3 Panthers Play for Keeps (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-five

I’m not the fainting sort. Far from it, but just then, the idea of lying down for a bit was very attractive. Trouble is, I’ve given in before. Got myself hospitalized, back when my sensitivity first manifested itself, when all those voices seemed to be coming out of nowhere. And while my stay in the bin was voluntary and I was able to leave under my own power three days later, it wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat. And so, just as I turned the knob to Doc Sharpe’s consulting room, it hit me that I had to leave. Other people’s problems might be solved for them while they reclined with an ice pack or a beer. Me? I’m on my own.

County has a back door—fire regulations being what they are—and I took advantage of it, striding out as quickly and purposefully as I could, a don’t-mess-with-me look on my face. No human dared stand in my way, although I did hear a startled squawk from the bird room. Smaller animals are the most attuned to this kind of determination. They have to be to survive.

My motivation wasn’t that different, I realized as I cut up the alley toward my car. Sure, it presented as ferocity, but that’s my own form of protective coloration. In reality, I was as shaken as I’ve ever been, save for that one time. And my instinct was to run to the one creature who had been able to reach me then: Wallis. She’d been pissed when I’d checked myself into the hospital, not to mention hungry by the time I’d gotten home. But she’d taken care of me, in her way, alternately cajoling and chiding me into something akin to acceptance. I owed her my life, although neither of us likes to speak of it. I was going home to her now. Lunch, and a consult with my cat. That’s what I needed to set me right.

I pulled onto the highway, my mind racing. The thaw had left damp patches on the pavement, and now I was seeing them as leopard spots. The shadows, too. Trees casting dark blotches against the tawny ground. Taking a deep breath, I made myself lift my foot from the accelerator. Just because my breathing was fast didn’t mean my reaction time was. Not right now. Until I was sure, I needed to be careful.

Sure of…What? I could tell my speed was inching back up, but for a moment there, I felt like normal. I was regarding this as a problem, as Wallis would. Well, if Wallis could drive and worried about things like her sanity. Because it really came down to two options. One, I was losing it. Perhaps temporarily through some combination of low-level alcohol poisoning, stress, and hunger. Perhaps not. Or two, there really was a snow leopard, a majestic beast more customarily found in the mountains of Central Asia, loose in the woods around Beauville.

Suddenly, I started laughing out loud. If I was losing anything, it was my edge. Wallis would have a heyday with this.
“You trusted a dog?”
I could hear her voice, but I no longer doubted my sanity. Because it hit me: I believed what I had seen. I had seen—in that scared little sheltie’s eyes—the big paws and beautifully mottled coat. Even more, I believed what I had heard: snow leopards don’t roar. They chuff. They growl, and, yes, they wail. But there clearly had been some mix-up. I didn’t know how a New England dog would have a mental image of a Himalayan cat, but stranger things had happened. Maybe it had seen one on TV and freaked out when confronted by a bobcat. Maybe the little dog was delusional.

Or, maybe, it was me. The funk returned as I raced down the road, trying not to see lurking beasts in every shade and pothole. Maybe that was why I reached for my phone when it rang. That, and the sneaking feeling that maybe I still had other problems that needed solving.

“Laurel?” In this state, I needed to keep my eyes on the road. As I spoke, though, I tried to remember just how I had been planning on tackling the shrink.

“You tell me.” It was Creighton, though his greeting had me momentarily speechless. “Pru, you there?”

“Yeah, Jim.” I snuck a glance at the phone. Sure enough, he was calling from her phone. “But I’m sure you can understand my confusion.” My words dripped acid. I could hear it myself, and I knew my mood—my current vulnerability—wasn’t helping. Well, what did he expect? “I’m here, and you’re…”

My mouth suddenly so dry I just couldn’t say it.

“I’m at Laurel Kroft’s house.” He did. “And you were the last person she called.”

“That’s impossible.” I shook my head, not that he could see me. “I’ve been trying to reach her, but I’ve just been getting her voice mail.”

“And why were you calling her?” His voice was cool. His cop voice. Mine wasn’t. If he was waiting for me to erupt into jealous mode, he had another think coming.

