an old high school buddy, would slip past the tables, snatching purses off the backs of chairs while the victims were distracted. The two had been caught when another customer noticed Mackenzie stealing a purse. When Mackenzie was arrested, she’d squealed like a stuck pig, telling law enforcement that Cheyenne was in on it, too. Evidently, though she’d been literally caught holding the bag, she wasn’t willing to go down alone, not when she’d shared the spoils with her friend. According to my research, though the two had received probated sentences, Mackenzie had recently been rearrested and was awaiting trial in Houston. Cheyenne, however, still lived in the area.

  The second report that caught my eye involved a young woman named Mia Clarke who’d been arrested for stealing jewelry at a nail salon. The victim had taken off her wedding ring, engagement ring, and diamond tennis bracelet to get a hand massage and manicure. Mia had stepped over, feigning interest in the nail color the woman had chosen, and had scooped the woman’s jewelry into her hand. The woman had immediately noticed that the jewelry was missing, chased the young woman onto the sidewalk, and tackled her. An unknown accomplice waiting at the curb in a getaway car had sped off. Unlike Mackenzie, Mia didn’t squeal on her friend. Mia had served a month in jail and paid a $500 fine.

  A glance at Cheyenne’s and Mia’s mug shots told me they were both blond, though Cheyenne’s color appeared natural and Mia’s appeared processed. Their driver’s license data put Cheyenne at five five and 125 pounds, and Mia at five six and 130 pounds. Fairly average sizes. I printed out their mug shots and driver’s license photos, and entered home addresses for them into my phone. I’d soon be paying each of them a visit.

  When I finished reviewing the criminal records, I searched for boot and western-wear stores in the Fort Worth area. Of course there were dozens of places to buy boots in Fort Worth. The city was Cowtown, after all. But while most stores sold only a limited selection of basic styles, there were several that carried more extensive lines. Luskey’s. Maverick Fine Western Wear. M. L. Leddy’s. The Justin Boots outlet store. Cavender’s Boot City. Shepler’s in the nearby city of Arlington.

  Luckily, many of the stores showed photos of their inventory online. I used up an entire ream of paper and every ink cartridge I had on hand, but I was able to print out the pages depicting the boots. With any luck, these printouts would lead me to the thieves.

  TWENTY-SIX

  YOU STINK

  Brigit

  As Megan patrolled the stock show grounds, Brigit took advantage of the fact that her partner was distracted to snuffle around on the ground, grabbing up the occasional errant food scrap that someone at the event had dropped or tossed away. A small piece of beef gristle. The rounded end of a hot dog bun. A greasy, sugary bit of funnel cake. After making sure that neither her partner nor the child’s parents were watching, she’d tugged a soggy salted pretzel out of the hands of a toddler who was sitting in a stroller, gumming it. Fortunately, the kid was too surprised to cry until after Brigit had eaten the evidence of her crime and moved on.

  As they continued around the grounds, Brigit’s nose detected a cacophony of competing scents. Her superior olfactory senses and advanced brain were able to distinguish them all. Her nose told her that Clint had ridden by on Jack not too long ago. She could scent both Clint’s shaving cream and Jack’s horsey smell. Near the midway, the smell of lemon-scented disinfectant attempted, unsuccessfully, to mask the stench of vomit expelled by someone who’d had no business getting on the Tilt-A-Whirl after eating a full platter of barbecue and potato salad. Her nostrils also discerned the faint notes of women’s cologne, the same two scents she’d detected around the stock show’s bathrooms last weekend and last night.

  Whoever wore those scents had returned.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  POTTY THEFT

  Robin Hood

  The evening news was on in her tiny apartment as she boiled some linguini noodles and sautéed the shrimp she’d bought at the grocery store last night. She wasn’t much of a cook, but she figured if she tossed in some crushed garlic and lemon juice she could improvise a shrimp scampi. Besides, she needed to eat something other than chocolates. She’d opened the heart-shaped box at breakfast and made her way through a dozen pieces, including a milk-chocolate-covered caramel, a coconut crème, and a cherry cordial. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up with thick thighs and a fat ass and her chances of becoming a trophy wife would be over.

