Never Con a Corgi (10 page)

The husky trotted off into the roadway unhindered.

Leigh did a face plant in the grass.

A wet corgi nose snuffled at her cheek. Leigh lifted her head and saw that the husky had gone no farther than the nearest roller blader, and that his lead had been picked up again—no doubt with minimal effort—by Frances.

She sighed and struggled back to her feet. Now she really,
really
wanted that shower.

"Well, that was a bust," Frances said testily, rejoining her. "Skaters just aren't creatures of habit like dog walkers." She looked up at the rapidly darkening sky and sighed dramatically. "Look, there's Bess coming our way. The walkers are all but gone; it's getting too dark. I guess we might as well head back. Let's hope the others had more luck. And by the way, dear—"

Leigh braced herself.

"You have goose poo in your hair."

Chapter 11

"So, did you find anyone to support Gil's alibi?" Maura asked, accepting the cup of coffee Leigh offered her and settling into a kitchen chair.

Leigh poured another cup and joined her. "Well, that depends on how you look at it. Cara did talk to a couple of women she was certain had seen Gil. They even remembered that he was wearing business casual, which stuck out a bit, as we'd hoped. But as soon as she mentioned the word 'testify,' they got skittish. Started saying they weren't so sure after all, that they couldn't possibly swear to it. Refused even to give Cara their names."

"That's not good," Maura said soberly.

Leigh shook her head. "Cara was distraught, as you can imagine. She tried so hard to be polite about it—but they just seemed terrified of having anything to do with the police."

"You have no way to contact them again?"

Leigh smirked. "I didn't say that. Cara being Cara, she let them walk off, then followed them covertly until they got back to their car. She hid behind a tree and scribbled down their license plate number."

Maura let out a smirk of her own. "Very enterprising. But we won't hassle them unless we have to; unwilling witnesses aren't much better than no witnesses at all. Anything else before you get to it?"

Leigh looked up from her cup. "Get to what?"

"Your attempted inquisition of me. Wanting to know everything Detective Peterson and I found out yesterday."

"So you're going to share?"

Maura reached out and grabbed a donut from the box Leigh had risen before dawn to acquire. "Hell, no. But I thought I'd take you up on the free breakfast, anyway."

Leigh groaned. "Knock yourself out."

A ball of black fur landed heavily in her lap, and she put out a hand reflexively to scoop it up. Her Persian, Mao Tse, was getting on in years. After the highly unpopular introduction of the barbarian dog two years ago, Mao had registered her protest with a self-imposed exile to the master bedroom—which Leigh had since kept both dog-and child-free in her honor. For Mao to discover an empty Leigh-lap in the middle of the kitchen on a quiet morning was a rare find the cat wasted no time capitalizing on.

"Did
you find any other prospects?" Maura mumbled while she chewed.

"I found a guy who's ready to testify that he saw Gil, yes."

The detective's eyes widened. "Seriously?"

"He could be serious," Leigh said without enthusiasm, reaching for a chocolate-frosted. "But I'm guessing no, seeing as how he prefaced his contact info with
for a good time, call."

Maura spewed some donut crumbs. "Could still be legit, you know," she said when she'd recovered. "He might have actually seen Gil
and
want your body. Good thing you had Killer there with you." She pointed a thumb toward Chewie, who was laid out flat on the linoleum by the detective's feet, snoring. "This guy doesn't have your phone number, does he?"

Leigh frowned. "How dumb do I look?"

Maura grinned, but made no comment. "I'll take care of it, then. Guys like this make my day."

Leigh let that one go. Maura took a lot of grief for her size, but being a he-woman did have its perks, and being able to intimidate the crap out of perverts was one of them.

"Maura," she said thoughtfully, "is there anything else we can do for Gil? Cara's pretty frantic, under the circumstances."

"I know she is," Maura replied. "But Peterson's good, and I plan to be watching over his shoulder, whether the department likes it or not. He's got a full day's worth of search warrants to execute, so I'm sure something will turn up. The best thing you can do is keep trying to find a willing witness to Gil's alibi." She leaned over the table. "But that's
all
you can do. Any of you. Understood?"

Leigh offered her trademark salute.

"You know," Maura said with a frown, reaching for her third donut. "I never do believe you when you do that."

