Wookie, his first impression, sounded worse than Truffles. Beast? Appropriate, but a little harsh. Skippy? No. Brownie? No. Cocoa? Fudgesicle?
Jack scowled and muttered, "Shit" under his breath. The dog's ears prickeda relatively massive undertaking. "Yeah, I'll bet you've heard that one before."
Leaning back, he studied the mutt, like an artist examines a bowl of fruit. God only knew why, but it looked like a Phil. Now that Jack thought about it, even filthy, he'd looked like a Phil.
"Phil McPhee it is." He sighed and shook his head. "Phil. No adoption, no last name required. Just Phil."
His thumb pressed the blow-dryer's toggle switch. "And
just
till tomorrow afternoon."
7
T
he slow, monotonous drizzle had commenced at dusk. All day, overcast skies suggested a possibility of rain. While some native Ozarkers may have washed and waxed their vehicles to up the chance of precipitation, they didn't skimp on watering their vegetable gardens and porch plants.
Rain shellacked the streets and burbled along the sloped concrete curbing. Pyrotechnic thunderstorms drew watchers to windows and doorways. Tonight's sporadic quivers of cloud lightning and muted rumbles fostered scant, if any supervision.
The gloomy weather, in other words, couldn't be more perfect for a burglary. And less so, for the increasingly narcoleptic private detective parked near the deHavens' highfalutin rock pile.
Slumped in the Taurus's driver's seat, Jack bugged out his eyeballs, rolling them around in isometric tandem. A nest of candy bar wrappers was batted away to grope for the foam drink cup wedged in the holder. Rubbing slushy chunks of crushed ice over his face and neck, he whistled backward, as the runoff trickled down his back and chest, paused ever so briefly at the dam that was his jockey shorts' waistband, then forged onward and irrevocably downward.
He gnawed on the drink straw, yearning for a cigarette. He couldn't light it if he had one, which is why he'd quit years ago. For a while, smokeless tobacco provided the nicotine buzz without the telltale orange glow. Hating the taste was stimulating in itself, until that dark, unstormy night when he mistook a spit cup for his coffee cup.
The memory alone cleared some of the brain fog. Jack swished a mouthful of diluted soda, as his gaze arced from the driver's side mirror to the rearview, then the passenger's side mirror. His butt and legs were numb. The crotch of his jeans was damp and clingy from the crushed-ice baptisms. He was bored out of his gourd, but at least he hadn't been followed this time.
After Cherise Taylor dropped off Phil at Merry Hills, she'd met Jack at the mall's food court. They'd split a sub sandwich, exchanged keys and vehicles, then traded back at an abandoned farmstead five miles from town.
Great gal, that Cherise. Posing as Belle deHaven at the kennel had been a lark for her. Jack's blip of jealousy at hearing
all about
the fantastic guy Cherise went out with Friday night and Saturday was reflex, not regret. So what if her first date with Mr. Wonderful was a lousy four days after she and Jack broke up on the phone?
"Live and let live." His fingers bobbed for another clump of ice. "I'm happy for"
He tensed, his eyes riveted on the deHavens' bowed, two-story front window. The drapes, if there were any, hung outside the bronzed metal frame. Belle always had believed the fishbowl effect discouraged intruders.
"Close the blinds and the curtains and a creeper can't tell if you're home or not," she'd agree, then add, "but the neighbors can't see some jerk carting off everything you own, either. Unless he closes them, and if they're always open, that's a tip-off right there."
The opposing schools of thought had equal numbers of fans and detractorslaw enforcement and insurers included. Twenty-four-hour convenience stores were constantly warned about plastering advertising posters over exterior windows. Maintaining a clear, well-lit line of sight didn't prevent robberies, but did discourage them.
The deHaven house was dark, inside and out. Jack supposed in her dash to make her afternoon flight, Belle had neglected to switch on any lamps or the exterior lights. Illumination from the solar-powered landscape lights wouldn't attract a self-respecting moth.
