

* * *

**LIA ANDERSON MYSTERIES**

by C. A. Newsome

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A SHOT IN THE BARK

DROOL BABY

MAXIMUM SECURITY

SNEAK THIEF

MUDDY MOUTH

FUR BOYS

# A Shot in the Bark

### Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries 1

## C. A. Newsome

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, places and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is coincidental.

A SHOT IN THE BARK

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Copyright © 2011, 2017, and 2018 by Carol Ann Newsome

"Max" Copyright © 2010 by Carol Ann Newsome

Cover Design by Elizabeth Mackey

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All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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Two Pup Press

1836 Bruce Avenue

Cincinnati, Ohio 45223

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Version 3.2 November 2018

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Newsome, C. A.

A shot in the bark: a dog park mystery/ C. A. Newsome

Pages cm

ISBN 9780996374279 (paperback )—ISBN 9780996374255 (ebook)

1. Serial Murderers—Fiction. 2. Murder Investigations—Fiction

3. Cincinnati (Ohio)—Fiction. I. Title.
For the two and four-footed friends who share my mornings.

### Contents

Prologue

1. Saturday, May 7

2. Sunday, May 8

3. Monday, May 9

4. Tuesday, May 10

5. Wednesday, May 11

6. Thursday, May 12

7. Friday, May 13

8. Saturday, May 14

9. Sunday, May 15

10. Monday, May 16

11. Tuesday, May 17

12. Friday, May 20

13. Wednesday, May 25

14. Thursday, May 26

15. Monday, May 30

16. Tuesday, May 31

17. Saturday, June 4

18. Tuesday, June 7

19. Saturday, June 18

20. Sunday, June 19

21. Sunday, June 26

22. Monday, June 27

23. Thursday, July 7

24. Saturday, July 9

Epilogue

Viola's Song

Special Offer!

Author's Notes

Acknowledgements

Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries

About the Author

# Prologue

### Seven Years Ago

He has to go. Can I do it? Years with this man were endurable while he worked long hours, out of town for weeks at a time while pursuing his ambitions. Now the man who was once a big white shark with his own personal ocean splashes in my little puddle, making life intolerable with his endless demands.

I've read in murder mysteries that potassium chloride is practically undetectable. Looks like a heart attack. He's had two. No reason he can't have a third.

I could sneak the potassium into his insulin. Then I could arrange it so he injects it himself while I'm away and have an alibi. But that would mean an unattended death and maybe an autopsy. If there's an autopsy, they might examine his insulin and syringes. They would have traces of potassium that could be detected... unless I swapped them out first.

Does potassium affect the color of insulin? If it does, I'll have to think of something else because he won't take the shot.

If I'm present when he dies, an autopsy is less likely, but I'll have to face the EMTs. Can I pull off acting shocked and grieving? I'd have to time the call to 911 right, wait long enough to ensure he's dead but not so long it raises questions.

Timing is critical. For the past three years, Ryan Widmer and his wife Sarah have dominated the news, all because he delayed the 911 call too long. Sarah's skin was dry when the EMTs arrived, odd for a woman who'd drowned in her tub. The bathroom was too clean, no pools of water from a distraught Ryan dragging her out of the water. And he drained the tub. Who would drain the tub?

Jurors from the first trial thought the floor was dry because he mopped it. That Sarah thrashed in the water while he was holding her under, creating a mess inconsistent with his story that she fell asleep in the tub and slid under. There was a better explanation for the anomalies, but it was not one that would help Ryan.

Now Widmer rots in prison. Such small mistakes. How can you think of everything at a time like that? You can't, not in the moment. I must think of everything, and think of it in advance.

## 1

# Saturday, May 7

"Unknown entity at two o'clock."

The invitation to play Stranger Danger came from Terry, a dog park habitué sitting at the other end of Lia's usual picnic table with Jim, one of her oldest friends.

Jim objected: "How do you know he doesn't have a dog? Maybe he parked there so his car won't get scratched."

Lia had her nose in the knotted mess that was her golden retriever's tail and didn't respond. The untangling should have been easy with Honey sprawled on the table top in front of her. But the tail thumped erratically while Honey tracked a squirrel in a nearby tree, turning each offending twig and bit of vegetation into a moving target.

She took a break from Honey's tail and scanned the parking lot, zeroing in on a Mazda Miata in classic Jaguar green near the entrance. It faced the wood surrounding the dog park, as far as you could get from the service road leading to the entrance corral and an easy football field away. Not likely to be a dog lover, then.

Terry scoffed. "Look at that shine. The jerk hand-waxes his car every week. He won't let dog hair in it. Sorry, Jackson," he said to the hound mix he was scratching behind the ears. "Your claws will never sink into his leather upholstery."

"He could have a dog that doesn't shed," Jim argued.

"No self-respecting owner of a Miata would own a poodle. It would destroy his manhood."

"He could own a schnauzer. Maybe he vacuums his car when he waxes it."

This back and forth could go on for hours after the Miata left. Terry arbitrated union strikes for years before he retired, though with a lawyer brother hosting a long-running talk radio show, Lia suspected his love for debate had its roots at the family dinner table.

Jim had spent decades arguing with architects, developers, and city planners while surveying a large portion of the new construction in Cincinnati. With kind eyes, a large nose, and bushy beard, he reminded Lia of Treebeard, the Ent from _Lord of the Rings_. Like the Ent, Jim was slow to make up his mind and impossibly stubborn.

Their table sat high on the slope overlooking the parking lot and provided an excellent view of everything that happened in the lot while the people below were unaware they were observed. This vantage point allowed advance warning when unknown and possibly vicious dogs entered the park. So many dog-less drivers used the secluded lot for questionable purposes, vigilance had morphed into speculation, then entertainment in the form of Stranger Danger.

This morning's bickering aggravated the headache plaguing Lia since she woke up. Intervention was necessary. She couldn't stop them, but she could derail their momentum if she entered the game.

Lia chose her moment and dove in: "Can you see the interior? If it's black, he doesn't have a dog. Everything shows on black. A guy who hand waxes his car would care."

"Whatever," Terry said. "He's not getting out of his car. I call Stranger Danger. Recreational pharmaceuticals. It's some hipster idiot picking up his daily hit of meth."

"Hipsters smoke marijuana," Jim argued. "They don't do meth."

"They do if they want to afford a Miata," Terry said.

Jim said, "I vote for romantic assi... assin..."

Lia supplied the missing word. "Assignation."

"That's right. Assignation."

"A rendezvous before breakfast?" Lia said. "It's a covert operator trading military secrets. He's selling a portable drive with a worm to penetrate the Department of Defense firewall."

Jim looked sideways at her. "Last time you called arms dealer."

Lia shrugged. "Can't stash a rocket launcher in a trunk that small, and the car's too rich for him to be selling junk guns to gangbangers." She pulled a Chuckit from her tote bag and loaded a tennis ball into it, lobbed the ball down the hill. Honey, tail now free of vegetation, leapt after it and nearly collided with Lia's other dog, a schnauzer named Chewy who'd been eyeing Honey's squirrel from a different vantage point.

The car continued to sit, the owner still inside.

Honey returned, followed by Chewy. She dropped the now-slobbery ball at Lia's feet so Lia could send it bouncing back down the hill. Chewy trotted off to sniff at the base of a tree.

"Damn," Terry said. "Unauthorized work break. No, this is Saturday. It's a realtor between appointments."

"How's a realtor going to drive a couple to a listing in a sports car?" Jim asked.

A flash of white on the boulevard caught Lia's eye. "And now we have a mini-van. Mr. Miata arrived early for the handoff to scope out the area for an enemy presence."

"It's a woman in the van," Terry said. "He wasn't early. She's late."

"Your meth dealer's a woman?" Jim asked

"No drug dealer drives a mini-van," Terry said. "That's a soccer mom seeking coitus while her kids are at practice."

Jim scowled. "I called romance. You said recreational pharmaceuticals. You can't switch. It's against the rules."

"If it is a hook-up," Lia said, "which vehicle will they leave in? The Miata is sexier, but the van is less obvious."

"They won't leave," Terry said. "He'll get in the van for love in a sea of stray Cheerios."

The revulsion Lia felt was visceral. "Eeeeeewwwwww."

Chewy returned to sniff around Lia's ankles, looking for the source of her distress. She ruffled his ears. "It's all right, little man." Chewy stretched his neck in canine ecstasy.

The driver's side door opened on the Miata. The man who stepped out was short, stocky, and bald. A woman exited the van and opened the sliding door, lifted a young boy down. He ran to the stocky man.

"Ah," Terry said. "Custodial handoff."

"I win," Lia said.

"How do you figure?" Terry said.

"Transaction between hostiles. That comes closest to the spy scenario."

"Children come from romance," Jim said. "I win."

Terry raised a finger in a just-one-moment gesture. "Dare I make the case that she was under the influence when she got pregnant?"

Lia and Jim both looked at him. "No."

"Jim and I split the points," Lia said.

"How many points is that?" Jim asked. "I want a steak when I beat Terry to one hundred."

"Make it five hundred," Terry said, "and it's a bet."

"We'll be dead before either of us makes it that far. You're saying that so you won't have to pay up."

The woman left after a brief exchange. As the mini-van turned onto the boulevard, the man opened the door of his car. A standard poodle jumped out and pranced around the boy in a display of doggie delight. The man slung an arm around the boy's shoulder and the pair bumped companionably as man, boy, and dog disappeared into a trailhead off the parking lot.

Jim sneered. "Hah!"

"He looks manly enough to me," Lia said. "They waited until Mom was out of sight before they went into the woods. I bet she thinks Junior is coyote bait and doesn't approve."

A familiar green Forester turned into the lot. _Finally._ Lia jumped down from the table. "I want to talk to Anna."

"Feminazi plotting? I must be on my guard," Terry said.

Lia headed for the gate, Honey and Chewy at her side. She waved Terry off without bothering to look back.

Lia perched next to Anna atop table a safe distance from the men. The not-so-early birds were starting to arrive, which meant she wouldn't have much time to talk before they were interrupted. Still, it was hard to find the words.

She picked at a scab of paint on her studio shorts as she spoke. "How did I get mixed up with such a loser, Anna?"

Anna watched her with intense eyes of an indeterminate color and said nothing. Nature's one gift to Anna had been thick hair that went pale gold instead of grey though her brows remained dark. The effect should have been harsh. Lia found it comforting.

Lia turned away, tracking Chewy's daily tour of the park perimeter while she gathered her thoughts. "I know better. Mom went through the same damn thing with her second husband. Handsome, talented, and just needed a little push, a little cheerleading, to manifest his brilliant potential." She snorted.

"You've been seeing Luthor for what, a year now? What's upsetting you today?"

"Nothing's upsetting me."

"Nothing?"

"As in, nothing's changed. Nothing's moving forward, nothing's different. Luthor's in the same place he was a year ago. He's manifesting nothing."

"What brought this on today?" Anna asked.

Lia made a face. "I read his latest revisions. He almost had a decent book when I met him. Now it's a mess. He said he needed to cut twenty thousand words. Then he decided to turn it into a genre mashup. He added seventy pages, and says he needs to add more to integrate all the new material. Which means the book will be so long no publisher will touch it. He killed the pace and it's lost its freshness. The good parts are so overworked they just lay there, dead and stinking to high heaven."

"That's quite an image."

"It's pure road kill. I told him, 'You can't sell something if you never finish it. You can't finish it if you can't decide what it is and you keep adding new elements that mean you have to rewrite the whole damn thing. You're not curing cancer, you're just trying to entertain people.' Then he tells me that being a writer is not like being a painter, and I don't understand."

"Good thing he's a writer, not a painter. He can go back to an earlier version of the manuscript when he comes to his senses."

"That's just it. He's been overwriting the files all along. I organized his files months ago and showed him how to save different versions of the book as he made changes. He blew it off and said it was too much trouble."

"There's software that can retrieve it, isn't there?"

"There isn't if Paul offers to defrag your computer while you're having beers. You'd have better luck reviving disco. Honey! Stop digging! Right! Now!"

Honey's feathery golden tail waved above flying clods of dirt as she enlarged a hole created by an earlier park visitor. Chewy sniffed the growing dirt pile, emerging with dirty paws and a clump of sod on his nose.

"Honey! I said STOP!"

Honey looked up, her expression sheepish. She returned to Lia in a penitent slouch and placed one dirt-caked paw in Lia's lap in a plea for forgiveness. Lia looked down at the dark smudge on her shorts. She hugged the golden retriever and rested her cheek on Honey's head. "You're supposed to be perfect, girlfriend. I need you to be good right now."

Anna's eyes flicked over to the bench where Jim now sat, several yards away. "At least you have the sense to dress for the park."

Anna wasn't talking about Jim. Jim's couture was comfortable, well-used, and rumpled, like his face and personality. It was Catherine, the grand-dame sitting next to him, and her Nordstrom running outfit that drew this bit of spite from Anna.

"I'm sorry I ever introduced them," Lia said. "She never would have looked at Jim twice if I hadn't raved about what a wonderful person he was. Now the first thing she does whenever she shows up is cut him out of the herd."

"Let's collect the children and see if they might like to chase some balls. If I aim right, one might just hit her in the head."

Anna's black and tan Tibetan mastiff, CarGo (as in "Car! Go!"), galloped up. At 125 pounds, CarGo could be mistaken for a small horse. His one bad habit was jumping up, and with paws on shoulders, looking humans in the eyes. Anna frequently announced she was taking him to the nearest Author Murray Studio so they could learn ballroom dancing together.

Anna launched two balls in the air. CarGo beelined after a line-drive with Chewy yapping at his heels. Honey considered a high lob, bolting when its trajectory became apparent. She leapt up to snag it out of the air before CarGo pounced on his own grounder.

"What is it about this book that has you so upset?"

Lia chewed her lip,` looking for a way to explain. "Some creatives like to diddle with their work and they don't care if they ever finish or not. Maybe they're afraid to put their work out there, maybe they're not sure what it is they want to do, maybe they feel they have to get it perfect—but you can never get it perfect."

Lia paused to toss another ball, adjusting her aim to send it away from Jim and Catherine.

"People who accomplish anything are finishers. They don't whine or make excuses. They might adjust their course a bit, but they don't suddenly decide to switch destinations. Once Luthor added shapeshifting inter-dimensional beings to his police procedural, I knew he was never going to finish the book. He never reads science fiction. How can he write it? It was the last straw. We're done."

"Over a book?"

"Over his pretense that he's actually doing something with his life. I can't be with someone who hasn't entered the real world. Sooner or later, they wind up turning on me like it's my fault they haven't gotten anywhere. He's already started with the little digs."

"I'm so glad he never moved in."

"That would have been a mistake. I'm dreading this as it is."

The familiar sound of a perforated muffler drew Lia's attention to the parking lot. Luthor had named the rattle-trap Corolla Hamlet because it "suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." Lia thought Shakes-Gear was more to the point. Great. Luthor was here and she wasn't at all ready to deal with him.

Luthor Morrissey extracted his long frame from the compact car and shoved a tangle of blond hair out of his eyes. His clothes, while expensive, were unpressed. Luthor affected 19th Century Romanticism overlaid with a patina of 21st Century Artist Grunge: Lord Byron for the third millennium. His dog, a black chow mix named Viola, jumped out behind him.

It had taken too long for Lia to realize Luthor was coasting on good looks and artistic sensitivity. He was assisted by Viola, whose silky fur drew admirers despite her schizophrenic personality. Luthor had spotted Viola as a traumatized puppy in a February ice storm and spent over an hour coaxing her to warmth and safety. But animal rescue only gets you so far.

He made his way up the service road that led to the park gate, Viola circling him in frenzied excitement.

Lia sighed. "I'll miss the dog."

Luthor yelled from the gate, waving a long arm overhead, his unbuttoned cuff dangling off his wrist like the ruffle on a poet shirt.

"As if everyone hadn't heard his muffler when he was a mile away," Lia muttered.

"Have pity. You're about to ruin his year and he doesn't know it yet."

"He doesn't have a clue. That's the problem."

Jim joined Anna as she watched the drama unfold. "Third time a charm?"

"I hope so; the other breakups didn't stick. This is wearing her down. It's wearing _me_ down."

Lia ignored Luthor's outstretched arms, climbing on a table and folding her arms across her chest. Viola jumped up beside her, tried to shove a nose under Lia's hand. Lia ignored her. Luthor's posture tensed. The volume of their argument increased, Luthor's voice now audible. Anna could almost, but not quite, understand what he was saying.

"Is she going to be okay?" Jim asked.

"Sooner or later. Lia's resilient. But I'd so hoped he would make her happy." Anna craned her neck, searching the park. "What happened to your girlfriend?"

"Catherine's not my girlfriend. She just needed some advice. Fleece is the only woman in my life." Fleece, a Border Collie, was currently herding a pair of lab pups.

"You're too kind, Jim." _Or too blind_.

A tall redhead with chin-length, Cleopatra hair joined them. Bailey had the kind of figure that photographed well because she was always fifteen pounds underweight. Mildly popped eyes, a beaky nose, and a hesitant smile that quirked up on the left while the right remained undecided—these features often gave Bailey a gawky appearance. Then she would move with unexpected grace and transform, duckling to swan.

"Is this the end?" Bailey gestured toward the tableau at the other end of the park with a long, tapered hand that should have been pouring tea or playing piano. Ironically, her fingers were callused and nicked and her nails blunt and grimy from her one-woman gardening business.

"I hope so," Anna said, "but I don't think he'll let her go easily. She doesn't need this. She's already stressing over that garden you two are building for Catherine. I'm so angry at Luthor. He should be supporting her so she can do her work, not expecting her to nursemaid him while he pretends to write."

"Support her?" The left side of Bailey's mouth jerked in amusement. "He can't even put gas in his car."

"Not that. She does okay by herself. I meant cook her dinner, rub her feet instead of expecting her to rub his all the time. He's not the one standing on a concrete floor all day painting." She paused to glare at Jim. "Why is it men always think their needs are more important?"

Jim raised both palms in the universal plea for peace. "You know I'm not going to touch that."

The park gate clanged shut. Luthor stormed down the service road with Viola at his heels while Lia sat on her picnic table with her arms wrapped around her knees. Squealing tires announced Luthor's departure.

"He better go easy on those tires," Jim said. "He could have a blowout going down Montana Avenue."

"Don't say that!" Bailey said. "If he dies on that hill, Lia will feel guilty and paint his picture forever. If he lives, she'll still feel guilty, she'll be rubbing his feet in the hospital, and she'll still paint his picture forever. Either way, it'll destroy her career because who wants to buy a hundred paintings of Luthor? We'll never finish Catherine's garden and I won't get paid. I'll end up in Over the Rhine selling my favors to the druggies. The going rates are way down. I'll starve."

## 2

# Sunday, May 8

Lia looked at her clock with eyes gritty from lack of sleep. Four ten in the freaking a.m. She'd unplugged her landline sometime after midnight, but that hadn't stopped Luthor's endless calls and recriminations from echoing in her head. At 1:30 she'd taken a long, hot soak in Epsom salts, her favored cure for insomnia. It hadn't worked.

