"If he came through our program, we'll definitely have a record. You said you found us through a microchip?"
Maggie read her the number. She could hear the keys clicking. Then there was a gasp.
"Hello?" Maggie said. "What is it?"
"This can't be," Beth replied. "You said the owner died."
"Yes. I'm afraid so. Why?"
"And it was a young woman?"
"Yes," Maggie said.
"But this microchip is for Hendrix. He was adopted by Lauren Douglas. Please tell me she's not the one who's dead."
Maggie gripped the phone tightly. "Yes, I'm afraid she is. You know Lauren?"
"Of course. We work with volunteers from colleges in the area. She was a student at Cornell, I believe. Lauren was incredible, both with the dogs and the prisoners. And you say she's dead? Are you sure? She was so young."
Maggie could hear the sorrow in the woman's voice. "Yes," Maggie said, feeling her lip tremble as she said it. "I'm sorry to give you the news."
"She was so fit when I knew her," Beth said. "Had she been sick?"
Maggie grew quiet. "No," she finally said. "She was killed. The police are still investigating."
"How horrible," Beth said. "I'm so sorry. She was just a lovely person."
"Yes," Maggie said. "She was." She wiped her eyes, then asked, "so you actually worked with her?"
Beth explained that Lauren had been one of their college student volunteers. She had started out not knowing much about dogs, but picked up the training and care of them quickly, and had ended up adopting Hendrix when he graduated from the program. That fit what Alyssa had said about Lauren, how she would throw herself into activities on campus, joining clubs and volunteering.
She asked Beth questions about Lauren's time in college, but she didn't seem to know anything more about Lauren's background. Just that she had been a student at the university, and had volunteered a lot, and had become very involved with the dog training program. She would come in every single week to work with the prisoners on training techniques, and help to care for the dogs, who were all difficult cases from the local animal shelter.
Maggie offered some more words of comfort as they were getting ready to say goodbye. "Thank you for everything you've told me," she added. "It helps to learn a bit more about where Hendrix came from. And to know how much Lauren did for him. To take a shelter dog and turn him into this amazing pet is really something. He's such a wonderful old dog."
"Oh, yes," Beth said. "She certainly helped, and became one of our best student trainers. But of course, all of Gabriel's dogs have been wonderful. Well, goodbye, and thank you for telling me the news, sad as it is."
Gabriel. "Wait!" Maggie shouted into the phone. "Don't hang up!"
"Yes?" Beth said. "I'm still here. What is it?"
"You said Gabriel? Was he one of the dog trainers? What happened to him?"
"Yes," Beth said. "Gabriel is our best trainer. Such a bright young man. Very serious about his training work. Really devoted to the animals. The volunteers just come in weekly to help the prisoners with training and socialization. But it's the prisoners who do the actual daily work with the dogs. They keep them in the cells with them. Feed them, bathe them, and work on their lessons every day. That's the key to the program's success. The dogs are then adopted out into the community, and the prisoners learn to be responsible and kind to others in a way that hopefully improves their lives, too."
"But Gabriel?" Maggie could hear the strangled sound in her own voice, but the woman didn't seem to notice. "You said Hendrix's trainer was named Gabriel. What was his last name?"
"Gabriel Franklin." The name crackled over the cell tower connection and Maggie almost dropped the phone.
"So he was another student in the program?" she asked, her voice sounding so hoarse that Beth didn't seem to hear her question.
She just kept rambling on. "Yes. I would definitely say Gabriel is our best trainer. He is so gentle and patient with the animals. When you see him with the dogs, you can almost forget he committed first-degree murder."
Chapter Twenty
Maggie took the dogs for a walk to the state park a little before sunset that evening. She met Ibarra there, and they sat at a picnic table overlooking Carita Cove. He'd brought burgers and fries and two giant-sized milkshakes. While they chatted, Maggie pigged out, eating her full share.
The dogs lay at her feet, and she gave them their full share of the food, too. She was glad she had brought a windbreaker, because there were clouds coming in off the sea, and the wind was picking up.