Leigh grinned. "Yeah. I know."

***

"We
won't!"
the Pack responded in unison, complete with eye rolling, as they piled out of the van and sprinted through the rain to the front door of the animal shelter. Leigh bit her lip. She hadn't meant to transmit her own anxiety, but clearly, she had given one too many admonitions about their staying out of the woods. She wished it hadn't been necessary, but she couldn't help but be suspicious of Ethan and Allison's sudden desire to pull an extra shift—and Matt and Lenna's sudden desire to accompany them. She would have said no if the shelter manager hadn't insisted she was short-staffed and could use the extra help this morning. Leigh knew that, unlike the majority of child volunteers, the Pack actually did help. And it was entirely possible that Matt and Lenna weren't looking for trouble so much as a way to get out of the house and escape their mother's unprecedented foulness of mood.

Leigh closed the van door, pulled out onto Nicholson Road, and headed for her Aunt Bess's house. The children's preoccupation for a few hours was timely, as she had a mission of her own to conduct this morning. A mission which had nothing to do with one Brandon Lyle—or at least, she hoped it wouldn't. The dog park was still a good idea, and she wasn't giving up on it. She couldn't very well abandon important plans every time she tripped over a body, could she?

She navigated the private road to her Aunt Bess's house warily as usual, mindful of the potholes that were quickly filling with the morning's rain. She had a fleeting fear of being trapped on the wrong side of the creek, but she suppressed it. It was July, for heaven's sake. And it hadn't been raining that long.

With her gaze kept firmly on the road, she didn't notice the visitor standing on Bess's porch until she was parked in the driveway. The man was gesticulating wildly. He was also holding a shotgun.

She fumbled in her bag for her cell phone, stuffed it into her pocket, and stepped out of the car. She would have called 911 if she didn't know who it was. Knowing who it was... well, it never hurt to have one's phone handy, did it?

"They wouldn't tell me a blasted thing!" the man was shouting. He was an older man, well past seventy, with deeply wrinkled, sun-damaged skin and dark eyes that brooded under bushy white eyebrows. Shabby clothes hung from his lean frame like a scarecrow, but his quick movements revealed a body as able as his spirit was willing. "Wouldn't you think we'd have a right to know," he railed, "seeing as how they're murdering people right here on our own doorsteps now?!"

"Now, Clem," Aunt Bess retorted, her voice calm, but firm. "You know perfectly well the police aren't going to answer our every question about an ongoing murder investigation. That's just silly. Some things, we have to find out for ourselves."

Leigh's eyebrows rose as she mounted the stairs and dodged under the porch roof out of the rain.

"Well, I was out there last night, wasn't I?" Clem fumed. "Got my flashlight and looked all over, soon as I heard. Should have known nobody was going to tell old Clem except the five o'clock news!" Chaw-stained spittle sprayed from the old man's lips as he talked, lacing the straggly white beard below.

Bess's eyes narrowed. "Now, don't you give me that line of horse pooey!" she said fiercely, dropping her previous facade of calm. "I knocked on your door three times yesterday, and the police tried, too. If you had a telephone and an answering machine like the rest of the modern world, you might not miss so much information!"

"Devil's work!" he spewed. "Bunch of techno-nonsense!"

"You figured out how to use that digital converter box fast enough!" Bess retorted.

The man's shoulders slumped slightly. "I gotta watch my shows, don't I?"

Bess sighed. "I left you a note to come and see me—it's your own darn fault you ignored it. Now, cut the self-righteous act and put away that fool gun before I crack it over that extra-thick skull of yours."

Clem uttered a low, growling noise, but to Leigh's relief, he leaned the shotgun obediently against Bess's porch rail.

"You remember my niece, Leigh?" Bess asked, her voice now all sweetness. Clem did not look up. He had yet to spare the newcomer a glance. "She's the one who found the body," Bess finished.

Clem looked up.

"What'd it look like?" he barked.

Leigh swallowed. "Um... he looked... dead."

Clem's eyes bugged. "Where was he? On my land?"

"Um... I—" Leigh looked to Bess for assistance. She wasn't supposed to be divulging crime scene information. For all she knew, the police were limiting what they told Clem for a reason. But Bess, curse her, looked every bit as expectant as he did. Bess had already given Leigh an earful for tipping off the detectives about the video before informing her dear, devoted aunt that there had been a murder in the first place.