There was probably a string of nasty messages on her cell phone, starting five minutes after she unplugged the phone. She only owned one because it was cheaper than putting a line in at the studio and it frequently went AWOL, which explained why it hadn't started ringing–at least not in her hearing.

It had to be at the studio, at the studio, hopefully not tucked in the shelves by the south wall. Jason lived in an illegal loft on the other side of that wall. _If I'm lucky, the battery's dead. Otherwise the noise has been driving him crazy. I may owe him a six pack of the good stuff._

Jason, enraged by the noise, might have already punched a hole in the drywall to retrieve her phone and smash it to bits of black plastic with one of his wood-working mallets. _At least then I wouldn't have to listen to the messages. How many were there? One three-hour rant? A hundred one-word nuisance calls? How quickly can you call and leave a message? Two minutes? At two minutes a message and three hours, ninety messages? What are the limits on the in-box?_

Better for Jason if it was one very long message, or the battery was dead. How long would it take to delete ninety messages?

She'd expected Luthor to bang on her door in the middle of the night in a bad imitation of Stanley Kowalski in _A Streetcar Named Desire_. It hadn't happened. Once she'd unplugged the phone the only things that disturbed her night were her own circling thoughts.

Tired of her head spinning, Lia pulled on sweats and grabbed her keys. The soft jingle had Chewy and Honey instantly awake. They beat her to the door.

"You guys don't miss a trick, do you? Up for some pre-dawn prowling?" She snapped leashes to their collars. "Shall we walk? It's only two miles; what do you think?"

Lia learned to appreciate baker's hours years ago, when an outdoor mural had her working in the pre-dawn dark so she could project her design on the wall. Her friends were horrified, convinced her body would turn up months later in Mill Creek. She'd told them all the crazies and criminals were home from the bars and passed out by four. It was a lot safer then than at any time between dusk and three.

Inside her apartment, it was easy for Lia's thoughts to loop in the wee hours, driven by confinement and ambient noise. You never realized how noisy houses were until you went outside in the dead of night. The dark houses and silent streets calmed her mind. She could let everything go.

Honey and Chewy trotted obediently beside Lia as she hit her stride. Not a power walk, but quick and steady through the darkness, their shadows morphing like the reflection in a funhouse mirror as they passed from streetlight to streetlight. The rhythmic motion eased the fog of obsessive thoughts and she began to relax. _This is the ticket. Two miles to the park, let the dogs run around a bit, back home, fry up some potatoes and eggs. It's Sunday, no need to plug the phone in. Play some Mozart. Do the crossword. Don't think. Go back to bed. Yes._

She turned down Westwood Northern Boulevard, jogging down the hill for the last half-mile. Honey and Chewy barked happily. "Shush!" she admonished, though they were now at Mount Airy Forest and the nearest homes were four lanes and a median away.

Lia laughed as the last of the tension poured out, then slowed to a walk as she turned into the parking lot. It would be soothing to sit on a table, looking up at the sky and watching the stars until the rising sun blinked them out.

A dark hulk sat at the far end of the lot. The familiar silhouette had her grinding her teeth. _What is Luthor doing here?_ Had he parked outside her apartment, seen her leave? No, she would have heard him. His muffler, anyway.

_Shit. Shit. Shit. Damn._ Lia's mental cussing became a litany as she strode towards the car, anger building. Then she thought better and turned towards the utility road leading up to the entrance corral. She didn't want to freak out in the parking lot, upsetting the dogs so close to the street.

Once she released Honey and Chewy into the park, she pulled a rag out of her pocket and wiped the dew from a spot on her favorite table top and clambered up. She faced the black asphalt void, no longer thinking about stars or sunrise.

There was no movement in the Corolla. Hadn't Luthor heard the dogs barking? Maybe he only came so he could sit there and snub her. Like, how would she ever know she was being snubbed if she couldn't see him doing it?

Honey and Chewy whuffed softly as they made their nocturnal investigations. False dawn appeared over the ridge. _Shit._ The litany began again, tired now. _Shit. Shit. Shit. Damn._

The serenity Lia experienced during the final run to the park was now broken and beyond repair. She may as well confront Luthor and get on with it, whatever "it" was. Trudging back down the hill, she wondered what she could possibly say to Luthor that she hadn't already said.

She hit the parking lot, thoroughly pissed. Was he going to spoil her favorite place for her? Would they have to divvy it up, take different shifts, different quadrants, different friends? If they did, would he respect her boundaries and leave her be? She doubted it.

"Luthor!" She snapped out his name like a pistol shot in the darkness. "What the hell are you doing? Why can't you just give me some space?"

The Corolla remained silent. Was he in the car at all? Maybe the car was dead. Which meant Luthor was home in bed and she was fuming for nothing. Or he passed out in the front seat. He didn't normally drink alone, but he might have made an exception.

Lia approached the car. A dark form leaned back in the driver's seat. _Great. Door Number Two._ She wrenched the passenger door open, triggering the overhead light.

An explosion of red painted the interior of the Corolla, framing Luthor's face. His mouth gaped, his eyes fixed and staring, accusing.

Lia fell to the ground and vomited.

Yellow tape fluttered as police set up a perimeter around Luthor's Corolla, their radios crackling in the distance. A patrol car, lights flashing, sat sideways across the entrance. Lia huddled on a picnic table overlooking the lot, numbly sandwiched between Honey and Chewy. Looking down on the scene had the effect of distancing her from events, making them even more surreal.

Jim handed her a cup of coffee. She cradled it between her palms, leaching warmth into hands that remained chilled despite the warming day. It was Jim who'd found her at daybreak, hugging the dogs, as she rocked back and forth in shock, Jim who'd called 911, and Jim who'd sent Anna for coffee at the closest UDF.

She looked at him, mentally pleading for it all to go away. She had a stray thought, that his face, so full of compassion, belonged on a religious icon. Something Italian, from one of the Catholic sects that embraced poverty. He could have been a Franciscan monk. Maybe Saint Francis himself.

He spoke, his voice quiet and firm. "You're not responsible. It was his choice. It was his choice to do it where you'd find him. I'm sorry it happened, but that was wrong of him, selfish and hateful to put you through this."

Anna leaned over the dogs and wrapped an arm around her. "I'm so sorry. It shouldn't have happened. Not like this."

Lia broke then, tears streaming down her face, ugly sobs erupting from her mouth. The dogs whimpered and snugged in closer as Lia's sobs trailed off to gulps and then hiccups. She took a sip of coffee to steady herself. Her mouth quirked sadly.

"You knew to get hazelnut creamer for me."

"Of course," Anna said.

The sound of an approaching car drew their attention back to the lot. Catherine's Lexus jumped the curb, plowing through the grass in an attempt to cut around the patrol car. An officer leapt out of the patrol car, leaving the door hanging open as he dashed in front of the Lexus.

Anna said, "That's a brave man."

Jim shrugged. "She's not going very fast."

"He doesn't know Catherine," Anna said.

Catherine's strident voice drifted up from the parking lot. "What do you mean I can't come in? Those are my friends!"

Jim turned to Lia. "I'm sure she's worried about you,"

"Hush," Anna snapped. "Maybe somewhere in her tiny little heart she's thinking about Lia, but that won't stop her from making this all about her. She's already well on her way."

"That's uncalled for," Jim said.

The words burst from Lia's mouth. "Stop it!"

The guilty pair looked at her.

"I can't take the bickering."

"We're sorry," Anna said. "We'll stop."

Catherine's Lexus did a three-point turn, leaving ruts in the grass as it pulled out.

A man worked his way up the access road and through the corral, approaching their table. He was tall, maybe two inches over six feet. Lean, with an easy stride. Longish, dark hair with a bit of body, though it didn't qualify as wavy. As he drew closer, Lia could see that he had a pleasant face with slightly droopy eyes. Like Paul McCartney. Puppy dog eyes that might turn into basset hound eyes in old age, though Sir Paul wasn't looking too shabby these days.

His golf shirt and khaki slacks reminded Lia she was still in her sweats. Very shortly the sun would be above the trees and the heat would turn on like flipping a switch.

"No uniform," Jim observed. "Must be a detective."

Now she'd have to talk to the police. Lia stared at the top of Honey's head, willing the last twenty-four hours to go away.

Peter Dourson's witness huddled on a picnic table behind a quartet of human and canine protectors. The humans moved apart as he approached, giving him a better view of her. She sat on top of the table with her feet on the bench, hugging a golden retriever while a schnauzer curled protectively against her side. The schnauzer lifted its muzzle, watching him with suspicion.

The woman's head bowed over the retriever, giving him an intimate view of the butterfly clip restraining a mess of multi-colored brown hair. He suspected the figure under the baggy sweats was slight, though he could tell she was of above average height.

He had a sudden flash of Michael Douglas coaxing Kathleen Turner out from under a bus in a Central American jungle. What was that film? Something about a stone? He kept his hands relaxed and gentled his voice as he moved into the group.

"Hi. You found the body?"

The woman nodded and continued to stare at the top of the retriever's head.

"Lia Anderson, is it?"

Another mute nod.

"We had to send your friend away. I hope that doesn't upset you."

She shook her head, still looking down. "Are you a detective? Jim said you must be a detective."

"Yes, Detective Dourson. Peter Dourson, from District Five."

"Can I ask you a question?" One of her fingers traced mysterious shapes on the table top beside an abandoned coffee cup, her whole being centered on that moving finger as if the pattern she created held the solution to everything.

"Sure, go ahead."

"How long will I be stuck here?"

"We're not sure at this point. Is there somewhere you have to be?"

"Luthor... the blood... it's so awful."

He wished she'd look up. Sometimes suspects ducked their heads because they couldn't lie with a straight face. That wasn't the case here. This woman curled into a ball because it was the best she could do to remove herself from the situation. It was something a child would do, and it pulled at him.

"I know. I'd like to ask you some questions, but the witness advocate isn't here yet."

"I've got Jim and Anna. I don't need anyone else."

"Are you sure? Do you have someone to be with you when you leave here?"

A sturdy woman with a white, de rigueur Cincinnati bob brushed a strand of hair away from the bowed face. "I'll take her home. She won't be alone."

"All right then. You would be?"

"Anna. Anna Lawrence. And this is Jim."

Jim was older and weathered by the elements. It was a contrast to most of the people he spoke to, who aged young with drugs and alcohol.

"Jim McDonald? You called this in?"

"Yep. I got here right before Anna."

"What time was that?"

"Around six."

Peter raised his eyebrows.

"All the dogs know is daylight. They could care less what time it is."

Jim's grumpy resignation made Peter's mouth twitch. He squashed the urge to smile. "Is that every day?"

"Pretty much."

Peter turned to the bowed head, talked to the butterfly clip. "When did you get here?"

"O-dark-thirty? I don't know. We left the house a little after four. We walked here."

"Who was with you?"

"Just Honey and Chewy."

Honey and Chewy must be the dogs. "That's pretty early."

"I couldn't sleep."

"How long does it take you to walk?"

"Thirty, forty minutes."

"Does four-forty-five sound about right?"

"I guess. I don't have a watch."

"What happened when you got here?"

"I saw the car and I was pissed." Her index finger made a spiral, then scribbled it out.

"Pissed? How come?"

"Detective," Anna said, "he was her boyfriend. She broke up with him yesterday."

Peter hadn't heard this bit of news. He needed to tread carefully. "I'm sorry."

The voice emerging from that bowed head broke. "I'm sorry, too. So sorry."

Peter could not see the tears but he knew they were there. "Are you okay to do this?"

A hand rubbed under her nose. She sniffled. "I don't want to wait."

"Okay, tell me what happened after you got here. Take your time."

Lia haltingly recounted events up to the time she threw open the car door.

"What did you see?"

"Blood, all over. The back window, the seat. He was surrounded by it. He was staring at me."

"This is really important. Did you touch anything?"

"No, no. The passenger side door handle, that's it."

"Why the passenger side door?"

"It was closest." Her finger resumed its tracery. Maybe she was casting spells.

Peter turned to Anna and Jim. "Did either of you touch anything?"

"I looked in the window," Jim said. "I didn't touch the car."

"How about you, Anna?"

"I didn't go near it."

Peter returned his attention to Lia. "Tell me about the breakup. Whose idea was it?"

What followed was a dull recitation of hours of phone calls and recriminations, a verbal flood laced with wheedling, begging, and profanity that left behind a vile tone, though Lia couldn't quote anything Morrissey said. She recalled he'd called her "angel" in one sentence and used the "C" word in the next. Peter decided Luthor Morrissey was a major ass long before she finished her story. No wonder the woman was such a mess.

"It was so nasty, I couldn't get it out of my head. That's why I couldn't sleep. Was it suicide, Detective?"

She looked up at him finally, green eyes glistening in a damp face. Those eyes reminded him of sun filtering through leaves, of cool green walks in Kentucky hollows. Her cheekbones were high and wary. The mouth underneath trembled, a soft, living thing. He noticed a slight dent in her chin, as if someone had pressed a thumb in it, like the cookies his grandma made at Christmas. Tendrils of hair escaped the clip on the back of her head, skimming those suspicious cheeks and snaking down a long neck, reinforcing her fragility.

Peter mentally shook his head and focused on her question. "It's early to know anything."

"I'm sure you're not allowed to say."

"That, too, but really, it's too early."

"I was so angry. I wanted him gone, but I didn't want dead."

"I know."

"Do you?" she pleaded.

"Yeah, I think so," he said.

Peter remained behind as Anna and Jim collected their pack of dogs and escorted Lia to a green SUV. He picked up the abandoned coffee cup. It was still almost full and smelled like hazelnut. He dumped it in the trash.

> I remember most the explosion of blood and glass, the gory blow-back speckling my clothes, my face and even under my cap and into my hair. I'll burn the jumpsuit this evening, and the neighbors will assume I'm grilling out. I'll encourage that impression by dumping Liquid Smoke on the fire.
> 
> I'm probably worrying over nothing. The police might never ask questions, not if they buy the suicide scenario.
> 
> I disliked shooting Luthor. I would have preferred doing it another way but he had no convenient health issues to exploit. He didn't care for risky activities that could be manipulated into accidents. He had only one obvious weakness, and that was his dependence on Lia.
> 
> The clothes are no problem, but what do I do with the phone? It had been easy to lift from Lia's tote. Easier still to lure Luthor with a text message. It would be simple to return it to Lia, just drop it behind the driver's seat of her Volvo. The windows are always open for the dogs. But I'd have to remove those final text messages, and if the police came asking questions, possession of the phone might cause Lia problems.
> 
> If Lia got the phone back, she would feel compelled to listen to all of Luthor's messages from last night. She could still do it without the phone, but would she bother? Too bad there was no way for me to find out what was on voicemail without leaving a record. Checking messages could tip Lia off that someone else had her phone, and that wouldn't be good at all. Curiosity killed more than the cat.
> 
> Better to destroy it.
> 
> It had taken more time to dig Luthor's phone out of his jacket and delete my texts than it had to kill him. It had been delicate going, putting it back. I felt horribly exposed even though trees blocked the view of the parking lot from the street. But Luthor's phone couldn't be missing. That would be a tip-off.
> 
> If Luthor's death is ruled a suicide, they won't bother to pull the phone records, will they?
> 
> Such a nasty job, all the way around. I dislike guns, dislike blood, and dislike loose ends. I looked at the loose end in my palm. What to do, what to do?

## 3

# Monday, May 9

A rough, wet tongue dragged across Lia's face, pulling her into unwelcome consciousness. She rolled away, hauling a pillow over her head. Honey tugged at the pillow. It had to be Honey because Chewy was busy emitting the cacophony of piercing yips that were making her head ache.

Groaning, she surrendered the pillow, then turned her head to eye a grilled cheese sandwich congealing on her night stand. She shoved the sandwich away from the clock. Anna had done her best to tempt Lia's appetite the day before, drifting in occasionally with tea or comfort food. Lia hadn't touched any of it. Instead she'd curled up with Chewy wrapped in her arms, the confused schnauzer snuffling her tears as if he was trying to figure out what they were.

A blonde muzzle edged onto the nightstand, sniffing at the now accessible sandwich. Lia narrowed her eyes. Honey snatched the sandwich and dashed out of the room.

"That's your breakfast, creep!" Lia yelled. "No kibble for you." _Like she cares. She'll take dried-out cheese over kibble any day._

It was 8:00 a.m. No matter how she was feeling, Honey and Chewy needed to run. The morning shift at the dog park would be in full swing. Lia dragged herself out of bed to face the inevitable.

The Mount Airy Dog Park had two fenced areas, the smaller designated for small dogs. Few people used it because it had no trees and most of the small dogs preferred chasing the big dogs on the other side. The small enclosure was a good place to go if you wanted to be alone.

Lia perched on the table by the fence, the only one with shade, and sipped coffee while Honey and Chewy made a resigned foray across a boring expanse of grass slightly larger than a typical back yard.

Lia's friends congregated on the other side, dogs milling around them. They were too busy watching Terry draw lines in the air with his finger to be aware of her presence. _He's probably calculating the trajectory of the bullet after it passed through Luthor's skull._

A petite, first generation Chinese-American named Marie Woo tilted her head at a skeptical angle, this month's magenta bangs flopping over one eye. The tilt of her head told Lia she was about to challenge whatever point Terry was making.

Nadine Moyers paused in the umpteenth lap of her power walk across the park to hear the news, her aging basset hound panting gratefully for the break. Nadine's candid blue eyes widened in horror as Jim said something to her.

_Yep, talking about me._

Catherine fussed with her Pomeranians a few yards away, glaring daggers at Nadine over their fluffy red sable heads. Catherine's hair was dyed to match her dogs, with sable lowlights to mimic the guard hairs. It was an effect that cost more than three month's kibble for Honey and Chewy. _Who spends a thousand dollars a year on hair?_

Anna and CarGo detached from the group, followed by a tall man with a medium-sized black dog on a leash. The dog resisted, darting in different directions. Someone, especially Anna, should have told him it was a mistake to keep a dog leashed inside the park.

The pair passed through the corral, into the picnic shelter that separated the two enclosures. Anna waved. "Lia! Detective Peter's here. Look who he brought with him!"

Lia recognized the rangy figure playing maypole to a dancing Viola. She felt a trill of something as he and Anna entered her side of the park. Nerves? "Detective Peter, is it?"

"Ms. Anderson," the detective said, nodding politely, "I hope you're doing better today."

He looked at her with steady blue eyes in a way that made her feel vulnerable. Lia shrugged and resisted the urge to duck her head. "Anything is better than yesterday. How about you, Detective Peter, are you returning to the scene of the crime, or did something else bring you back to our little slice of paradise?"

Peter extracted himself from the tangled leash and unhooked Viola, who jumped on Lia's table in a mad dash and circled the tabletop, making uh-uh-uh noises. Honey and Chewy looked on in disgust. Viola had never sought out Lia as long as Luthor was around. Lia rescued her coffee cup and set it aside before giving the chow mix a hug. _Any port in a storm, girl. I get it._

"Viola's staying with me for now. She's been fretful. I thought she'd like to play with her friends."