  The small TV screen filled with an image of the big-busted reporter with Creamsicle-colored hair. What was her name again? Trish something-or-other? She was dressed in a stupid pink-banded cowboy hat, pink scarf, and pink fringed jacket, looking like a life-sized Barbie doll. Robin Hood didn’t like this woman. She seemed pushy and full of herself. Then again, Robin Hood was nothing if not tenacious, herself. Perhaps she had more in common with the reporter than she’d like to admit. She’d never be caught dead in such a tacky outfit, though.

  She had just picked up the remote to change the channel when the camera panned back, showing the reporter standing next to the two women whose purses and rings she and Heather had taken last night.

  Uh-oh …

  “It was a busy night at the rodeo,” Trish said to the camera. “And not just for cowboys and cowgirls. Thieves were at work, too, catching unsuspecting victims with their pants down.”

  Trish turned to the women next to her. “Can you tell the viewers what happened here tonight?”

  The tall, auburn-haired woman went first. “I’d just come out of the bathroom stall when one of the thieves attacked me. She pulled a pillowcase over my head, shoved me up against the wall, and stuck a gun in my back. I was scared to death! She grabbed my purse out of my hand and then wiggled my wedding band and engagement ring off my finger.”

  The other woman, the curly-haired one with the impossible-to-pronounce last name, spoke next, telling virtually the same story. “I couldn’t see out of the pillowcase. It was like one of those thriller movies. I thought they might shoot us and leave us for dead on the bathroom floor!”

  Robin Hood rolled her eyes. The worst she and Heather could have done with the lipstick tubes was give the women a forced makeover.

  Trish went on to say that one of the thieves appeared to be a young woman with short blond hair. Apparently the women must have gotten a glimpse of her before the pillowcases were secured. “We can only hope that Fort Worth PD will catch this ‘potty’ thief.” Trish grinned at the camera is if proud of her crappy pun.

  Well, if the cops were looking for a short-haired blonde, they wouldn’t find her tonight. Robin Hood dug through her closet until she found the Jessica Simpson brand clip-on hair extensions she’d bought a few weeks ago at the Sam Moon accessory store. The extensions were a color called chocolate copper. The dark color brought out the blue in her eyes. Not bad, even if the extensions were synthetic. She’d worn them on Halloween along with a belly dancer costume. She’d leave the costume and finger castanets at home tonight, though.

  There had been no mention of the ATMs in the news report. Looked like the victims were not aware how she’d chosen them, that she’d followed them from the cash machine. Good.

  Two hours later, pulling her peacoat tighter to combat the evening chill, she stepped up beside a tree where she could keep an eye on one of the outdoor ATMs. Her sisters, who had been trailing behind her, stopped at a nearby food stand and purchased churros and lemonade.

  As Robin Hood eyed the cash machine, she spotted that dark-haired female cop and her furry dog. She’d seen them around the stock show grounds several times. Hard to miss a dog of that size. The damn thing
was ginormous.

  Tonight the cop and dog seemed on high alert. The officer scanned the surroundings as if looking for someone. Is she looking for the thieves? Did she know that Robin Hood had followed her victims last night after they’d withdrawn money from one of the ATMs?

  Though she wore the dark hair extensions, she nonetheless felt her heart flutter in fear. If the cop came close enough, she might be able to tell the cheap things weren’t real and realize the hair was a disguise.

  Better get the hell away from the ATM.

  She texted her sisters as she stepped away from the tree. Nosy cop. Abort mission.

  She continued around the grounds, noting other police officers hanging around near the other money machines. Damn! A couple of them glanced her way as she passed, but none showed any signs of recognizing her.

  As concerned as she was about the police presence, she hadn’t come to the stock show tonight and paid the entry fee to go home empty-handed. She ducked down the alley between two of the cattle barns and placed a call to Crystal’s phone. “The ATMs are all being watched,” she said. “Change of plans.”

