Howl Deadly

by Linda O. Johnston

  And to see if I could satisfy even a tiny bit of my curiosity as to why said law enforcement types seemed to be settling on Dante as a suspect.

  Sure, I might suspect him myself. But my reasons might not be the same as any official ones—and I wanted to know what the latter were.

  We eventually returned to the office. Happily, Dante was still around. He’d apparently hung out in Megan’s digs, and his cell phone was at his ear when I spotted him.

  He wasn’t alone, either. Brody Avilla sat in a nearby chair, also talking on his cell.

  “Well, hello, Brody,” Corina all but purred from behind me. She slipped around me and headed toward the film star. “Since you’re here, could I interview you? I’d love your insight on HotWildlife. Today, I intend to do a short feature on what a wonderful place this is.”

  “Of course, Corina,” Brody said. “But, before you ask, I came back here to cooperate with the county sheriff’s office, and don’t intend to talk about Jon Doe’s death.”

  So he was a possible person of interest, too? I’d have to find out more about that later.

  Corina’s outside on-camera interview of Brody was charming but not especially eventful. And then Corina appeared to be done.

  “Thanks again for the scoop the other day, Kendra,” she said. “And this puff piece should go over well. I owe you.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I said sardonically. And as she left, shadowed by her silent camera guy, I slipped back inside the building.

  Brody was conclaving with Dante and Megan, who had taken back her office. They all grew quiet and looked at me as I entered. I felt as if I’d interrupted something important—and wished I knew what it was.

  “So, Brody, when do you talk to the sheriff?” I inquired, partly out of curiosity and partly because I hoped it was soon. I really wanted to find a way to get Dante alone—and not, this time, because I found him irresistibly sexy.

  “I’m leaving in about a minute,” Brody confirmed.

  It was midafternoon. I wanted to leave, too. But first things first. “So what are your plans for the rest of the day, Dante?” I attempted to sound casual.

  His gaze lit on me in an expression of amusement. “I assume you’d like to debrief me about what went on during my session with the sheriff’s deputies,” he surmised.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Well, I guess I’d better comply.” He aimed a sexy smile that might have made me melt into a pile of oozing sugar if I hadn’t seen through it.

  I wouldn’t be able to trust a thing he said.

  Still, I smiled back. “I noticed a little lunchroom behind the food storage shed. There was even a filled coffee carafe a short time ago. How about if we head there?”

  He agreed. Brody said goodbye, and Megan appeared relieved to have us all exit her office.

  As we strolled through the crowd outside, on our way to the lunchroom, I spotted Krissy and Anthony, who were heading tour groups. They saw us, too, and Krissy came over to say hi. Not to me, of course, but to Dante. Clearly in a hurry to keep herd on her group, she didn’t stay long.

  In the lunchroom, which was empty this late in the afternoon, I poured us both some caffeine and sat down across from Dante at a small table.

  “So, tell me what went on this morning,” I said.

  His eyes kept mine locked in a mutually heated gaze, which both stimulated and annoyed me. Even so, I made myself pay attention to his words.

  “I still don’t know why those Homicide Detail detectives think I had anything to do with Jon Doe’s death,” he said. “But the questions they asked seemed innocuous enough. Why had I started HotWildlife? How long ago? Was I involved in hiring its employees?”

  “And were you?” I inquired.

  “Along with Megan, of course, since I founded the place and pay a lot toward its upkeep. But she has a lot of discretion in who works here and other administrative matters.”

  I nodded, sipping the strong brew and musing. Did Megan come to rue hiring Jon Doe for some reason, and decide to get rid of him the hard way?

  Now, where had that thought come from? She’d seemed utterly cooperative when we’d gone through her files.

  Too cooperative?

  “What else did they ask?” I inquired.

  Nothing sounded extraordinary. They wanted to know how long ago Dante had met Jon Doe. Whether he’d talked to him much. Spent much time in his company. Liked how he performed his work.

  Had any reason not to like him.

