Double Dog Dare (19 page)

Before I reached a real decision what to do, I saw in my side-view mirror yet another silver hybrid vehicle. It hadn’t turned into the parking lot, as I had, but stayed on the street, in a spot along the curb.

Boy, that kind of car was proliferating around L.A.—or was I seeing only one? The tinted windows and distance to where I sat prevented me from scoping out the driver. Not that I’d necessarily be able to compare him or her with any previous hybrid driver who’d come into my view lately. But with Jeff’s disappearance and Earl Knox’s killing, paranoia had asserted a major appearance in my brain.

Was I being followed? If so, why? And was I in any danger?

Heck, how could I assume otherwise with everything else that had happened?

I pulled my cell phone from my purse to keep it handy. The area was too deserted to expect any assistance from a Good Samaritan passing by. Sure, there was a beige minivan parked ahead along the street, but I didn’t see its driver. My nervousness seemed way misplaced. Even so, I told myself to keep a cool head and a realistic path for flight. I scoped out the parking lot and saw an exit on the opposite side from where I’d entered.

In case the person in the hybrid could see me better than I could see inside that vehicle, I pretended nonchalance, checking my makeup in the cosmetic mirror on the visor— and also using it to see if there was any possible assistance behind me.

Not.

All I viewed was my own wide blue eyes. Was that fright I perceived in them? Well, yeah—sunken into their sockets in my face that seemed a lot more plain than usual in its pallor. Oh, well. Beauty wasn’t a prerequisite for getting out of a potentially perilous situation. Assuming all this wasn’t my own overactive imagination.

Which it most likely was. So what if the car was still there?

Even so, as fast as I could, I shoved up the visor and at the same time turned on the engine, gunning it until I sped out the far side of the parking lot and onto the nearest street. There, I ignored any speed limits and hied my low-powered rental vehicle as fast as it could go back onto the freeway.

Where, wisely or not, I felt a whole lot less threatened. Safety in numbers and all that, since traffic was typically horrible, even for late on a Sunday afternoon.

I kept my eyes open to my surroundings and the occupants of all the autos around me as I headed back toward Studio City.

Did that guy in the dented red pickup truck have a resemblance to Jeff around the strong chin? Nah, not really.

How about the fellow in the jade-colored Jaguar who passed me as if I was standing still? Which I was, in this traffic. Who could tell, at his speed?

My emotions were clearly overwrought.

Talk about keeping an eye open for a would-be rescuer—well, that would have been Jeff, had he been somewhere reachable. Now, I was simply grasping at flimsy straws of fading hope.

I turned on the car radio and listened to a modern middle-of-the-road station to help calm my shattering nerves.

And soon reached the exit closest to Doggy Indulgence. At last.

The light turned red at the bottom of the ramp, so I stopped and stared into my rearview mirror.

No silver hybrid. Thank heavens.

I headed toward Ventura Boulevard and Darryl’s delightful doggy spa. I dared to relax and consider my plans for the pending evening. At the next traffic light, I thumbed through my pet-sitting journal to remind myself of which clients required visits and the kind of care they anticipated. Evening meals? Of course, for everyone.

In a couple of minutes I pulled into Darryl’s parking lot. It wasn’t filled, at least not as much as on weekdays, but I gathered there were still sufficient seekers of doggy day care on this Sunday to merit its staying open.

I parked in the area I always preferred, toward the far end of the lot, where my Beamer had been less likely to get dinged. If only I’d anticipated its smashing fate. . . .

As I turned off the engine, I saw a movement toward the boulevard and glanced that way.

A silver hybrid car parked there, blocking the only viable exit.

Coincidence? Could be. If not, who was in it? What did they want? Was I about to somehow share Earl Knox’s fate? Unlikely. It was too far away for the occupant to inject me with ketamine. And there was no viaduct near here for anyone to attempt to drown me, although the Los Angeles River was nearby—or at least the dry channel where water flowed during the rainy season, which seldom included May.

Darryl was my closest friend, in more ways than one at this moment as I sat outside his building. If I was in genuine danger and not simply hallucinating, I didn’t want to involve him.

