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Bravery was admirable. Except it forced constant vigilance, attentiveness to every subtle twitch, grimace, blemish—any deviation from whatever constituted normal. Had Harriet hovered over Dina and Randy as diligently when they were children, they’d have whistled up the stork and demanded a change of address.
The paper bags contained an anti-inflammatory prescribed for arthritis and two types of ophthalmic drops to control Harriet’s glaucoma. One of the latter required refrigeration. As she moved to the kitchen, Dina cocked an eyebrow, angled sideways in the chair, then looked back toward the hall. No oxygen hose trailed along the carpet.
“Something seems to be missing. But jeepers, I can’t imagine what it is.”
Her mother shrugged and closed the fridge. “So I left my leash on the bed for a minute or two. What’s the harm?”
Dina dropped her head into her hands. Maybe it wasn’t too late to whistle up that stork.
Jack raised his head from his hands and blew out a breath. It stank of beer, rancid onions from the chili dog and rings he’d gulped for dinner and the five pots of coffee he’d chased them with.
A scrambled egg, dry toast and a glass of milk next door at Al’s diner would absorb the acid gnawing craters in Jack’s stomach. A glance at his watch, then at the parking lot visible out the office window nixed the idea. Neighborhood bars had poured their customers out on the street over an hour ago, but Thursday-night-into-Friday-morning crowds were different from weekenders.
Rebels without a brain, in Jack’s opinion. As if knocking back a sixer the night before the work week ended was a form of social commentary. Clock in Friday with a killer hangover and perfect impression of a toilet bowl’s rim carved on your face and that’ll by God show the boss who’s boss.
“Nice attitude, McPhee,” he muttered. “Speaking from experience, I presume?”
He was. His throbbing neck and shoulders brought back memories of regular worship services at the porcelain altar. Hunkering over a desk for hours on end exacted similar punishment with none of the fun of getting there.
Sitting back in his chair, he surveyed the ream of photocopies and newspaper stories separated into categorized stacks. A case beginning with little or nothing to go on was common. One with an old-growth forest in paper form splayed across his desk should solve itself. And might, if he could see the pattern for all the damn trees.
It was there. He was just too bleary-eyed to find it. The usual remedy for mental fatigue was a good night’s sleep. A fabulous idea, if he could unplug his overloaded brain and stuff it in his sock drawer. Otherwise, the yammering in his head would be like the New York Stock Exchange after the opening bell.
A legal pad lay on the floor a few yards from his desk. Handwritten notes and jagged scratch-outs covered the fanned yellow sheets. A few minutes ago, the pages rattled merrily when Jack threw the pad in frustration. Tantrums were juvenile and counterproductive. That’s why they felt so good.
His bowlegged, knee-bent scuttle to fetch the tablet was peculiar to the elderly, toddlers and those whose spines had conformed to nonergonomic chairs. Jack plopped the pad on the desk, then stretched for the ceiling’s acoustic tiles. Crackles and pops sounded like chicken bones in a garbage disposal. He yawned so hard that black specks jittered behind his eyelids.
“Think,” he said, still standing, his hands thrust in his trouser pockets. “Gerry Abramson isn’t paying you to be dense.”
Centered amid the paper rampart he’d dutifully studied was a street map photocopied and pieced together from the Park City phone directory. A colorful four-by-six-foot Chamber of Commerce version was framed on the wall, but the compact tape-job better suited the purpose.
Besides, he’d have to switch on the overhead to see the big one. An island of light shed by the desk lamp was cozy…and less conspicuous to fat, unemployed freaks cruising Danbury Street.
Dotting the miniaturized map were color-coded flags snipped from sticky notes. Each bore the date of the previous year’s and current burglaries. A pattern should have emerged. Burglars, particularly pros, as the success rate confirmed, didn’t act on impulse or at random.
Eight months of inactivity presumed advance planning for this year’s take, hence a corresponding level of preparation the year before. Inherent in both should be a sort of grid effect designed to throw off the cops: hit a couple of north-side homes, then south, then the eastern burbs, etc. The property-crimes unit would chase their tails all over town, unable to anticipate the thief’s next move.
