Double Dog Dare (31 page)

“I wish you’d just left things alone, Kendra,” Clark said with a nerdy smile, his tone utterly amiable despite a slight whine to his words. He stood with legs spread apart, hands behind his back, looking like some kind of naughty and repentant kid—maybe. “Like I told you before, my motive to kill Earl, at least the one everyone would have ascribed to me, was the theft of some pretty primitive technology. But one of my companies has gone a whole lot farther with it. We may be ready to start our own competing business any day.”

“That’s great,” I attempted to interject, recalling that this man never let me get a word in edgewise or otherwise in our earlier conversation.

“But now, word will be out that there’s something flawed about its basics. People around here knew that Earl walked away with some of my scientific discoveries. The other companies involved with cloning knew it, too.”

“But if you went farther with the technology than what Earl stole, then everyone will applaud your ingenuity and your—”

“You don’t get it. I thought that what this miserable place was selling was the real thing. I didn’t let my people put aside what Earl stole and try a different direction. I had them start again with the same technology, and they’re still fumbling with it. Now, we’re going to lose millions. More. And now that your allegations are out there in public, our investors will dry up.”

“But if you—”

He shook his head almost sadly. Was that a noise from the open door? No, it was simply Melville, sitting and panting and keeping an eye on the two of us. Clark continued, “See, that night when Earl panicked and gave a thumb drive to that damned investigator Hubbard, he called me. Told me what was going on, apologized for double-crossing me in the first place, and told me he was making good on it now by letting the world know what he’d done—and how The Clone Arranger wasn’t really using my technology but was scamming its customers. He thought I’d be pleased about it, stabbing his new employer in the back that way. But, hell, I was anything but. I told him so. His going along with their lies wound up hurting my business—keeping it set in the wrong direction. Plus, with word out there about the technology’s failure, my reputation would suffer. I threatened not only to let the Paynes know what he’d done, but to blame everything on him. He’d never get another job. And if he didn’t dispose of that interfering SOB Hubbard in exactly the way I told him, I’d dispose of
him
even more brutally.” Clark’s even huger smile made me shudder.

I considered inquiring why he was telling me all this, but I thought I knew.

“Well, I think he listened to you. Interesting stuff, Clark. But right now, we’ve got to—”

“There’s a reason for my telling you everything, Kendra,” he said, answering my unasked question as if I’d shouted it out. “You’re a smart lady, and I figured you’d want to know why you’re going to die. And you know the great part?”

He didn’t stop to let me guess. Not that I necessarily would have gotten it. Not the way my mind was racing far, far away and my shuddering body intended to follow.

He whipped from behind his back an ugly and huge hypodermic needle held in hands swathed in slick vinyl gloves.

“This stuff comes from right inside there.” He nodded toward The Clone Arranger.

Where the hell were the people who were apparently taking stuff out the open doors and loading those parked trucks?

Or had Clark been the one to gain entry to get that damned, scary needle?

Didn’t matter. Not now.

“Let’s get this over with, shall we?” he said, and sprang at me with his hand raised and the needle pointed square at my unprotected arm.

Chapter Twenty-five

I SCREAMED. I aimed my best imitation of a kung fu kick right where it should hurt.

And best of all, Melville suddenly stood and seemed to understand that this man was not a friend. He lunged with teeth bared. “Kill, Melville,” I shouted.

Just as I heard sirens approaching from not far away. And at long last people started pouring from the open Clone Arranger door.

Did this deter Clark Weiss? No way. Partly doubled over by the pain in his privates, and Melville’s teeth clamped over his arm, he still came at me.

I suddenly feared for Melville. What if the idiot somehow shot the dog with a dose of whatever was designed to down a whole human being?

“Friend, Melville,” I shouted, but the dog was too engrossed to hear or obey. So I did what I had to after seeing lots of martial arts videos: shrieked some unintelligible syllables and aimed my head right at Clark Weiss’s unprotected side.

We went down in a tangle of legs—canine and human. I felt a needle prick in my thigh . . . and then nothing at all.

I WOKE UP in an awful-odored hospital room. I mean, it was okay if you like sweet-smelling antiseptics and cleaners and all. I don’t.

Well, hell. I wasn’t alone. On one side sat Jeff Hubbard, leafing through a magazine.