Lia rubbed her cheek on Viola's fur. "How did you wind up with her?"

"Luthor's folks weren't keen about keeping her. I figured I could look after her until I found someone to take her."

"The old man's allergic. So he says." Viola squirmed out of Lia's arms and leapt off the table. Lia took a sip of coffee. The cup wasn't much of a shield, but it was all she had.

"I thought there might be a friend who would want her if I hung onto her for a few days. Otherwise, it was the shelter. Maybe you know someone?" The look he gave her was hopeful, verging on desperation.

"Thank you for rescuing her. I don't know if I'm up to taking on another dog. I'll have to think about it."

"Let me know if you change your mind, or if you think of anyone who'd like to have her." He paused. "We have some questions about Luthor, loose ends to tie up. Can you stop in at District Five later today? I can come to you if you'd rather."

"That would be nice. You can never park at District Five."

"It's a pain, I know. Any time in particular?"

Arrangements made, Anna and Lia watched the detective head for the parking lot with his capering shadow.

"That's a nice young man," Anna observed.

"Are we talking a little cougar action here?"

"Not a bad idea, but I suspect he might have a different agenda."

"And what agenda would that be?"

"What white knight isn't looking for a beautiful damsel in distress?"

"He already has a damsel in distress, and he's trying to get rid of her. Anyway, he's too normal. I bet his mother still starches his Khakis, and his idea of a fun evening at home includes television. I'd be bored in a week."

Anna sighed. "After Luthor, you could use a nice, normal man. Someone with a steady job and manners. He has very nice manners, don't you think?"

Lia sat back, folding her arms. "Isn't it morbid to play matchmaker with me the day after Luthor died?"

"Only to someone who didn't know him, dear."

The door to Lia's half of a two-family was open when Peter rang the bell, Viola at his side. Lia peered through the mesh of the screen door, then unlatched it. Viola nosed through and pushed inside, whimpering and jumping, her paws landing on Lia's thighs while Lia's dogs sniffed at her and wagged their tales.

Lia knelt down so Viola could bathe her face with frantic kisses. "Aw, sweetie, I missed you, too." She smiled at Peter. "Thanks for bringing her."

"Do you want me to hang onto her or can I unclip her?"

"Let her go, sure."

Viola lunged, barking at Honey and Chewy as Peter bent down to release her. The trio ran off to the back of the apartment, where Peter suspected a dog door led to the back yard.

"Can I get you anything?" Lia asked. "I've got green and herbal tea, filtered water, or I could juice up some carrots and celery for you."

Peter maintained strict cop face. It wouldn't help to let her know how he felt about celery juice. "Pepsi?"

"'Fraid not."

"Sweet tea would be nice if you have any made up, or water is fine."

Lia disappeared into the back. Peter took the opportunity to examine Lia's living room unobserved. It was warm and colorful. A lot of hand work. Artistic, not the country cute crafts that exploded all over his mother's house. None of the usual laminated presswood. The furniture was solid and simple—likely from one of the Amish communities due east. This was all her. There was nothing of Luthor, of any man here.

He was examining a little bronze statue of a dancing woman when Lia emerged carrying two glasses of tea the color of swamp water and a squeeze bottle. He sighed inwardly. _When in Rome..._

"I hope green tea is okay," Lia said, handing him the squeeze bottle and a glass with a long spoon in it. "I dilute raw honey so it will mix with cold tea instead of clumping on the bottom. You can make it how you like."

Her hands were faintly gray-green, the color more intense around her cuticles. It boded ill for the tea. Peter squeezed the syrup into the tea, then located a coaster on her coffee table and set the bottle down. He stirred the tea and wondered if he could get away without drinking it. "My family's idea of health food is putting margarine on the potatoes."

"I'm an artist, Detective. I scrape by, but I can't afford to get sick. The cheapest and most reliable way to take care of yourself is with food. Call me up next time you can't sleep and I'll bore you right into a coma about it. Where are my manners. Please have a seat."

She gestured to a mission-style sofa upholstered with a flowery tapestry. A half-dozen pricey-looking, embroidered and appliquéd pillows marched across the back, reminding Peter of the way young girls piled stuffed animals on their beds. He sat on the edge, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees to avoid crushing them. Lia settled onto a straight-backed oak chair that looked like it came out of Peter's elementary school.

The dogs returned. Honey lay at Lia's feet, grinning happily with a smudge of dirt on her nose. Viola jumped on the sofa, staking her claim to Peter.

"Is it okay for her to be on your couch?" Peter asked.

"She's fine, but you might want to move your tea."

"My tea?"

Lia nodded at Chewy, who was giving the glass of tea dangling from Peter's hand a calculating look.

"If he wants attention, he'll head-bump your hand, usually the one that already has something in it. It's never convenient."

Peter sat up, pulling his hands and the tea out of reach. "Thanks for the warning. You seem steadier than you were yesterday."

Lia looked down into her tea. Her hair fell forward, shading her eyes. "Painting helps."

_The green is paint, not botulism._ Peter took a sip of the tea and nodded at a pair of canvases, one a close up of a magnolia blossom, the other an iris. "Those yours? They're beautiful."

"Thanks. The flowers sell best, but I'm too attached to those two to let go of them. I'm doing okay right now. Mostly I vacillate between grieving and being angry. I find it so much easier to function when I'm angry than when I'm grieving."

"Angry? How so?"

She held the glass in both hands, tapping the rim with an index finger. "I feel guilty because I didn't love him and stopped wanting to love him months ago. Then I get angry because for months, he put me in a position to hurt him, and I didn't want to do that. Why did he have to kill himself? It's not like we were talking marriage or even living together."

"I thought you just broke up."

"Saturday was the third time. The first time was in March. He wore me down and I took him back. Twice. And the whole time I've been trying to find a way to put more distance between us. I'm such a wimp. I should have stuck to my guns." She winced. "Bad word choice. But I'm wondering if things would have gone so far if I hadn't taken him back that first time. I spent most of the last few months being angry or resentful." She blinked hard. "I can't believe how much this hurts."

The retriever sat up and rested its muzzle on Lia's thigh. Her fingers sank into the fur, flexing.

"You can't blame yourself."

Lia's eyes were shiny pools when she looked at him, her smile ironic. "Sure I can. What can I do for you, Detective? You mentioned loose ends."

"I just have a few questions. Do you mind if I record this?" Lia shook her head. Peter produced a small cassette recorder and positioned it between them on the coffee table.

"Why did you break up with him? Do you mind talking about it?"

Lia pressed her lips together for a long moment, tapping the rim of her glass. "Luthor was a high energy guy. He walked into the room and everyone knew the party had started. You know anyone like that?"

"Sure."

"He never turned it off. He always had a new plan, a big scheme, and everyone had to be on board with it. But he was more about the idea of the thing than actually doing it. After a while I realized none of his big plans were ever going to work. He wanted everyone to admire him for things he was never going to do, and if you didn't, he'd pout."

She paused to sip her tea, one hand stroking the retriever's fur. "He was fun at first. Then he was exhausting. After that he became disruptive. If he wanted to do something while I was working, he'd complain that my art was more important than he was. But this is my job. It's my business, and I have bills to pay. It's damned hard to make a living as an artist. At first I thought he was clueless about discipline. Then I wondered if he was deliberately sabotaging me."

"Why would he do that?"

"I don't know. But I felt like the dieter whose friends kept bringing pizza over."

"I can see why you resented him. Sunday you told me Luthor was upset the previous day. Did he have a history of suicidal moods or behaviors? Any family history of suicide or depression that you know of?"

"Not that I saw or knew about. I knew this guy in high school. One day he had a fight with his girlfriend, picked up a steak knife and threatened to kill himself. He woke up on the floor, wondering what happened. He stabbed himself by accident. I could see Luthor doing something like that, getting caught up in his drama when he had people around and injuring himself by mistake."

Had she been the girlfriend in that scenario? Peter waited for her to continue.

Lia stared at nothing and shook her head. "I can't see Luthor getting morose and killing himself while he was alone. He loved an audience and he knew I'd be coming to the park." Those expressive green eyes turned to him. "Why didn't he wait until I was there so he could stage a grand scene? Maybe I could have stopped it."

"I don't know. What do you think?"

"I don't understand it. I don't understand it at all."

Peter squashed the urge to comfort. "We're trying to figure out where the gun came from. It's not registered, and his parents said they never knew him to have anything to do with guns."

"It was news to me, too. There are gun fanatics who come up to the park. Terry puts the NRA to shame, if you believe everything he says. José carries because he sometimes runs his dogs before daylight, and the park has a history—at one time they staged dog fights in the corral. If Luthor had any interest in guns, he would have talked to them about it."

Lia tapped the rim of her glass, as she did every time she needed to think. Peter filed the tic away for future reference.

"You know what bothers me? Luthor was fussy about his looks. His clothes looked like he slept in them but it was a deliberate affectation. I can't see him wanting to leave a gory mess. He'd want the person who found him to swoon with the romantic tragedy of it all. All I wanted to do when I saw him was vomit. I imagine you had to step around it. I know that sounds cynical."

"It's not cynical if it's true. Did you notice the gun at the time?"

She shook her head. "The blood freaked me out so much I didn't remember anything else until Jim found me. I don't know how I got to that picnic table."

"When was the last time you spoke with Luthor?"

"It was around one. I hung up on him when he called me the "C" word and unplugged the phone. He might have tried my cell, but I can't find it, so I don't know."

"How long has it been missing?"

Lia frowned, her finger tapping. Chewy shoved his head under her hand. She pulled her glass out of reach with a speed that spoke of practice and vigilance.

"I used it Friday in the studio. I usually toss it in my bag. It floats around in there until I need it, though by then the battery is dead. I might have seen it after that, but I can't say for sure. Why do you want to know about my phone?"

"No particular reason. I like to follow up on anything out of the ordinary."

"Oh," Lia said. "That's not unusual. My phone hides from me all the time. It's probably plugged into the charger at my studio."

"Let me know if it turns up. I'd also like to find out more about Luthor's state of mind. Can you give me a list of his friends? People he would have confided in? Someone he might have talked to Saturday night?"

She chewed her lip. "I honestly can't think of anyone. You must be wondering why I stayed with him, the way I'm talking about him. He was smart and he could be fun. When I realized he wasn't Mr. Right, and just barely Mr. Right Now, it was just easier to let things slide. I don't think he would have called an old girlfriend. He wouldn't have confided in a guy. With them it was all bullshit bar talk. You might try the places where he hung out. People always knew who he was."

"And where was that?"

"The dog park, of course. There were two bars he liked, the Comet and Northside Tavern. Sometimes Sidewinders, the coffee shop. That's about it."

"José and Terry, how would I find them?"

"That's easy. Any morning at the park, before eight. Anything else you want to know?"

"Just one last thing. We know you and Luthor were having problems. Was he upset about anything else? Work, money, someone besides you?"

"Luthor liked his job well enough. He made a big deal about struggling with his book, but I finally realized that was a pose. Did you ever see the movie _Sliding Doors_?"

"Gwenyth Paltrow, wasn't it?"

"She's supporting her writer boyfriend, he's cheating on her, and she doesn't know it. He's having a beer with his best friend and the friend asks him when his book is going to be done, and the boyfriend says something like 'I'm a writer, I'll never finish the bloody book.' Luthor was like that. When I started getting fed up with him, I kept flashing to that scene. That movie's probably the biggest reason why I never wanted him to move in with me."

"What was this book about?"

"It kept changing. First it was a murder mystery, then it was a police procedural. Recently he introduced an alternate world scenario."

"Alternate world?"

"Doppelgängers from another dimension, inspired by an old show on Fox television. _Fringe_. Luthor figured the doubles could commit the perfect crime. He thought it would be an original twist on the police procedural genre."

"I imagine it would be. Money problems?"

"Luthor was always broke. He paid rent, bought a few beers, and that was about it. If he had money he spent it, but I wasn't aware of any debts."

"What about conflicts with other people?"

"None that I know of."

Peter stood up and turned off the recorder. "That's enough for now. I'll let you know if I need anything else. Thanks for your help."

Viola sighed and jumped off the couch.

Peter made plans as he and Viola walked towards his Chevy Blazer. Pull Morrissey's phone from his personal effects. Review the contact list and cross-reference against the call records, any text messages. Use those to establish a time-line and hopefully generate some leads. Check his browser history and emails. Visit the places Lia mentioned, talk to people. Recruit Brent Davis to help with legwork?

First books tended to be autobiographical. Maybe Morrissey revealed something there. Then again, from what Lia told him about the book, maybe he'd con Brent into reading it.

Morrissey's parents were having his body transported to Buffalo. It might not hurt to ask a local to go to the funeral, see who came. Not a high priority. Unless Morrissey's electronic activity indicated otherwise, this was local.

Another visit to Morrissey's apartment was in order. Somewhere in the junk shop showroom he called home had to be the reason why the man was dead.

There are rules to getting away with murder.

Rule Number One: You can't confide in anyone. Nobody. Not ever. Secrets are ticking time bombs. Even with his mistakes, Widmer should have gone free after two mistrials. Then a woman came forward.

She claimed Widmer bragged about killing his wife, that Sarah fell and hit her head during an argument and Ryan drowned her in the toilet while she was unconscious. It was a scenario that none of the experts had posited, an elegant explanation for the empty tub and Sarah's dry skin.

The woman's credibility was dubious, but her story created grounds for a third trial and gave the prosecution the chance to correct the mistakes they made in the first two. Then they nailed him.

Talking is tempting fate. That's my mantra. While it's delicious to hold my secrets, sometimes I feel the urge to drop a hint or two, something to make people wonder. The pressure builds and I sit quietly and meditate. I repeat a hundred, a thousand times, "Talking is tempting fate," while I close my eyes and imagine the color orange to remind myself how ghastly I would look in prison clothes.

Rule Number Two: Never kill when you are angry. You make mistakes when you're angry, and the biggest mistake is giving in to the desire for violence. Violence leaves behind evidence of violence, telling the world that the death was, in fact, murder and not an accident or by some natural cause. To escape discovery, death must be coolly calculated and coldly committed.

Rule Number Three: Make it look like something else. An accident, suicide, a health condition, anything but murder. You can't be convicted for a crime if no one knows one occurred.

Rule Number Four: Plan, plan, plan. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. You have to review and practice your plan enough to find all the holes, and there are always holes. It has to be second nature because the mind often goes blank when stressed. You've got to be programmed in case fear strikes. When your mind blanks, you've got to go on auto-pilot and rely on muscle memory.

Rule Number Five: Never repeat yourself. Don't kill two husbands, two bosses, or two landlords. Never kill two people the same way. Repeating creates patterns and patterns draw attention. Avoid connections between victims because connections will eventually form a net with you in it.

Rule Number Six: If you can't have an alibi, don't have a motive, at least not an obvious one. Nobody has an alibi when they are asleep in bed at night, but the authorities don't care unless they think you had a reason to kill your victim. So if you think someone might become a target, don't engage in conflict with them. Keep your animosity secret.

Rule Number Seven: Keep still. Once you set everything in motion, do nothing that was not part of the original plan. People who scramble to protect themselves only wind up drawing attention to the thing they want to hide.

Rule Number Eight: Avoid casting suspicion on anyone else if you can help it. It's bad karma. Unless the person is really, truly, odious. Then you can consider it a "two-fer."

Rule Number Nine: No Souvenirs. Souvenirs are evidence. You never know when evidence will surface. Keep your memories and nothing else.

## 4

# Tuesday, May 10

The petite bombshell smiled coyly from behind the deserted bar when Peter entered The Comet that afternoon. Desiree Willis was the antithesis of Lia, with her wild spray of coppery hair and green highlights. A tattoo of a Celtic trinity symbol peeked through an artful rip in her tee shirt. Bloody barb wire circled her left biceps.

Peter couldn't see behind the bar to check out the rest of her outfit. He made a mental bet that her jeans featured butt cleavage topped with a tramp stamp. Bonus points if the tattoo included a heart. She was the type who would practice posing in her mirror. He made a second bet that she had at least one selfie smiling over her right shoulder to display her tattoos to best advantage.

Thinking of phones segued into thinking about Lia's lost cell phone and Lia herself: long hair pulled back at the nape of her neck, plain T-shirt, serviceable khaki shorts, bare feet, short nails, no tats, piercings or jewelry. Her personal style was simple and functional, yet her paintings took the ordinary and made it lush and exotic, even sensual. _Maybe a real artist doesn't need to look like one._

Desiree's face turned misty when he showed her Luthor's photo. She put down the glass she was wiping and scanned the empty bar, chewing her lip. "Luthor was such a doll."

"How long did you know Luthor?"

"He was a regular before I started working here last winter, but we didn't really start talking till spring. Sometime around spring break? He was coming in a lot more often then."

Maybe Luthor was more like the guy in _Sliding Doors_ than Lia knew.

"Were you close?"

Her eyes dropped, guilty. "Ah ... geez. That girlfriend of his, she didn't get him, you know? Just because she can crank out pretty pictures of flowers and people lap them up doesn't mean she understood what Luthor was going through with his novel. He was breaking new ground, writing something important, you know? She was just a decorator."

Peter wondered why her opinion annoyed him. _Bet number 3: that's a direct quote from Luthor._

"You knew him pretty well. Did you see him outside the Comet?"

She looked away.

"Desiree?"

"Why do you have to know?" She pulled out a cutting board, piled lemons on the bar and began slicing wedges. For tea? Tequila? Peter gave her a moment.

"It's important," he prodded.

"He's dead! He shot himself. What else matters?" Tears spilled from her eyes, spreading a wash of mascara across her cheeks. Peter knew better than to let them distract him from the fact that she wasn't answering him.

He kept his tone gentle. "We need to know why. Everything matters."

She set the knife down. "Look, there was this one night, right after they broke up, two, three months ago. He hung around after closing. We always have a few drinks after we lock the doors to wind down. I got a bit toasty. Luthor and I wound up necking in the parking lot and I took him home with me."

She took a cocktail napkin off a stack on the bar and blew her nose. "We were a thing for a few weeks. Those were the happiest two weeks of my life. Then I found out she had her claws in him again. I couldn't deal. I told him I wasn't going to be the other woman, and if he didn't know what he wanted, he'd have to figure it out."

"What happened after that?"

"What we had was so good, I was sure he'd end it with her and come back. Instead, he'd test the waters every once in a while. Then he drifted away. Stopped coming in when I was working, ignored me if I was hanging out. It hurt. A lot."

Peter privately thought Luthor did know what he wanted, and it wasn't to be stuck with one woman. Further questions revealed Desiree hadn't seen him for several weeks, and he hadn't called. She'd been working until closing the night he died. Whatever happened that night didn't appear to involve her.

Desiree provided names of some of Luthor's regular crowd. He'd have to come back on a Thursday or Friday night to catch everyone. Not much hope that interviewing them would reveal anything important, but it had to be covered.

