Double Dog Dare (7 page)

“Could I see your lab facilities?” I asked. “To assure myself of their safety?”

“I’m afraid that’s against our policy, unless you actually become one of our clients.”

Drat! Well, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for, anyway. Some telltale sign that Jeff had been here on his quest to help Lois, sure, but what would that be? Some big placard proclaiming JEFF HUBBARD WAS HERE? Not hardly.

“Okay, I’ll think about it,” I said. “Er—Ms. Leeds appeared happy about the cloning you did for her. Could you tell me if there are people who are dissatisfied? And if so, why?”

He seemed to stiffen. In fact, he quite suddenly became very remote. I’d apparently struck a nerve, but surely genuine clients must sometimes ask such probing questions. Didn’t they?

“As with any business, there are always people who find fault, Ms. Ballan. Mostly people who assume that the clones of their pets will be identical to the parent animal, but personalities, and even features, can often differ. And in those rare instances where the parent does not react ideally to the DNA extraction procedure—well, owners can get very upset about such things. That’s why we insist that our clients—the human ones—sign such a detailed contract, to ensure they understand.”
And waive all their rights to argue, undoubtedly
. “Read it, talk it over with Meph, then let us know if you’re still interested. Although I have to tell you that smaller, mixed breeds like Meph—well, our scientists will need to look him over before we can take him on, even if you’re sure you want to go forward. I hope we hear back from you soon.”

Was that true? I somehow found myself being accompanied to the door. Odd.

Well, until I’d read the contract and decided how else to approach this strange and secretive organization to get the information I was determined to extract, I was okay with leaving. For now.

I took Meph home to Maribelle, walked and fed his neighbor, the shepherd mix Stromboli, then checked in with Rachel. She was handling some of my pet-sitting for me this evening.

I couldn’t have been happier to get to Jeff’s and be greeted by my adoring canine children, Lexie and Odin.

Well . . . yes, I could have been happier. If Jeff was there, too.

But the pups and I still had a pleasant evening, eating, walking, then snuggling up in front of the TV on Jeff’s furniture.

I phoned Lois, telling her what I’d found out about The Clone Arranger: nothing especially untoward, though certainly some suspicious behavior.

I even managed to get some sleep that night. Good thing I didn’t know what awaited me the next day.

MY MORNING ROUTINE ran like proverbial, precise clockwork. Lexie and Odin stayed happily home at Jeff’s, and all pet charges were pampered as always. Then I slipped into my fashionable lawyer’s shoes and dug into work in Encino.

Around two in the afternoon, I was sitting in my office, minding my own attorney’s business, sorting a stack of legal papers, when my cell phone rang.

Okay, call it foolish, but my heart raced in its usual eager anticipation of hopefully hearing from Jeff at long last as I lifted my phone out of my purse to answer.

Only . . . although the caller ID was familiar, it wasn’t Jeff.

“Kendra? Oh, thank God I reached you.” Lois’s voice sounded strained and strange. “This is Lois. I need your help.”

“Is something wrong with Ezekiel?” I asked immediately. Why, besides her Akita, would she be calling me . . . unless it had something to do with Jeff?

“No. He’s fine, but someone’s going to need to look in on him tomorrow. Kendra, I’m under arrest. In Glendale. I’m accused of murdering Earl Knox, the guy at The Clone Arranger who killed my poor Flisa.”

Chapter Five

A LITTLE WHILE later, Lois and I sat in the food court in the Glendale Galleria, a gigantic shopping mall. We glared grimly at the disposable coffee cups before us on the table.

I’d noticed before that age hadn’t treated Lois well. Now, she seemed to have added a decade or two. Her chosen clothes, a loose knit top over baggy blue jeans, didn’t help her appearance. Her beautiful blond curls appeared to be a futile attempt at an attractive hairdo.

She said she’d come here straight from the local police department, where she in fact hadn’t been arrested, though she still feared it. They had neither read her her rights nor kept her in custody. She nevertheless assumed it might be a matter of time till that situation was reversed. And although Lois had a neighbor who watched her Akita, Ezekiel, when she wasn’t around, she was extremely worried about how the neighbor would care for him if Lois were incarcerated.