On the other was Tom Venson, with a big veterinary-looking tome on his lap.

Help!
my mind yelled.
Nurse! Anybody!

But instead of crying out, I said very slowly, “Well, if either of you were paying attention to the guest of honor here, you’d know I was awake.”

They both stood and crowded around me and made all sorts of excited noise. I tuned them out and fell back to sleep.

NEXT THING I knew, I awakened yet again—much more widely this time. When I glanced around half hopefully, and half dreading the possibility of facing both those men again, I was kinda pleased to see that the only person present besides me was Detective Ned Noralles.

“What brings you here, Ned?” I asked after clearing my throat in a futile attempt to erase its hoarseness. “Isn’t this St. Joe’s?” Providence St. Joseph Medical Center was in Burbank, not within the official purview of the LAPD.

“Professional courtesy has been extended to me,” he said with a sardonic smile. “Both the local PDs know I’m here and ready to question you about what happened. You’re in Burbank, and your little altercation with Clark Weiss occurred in Glendale.”

“Little altercation?” My voice rose in incredulous protest. “He attacked me. Tried to kill me.”

“Could be. But the guy’s not talking.”

I eyed Ned wryly. “Did you meet him before? His silence is an obvious sign he’s guilty. I couldn’t get him to shut up any of the times I’ve spoken with him. He even confessed a whole lot to me before he came at me with that damned needle.” I shuddered in my soft and too revealing hospital gown, which I quickly yanked back to a more modest level.

Ned looked awfully interested, or maybe he was just intending to make me feel uncomfortable. If so, he succeeded. So what if he was a nice-looking guy? I had had too many like that in my life—or I had before. Now, I wanted nothing to do with either of them.

Besides, where were they, now that I was awake enough to most likely stay that way?

“He’s lawyered up, as they say,” Ned informed me, peering at me in a pinched way that told me he was very much aware that I was one of those awful attorneys, too. “But only after claiming he came to talk to one of the Paynes that day about possibly joining their cloning technologies to fix their now-public problems and saw you stealing stuff from the building. When he confronted you, you confronted him right back with the ugly needle and the dog. Of course he had to defend himself.”

“What!” I was becoming more and more enraged by the effrontery of that horrible Clark Weiss. “He tried to kill me! Look, Ned, let me tell you what happened. I brought Beryl Leeds’s dog Melville to The Clone Arranger to try to use him to get my foot in the— Melville! Is he okay? Where is he?”

“You have a whole lot of friends worried about you,” Ned said unresponsively, sitting on the edge of my high hospital bed. Only it wasn’t actually unresponsive at all. Among those who’d come to visit and keep watch, he informed me, was Tracy Owens of the Pet-Sitters Club of Southern California, who knew where I’d intended to end up with Melville that day. “She took him to the foster home you’d discussed with her before, and said to tell you that once the guy there got across to the dog that he was friend, not enemy, they started getting along just fine.”

“Oh,” I said, suddenly exhausted once more. “That’s a good thing.”

“Sure is. Anyway, we’ll take an official statement from you when you’re feeling better, but you’ve already given several unofficial ones between bouts of unconsciousness.”

“Really?” That unnerved me a whole lot. I didn’t recall a single one. Which reminded me of Jeff and his assertions of what he did and did not recall at times.

Would I start obsessing about him as conspiring in all that had happened, the way he had done with me? Well, maybe
he
deserved it.

“So tell me what the cops think really happened in all this.”

He wouldn’t do it, since I was a percipient witness and he wouldn’t want to taint any testimony I might give at the criminal trial of Clark Weiss that was apt to happen. So, instead, I asked if I could tell him what I understood occurred, and he could either smile or frown in response. Which brought one of his usual sardonic grins, and he let me begin.

“I surmise that this whole thing was started by Lois’s attempt to get her not-quite-Akita, Flisa, cloned. When Flisa died, Lois asked Jeff to surreptitiously check things out, so as not to make her look bad before her conservative church group. Jeff loves her like a mom, and did as she asked, somehow getting through to Earl and convincing him it was in his very best interest to save himself from a bad situation by giving Jeff proof—which he did. I gathered from Earl’s ex-wife that he had stopped being enamored with The Clone Arranger. Maybe he felt guilty about its committing fraud on its customers. Now we’ll never know. But that damned thumb drive he gave Jeff had evidence about what The Clone Arranger really did—and it wasn’t genuine cloning.”

