Lost Dog (A Gideon and Sirius Novel Book 3) (8 page)

Love me, love my dog. I was getting to know that about Heather.

“Are you going to bring Angie Arrow?” Katie asked.

“I’m going to bring my K-9 partner, as well as Angie. Did you call her Angie Arrow?”

“Heather sometimes called her that. I think she got the name Arrow from some dog in an old movie.”

“
The Point
,” I said.

“That’s it. She was always humming a song from that movie. Heather said it was a favorite of hers.”

“Me and My Arrow,” I said.

“Yes! She loves that song.”

Harry Nilsson sang it, but I didn’t tell her that, nor did I offer up its refrain. Katie gave me the name of the restaurant and its address. It was only after we said our good-byes that I found myself humming Heather’s favorite song.
The Point
is a short, cute animated film. Its hero is Oblio, the only roundheaded person in the land. Oblio’s faithful companion is his dog, Arrow. I didn’t really know Heather Moreland, but what I did know about her I liked.

Angie and I made our way back to the front of the house. I closed the gate behind us while Sirius made a fuss about our return. I added some music to our celebration.

Sirius and I were like Heather Moreland and Angie. We both had our Arrow.

Judging by Angie’s perked-up interest, she knew the song. I wasn’t Oblio or Heather, but she still rewarded me with some tail wagging.

CHAPTER 10

LOST DOG ANSWERS TO NAME OF LUCKY

Sergeant Sergio Reyes arrived at Heather’s home twenty minutes after I put the call in to Burbank PD. He was wearing a uniform that made him look doughy, but no one looks svelte wearing a Kevlar vest. Reyes limped up to the porch where I was waiting.

“Gout,” he said by way of explanation. “It’s a bitch.”

“The disease of kings,” I said.

“Maybe there’s something to that,” he said, “seeing as my last name is Reyes.”

I knew enough Spanish to know his surname translated to “kings.”

“The doctor says my uric acid is sky-high. He recommends I lose twenty-five pounds and drink less. I asked if he could give me a prescription for a new job.”

“If he’s handing out those kinds of prescriptions, there will be a long line of cops waiting for them.”

Reyes leaned against the wall, putting his weight on his good foot. I had told him Heather’s story over the phone, or at least given him the bullet points.

“Where’s the dog?” he asked.

“She’s with my K-9 partner in the car.”

My vehicle is equipped with a special AC system to keep Sirius cool in the car even on very hot days. It also has what’s referred to as a
Hot-N-Pop
, which is a system that sets off an alarm if it gets too hot in the car. And if for some reason I can’t respond to that alarm, a door automatically pops open.

“So you say this woman”—he looked at his notes to get her name—“this Heather Moreland didn’t show up for work the last two days, and her neighbor said he hasn’t seen her for a few days?”

I nodded, and then did my Vanna White imitation, pointing to the mailbox and then the motion detector. “The mail hasn’t been collected. And if you look at the motion detector, you can see it appears to have been purposely disabled. I was told Ms. Moreland was finalizing her divorce and the ex wasn’t happy about that and supposedly was making threats.”

Reyes winced, but not from what I’d told him. He was still trying to get comfortable. “So did you enter the house?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He stared at me. “I’d hate to find out otherwise and have that come back and bite me in the butt if I find anything that makes this look like a crime scene. You sure about that?”

“I’m sure. I did go in the backyard, but I didn’t touch anything. Angie—that’s the dog—was anxious to get back there.”

That information didn’t sit well with Reyes. “You’d think an LAPD detective would know better than to potentially dirty the waters, but you just couldn’t wait to snoop around, could you?”

Little brother had a chip on his shoulder. “I could wait, and I did. I had cause to go inside the house, but I didn’t.”

“This is Burbank, not L.A., just in case you might have forgotten that.”

“And just in case you forgot, I came here to return a dog.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, not even making a pretense of hiding his doubts.

It was probably his gout talking, or at least I hoped it was. I handed him my business card and said, “If you don’t need me for anything else, I’ll be taking off.”

It would be up to him to canvass the neighborhood, see if he could locate any surveillance cameras at nearby homes, check on the status of Heather’s credit-card purchases, and start a missing-person search. I would gladly leave that to him.

“Where’s the neighbor you talked to?” he asked.

I pointed to Becker’s house.