"Gonna be a storm overnight," Ibarra said.
"You think so?"
"Yup," he said. Then he gave her an assessing look. "Now tell me everything you've been up to today."
So she did.
Will sat across from her about fifteen minutes later, finishing the last bite of his burger. He chewed thoughtfully, and then grabbed a fry from his paper bag and ate that.
The state park was pretty much empty by this time, since it was cold and getting dark, but there were a few locals standing around, waiting for the sunset. The regular surfers were just coming back up the hill from the beach, wet and ragged and looking contented with their day's work.
Jasper bumped Maggie, reminding her that she owed him another french fry. She gave him one, and offered another one to Hendrix, who was too polite to bump, but took the snack gratefully when offered.
"So he's not a police dog," Will finally said, having listened to her whole story while he ate. "He's a prison dog."
She had given him a heads-up about it on the phone as soon as she found out, but when they got together for dinner, she'd gone through the whole explanation of how she'd tracked down Hendrix's microchip and researched his background.
He'd listened impassively at first, but as she spoke, his expression grew more and more fascinated.
"You figured out all that from a microchip," Ibarra said, shaking his head. "That's wild." He gazed out at the cove, watching the sun going down behind the offshore clouds, turning them crimson as it set.
"You'd make a good cop, Maggie." He said it to the waves, not looking at her.
"Do you think it's significant?" Maggie asked. "To the case, I mean."
"That the murder victim was in love with a murderer?" He said it in a matter-of-fact way, but she could see it hurt, and again she wondered just how close they had been.
When she asked him point-blank about it, he turned back toward her and replied, "of course it hurts, Maggie."
"How close were you, Will?" she asked. "Be honest."
"Not as close as you're assuming," he said. "But I cared for her. And Lauren was one of us. She wasn't a cop, but she worked for the police department. She was a member of the team. And now, everyone's feeling betrayed."
Maggie put down her bag of fries. "So you told the whole team about it?"
Ibarra had turned back to look at the water, and he acted like he hadn't heard the question.
"There's something more, isn't there?" she said to his back. "What aren't you telling me?"
"You notice everything, Maggie," Ibarra said softly, to the waves.
Hendrix was sitting near him, and he leaned down to pet the dog, running his hand along the plush ruff. When he turned his head to the dog, she could see him smile gently at the serious expression on the old dog's face.
"What's up, Will?" she asked.
"When you called me to say the boy in the locket photo was in prison, I told the team about it."
Maggie crumpled up her empty french fry bag and then grabbed her milkshake and took a sip. "I expected you would."
"You said the woman at the dog group told you he'd been convicted of murder," he said. "Is that all you learned, or did you find out the rest?"
"Not much more," Maggie said. "The woman told me he's a model prisoner, and a great dog trainer."
"And he shot his college roommate in the back during a drug deal gone wrong."
She ga
sped at the brutal words. "A drug deal?" she whispered. Somehow that wasn't what she'd expected. She had heard the basic story from the dog trainer, Beth, already. And she thought she'd absorbed the news. Gabriel Franklin was a murderer. But somehow in her mind she'd minimized it. He may be a murderer, but he wasn't a brutal, evil killer. He couldn't be. He was the little boy in Lauren's locket. He was her childhood friend. Alyssa Douglas-Jones had called him a nerdy boy, a bright kid who was a lot like Lauren. Maggie hadn't really thought about what the little boy in the locket had done to end up in prison, but she never even imagined him shooting another college kid.
"Did he have a reason?" she asked, grasping at anything to try to make sense of it.
Jasper stood up and leaned against her side. He didn't like her upset, and wanted to help.
"A reason?" Ibarra's voice was cool, and he still looked out at the water. "You think there's a valid reason to shoot somebody?"
She wrapped her arm around Jasper, and he licked her face to make her feel better. He put his head in her lap, and she petted his nose to calm down. "I don't know," she said. "Self-defense is a valid reason, I guess. Or a mistake. Doesn't there have to be a reason to do such a horrible thing?"