  * * *

  A half hour before closing time, she tilted her head and smiled up at the scrawny, beady-eyed, hook-nosed guy she’d been dancing with for the past hour. “How about the two of us get out of here?” She punctuated her words with a teasing quirk of her brows.

  She didn’t have to ask him twice. He grabbed her hand and pulled her out the door, releasing his grip only to take a quick peek into his wallet, apparently checking to see if he had a condom. Dumbass. If this sleazeball thought she would sleep with him he needed to have his head examined. The only thing in his wallet that she was interested in were those bills she’d spotted when she’d been behind him in line at the bar earlier in the night.

  They continued on, heading out to his pickup in the parking lot, her sisters coming along a hundred feet or so behind them. Think Ryan Gosling, she told herself as she backed up against the fender of the man’s truck and reached out to pull him up tight against her. She put her mouth to his, fighting the urge to retch as the tip of the man’s beer-coated tongue seemed to be taking an inventory of her teeth. Upper molar. Lower molar. Two bicuspids …

  Ugh. Ryan Gosling. Ryan Gosling. Ryan Gosling. When the heartthrob no longer seemed to be enough, she added Bradley Cooper to the mix. Ryan Gosling. Bradley Cooper. Ryan Gosling. Bradley Cooper.

  She wrapped her hands around the man’s waist, then slid them down over where his ass would have been if he’d had one. Another ugh. She expanded the entourage to include Adam Levine now. Ryan Gosling. Bradley Cooper. Adam Levine. While one hand slid around to the front of his pants to cup his rock-hard, though unimpressively sized bulge, two pink-tipped fingers slipped into the back pocket of the man’s loose-fitting jeans, emerging with the wallet pinned between them. Her mouth still pressed firmly to her victim’s, she tossed the wallet to Heather as she and Crystal walked past the truck. Lustfully moaning into her mouth, the man had no idea he’d just been taken.

  Anyone that dumb and horny deserves to be robbed.

  Eleven Ryan Goslings later, her cell phone rang in her tote bag, belting out her ringtone, “Raise Your Glass” by Pink.

  She pushed the man back and reached into her tote for her phone. “I better see who it is.” She looked at the screen and faked a frown before punching the button to take the call. “Hi,” she said. “Everything okay?”

  On the other end of the line, Crystal snickered loudly. “Come quick, Li’l Sis!” she cried. “Zombies from outer space are invading the planet! Blah-blah-blah!”

  Stupid Crystal. Didn’t she realize the man was standing so close he might be able to hear what she said? Her sister didn’t have the sense God gave a goose.

  Still holding the phone to her ear, she quickly thumbed the button to turn down the volume, her sister’s words now only a soft, “Blah-blah-blah! Blah-blah-blahbeddy-blah!”

  “Oh, my God!” she cried into the phone. “I’ll be there as soon as I can!” She shoved her phone back into her purse. “I have to go! My mother’s been in a car wreck!”

  She supposed she should feel guilty for putting her mother through so many fictional traumas. But what her mother didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. Neither could the constant onslaught of make-believe cars, buses, trains, and garbage trucks. Maybe next time she should mix it up a bit, plow her mother down with a cement mixer.

  As she scurried off, the man called, “Can I at least get your number?”

  No concern at all about her mother’s alleged car accident? What an ass. She wouldn’t feel at all guilty when she spent this guy’s money.

  “Sorry!” she called over her shoulder. “No time!”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  POCKET CHANGE

  Megan

  The night passed with no reports of a purse snatching or mugging. Though I would’ve loved to catch the thieves, the fact that no crimes had been committed tonight was an acceptable consolation prize. Sometimes you had to take what you could get.

  As the show began to shut down for the night, Clint rode up on Jack. “Hey, there.”

  “Hi, Clint.”

  He swung down from the horse and gave Brigit a pat on the head before turning his eyes on me. “The radios were pretty quiet tonight.”

