A Fatal Twist

by Tracy Weber

  I kept my voice carefully neutral. “I’m not going to tell her that I’m investigating the murder.”

  “What other excuse will you have for visiting her at a fertility center?”

  I made my eyes wide and smiled at him alluringly. “Want to make a baby?”

  Michael leaped to his feet and held up his hands. The beer bottle dropped to the floor with a loud thump. “Uh uh, Kate. No way.”

  “I thought you wanted kids?”

  “Don’t try to play me. That’s not what this is about, and you know it. If we wanted to, we could get pregnant tonight. You’re talking about setting up a medical appointment under false pretenses. Count me out. I’m not about to help you commit insurance fraud. That’s a federal offense.”

  He had a point.

  “You’re right. No insurance claims.” I mentally balanced my checkbook. “I wonder how much a consultation costs? Maybe I can pay out of pocket.”

  Michael shook his head adamantly. “I know you want to help your friend, Kate, and I promise not to stand in your way. But I am not going to a medical clinic under false pretenses, and you shouldn’t, either. Please promise me you won’t make an appointment and go there alone.” He stared at me, refusing to break eye contact.

  I didn’t want to lie to him, but I wasn’t sure I could be completely truthful, either. I hedged my bets by surreptitiously crossing my fingers.

  “I won’t.” Unless it’s absolutely necessary.

  Time to come up with a plan B.

  Fifteen

  When I left home at eight the next morning, Michael was living up to the Boy Scouts motto: Be Prepared. He obsessively tinkered with the dog door, fitted Bella’s new collar, and tested the nanny cam setup. If the pups successfully performed their Houdini act again, he’d be ready.

  I arrived at the studio at eight-fifteen. Enough time to say a quick hello to Mister Feathers and a quicker goodbye to the Morning Yoga Immersion teacher, who’d finished up late and had to run straight to her full-time job. That left me with a full hour to work before the students of my nine-thirty All Levels class started arriving.

  I’d barely started typing Serenity Yoga’s monthly newsletter when the chime clanged against the front door. Tiffany backed through it, carrying two white cardboard cups printed with Mocha Mia’s logo.

  The smell of caffeine was so overpoweringly tantalizing that I almost didn’t notice her skintight hot pink yoga pants and her I’m just here for the Savasana tank top. Almost.

  “You brought coffee.” I hungrily reached for the cup labeled Kate.

  “I asked the barista if you had a favorite drink, and she made this. A triple soy macchiato.” Tiffany emphasized the word “triple.” “I thought yoga teachers were supposed to be Zen. Shouldn’t at least one of those shots be decaf?”

  Every cell in my body hungered for stimulants, so I didn’t reply. I drowned my snarky thoughts in hot, bitter deliciousness and reached into the desk for my billfold.

  Tiffany held up her hand. “Don’t worry about it. It’s on me.”

  I set the cup on the desk and eyed her suspiciously. “You brought me a present?”

  “It’s not a gift; it’s a bribe. I brought you coffee. Now tell me everything you learned from that Summer person yesterday, and hurry. I have to be at work in thirty minutes. Michael has a hissy fit when I’m late.”

  I gave her an abbreviated version of yesterday’s events, focusing mainly on Mariella, Tamara’s sexual harassment lawsuit, and my dilemma about snooping around at Reproductive Associates.

  “I thought I had the perfect cover story, but Michael won’t go for it.”

  “Maybe you could pretend that you want to offer a fertility yoga class. You know, one of those Tantric Yoga things.”

  “Tantric Yoga isn’t … oh, never mind.” I thought for a moment. “Telling them I want to offer a class isn’t a bad idea, though. Yoga can help improve reproductive health.” I walked to the bookshelf, pulled out a yoga therapy text, and thumbed through it. “I haven’t been trained in those techniques, though. I’ll have to do some research.” I thumped into the chair behind the desk and started reading.