"It wasn't a mistake," Ibarra said coldly.
He crumpled up the fast food wrappers and tossed them into a nearby garbage can. Then he finally turned back to face her, and she could see pity in his eyes.
She deserved the pity. She had been in denial, trying to make this into something less horrible and evil than it was. That image of the little boy had seared into her, making her want to be on his side. But he wasn't a little boy anymore. He was a grown man, a couple years older than Lauren. And he was a brutal, remorseless killer, even if he had taken good care of Hendrix.
She hadn't truly accepted the words she'd heard on the phone. "Lauren's sister told me he was the brightest kid in class," Maggie said, trying to explain to Ibarra how she felt. "After he moved away, she assumed he ended up becoming a brain surgeon or something. It's just hard to imagine him changing so much."
"She wasn't far off about him," Ibarra said dryly. "He and his roommate were pre-med students. So they started a little side business as drug dealers to pay their way through school. Gabriel Franklin was smart, all right. Smart and ruthless and, when something went wrong, a killer."
"And you found all this out so quickly? I only learned about it this morning."
"I didn't find out anything, Maggie." He sounded bitter about that.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not on the case," he said, clearly trying to make it just a fact, and not a painful insult to his ego. "I'm out of it."
"Then how did you—?"
"—find out? Easy. I gave the info you told me to Chief Randall and he put his team on it. Randall told me what they'd learned just before I came here to meet you."
He added, still in that bitter tone, "at least they're keeping me in the loop."
"I see." Maggie sat there for a while, slurping her milkshake through the straw. It was thick and chocolatey, and she sucked in her cheeks to get every last drop while she stared out at the water.
She wondered why Lauren had kept that little photo in her memorial locket. It was more than a passing acquaintance. She had enrolled in the mourning beads class. She had spent time on the project, revisiting it again and again to change and update the necklace. She wore it often, close to her heart.
Maybe her sister had been right. Maybe Lauren had been a little bit in love with Gabriel Franklin when they were kids. Maybe she was so shocked by meeting him as an adult after a long absence that it rocked her world, and sent her into some kind of emotional tailspin. Maggie had felt it, too, even from a distance. The image of the innocent little boy, and then the shock of finding out he was a horrible person. It must have been worse for Lauren.
"She must have been mourning the loss of a childhood friend," she mused. "The loss of all that potential he had. He could have made something of his life, but instead he threw it all away. She had said he was dead—"
Maggie stopped there. Those hadn't been Lauren's exact words, had they? She tried to think back to the day when they'd all sat around the big work table in her shop, creating jewelry pieces to commemorate some moment or memory in their lives:
Lauren had Crystal Mystic Black Swarovski pearls in her tray, and had selected a glorious goth angel with outspread glass wings as the centerpiece. But when Maggie asked if she wanted to talk about her choices, she shook her head. "It's for someone I care about very much," she said. "He's gone now."
"Someone I care about very much," Maggie whispered. "He's gone now."
"What?" Ibarra asked.
"That's what Lauren said at the time. He's gone, not dead. I'd always assumed her mourning necklace was for someone who died. But it was simply for a good friend who'd thrown away his life and was gone. I misunderstood. She was grieving that he had gone bad and was no longer the boy she knew."
She glanced at Ibarra. He was still petting Hendrix, and his expression was somber.
"Okay, I give up," she said. "What aren't you telling me? There's something else, isn't there?"
"I told you, you would make a good cop."
"So I'm right. There is something. But I don't see what. From what her sister said, she hardly knew him. How can it matter?"
He nodded. "Oh, she knew him, Maggie. She knew him very well."
"Spit it out, Ibarra," she said impatiently.
Ibarra sighed, then stopped petting the dog to turn and look out at the ocean.
"Randall told me they did a more thorough search out at Lauren's cabin today. They found a cache of stuff buried under a big tree in the yard."
