Double Dog Dare (25 page)

The police department building wasn’t especially lonely. Similar structures that must have housed additional city functions were located nearby.

Okay, so now what should I do? Approach a poop scooper and ask for the time? Or—

No. As I got near the entry, I saw Lois standing inside, talking to Esther. Lois caught my eye, and I waved for her to come out. What we might discuss shouldn’t be for the ears of the uniformed officers I saw behind a glass barrier across the room, apparently the greeters who asked visitors their business before allowing them to pass through to official areas.

Besides, speaking of eavesdropping, that was why I had requested the chief poop scooper’s presence, and I doubted that someone in his dress or condition would be allowed inside, notwithstanding the open-air atmosphere of the large, open entry with its high ceiling. Bad smells aren’t static, and the cops might assume his would permeate their otherwise awe-inspiring structure.

Fortunately, Lois understood my gesture and headed outside, accompanied by Esther. As always, Esther looked like the septuagenarian she was: short, stooped, silver-haired, and sagging, lined face. But looks are deceptive. She was one savvy lady lawyer, and her bright peach suit suggested she wasn’t a wallflower. She’d always been the go-for-the-jugular sort, and I knew that Lois was in excellent legal hands. “Kendra, my dear,” she cried as soon as she was outside, and reached out her hand. I took it, and she used it to draw me close, into a snug hug of greeting.

“Great to see you, Esther,” I said, feeling underdressed in my business casual dark slacks and flowered cotton shirt.

Lois, too, had come clad in a suit. Hers was more modest and subdued than her counsel’s—depression gray, with a plain white blouse beneath. She looked closer to Esther’s age than mine, though she had to be right in between. This situation hadn’t been kind to her psyche or appearance. The limp I’d noticed earlier had grown more pronounced. Her formerly glowing green eyes had dulled, and her blond curls drooped even more than before, along with the wattle beneath her chin.

Glancing at my watch, I saw that the time for the session with the cops was fast approaching. “Any idea why they want to talk to Lois again?” I asked Esther, keeping my voice loud enough for the poop scooper to hear.

“I gather they think they’ve amassed nearly enough evidence to take my client into custody,” Esther replied grimly. At that same client’s sorrowful groan, Esther reached in that direction, grasped Lois’s hand, and added, “But not if I can help it.” Then she turned back toward me. “Kendra, from what I’ve seen of your skills in the past, it’s a good thing for Lois that you’re helping out. One thing I need to ask you, though.”

“What’s that?” I again ensured that my voice was projecting. “Ask away, Esther.”

She looked at me oddly, then said, “My suggestion, my dear, is that you figure out very quickly what happened in this particular murder. Time is running out, I fear, to clear my client.”

That client reacted quite strongly to Esther’s statement, sinking toward the ground as the poop scooper sped from his nearby chores to catch her.

Chapter Twenty

FORTUNATELY, LOIS WAS just a touch woozy, and managed to avoid being carted off by EMTs in a shrieking ambulance. She simply, and firmly, said no.

We all went inside for a few minutes of rest and relaxation while the attentive authorities in the anteroom notified their upstairs counterparts that their meeting would start a little late.

Okay, so they didn’t exclude the cruddy-appearing poop scooper from coming inside and hovering over the frail lady he’d helped to rescue from a fall. And in fact, despite his decrepit appearance, he smelled only half bad. What a surprise.

Jeff played his role well, though, asking often if the lady was okay—and not leaving when she assured him she was, despite the odd stare she shot his way. Did Lois see Jeff inside this awesome disguise? I did, of course, but I’d been a lot physically closer to him than his mother figure—really up close and personal.

Then again, she’d known the real him a lot longer than I had.

In any event, despite curious looks in his direction, she didn’t let on that anything might be amiss. And for his part, Jeff stayed, perhaps acting as if he awaited a tip for his assistance, although he didn’t stick his hand out. We remained in the lobby for at least ten minutes, sitting in chairs along an outer wall near the windows.