"It was out near the pond," Leigh answered vaguely. Surely the five o'clock news had offered that much already.

"Really?" Clem said skeptically, his beard twitching.

"Don't sound so shocked!" Bess interjected. "If the body had been found on your property, the police would have contacted you first thing."

Clem grunted. "I don't know that. I don't trust the police!"

Leigh was not surprised.

"For all I know," he continued, "they whacked that young hustler themselves, and now they're trying to pin it all on us landowners! Well, I pay my taxes, and I'm telling you right now—"

"Clem," Bess said reasonably, with no trace of sarcasm, "Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, don't you think it's much more likely that a man like Brandon Lyle was murdered by a personal enemy? A business associate he'd double crossed? A jealous lover?"

Someone trying to protect their land?
Leigh stifled the comment. Clem's shotgun was still within reach. Furthermore, such motive would apply equally to her own "eccentric" Aunt Bess, and one suspect in the family was enough.

Clem uttered a growl. "I don't frankly care who killed the bastard, as long as they stayed off my damn land while they were doing it! And the police had better stay off as well. Waking me up with their banging... lucky some heads didn't roll then, I'd say! Nobody trespasses on my land, understand?" He fixed his gaze on Leigh again.
"Nobody!"

"Oh, leave her alone, you old coot!" Bess chastised, planting both hands on her generous hips. "She'll think you're serious."

"I am serious!" he bellowed.

"You're a pumped-up bag of wind!" Bess fired back. "You're just mad because you didn't hear the police coming.
And
because you didn't hear anything the night it happened, which we both know is because you're deaf as a post and too darn stubborn to get a hearing aid!"

Blue veins started to pop out on Clem's weathered temples, and Leigh's body tensed. Her Aunt Bess had always had a way with people—even crazy ones. But no one was perfect.

"Now, stop bullying my niece and get back on your own precious property and off of mine," Bess continued, her tone steely. "Before I start asking questions about how my extra gasoline cans keep going empty!"

Clem's gaze dropped like a rock. He scowled, swept up his shotgun, and stepped off the porch. Then he turned around and fixed Bess with another bug-eyed stare. "You'll tell me everything later, won't you?"

Bess returned a smug, conspiratorial smile. "Don't I always?"

Clem turned his back and stomped off.

Bess opened the door to her house and gestured Leigh inside, much to the delight of Chester, who burst from his captivity to spin around Leigh's ankles in greeting. "Would you like some tea, kiddo?" Bess offered, her voice merry.

Leigh shook her head. "Aunt Bess," she said nervously, "aren't you just a teeny bit worried about living next door to an armed lunatic?"

Bess's lips pursed. "Don't be ridiculous, Leigh. You've known Clem since you were a girl! He's perfectly harmless."

Leigh gritted her teeth. It was true that Clem had lived in the neighborhood even longer than Bess had, but the word "known" was an overstatement. In the last three decades, she might have glimpsed the man half a dozen times in the distance through the trees. His existence in her mind had always been on par with the wicked witch and the gingerbread house... smart children stayed out of his woods. Period.

"The man scared Hook's PR woman half to death!" Leigh retorted. "Sooner or later he's going to wind up in jail for brandishing a weapon like that."

Bess waved her hand in dismissal. "Clem's half deaf. He probably couldn't understand a word she said. But I agree he can't keep waving that fool gun at every person who bangs on his door. He couldn't hear with his telephone anymore, so he got rid of it. Idiot won't listen to me when I tell him there are devices—" She broke off suddenly. "What's up, kiddo? You didn't drive all the way out here to lecture me about the company I keep. I have your mother for that. Are Cara and Gil all right?"

"I wouldn't say Cara is," Leigh answered honestly, remembering the bags she'd seen under her cousin's eyes when picking up the kids this morning. "She's still terribly worried about Gil. But that's not why I'm here. I'm here because I want the animal shelter to build a dog park, and I need your help."

Leigh explained the plan, which Bess took to immediately. "It's a splendid idea!" she agreed. "But you'll need to talk to Anna first. She has to approve any structures built on the property—that's in the lease."