His trip to the Northside Tavern turned up a waitress. Sharon was a black-haired, dark-eyed waif who swore she and Luthor had been friends, nothing more. Luthor complained to Sharon that Lia was making him crazy. He hated her clinging, but she had mental problems and he couldn't break up with her until she was stabilized on the meds she refused to take. Sharon insisted Luthor shot himself because it was the only way he'd be free of Lia.

Sharon had been out of town for her sister's wedding on Saturday night.

No joy there.

By the end of the afternoon, Peter was convinced Luthor had put more energy into the stories he told about Lia than he had in his book. _Either Lia is a pure psychopath, or Luthor would say anything to get laid. My money is on door number two but it won't hurt to keep my eyes open. You never know about some women._

He'd grab an early dinner and look at Luthor's phone records. Right now that looked like the only way to establish a timeline for Saturday night and figure out if Luthor had done anything besides harass Lia before he pulled the trigger.

Peter had never experienced anything like it. He'd swung by Dewey's after work to pick up pizza before retrieving Viola from his neighbor, Alma. Now the dog sat less than a foot away from the sofa, eyes tracking every bite, drool intermittently hitting the floor. After eating two slices, he stashed the box on his bookcase, pulled out his notebook, and looked up a number. He fortified himself with two pulls on his beer before he picked up the phone. Viola stared at the box and whined.

Lia answered on the third ring, thank God.

"What can I do for you, Detective?"

"I have a dog problem. I hope you can help me."

"I'll give it my best shot."

"I'm trying to eat a pizza and Viola's staring at me and slobbering all over the floor."

Lia's warm laughter washed over him. He tried to be offended but was stuck with sheepish.

"It's not funny. I can't eat like this. It's killing my digestion."

"I see. You'll have to distract her."

"With what? She acts like pizza is a tractor beam."

"Oh, it is. You distract her with the crust, and she'll take it to some corner where nobody can take it away from her. You might make it half way through the next slice before she's back."

"Can't I just give her some kibble?"

"She's not stupid. She knows the difference. Pizza demands tribute."

"And that's not bad for her?"

"It's better for her than a lot of dog foods. No chicken beaks in pizza."

"They put chicken beaks in kibble?"

"You don't want to know what they put in kibble. What's on your pizza?"

Peter stared at the box, which was no help. "Olives, goat cheese, garlic—"

Lia interrupted. "Whole cloves or crushed? Is this an Edgar Allen Poe?"

"Yeah, from Dewey's. Whole cloves, but you know that."

"Keep the garlic away from her. It's poisonous. Don't give her onions, chocolate, or grapes, and very little sweet stuff. She loves apples and carrots, and she especially likes avocado."

"Avocado?"

"Her favorite outside pizza and liver treats. Some people say dogs shouldn't get it, but it's fine."

"You know a lot about this. Sure you can't take her?" Peter threw a touch of desperation into his voice, hoping to engage her sympathies.

"She's an alpha bitch. So's Honey. They get along as long as they don't live together. Besides, you ever try walking three dogs at the same time?"

"Um, no, and don't want to."

"Exactly. Any other doggy daddy advice you need?"

"Now that you mention it, I don't think she's house-broken. I take her for long walks and she does nothing, then as soon as we get home she'll find some corner and do her business."

Lia's sigh was audible. "Sorry. I should have thought of that. Viola's a complicated little girl. She was abandoned at an early age and she gets anxious, especially in new situations. She feels especially vulnerable when she's using the bathroom. I think that comes from her border collie side. She thinks more like a human than other dogs. You like anyone watching you in the bathroom?"

"Good point. What do I do about it?"

"She'll get over it as she feels more comfortable, but she's always had a shy bladder. Luthor would take her to the park and she'd find some nice, private bush to violate. You really have to watch her to pick up after her. You might get some disposable training pads from the pet store. She knows what they are and she'll use them. If you want, I'll teach you a little song we would sing to her on walks. It's a signal she knows."

"She won't pee because I don't sing to her?" _Maybe Sharon was right about Lia's mental state._

"Dogs are like people. They all have their quirks. Some more than others."

"Huh."

"It's a big change, having a sentient creature around all the time. They have needs and personalities, but they're still easier than children. Viola's been spayed, so she'll never come home pregnant, and while she may want to drive, she can't reach the pedals. She'll never wreck your car."

"You think I should keep her."

"I think she's going to keep you. Don't worry, you'll like it. Bring her to the park if you need more pointers. Dogs are easy and fun if you keep a few things in mind. Otherwise they can run your life."

Now that Peter knew the drill, Viola daintily nibbled the crusts from his two previous slices, allowing him to make headway on the third in peace. His Poe had lost most of its heat by the time he'd gotten off the phone, but the advice had been worth it. Except the bit about singing to Viola so she'd pee. That was for the birds.

Peter held his fourth slice with one hand and opened the binder sitting on his coffee table with the other. He kept one eye on a drooling Viola while leafing through an impressive stack of reports and statements. When he could no longer stand her piteous expression, he tossed her the crust and flipped to the autopsy report.

Death occurred between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. As expected, Luthor had died as a result of a gunshot wound under the chin, inflicted by a nine millimeter gun. Stippling on Morrissey's skin indicated a contact wound. There was gunshot residue on his clothes and right hand, which didn't mean much except that he had been near a gun when it fired.

Peter skimmed the rest of the autopsy and skipped to the crime scene report, zeroing in on the blood spatter section. No blood on the underside of Luthor's right wrist, and there should have been if he'd held the gun under his chin. Instead, spatter indicated Morrissey's arm had been lowered. Edge characteristics of spatter on his hand suggested a wipe pattern or some other alteration. There was a void in the backspatter on the passenger side of the car.

He looked at the photos accompanying the report. Blood spatter fell according to algorithms, in patterns that told the story of what was where when a shot was fired. When something was moved, it disrupted the pattern. The spatter on Morrissey's jacket was a hair out of alignment with the lay of the fabric, creating a discordant sensation that Peter now realized he'd felt when he looked at the body.

It was the kind of thing cops referred to as a hinky feeling. Hinky feelings weren't intuition. They were real-world perceptions sitting just below conscious awareness. In this case they added up to the conclusion that had been lurking in the back of Peter's head since he'd walked up to Morrissey's Toyota.

Someone had been in the car with Morrissey when the gun was fired. Someone who walked away speckled with blood that would have peppered the dash, the passenger seat, and the door if the seat had been empty. Someone who'd held the gun because Morrissey sure hadn't held it. Someone, not Morrissey, who had pulled the trigger.

It was most likely this someone who'd touched Luthor's hand, post-mortem. There could be a lot of reasons for that. Say, Morrissey meets with Anderson at the park and Anderson ends the attempted reconciliation by shooting him. She touches his hand. To assure herself he was dead? An expression of remorse? Saying good-bye? But why rifle his clothes? What could she have been looking for? He'd had his phone and wallet. A token of some kind? Something she wanted back? Something that pointed to her?

Anderson could have done it. He'd seen people in that shocked state after they'd killed someone. But he didn't think she would have had the presence of mind to drive home, clean up, get the dogs and walk two miles to the park to wait for her friends to arrive. Unless she was a psychopath.

Voila shoved her head onto Peter's knee. Peter set the binder aside and ruffled her fur. "You know the woman. What do you think? Is she a crazed psycho-bitch?" Viola looked up at him, tongue lolling, opaque, brown eyes divulging nothing.

No. If Anderson shot Morrissey, she would have been covered in blood when McDonald found her, and she wouldn't have had her dogs. You don't take your dogs with you to shoot someone. They're too unpredictable around loud noises. If the dogs had been there when Morrissey was shot, they'd have been bloody and running scared in the woods.

Peter took a long pull from his beer and thought back to Sunday morning. That golden retriever had clung to her, as if sensing Anderson's distress and wanting to provide comfort. Psychopaths can fool people, but he didn't think they fooled animals.

Golden retrievers not being credible in court, Peter filed that observation away as suggestive rather than evidential. Still, he preferred not to look for zebras when there were horses around. Someone else in the car then.

Someone killed Morrissey and tried to pass it off as suicide. A set-up or a crime of passion? Desiree and Sharon were out, but Morrissey could have had other women. Guys like him usually did, though Peter couldn't understand why a guy who had a woman like Lia Anderson needed anyone else.

Peter had spent the better part of Sunday canvasing the neighborhood—if you could call it a neighborhood—for witnesses. The dog park was surrounded on three sides by hundreds of acres of urban forest. As deer and coyotes were damned hard to interview and weren't any more credible as witnesses than golden retrievers, that left the apartment complex across the road—a good three football fields away.

Time of death fell in line with witness reports of two shots, fired sometime after 2:00 a.m. Peter thought back to the smeared blood on Morrissey's hand. Someone who'd watched too many movies would have fired the second shot to get GSR on the supposed gun hand, and that could be the cause of the blood smears.

A few of Peter's witnesses had been up and moving around at the time of the shots. Normally someone would have looked out the window, maybe spotted a car leaving the park. But the view from the apartment complex was blocked by a dense screen of trees and tall bushes, likely planted as a sound break against the noise of traffic on Westwood Northern Boulevard.

The one woman walking her incontinent dust mop of a dog at the time had been inside the line of trees and seen nothing. There was an unobstructed view of the entrance to the parking lot from houses on opposite ends of the complex—if you looked at the exact right angle and held your mouth right, but he'd had no luck there, either. Damn shame. If someone had caught a glimpse of a car—just the color or the body type—it would have made his job much easier.

Peter got up to stretch and toss the remaining half of the pizza in the fridge. He grabbed another beer while he was there, then settled in on the sofa and returned to Luthor's file. Viola jumped up beside him and lay her head in his lap. Peter stroked the silky head.

"I guess there's something to be said for a woman who still wants you after the pizza is gone. Seriously, though, do I really have to sing to you?"

Viola closed her eyes and sighed with contentment.

He turned to the report on Luthor's phone, opened the binder rings and pulled it out. Bless Cynth for pushing this ahead of all the other demands on her time. First was the contact list, next was the list of calls. He skipped to the end. Saturday evening took up two pages, starting with a long list of outgoing calls to a number Peter recognized as Lia's. _She wasn't kidding. He was harassing her._ He counted up the calls, looked at the minutes. The earlier calls were longer, as if Lia tried to reason with Luthor, then became increasingly impatient. The flurry of calls at the end of the page lasted seconds and were exactly 2 minutes apart. Long enough apart for Lia to believe he'd stopped calling and be busy doing something else when he called again. _What a jerk._

The last call to Lia's home phone was 12:57 a.m. Sunday morning. _This is when she unplugged her landline._ After 1:00 a.m. a set of calls to Lia's cell phone appeared. More than twenty over a period of thirty minutes, again all outgoing, each lasting long enough either for Lia to hang up on him or for him to get her message system and disconnect. Peter wondered what Sharon and Desiree would say about the way Luthor hounded the woman who "had her claws in him."

The record showed an incoming text from Lia's cell at 1:35 a.m. The two phones traded several more texts. He looked at the bottom of the report. There were no texts stored in the phone for the wee hours of Sunday morning. Whatever they had been, they were gone.

The gun, will it boil down to Dad's old Luger? Never registered, absolutely untraceable; he picked it up at a gun show in the 70s, before Hinckley shot Brady and changed everything. I saved it as my "weapon of last resort." I know how to shoot. I just don't like the mess. But how often have I had a target ripe for a suicide scenario?

Shooting Luthor was easy, like a fish in a barrel. I expected the blow-back, so I wore a paper painter's jumpsuit, spray-painted navy blue so it could pass for sweats in the dark and stuffed my hair under a ball cap. Rubber gloves and booties completed the ensemble.

I knew what Lia would do. She'd done it twice before. Luthor would call and call and finally she'd get fed up and disconnect the phone. All I had to do was wait until Lia's cell started ringing; that meant Lia's land line was unplugged.

The cell started ringing at 1:03 a.m. He'd let it ring until he got voicemail and then called again. I ignored the phone, as if I was Lia. I assembled my gear while it continued to ring. When I was ready to go, I disconnected his current call attempt and sent him a text in Lia's terse style.

> _Lia: Talk park 2:30_
> 
> _Luthor: Yes Yes Yes_
> 
> _Lia: C U there_

I sat a quarter mile from the dog park in the entry to MacFarlan Woods, waiting for Luthor to drive by, then followed him into the parking lot. I parked far enough away from Luthor to avoid splatter on my car.

He was still sitting in his car when I walked up, confusion on his face at seeing me. Still, he popped open the passenger-side door when I knocked on the window.

I leaned in, my hand in my pocket, gun in hand.

Luthor started to speak, "What are you—"

I'd rehearsed it to get it right, whipping my hand out of my pocket, safety off, finger on the trigger, jamming the gun under his chin before he could blink. It had to be a contact wound and it had to come from the passenger side.

The right temple would have been classic and more certain, but I expected Luthor to turn to face me and lean forward. Getting the gun against his temple in the close confines of the car, then firing before he could jerk away was unlikely under the best of circumstances. With his right temple facing the back of the passenger seat it would have been impossible.

With the chin shot there was more risk that I would miss important parts of the brain, but more certainty that I could get the gun into position and pull the trigger before Luthor realized what I was up to. Better, I could use the force of jamming the gun under his chin to push him back against his seat, where he would have been if he'd shot himself.

It would have been so much easier from the driver's side. I could have held the gun down by my side and out of sight, then tapped on the window for Luthor to roll it down. His head would have been right there and I would be standing over him with leverage on my side.

But the shot coming from the left would have been a tip-off. So I had to do it this way. Jam the gun under his chin and get the shot off before he could flinch and spoil the trajectory, possibly surviving. It's not like I could fire a second time to finish him off.

The kick wasn't bad, but the splatter was more than I expected. Some flew in my face and I didn't like that. Worse was the feeling of Luthor's gore drying on my skin while I took care of business.

I changed into a second pair of gloves. Then the second shot, holding his hand on the gun so he would get gunshot residue on it, carefully aiming the gun through the shattered driver side window, sending the bullet up the hill, away from the first shot. I retrieved the second shell, then began the unpleasant task of rooting through his jacket for the phone so I could delete the text messages.

When I was done, I pulled a plastic garbage bag out of my other pocket. I stripped off the jumpsuit, booties, cap and gloves and dumped them in the bag. Next I wiped off my face with a towelette I had in the pocket of the shorts I wore under the jumpsuit. I tied off the bag and placed it on the passenger side floorboard of my car. The whole process took five minutes, at most. A month of planning, a week of preparation, for those few seconds when I could rid the world of someone who Just Didn't Get It.

Back home, Baby sniffed me and whuffed, knowing the smell of blood and gun powder did not belong on me. I tucked the bag in my reach-in freezer so it wouldn't tempt the dog, then took a very long, hot shower. I cleaned the drain and sanitized it with bleach. A bit much, but you couldn't be too careful. This operation had been risky enough without leaving Luthor's DNA around my bathroom.

I tried not to leave anything to chance. Luthor's phone records could raise some questions. I wasn't worried about the second bullet. It might be found fifty years from now by a hobbyist with a metal detector. By that time it would have no meaning.

Terry might be a problem. He'd seen the gun when I loaned him some camping equipment. I'd taken it along on my last camping trip and left it with my gear by accident. That was years ago. He probably did not remember. If he did, he knew enough about guns that he might remember the make and model. One of those risks you had to deal with.

Better not to do anything at all about Terry. I've been of the opinion that my mornings would be ever so much more peaceful without having to listen to him blast liberals and recite odes to Sarah Palin. He's been on my list as eventually needing removal, but now was not the time.

If I just hold tight, everything should be okay. None of my removals have been discovered yet. As long as they continued to believe Luthor shot himself, no one was likely to turn over any rocks looking for evidence.

Best to do nothing about Terry.

## 5

# Wednesday, May 11

"Lia, darling, how are you?" Catherine slid through the crowd of dog park regulars and neatly inserted herself between Lia and Jim on their bench. The hug she gave Lia had Lia's coffee tipping precariously. "How terrible for you. I wanted desperately to be here for you Sunday, but the police wouldn't let me through. I hope they told you—that young detective said he would. I made him promise. You wouldn't know, I'm sure you were in shock."

She turned to Jim and touched his shoulder. "Jim, did he tell you?" Lia swore she could hear lashes fluttering. She rolled her eyes so only Anna could see and resolved to ask her later if Catherine was batting her eyes.

Lia had decided to rejoin what she called the General Population—And didn't the mad scramble on this side of the park resemble a prison yard sometimes? A prison yard with barrel racing? Mostly people were giving her space. Except Catherine.

"I wanted to bring you a casserole so you wouldn't have to worry about food but I just had so much company, there was no way I could do it. I'm so sorry about Luthor, but you know, I never thought he was right for you. What an awful, awful thing for him to do. You must be devastated." She turned to Jim. "I heard you saw him, too. Was it awful?"

This time she paused in expectation of an answer.

"It was grim, Catherine. You wouldn't have wanted to see it."

"I'm sure it would have destroyed me to see something like that. I don't think I'd ever be the same again. I don't know what the world is coming to. I hope you'll excuse me. I've got to run Caesar and Cleo to the groomers."

Catherine took Lia's hands in hers and pressed them. "Don't you worry, we're all going to take care of you. Jim, you must walk me to my car. Caesar, Cleo, come, babycakes. It's spa day!" Jim obligingly escorted Catherine and her yapping poms across the park.

Anna raised her eyebrows, looked sideways at Lia and announced, sotto voce, "She came, she saw, she conquered."

Marie snorted.

Bailey shook her head. "Is she always like that?"

Anna, Marie, and Lia replied in unison. "Always."

"She's done her good deed for the day," Anna said. "She can go to lunch with a clear conscience. Tell us, what did Detective Peter want to know? Bailey, have you seen Detective Peter? He's quite handsome."

"Anna, you go for it," Lia said. "I can't deal with being fixed up right now. Or ever."

"Seriously, why was he interviewing you? Surely there's no question how Luthor died?"

"Not at all. He said they were just trying to understand why, I guess because he didn't leave a note. He wanted to know who Luthor might have been talking to, if he was having problems aside from the breakup. That sort of thing. Oh, and he called me later for advice about Viola."

"Did he now?" Anna gave Bailey a knowing look.

"You can stop with the eyes, Anna, he's just not used to having a dog."

"So why haven't you taken her?" Marie asked.

"She and Honey would have dominance issues if they lived in the same house, and I don't think I could stand having her give me the 'Where's Daddy?' look. It's your fault, Bailey. You introduced me to that animal communicator. Now I know she's missing Luthor and wondering where he is. If I took her, she might blame me for taking her away from him. I'd feel guilty every time I laid eyes on her. Besides, she likes men."

"You know," Bailey offered, "calling Luella might not be a bad idea. She could explain it to Viola."

Marie considered. "You think a detective would go for the woo-woo stuff?"

"So maybe we don't tell him," Bailey said. "He'd let you have visitation, wouldn't he? And Luella could ask Viola how she likes him."