  “And that’s it?” I asked when he was done. “It doesn’t sound much different from the things they asked me after I found him—except for the stuff about how HotWildlife is run.”

  “That’s it,” Dante confirmed. “I don’t get it, either, but I want to cooperate.” Like hell he did, but I knew he was savvy enough to do what was necessary to keep them from glomming onto him for lack of a better suspect. “I still have the sense I’m near the top of their suspect list, I but don’t know why.” His expression was so absolutely angelic that I almost expected a halo to appear above his gorgeous head. Which made my thoughts start circulating about how devilish this sexy man might really be. His name was Dante, after all, and that always brought infernos to mind.

  “When are you heading back to L.A.?” I asked.

  “Soon as we’re done here,” he said. “How about you?”

  “Since I’m here, I’d love to feed a wolf pup before I go. After that, I’ll drive home.”

  “Interested in grabbing dinner with me tonight?”

  “Definitely interested one of these days, but I need to catch up on pet-sitting tonight, and expect I’ll be exhausted. Tomorrow?”

  “Done.” He gave me such a torrid kiss that I wondered how I’d wait until tomorrow.

  I WALKED DANTE to the parking lot. Waved to the volunteer manning the entry booth.

  Walked the perimeter of HotWildlife for the first time all by myself, wondering if I’d get any sudden insight about how mama wolf might have exited unseen.

  Unfortunately, not.

  Nor did it suddenly come to me who might have had it in for Jon Doe—or whoever he might have been. But since I was still here, I had time to ask some additional questions.

  But Megan was busy with a group of visitors. Krissy was giving another tour.

  When I stopped at the infirmary, Anthony and a guy I’d seen there before but didn’t really remember were both heading inside. Anthony reintroduced me to Irwin. “He’s become a volunteer,” Anthony explained. “He’s helping with the wolf pups. You, too?”

  “Absolutely!” I affirmed.

  A little while later, the three of us sat with the small pups on our laps as they nursed from the bottles we held.

  An opportunity I couldn’t waste.

  “So, Irwin, didn’t I see you here around the time poor Jon Doe died?”

  Irwin was tall, wore glasses, and had large, round cheeks. “Yeah, I was at HotWildlife that day,” he said in a slightly nasal tone. “I’ll never forget it. I sat down later and started writing down everyone I’d seen here. Gave it to the cops, too. Not that I knew all the names, of course, but I jotted down descriptions as well.”

  “Awesome!” exclaimed Anthony. “I told them everything I knew, which wasn’t much, but I never even thought of that.” It still surprised me how gentle this big guy could be. The wolflet in his lap, though dwarfed, appeared well cared for.

  “What did you think of Jon Doe?” I didn’t address the question specifically to either one of them, but Anthony was first to answer.

  “He seemed okay, I guess,” he said. “I come here after school and on weekends a lot, and he was always here. He didn’t say much to me except when he freaked out about me handling these little guys. I didn’t really know him well.”

  “I didn’t, either,” Irwin piped up. “But he seemed—well, he yelled at me once when I put my hand too near one of the enclosures. I wasn’t really trying to pat the tiger. I know they can attack without
warning. But the way Jon Doe acted, I might as well have jumped in and tried to ride the thing.” His tone had grown increasingly agitated, and he obviously realized what he was doing. “Not that I hated him enough to kill him, of course.”

  “Of course,” I agreed.

  But I’d learned, during my prior investigations, that the oddest things sometimes set people against others.

  And the most innocent-seeming sorts were occasionally the most lethal.

  Consequently, since I didn’t want Dante, or even Brody, to be guilty, I’d keep Anthony and Irwin on my own little list of people who had been at HotWildlife that day—and who might be murder suspects.

  I soon got into my car to head home. My mind still buzzed with questions about why the local authorities had Dante in their sights. Brody, too.

  Something similar to my own suspicions about whatever had brought them together in the past?