  Tiffany wrinkled her brow. “Oh for goodness sake. You’re making it too complicated. I have a better idea.” She pointed to the computer. “Scoot over and let me look something up on that thing.” She sat at the keyboard and started typing. “Reproductive Associates, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  She leaned forward and stared at the screen. “Good lord, look at this cheesy tagline. Let our family help create yours. Gag me.” Three mouse clicks later, she pumped her fist through the air. “Ha! I’m so good. It says here that the first consultation is free. You won’t have any insurance problems at all.”

  “Free?” I moved behind her and glanced over her shoulder. She was right. “Why didn’t I think to check that last night?” Hope ballooned in my chest. Then I flashed on Michael’s obstinate face and it quickly deflated. “Michael still won’t go for it. He vetoed the idea last night, even after I said that I would pay for the appointment myself.”

  “So, go without him.”

  “I can’t. I promised him that I wouldn’t go there alone. I can’t even drag Rene along this time.”

  A Cheshire Cat grin spread across Tiffany’s face. Her eyes sparkled. I would have sworn that her pupils dilated.

  “I can do it!”

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “I can go with you to the clinic.” Her grin turned into a smirk. “We’ll tell them you’re my mother.”

  I ignored the intentional jab at my age. Thirty-three wasn’t exactly grandmother material. I gave her a not-quite-fake scowl. “No way.”

  “Fine. My life partner then. We’ll say we want to select a sperm donor.” She picked up the phone and started dialing.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She held her index finger against her lips, shushing me.

  “Hi. My name’s Kate Davidson. I’ve been looking at your website and I’d like to schedule an appointment for a free consultation.” She reached across the table and grabbed a pen and a notepad. “My fabulous life partner, Tiffany, will be coming with me. We’d like to get pregnant. I want to carry the baby, but we’re afraid I might have trouble conceiving.” She listened for a moment. “No, I haven’t seen any other fertility doctors, but I’m quite a bit older than she is. My ovaries have probably shriveled up.”

  I leaned across the table and slugged her.

  She winked. “I see.” She jotted a line of dollar signs across the middle of the page. “I’d heard your clinic was more expensive than some, but money’s no object.” I opened my mouth to argue, but she shoved her palm in my face. “All that matters is that we end up with a healthy baby.” I waited through what seemed like a century before Tiffany spoke again. When she did, her voice sounded depressed.

  “Next Wednesday? Seriously? That’s the soonest?” She drew a frowny face next to the dollar signs. “Gosh, we both have tomorrow and the next day off. We don’t want to wait that long.” She frowned and made several mouse clicks. “I understand. I guess we’ll have to go with Bellevue Fertility then. You were our first choice, but … ” She smiled and gave me the thumbs-up sign. “Tomorrow? At eleven? That would be fabulous. Thanks so much for squeezing us in.” She wrote down a name and an address. “We look forward to meeting you, too.”

  Tiffany hung up the phone. Her smile showed more teeth than a crocodile readying to chomp on a muskrat. “We have an appointment with a Dr. Steinman tomorrow at eleven. Evidently they’re squeezing us in during his research time. I really do have the next two days off. Can you make it?”

  Unfortunately, I could.

  “Why didn’t you at least call under your own name?” I asked. “Now they think I’m some crazy loon with shriveled ovaries.”

  “It’s supposed
to just be a consultation, but I couldn’t be sure.” She pointed below her navel. “Murder or not, no doctor is getting anywhere near my Reproductive Associates. You’re going to be the patient.” She glanced at her watch. “I have to go. It’s time for my shift at Pete’s Pets. I’ll meet you here at ten-fifteen tomorrow. Don’t forget to wear clean underwear.” She stopped at the door. “Kate, what should we tell Michael about this?”

  “Absolutely nothing. He’ll try to talk us out of it.”

  Tiffany winked. “I was hoping you’d say that. But remember, if he finds out, this was all your idea.” She did a happy skip and bounced out the door.

  I shook my head in amazement. Who would have guessed? Tiffany. The new Thelma to my Louise. I could only hope our adventure had a happier ending.