Anna gave Bailey a look. "So devious. I knew there was a reason I liked you."

## 6

# Thursday, May 12

Peter was exhausted when he finally returned home Thursday evening. His bar interviews had turned up one dead end after another. Likewise interviews at Luthor's job. While he was sure the Cincinnati Art Museum was a pit of seething passions, Morrissey, in his position as a part-time exhibitions installer, appeared well out of it.

Viola wriggled and wagged as he opened the door. He knelt down to ruffle her fur and she gave him frantic kisses. Not a bad way to arrive home.

"If you learned how to bring me a beer, this would be perfect," he told her.

He let her out the back, twisted the cap off a Beck's and sat on the stoop, watching her sniff her way around the yard of the old Victorian that had been converted into apartments.

The more he thought about it, the more it made sense that Morrissey's death had something to do with the dog park. The parking lot was perfect for a meet up—or an ambush. The lot was nearly invisible from the street. If you didn't use the park, you might not know it was there, though according to Lia there was a regular parade of druggies and adulterers who used it to conduct questionable activities. _Murder being the most questionable activity of all._

People meet at places they have in common. If the meet was Morrissey's idea, he wouldn't have suggested the dog park to someone who didn't know it—too easy to drive past. And it would have seemed odd if anyone but a park regular asked Morrissey to meet there.

It probably hadn't occurred to Morrissey how isolated the most-used six acres of Mount Airy Forest would be at 2:00 a.m. Familiarity would have made him careless, more so if he thought he was meeting Lia.

This crime had taken obsessive planning to set up. If Morrissey's doer knew more about spatter patterns, his death would have been labeled suicide. This type of staging took detachment.

Lia was still the obvious suspect, but he'd almost ruled her out. There hadn't been a single wrong note when he first interviewed her. It wasn't her—unless she was a special sort of crazy, the kind of Oscar-winning crazy that can live a lie and have everyone—including herself—believing it.

_Wouldn't that be a damned shame, pretty woman like her?_

Procedure dictated he interview her again, and hammer her about the phone. But since it was most likely she—or someone close to her—killed Morrissey, all the interview was likely to accomplish would be to tip off Morrissey's killer that the death had been classified as murder.

Meanwhile, Viola provided the perfect excuse to visit the park and get a feel for who was who. So he'd hang onto her a while longer. He could always find her a home later.

He was sure Lia would introduce him around. If she didn't, from what he saw during his one visit, Viola would draw anyone who knew Luthor. And he could ever so casually ask Lia if she found her cell. So far, no one knew this was a murder investigation. If he kept it that way, maybe he could catch his quarry off guard. Whoever it was.

My first removal was the hardest. Not the doing of it; I was quite glad to put an end to a life that exuded such misery that it spoiled the perfect peace of my existence. It was the pretense of grief afterwards I found hard to maintain. I decided never to remove anyone so close to me again.

But the doing was easy. My target was conveniently asleep in a hospital bed with an IV drip. So simple to use a hypodermic to load the line with potassium chloride at the end of visiting hours.

When his induced heart attack occurred, I was in a very public restaurant booth with friends. That was the first time, and it was in the restaurant that I most struggled, to keep still, to stay calm, to wait for events to unfold while pretending nothing had changed. The call came, ruining a very nice snapper almondine. I had to abandon this treat and also forgo the crème brûlée I'd planned to order for dessert.

I learned much that night. I learned to use my own stress and tension to fuel the appearance of grief. I learned that at certain times people will forgive you if you pretend not to hear them and don't respond to them. And I learned that while it is a good thing to be visible and accounted for when the removal actually occurs, it is also good if you can be alone when receiving the news. Schooling one's voice over the telephone is much easier than managing one's facial expression and mannerisms in a face-to-face conversation.

The first one was easy because the plan was simple and I did not over-think it. But the more removals I do, the more aware I am of how many things can go wrong; how much danger is in each step along the path once the event is in motion. As the years go by, technology is increasingly my enemy. Surveillance cameras, time-stamped receipts, GPS devices, all must be accounted for. It becomes harder to obtain what I need to carry out these events without leaving a record. It is no longer enough to simply dispose of evidence; you have to obtain items in such a way that not a single kilobyte betrays you ever had a connection to them. I've learned to anticipate possible scenarios and obtain the necessary tools ahead of time as part of a legitimate purchase. My painter's coveralls I bought two years ago when I repainted the living room. I bought them along with two gallons of paint and other supplies, at an old store that didn't use a scanner. I paid cash. There was no camera.

I did not have Luthor in my sights then, I hadn't met him yet. But I knew someday I would need to protect myself from leaving DNA at a removal, and I put those coveralls away against that day.

## 7

# Friday, May 13

Lia grimaced at the plans on her drawing table. Catherine wanted her garden to be a vacation of the senses, full of earthly delights. _If we're not careful, this will turn into a three-ring circus, with me and Bailey as head clowns._

Bailey leaned over Lia's shoulder, her Cleopatra haircut swinging with the motion. She traced an area alongside the winding path with a graceful finger, the cuticle grimy with soil. "I was thinking lavender along here."

"Won't it crowd the path once it gets going?" Lia asked.

"Not if we widen the path."

"Maybe. We'll have the same problem with the mint. We want it to fill in but not take over."

"That means digging out the pathway, then pounding sand into the bed. We'll need to fill in the spaces around the pavers with crushed limestone. We'll also need a plastic border along the edge to keep plants from encroaching."

Lia sighed. "Catherine's not going to like having plastic _anything_ in her garden."

"She will once she sees the price for brick edging."

"You make an excellent point."

They continued to pore over the drawings for a free-form, paved labyrinth landscaped with herbs to provide aromatherapy. Round pavers would depict oriental symbols for peace, joy, truth, harmony, abundance, and energy. A pond, complete with a tiny island, would sit at the center of the labyrinth.

"Does she know Chinese?" Lia asked.

"Doubtful, but it's awfully fashionable, isn't it?"

"Bailey, you're such a cynic."

"I'm a pragmatist and you love me for it. That's what it takes to keep a straight face around most society types."

"This project isn't so bad, is it?" Lia asked.

"No, it's better than most. We may have a tough time making a profit, though."

"Why do you say that?"

Bailey extended a hand and ticked off her reasons. "One, I can tell she's going to be insanely particular. Two, she seems obsessed with impressing her friends. Three, this seems to be a case of 'I may know art, but I sure don't know what I like.'"

Lia snorted in spite of herself.

"Ha. Made you smile. Anyway, I expect her to reject materials and change her mind a few dozen times—after we break ground. You did include a clause about change orders in your standard contract, didn't you?"

"It's there. She acted like I'd stabbed her in the heart when I pointed it out to her."

"Remind me why we took this job again?" Bailey asked.

"Because it's a golden opportunity to show off our talents. And because we love pain and suffering. Want to see some tile samples?"

"Sure. So what is Dame Catherine's story?" Bailey asked.

"She's on her second husband. First husband died years ago. Current husband is a recent addition, don't know much about him. She got him through her _other_ friends." Lia emphasized the word just enough for Bailey to notice.

"Other friends? Who are her other friends?"

"You know, the society folks she hangs with when she's not slumming at the dog park."

"Is that what she's doing?"

"Feels like it sometimes, don't you think?" Lia responded.

"I'm not sure what to think of her. The one time I had a conversation with her, she told me I had a certain poise that commanded attention, but she wasn't sure if anyone else would look past my unfortunate features to notice. I think she was saying I'm not pretty, and isn't that a shame."

Lia shook her head. "You have to admire a creative backhanded compliment. She means well, though."

"If you say so. I'm still going to smudge the check with sage after she gives it to us."

A knock interrupted their mutual eye-rolling. Lia glanced out the window. "We speak, and Madame Devil appears." Lia put on her game face and invited Catherine into the apartment.

"Lia, darling. I'm so glad to see you working." Catherine paused to give Lia air kisses. "I was afraid that awful business with Luthor was going to derail our little project. I can't wait to see what you have for me. Tell me the drawings are finished. Oh, hello, Bailey."

Lia pasted on her best business smile. "Just waiting for your approval."

Catherine examined the drawings. "Marvelous. I love the Chinese symbols on the pavers. But I'm wondering... most people won't know what they mean. Can we put the words in English around the edges, make them repeat as a border?"

Behind Catherine, Bailey's ever-so-graceful forefinger now pointed into her mouth. She mimed gagging, leaning over as if about to topple. Lia cleared her throat to cover the way her mouth twitched.

"Not as a mosaic." She gave Bailey an I'm-killing-you-with-my-eyes look.

Catherine frowned. "Why not? I think I'd really like that."

_You only want it because it's impossible._ "There's only room for something one inch tall. The letter shapes are too intricate for the tile, and the tile would shatter. There would be a lot of waste, and the pieces would be so small they'd pop out with the first freeze. The labor would be excessive. It would triple the cost of the pavers and blow your timeline."

"Surely you can come up with something more reasonable."

"We could carve something in the cement, but that means we'd have to flip the stones before they were dry and I couldn't guarantee they'd cure properly. Plus, the depressions would gather dirt. And it would just be plain grey, no color."

Catherine sniffed. "I wouldn't like that at all."

"We could get those little plastic letters they have for kids and embed them," Bailey said, her face all seriousness, "but the plastic would get scuffed and look pretty ugly after a week. Or less."

Lia sought to redirect Catherine. "Don't you think the words would be awfully... busy? Right now the indigo symbols are on a multi-colored background, for a confetti effect. It's elegant and energetic. To make the words legible, we'd have to go for a solid color background, and then your pavers would look just like something you see in every New Age store in town." _Exactly where you got the idea._

"Perhaps." Catherine tapped her chin with a short and inelegant finger wearing a chocolate diamond ring and topped with a French manicured nail.

Bailey picked up on the direction of Lia's thoughts. "Not having the translations makes it more exclusive, don't you think? Everyone will have to ask you what they mean. And you'll know because this is your mantra."

"You know, Lia, you may be right. How are the plans for the koi pond coming?"

For some reason Lia did not understand, Catherine was acting like Bailey wasn't there. Lia jerked her chin a fraction of an inch at Bailey, urging her to back away. Bailey handed a roll of paper to Lia and retreated.

The drawing showed a large pool with an island accessed by stepping stones. In the center of the island was a circular mosaic bench that allowed you to face all directions.

Catherine sighed in pleasure at the yin yang sign gracing the top of the bench. "I wish the stepping stones in the pond could have mosaics, too."

"We need a textured surface on the stones because water will be splashing on them. With mosaics, the surface would be too slick. You could fall. We wouldn't want you to drown in your own pond."

Catherine pouted, "I suppose. Can we have it finished next month? I want to throw a solstice party to show it off."

Bailey glowered behind Catherine's back. Her long, expressive hands mimed choking Catherine.

Lia temporized. "It would be cutting it close. I'll check José's schedule to see when he can do the excavation. The pavers have to cure for a month for maximum strength."

"How strong do they need to be? It's not like elephants will be parading through there."

"If I can't have a month for curing, I won't be able to guarantee the pavers lasting through the winter. It's not just weight. It's also the freeze-thaw cycle."

"You _can_ make it work, can't you?"

Lia rubbed a temple, thinking of all the time she and Bailey would have wasted if Catherine backed out now. "First, you need to approve the plans. Then it will take a minimum of two weeks working full time to cast the pavers, a month for curing. We can get the excavation and landscaping done while the pavers are curing. Then a two-week window for installing the pavers. In order to finish by the middle of June, we'd have to cut back the curing time, but I may be able to add something to the concrete to make it stronger. And any changes once Bailey and I start will set the timeline back."

"You know," Bailey said, "we have to get the herbs as soon as possible, because prime planting time is almost over. They'll disappear off the shelves if we don't order them now. They'll just be getting established. You won't have full growth until next year."

"Next year? Is that right, Lia? I think I should just put in a nice gazebo instead."

Bailey's eyes bulged, her expression a mixture of incredulity and outrage. Lia took a moment to be grateful Catherine's eyes were still glued to the drawing. _Damn Catherine for treating Bailey like the hired help's hired help. Reminder to self: talk to Bailey about her game face._

"Gazebos are so nice," Lia said, "I love Yvonne's."

The reminder that a gazebo would not be unique in her set was enough to bring Catherine back on board. Lia was all smiles as she escorted Catherine out with a copy of the contract. Lia shut the door, then slumped against it, fanning herself with Catherine's deposit check.

Bailey shook her head. "Rich people."

"José has done some other work for her. He refers to her as the Princess from Jupiter."

"Sounds about right. But she'll have her 'perfect oasis of perfect calm,' as she calls it."

"She'll have hers. What about ours?" Lia asked.

"Mmm. What would that entail?"

"You tell me."

"Perhaps a nice little oak grove anointed with blood sacrifice? Catherine's, perhaps?"

The laugh burst out of Lia, followed by tears. "Damn, Bailey, I can't help thinking how much Luthor would have appreciated that."

"It's okay. Are you sure you're not pushing yourself too hard? No one expects you to be 100%."

_Where does a chump like Morrissey get twenty-five thousand dollars?_

The neat bundles of twenty dollar bills were the last thing Peter expected when he opened the tool box he'd discovered under Luthor Morrissey's recliner. _Nobody else knew this was here. If they had, this place would be torn apart and the money would be gone._

Peter scanned the dumpy apartment piled with second-hand furniture, chosen for comfort and probably donated by friends who were upgrading. He bet the dilapidated Lazy Boy came from a guy whose new wife made disposal of the chair a condition of the wedding. He snorted at the thought of a pre-nuptial agreement that stated, "engagement shall be considered null and void and wedding will be cancelled if said recliner inhabits marital premises as of 12:01 a.m. on wedding date."

Cash usually meant drugs, but Morrissey's apartment lacked the usual signs of dealing or drug use. No papers, no pipes, no powdered milk, talcum powder, or quantities of other white powders used to cut drugs.

_A mule? Mules are usually part of the culture._ _What dealer would trust a mule who didn't partake? Maybe if it was family, but Luthor's family connections are loose, and nothing pops._

_Blackmail? A third class sleaze like Morrissey wouldn't think anything of it._ _Might explain why he wasn't worried about finishing his book or getting a better job. It's also an excellent motive for murder._

_File it away, Dourson. It can't be traced. It leads nowhere._ _When I have someone in my sights, Twenty-five thousand missing from their bank account will be a nice nail in their coffin. But I have to figure out who they are first and get enough on them to pull their bank records._

_This has to connect with the dog park, but those are working and middle class people. Who up there would be dealing in that kind of cash?_

A memory tickled. Monday morning, a woman, old enough to be Morrissey's mother. Two fluff-ball dogs. What were they called? Pekinese? No, Pomeranians. Catherine, that's her name.

What could Luthor have had on her? _Can't be doing the pool boy. No pools in Clifton._ _Please, God, do not let me find video of Granny and her dogs doing something nasty._

He shook his head. _Speculation, Dourson, pure speculation. Just as likely he was being paid by Lia's gun-freak buddy to run Uzis. Or maybe he was a killer for hire. Nah. Morrissey didn't have the stones._

Peter opened the closet. _Morrissey may not have cared where he lived, but he cared how he looked._ The array of jewel-toned shirts in natural fabrics reminded Peter of a peacock. Lizard skin boots kept company with Italian loafers. It seemed a bit rich for Morrissey's blood, but maybe not for the guy with 25K stashed under his Lazy Boy.

## 8

# Saturday, May 14

Terry jerked his chin at the access road leading to the park. "Ho, Lia, isn't that your young man treading the path to our little heaven?"

Lia suspected everyone sitting at her table was now staring at the person heading for the corral. She tossed Honey's ball, not bothering to look. She'd already seen Peter's Blazer pull into the lot. Bailey caught her eye. Bailey, not accustomed to Terry's purple prose, made a face.

"My young man?" Lia asked dubiously.

"Ah, yes, our stalwart officer of the law and his newly acquired canine companion. I'd take the lovely Viola, but then the poor lad would have no excuse to bump into our resident artist."

Lia rolled her eyes, landing them on Anna. "What have you been telling him? Why don't you two go back to passing notes in math class?"

"You think he needs encouragement from me?" Anna asked.

"But this is math class," Terry said. "And one plus one equals?"

Lia pulled a pair of plastic grocery bags from her tote and handed them to Terry. "One plus one equals Jackson and Napa crouching by that tree as we speak. Time for latrine duty, Teddy."

"Teddy?" Bailey asked as they watched his retreating back. "I thought his name was Terry."

"Lia's little joke," Anna said. "She says with round glasses he'd be a dead ringer for Teddy Roosevelt. During his portly years, of course."

Bailey squinted at the sturdy figure bending over to retrieve Jackson's daily present. "Maybe. I've never seen a photo of Roosevelt from this angle."

Jim, who'd been silently communing with Fleece, snorted.

Viola bounded up and body slammed Honey, who took off after her. This sent Chewy into a fit of barking.

"Okay, Little Big Mouth, enough," Lia stated firmly.

Peter reached Lia's table in time to hear her last remark. "Little Big Mouth?"

"Chewbacca. It's what I call him when he annoys me."

"I thought he was Chewy?"

"His full name is Chewbacca Wonder Pup, Master of Confusion."

Peter raised his eyebrows.

"I named him Chewy," Lia said, responding to the unasked question. "Marie informed me that schnauzers have too much dignity for such a silly name. She breeds show schnauzers, so she took it as a personal insult." Lia patted her thigh, rubbing Chewy's ears when he propped his front paws on her legs. "She doesn't understand you, does she, Little Man? So I gave him a name full of consequence."

"And is Honey just Honey?"

"Oh, I couldn't elevate Chewy and leave her out. She's Honey Bunny Sunny-Side Up."

"Huh," was Peter's only response.

"Detective Dourson!" Catherine moved in next to him, planting a proprietary hand on his arm. "What brings you to our tiny corner of Cincinnati?"

"Dog's gotta run." He shrugged and used the gesture to dislodge Catherine's hand.

"So you're not here to ah—investigate—anyone?" Her emphasis on 'investigate' held prurient notes.

Bailey cleared her throat to stifle a laugh. Anna nudged Bailey and Bailey nudged back. Lia thought Peter caught the byplay, but wasn't sure.

"Should I be investigating anyone?" Peter asked.

"We're all innocent as lambs and doves, Detective. I don't think you'll find any guilty consciences here," Catherine said.

"Oh, I don't know," mourned Anna. "I have to confess to murdering a hot fudge sundae last night."

"Really," said Peter gravely. "And did that murder include cannibalism?"

"Why, Detective Peter, you found me out! But you can't prove a thing."

"No?"

"I ate the evidence."

Terry, having rejoined the group, guffawed. "Well turned, my lady! You definitely have more than half a wit!"

Catherine turned to Jim. "Walk with me." Jim followed her obediently, Caesar and Cleo trotting alongside. Fleece followed with an aggrieved expression.

"Was it something I said?" Peter asked.

"Oh, Detective Peter," purred Anna, "You committed the gravest of sins."

"Oh?"