Odds were that tiny interior flicker he'd seen was an electronic thermostat cycling on or off. A wink of lightning reflected in a picture or in a mirror. Ninety-nine to one, it was a miserable private detective's imagination begging for an excuse to bail out of his car.
He exited the Taurus, staying to the soggy shadows. His stride was brisk, but as normal as a man could fake whose feet felt as though they'd been encased in concrete. That juke-and-weave-between-the-tree-trunks crap was for spy movies and TV gumshoes. Act like a rational, law-abiding reason exists for walking around in the soup at midnight, and unseen witnesses will assume you're just a schmuck out looking for an escaped cat.
A wide berth was given the motion-detector lights trained down on the three-bay garage doors. The soffit overhanging the solid side wall had no security devices; one lurked under the rear corner, monitoring the gate accessing the backyard.
"Contemporary rustic" was Belle's term for the joint's overall design. Jack figured the thick, six-foot fieldstone wall enclosing the back half of the property met the rustic specs, but it was almost as easy to climb as a ladder.
The moment he dropped to the other side, he crossed the line between a blow-off trespassing charge and the real, indefensible deal. The difference could cost him his license. Fictional P.I.s can afford to play fast and loose with the law. Credentialed investigators don't jaywalk, much less break-and-enter presumably after the fact.
The Realtor who'd listed the other decoy house had obtained permission from its owner for Jack's one-guy sting operation. Here, if worse came to handcuffs, Belle would lie for him. He was almost sure of it.
Jack flattened himself against the house to evade any security camera's electronic eye. Sliding sideward, his windbreaker scraped the irregular stone surfacea noise louder by several decibels to his ears than it actually was. So was the slurp of his crepe-soled oxfords sinking in a shallow gully carved by the downspout's runoff.
Progress halted at a heat-pump unit camouflaged by horseshoed shrubbery. Go around, and a motion detector would nail him. There was almost but not quite enough space to giant-step over the unit's conduits and slither behind it. From Jack's vantage point, the only visible exterior door was the metal-clad utility type that probably led into the garage.
Which begged a question he should have asked himself long before now. If he was pinned to the friggin' wall by the deHavens' security system, how did an intruder slink past it?
Answerthe brief glint of light he'd swear he'd seen inside a minute ago
was
an electronic thermostat control, a wink of reflected lightning, a hallucinatory figment of his imagination.
Those still unsatisfactory conclusions and stubbornness had him twisting off a branch from the heat pump's hedge. Jack retreated to the corner motion detector and waved the stick to breach the monitor's invisible electronic beam.
Nothing. A second box above the utility door scored the same nonresult. He about-faced and proceeded toward a pergola shading the terrace, thinking his suddenly airheaded ex-wife owed him huge for guarding the house she'd forgotten to secure.
In a blinding flash, the patio, yard and the family room inside lit up like a prison compound during an escape attempt.
Jack froze. Dilated pupils reduced the visual field to a fuzzy, round blur. As he whirled to run for the gate, a lower section in the utility door swung upward. Stunned, half-blind, he braced to fend off the dog for whom the pet door was intended. What emerged was a pair of gloved hands, then a stocking-capped head, followed by slender shoulders clad in a dark, long-sleeved shirt.
Jack's wheezy "Hey, you" was like a starter's pistol at an Olympic hundred-meter dash. The burglar was faster off the blocks, but no match for a flying shoestring tackle. Rolling together on the wet grass, the intruder seemed to have six elbows, knees, an extra set of teeth and no compunction against using them.
Jack's fist hauled back to knock the son of a bitch into next Wednesday. Wrenching away, the burglar's cap fell off. A tangle of long, sweaty hair unfurled like a tent flap.
"Holy" He squinted at the glowering eye and face behind that hirsute veil. "Dina?"
She kneed him in the groin, tucked, pushed up and took off.
Cursing and cupping his crotch, Jack ape-loped after her.
