"Shit," Jack said, having mentally bleeped the first profanities that came to mind. "I knew I should've picked up that stupid mutt, returned him to the shelter,
then
gone to the office."
On second thought, posing as Carleton deHaven at Merry Hills wouldn't have been exceptionally shrewd, either.
"The kennel is pretty busy on Mondays," Dina said. "All of them are. If boarding customers don't come by six on Sunday, they have to wait until after two on Monday to pick up their dogs."
Which, Jack recalled, was why he hadn't fetched Phil. As if McGuire wouldn't have waited at the office for him, regardless. He checked his watch. "Maybe Cherise can take offNo, forget that. Accidentally implicating her before the fact is bad enough."
The heat and carbon-monoxide-flavored mugginess closed in and down on him. His heel eviscerated a cigarette butt flicked at a gravel-filled receptacle, then another, girdled with pink lipstick. "For all I know, somebody has already tipped McGuire and Merry Hills is under surveillance."
Dina asked in a low voice, "Could you tell if it was? I mean, would the police watch the kennel from the outside? Or put somebody inside, like he was a new employee?"
Jack chuckled in spite of himself. "I don't think Harriet's the only detective-show junkie at your house." Sobering, he said, "Good God, I should've asked way before now. Your mom is all right, isn't she? No aftereffects from last night?"
"Grouchy. A little woozy halfway through her laps in the hallway, but on her ten scale, I'd say she's about a seven." An upheld finger silenced him. "Cancel the guilt trip, McPhee. Mom had to be told where the money was coming from, eventually. She wouldn't have taken it as well from me.
"You saw how we are. Like a damn button-pushing competition. She's had more practice, but I'm younger and healthier." Dina made a face. "There's something to be proud of. Getting my licks in on a heart patient who needs help in the bathroom."
"Cancel
your
guilt trip, Wexler. It took about ten minutes to figure out that you two are a book-matched pair."
He moved aside for an approaching smoker to douse a cigarillo. Stress had him jonesing to bum a smoke. It always did and probably always would. If Dina hadn't been there, he might have given in.
Settling for a whiff of secondhand smoke, he said, "Which brings up another hitch in your confession theory. Where does Harriet fit into it?"
"I didn't intend to say anything today. I can cover the bills till the end of the month. Long enough for Randy to come home or to make, uh, other arrangements."
Dina glanced down at her outfit. "I'm pretending to be an intersession student. My thesis subject is a hypothetical, law-abiding citizen forced to steal to buy medicine for a chronically ill parent."
Those sad, dark eyes glittered with contempt. "It doesn't make it right, but I'm not the only one who ever has
who
is
doing it, or will, when working, begging and borrowing doesn't stop the merry-go-round. It just goes faster."
No, Jack thought, the situation wasn't unique to her and her mother. Those who take an actual bullet to save someone they love are heroes. Everyone believes they'd make that ultimate sacrifice, too. Jack would for his parents, his sisters, nieces, nephews
and yeah, for Belle, if the bastard who'd shot her had given him the chance.
But take a metaphorical bullet? And keep taking it for the exact same life-or-death reason, and you're a menace to society.
"You'll never pull off the Jane College bit," he said. "Not without a bag over your head. Try it, and any cop with half a brain will read you like
Guns & Ammo.
"
Dina jutted her jaw and plastered on a starlet smile. She hesitated a moment, then slumped. "I look guilty, huh?"
"Worse. You look honest and trying too hard not to look guilty."
"Then I'll practice for a day or two." An eyebrow crimped. "Unless you have a better idea for keeping the kennels out of this."
"Aw, for crissake. That's the least"
"Since I have an idea for sneaking Phil out of Merry Hills without anybody knowing it."
Visions of a
Great Escape
remake with Dina playing Steve McQueen's role made Jack's head hurt. Then again, her legs were excellent, but too short to reach a motorcycle's pegs. "Let's have it," he said with no enthusiasm whatsoever.
"You give me cash to pay the boarding fee. I'll drop by to see if Phil's dermatitis has improved, then say he needs to be taken outside awhile. That isn't an old wives' tale. Some skin conditions do respond to brief exposure to natural light."
"What if Phil's already outside?"
"Doesn't matter." Her tone suggested the interruption was not appreciated. "I'll let him out the side gate, where you'll be waiting in your car. Back inside, I'll sneak the money into the cash drawer, mark the fee paid and take off."
Jack rested his hands on his hips. "Where
do
you come up with this stuff?" A better question was, how in the hell did she get away with burglary for so long? "If you go outside with Phil, or are outside with Phil, don't you think somebody'll wonder when you go back in
without
Phil?"
"Oh. Hmm. Well, I can wait around in the exercise yard, until the coast is clear. Then I'll
I'll move the dogs around in the pens. Yeah! That'll keep Phil from being missed for a while, and when the fee's marked paid, everyone will think his owner must have picked him up."
"His deceased owner," Jack reminded.
"Okay, butLook, I trusted you to help me last night. Why can't you just trust me to help you?"
"You didn't trust me. You just didn't want to go to jail."
"I told you everything. I didn't have to. Once I was home, you couldn't have proved I was ever inside your ex-wife's house. Or anyone else's."
She had him there. And knew it. "Let me think about it while you give me a lift to the office to get my car."
They started down the steps, Dina coltish in dress shoes likely boxed in a closet for months, and loath to let them set the pace. "One condition," she said.
Why wasn't he surprised? "Hey, I can take a cab."
"Phil can't go back to the animal shelter."
"He has to." When Jack dragged himself home from the Wexlers, he absolutely had not wished Phil was there, wagging a welcome home. Or stuck a cold, dog-snotty nose in his face this morning and whined to go out. First thing, he'd washed the hair-clotted towels and given the blow-dryer to Ms. Pearl. No bonds to break, no regrets.