"You paid attention to someone else. Terry, I see Jackson and CarGo are sniffing around that sweet little lab. We'd better make sure Louise didn't bring her to the park in heat again." Anna dragged Terry away.

Lia yelled at their departing backs, "You wouldn't have to worry about that if you'd neuter your dogs."

Bailey pulled Kita's leash out of her back pocket. "I'm taking Kita for a walk in the woods before I go. I'll call you later about starting Catherine's pavers. Come, Kita!"

_Way to abandon ship, Bailey._ Accepting the inevitable, Lia gestured to the now empty table top. "Have a seat."

Peter climbed up next to her. Viola raced back and jumped between them, presenting her winsome 'scratch my ears, please' smile to Lia. Lia obliged, Viola turning her head to make sure Lia got the good spots.

"Dogs seem to like you."

"I like them back. Viola and I are good buddies, when she's in the mood. I wish I could take her but I know my limits."

"She's okay with me for now." Honey, jealous of the attention Viola was getting, shoved her head under Peter's hand. He gave her an absent pat. He sighed. "I promised myself I wouldn't talk business, but I do have a burning question for you. Do you mind?"

"Shoot, Detective."

"Where would Luthor get a large amount of money?"

"Luthor? Luthor and money weren't even distant relations. He talked about taking me to Baja after he made a million on his book, but that was all talk."

"What if it wasn't?"

Lia snorted.

"I found a significant amount of cash in his apartment."

"How significant?"

"Twenty-five thousand dollars."

It took Lia a long moment to remember how to speak. "Are you sure it was his money? I've never known him to have any."

"Whose would it have been?"

Lia frowned. "One of his bar buddies? It wouldn't surprise me if one of those guys was into something shady."

"What makes you say that?"

"Sometimes Luthor would say things that suggested his values were..." She searched for a word. "Flexible. He liked the idea of a big score. And I think he enjoyed being on the edge where his drinking buds were concerned. He called it research. I called it living vicariously. I could see him falling into some stupid scheme. I don't know, I'm not sure what I'm talking about. Him having money when he was always crying poor... I can't believe it, but on another level it doesn't surprise me at all. Does that make any sense?"

"Part of you didn't trust him."

"The more I talk to you, the more I wonder where my brain was when I got together with him."

"I'm sorry to upset you."

"Don't apologize. I don't know where the money came from, but in a weird way it makes me feel less guilty over his death."

"Lia, look at me." His finger slipped under her chin, tilting her head up so she couldn't escape the concern on his face.

She found herself caught in eyes a deep, luminous blue, the exact color of twilight in a Maxfield Parrish print.

"The only guilty person is the one who pulled the trigger."

"You don't think breaking up with him was its own kind of trigger?" The words came out so softly she wondered if he'd heard them.

"I don't know exactly what happened with your boyfriend, but the money tells me there was more going on with him than a break-up. I'm just not sure what."

"Will you find out?"

"I'll do my best."

"This is a lot to take in. Do you mind if we don't talk about it anymore?"

"Yeah, sure."

"I'm going to throw balls for Honey. You can join me if you like. I don't feel much like talking, but if you're with me the others will stay away."

"Why is that?"

"Just their bizarre sense of humor."

She led him to a treeless area with a downhill slope, then pulled her "flinger" and a pair of tennis balls out of her tote. Honey bowed and barked in anticipation. Viola went on alert. Lia launched the balls, willing herself to relax with the mindless activity.

Peter kept guard, enjoying Lia's fluid movements and open affection for the dogs. When she left for her studio, he ignored the regret he felt and looked for other fish to fry.

José had left, but Terry was still there. It didn't take much for Peter to engage Terry in gun talk. Terry waxed poetic about his favorite rifle, what he called his "Sarah Palin special." He admitted his preference for the Walther PPK as a personal protection weapon was an affectation born of his affection for James Bond movies—the Roger Moore Bond, not the Sean Connery Bond. After which he attempted to draw Peter into a debate about the merits of revolvers versus pistols for police work.

When Terry was well warmed to his topic, Peter asked him who else around was a gun enthusiast.

"These guys are amateurs." Terry named a few names. "José has a concealed carry permit because he's up here before daylight lots of days."

"Why so early?"

"He's one of the few morning people who works day shift. He needs to be done and gone before eight."

"Is it so dangerous here that he would need a gun?"

"Well, at one time, the men's room was a big gay pickup spot. We cynics think they put the dog park here to run them out, but we still occasionally get the odd, sad specimen heading for the bathrooms, sans dog. There was a rumor a few years back, that someone was using the entry corral at nights to fight pit bulls. I doubt you'll run into either at 5:30 in the morning, but you never know."

"You seem to know a lot about what goes on up here."

"As much as anyone."

"We still have some things we're trying to clear up about Morrissey."

"Luthor? What about him?"

"We're still trying to figure out what he was doing with a gun. His mother swears he avoided them. Did he ever talk to you about guns?"

"Certainly."

Peter perked up. "What was the nature of those conversations?"

"Conversation. Singular. He wanted to discuss a murder weapon for his book, so I reviewed the differences between pistols and revolvers, and Berettas versus Glocks and the impact of a twenty-two round versus a nine millimeter on the human body, and how caliber size affects exit wounds. He got a bit green while I explained the difference between red mist, like you get when someone steps on a land mine, and blood spatter from a gunshot wound."

"Where do you think Luthor got his gun?"

"Good question. What flavor?"

"Luger 9 millimeter. It's more than thirty years old, not registered."

"Fascinating. And as untraceable as they come. Luger? Not the kind of piece you'd find for sale in a bar parking lot, I'd say."

"Not something that old. This one was pristine. Someone cared for it. My first thought was he got it at a gun show, but then it would have been registered."

"Not a family piece?"

"The Morrisseys don't own guns."

"Curiouser and curiouser. You check old posts on Craig's list?"

"Going back three months."

"You, my man, have a true mystery on your hands."

Keep still. That's Rule Number Seven. Detective Dourson is talking to Terry. I want to barge in and either derail their conversation or at least find out what they're saying. I must not. Showing my face to Terry when they might be talking about guns might jog his memory.

Is Dourson's presence as benign as he pretends? Lia looked upset when she left. They must have been talking about Luthor. I'll ask her about it later.

Terry's mind is a repository of endless depth. Does he remember my gun, what make it was? He only saw it for a moment. I need a plausible story in case he asks me about it. Or would it be better to admit I own a Luger, then be distressed when I discover it missing? Is it conceivable that Luthor would have stolen it? What's worse? Owning the suicide weapon, or not being able to produce an old Luger when he remembers? _If he remembers_.

It all depends on Terry. Will he remember?

A deft touch startled Peter out of his musings. He looked down at his arm, where a French-manicured hand rested against his skin.

"Detective, I feel so neglected," Catherine purred. "You'd rather listen to Terry's odious opinions than talk to me."

"Purely business. Tying up loose ends."

"I'm sure I can tie up a loose end as well as anyone."

"Maybe you can. How well did you know Luthor?"

"Oh, about the same as everyone else. That is, excepting Lia, of course." She gave a little laugh. "After all, he was young enough to be my son. Why do you ask?"

"We're trying to figure out where the gun came from."

"I don't think I can help you there. Are you sure you don't have any other ends I might ... tie off?"

Peter maintained strict cop face and reminded himself that forbearance was a virtue. "I was confused about one other thing."

"What is that, Detective?"

"Luthor seemed to dress rather well, don't you think?"

"I always did admire a well put together man."

"So where did he get the money?"

"What do you mean?"

"His clothes seemed a bit rich for his finances. Did Lia give them to him? Was that why he didn't want to break up with her?" He saw a flash of something in Catherine's eyes. Then it was gone.

"Lia?" Catherine tittered. "Some women enjoy dressing a man. Lia's not one of them."

"Huh." It was Peter's standard non-committal response, designed to elicit elaboration.

"Nothing against dear Lia, you understand, but personal appearance isn't a passion with her."

Peter took in the rust—colored hair, cut in a fluffy style and highlighted—no, when they're dark, they're called lowlights—to match her Pomeranians. He wondered what Lia, with her flip flops and no-nonsense ponytail, thought of it. Catherine obviously had a passion for personal appearance. He decided to push a bit more.

"Luthor was a real puzzle."

"How so, Detective?" Wide hazel eyes looked perhaps a bit too innocent.

"You've got a would-be writer with a nothing job. He likes his beer, but that seems to be his only vice." He paused. "What's he doing with twenty-five grand in his apartment?" He saw a jolt of something in Catherine's face before she looked away.

"Perhaps," her affectedly winsome smile returned, "He got it the same place Ollie North did."

"How so?"

"From his change jar." She laughed. "I imagine you're too young to remember the Iran/Contra scandal."

"I think I was in Little League at the time. Or burning marshmallows over a campfire." Peter made a mental note to ask Alma, his septuagenarian neighbor.

Lia and Bailey eyed the stack of paver molds. It had taken the better part of a day to cut 12" circles out of 3" thick, 18" squares of foam insulation to form the sides of the molds. Each foam square would be paired with an 18" square of 1/2" plywood, which would be the bottom.

Lia nodded at the stack of Styrofoam molds. "We've got forty forms. Depending on how inspired I am, I should be able to set up the mosaics for those in two to three days. Then a day for us to pour the concrete. Those can set for two days while I lay out the next batch on the extra set of plywood squares. The trick will be keeping the finished concrete thoroughly wet while it cures."

"We could get some kiddie wading pools and keep them submerged."

"That would work, but they wouldn't hold enough pavers. After we pop them from the molds, we're going to wind up stacking them at least five-high. We could cover them with wet burlap and plastic, spray them down every day."

"Put Styrofoam shims between to protect them? Then we'd be able to spray in between the pavers."

"We'd have to be careful. Don't want the stacks falling over because the shims made them unstable."

"Good point."

Lia rolled her shoulders to get the stiffness out. "I'm so glad she went for the random confetti background; it will make it so much easier to produce a few hundred of these. And even though there are six repeating symbols, every paver will be unique."

Bailey nodded in agreement. "That's what I thought. So while you get started, I'll go out to Catherine's with José and do a preliminary site survey, get a final quote on the cost for him to dig out the path and lay down a bed of sand."

"Will he pound it down with that funny vibrating thing?" Lia asked.

Anna as she stuck her head through the doorway. "Funny vibrating thing? Is that a technical term or are we talking artificial appendages? I hope you don't mind that I stopped by. I tried to call your cell. You know your mailbox is full?"

Lia sighed. "I still haven't found my phone. But I'm not looking very hard. I'm not looking forward to clearing out those messages."

"We could try calling it," Bailey offered, "but I bet the battery's dead by now."

Anna strolled over and perused the stacked forms. "Oooh, I see lots of pizza in someone's future. Pizza and caffeine. So is Madame Butterfly paying a fast food surcharge for wrecking your diet?"

"I'm going to move my spare juicer in here and pick up a 15-pound bag of carrots at Whole Foods. My diet won't go totally down the toilet."

"Hear that, Bailey? Our girl not only has a juicer, she has a spare juicer. How many people do you know have spare juicers? But enough about art and food. Let's talk about sex. I ran into Catherine and Marie at the park. They tell me you were having quite the tête-à-tête with Detective Peter."

"It was nothing. More questions about Luthor."

"What more could he possibly want to know?"

"A lot, apparently. Mr. I'm-Too-Broke-To-Take-You-On-A-Real-Date had twenty-five grand stuffed in his Lazy Boy."

"No!" exclaimed Anna and Bailey in unison.

"Where on Earth did that come from?" Anna asked.

"That's the twenty-five-thousand-dollar question. Bailey, would you have thought Luthor had even spare change to drop in the cushions of his recliner?"

"He did always dress nice," Bailey observed.

"He said his mom sent him clothes. I never questioned it. Now I'm wondering if 'Mom' is some burly guy in Colombia with a shaved head."

"Luthor didn't travel enough to be a drug courier," Anna said.

"He could have been picking up packages at the airport for someone," Lia said.

"Really, Lia, you think his Corolla would make it that far?" Anna responded.

Bailey frowned. "I don't know. Luthor had an elastic view of the world, but drugs? I can't see it."

"I know," Lia said. "But what can you see that isn't worse?"

"Oh, Lia," Anna apologized. "I've gone and gotten you all upset. I'm sorry."

"It's okay, it was just simmering there below the surface."

"Sweetie, we don't have all the facts," Anna said. "We don't know for sure what that money was doing there. It might not have even been his."

"Yeah, he could have been holding it for the big burly guy with the shaved head. Somehow it doesn't make me feel better."

"You don't suppose he got a book deal?" Bailey asked.

"He took it in cash? And didn't tell the whole world?"

What rotten luck. Who would have thought Luthor could hang on to twenty-five dollars, much less twenty-five thousand? And that Dourson would find it? Now he's got more questions, and he'll continue digging.

So far, I have been peripheral to this investigation. This is my third investigation. I've never been a "person of interest," though this time there are more loose ends that could trip me up.

My first removal was too close to me. It was exciting being in the spotlight, though it was very exhausting and I had to keep up the pretense much longer than I cared. I became a virtual prisoner in my own home just to avoid people. But the bliss! It was worth the risk to have serenity again, with the added pay-off of an inheritance. That first removal was such an epiphany. That I could remove people who disturb me! The blights on existence that make life less than pleasant for the rest of us could be eliminated. This exhilarating truth made my self-imposed confinement both necessary and difficult. I wanted to skip down the street singing tra-la-las. Not a good look for someone in mourning.

I spent my time in planning. Thinking how it could be done, deciding who might be next and how long I should wait. I rated the people around me. Considered their good and bad points. It really all boiled down to who was making life unpleasant and was unlikely to change.

I felt like Santa Claus, making a list and checking it twice.

My second removal came a year later and I don't think anyone would have argued with my choice. He was a stupid man, misogynistic, always yelling at his kids, the dogs. Drinking beer on his porch, wearing a Marlon Brando undershirt (I refuse to call them "wife-beaters") displaying an unpalatable physique. His was the only worthwhile opinion on any matter. I'm sure if he ever apologized to his wife for anything, she'd have fallen over in a dead faint.

He was tricky, having so many people around him. My break came when one of his children complained that they never had peanut butter in the house. Dad was allergic and almost died once.

I waited until he was leaving for his annual hunting trip, then left a bag of brownies in his truck. I made them with peanut oil. He went into shock in his hunting blind and wasn't discovered until his buddies missed him hours later. I'd put the brownies in a plain white bakery bag, layered with tissue. The police figured he picked them up at some country store during his trip. There were too many miles and too many back roads to find the source. The only fingerprints on the bag were his.

There was a token investigation, centered around his wife. She was properly bewildered and was not a baker. A search of the house did not reveal chocolate or peanut oil. She received her life insurance, sold the house and moved away. This was a relief to me because she was the sort of woman to find another just like him. And if she didn't, her boy was getting old enough to start displaying behavior he learned at Papa's knee. Their house was soon occupied by a young couple who refinished the floors, tore out the cabinets, and exorcised the ghost of Archie Bunker, Jr.

Removal number three was a supervisor who thought nothing of demanding that I work on the weekend and deliver reports to her home after hours. None of which was necessary. On one occasion, she was home with a cold. I brought along a bitter herbal powder. I told her it would help her symptoms and offered to make tea with it. She was touched by my consideration. I laced it with sleeping pills. When she passed out, I put on rubber gloves and rinsed out her cup to eliminate any residue. I wiped my fingerprints off the jar of herbs, and pressed her hand to it. Then I put it in her cabinet.

I dragged her into the bathroom, removed her clothes, and ran bath water. When it was half full, I placed her in and pulled up on her ankles so that she was flat on her back under water. I'd read how it is impossible to rescue one's self from drowning when the feet are held up like this. She never woke. I held her feet up for five minutes just to be sure, then carefully repositioned her legs with bent knees to look like she had been sitting in the bath, passed out, then just slid under. I scattered her clothes around as if she'd dropped them on the floor in a drugged stupor. On the way out the door, I dropped a few more pills on the table, picked up my report and left. I was never there.

Universally disliked as she was, I saw distress but not grief at work. Our new supervisor lacked her flash and drive. He also lacked her temper and demands. Though I did not find him engaging, he was workable and not out to prove anything. I was not the only person who appreciated his willingness to trust in staff competence and the lack of eleventh hour revisions.

It was ruled an accidental death. All evidence suggested she was alone when she died and no one looked any further.

Lia was saddened but not destroyed by Luthor's death. She would converse, even smile at a joke. But then she would go flat. Would grief cause her to dive into her work or leave her enervated and listless? She had a project to finish, a gorgeous serenity garden. If Luthor's death had a negative impact on her work, would it be any worse than the constant stress she was under while he was alive?

## 9

# Sunday, May 15

The dogs Peter had known growing up were hunting dogs, not companion animals. He'd never thought of them being happy. But he couldn't think of another word to describe Viola's behavior, unless it was ecstatic. She'd grown more excited the closer they came to the dog park. Now she tugged on her leash, dragging Peter up the service road leading to the entrance corral as if she couldn't let another minute to pass before she saw her friends. And the only reason her heel of a foster-dad brought her was to provide cover so he could spy on the dog parkers.

To be truthful, if there hadn't be a murder, he'd still use Viola to get closer to Lia. Lia of the mossy green eyes and hair of many colors was the first woman who interested him since Susan ended their engagement to marry the furniture king of Bowling Green. _Damned inconvenient, in the middle of a homicide investigation._

Because there was a case, he was keeping secrets from her. Everyone who hung out at this patch of the forest was to some extent a person of interest and he had to be careful. Not a good way to start with a woman.

Why would someone kill Morrissey? It could be a jealous lover, but Luthor struck him as a man who believed in self-preservation and kept his women apart. Sharon and Desiree knew about Lia, but he figured that was strategic. There was only so much they could expect from Luthor if he was trapped in an unhappy relationship. They didn't know about each other and Lia didn't know about them.

The killer knew the park. Morrissey let his women know about Lia, but he wouldn't invite trouble by allowing them to cross paths with her, especially not on her turf. So the women moved down his list of possible suspects.

It could be the money. If only he could figure out where it came from and what it was for. Or the money could have nothing to do with it. It could be a big, fat, sexy red herring. The initial search had missed it. Someone could have planted it later to distract him. But how would they know he'd find it?

Then again, if he didn't find it, they could always come back later and get it. That implied access to Morrissey's apartment. _No one had 25K to throw away like that. I've been watching too many movies._

Peter passed through the double gates of the entrance corral and paused to look around while Viola danced on her lead.

The four big motives for murder were money, sex, revenge, and power. Occasionally someone killed to protect their ass, but that hadn't happened on his watch. Sex or money seemed the likely motive for offing Morrissey. Maybe a CYA if the money was blackmail.

Peter wouldn't count revenge out, though it was last on his list. Morrissey seemed the kind of guy who preferred to get his thrills vicariously through his questionable buddies and avoided trouble for himself. He might indulge in a little discrete blackmail if the victim were unlikely to retaliate. He was not a guy who tugged on Superman's cape.