  It was true. Not only had there been no purse snatchings, there’d been only a few sporadic reports of shoving matches and lost children, with a single instance of public urination/public intoxication. All in all, a quiet night.

  “Thank goodness.” I stroked a hand down Jack’s neck.

  “You’re off duty now, too, right? What say you and I go celebrate with a drink? Gotta spend my rodeo winnings somehow.”

  His dark eyes twinkled with possibilities. Possibilities that could become probabilities.

  I found myself saying “Why not?”

  Why not, indeed. Other than a single text—just thought I’d say hi—I hadn’t heard from Seth all week. I supposed he might be working tonight, but for all I knew he could be out with another woman. Frankly, I was feeling frustrated. Our relationship had no parameters. I’d thought keeping things casual, having no obligations or expectations, would simplify things. Instead, this murky, squishy thing we shared felt undefined and unfulfilling. Of course the blame lay on me. I was the one who’d suggested the arrangement. He hadn’t argued about it, though. That meant he hadn’t wanted anything more from me, right?

  “Hop on up into the saddle,” Clint said. “No sense you walking when Jack can provide transportation.”

  I let out Brigit’s leash a couple more feet, then grasped the saddle horn with both hands and put my left foot in the stirrup. In seconds, I was seated on Jack’s back. The stirrups hung too low for my feet to reach them once I was settled, but the saddle horn gave me something to hold on to. Clint walked Jack over to a picnic table and stepped up onto the attached bench. He swung his leg over the horse’s rump and took a seat behind the saddle, one hand crooked around me to hold the reins, the other resting on my hipbone in a gesture that felt simultaneously thrilling and overly intimate. But perhaps I was reading too much into it. His hand had to go somewhere, didn’t it?

  Clint squeezed the horse with his thighs, setting the big beast in motion. The rhythmic movement of the horse under us felt slightly erotic. Clint said nothing, though I could feel his soft breath on the back of my neck, the warmth of his body, which was separated from mine by mere inches.

  We reached the exit and rode over to Clint’s brown and tan pickup and horse trailer. Clint dismounted first, then held up a hand to help me down.

  Just as my feet hit the ground, a skinny man in his forties came barreling up. He had beady eyes and a hooklike nose, giving him an odd, birdlike appearance. “I’ve just been robbed!” he cried in beer-scented syllables.

  Clint and I exchanged glances. Looked like we’d planned our celebration too soon.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I’d been da
ncing with this girl the last hour or so, bought her a couple of beers. When the band announced the last song, she suggested we get out of there.”

  I would’ve thought he’d look a little sheepish admitting that he’d been hoping to snag an easy lay, but he seemed to have no such qualms.

  He continued his enraged diatribe. “We got out here to the parking lot and went to my truck and, well, things started getting a little…” He waved his finger around as if the digit would fill in the blank for him.

  “Go on,” I said. Not that I really wanted to hear the dirty details, but those dirty details might help us nab the robber.

  “Well, she backed up against the front fender and kinda pulled me to her, you know? Next thing I know, she was grabbing my ass. I just thought she was turned on…”

  Standing behind the man, Clint looked him up and down and raised a dubious brow that said No way would this man be able to turn a woman on.

  “… but then she got a call on her cell phone,” the man continued. “Some kind of emergency, she said, so she had to go. It wasn’t until after I got into my truck that I realized my wallet was gone.”

  My eyes went to the seat of his pants. “You’re certain your wallet was in your back pocket when the two of you left the dance hall?”

  “I know it was,” the man said. “I’d checked in it to make sure I had protection.”

  Behind the man, Clint grimaced in disgust. I nearly did the same.

  My mind began to process the information. Could the woman who robbed this man be the same one who snatched Catherine Quimby’s purse from the hook in the bathroom stall last weekend? Or one of the two thieves who’d mugged the women last night? Had she realized the ATMs were under surveillance tonight and decided to develop a new MO?

  “The girl,” I said, “how old was she?”