“Why do you think, Jim?” I pitched my voice low, working to keep it even. “Don’t you have a murder to investigate? You talked to us both. You could see it as well as I could. Laurel was pretending. Holding something back. She knows something about Mariela—or about the Haigens, that’s for sure. Maybe they were into something together.” Benazi. One thing I’d learned from him was that wealthy people like their toys. They also like to think they’re above the law. “Maybe it was some kind of a scam.”

I was on a roll. “Or maybe it wasn’t the Haigens. Maybe she and this Mariela had something going.” I heard the intake of breath, a warning I’d gone too far. “Or maybe not.”

“Or maybe you two were brewing up something, and now she’s lying low.” His voice was even, smooth, like a fishing line cast perfectly into the pool. “Or maybe you were working together, and you didn’t trust her.”

“Me?” He had to be joking. I laughed. He didn’t join me. “Jim, you’re not serious. Are you?”

“We know you called her, several times. We know you talked at least once—the call lasted close to a minute.”

“What? No.” My exit was coming up, and I let myself drift to the right. “I never reached her.”

“Why do you think I’m calling you from Ms. Kroft’s house, Pru?” I didn’t answer. I hadn’t thought. “I wanted to see who she had spoken to last. We have your messages, and it’s clear she called you back.”

I had slowed down enough to check. “Maybe she left me a message. I have one.” I’d let the car stop on the shoulder. Things were complicated enough without an accident. “I didn’t speak to her, Jim.”

“Your phone’s on.”

No arguing with that. “I was at County.” Doc Sharpe could back me on that. Not that it would help his opinion of me. “I guess I didn’t hear. But, wait…” Something really strange was going on. “What is she saying? Why are you tracking her calls?”

He didn’t say anything. In that silence, I heard enough. “She’s saying something about me, right? That there’s something going on with me…”

I didn’t know what she had picked up. I flashed back over all my interactions with Spot, wondering what she had seen. What she had been able to deduce.

Creighton, meanwhile, wasn’t helping. The silence was getting to me. “Jim, I swear, I don’t know anything. But I do know her.” That’s when it hit me: “More important, I know Spot. I’ve been working with him for weeks now, and he’s been living with her. He’s a good dog, and he’s not some little toy. If somebody threatened her…If something…”

I flashed back to our walk. The shadow in the brush. Except that Laurel would have had no reason to take the dog out to the preservation land. Would she?

“Jim, did Laurel go out to the woods?” My mind was racing. Could have been out of curiosity. Could have been for another reason, especially if she had had some idea of what had happened to Mariela. “Could she have taken Spot out to where Mariela was found?”

Spot wouldn’t have willingly tracked whatever was out there. But I’d just spent several weeks training him to put aside his own preferences. Teaching him that his desires, even his instincts, were to be subjugated to the commands of his person. If Laurel had gone out there and sought to hunt down whatever had killed Mariela, he could have done it. Hell, at this point, I was kicking myself for not having thought of it.

“She didn’t take the dog.” That stopped me. “The dog’s here, Pru.”

This wasn’t making sense. “Creighton, I don’t know what you’re saying. You’re at Laurel’s house. Her dog is there, and she’s not, apparently. And you say she called me, which makes sense because I’ve been trying to reach her. None of that is odd. I mean, it’s the middle of the day. She could be off seeing clients. Or, hell, maybe she had a personal errand.” I paused, my original beef coming back to me. “Some of us do have private lives, Jim.”

“And some of us have real jobs, Pru.” He’d heard my snark and lobbed it back. “In this case, Laurel was part of it. She had been holding something back, when the three of us spoke. She wanted to talk to me. In private. Only she never showed, and so I came here to find a dog stuck in his crate and crying like he’d just been whipped. And there’s no sign of Laurel. Only two messages, each saying there’s something important. Something that has to be dealt with. And both of them are from you.”

Chapter Twenty-six

“I knew I hated her.” I was fuming, pacing back and forth between the refrigerator and the door. “With that faux-country look and that frosted hair. Like that color comes from anything besides Clairol.”

Wallis didn’t comment. Didn’t have to, really. I knew she thought I should have taken Laurel Kroft out of the running weeks before, by any means necessary. She knew I hadn’t, that I didn’t have it in me. Now, as she enjoyed the roast turkey that should have served as both our lunches, I was paying the price.