Pretending the cops couldn’t hear and the poop scoop guy’s English was worse than it was, I eventually responded to Esther’s comment to me that had upset her client enough to affect her consciousness. Speaking in a lowered voice, I said, “I’ll do whatever I can to find the person who’s really of interest in the . . . incident.” I looked around again, in an attempt to ensure no stranger was listening. At least Corina Carey wasn’t in evidence, taking notes for her miserable
NewsShakers
show. “I have some ideas already.”

Lois, whose chair was in the center, looked a shade brighter. “Really?”

I nodded. “Nothing too exciting yet,” I warned her. “But I do have some questions for you, and their answers could assist me in getting somewhere.”

“Anything,” she said, straightening a little. She regarded me expectantly, green eyes aglow.

Which made me feel a bit awful. What if my inquiry was way off base? Still, I had to try.

“Let’s go back a ways.” I ignored an annoyed gaze from Esther, who was concerned about how long they’d have before the detectives upstairs headed down to round them up. “How did you hear about The Clone Arranger?”

“On a newscast about designer dogs,” Lois said. “They were mentioned, along with some places doing research into genetic enhancement of certain pet traits—like a speed gene for greyhounds, I think.”

I’d done some research in that direction, too, so I knew what she was talking about. “Okay, then,” I continued, “how did you first contact them?”

“I found their website and called for an appointment.”

“Did they ask what kind of dog you were interested in having cloned?”

“Where’s this going, Kendra?” Esther interrupted.

“I know it doesn’t necessarily sound relevant,” I responded. “For right now I don’t want to explain. Please just play along.”

My old friend Esther was usually a pillar of patience, but she didn’t seem inclined to take the time today. Even so, she settled back with a bit of a sigh, her head turned so she wouldn’t miss a word, even if she didn’t comprehend the significance . . . yet.

“So Lois, did they ask anything about your dog?” I repeated.

She shook her head. “I don’t remember anything before, on the phone, like that. I just went there, they looked Flisa over, and asked a few questions about her lineage— like, did I know her parents, how much Akita did she have in her, that kind of thing.”

Aha! That could comport with my theory.

“Tell me as much as you recall about how that visit went.”

Esther rolled her eyes, as if to remind us we didn’t have all day.

“In twenty-five words or less,” I added.

Lois looked lost. “I don’t think . . .”

“I’m kidding,” I said. “But we do need to keep this brief.”

I’d asked some of this stuff before, but not in as much detail. Now, Lois quickly described a visit that had begun much as mine had as Kenni Ballan, there with “my” little Meph. She had met first with sales manager Earl, who had given Lois some paperwork and spouted similar disclaimers about no guarantees of pups and no assurances of exact twinship if the cloning was successful, especially as to personality. She had gotten a lot farther than I had, though, being granted an audience with The Clone Arranger’s science guru Melba Slabach, who’d explained how DNA samples would be taken from Flisa’s skin and elsewhere. Yes, Lois recalled meeting Mason and Debby Payne while she was there, and P.R. specialist Wally Yance, too.

“And while you were there, was there any discussion of whether cloning generally worked best with purebred or mixed-breed dogs?” I inquired at the end, almost as an apparent afterthought.

“Well, yes, I think someone said purebred. Melba, maybe. Or Debby. I mentioned my Akita Ezekiel, at home, but said it was Flisa I wanted to clone, at least for now. And—”

“Kendra, I really think—” Esther interjected.

“I’m through,” I said. “Thanks, Lois. And as far as how to mount a defense in your discussion up there”—I pointed toward where the elevators sat behind barriers, then let my finger raise a little. “You can tell them, or at least give some good hints, that all wasn’t exactly kosher at The Clone Arranger, and other people may have realized it. That could have given a goodly number of other suspects a reason for eliminating Earl. Good luck.”

And I watched, the poop scooper standing at my side, as Esther accompanied Lois upstairs.

HE STOOD BESIDE me at my car. “I know what you were getting at, Kendra.” He sounded all Jeff, and all furious. I only wished I knew why. And that I could shrug his awful attitude off so it stopped stabbing me. “You do have it, then. Or did you know about it before? Was all that just an act, your supposed attempt to help Lois?”

He was entirely out of character as a poop scooper, which surprised me. At least as far as his demeanor, not his disguise.