In hindsight, that strategy should be obvious. Jack stared at the map. Uh-huh. Sure. He might as well have thrown his ticky-tacky little flags like darts. Blindfolded.
“Gerry’s wrong about every victim being out of town when the thefts occurred,” he said. “Two hits were in gated communities with manned guard posts. Was it luck, happy accident or genius to hit during a whoop-de-do celebrity golf tournament and the debutante cotillion?”
No answers, including what the debs were coming out from, and how three days of brunches, lunches, teas and dinners culminating in a formal ball enabled it.
Talking to himself didn’t always rouse any synapses from their stupor, either, but there was something about thinking aloud that worked better than brooding in silence.
His finger tapped each of three widely separated flags. The first marked the Calendar Burglar’s alleged debut. The other pair, this year’s second and fifth B & Es. “What frosts the cupcake is how he knew to rob these folks.”
The majority of the robberies occurred in affluent, newer housing developments with names like Grande Vista Estates and Devonshire Downs. These particular three occurred in less target-rich environments: modest homes in older middle-class neighborhoods. The victims’ net worth exceeded that of many of the McMansion dwellers, but apparently they subscribed to the antiquated notion that flaunting it was déclassé.
“A lot of Park City natives wouldn’t recognize these people’s names,” Jack said. “They donate a lug of money to charity, but pretty much on the q.t.”
Charity was big business—nonprofit status aside. The larger the organization, the larger the administrative staff. Volunteers donated time to causes they deemed worthy, and while that might apply to some on the payroll, logic asserted that for others, it was just a job. And not one that’d earn a down payment on a house in Grande Vista Estates.
Donor anonymity didn’t apply to recordkeeping. Federal and state forms must be filed, specifying who gave how much to what and when. A financially strapped employee might shy from out-and-out embezzlement, but initiating a personal collection drive could be irresistible.
Jack tuned out the annoying little bastards in his head questioning how said office worker would know when to strike. He flipped through the police reports for the umpteenth time, scanning one complainant’s statement after another.
The remembered reference to charity elicited a gleeful “Bingo!” It was closely followed by a glum “Excellent work, dumbass.”
There was Charity all right. Plain as day. Except it was a damn dog’s name. A poor widdle pooch whose diamond-studded, five-thousand-dollar, sterling-silver-tagged collar got ripped off.
Muttering f-worded nouns, verbs, adjectives and not a few common compounds, he threw the reports skyward. Jerked his suit coat off the back of the chair. Switched off the desk lamp. Stomped to the door. Stabbed the key in the lock…then turned, leaving the ring dangling.
Dog. Neither Charity nor charity had tripped an almost imperceptible trigger, much less Jack’s temper. And not dog, either. Dogs.
A report on one of National Federated’s insureds noted the homeowner’s opinion that not photographing what might be a partial shoe impression on the dog’s bed was shoddy police work. Lifting a print off velvet flocked with dog hair was impossible, let alone idiotic. So was arguing with a know-it-all taxpayer.
Jack flipped on the overhead lights. The suit coat was lobbed at a couch clients rarely used and wasn’t all that great for naps. Crouched on the floor, he scooped up the mess he’d made and carried it to the desk. Sorting the papers, restacking them neatly, he speed-read each one, looking for another remembered reference to a dog. Maybe a doghouse. A toy. It was there—he was certain of it—imbedded in blocks of cramped cop handwriting he was too weary to decipher.
Provided that pet ownership connected the Calendar Burglar’s targets, Jack didn’t flatter himself thinking the police missed it. Time was the mitigating factor. Some had slid by before specific thefts pegged a single perpetrator. Determining a link existed and the follow-up ate time off a clock they didn’t know was ticking. Then it stopped cold for nine months. When the Calendar Burglar resurfaced, the investigative juice wasn’t stagnant, it was freeze-dried.
“They may have already smoked the dog angle, but it’s worth a shot. If I can figure out how this scumbag operates, the who will drop in my lap.”
Every burglary victim would receive a call tomorrow to confirm a dog’s presence in the home and its whereabouts when the theft occurred. Not from Jack McPhee, of course. Identifying himself as a P.I. guaranteed the person at the other end would hang up or clam up.
