Молли Фитц - Terrier Transgressions

“Okay, fine,” he said after a thoughtful pause. “But why didn’t you just talk to the dog yourself? Why did you need to drag me into this circus?”

“Because,” I whined, wishing that he could just take me at my word for once in our lives. “I couldn’t understand Yo-Yo, and I don’t think he could understand me, either.”

“Again, why couldn’t you have lied? For goodness’ sake, Angie, make something up so we can all move on with our lives.”

Well, it was nice to know my cat had no problems with lying to get out of a scrape. My morals were less questionable, however. Also, I’d already tried lying to Charles and it hadn’t worked.

At this point I had seriously begun to worry about the ramifications of my midday work break. How much time had passed? Had Thompson and the other associates returned to the office and realized I was missing yet?

“I am not going to lie to him,” I said, choosing to take the high road. “Especially not about a case. What if his client really is innocent? What if he has to spend the rest of his life in jail because my lie messed up the case? Yeah, no thank you.”

Octo-Cat groaned and rolled his eyes, a new human gesture he’d picked up from me. “So what? You need me to translate because you can’t speak dog?”

“Yes, please.” I clasped my hands in front of me. I wasn’t above begging, and Octo-Cat just so happened to love it when I groveled.

He took on a self-important air, glancing down his nose at me. It made his eyes cross, and I had to fight to suppress a laugh. “You know dogs have a much simpler language than cats. It matches their simple minds. If you understand me, then you should definitely be able to talk to Dum-Dum out there.”

“So you’ll help?” I asked, praying he could see how desperately I needed him.

“Fine, I’ll help” he said with a growl. “But you owe me. Big time.”

I raced to the door to let Charles and Yo-Yo in before my cat could change his mind. “Keep him on the leash this time,” I instructed as they passed back through the threshold into my home. “Better yet, keep him on your lap.”

Charles took a seat on my living room couch with the dog perched on his lap. “What now?” he asked as I took up residence in my arm chair.

“First, promise me that you won’t tell anyone about any of this.”

He bobbed his head in rapid, enthusiastic agreement. “Yes, I promise.”

I nodded, too. “Good. Now remember I don’t even know if this is going to work, but give me a few minutes and we’ll be able to find out.”

Charles fell silent, his eyes fixed squarely on me. It seemed that maybe Octo-Cat frightened him a bit, and that was just fine by me.

I turned to my tabby companion and said, “Would you please ask Yo-Yo what happened to his owners?”

Octo-Cat hopped up onto the coffee table and faced the dog on Charles’s lap before repeating the question.

Yo-Yo gave a happy, little yap and began to pant, which my cat translated as, “He says his owners are the nicest people in the whole world and that the guy he is staying with right now is nice, but he misses his family and wants to go home.”

“He said all that?” It took Octo-Cat at least ten times longer to translate that than it took Yo-Yo to speak it.

“I told you,” Octo-Cat said, taking a quick break to lick at his paw. “Dog language is incredibly simple. What he actually said translates to ‘best, miss,’ but when dealing with dogs you have to add a ridiculous degree of enthusiasm to get a proper sense of what they want to tell you. It’s exhausting, really.”

“What are they saying?” Charles asked.

“Shhh,” Octo-Cat and I both hissed.

Charles slumped back on the couch and watched us with a mix of intrigue and fear.

Turning back to my cat, I requested, “Would you please ask him if he was present when his owners were murdered?”

When Octo-Cat relayed my question, Yo-Yo let out a long, shrill series of screams and clawed at Charles’s lap in a panicked attempt to get away.

“Oh my gosh, what happened?” I cried at the same time Charles asked, “What the heck was that about?”

I looked to Octo-Cat for an explanation.

The cat’s eyes widened as he revealed, “He says his owners aren’t dead, and that pretending they are is a mean and terrible joke to make.”

So much for using Yo-Yo to plan a defense for Charles’s client. It sounded as if the little dog were being murdered himself simply by being asked about their deaths. How could we get any useful information from him if he didn’t even realize they had died?

One thing was for certain: I wasn’t going to be the one to break this poor, sweet doggie’s heart.

Chapter Four

I watched helplessly as Charles raked both hands through his hair in distress.

“I just don’t know what to do anymore,” he admitted with a deep, guttural groan. “I thought for sure when I saw what you could do that it was fate, that you were meant to help me defend this case.”

I leaned forward in my chair and placed a consoling hand on his knee. It was the only part of him I could reach, but still, the minor contact sent a little thrill racing from my fingertips straight to my chest. “Maybe I can find another way to help. There’s still one thing really doesn’t make much sense to me, though.”

He raised his head to look at me. A series of wrinkles lined his brow as he waited for what I had to say.

I cleared my throat before asking, “If you’re so sure your client didn’t do it, then how come you don’t have a defense for him outside of talking to the victims’ dog?”

He slumped back on his chair and ran a hand through his hair again, releasing the scents of soap and pine into the air. “Because everyone’s already decided he’s guilty.”

“Except you,” I said flatly.

Charles sighed. “Seems that way.”

“Okay, so walk me through this, then. Can you tell me more about what happened and why everyone’s so convinced your client is guilty? Also, I’d love to know how you ended up with this dog.”

Octo-Cat settled in on the chair beside me. “Actually, I’d love to know that, too.”

We both waited while Charles composed himself enough to tell us the story.

“If he starts this thing with ‘it was a dark and stormy night,’ I’m going to puke,” Octo-Cat remarked with an exaggerated yawn.

“Hush up, you,” I said to the impatient tabby at my side before offering Charles an apologetic glance. “Sorry. Go on.”

He cocked his head and studied the pair of us for a moment. “What did he say?”

“You don’t want to know,” I muttered, stroking Octo-Cat with more force than he generally liked as my way of sending him a silent warning.

Charles let his gaze linger on Octo-Cat as he launched into his description of the murder. “It happened in the morning. The victims—their names were Bill and Ruth Hayes—had just put their house on the market. Apparently they’d already had an offer accepted on a new place and needed their old place to move fast, so a big open house was planned for that day. I guess property in their subdivision rarely goes up for sale, so there was a lot of interest. At least a dozen couples arrived to check the place out, and one of them discovered the victims’ bodies shoved into the master bedroom closet upstairs.”

I took this all in before asking, “Okay, so lots of people means lots of potential suspects. Why did the blame get pegged on your client?”

“The crime scene guys said they’d been dead for close to ten hours before they were discovered the next morning, and it was my client’s hammer that was used as the murder weapon. Besides his sister, he was one of the only people who had access to their home and knew the code to disarm the security system.” Charles’s face was grim as he recounted the details. The more he told me, the more familiar the events started to feel. I hadn’t been brought in to research this case for the firm, but I had heard all these details before from another source…