“What ‘it’ are you talking about?” I asked, not for the first time, glaring right back into his icy blue eyes. “The supposed disappearing ‘it’ from your package?” I was getting angry with his entire act. Why the heck did he choose to continue to mistrust me?

“You obviously know what it is, Kendra, or you wouldn’t have asked those questions.”

“Circular argument here, Hubbard,” I retorted, then slapped my hand over my mouth. Okay, it wasn’t any huge surprise whom I was talking to, but I’d promised not to announce it.

“Besides,” he continued, apparently unfazed, “don’t you see how dangerous it is for you to continue with this? It’s taking up a lot of my time protecting you and getting these guys I’ve hired to back me up.”

“Did I ask you to protect me? And besides, I’m sure that most of what you’re doing now is spying on me, to see if I come up with ‘it,’ whatever ‘it’ is.”

“It,” he said with a chilly stare, “is a thumb drive, as you obviously know, since you’re clearly aware of the information on it.”

“A thumb drive?” One of those handy little storage gadgets to save stuff from computers? “If you did actually put one into that envelope, it wasn’t there when I received it. As I told you, the package was already open. ” And just in case, I’d asked Rachel to see if she’d seen any extra dropped-out contents anywhere. At least now I knew what to ask her about. “And
what
information do you assume I know?”

“Don’t act dumb,” he insisted to me.

Utterly insulted, I scowled and stepped back.

“Look, Jeff, I think the drug that got pumped into your system is continuing to extremely mess with your mind.” I’d come to assume that was a reason for his continued paranoia—even if it couldn’t explain why he didn’t tell me he was back in L.A. in the first place. “Please see a doctor, or better yet, a shrink.”

And I refused to shrink under his increasingly furious stare.

“Okay,” I continued, “here’s how it is with me, whether or not you like it. I started snooping into this situation all because of you. Because I was worried about you, thought you were dead. I began helping Lois because she was important to you. Well, I know now that you’re alive.”
Even if you’re not acting like the sexy, sometimes sweet, always exasperating guy I fell for
. “But Lois still needs help clearing herself from Earl’s murder. If you didn’t do it—”

He shook his head, as if outraged I’d harbor such an ugly suspicion. Well, hell, it was okay for him, but not for me?

“And I don’t think Lois did, so I’m still going to follow my own leads and see if I can figure out who did do it. You can work with me, or stay out of my way.”

“And you can stay out of mine,” he said. “But you’d better watch your own back now. I’m not going to. Not until you turn the thumb drive over to me. My mind may have been messed up, but some things are still clear. See you around, Kendra.” And then he stalked off, leaving me watching
his
back in bewilderment.

What the hell was on that thumb drive, and why did he think it was so important?

I HEADED BACK to Darryl’s to pick up the dogs. Yes, I again kept an eye on my rearview and side mirrors, but still saw no one following me.

Certainly not Jeff, in whatever guise.

But at least this afternoon’s confrontation had taught me one thing. Jeff was alive and definitely kicking—against me. I’d seen on the Internet that ketamine could cause some of his symptoms: paranoia, amnesia, and all sorts of other stuff. But whether it was the drug Jeff had been administered and its lingering, scary effects, or simply his own pigheadedness, he now hated me. I didn’t want to out him just yet to Ned Noralles or any authority, since he seemed to have some reason to stay undercover, logical or not. And he had, after all, ended up in the canal in his car, apparently as the result of Earl’s attack on him.

If I found out who’d killed Earl, I should also be able to determine who’d conspired to harm Jeff. Would that encourage Jeff to get help? Bring back the Jeff I’d known and thought I loved? Who knew?

And that dumb thumb drive. I’d started pondering what might be on it. Did it matter? Probably—if it added to Jeff’s lunacy.

But one thing I was sure of: All bets were off as far as following Jeff’s rules. I wouldn’t purposely divulge his secrets unless I became certain it was in his best interest—or mine. But I still intended to use whatever resources I could to achieve my own results.

What was all this about? Well, for the first time since I’d spoken to Jeff in the resurrected flesh, I called Althea and gave her a computer assignment.

“Have you heard anything about Jeff?” she of course asked as I explained only what I wanted, but not why.