She was scaling the rock wall when he grabbed her shirttail. Yanking her backward on her butt, he straddled her, detonating fresh, all-inclusive paroxysms of pain.
"Give it up, damn it. I don't wanna hurt you."
Squirming like a ninety-pound wildcat, she panted, "Lemme go. I didn't take anythingI swear I didn't. Just let me get out of here and I promise, I'll never do it again."
"Gee," Jack grunted. "That's original."
"I
won't.
" With her wrists pinned to the ground, a gloved finger motioned the sign of the cross. "I'm not really a thief"
"Also original." Jack's head cocked at a siren wailing in the distance. By Dina's expression, she heard it, too.
"Please, Mr. McPhee. Don't turn me in to the police. At least give me a chance to explain."
Explaining his presence to the cops wasn't at the top of Jack's personal hit parade, either. The original plan was to tail the thief home, then tip the police. Nice, neat, unquestionably legal.
The part-time dog groomer and presumed Calendar Burglar he was sitting on could implicate him in the thefts to plea-bargain the charges against her. Or
charge,
if she couldn't be tied to the prior burglaries. Jack's contract with National Federated Insurers should be a nol-pros on an accessory rap. As a rule, he preferred to not mix business with felony arrest warrants.
"C'mon," he said, lurching to his feet, then pulling her up. With her arm clamped in a "don't mess with me" grip, he grabbed the stocking cap, then ran for the side gate.
Struggling to keep up, she cried, "Where are you taking me?"
"My car." He shot the gate latch with a fist, then kicked it shut behind them. "Then as far away from here as we can get."
Floodlights above the garage and entry door blazed like a locomotive's headlamps. He steered Dina into the remaining shadows, the siren they'd heard was louder and closing in fast.
Then it stopped. Silence didn't exactly descend. Not with Jack's pulse hammering in his ears and his undertall captive huffing, "The cops
must've gotten
another call."
"Uh-uh, kid. This is high-roller holler. Siren en route, only."
The one thing he'd done right all night was leave the driver's door unlocked. Jack pushed Dina inside, crammed in behind her and slammed the door. The childproof locks clicked a nanosecond before she jerked the passenger's door handle.
A jittery red halo rose above yonder hill. Jack keyed the ignition, shifted into Reverse and floored it. A hard crank to the right and a sharp left whipped the sedan into an adjacent Tudor's circle driveway. Jamming the car into Park and killing the engine sufficed as brakes without any taillight flash.
"Hit the deck," he said. "And stay there."
To his astonishment, Dina slid off the seat and crouched on the floorboard. Not so surprising was a surly "You said we were getting out of here."
"If we're lucky, we will." Jack curled sideways, his cheek resting on the window ledge and head obscured by the side mirror's housing. "If we're not, the people who live here are, at this very moment, speed-dialing 911."
"But"
"Look, Ms. whatever your last name is, it's your fault we didn't make it to the car fast enough to drive off into the sunset."
"I was scared to death. I didn't know who'd grabbed me."
"You did before you damn near gelded me."
After a pause that may or may not have contained a stifled chuckle, came a righteous "If you're not a cop and you're definitely not a jewelry salesman, who are you?"
"Private investigator." Jack shrank down as the patrol unit approached the deHavens' address. "Don't make a sound," he whispered. "Boy in blue at eleven o'clock."
A fender-mounted spotlight swept the property from lot line to lot line, then zeroed in on the gate. The cruiser backed up to blockade the driveway. The uniform stepped out of the patrol unit, gandering around as he slipped a nightstick into the loop on his utility belt. Twice, he eyeballed the Taurus parked in the driveway across the street.
It's the housekeeper's car, Jack telegraphed in a convincing, mental tone of voice. Or maybe good ol' Aunt Agnes is visiting from Des Moines.
Another unit arrived from the opposite direction. A consultation ensued, punctuated by gestures and finger-pointing. Armed with Maglites, the officers rang the deHavens' doorbell, checked each garage door, then split up to circle around back.