  No one at the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner’s office would leap to answer my inquiries. I was a nonentity as far as they were concerned, other than being the person who discovered the body—and, perhaps on some level, a suspect. I had no credentials to convince them to cooperate with me.

  But I knew another person with whom they might collaborate. Which was why I’d told Dante I was too busy to see him this evening, in the hopes I could schedule something with someone else.

  Once more, I turned to my hands-free car phone to make a call.

  “Hi, Ned,” I said cheerfully when Detective Ned Noralles of the LAPD answered. “How would you feel about meeting me for dinner tonight?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I SPENT ALL the time I needed to take wonderful care of my evening’s pet-sitting charges—I was so happy to see them again—plus feeding and coddling my own little Lexie before leaving her for the evening.

  Then, after putting on a fresh change of clothes, I headed my Escape toward Hollywood and Highland, a nice upscale shopping center containing plenty of restaurants, and connected to Grauman’s Chinese Theater—the one with all the stars’ hand-and footprints.

  I hadn’t allowed Ned to think I simply wanted to see him socially—although I did enjoy spending time with this nice-looking African-American cop. We became friendly when I helped to clear him and his sister, Nita, from being murder suspects a few months ago.

  And the fact that his pet, Porker, had wound up the second-place winner in the Animal Auditions potbellied pig contest had kept his mood way high when it came to me. His sister’s pig, Sty Guy, had come in first!

  I thought about what a good guy Ned was, and how I seemed to have an affinity for latching onto the wrong men. First Jeff, and now possibly Dante. I pulled into a parking spot in the garage attached to Hollywood and Highland, then hurried to the restaurant where I was to meet Ned. He was already there, standing at the doorway.

  “Good to see you, Kendra.” A big smile lit up his great-looking face. He was clad in a non-cop outfit of blue shirt tucked into darker blue jeans. I’d dressed in similar casual attire.

  We’d chosen to meet at an upscale American grill, and were immediately shown to a table. The place was crowded, the lights were bright, and the aromas suggested that the meats served there were, in fact, excellently grilled.

  “So how’s Nita?” I immediately asked. I had to raise my voice a little, since the acoustics turned other conversations into a hearty rumble around us. “And Porker and Sty Guy?”

  “All fine,” he said, smiling. “And you? Lexie? Dante?”

  Which made my own smile fizzle slightly. “We’re all doing well. At least I can speak for Lexie and me. I still see Dante, but … well, he’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  A server came to take our drink orders. I thought of getting something absolutely alcoholic, since this conversation wouldn’t exactly be easy. But, hey, I’d asked for it. And I asked Ned to do some digging on my behalf.

  The least I could do was stay sane and sober.

  We both settled on beer on tap—a good choice for imbibing at a grill. I studied the menu, made my decision, waited till Ned, too, put his menu down on the table.

  And then I asked, “I know I haven’t given you much time, but did you have any success extracting information from the San Bernardino County Sheriff-Coroner’s Department?”

  “A little.” His grin appeared both amused and rueful. “You get right to the point, don’t you, Kendra?”

  “You always have, too,” I said, smiling right back. “When you tried to get me to back off looking into murders you were assigned to solve.”

  “Touché. I’ll fill you in on the little bit I’ve learned so far—as long as we can talk about other things afterward.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “The main thing,” he said—just as our server brought our beers. We toasted, then tasted them, and Ned soon continued. “There’s of course a lot of professional courtesy among law enforcement agencies, especially in nearby areas. And you know I’m friends with Frank Hura. On the other hand, there are also things that are kept confidential. I had to promise the cooperation of the LAPD, which was a plus to them since some possible suspects live in our jurisdiction.”

  “Including Dante and Brody,” I suggested.

  “Right.”

  “And did Frank give any hints about why the two of them are favorite suspects?”

  “Well, sort of. But here’s the weird thing.” He leaned over the table toward me, indicating he was about to lower his voice. “Frank suggested they’d learned some background info that linked the three of them—Dante, Brody, and Jon Doe—sometime in the past. Stuff that could possibly implicate Dante and Brody in the murder. He also made it sound like Jon Doe wasn’t necessarily the victim’s real name.”