"My apartment is small," he said. "Phil is not. Plus, I have a feeling I won't be spending much time there in the immediate future."
"Pets are therapeutic. It's clinically proven they can alleviate stress, depression, hypertension
"
Jack looked at her. "You want him?"
Dina shook her head. "Temporary custody. Fifty bucks a week for his care and feeding, and a promise you'll keep him when I can't anymore."
"Deal," blurted a voice that sounded exactly like Jack's.
* * *
Dina saw the car first. She and Jack were in the crosswalk at midblock that led to the visitors' parking lot where she'd left the Beetle. She lagged behind a couple of steps, the tissues wadded in the toes of her shoes as hardened and rough as papier-mâché. Size-four-and-three-quarter pumps didn't exist; fives were nearly impossible to find. Seldom in her life had she worn shoes that weren't a half size too big.
Now skating along more so than walking, she glimpsed a blur streak from the parking lot's exit, turn wide and swerve into the southbound lane. Mouth agape in a silent scream, she slammed into Jack, pushing him forward with all her might.
The burn of skinned knees and the palms of both hands registered before Dina realized she'd fallen. As an added insult, her hobo bag swung up and clouted her in the head.
"Dina!" Jack hoisted her to feet and hugged her tight. "Jesus, darlin', are you okay? Are you hurt?"
Stepping back, he smoothed the hair from her face. He looked her over, as though expecting to see bones sticking out, or arterial bleeding.
"I'm fine." She tottered a little, feeling at once hollow and capable of wrenching up the redbud tree in the parkway and hurling it at
well,
something.
"Are you sure?" At her wobbly nod, Jack wrapped an arm around her, smushing her against him. It felt pretty wonderful, except she'd really have liked to sit down on the curb a second.
He called across the street, "Hey, kid. Yeah, you. Did you see that car?"
A teenager in what appeared to be chainsawed sweatpants and a T-shirt pointed north. "He cranked a left at the corner.
Haulin'.
"
Jack muttered, "No shit, Sherlock," then louder, "Gimme a make, a model."
"You mean like Ford, or sumthin'?" The teen waved dismissively. "I dunno, dude. It was like, you know, like dirty white, I think. Maybe tan."
Behind them, a reedy voice said, "It was a Chevrolet. No doubt about it."
Jack turned, taking Dina with him. The speaker was a well-dressed woman with lilac-tinted hair and the bearing of a retired elementary teacher. "The car was just like my granddaughter's, only hers is blue, and she takes far better care of it."
The woman clucked her tongue at Dina. "That was quite a tumble you took, miss. As crazy as people drive anymore, it's a miracle you weren't killed." She looked at Jack and flipped up her clip-on sunglasses. "In my day, a gentleman walked beside a lady to cross the street, not in front of her."
Dina suppressed a chuckle at his contrite "Yes, ma'am." She ducked from under his protective wing as he reverted to the woman's original comment. "Your granddaughter's car. Do you by chance know the model?"
An apologetic
no
prompted, "What about the driver? Male? Female?"
The woman pursed her lips and looked down the street. "It happened so fast
A man, I'd say, but I really can't be certain."
Jack asked for and received her name and phone, then gave her a business card. "Thanks, Mrs. Norton. If you think of anything else, please let me know."
Dina banked her curiosity until they were out of earshot. "The man in the white Chevy," she stated. "He was trying to run you down, wasn't he?"
Expression stony, refusing to meet her eyes, Jack replied, "What makes you think that?"
"Because he timed it, and he didn't hit his brakes, even going around the corner."
"Mighty observant for a dog groomer." Jack's scowl deepened, as though deciding whether to leave it there or continue. "Assuming it was a Cavalier, the driver's name is Brett Dean Blankenship. I turned him down for a job last week. Saying he doesn't take rejection well is like saying the ocean's wet."
He pulled the Bug's driver's-side door handle, grunted, then reached in the open window and pulled up the lock. "He's stalked me on and off ever since."
"Stalking? Ye gods, McPhee. How about hit-and-run?"
"Missed and ran," he corrected.
Dina stowed her hobo bag on the rear floorboard. She sat down gingerly, the blistering-hot upholstery upstaging her tender, stinging kneecaps. Jack had slid into the passenger's side and was collapsing the windshield's sunscreen, when she turned and said, "But you were in front of me in the crosswalk. Blankenship swung into the other lane, not into the curb."
The folded sunscreen skimmed over her head and flopped on the backseat. "And lucky for me, you throw a pretty mean tackle for a girl."
"You're welcome." Dina depressed the clutch and keyed the ignition. The VW fired up and shuddered in place and coughed exhaust the approximate shade of Mrs. Norton's hair.
Pulling out of the lot, her thoughts flittered like dust motes, a frightening few of them consigned to operating a motor vehicle. "Why did you ask everybody but me about the car and the guy driving it? It was a man, by the way. A big man."
"You were involved. An adrenaline dump sharpens, distorts and narrows perceptions. If you aimed a .22 peashooter at a convenience store clerk, he'd see Godzilla armed with an AK-47 with tiny nicks inside the barrel."
Thinking back, Dina allowed it was true. The car was light colored, but not necessarily white. The driver's silhouette filled the space above the dash and the roof. In the V-dub's passenger's seat, Jack almost fit that description and he wasn't a big man. And an impression of size automatically translated to male.
What Dina couldn't shake was the feeling she, not Jack, was the intended target.
"Left at the next corner," he said, pointing. "Then a right when you get to Danbury."
"Was Blankenship stalking you last night?"
"No."
"You're sure?"
Jack glanced at her, then looked away. "Positive."
Good, Dina thought. Because if he had and the guy was insane enough to try to hurt me, simply because I was with Jack, I'd wonder if he'd