"What kind of stuff?" she asked.
He was still looking out at the ocean.
"What kind of stuff, Will?" she repeated when he didn't answer her.
"Drugs," he said quietly. "Drugs and money. From Franklin's stash."
"Drugs and money," she breathed. "But Gabriel Franklin is still in prison. Beth at the dog program said he's serving life. It's impossible for his drugs and money to be at Lauren's house."
Ibarra laughed, but it wasn't humor. It was disgust. Shame. Scorn. He watched the gorgeous Carita Cove sunset over the water, all reds and golds and purples behind the gathering black clouds. And he laughed that ugly, cynical laugh.
"It can't be true," Maggie said stubbornly. "It doesn't make sense." But it did. And if she accepted the logical reason why it was true, she would feel the same disgust that Ibarra did. Instead she shook her head, and said, "no, Will."
"Yes, Maggie," Ibarra said. "Gabriel Franklin had some of the proceeds from his drug deal hidden under his mattress in the dorm when he was arrested. There was cocaine, cut with a particular filler. And hundred dollar bills clipped together in stacks of ten."
"And the drugs and money found at the cabin—?"
"—were identical. Cocaine, cut with the same filler. And five hundred dollar bills, clipped together the same way. I'm sorry, Maggie, but Randall checked the report twice because he couldn't believe it. It's exactly the same."
He faced her again. "Lauren hadn't lost him, Maggie. She was his partner in crime."
Chapter Twenty-One
Maggie walked home not long after that. Ibarra had wanted to talk more after they finished eating, but she didn't feel like it.
The sun went down, leaving it cold and dark along the edge of the cove, and she didn't want to be out in this ugly world full of criminals. So she walked home along The Row, the charming cobblestoned sidewalk at her feet and the ornate scrolled streetlights overhead hiding the dark underbelly of society behind their pretty façade.
The dogs trailed along beside her, and she walked slowly, not wanting to strain Hendrix's sore joints.
She didn't feel like walking quickly, anyway. She'd had the wind knocked out of her, and didn't know quite what to do with herself.
She liked puzzles. She was an avid reader of mystery novels,
and she always figured out the solution to thriller movies before everyone else. It was fun. It was the way her mind worked, putting together clues and seeing connections and patterns. Even when she found out about a real-life crime, she always felt she could figure things out, could see things other people missed.
But she hadn't seen this. Lauren, who she had thought was a private person, and maybe a bit shy, was in league with a murderer.
It was getting dark, and the dogs were ghostly shadows by her side. Jasper's ruff was like a fluffy white cloud drifting near her, but Hendrix's dark coat was lost in the dusk.
"Come on, boys," she said morosely. "Let's get home and shut out the night."
When they got home to the tiny house the boys settled down in their usual spots. She went around and locked all the windows and doors, and closed the curtains tight. The world outside was a cold, harsh place, and she wanted to stay inside tonight, where things were cozy and safe.
She sat down on the daybed next to Jasper and lay back against the pillows, and tried not to think any more. But her mind raced anyway.
Lauren was a criminal. Whatever had happened to her, she'd probably deserved. Her leaving the dog with Maggie had seemed like some serious thing, almost a call for help. But it had probably just been her way of getting him out of the way so she could commit some crime. And the crime hadn't worked out the way she planned, and had led to her death. A falling out among thieves? An attempt to pull off some sort of nefarious deal? Who knew? And now, after finding it out, did Maggie really care?
Maybe it was better not to find out who had killed Lauren Douglas. She had dealt drugs and been in love with a killer and had probably stolen and cheated and lied.
Even Hendrix, her beautiful dog, had probably been simply a convenient ruse, used by her and Gabriel to facilitate their meetings at the prison every week.
It was all ugly and evil and selfish and mean, and Maggie felt the tears flow. She'd already cried for Lauren. She had cried before for the loss of the young woman she had considered a good person, and a friend.
Maggie and the Whiskered Witness Page 13