Double Dog Dare (21 page)

He’d been the one to give me instruction in private investigating, so it wasn’t any big surprise that he had acted pretty professionally on his own—except for one big lack: backup. Wisely, he decided not to burst in on the business and tell the people at The Clone Arranger that he was probing their practices to see if they’d done something awful in their work with Flisa. Unwisely cocksure of himself, he told no one at Hubbard Security but had taken a quick trip undercover on his own.

Unlike me, he hadn’t shown up there with a pet supposedly to be cloned. Instead, he had brought out some of his cache of fake credentials and pretended to be there from the state to inspect the facility.

He stared at me sheepishly. “Apparently, I wasn’t undercover enough. I talked to some of them. One guy in particular. Playing my government role, I scared him into telling me stuff he shouldn’t. Even got him to . . . well, never mind. I did some more looking around and . . . anyway, next thing I recall was being sprawled in the backseat of my Escalade. I wasn’t entirely conscious, but knew enough to suspect I’d been drugged. Someone in the front seat was talking on a cell phone. I wasn’t awake enough to hear everything, but I heard enough to know I was in big trouble.”

“What do you remember?” I asked, intrigued and horrified at the same time. I was fairly certain I knew what happened next—an apparent car accident, with the Escalade and Jeff winding up in the California Aqueduct.

He frowned, as if in concentration—an expression I remembered well on the old, undisguised Jeff. I’d found it sweet and sexy. But now, I refused to allow myself to feel anything . . . didn’t I?

“Well,” he said slowly, “the driver raised his voice, which was probably what woke me up. He was angry he’d been forced to do the ‘dirty work.’ That’s how he phrased it. But he promised to take care of things on his end. Argued with whoever he was talking to and said something like ‘You got to someone in this clown Hubbard’s own operation this fast, like you promised? That’s great—his girlfriend? You’ll be the one to follow up on that after I do this, right?’ I guess the answer was affirmative, since the guy said ‘great’ again.”

“You were drugged, unsure of what you were hearing. Yet you took this to mean you couldn’t trust me?” A sense of utter outrage made me want once more to kick the guy across the table from me. But sense and self-preservation took over. He might look like a fragile senior citizen, but under that dumb disguise he was hunky, muscular Jeff.

“I didn’t know what to believe,” he said, sounding exhausted. Looking that way, too, but I refused to allow myself to feel sorry for this sorry excuse of a former boyfriend. “And then . . . well, I must have fallen unconscious again. Next thing I knew, I was in the Escalade, underwater. Fortunately, good Boy Scout and security expert that I am, I kept a tool inside the car that allowed me to break the window and escape. I floated for quite a distance, I guess. I wasn’t sure where I was, or when it was, when I finally pulled myself out of that cold canal. Wasn’t even sure who I was and how I got there for a while, either. And then, when I started to remember bits and pieces, I wasn’t sure what was real. Who I could trust. Or whether what I’d heard meant you were in danger, too—without my knowing from whom.”

“I get it,” I said solemnly. And I did. He had been drugged. Whether or not he heard what he recalled, he’d become confused.

Only . . . that was now a couple of weeks ago. Why hadn’t he figured things out in between?

And another thing had started to bother me. “Do you know who the driver of the car was?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, and his hands made fists on the sides of the table. “I’d met the bastard first thing at The Clone Arranger. It was Earl Knox.”

The guy who’d been murdered soon thereafter. A guy whom Jeff—who’d been drugged, confused, and furious— obviously had issues with.

Had Jeff been the one who killed him?

Chapter Seventeen

I DIDN’T ENLIGHTEN Jeff about this latest ugly suspicion of mine—that he had recently gotten revenge for the attack on his person and Escalade by disposing of the attacker, Earl.

Instead, I continued to ask questions that I hoped would help him straighten out what appeared to be continued confusion in his mind. And felt strangely pleased that, even having endured all that, he had still managed to worry about me—maybe.

I took a sip of wine and went on conversationally, as if we were discussing something simple, like how to pat a puppy. Which I did, after putting my glass down, since Lexie and Odin now sat on the floor on either side of me. My dear, doggy protectors.