Peter's musings were interrupted by a golden body slam. Honey careened off his legs as Viola chased her around him, wrapping Peter's legs with her leash. Peter, still reeling from the hit, toppled.

Lia's jade eyes laughed down at him as she extended her hand to help him up. He didn't need the assist, but welcomed the opportunity to touch her. The strength and softness of her hand had barely registered when a jolt of something passed between them. Her eyes flashed wariness. Had she felt the connection as well?

She bent over and removed Viola's leash and handed it to Peter. "And that, Detective, is why we remove leashes inside the corral before we enter the park."

"Is that the reason?"

Lia dropped her eyes, then turned to watch Viola chase Honey across the park. "One of them."

"Will the others prevent me from landing on my ass?"

"They might."

"Then enlighten me. Please." He gave her his most pathetic look.

She thought for a moment. "You see the corral?"

"I got the whole leash-corral connection."

"This is something just as important."

"Tell me."

"A corral has a gate. A gate is a portal."

"Oka-a-ay," Peter replied, unsure where she was going.

"Dogs guard their space. When they are inside the park, the park becomes their space and the gate is like the front door."

"And?"

"What does a dog do when a stranger comes to the door?"

"They bark?"

"And sometimes they get aggressive."

"So dogs inside the park guard the gate."

"You're a quick study. Sometimes they do, if they're near it. It's best to take your dog away from the gate after you enter the park, and don't let them guard. You don't have to worry about Viola with that. But..."

"But?"

"If you're inside the corral, and dogs inside the park start guarding, there's a chance a fight might break out."

"So what can you do?"

"If a strange dog is guarding the gate and acting aggressively, snarling and growling, call their owner over and ask them to remove their dog from the gate. You have an advantage. You can always flip your badge out if you need to."

"That wouldn't constitute an abuse of power?"

"I'd say letting your dog be a bully is an abuse of power. You're just calling them on it."

"I can buy that. What else?"

"Don't bring food or treats into the park. Some dogs are food aggressive, so it can start a fight."

"Makes sense."

"Don't ever put loose treats in your pocket. I think Viola has outgrown chewing the pockets out of pants, but even if she has, your pants will always smell like treats and you'll get pestered by strange dogs. Any time you carry treats, keep them in a baggie. Of course, if you're recruiting drug dogs, that would be a way to sniff out the talent."

"Pun intended?"

"Of course. One big thing. Dogs are pack animals and they have to either lead or follow. If you don't lead, they will decide it's their job, and they'll start behaving badly."

"How do you do that, besides with a leash?"

Lia pondered for a moment. "It's more about being consistent. Only have a few rules, but make them rules you can and will enforce every time. You can't neglect it even once. You let it go and they know it's not really a rule and they don't have to do it."

"Sounds harsh."

"It's better than yelling at your dogs because they don't understand what you want. I'm not saying boss her around all the time. Keep it simple. Set basic routines around walks and meal times, and when they know what to expect, they'll start doing it automatically."

"And if I don't?"

"Say somebody is harping on you to lend them money and you say no. If you've never loaned them money, they'll give up pretty quickly. If you used to lend them money and now you're saying no, it's harder to get them to go away, right?"

"True."

"Now suppose you spend fifteen minutes saying 'no' and then they wear you down and you say, 'Well, okay, but this is the last time.'"

"Okay."

"So what happens next time?"

Peter scrunched his eyebrows and thought. "He's not going to believe me when I say no."

"Exactly!" Lia flashed a broad smile. "Viola has a couple routines she knows, so it should be easy to get her back into a groove. But once you start with her you can't blow it off."

"So what are they?"

"When it's time to go for a walk, have her sit before you clip on her leash. And when you are done, make her sit to unclip." Lia lifted her hand, palm up, and Viola plopped on her butt. She maintained eye contact with Viola for a moment, then said, "Okay." Viola popped up. "That's the hand signal. Or you can just say, 'Sit!' in a firm voice." Viola sat back down.

"I haven't been doing that. So what do I do now if she ignores me? "

"You say 'sit' the first time and if she doesn't do it immediately, say it once more, but this time gently push her butt down. Don't keep repeating the command; it just becomes noise. Like teachers in school who yell all the time and nobody listens to them. Whatever it is, give her one opportunity to obey. If you need to, repeat the command and gently put her into position. And if she pops out of position, keep doing that until she stays. Reward her with treats when she gets it right, if you need to."

"Doesn't sound too hard. So what else is she used to doing?"

"Viola's used to being told to lay down before she gets her meals, and she's not allowed to eat until she's released. You release her by saying 'okay.'" Viola got back up. This time she sauntered off, hoping to avoid more commands. "Always have her hold a command until you release her."

"That sounds a little mean."

"Dogs are different from humans. They like being led unless they're being led by someone ineffectual. Viola may give you some resistance, she may test you by trying to get up before you release her. If you let her get away with it, pretty soon she'll be jumping all over you when it's meal time. She might start snatching food from your plate when you're eating."

"Sounds like a slippery slope."

"It is. Dogs know who's a push-over and who isn't. And their behavior will change accordingly."

"I have nephews like that."

"Exactly."

"If I make my nephews lie on the floor before I give them pizza, do you think they'll stop acting like brats?"

Lia's face was carefully blank. "It's worth a try, Detective."

"Will you teach me Viola's pee song?"

"That's pretty personal stuff. I don't think I know you well enough. You should make up your own pee song."

"Damn. Must I?" He looked at her sideways. "I think you're making the whole pee song thing up just to con me into making an ass out of myself."

"I don't need to humiliate you. You'll do it to yourself the first time you talk baby-talk to Viola in public."

"Oops."

"See, humiliation is already a done deal. Surrender your self-respect, Detective, it's very freeing."

Peter decided they'd talked enough about his personal humiliation. "How long have you been coming here?"

"About six years. Ever since I got Honey."

"You come every morning?"

"Pretty much. Except when it's pouring rain or the roads are iced up."

"And the same people are here every day?"

"Some more than others."

"You're friends with all of them?"

"Good friends with some, friendly with most of the rest. You'll find all different kinds of people here, and you wind up associating with people you wouldn't know otherwise. Sometimes the only thing we have in common is dogs. We all try to get along, but if the sordid underbelly of the park were exposed, I suspect you'd find a seething cauldron of political conflict, romantic discord and social rivalry."

"And which of these are you?"

"Until last Sunday, I fell in the category of romantic discord. I guess I'm still there. I feel so guilty."

"Why?"

Lia's earnest green eyes glimmered with unshed tears. "I hate what Luthor did and I hate that he did it because I broke up with him. I especially hate that I'm relieved it really is over. His funeral is next week and whatever I do, I'm the villain. I stay away and it's because I don't care. If I go, then how dare I show my face after what I drove him to? I thought about sending flowers, but they'd only wind up in the trash."

"Have you talked to his family?"

"I called his sister on the phone and she screamed at me for five minutes straight before I figured out there was no point staying on the line."

"I see what you mean." Peter mentally took a deep breath and hoped he wasn't making a big mistake. "Let's sit down somewhere. I have something to tell you."

"Over there?" Lia pointed to an empty picnic table under a maple tree. They climbed on top and rested their feet on the benches.

"Why do so many people sit on top of the tables here?"

"If we sit on the benches we get slammed by racing dogs, or one of the dogs will jump on the table and get in our faces. Maybe just maintaining pack leadership? Height is dominance to dogs, so you'll see little dogs jumping up on the table so they can lord it over the great Danes and rotties."

They fell silent. Peter wondered if Lia was the sort to shoot the messenger.

"What are you being so mysterious about?" she asked.

"What I'm going to tell you has not been made public, but I think you need to know. Can I count on your discretion?"

"Hard to say, since I don't know what it is. I'll stay mum if there's no compelling reason not to."

"That's my line. Seriously, I need your promise."

Lia searched his face. "Okay then."

Peter paused, looking for the right way to tell her. "Do you ever watch forensic cop shows?"

"You mean like CSI? Not often. Why?"

"There were irregularities with Luthor's death, things that weren't obvious."

"I don't understand."

"We can tell someone was in the car with Luthor when he died. And we know he didn't shoot himself. It was staged to look that way."

She stared at him. "How can you know that?"

"It's technical. It's also gruesome."

"Don't treat me like a child."

"You remember all the blood in Luthor's car?"

"I can't forget it. I see it every night when I close my eyes."

"There should have been blood on the passenger seat, but there wasn't. It's called a void in the spatter pattern. It means something was in the way and caught the spatter."

"Something or someone?" she asked.

"We believe someone."

"I see."

Honey and Viola wandered over. Lia pulled a tennis ball out of her pocket and sent it down the slope. She watched the dogs race after it. "Even if someone was with him, how do you know he didn't shoot himself?"

"The spatter indicates Luthor's arms were down when he was shot. He couldn't have pulled the trigger. There's more."

"More?" The word escaped Lia's mouth in a high-pitched whisper. She swallowed.

"Did you know Luthor had other girlfriends?" Lia looked away. Peter wondered if killing the messenger was occurring to her now. "He started with one young woman the previous time you broke up. He attempted to keep it going after you got back together, but she wouldn't have it."

Lia gave a sad and cynical snort. "At least somebody had some class."

"The other woman he began seeing in a casual way recently. She seemed to be more a girlfriend in waiting. It hadn't quite gone there yet."

Lia looked down, shaking her head. Finally, she said, "This is too much. Luthor was murdered?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"We don't know. Did you ever find your cell phone?"

"Not yet. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Because Luthor traded texts with your phone before he was shot. We have to find it."

Anna and Jim watched from the other side of the park as Honey jumped up on the table and licked Lia's cheek. Lia turned her head into Honey's neck and wrapped her arms around the dog.

"What do you suppose he's saying to her that has her so upset?" Anna asked.

Nadine walked up. "Lia looks really unhappy. Should we interrupt?"

"I don't think she wants company right now," Jim said. "She knows we're here if she needs us."

Catherine appeared and took Jim's arm. "Hello, Anna, I just love your sweatshirt. You look so ... relaxed."

Anna ground her teeth.

"Honestly," Catherine said, nodding at Peter and Lia, "Why is he upsetting her like that? She's in the middle building my labyrinth. It's a huge project. She doesn't need this."

Anna rolled her eyes. "Catherine, you're all heart."

"You'd feel the same way if it was your garden that might be late and your party that might be ruined," Catherine snapped.

"No, I wouldn't. And he didn't need to do much of anything. Lia's got a brave face, but our girl's been hurting. It's only been a week since Luthor died."

"Now, ladies, we all care about Lia," Jim said.

"Of course we do," Catherine said.

Anna narrowed her eyes until Catherine blinked and looked away.

Peter wondered if he'd dropped too many bombs at once. It took all his patience to sit quietly while Lia communed with Honey. Viola jumped on the bench and rested her head on Lia's knee. Chewy shoved his head under Lia's hand. She scratched his ears absently while she brooded.

She eventually sat up and turned around. "You dumped all this on me and I can't share it with anyone."

"Not for a while, unless you have a priest or a therapist."

"I suppose I could talk to the dogs about it," she smiled weakly.

"Yes," he smiled wryly back. "You can talk to Honey and Chewy. I'm so sorry. I didn't want to tell you like this."

"Why did you tell me?"

"I shouldn't have, but I hate seeing you guilt yourself about Luthor."

"Is the way I'm feeling now supposed to be better?"

"Maybe not. But at least it's based on reality. It was unfair for you to keep blaming yourself."

"So you keep coming here, what, because I'm some kind of suspect?" Lia asked.

Peter sighed. "Everyone's a suspect right now. You're way down the list. His death is connected to the park. The answer has to be here."

"I am so not ready for this."

"I know you aren't. You could help me, though."

"How?" She picked up her flinger and half-heartedly tossed a ball for Honey.

"A lot of murders are easy to solve, even if they're difficult to prove. This one is different. Someone didn't just get mad at Luthor and pull out a gun. He planned it, and my sense is that plan was in the works for a while. All this time, he's been walking around the park, being everyone's friend. It's to my advantage that he doesn't know there's an investigation. I need to dig, but conducting interviews will only serve to alert him and make him more careful. You know the players. You can give me background information that would take me weeks to pull out of casual conversation."

"You really think somebody here did this? I can't believe it."

"It has to be someone you know. They had to have access to you to take your phone. And they'd have to have been to the park to know how secluded this lot really is, even though it's right on the street. They'd have to know you had a fight and that you were likely to unplug your landline."

"This keeps getting better and better."

"I'm really sorry. Do you see why it's so important that you not talk about this until I say it's okay?"

"I've got to tell them something. Everyone who's here knows you said something that upset me and everyone who's not here will know by tomorrow," Lia said.

Peter pondered. "What if you just tell them about the girlfriends? You can rant and rave and cry big soggy tears if you want. Will that work?"

She nodded. "I guess so."

"I'd like to interview you more formally, and record it. Later today, if possible. I can come by your place."

"How about the studio? It'll be easier for me to talk if I'm moving my hands."

"Will it be private?"

"Sure. Bailey won't be there. She and José are working at Catherine's."

"Can I give you a lift? This might not be a good time for you to drive."

"We walked up today. I think I need the walk home."

He watched her head over to her friends, looked on as Marie and Bailey came out of the woods and joined them, saw Anna put an arm around her and stroll with her to the corral and down to the parking lot. He wished he could be the one comforting her. But he couldn't. At least she had someone.

Keep still. This is getting increasingly harder. That scene at the park, what was that about? It had to be more than Luthor's bimbo girlfriends. How could Lia not have known about them? Why was Dourson still pursuing this? I've been over it again and again. I made no mistakes. Yes, the cash confused things and that's too bad. But people with money and extra girlfriends could still kill themselves.

I keep thinking of a scene from the movie _Lord of the Rings_. The hobbits are hiding under the road as the Nazgûl pass over. Worms and centipedes and every creepy thing imaginable are coming out of the earth to get away from the ringwraiths, crawling all over the hobbits, and the hobbits can't move a muscle or they'll be discovered.

Keep. Still.

For the last week Lia's emotions had bounced around like a Jack Russell terrier in a tennis ball factory. An over-caffeinated Jack Russell, on a sugar high. In comparison, Chewy and Honey lay napping on a pile of blankets in the corner of her studio. Their world was simple: eat, sleep, play. _I want to come back as my dog in my next life._

She wiped off her work table and selected the template for Catherine's "peace" paver. Maybe if today was dedicated to peace, she might begin to feel some.

Before Peter's revelations, she'd only had to struggle with grief for Luthor, guilt over contributing to his suicide, anger at him for shooting himself, and shameful relief that he was finally out of her life.

Now she was supposed to stop feeling guilty. Instead she got to wonder what the hell Luthor had been up to for the past year. She got to feel angry because he was a cheating prick. And she got to feel stupid because she'd been clueless. Now she was supposed to believe a killer was running around the park. And none of that cancelled out the grief, or the shame.

It was too much to process. Thank God for art. Work was the only thing that took her out of the mess inside her head.

Lia opened a box of midnight blue tile cut in random shapes. Goggles on and nippers in hand, she shoved her thoughts aside and set to work, losing herself in the colors and shapes. Once the character took form, she covered the background with random pieces of rose, saffron, and yellow; then gave the final design a once over, nudging the tiles with an orange wood stick to make space for concrete between them.

She lowered a square of clear contact paper over the tiles, rubbing it so the tiles would stay in place while the paver was cast. This was topped with a mold base, making a sandwich with the tile in the middle. The stack was flipped, carefully so the base was on the bottom and the tiles were upside-down. Once the template was replaced with a Styrofoam ring, the completed mold went on a shelf.

_One down, forty-nine to go._

Lia had just finished the Chinese character on paver number six when Honey's gentle "whuff" alerted her to Peter's arrival. She removed her goggles and waved him in before he had a chance to rap on the doorframe.

"You look like you're feeling better." He leaned over the table, scooping the hair out of his eyes with one hand as he eyed the bits of blue tile.

"Much. Your timing is good, I was about to take a break. Can I get you something? Water? Sweet tea? I remember you like it."

"Tea would be great."

Lia opened an ancient refrigerator and poured two glasses from the tap on a sun tea jar, then dragged a dusty, paint-speckled stool over to the table. She looked at Peter's crisp khakis. "I can wipe this down for you."

Peter sat on the high stool, hooking his heels on the bottom rung. "This is fine." He tilted his head back, taking a long swallow. "Thanks for the tea. It's getting hot out there."

"Are you sure you're a detective? You seem too friendly to chase down criminals."

Peter flashed a grin. His face was too open, giving the moment an uncomfortable intimacy. Lia dropped her eyes to the table. She took several pieces of rose-colored tile and placed them at random on the template, scooting them around with a fingertip.

"Thumbscrews have gone out of style. At roll call, officers now spend five minutes chanting 'You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.'"

"They do not."

"Really. Amendment 277, Section C in the department manual of standard operating procedures. I'll show it to you if you like." He pulled a phone from his pocket. "We have an app."

This tugged smile from Lia that she didn't realize she had in her. "So the movies have it wrong? You don't slam perps against walls and hang them out windows to get confessions anymore?"

Peter coughed, likely a smothered laugh. "Um, no. Cinematic interrogation styles are the last resort of angry cops who don't care about their pensions. Most of the time being a detective is like being an accountant. I spend my time hunting down details and adding them up."

"And helping little old ladies cross the street."

He shrugged. "Rule number seven in the _Official Boy Scout Handbook_. I was an Eagle Scout." He nodded at the template. "Tell me about your project."

Lia suspected he was only asking to relax her. Still, she unrolled her drawings for Catherine's garden and showed Peter the molds she'd already set up. "We're using jewel tones to suggest aura colors."

"Really? What do aura colors look like?"

"Bailey says they're like a rainbow, clear and intense."

"Bailey sees auras?"

"She sometimes sees a haze of color around someone, never a full aura. It doesn't happen often."

"And what does a full aura look like?"

Lia wondered if amusement lurked under Peter's politely expressed interest. She had her own misgivings about Bailey's nutty hobbies but she wouldn't let him know that.

"She says they have a lot of layers, and sometimes they have rays extending out that attach them to other people. You can also have other colors, like turquoise or peach. Muddy colors, if you're unhealthy; silver and gold if you're a saint. That's what halos are in old paintings. An exceptionally spiritual person can have such a strong aura that normal people will see a bit of it, mostly around the head."

"According to Bailey," Peter said.

"I'm not into the New Age thing, but somebody had to see something for halos to show up in centuries of art. Anyway, the background of each symbol is meant to evoke aura energy without being obvious about it. Catherine wanted to do a repeating rainbow theme, one red paver, one orange, one yellow, all through the labyrinth. Bailey and I talked her out of it."

"How did you do that? She seems like a determined woman."

"Bailey said she loved the idea because it reminded her of a playground. Catherine couldn't change her mind fast enough. I guess it's a vinegar-disguised-as-honey thing. I caught on. Now we double team her. Should we be wasting your time talking about my stuff?"