“I’m going to have to get that dog, you know,” I said, although putting it this way to Wallis might have been a mistake. From what Creighton had told me, Spot sounded distressed, but not frantic. That could mean something as simple as he needed to be walked. It could also mean that he knew something had happened with Laurel, or that she was upset by something before she, presumably, stormed off, forgetting her appointment with the hunky detective. It didn’t sound like he’d witnessed an abduction, or worse. Creighton may not have my sensitivity, but he’s not a complete jerk when it comes to animals. Hell, if he were, he wouldn’t have been so good with women.

“And?”
Wallis twined around my ankles, leaning in to let me feel her warm soft body.

“I am not bringing Creighton back here.” I paused. “Not now.” I’d said I’d meet him at Laurel’s, but I had no intention of turning our meet-up into a tryst. For one thing, I was furious at him. He might not believe the worst of me, but he was following his own particular rulebook, and that meant he had to consider what role I was playing in the sudden disappearance of someone who was about to confide in the cops. For another, as much as Wallis might dismiss the notion, I did have a job to do—and a duty to Spot, at least until his primary caregiver returned. And finally, and if I was going to be honest, I might as well admit this reason trumped all the others: I was intrigued. As Creighton had noted, Laurel had called me. Her message, however, had raised more questions than it had answered. Before I would share them with our mutual boyfriend, I wanted a stab at figuring out what my shrink rival had meant.

“Pru, Laurel Kroft here.” Like I could confuse that fake-smooth voice with anyone else I spoke with regularly. “I think I know what you’re getting at, I really do.” There was a pause so long, I was checking to see if the voice mail had cut out, when her voice came back again. “But the hypothesis I’m working with is that it was an accident.” Another pause, in which I could almost hear her constructing her excuses. “A horrible, horrible accident. I’m seeing what I can do about it.”

Well, that was lame. And while I couldn’t see smooth-as-silk Laurel Kroft involved in anything bloody, it didn’t put her in the best light. She was involved, one way or another, and already trying to dig her way out.

That message had made clear she knew I was onto her. And that meant I should step back. I might not like her, but she was smart enough to have read my actions correctly as a threat. If she were that desperately trying to cover something up—an “accident?”—she’d damn herself. And as far as Creighton was involved, it would be better if I weren’t involved. I only had to wait. Didn’t mean I couldn’t wait over at her place, though.

“Suit yourself
.”
Wallis had clearly followed all of my convoluted reasoning. Not that she agreed with it.
“Me, I’d say ‘carpe diem.’ But I’m just a hunter. A simple predator. You’re the one with the…brain
.”
Before I could retort, she had left the room.

The combination of aggravation, coffee, and last night’s whiskey had left me with a sour stomach and no appetite. I needed my wits, however. Plus, I liked the idea of making Creighton wait, at least a few more minutes. So I made myself a sandwich of what was left of the turkey. As I ate, I thought about going after Wallis. Because of the Kroft situation, I hadn’t had a chance to tell her about the sheltie’s bombshell, if that was indeed what it was. I had a feeling she’d get a kick out of my vision of a big cat. Then again, she might just confirm that I was losing it. Start speaking in tongues, or something.

Whatever. I might want to annoy Creighton. I couldn’t afford to really piss him off. And so as I wiped the crumbs off my hands into the sink, I switched my thoughts to what I needed to do—and how I could slip my own agenda into Jim’s.

For starters, it only made sense that I would take the dog. My sometime-beau wanted to question me. He’d made that clear. But if Spot needed to go out, that would buy me at least a temporary reprieve, and maybe help me get to the bottom of the situation. Then…yes, I had it.

“Bye, Wallis!” I called, grabbing for my keys. “Back later!”

“Jealous…
” I felt rather than heard her voice, accompanied by a low throb of emotion, more growl than purr.
“Doesn’t recognize human nature. Doesn’t recognize anyone’s…

“Jealous and she doesn’t see it
.”

“I see it all right,” I muttered to myself as I donned my coat. Let Wallis pick that up, if she wanted. I wasn’t going to let anyone’s snide comments stop me now, not even my cat’s.

“You’re not thinking of every possibility, you know
.”
Wallis voice reached me, even as I locked the door behind me.
“She could be there, when you get there. Then what would you do?”

Count on a cat to have the last word.