Several pretexts suggested themselves on the drive home. A marketing surveyor for a pet-products retailer? Not bad. How about a radio station manager random-dialing for a dog-of-the-week contest? “Decent,” Jack allowed, “but start fishing for a specific time frame and the callee might get hinky.”
The office’s safe line ensured the calls couldn’t trace back to him, yet the perfect approach must be slick and instantly forgettable. He’d think of something. He always did. There’d still be hang-ups and nobody-homes in the mix, but pretexts were as available as the number of otherwise intelligent, cautious people willing to chat up a total stranger on the phone.
“Stranger, my ass.” Alone in his car and seemingly the world, aside from a motorcyclist in the opposite lane, Jack tipped back his head and laughed. “McPhee, you’re a genius, if you don’t say so yourself.”
He lowered his voice an octave. “Good morning, Mrs. Victim. This is, uh, John Q. Clerk with the Park City PD. Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but I’m following up on a barking-dog complaint filed on XYZ date at your address…”
5
“Oh, this is so exciting,” chirped Ms. Pearl. The confirmed spinster—her word, not Jack’s—foisted a pink, doll-sized overnight case on him. “My little girl is going to be a spy.”
Actually her loaner Maltese was a four-legged shill. It wasn’t Jack’s fault that his across-the-breezeway neighbor heard “undercover sting operation” and thought James Bond with fur.
Four hours’ sleep had converted last night’s genius pretext into a blue-ribbon stupid idea. It would have worked, sure. Then the minute the connection was broken, pissed-off burglary victims would confront the neighbors, demanding to know which one initiated the barking-dog complaint.
And who wanted to waste a day chained to a desk making phone calls? Especially a private investigator who spends more time on the phone than a phone-sex operator.
Jack forced a smile. Not easy with a yappy eight-pound dog in the crook of his arm, two fingers hooked on the handle of its luggage and a leash dervishing at his crotch like a noose in need of exorcism.
The stuffed Maltese toy he’d given his niece for Christmas one year had come with a key in its butt that when wound, played “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” Instead of a music box, the real deal squirmed and lunged, as though it had springs where its bones were supposed to be.
“I really appreciate this, Ms. Pearl.” Which would be true as soon as Jack dumped her wacko dog at TLC, the city’s most expensive boarding kennel. “But remember our, uh, arrangement has to stay between us.”
Ms. Pearl’s penciled eyebrows lofted, enhancing an already eerie resemblance to Olive Oyl. “It will, Officer McPhee. I won’t tell a soul.”
He’d never told her he was a cop and hadn’t been for many a year. Busting a gangbanger peddling Ecstasy to a middle-schooler in the complex’s parking lot was strictly a citizen’s arrest. Attempts to correct an assumption that Jack was a plainclothes narc were one of those doth-protest-too-much things. Between his reclusiveness and the weird hours he kept, tenants could just as easily suspect he was a vampire.
Ms. Pearl made oochie-coo noises and crouched down to say goodbye to the Maltese. “I don’t know what I’ll do without my Sweetie Pie Snug ’Ems. I surely don’t.” She kissed the dog’s button nose. “But I packed your favorite toys and a special treat, so we’ll have to be brave girls, won’t we? Oh, yes, we will.”
Thankfully, Jack’s eyes unstuck from their backward roll before he reached the flight of plank stairs leading down to ground level. He loved dogs. His best buds when he was a kid were a brainless Irish setter and a three-legged beagle.
“No offense,” he told the wriggling furball playing peekaboo with his tie. “But just because the AKC says you’re a dog, you’re too short to drink out of the toilet and you couldn’t catch a Frisbee with a net.”
The parking area behind his building was as empty as it had been full when he’d bailed out of his car around three-thirty. In daylight, the Taurus looked a hundred miles closer to the rear entrance than it had last night. It only seemed farther away with a panting Maltese zigzagging in front of him like a duck in a shooting gallery.
The minisuitcase thumped on the rear floorboard where it would stay until its return to Ms. Pearl—minus the treats. Leave them inside and she’d know the luggage hadn’t made the whole trip.