I had no idea where the Glendale police headquarters was, but Lois certainly did . . . now.

“It’s only a few blocks from here,” she informed me after my initial inquiry, “in the Civic Center, which is pretty close to the commercial area. The library’s not far, and . . . But that’s not really what you came to talk about.”

“No,” I agreed. “Let’s discuss Earl.”

I’d already heard a little while listening to one of the news radio stations as I sped here along the freeway from Encino. There had been an incident at a business in Glendale, an apparent homicide, and local authorities were investigating.

Since Glendale is its own small city, it has its own municipal police department, which meant there would be detectives other than Ned Noralles on this case.

That didn’t necessarily mean he’d keep his nose out of it. Any more than I would. He could call it professional courtesy. I could call it unprofessional but absolutely interested snooping. On behalf of a friend—Lois. Perhaps on behalf of two friends, including Jeff, although so far I had only Lois’s suggestion to tie him to The Clone Arranger via an investigation he’d been involved with prior to his disappearance.

Several people with food on trays strolled by, seeking the perfect table, I supposed, since the food court wasn’t especially busy and there were plenty of places to sit. I inhaled the scent of something delicious from one of the stands surrounding this cluster of tables—grilled meat, I guessed. Instead of succumbing to the hunger that suddenly spread through my half-empty stomach—I’d nibbled some nuts earlier—I took a sip of the strong but cooling brew in front of me.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll ask some obvious questions. What were you doing at The Clone Arranger this morning? I mean, if the cops took you in for interrogation after an apparent murder there, I’d imagine you were at least nearby, right?” Her presence in Glendale supported this presumption.

She sighed so deeply that the wattle beneath her chin wiggled. “Yes, I was. After you and I talked last night, I couldn’t sleep. So much was going on that involved those awful people. I’d asked Jeff to look into what had happened, how they’d caused Flisa’s death instead of cloning her, and Jeff vanished. You, at least, were still around—although I’d held my breath after sending you there—but they seemed to be pulling the wool over your eyes.”

Suddenly feeling defensive, I opened my mouth to protest. Okay, I hadn’t learned anything useful, except that the cloning company appeared to disclaim even more than I might if I was their lawyer . . . maybe. So what had I derived from my visit? A whole lot of additional questions.

“I wasn’t there long enough to form an informed opinion, ” I began, but Lois held up her hand.

“Well, there’s definitely something wrong with the place. Jeff knew it, too, which is why we can’t find him.”

“So you think—what? That Earl Knox did something to make Jeff disappear, and now Earl’s dead, too?” I nearly bit my tongue at the faux pas I’d just committed in saying that terrible word “too.”

“What do you know that I don’t, Kendra?” Lois frowned fiercely. “Have you got something about Jeff?”

“No,” I asserted. “I misspoke. And even though there’s an apparent connection in our viewpoints, that doesn’t mean the authorities will agree. So far, there’s nothing to connect Jeff to The Clone Arranger except your request that he look into the place, and you’ve made it clear you don’t want anyone to know about that. Only now . . .”

“Now I did tell the policeman who interrogated me,” she said with a sigh. “He got such a gleam in his eye that I was sure he thought I’d delivered a confession, complete with motive.”

“What, because you asked a friend to look into the place, and the friend seems to have floated off in a California Aqueduct canal, you decided to kill one of the employees? ”

She buried her face in her deeply wrinkled hands. “Oh, Kendra, if you put it like that, they’re sure to arrest me. And I haven’t even told them yet that I think Earl somehow killed my poor Flisa.”

“How?” I inquired, trying not to either shake my head or form an anti-Lois opinion. I knew what it was like to have a whole lot of evidence against me in a murder investigation.
Two
investigations. And I’d been innocent.

Hopefully, Lois was, too.