Assuming they’d take my side over Jeff’s should I need an actual defense—a major and likely misguided assumption. My sweet little Lexie undoubtedly would, but a bigger, broader, more alpha Akita like Odin—who just happened to be Jeff’s?

“So,” I said, “Earl agreed to do ‘the dirty work,’ which I assume meant getting rid of you.”

Jeff nodded. “That’s what I figured.”

“But you don’t know who he was talking to.”

“Probably somebody at The Clone Arranger.”

“The owner, Mason Payne, or someone else?”

Jeff shrugged. “That’s what I need to know. And, before you ask, no, I still don’t know who he referred to or what he meant when he said the person he spoke with had ‘gotten to’ someone in my operation—or my girlfriend. I’ve been looking into The Clone Arranger even more since my return—although less directly. What’s the Scoop, and my working outfit”—he gestured at his current disguise—“give me a lot of latitude to show up all over the place and still stay invisible. And I’ve hired some guys I taught in classes in other Southern California cities to come here fast and scoop poop with me, while observing your house and mine and other pertinent places.” He waved his hand in the air to silence me as I opened my mouth to comment. “And before you say anything, it wasn’t simply to spy on you or the others, but to protect you, in case what they’d meant was that they intended to harm you.”

“Even after they thought they’d gotten rid of you?”

He nodded. “Especially after . . . well, Earl was killed, and I’m sure one of them did it. Plus, I’m fairly certain I know why. But the who still eludes me.”

“And you’re not telling me why . . . why?”

“Because if you’re part of their scheme, you know why. And because . . . well, if you aren’t part of their scheme, you’d already have told me something I was anticipating you’d say, to convince me you weren’t. Handed it over.”

“You mean that important and extravagant speaking schedule? Well, gee, I’ll go get it for you.” I stood as if to head for the office to retrieve that stupid envelope and its supposedly critical contents. “Oh, wait. I’ll bet you mean that other mysterious and supposedly missing insert.”

Jeff stood, too, and shook his head, looking more stressed than I’d ever seen him. And it wasn’t simply his makeup job that turned him into a stranger. “I can’t believe this! Oh, hell, sure I can. I did a lot of things wrong in this situation, Kendra. I can’t even begin to tell you. . . . Well, yes, I can. Do you know, I was actually in the clear. I got what I needed my first time in that damned place, amazingly enough. I thought I did the right thing by sending it to you, but now you . . . And then, a little while after I left, Earl called me to come back for even more evidence, and I was stupid enough to go. That’s when all the crap happened. And yet, there I was, a career cop first, then what I thought was a pretty smart P.I.—but I still fell for it. Fell for
you
. Damn!”

He slammed his fist down on the small table, rattling the empty dishes so hard that Odin growled and Lexie slunk away with her ears down and tail between her legs. Poor, uninformed babies.

And I included myself in that. Too many holes and painful implications in Jeff’s story.

Too many unanswered questions that I decided not to ask now, mostly since I knew he wouldn’t care to comment— even assuming his muddied mind had any answers. But the circularity of his conversation suggested to me that whatever the drug he’d been given, whatever else had happened since then, he was one hurtfully confused P.I.

Unless this was all part of his undercover act.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I asserted as mildly as I could.
Or on me
. “Dessert?” I felt my face color after that inquiry, since it could clearly be taken as an invitation for something sexual. And if he took it that way, I’d simply have to disabuse him of the idea.

Not now. Maybe not ever again, if we didn’t get through the current murky morass of misinformation and mistrust.

“No, thanks. I’d better get going.” His ire had deflated to obvious misery, and he stared down at the floor, clearly dejected.

His leaving was a good idea. Even so . . . “This is your home,” I reminded him. And I hated to see him go while obviously so sad.

“But it’s not the home of the owner of What’s the Scoop,” he said. “And that’s the person I was when I came inside.”

“No, you were a worker who helped to save my skin from the rampant hybrid car.” All the more reason to keep this man around. The car was still out there somewhere. So was its unidentified driver.

