Suzann Ledbetter - Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

The office’s safe line ensured the calls couldn’t trace back to him, yet the perfect approach must be slick and instantly forgettable. He’d think of something. He always did. There’d still be hang-ups and nobody-homes in the mix, but pretexts were as available as the number of otherwise intelligent, cautious people willing to chat up a total stranger on the phone.

“Stranger, my ass.” Alone in his car and seemingly the world, aside from a motorcyclist in the opposite lane, Jack tipped back his head and laughed. “McPhee, you’re a genius, if you don’t say so yourself.”

He lowered his voice an octave. “Good morning, Mrs. Victim. This is, uh, John Q. Clerk with the Park City PD. Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but I’m following up on a barking-dog complaint filed on XYZ date at your address…”

“Oh, this is so exciting,” chirped Ms. Pearl. The confirmed spinster—her word, not Jack’s—foisted a pink, doll-sized overnight case on him. “My little girl is going to be a spy.”

Actually her loaner Maltese was a four-legged shill. It wasn’t Jack’s fault that his across-the-breezeway neighbor heard “undercover sting operation” and thought James Bond with fur.

Four hours’ sleep had converted last night’s genius pretext into a blue-ribbon stupid idea. It would have worked, sure. Then the minute the connection was broken, pissed-off burglary victims would confront the neighbors, demanding to know which one initiated the barking-dog complaint.

And who wanted to waste a day chained to a desk making phone calls? Especially a private investigator who spends more time on the phone than a phone-sex operator.

Jack forced a smile. Not easy with a yappy eight-pound dog in the crook of his arm, two fingers hooked on the handle of its luggage and a leash dervishing at his crotch like a noose in need of exorcism.

The stuffed Maltese toy he’d given his niece for Christmas one year had come with a key in its butt that when wound, played “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” Instead of a music box, the real deal squirmed and lunged, as though it had springs where its bones were supposed to be.

“I really appreciate this, Ms. Pearl.” Which would be true as soon as Jack dumped her wacko dog at TLC, the city’s most expensive boarding kennel. “But remember our, uh, arrangement has to stay between us.”

Ms. Pearl’s penciled eyebrows lofted, enhancing an already eerie resemblance to Olive Oyl. “It will, Officer McPhee. I won’t tell a soul.”

He’d never told her he was a cop and hadn’t been for many a year. Busting a gangbanger peddling Ecstasy to a middle-schooler in the complex’s parking lot was strictly a citizen’s arrest. Attempts to correct an assumption that Jack was a plainclothes narc were one of those doth-protest-too-much things. Between his reclusiveness and the weird hours he kept, tenants could just as easily suspect he was a vampire.

Ms. Pearl made oochie-coo noises and crouched down to say goodbye to the Maltese. “I don’t know what I’ll do without my Sweetie Pie Snug ’Ems. I surely don’t.” She kissed the dog’s button nose. “But I packed your favorite toys and a special treat, so we’ll have to be brave girls, won’t we? Oh, yes, we will.”

Thankfully, Jack’s eyes unstuck from their backward roll before he reached the flight of plank stairs leading down to ground level. He loved dogs. His best buds when he was a kid were a brainless Irish setter and a three-legged beagle.

“No offense,” he told the wriggling furball playing peekaboo with his tie. “But just because the AKC says you’re a dog, you’re too short to drink out of the toilet and you couldn’t catch a Frisbee with a net.”

The parking area behind his building was as empty as it had been full when he’d bailed out of his car around three-thirty. In daylight, the Taurus looked a hundred miles closer to the rear entrance than it had last night. It only seemed farther away with a panting Maltese zigzagging in front of him like a duck in a shooting gallery.

The minisuitcase thumped on the rear floorboard where it would stay until its return to Ms. Pearl—minus the treats. Leave them inside and she’d know the luggage hadn’t made the whole trip.

He’d promised to strap down the dog in her safety harness for the ride, too. It wouldn’t have joined the suitcase on the floorboard if the white blur now bouncing all over the friggin’ car responded to “Sit.” Or “Heel.” Or “For God’s sake, stay, you psycho little son of a bitch!”

Bellowing “Hell with it,” Jack snagged the leash on the fly and wrapped it around his leg. “Gotcha.”

Sweetie Pie Snug ’Ems shot him an “oh, yeah?” glare. Her glittery pink toenails dug into the upholstery. She tugged backward, whipping her pouffy head. When the collar hung up on her ears, she bared her teeth and growled at him.

“Think you’re scary, huh?” Jack tilted down the rearview mirror. “Check it out. You look like an attack hamster with a bad perm.”

The Maltese stared at her reflection, then blinked her beady eyes. She tucked her feather-duster tail and sat down like the lady Ms. Pearl had raised her to be.

“Good doggy.” He loosened the leash a few inches. She hesitated, then sighed and snuggled against his thigh.

He’d told her owner a rumor was circulating about boarding kennels using customer lists for purposes other than mailing Christmas cards. The disclosure was nearer his hunch than he’d cared to admit, yet it hadn’t satisfied Ms. Pearl. She’d pushed for specifics. He refused to slander the three, thus far noncomplicit kennels that catered to an upscale clientele: TLC, Ltd., Home Away and Merry Hills.

“You’ll just have to trust me on the details,” he’d said. To his surprise, she had.

To the Maltese now sniffing at the air conditioner’s exhaust, he said, “You’re gonna love this gig. In-room movies, an exercise pool, story hour.” Jack grunted. “At forty bucks a day, you’d better love it.”

The morning rush hour on Denton Expressway was beginning to congeal. The female driver in the car ahead of him was applying mascara and slaloming between the roadway’s painted lines. Jack checked his passenger’s side mirror, then the rearview. In the inner lane, a Hummer was several cautious yards behind a pickup, as well as Jack’s rear bumper. The compact sedan lagging in the Hummer’s considerable shadow had a spidery crack in the upper quadrant of its windshield.

Jack’s lips curled tight over his teeth. He hugged the dog to his thigh. The speedometer’s needle stuck a hash mark past sixty-five, as though it were glued on. Constantly monitoring the mirrors, a half mile clocked past, then three quarters, then…

He punched the accelerator and veered into the gap in front of the Hummer. Tapping the brake pedal, Jack timed the swerve onto Madison Road’s off-ramp like a NASCAR contender. The maneuver earned a horn blast from the exiting car he’d cut in front of. Swooping in from nowhere probably scared its driver, but expertise separated careless and reckless from a controlled, slick-as-hell evasion.

Loosening his grip on the Maltese, Jack slowed for the traffic light at the top of the ramp. Below on the expressway, Brett Dean Blankenship’s dented Cavalier now tailgated the Hummer like a pesky baby brother. The not-so-ace detective would take the next exit and circle back, for all the good it’d do him.

Jack took a stab at feeling smug. Outwitting the jerk didn’t change the fact that four days had elapsed since Blankenship crawled out of his cave and into Jack’s car at the motel. Seldom did one ever go by without Jack pissing off somebody, but Blankenship had definitely crossed the line from harassment into stalker territory.