  The rest of the day was blissfully uneventful, filled with prenatal classes, private sessions, and studio paperwork. The weirdest part of my afternoon was the hour-long break I took to check on the puppies. As Michael had predicted, they were firmly imprisoned in their crate. That was unusual all by itself. More surprising still was the almost-impossible-to-unknot necktie Michael had used to tie the crate door shut. Who knew Michael owned a tie?

  He’d left me a note taped to the kitchen door: I couldn’t find a padlock, but if you have one somewhere, use it. Until then, the tie will have to do. Wait until you see what I caught on the video.

  I let the pups out for a few minutes of playtime, took Bella for a fifteen-minute walk, then headed back to the studio. I would have stopped by the pet store to ask Michael about his cryptic note, but I had back-to-back private clients scheduled all afternoon. Before I knew it, it was six p.m. The Yoga for Men teacher had arrived and it was time to go home. I tossed more birdseed to Mister Feathers and headed to my car. I hadn’t heard any complaints from Michael, so I assumed his day had been as uneventful as mine.

  I assumed wrong.

  The back yard was littered with the severed branches of Michael’s prized blueberry bushes. The casualties, I assumed, of an afternoon’s worth of puppy teething. Bella greeted me in the kitchen with her tail tucked between her legs and her ears flattened against her skull. A deep rumble emanated from her belly.

  “You feeling all right, sweetie?”

  Hopefully Bella wasn’t about to suffer an EPI setback. Setbacks with EPI were common, but thus far the only one Bella had endured had been caused by human error. Specifically, mine, during a two-day stretch of vacation when I’d forgotten to add enzymes to her food. But I’d been out of my element then. We were home now, and my food-making routines were intact. If Bella had a setback today, it might prove to be more complicated.

  I reached down and rubbed her ears. “What’s the matter, girl?”

  Michael’s grumpy voice came from the office. “Kate, is that you? Come in here.”

  I hesitantly tiptoed into the office. Bella slinked in behind me. The puppies snoozed in an ex-pen next to Michael’s desk. Michael stopped typing and faced me. He didn’t look happy.

  “I see the puppies escaped again,” I said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how that keeps happening. I tied the door shut after their playtime, exactly like you asked me to.”

  “You used a slip knot.” Michael reached into the garbage can next to his desk and held up the shredded remains of his necktie.

  Oops.

  “Sorry, hon. The knot you used earlier was impossible to get undone.”

  Michael dropped the tie back into the trash can. “That was the point, Kate. To make it hard to untie. Besides, the puppies aren’t the problem.” He frowned sternly at Bella. “She is.”

  Irritable defensiveness prickled the back of my neck. Michael loved Bella as much as I did, but that didn’t give him the right to criticize her. “What exactly do you mean?”

  He winced at my clipped tone. “Sorry, Kate. I’m a little cranky, but you’ll see why in a minute.” He gestured to my desk chair. “Bring that over here and have a seat. You need to see this.” A couple of mouse clicks later, he pointed at the screen. “This recorded this morning.”

  As I watched the screen, a video-recorded Michael placed each wiggling puppy inside the crate, carefully closed the top and bottom lock bars, and walked out of the camera’s view. Four unbearably sad puppy eyes followed him out of camera range. About a minute later, I heard a door close.

  “That was me leaving for work,” Michael explained.

  Video Mutt went into a sloppy sit and stared mournfully through the crate’s wire bars. Video Jeff nudged the door with his nose. Michael fast forwarded.

  “This is about five minutes later,” he said.

  Five minutes was evidently five centuries in puppy time. The two now-desolate, obviously-abandoned-forever puppies started their prison break. Jeff tried to dig a tunnel through the crate’s bottom while Mutt cried for help, in the highest-pitched, most annoying series of yelps I’d ever heard.

  “Good Lord, that’s irritating,” I said. “It’s a wonder the neighbors haven’t complained.”

  “I’m sure they would, but it doesn’t last long.”

  By the end of his sentence, Video Bella had slinked into the camera’s view, ears flattened against her head, tail tucked between her legs. I reached down and scratched her neck.

  “Poor baby,” I said. “Does the crying hurt your ears?”