The cops were a better idea—I could at least invoke Ned Noralles’s name. I started to press in 911, when I noticed that a beige minivan had pulled close behind the hybrid and started honking its horn. Surely not the same one I’d seen on the street before.

No, it was probably someone coming here to drop off or pick up a pampered dog. I only hoped that person wasn’t imperiling him- or herself with impatience.

Whoever it was, the noise apparently got to the hybrid driver, and the car took off.

I watched for an additional minute without moving, intending to thank the minivan driver—and maybe even walk inside with that now-adored, impatient person. But that vehicle didn’t pull into the lot. Instead, it sped off, too.

Slowly regaining my breath, I stayed a short while longer, observing the area in an attempt to ensure I was safe.

No reason to assume I wasn’t, especially when a few of Darryl’s employees meandered outside with some of their visitors of the day on a leash for a late-afternoon constitutional and potty break.

There was no apparent danger to them, and I used their presence to go inside.

“Kendra, are you okay?” Darryl all but dashed toward me from his post at the sign-in desk. “You look awful.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in my usually glib sarcasm, and I sounded almost serious. I stooped immediately as Lexie and Odin barreled toward me from different parts of the huge doggy room and leaped on my legs for attention. I buried my face first in Lexie’s fur, then Odin’s.

“Come into my office,” Darryl ordered. I was too stressed to disobey.

I noted a stain on the collar of my friend’s Doggy Indulgence shirt that suggested he’d hugged a drooling dog. Not an unusual state of affairs for this caring caretaker.

He pointed me toward a chair facing his cluttered desk and ordered, “Sit.”

Once again, I did as he said.

“Tell me what happened,” he commanded. He was obviously alpha that afternoon, so I complied. And when I was done describing my day’s difficult activities and imaginary hybrid stalker, he stood and all but growled at me. “Kendra, you’ve got to cut it out. I know you’re stressed about Jeff, and worried about the woman who was apparently so close to him, but you have to start caring more for yourself. If you don’t, I’ll start playing stalker myself and shadow you to make sure you stay safe.”

“No need,” I responded hurriedly. “I was freaked out enough today to learn my lesson. I’m backing off.” Fortunately, my hands were in my lap and I doubted he could see them over the stuff on his desk—so my crossed fingers weren’t in his line of vision. What else could I do? I was involved, like it or not. And I especially didn’t like not knowing where Jeff was. How could I keep my nose out of a situation when I was so much in the middle of it?

“How about hanging out around here tonight, till I leave?” Darryl asked, his voice a whole lot more gentle. “We’ll go out to dinner, then you can stay at my place. Lexie and Odin, too.”

“That’s really sweet, Darryl,” I replied. “But—”

“I knew there’d be a ‘but,’ ” he grumbled.

“I have pet-sitting to do. And I’ll be fine. Honest. I’m going to call Jeff’s assistant Buzz Dulear and see if he can keep an eye on things. I might even call Detective Ned Noralles, too, just to let him know that I think I’m being followed. ”

Not that I anticipated Ned would immediately send a fleet of squad cars full of cops to act as my bodyguards. Still, some backup might make me feel better. Buzz was the best bet for that.

Only, when I got back to my rental car with the pups and made those calls, Ned was off duty. The dispatcher promised to get him a message, but I wasn’t holding my breath.

And Buzz didn’t answer his cell phone.

So, I was on my own. But I was alert. I kept my eyes wide open as I went through all my pet-sitting duties, jotting notes in my official journal and watching for hybrid cars in all the neighborhoods I visited.

And saw none, thank heavens.

I decided that if I was being followed, whoever it was would be more likely to watch for me at home than elsewhere. Which also meant that, by heading there, I was more likely to endanger Rachel and her dad, Russ. I therefore told the dogs, when I got back into the car after my last pet visit, “We’ll stay at your house tonight, Odin. What do you think about that?”

He wagged his curled tail eagerly, as if he understood.

I headed for Jeff’s Sherman Oaks abode, parked in the driveway, and hurried the dogs inside. As they eagerly ate their dinners, I peered out the windows of the front hallway, toward the street.