  “No kidding!” I exclaimed absolutely innocently. I wasn’t about to tell him what I’d learned—or hadn’t learned—from Althea. “But I can’t imagine why anyone would pretend to have a name that’s so common. Or at least supposedly common. I mean, how many Jon Does are there, really?”

  “Surprisingly, a lot,” Ned responded. “I’ve run into some in local investigations, although of course more are named John with an h.”

  “Who’d purposely do that to their kid?” I shook my head. “Especially if they had the last name Doe. Anyway, go on. Who is Jon Doe?”

  “Frank didn’t give me any real information after that. Only …”

  “Only?” I pushed eagerly.

  Which, unfortunately, was when the server came to take our order. Of course, I ordered something grilled—a small steak. Ned asked for a sirloin.

  When we were alone once more—assuming we could call ourselves alone in this crowded café—I only had to look at Ned to get his amused smile focused on me again.

  “I’ll look into this further,” he said, “since I’m definitely intrigued. And I can’t be sure I interpreted what he said right. But—”

  “But what?” I urged eagerly.

  “He wasn’t exactly forthcoming, nor clear on what he said, but he hinted that he’d learned Jon Doe’s identity through his fingerprints—although there was something odd about that, too.”

  “Odd, how?”

  “That’s what I need to find out more about. I gathered that they were not in AFIS.”

  I knew what AFIS was: the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a resource used throughout the United States to identify people via their prints. Of course, not everyone’s prints were in the system; there had to be a reason, such as certain state driver’s license requirements and criminal convictions.

  “And that was the strange thing I didn’t quite get,” Ned said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if I understood the guy’s hedging and hinting right, I think he suggested that whoever Jon Doe was, he had a criminal record.”

  I ENJOYED THE rest of my dinner with Ned, even as my mind sputtered and spun around his revelation. Or at least his suspicion.

  Jon Doe, whoever he really was,
had a criminal record.

  And yet his fingerprints were apparently not in the system.

  Jon Doe might have had a past that somehow included both Dante and Brody.

  But what? Where? How?

  And how could I learn about it?

  Ned was smiling after we’d finished our steaks. We sat sipping coffee for a while, talking about unimportant but enjoyable stuff like our favorite cop movies and TV shows.

  “I really appreciate the info you got for me, Ned. And if you learn anything else about Jon Doe or what the San Bernardino sheriff’s guys think about his murder, I’d love to hear it.”

  “You’re welcome, Kendra. And if you happen to figure out who did it before those guys do, let me know. I’d enjoy thinking the LAPD’s not the only outfit you show up with your oddball investigations.”

  I grinned right back into his dark, sparkling eyes.

  “Well, if it turns out that Dante really is the guilty party, I’ve got shoulders big enough for you to cry on.” He flexed his biceps, and turned in a manner that showed off said shoulders, even as his smile grew silly.

  I laughed. “I’ll remember that, Ned.”

  SO OKAY. THAT night before bed, while sitting in a nightshirt in my living room, the TV on mute, I considered my phone options. Not that I’d call Jeff, even though ten had been his time to call me.

  But should I get in touch with Dante? Let him know the little I’d learned from Ned?

  Probably nothing Dante didn’t already know.

  If he had a history with Jon Doe, he might have known him under his previous name. But he didn’t seem willing to discuss that with me … yet.

  And how could a possible convict not have his fingerprints in AFIS?

  Unless Ned or I had misunderstood. Or it was by official decree.

  Dante might have some of the answers I craved. But how could I get him to share? He knew my history of resolving murder situations, but he hadn’t let me in on anything about Jon Doe that would help me help him. Why?

  Damn! No way was I going to get to sleep easily with my mind swirling around like this. “What should I do, Lexie?” I asked my clearly sleepy Cavalier, who lay beside me on the sofa. She wagged her tail in support, but offered no advice.