  Meanwhile, back on the video, Jeff spied Bella and joined in the chorus. The yipping grew louder. Real Bella jumped up from her spot next to me and scurried out of the office. I covered my ears with my palms.

  “They’re louder than the fire alarm.” I continued to watch, half convinced that I was about to watch one of my neighbors break into the house to strangle the dogs. Video Bella slinked to the front of the crate. She nudged the top metal rod with her nose until it flipped to the open position. Then she pawed it to the side, disengaging the lock. She repeated the process, albeit with much greater difficulty, on the bottom. The second lock unfastened; the crate door swung open.

  The puppies finally stopped screaming. They scrambled outside the crate and attacked their rescuer, biting at her ears, her feet, her belly, and her tail. Bella drag-walked both pups out of camera range.

  “So that’s how they got out. Unbeliev—”

  Michael held up his finger “Shhh. You have to listen.”

  Nothing came into the camera’s view, but I heard a distinct flop.

  “What was that?”

  “The dog door.”

  Less than thirty seconds later I heard a second flop, which indicated that at least one of the creatures had come back inside. I had a feeling I knew which one. Video Bella trotted back into camera range, ears relaxed, tail swishing back and forth. She entered the crate, turned a quick circle, and lay down. The lone sound was her contented sigh.

  I bit my bottom lip to keep from laughing. “She trapped them outside, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. I put them back when I came home at noon, but then she did the same thing after you locked them in the crate. She figured out how to untie your slipknot in less than a minute.”

  I affected chagrin, but inside I felt an odd mixture of frustration (at the situation) and pride (in my dog). One more example of the obvious: Bella was smarter than Michael and me—combined.

  “Well, at least we know what’s happening now,” I said.

  Michael frowned. “I hate to do it, but we’re going to have to padlock the crate shut.”

  “We can’t do that. The neighbors will have a fit if the puppies scream all day. Old Lady Schuman across the street almost had a stroke when Bella used to howl, and that was a lot less annoying. Besides, it’s not fair to Bella. The puppies obviously drive her batty when we’re not at home.”

  “It’s not their fault. They’re just babies!”

  Arguing about which animal to blame was useless. Michael was right, anyway. Mutt and Jeff were babies.
They’d been separated from their mother much too early, and lord knew what their lives had been like before that. They could be forgiven a little neurosis. We humans—who supposedly had the bigger brains—would have to come up with the solution.

  “Maybe this is a good thing,” I said.

  Michael frowned. “How’s that?”

  “It’s forcing us to face the truth. We have to come up with a better arrangement for the puppies.”

  Michael’s jaw hardened.

  “Hear me out,” I said. “You need to start working regularly at the store again, and neither of us can afford to come home every two hours to take care of Mutt and Jeff. It’s pretty obvious that leaving the puppies home all day in the crate isn’t going to work.”

  Michael threw up his hands. “Exactly what do you expect me to do? You know they can’t be exposed to other dogs yet, and I’m not going to send them to a rescue. Not this young.”

  I had a feeling he actually meant “not ever,” but that was a battle best fought later, over a fifth of tequila.

  “I know, Michael, you’ve already told me. They aren’t vaccinated.”

  “Well then, what’s your bright idea?”

  “Calm down, Mr. Cranky Pants. I know someone who’ll help, at least for a few days. She owes me.”

  “Tiffany’s already paying off her debt to you, Kate. It wouldn’t be fair to ask her to watch the pups on her two days off.”

  “Not Tiffany. Someone else. Someone who could use a little practice taking care of twins.”

  Michael’s face lost its scowl. “You wouldn’t … ”

  “I most certainly would. The puppies are going to daycare at Aunt Rene’s.”

  Sixteen

  After Michael left for Pete’s Pets the next morning, I filled my car with an assortment of dog toys, blankets, crates, and treats and drove Bella and the pups over to Rene’s. Sam quickly made friends with the two six-pound fur balls and submitted himself to Bella’s cool, not-quite-friendly greeting. Bella had never warmed up to Sam, likely due to his caterpillar-like mustache. On the plus side, at least she didn’t snarl at him anymore.