Jeff hadn’t been pleased earlier when I informed him I’d often seen the car around me lately, but never had the right angle to obtain a license number. Of course, he theoretically had the opportunity to do that himself today, but was too busy scooping poop and keeping an eye on his house, and then shoving me out of the way, to accomplish that basic little investigative act. And hadn’t he been driving that now-familiar beige minivan that forced the hybrid car away from Darryl’s driveway? If so, why hadn’t
he
noted the needed license then?

That he hadn’t was, in a way, a good thing, since he couldn’t castigate me too hard.

But it mostly was a bad thing, since neither of us could single out the person who apparently wanted me squashed.

Most likely the same one who’d wanted Jeff “taken care of.”

I slowly walked him toward the door.

“You need to call Ned Noralles right now,” Jeff said as he stood in the entry. The dogs sat down sadly at his feet, as if understanding he didn’t intend to stay. “Tell him what happened. Insist he send some patrols to keep an eye on you.”

“Sure, I’ll call Ned.” I attempted not to scoff. “I’m certain he’ll be really excited now about what happened a couple of hours ago: an attempt on my life without an earlier notification, and nothing to identify whodunit except that it’s the driver of one of those new, increasingly popular hybrids. And since I can’t tell him anything about how I really got out of the way . . .”

“Call anyway,” Jeff insisted. “Even though it happened out of his jurisdiction, he should be interested that this is related to the Earl Knox homicide.”

Which statement bounced right back into my mind my earlier wonderment. And fear.

Could that killer have been Jeff?

Surely not. If it was, why would he be so eager to bring in his greatest nemesis on the LAPD, Ned Noralles?

As obfuscation and cover-up of the truth . . . ?

He must have read the confusion on my face. “I’m really sorry about all of this, Kendra,” he said. And then he pulled me into his arms once more, and, to my amazement, I let him.

Beneath the whole senior citizen scooper disguise, I again felt that hard, hot body I’d come to know and adore and lust after so longingly. . . .

He gave me one heck of another desire-stirring kiss.

When he pulled away, he looked deeply into my eyes with his smoldering, sexy blue ones and said, “One more thing, Kendra.”

“Yes?” I responded breathlessly.

“I know about your interest in that veterinarian—Venson.”

My lust chilled yet again to slush. “That isn’t your business. And anyway—”

“He’s connected to The Clone Arranger. He’s one of the guys on my suspect list. I just thought you should know.”

And before I could comment that Tom was also already on mine, Mr. Poop Scooper was gone.

I did as he’d directed, though. I called Ned. Even reached him right away. He was involved in an unrelated homicide investigation, which meant he wasn’t exactly inclined to have a protracted conversation with me.

But he did express concern. “You didn’t see the driver? Get any identifying information?” The same salvo of questions I’d assumed he would ask.

“Unfortunately, no,” I told him.

“Well, I’ll get some additional patrols on your street tonight to keep an eye out for this bozo.”

“Jeff ’s street,” I said. “Lexie and I are staying here with his dog, Odin.”

Ned’s voice softened, which I thought was especially sweet for a hardened homicide cop who actually despised the guy he assumed was deceased. “Kendra, you know that the chances of our locating Jeff alive grow smaller every day he’s gone.”

He’s not gone
, I itched to shout.
He’s alive!
But instead I said what was expected, in the saddest voice I could dredge up. “I’m just hanging on the best I can.”

“Call anytime,” he said. Nice man, for a cop who hated my crime-solving guts. “Good night, Kendra.”

A LONG TIME later, as I finally prepared to shower and get ready for bed, my cell phone chimed.

I jumped. This was the time Jeff always used to call. But he had just been here. And I’d thought he was remaining undercover.

When I checked the caller ID, the number was unfamiliar.

Which worried me. Was it the hybrid car driver calling to check to see where I was? Ready to do something nasty to me here? Maybe, despite calling Ned, I should have bundled the dogs and me into my car and headed home, where I might be safer behind my wrought iron gate and the security system in my garage-top apartment.

Of course, Jeff was the security expert. His system should be state of the art and even more foolproof—or had he lost out in that, too?

“Hello?” I said loudly, unwilling to show my inner scaredness to whoever it was.