“And where did you say this woman works?”

“The happiest place on Earth,” I said.

At his blank expression, I added, “Disney Studios Burbank.”

“What are you planning to do with her dog?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Right now that’s still giving me paws for thought.”

He didn’t get the pun, which was just as well. My escape was delayed another ten minutes when Sergeant Reyes asked me to wait while he did a quick inspection outside and then inside the house. When Reyes returned, he wasn’t as convinced as I was that a struggle had taken place.

“No blood,” he said. “And the master bedroom is kind of a mess, but I’ve seen worse. It could have been she was just entertaining someone.”

I decided not to argue.

“Here,” he said, handing me a blue dog collar with tags. “You can use this more than I can.”

He’d evidently found Angie’s collar in the house. I did a quick inspection. One of the tags was a record of rabies vaccination; the other identified Angie by name and supplied two telephone numbers.

“Where did you find this?” I asked.

“It was on the floor next to her bed. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ms. Moreland just took off for a long weekend, and the dog got out without her knowing it. Nine out of ten times these kinds of situations turn out to be big fuckups. But I’ll do whatever needs to be done to locate her.”

“Keep me in the loop,” I said.

“I’ll do that.”

I didn’t believe him, and he didn’t believe me. And I didn’t mention that I was leaving to have lunch with Heather’s friend and coworker Katie Rivera.

I arrived at Moore’s Delicatessen on Orange Grove Avenue right at the agreed-upon time. With two dogs in tow, I headed toward the deli’s patio area. Angie identified Katie Rivera before I did and started yanking hard on the leash and pulling me toward her.

“Heel!” I said.

Sirius immediately responded; Angie kept tugging until she was greeted by an attractive dark-haired and -complexioned woman who looked to be about thirty. Until now Angie hadn’t expressed much enthusiasm for anything or anyone, but she was excited to see Katie. The woman bent down and hugged her, and appeared unmindful of Angie’s slobbering.

When she finished with their reunion, Katie extended a hand my way, and with a lilting Latina accent said, “Katrina Rivera.” Then she sounded like an Anglo when she added, “But everyone except my parents calls me Katie.”

As we shook hands, I said, “Michael Gideon and Sirius. I’m Michael. He’s Sirius.”

“Thanks for clarifying that,” she said.

We took our seats; Sirius settled next to me while Angie leaned next to Katie.

“At the onset I should say that I’m here more in an unofficial capacity than not,” I said. “The Burbank Police Department is now looking into Heather Moreland as a potential missing person. It’s their jurisdiction and their case. I’m with LAPD.”

She frowned. “I thought you wanted to ask me questions about Heather.”

“I do, but officially I’m only working the Angie angle. I’m not going to let jurisdictional restraints stop me from looking for Heather.”

“I called the Burbank Police yesterday afternoon,” said Katie, “and told them I was worried about Heather because she hadn’t come in to work. When I admitted she sometimes telecommutes, they said I’d need to wait another day before they could take a report. I guess you need to be missing for a certain number of hours before you can officially become a missing person. But I still knew something was wrong. Heather is hyper-responsible. At a minimum, she would have called me with some explanation. And as soon as you told me Angie was wandering the streets, I began fearing the worst. I’m praying Emilio hasn’t killed her.”

“He’s your prime suspect in this?”

“I don’t know anyone else who could possibly wish Heather ill. She acts like a saint in a nonpious kind of way.”

Heather’s life story was interrupted by a server who took our orders: Katie went with the Cuban sandwich; I had the meatloaf sandwich. While I ordered, I couldn’t help but notice Katie staring at the keloid scarring on my face. I try to not be self-conscious about it even though I know it’s the first thing people notice about me. My scars also seemed to jar her memory.

“Do I know you?” asked Katie. “You look familiar.”

I shook my head and said, “I would have remembered you.”

It was both flattery and fact, not to mention evasion. Sirius and I had gained unwanted notoriety when we brought Ellis Haines in, and were still remembered for that by lots of Angelenos. I never help people make that connection; to my thinking it’s better to keep the Haines genie bottled up rather than let him spill out.

“You were telling me about Emilio Cruz,” I said.