“Why would you think Earl Knox had anything to do with your pup’s death?” I repeated. “I mean, even assuming her death had something to do with her visit there, why not blame one of the other people at The Clone Arranger? Besides Earl, I met only the owner, Mason Payne. Why not him, or someone else?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. But Mason seems to personally handle the people he thinks can give the most publicity—and investment funds—to the organization. His sister, Debby, is a quiet soul, but jumps in to take care of the animals there for cloning, so I guess it could have been her. And Earl? Well, he struck me as a loose cannon, though I can’t tell you why. He sold their services, took charge of cloning procedures, and generally managed nearly everything. That’s why I assumed he was there when the DNA sample was taken from Flisa. I can’t swear she was mishandled, but they told me soon afterward that the sample wasn’t effective and they’d try again, but weren’t optimistic. But before I could get her there, she . . . she . . .” Lois suddenly started to sob.

I filled in the final word. “She died,” I suggested softly, and Lois nodded while stuffing a napkin in front of her soggy face. “How old was she?”

“Eleven. And she had some physical problems, so I knew she wouldn’t be with me much longer. That’s why I wanted her baby this way. One that would be as close to being
her
as possible. Only . . . only . . . it didn’t work out.”

Which didn’t necessarily mean that anyone there had mishandled the ailing and aging pup. Yet Lois obviously assumed so. Were her accusations of their misdeeds spoken only in grief and not in threat?

“Why do the police think you might have harmed Earl? Did you go there today with some reason in mind?” My coffee was now definitely tepid, but I didn’t want to go purchase a refill in the middle of what I’d been hoping to learn for the last twenty minutes.

“I went because I wasn’t happy with how things went with you yesterday. No new information. I just figured I’d go there and say I had another Akita, a purebred, I was considering cloning, although I absolutely had no intention of bringing Ezekiel along and risking his life. And when I got to talk to some of the people again about what went wrong with Flisa—they’d seemed sort of willing to discuss it before—I figured I could offhandedly ask if they’d had anyone asking too many questions lately who didn’t seem interested in their services. Reporters, maybe. And, gee, any investigators?”

I wondered why she hadn’t done that before, instead of getting me involved. But I didn’t think now was the best time to ask. “And did anyone answer?”

“No one spoke with me, although there were other people in the waiting room. Earl came in and gave me one of his awful grins. I shouted at him when he started to shut the inner door in my face.”

“So you gave up?”

“No. I sat there for a while, thinking. A few people leaving the facility stared at me, but no one was around to see when I actually left.”

“And somewhere around that time—”

“Supposedly, not long after that, Earl was killed.”

“How?” I asked.

“They didn’t say.” And neither had the news. “The cops said they’re just looking at all possible suspects. Why they may have singled me out over, say, Mason, I can’t tell you. But—”

“But you think they have.”

She nodded. “Kendra, there’s some stuff I’d like to tell you, as an attorney. You see—”

“I’m not your attorney,” I interrupted immediately. “I’m not an expert in criminal matters, and if I don’t represent you, I might have to testify to stuff you tell me. But I happen to know of a really good criminal attorney. Would you like me to put you in touch with her?”

Lois nodded yet again. “Is she expensive?”

“She’s reasonable. Just talk to her about what you can afford.” And I gave her the contact info for Esther Ickes, the attorney who’d helped me through some awful times.

I would warn Esther, of course.

And I wondered when in the world—if ever—I’d stop being a murder magnet.

BY THE TIME we finished our coffee and conversation, it was late enough in the day that I decided not to return to my law firm. Sitting in the parking garage in my rental car, I called Mignon on my cell. Our receptionist assured me that no emergencies had occurred. Not that day at the office, at least. I promised I’d see her tomorrow, then hung up.

Next call, as I ignored a glaring guy who seemed eager to grab my space, was to Jeff’s office. I reached Althea immediately. “Hi, Kendra,” she said eagerly. “Any news?”

“That’s what I was going to ask you.” I paused. “Actually, there is something I’m looking into. I have a lead on what Jeff was working on when he vanished, but the person who hired him wanted strict confidentiality.” Did I have an obligation to Lois not to tell the person who just might have the best resources in the world to look deeply into The Clone Arranger and its reputation? Sure, Jeff might have been sworn to secrecy. Lois had asked me to step in and help find him. Did that mean I had to keep her secret, too, presumably to protect her with her church friends?