I looked at Ned, who nodded ever so slightly, even as he lifted his quite nice butt, clad in one of his detective suits, off my bed and onto the nearby visitor’s chair.

He crossed his arms and nodded yet again, encouraging me to continue.

I went over—again, according to Ned’s allegations— what I recalled Clark had confessed before attempting to inject me with that awful needle.

“Earl happily handed the thumb drive to Jeff, then called his old boss Clark to tell him what he’d done, thinking Clark would be pleased to learn that the people who’d allegedly stolen his scientific stuff were going to wind up potentially paying for fraud. Only Clark wasn’t excited about it at all, and threatened Earl so he’d get the thumb drive back and get rid of Jeff. The first part turned out to be impossible, but he did attempt to dispose of Jeff, talking to Clark in the process. Jeff, while drugged, overheard parts of conversations. Has he told you that?”

“He sure has,” Ned said. “Go on. This is good.”

“Does it go along with official assumptions?”

“Close enough. So Earl kidnapped Jeff and dumped him into the canal, and damned if the guy didn’t survive. I never considered him a lion in law enforcement, but he sure seems to have a cat’s nine lives.” Amazingly, though Ned and Jeff had long since ceased to be friends, Ned appeared to be impressed.

“Right. That deals with most of the Jeff scenario, but not what happened to Beryl—at least not directly. Here’s what I guess: Beryl had been very public in her adoration of The Clone Arranger, and she’d met Clark, who’d considered her a potential investor in his companies, which he claimed had even better technology. She found out, probably from Clark, that Earl was messing up her whole The Clone Arranger arrangement—including the infomercial they’d promised to hire her for at a lucrative and much needed price. That’s why she went to confront Earl. Maybe she intended to kill him, but—”

Ned mumbled something I didn’t quite catch.

“Pardon?”

“Slllldfffnn,” he muttered again, staring at the ceiling.

I finally figured out what he wasn’t exactly saying. “Er . . . oh, yeah, maybe she accosted Earl so angrily that he came at her with a hypodermic of ketamine stuff that sedated dogs and did wonders with Jeff, too. And now me.” Ned sort of nodded, seeming encouraging. “So somehow she turned the tables on him and accidentally killed him in self-defense with that very same needle. Is that what her attorney’s claiming?”

“Gee, Kendra, you’re psychic!” Ned exclaimed. “That’s exactly it.”

I laughed.

“Okay, let’s cut the rest of this long story short. Jeff’s missing and presumed dead. Earl is dead and there’s someone besides Clark to blame it on. Things suddenly look rosy yet again for The Clone Arranger and its flawed technology. Only there I am, butting in, snooping around. So Clark starts following me in a car owned by one of his subsidiaries, a nice but ordinary hybrid that he wouldn’t otherwise be seen in. He parks one really nice auto outside his offices in his marked CEO’s space. Did you run the plate number of the vehicle parked near The Clone Arranger the day I was attacked?”

“Yep. Registered to an outfit that’s a subsidiary of a subsidiary of the big parent CW Ultra Technologies umbrella. ”

My turn to grin. Then frown. “He tried to run me over once, but Jeff, the super poop scooper, shoved me out of the way. And fortunately I was unstoppable. Showed how The Clone Arranger is a big fraud. Which upset Clark yet again about his potential investors. It may be a case of closing the barn door after the cloned cows have escaped, but he decided to get revenge against The Clone Arranger guys, which was why he happened to be there as they started attempting to remove any evidence of their fraud. I arrived as they were still packing up, and so did Clark. I was a bonus that day, although I was still high on his list for removal.” I paused. “Oh, yeah, Beryl. Clark was pleased that she stepped up and confessed, but the idea of self-defense and their conversations coming up bothered him a bit. To ensure she couldn’t testify, he contacted her the instant he found out she’d been released on bail—he’d been watching—and asked her to meet him to strategize about the whole cloning thing. He caught her in her car before she went into the restaurant where they were to meet.” I looked at Ned. “Any word about whether she’s going to survive?”