“I think he was the first male to pay attention to Heather. I suspect she was vulnerable to someone like Emilio, especially given her life history. I knew Heather for years before she finally opened up to me. I always assumed she led a charmed life because of her upbeat and happy personality. That’s why I could barely believe it when she told me she spent her teen years in foster care. As bad as that was, Heather said her home life before foster care was much worse. Her father was abusive; when Heather was twelve, she saw him beat her mother to death.”

My profession brings me in contact with the worst stories of humanity. Cops get desensitized because we hear too many bad things. But we’re still human.

“God,” I said, shaking my head. It was half curse for what had occurred; half sanction asking for providential blessing.

“Heather told me she wanted to work at Disney more than anywhere else because as a child Disney films gave her hope when her own life didn’t. That’s what drew her to Disney Studios.”

“The House That Snow White Built,” I said.

“That’s us,” said Katie.

More than a half century ago, Walt Disney had used the profits from his animated blockbuster
Snow White
to buy acreage for his studio in Burbank.

“I wonder why it is in that house-building description there’s no mention of the seven dwarfs,” I said. “It seems as if they got shortchanged.”

“I am sure there were plenty of jokes back then,” she said, “just as there are now. I know it sounds awful, but some employees like to say they work for Mauschwitz or Mickey Mauschwitz.”

I nodded; most in L.A. had heard that job description.

“Heather wasn’t that way, though. She loved her job. In real life she was sort of like the Hayley Mills character in
Pollyanna
. You ever see that film?”

“My dog Sirius loves sappy films,” I said, giving him a head rub. “He’s made me watch it more than once.”

“I imagine
your dog
,” she said, “would like Heather.” Katie reached down and stroked Angie. “Do you know one of the main reasons for her picking out Angie at the shelter when no one else would?”

I shook my head.

“Heather said Angie reminded her of Pluto. But I know it was more than that. Angie was on death row. She’d been returned a few times, and her number was almost up. I think Angie’s life reminded Heather of her own. The two of them were abused and unloved. Heather found a way to a better life, and she was determined to give Angie that same chance. It was a real challenge for her. I don’t think Heather could have picked a more difficult dog. Anyone besides Heather would have given up on Angie Arrow.”

“She should have named her Angie Lucky,” I said.

“Lucky?” asked Katie.

“It’s an old joke. There’s an advertisement for a Lost Dog. Under the description it says:
Blind in one eye, mange-ridden, only has three legs, recently neutered, has a mean disposition, answers to the name of ‘Lucky.’”

Katie started laughing. “That pretty much describes how Angie was at first. But Heather turned her around. I’m not sure which of them loves the other more.”

“How long have you known Heather?”

“About five years. She joined Disney about six months after I did.”

“How old is she?”

“I think she’s twenty-nine. She got an entry-level position right out of college.”

“How long has she been married?”

“Six years, I think, although she’s been separated for most of the last two years.”

“What does Emilio do?”

“When he’s not drinking, hitting Heather, or chasing other women, he works in an auto-body shop.”

“Do you happen to remember the name of his employer?”

Katie gave me a name and location, which I wrote down, and then the two of us talked more about Heather. From what Katie said, she was too good to be true. It wasn’t until the age of seventeen that Heather was diagnosed with dyslexia. And then beginning at age eighteen she was all alone in the world. Somehow she managed to work her way through college while still getting perfect grades. With each achievement, she got a little more self-esteem, even though her boyfriend and then husband, Emilio, had been anything but helpful in that regard.

“The unbelievable thing is that Emilio is now acting like he’s the victim,” said Katie. “It wasn’t until Heather left him that the idiot realized what a gem he’d had. He even tried to win her back by agreeing to take anger-management courses, but Heather knew better than to trust him. It was too little and too late.”

Our sandwiches arrived. Both of us conceded half of our meals to the hairy muzzles begging under the table.

“Lucky,” said Katie, remembering the punch line to my joke and laughing once more.

She scratched at Angie’s ear.

“I really don’t know how Heather was able to have such a good attitude after all she went through. She was like a real-life ugly duckling. She told me that growing up she had bad teeth and was afraid to talk to people. And she was anything but a natural student because of her dyslexia. But her circumstances never stopped her. And despite everything, she thought of herself as lucky. That’s why people always like being around her. In her presence you feel better. All morning I’ve been praying that she’s all right.”

“Keep praying,” I said, “and I’ll keep looking.”