He’d promised to strap down the dog in her safety harness for the ride, too. It wouldn’t have joined the suitcase on the floorboard if the white blur now bouncing all over the friggin’ car responded to “Sit.” Or “Heel.” Or “For God’s sake, stay, you psycho little son of a bitch!”
Bellowing “Hell with it,” Jack snagged the leash on the fly and wrapped it around his leg. “Gotcha.”
Sweetie Pie Snug ’Ems shot him an “oh, yeah?” glare. Her glittery pink toenails dug into the upholstery. She tugged backward, whipping her pouffy head. When the collar hung up on her ears, she bared her teeth and growled at him.
“Think you’re scary, huh?” Jack tilted down the rearview mirror. “Check it out. You look like an attack hamster with a bad perm.”
The Maltese stared at her reflection, then blinked her beady eyes. She tucked her feather-duster tail and sat down like the lady Ms. Pearl had raised her to be.
“Good doggy.” He loosened the leash a few inches. She hesitated, then sighed and snuggled against his thigh.
He’d told her owner a rumor was circulating about boarding kennels using customer lists for purposes other than mailing Christmas cards. The disclosure was nearer his hunch than he’d cared to admit, yet it hadn’t satisfied Ms. Pearl. She’d pushed for specifics. He refused to slander the three, thus far noncomplicit kennels that catered to an upscale clientele: TLC, Ltd., Home Away and Merry Hills.
“You’ll just have to trust me on the details,” he’d said. To his surprise, she had.
To the Maltese now sniffing at the air conditioner’s exhaust, he said, “You’re gonna love this gig. In-room movies, an exercise pool, story hour.” Jack grunted. “At forty bucks a day, you’d better love it.”
The morning rush hour on Denton Expressway was beginning to congeal. The female driver in the car ahead of him was applying mascara and slaloming between the roadway’s painted lines. Jack checked his passenger’s side mirror, then the rearview. In the inner lane, a Hummer was several cautious yards behind a pickup, as well as Jack’s rear bumper. The compact sedan lagging in the Hummer’s considerable shadow had a spidery crack in the upper quadrant of its windshield.
Jack’s lips curled tight over his teeth. He hugged the dog to his thigh. The speedometer’s needle stuck a hash mark past sixty-five, as though it were glued on. Constantly monitoring the mirrors, a half mile clocked past, then three quarters, then…
He punched the accelerator and veered into the gap in front of the Hummer. Tapping the brake pedal, Jack timed the swerve onto Madison Road’s off-ramp like a NASCAR contender. The maneuver earned a horn blast from the exiting car he’d cut in front of. Swooping in from nowhere probably scared its driver, but expertise separated careless and reckless from a controlled, slick-as-hell evasion.
Loosening his grip on the Maltese, Jack slowed for the traffic light at the top of the ramp. Below on the expressway, Brett Dean Blankenship’s dented Cavalier now tailgated the Hummer like a pesky baby brother. The not-so-ace detective would take the next exit and circle back, for all the good it’d do him.
Jack took a stab at feeling smug. Outwitting the jerk didn’t change the fact that four days had elapsed since Blankenship crawled out of his cave and into Jack’s car at the motel. Seldom did one ever go by without Jack pissing off somebody, but Blankenship had definitely crossed the line from harassment into stalker territory.
“Lucky for him, you’re riding shotgun,” he told the dog.
It sneezed and wiped dog snot on his trousers.
“Oh, I hear ya. Moby Dickhead’s just begging to get his blubber whipped.” Jack signaled for a turn onto Lincoln Avenue. “But a man’s got to choose his battles, and Ms. Pearl wouldn’t be happy about you seeing me shred that creep like a head of cabbage.”
He was still talking tough-guy trash out the side of his mouth and pleased with the effect when he almost drove past Euclid Terrace. Its four double-long blocks surrounded by a crumbling fieldrock wall were a tiny suburb back when lawn tennis and badminton parties were in vogue. By the ’70s, the Victorian mansions were shabby white elephants too costly to heat, cool or maintain.
Some chopped up into student apartments were now being restored to their single-family glory, but it was even money which would will out: regentrification or blight.