Nothing out of the norm there. Jeff’s lawn was empty, a few familiar-looking cars were parked at the curb—none hybrids—and across the road I saw one of the poop scoopers at work. From here, it appeared to be the older Latino fellow, but I wasn’t sure.

Of course the dogs desired their evening constitutionals when they’d finished gulping down their dinners, so I leashed them and headed out the front door. They’d been walked together often enough that I didn’t have any difficulty getting them headed in the same direction, and we went left on the sidewalk.

I might have heard the roar of an engine from another kind of car, but hybrids tend to be quieter. Even so, I did hear some kind of sound behind me. Before I could turn too far, something—or someone—hit me hard, and I went flying toward the nearest house.

Just as a hybrid car streaked by, right in the spot where I’d been standing only an instant before.

I screamed and yanked on the dogs’ leashes to get them away from the street. And then I looked down at the ground, at the form of the straw-hatted poop scooper who’d dashed from across the street to protect me.

Only . . .

Okay, Kendra,
I told myself. I’d been hallucinating all over the place lately. I’d even assumed I’d seen what I now imagined when looking at this senior Hispanic-appearing man before.

But now I could see the skin of one leg that had been bared as his jeans tore.

I could see the light hair peeking out of the silver at the back of his head, below his hat, as he rose to his knees, face toward the ground.

I could see a hand close up, one that wasn’t gloved.

And now that he wasn’t standing and stooped, I could see, from an odd angle, his actual height.

I gasped and grabbed at the hair at the back of his head, making him look right into my eyes.

Well, sure, he wore damned sunglasses, so I couldn’t completely tell their color. But their expression was angry—yet wholly familiar.

Before I could say anything out of my stupidly gaping mouth, the man said in a raspy tone, “Get back in the house, Kendra, and take the dogs with you. Now.”

Today was my day for obeying orders from the men I cared about most, I guessed. In any event, I responded in a scratchy voice of my own, automatically keeping it low. “Okay, Jeff. See you inside.”

Chapter Sixteen

TO SAY I stumbled into the house would be a humongous understatement. Especially since my canine companions kept leaping joyfully toward the man who followed me up the sidewalk, yanking at their leashes . . . and my horrified heart.

Traitorous Lexie and Odin. Oh, they’d tried to tell me the truth previously during the last week or so, in their own puplike ways. But every time they’d acted excited about the ersatz poop scooper, he’d been in a situation that explained it—covered with fascinating other-dog smells. Or feeding them treats. Or . . . who knew?

And I . . . I’d visualized a semblance of Jeff, somehow, in this person. But I’d imagined seeing Jeff in nearly every male I’d observed lately, especially as the driver of almost every other car on the road. I’d assumed I simply missed him so much that I willed him back into my life, genuine or not.

Well, now, here he was. And the insides of my anatomy were churning and flip-flopping almost as much as my anxious mind.

I all but sat down on the shining hardwood floor in the entry. Hey, I told myself, I was okay. No need for a drama queen performance. Whatever Jeff had attempted to accomplish over the past painful days by his amazingly absurd, extremely inconsiderate, and agonizing act, I’d deal with it.

I hoped.

I stood, held my head high, and gracefully walked down the steps into Jeff’s sunken living room.

Was I ready to violently detach his previously handsome head and burn it in the lovely old stone fireplace that was the room’s focal point?

Perhaps. I’d think about it. Murder magnet that I was . . . But so far I’d always been an advocate for the innocent.

For now, I stepped gingerly onto the southwestern-style area rug, maneuvered around the loglike rustic coffee table, and lowered myself onto the closest piece of the white sectional sofa. I glanced toward the wide-screen TV along the wall, turned off for now.

Where was my old nonfriend and media personality Corina Carey now, when I needed her? I hadn’t heard from her for a whole day or two. Did she already have the scoop on this situation:
Mystery solved—or magnified? Expanding his duties as a new poop-collection organization’s chief executive officer to include acting as senior scooper is none other than a local P.I. who had supposedly disappeared. Film at eleven
.