TLC, Ltd. occupied the former carriage house and stable spared from a suspicious fire that destroyed the main house ten or twelve years ago. Inside the home’s granite footprint was a lush, multiflora rose garden with a tiered bronze fountain at its center.
“Looks more like a funeral home than a boarding kennel,” Jack said, pulling into the graveled parking area.
It was nearly as quiet as one, too. A Sherwood Forest of evergreens meted the property’s lot lines. Disembodied barks and yaps filtered through dense privets enclosing the chain-link runs, but evidently, a customer the dogs couldn’t see or smell was nothing to get excited about.
Until the Maltese sounded off. Wriggling against Jack’s chest, she yipped and snarled like a streetfighter with a serious anger-management problem.
“Jesus Kee-rist,” he yelled, struggling to control the yipping, snapping ball of fur with teeth.
Slamming the car door with his knee, he held the pint-sized Cujo at arm’s length. “Listen up, sister.”
She licked her bared chops. Her earsplitting barks subsided to motorboat growls.
“I’m operating on four hours’ sleep. A three-hundred-pound loony tune’s stalking me. If this hunch of mine doesn’t pan out or the cops nab the burglar before I do, I’m screwed and so’s McPhee Investigations.”
If a Maltese could look thoughtful, the one dangling in midair seemed to be taking the situation under advisement.
“So are you with me on this? Or do I take you home and tell Ms. Pearl her spy washed out in the damn parking lot?”
Sweetie Pie blinked, then her head drooped and she heaved a shuddering sigh.
“Good doggy,” he said, cradling her under his arm. “And you’d better stay good while you’re here, too.”
Few vestiges remained of the building’s original purpose, apart from the redbrick exterior and the interior ceiling’s hewed beams and support posts. The plastered walls were painted a soothing willow-green and hung with framed hunt scenes, greyhounds in repose and a huge watercolor chart illustrating more dog breeds than Jack knew existed.
A high counter and a wrought-iron gate divided the reception room from a larger concrete-floored area. Jack supposed the second gate barred a hallway leading to the kennel proper. His apartment should be as clean as this canine hotel—and might be, if it had brass floor drains to hose it out with.
At a rubber-matted, stainless-steel table, a ponytailed twelve-year-old wielded a spiky comb and a blow-dryer. Standing at attention in front of her was a burly Rastafarian with paws. The dreadlocked dog seemed to be in a vertical coma, while she nimbly sidestepped across the row of metal milk crates to offset the height advantage.
A sharp rap drew hers and Jack’s attention to a glass partition set in the back wall. A fortyish brunette jabbed a finger at the phone held to her ear, then at Jack.
Nodding, the groomer switched off the blow-dryer, called “Be right with you” over her shoulder, then snapped her fingers. The Rastafarian she was grooming didn’t lie down on the table as much as it melted into a prone position.
The girl’s soccer-style kick sent a milk crate skirring across the floor. “Sorry I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, climbing on top of it. “I keep forgetting the door buzzer is broken and that dryer’s so loud I can’t hear myself think.”
“It’s okay.” Jack made a mental note to get his eyes and perhaps his head examined at the earliest opportunity.
The groomer with the megawatt smile, soft brown eyes bracketed by laugh lines and womanly curves hadn’t seen puberty for a couple of decades. Which was terrific, since otherwise, his visual appraisal would be morally reprehensible.
A vague smell of wet dog and flea shampoo was strangely pleasant, exotic even. Most of all, the definitely adult groomer was short. Very short. Short enough for a guy who measured five-ten in leather lace-ups to feel like John Wayne bellying up to the bar in a Deadwood saloon. If Jack had a cowboy hat to doff, he’d have drawled, “Well, hello there, li’l lady.”
“Cute dog.” She scratched the Maltese’s wispy goatee. Not even a suggestion of a wedding band blemished the appropriate ring finger. “What’s her name?”
For the life of him, Jack couldn’t remember. Then he did, and wished the amnesia were permanent. “Fido.” He swallowed a groan. “Yep, good ol’ Fido. No middle name or anything. Just…you know…Fido.”
“Uh-huh.” She chuffed. “Sure.”