"It's not a waste, but we should probably get started. Is it okay if I record this?"

At Lia's nod, he set a mini-cassette recorder on the table and turned it on. "You were telling me about Catherine. She sounds like she's very concerned with her image."

"She can be. She won't leave the house without make-up on. Some of us have dog park clothes that we toss on in the morning and wear for days without washing. It's pointless to put on clean clothes when you're likely to get body slammed by a muddy dog. Catherine always looks like she's ready for lunch in Hyde Park."

"This garden is a huge undertaking. What do you think that's about besides wanting to be the coolest kid on the block?"

"She said she wanted an 'island of serenity.' She's seen labyrinths and aromatherapy gardens. She wanted to put it all together and top it off with the koi pond. It's a great idea, but I feel kind of sorry for her."

"Why is that?"

"She's like a little girl who has to wear all her bows at the same time so you know how many she has. People who are so socially competitive and focused on material things make me think they don't believe they're enough without the extra trappings."

"So you're wise, as well as talented?"

Lia leaned back on her stool and folded her arms. "Suck up much?"

Peter shrugged and did not look embarrassed.

"When did Catherine decide she wanted a garden?"

"Three months ago? Not long after she started coming to the park. She found out I was an artist and started having all kinds of ideas. I thought it was just talk; so many people like her dangle their money in front of you and never come through. As if talking about a big commission that's never going to happen will make you fawn all over them."

"You don't fawn?"

"Not until I see cash. Not even then. Do you fawn over your boss every time you get your paycheck?"

"An excellent point."

"But with Catherine, the idea caught hold and she got serious. I have to give Luthor credit for selling her on the commission. He kept talking about what a beautiful setting it would be for her. I don't know if you've noticed, but she really eats up male attention."

"No, really?"

The incredulous look on his face pulled a smile from her. She started to give his shoulder a friendly cuff, then stopped. One does not hit police officers. Especially when one is grieving.

"Was Catherine interested in Luthor?"

"Of course she was, the way he played up to her. It was a game to him. At least, that's what he said. Now I'm not sure anything he told me was true." The sudden shift in her mood had Lia staring down at the half-filled template with damp eyes. She added lavender tiles, shoving them aimlessly with the orange wood stick.

"Did that bother you, your boyfriend flirting with another woman in front of you?"

"How could I take it seriously? She has grandchildren."

"'What about Bailey? How far down the New Age rabbit hole has she gone?"

Lia shrugged. "She hasn't offered to hold a séance for Luthor—not yet—but she's into just about every other New Age thing. Chakras, aromatherapy, herbs, acupuncture, energy healing, animal communicators, astrology—she's at least tried them."

"And you're a skeptic."

"I don't know much about it. If I saw an aura or two I might be more interested. Bailey doesn't hurt anyone and she's a great landscaper. I've known her for years through library events. She started coming to the park at the same time as Catherine—I take that back. Catherine started coming early in March. Bailey was a few weeks later."

Peter raised his eyebrows.

"It doesn't mean anything. Every spring we get a new batch of people. The weather gets warmer and they decide their dog might enjoy running around outside. It shouldn't irritate me but it does. I'm sure their dogs would like to run around in the winter, too."

"You're a skeptic, but you're building a New Age garden."

"I've got nothing against it. New Age is a huge market, and this is a new way to tap into it. Bailey knows her stuff. She's interested in the healing potential of plants, both in the herbs and in what she calls 'high vibration gardening.' And it's fun having a partner, even if it's just for this project."

"What's 'high vibration gardening'?"

"Bailey invented it. She uses specific plants to create an environment that encourages certain mental and emotional states. I get lost when she talks about it. Some people claim listening to Mozart aligns chakras. It's like that, but with plants."

"Interesting."

"When we're done with Catherine's garden, we'll take pictures and shop it around to see if we can drum up some business."

"Why gardens? People say you have a good thing going with the paintings."

"I thought you were here to ask me about everyone else. Why all the questions?"

"It's all part of the picture. I never know what's going to be important. So, why have you turned in your brush for a trowel?"

"This is a chance to try something new. It's fun because it's physical in a way that painting isn't. And it will be like a painting you can walk through. When I get Catherine's bench done, it'll be a painting you can sit in."

"Sounds nice." Peter's smile was genuine and warm, transforming a pleasant face into something much more than the sum of its parts. Luthor's smiles had been seductive or ironic or self-deprecating. Lia never would have called them genuine or warm.

"It will be. Catherine bought the house next door after it caught fire last year and tore it down. She's been dying to do something showy with the lot, and this is it."

"What's she doing hanging out at a dog park?"

"She doesn't seem like the type, does she?"

"I peg her as a lady who lunches."

Lia crinkled her eyebrows as she considered this. "Some of us are arty, and she likes that. When I'm being cynical, I think she comes because her husband won't go anywhere near the park. Too much poop for Leo. She can flirt as much as she wants and none of it will get back to her society friends. When I'm not being cynical, I think it's a relief to be around people who don't care how she's dressed or how much money she has. But that could just be me. If I was around her crowd all the time, I'd go bat-shit crazy. I'd wind up rolling in mud for relief."

"How does José fit in?"

"He's doing the parts that require machinery. He'll help Bailey with the rototilling and digging out the path. Then he'll use a compactor to pound in a base of sand for the pavers."

"What's his story?"

Lia smiled. "José is José. Though, now that I think of it, he's not really José."

"Oh?"

"He's Italian. When he was two, he said 'no way' to everything. His family called him José, for 'no way, José,' and it stuck. He won't tell us his real name."

"That's unusual, an Italian family calling their kid José."

"There has to be more to the story, but that's all I've got. He's your basic good-guy, who works with his hands and loves his wife. He's a maintenance supervisor and works 80 hour weeks. He knows how to fix most things and does minor construction jobs on the side. He's always helping somebody with something, and if a dog fight breaks out, he's first to jump in to stop it."

"How does he get along with everyone?"

"Everyone likes him. He gets frustrated sometimes when he's running a crew. Some of the young guys can be punks, and there was a guy who was stealing materials from a job last year. He was really pissed at one of his neighbors for neglecting his dog, so José stole the dog."

"Really?" Peter's eyebrows shot up.

"The guy was such a jerk. José is a teddy-bear. Have you seen his bumper sticker?"

"No, why?"

"It says, 'Mean People Suck.'"

Peter raised his eyebrows. "I take it that's his outlook on life?"

"Something like that."

Peter watched Lia take a square of contact paper from a pile of hundreds cut to the same size. She peeled the back off in one smooth movement and laid the sticky paper across the tiles as cleanly as his mother fluffed her duvet every morning.

"How do you do that without making a mess?"

"Lots of practice." She assembled the mold and placed it with several others on a set of shelves.

"How many times are you going to do that?"

"Three hundred. But not all of them today." Lia returned to her stool, sat back and stretched her arms over her head, an unintentionally sensual act accompanied by a sigh of satisfaction. "I have some finished pavers if you want to see the end result." She moved to a lumpy pile covered in plastic sheeting and lifted the corner, revealing stacks of finished pavers.

"Pretty. What do the symbols mean?"

Lia pointed to the nearest stack. "This one is 'joy.'" She gestured to another stack. "That's 'harmony.' The one I just finished is 'peace.' I thought I could use some today."

Peter pulled Lia's stool out for her. She gave him an odd look as she sat down. He shrugged, self-conscious. "It's ingrained. Blame my granny. Tell me about Anna and Jim. Are they part of this?"

Lia gathered a handful of blue tiles and laid them on the template. She picked them up and moved them around, stared at the result, moved them again. It reminded Peter of his mother trying to create words out of gibberish when she played Scrabble. _You're a sick man. Looking at a woman this pretty should never remind you of your mother._

"You'd think this was a dog park project, wouldn't you?" Lia said. "I couldn't have Anna working on Catherine's garden; she's already making jokes about putting land-mines under the pavers. It would totally skew the whole higher vibration thing."

"Bad blood there?"

"Well, sort of. Have you ever noticed how Viola gets jealous?"

"Jealous?"

"Sure. You pet another dog and she's right there, squeezing in?"

"Never knew dogs could get jealous."

"Dogs have a much bigger range of emotions than they're given credit for. Catherine does it."

It took Peter a minute to sort out the non-sequitur. "The squeezing-in thing?"

"She's an Olympic class squeezer-inner. She does it a lot with Jim, and it interrupts whatever we were talking about when she butted in. She doesn't join the group, she moves in to cut Jim out of the herd, so to speak."

"What does Jim do?"

"Nothing. Jim was married for more than thirty years before his wife died. He says he always does what women tell him to do. He thinks that will keep him out of trouble. It might, if only one woman is telling you what to do."

"And what does Anna do?" Peter asked.

Lia kept her eyes on the template, working as she talked. "Make catty remarks, mostly. She figures people will eventually catch on to Catherine's games and if they don't, they deserve her. Bailey says that's because Anna's a Scorpio."

"What does being a Scorpio have to do with it?" _This is a damn strange interview. Jealous dogs and astrology. Next she's going to tell me one of her buddies talks to aliens._

"Bailey says Scorpios love to sit back and watch people hang themselves."

"Always a good policy if you can work things that way. What's her story?"

"Let's see... Never married."

"Any guys around?"

"She and Jim are friends, but that's all. She and Luthor didn't like each other. I knew her before I met him, and she's always been protective of me. Luthor didn't like her because he couldn't charm her."

Lia's eyes grew sad, the way they did every time she talked about Luthor. _Does she miss the bastard, or is she hurting because she just found out he betrayed her? Both, maybe?_

"What did she think about Luthor?"

"Luthor liked to get mileage out of being a writer. Anna was never impressed. She kept saying 'When is he going to buy you a meal that doesn't come on a bun?' Anna is full of advice, but I don't think she ever dated much. She took care of her dad until he died, then she sold the house and moved here. That was years ago."

"Where'd she come from?"

"Pittsburgh? One of the suburbs. If it was me, I'd have traded in the hills for some flat land so I could see the sky."

"Does she have a job?"

"She works part time for a private foundation that funds projects in children's education. Are you sure I'm not boring you with nonsense?"

"People are never boring. Every detail adds to the picture."

"Why don't you do background checks?"

"I do. That's places and dates. You're giving me the heart. VICAP hasn't popped any 'murder disguised as suicide' cases. I have to solve this the old-fashioned way."

Lia's eyes stayed on her work. "VICAP? Isn't that the violent crime data-base they talk about on FBI shows? You think the guy who shot Luthor did it before?"

"Amateurs who fake suicides make huge mistakes. They put the gun in the wrong hand. They kill the guy five minutes after he orders take-out. Or they leave the body in a car in the woods and report the car stolen, only the car is a standard and the guy never learned to drive a stick."

Peter felt an urge to take Lia's hand, tip her chin up and make her look at him. _Not proper._ "This person took time to think about what they were doing."

Lia's head jerked up. She stared at Peter. "You think it was some kind of killer for hire?"

"Not a pro. A pro wouldn't bother to dress it up like that. Mistakes happen when you make things too complicated. In this case it was a tiny mistake and it easily could have been missed. I think I'm looking for someone who has murder as an avocation."

"You're looking for a... a _hobby_ killer?"

"More of those around than people realize. Donald Harvey killed dozens of nursing home patients before anyone realized anything was wrong. Luthor could have been killed for a number of reasons. It could have been the money. If Luthor was blackmailing someone, maybe it was because he knew they killed someone."

"Blackmailing a murderer doesn't sound smart."

"It doesn't, does it? But nothing I've learned so far says your ex was a brain trust."

Lia bent back over her worktable. When she spoke, it was to her template. "You're one surprise after another. How are you going to find this person if they're so slick?"

"It's a good question. I'll look at people who know the park, know you and Luthor had a fight, and had access to your purse that day to steal your phone."

"Why did they have to steal my phone that day?"

"Because they timed this with your fight. The fight had to happen first."

"Oh."

"Then I'll think about personalities and look at past histories, see if anyone has a pattern of deaths around them, but that's going to be hard to find."

"How come?"

"All of Donald Harvey's murders took place at nursing homes where he worked. There was always an increase in the death rate. Once somebody started looking, the pattern was there. In Luthor's case, we have no idea what kind of pattern to look for. It won't be anything as obvious as multiple dog park gun-shot suicides. The only connection I have is you."

" _Me?_ "

"And your phone. Has anyone else died around you in the past few years?"

"My grandfather died about five years ago in Georgia. Cancer. Nothing weird about it, and no connection here."

_Of course it couldn't be that easy._ "Whoever took your phone might return it. If it turns up, don't touch it. Call me immediately."

"Why?"

"It might have trace evidence. I doubt it, but we could get lucky. Anyone at the dog park with deaths around them?"

"Most of the morning crowd at the park are over forty, some are retired or nearly there. By the time you're that age, people have died around you. I'm having a hard time with the idea that someone killed Luthor, and that it's someone I know. But a serial killer? At the dog park?"

"It doesn't have to be someone at your park. It could have been a hired hit."

"That has to be it."

"But the person who hired him still had to steal your phone."

"There's a homeless guy who's been sleeping in the picnic shelter. He gives me the creeps."

_Denial. It's not just a river in Egypt._ "You let him near your bag?"

"Are you kidding?"

"Didn't think so. Look, I know you don't like the idea that one of your friends killed Luthor. But killers who do it more than once have wiring that's screwed up. It's the guilt that shows, and this guy isn't feeling any. You won't be able to tell the difference between him and anyone else. How about this. Who in your group couldn't have done it?"

"Well, José."

"Why not?"

"He thought Luthor was a trip. They joked around all the time."

"What about his temperament? What makes him incapable of murder?"

"José is too straightforward about everything. If he got mad at you, you'd know it because he'd punch you in the nose. Then he'd forget about it." She thought for a moment, "He's too good-natured to keep his mad going long enough to plan something like this. If he killed someone, it would be in the heat of the moment, and he'd turn himself in afterwards."

"Good. Who else?"

"Jim's retired. He was an engineer, so he's smart and organized. He does this 'Mr. Cranky Pants' routine, but it's mostly for entertainment value."

"How does that work?"

"If you tell him he should have done something a different way, or if Terry dumps too much political propaganda on him, he gets blustery all out of proportion with the situation. But he's not as irritated as he seems. He does it to end the discussion and have a little fun doing it."

"An interesting strategy."

"At heart, he's the guy you go to if you want to talk about something that's bugging you. He's also the most consistently spiritual person I know. He's Catholic and makes a real effort to live according to his faith. He doesn't make noise about it, he's not preaching or showing off."

_It wouldn't be the first time piety hid a murderous nature._ "How did he and Luthor get along?"

"By the time Jim was Luthor's age, he had a family and owned a business. He never said anything about Luthor, but I don't think he had much use for him."

Lia nipped a corner off a violet tile. It bounced into the middle of her design. She fished tweezers from a coffee can full of old brushes and strange tools, speaking as she worked the bit out from between the indigo tiles without disturbing them.

"Catherine... anyone who dyes their hair to match her dogs has to be detail oriented. She's narcissistic enough. Everything is all about her and she doesn't have much empathy for anyone else. That's the sort of temperament a killer would have, isn't it? I don't know if she's smart enough."

"How so?"

"She's so obvious in her games at the dog park, and she doesn't realize it. She's not fooling anyone. You said the person who killed Luthor would be a good actor."

"True. But that could be part of her game."

"And she doesn't get her hands dirty. I'm sure she paid the maid's kid to do her shoplifting for her when she was in junior high. She acts like not knowing how to do anything practical is a virtue. I'd think a killer like you're describing would need to be self-reliant and resourceful. Catherine is neither."

"I see your point."

"I think underneath everything, Catherine really wants to be liked. A lot of her posturing comes from insecurity. I know that doesn't quite sound narcissistic, but that's Catherine. I don't think you off people when you're looking for attention."

"What if you're looking for attention and you don't get it?"

She set her nippers down and sighed. "Geezlepete. This is giving me a headache. I can't think anymore. Can we continue this some other time?"

Peter turned off the tape recorder. "I know this is hard. Do you have any friends across the country, someone with no connection to Cincinnati? Someone you know will keep it to themselves?"

"I've got college friends."

"If you need to talk to someone besides me, talk to them. Don't share anything about Luthor's murder with anyone here, no matter how much you trust them. They might be innocent, but you don't know who they'll tell."

"Okay."

"Seriously. Finding Luthor's killer could get ugly and dangerous if he finds out I'm looking for him."

"I said okay," Lia huffed. "I get it."

"Look, will you feel weird if I hang at the park tomorrow? It would be good for me to see more of your crew, but not if it's going to make you nervous."

"Let me think about it. Can I call you in the morning?"

Lia returned to work after showing Peter out but was unable to concentrate. The mosaic in front of her devolved into a pointless pile of colorful bits. The bits blurred as her emotions slipped the death grip holding them in check. She shattered like the broken tiles littering the table top.

She shoved the template aside, planted her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. When the hard, harsh glare of afternoon sunlight slanted across the table, she was still there. She did not move until Honey nosed her knee, reminding her it was time for dinner.

## 10

# Monday, May 16

Viola was in the back seat of Peter's Blazer, panting in his left ear as they drove up Montana Boulevard. He wasn't sure what gymnastics she performed to wedge her head between his and the window, but decided to be gentle with his brakes until they arrived at the park.

Lia's message was on his cell when he got out of the shower. She hadn't sounded disappointed to be talking to voicemail. She'd be gone from the park by 8:30, if he wouldn't mind waiting until then to run Viola. Meanwhile, she would call if she thought of anything that might help him. _Does she just want some space, or is this a full-blown brush-off?_

Peter scanned the lot for Lia's ancient Volvo as he pulled in, despite knowing she would be gone. Well, he had background checks and phone records to review; he could give her a day or two. No more than that. Lia was closest to the center of this thing and the first of Detective Dourson's Axioms for Investigators was find the center and stick to it.

Anna pulled up next to Peter as he was letting Viola out of the back seat. She leaned out her window.

"Why, Detective Peter," you're becoming quite the regular. Does this mean you plan to hang onto Luthor's orphan child?"

"Jury's still out, but she's growing on me. It would help if she learned how to vacuum. Or if she could at least shed in a designated shedding zone."

"Designated shedding zone. That'd be a cute trick. You talk to Jim and he'll tell you that her purpose is to teach you all about unconditional love, and if she were perfect, you couldn't love her unconditionally."

"Say again?"

"She has to be flawed. If she didn't inconvenience you in some way, then you'd never have to decide to love her anyway." She opened the back of her SUV and CarGo jumped out. CarGo stood perfectly still while Anna clipped on his leash.

"I'll give that some thought. So Jim is a philosopher, is he?"

"Our very own Will Rogers. I imagine you're too young to remember him."

"I think I had a layover in an airport named after him."

"That would be Oklahoma City."

At the top of the drive, they met Terry exiting the corral. "Greetings, Detective. How goes your investigation?"

"As they say in cheap paperbacks, we are pursuing all leads."

"Ah. And are there any leads?"

"That would be the question, wouldn't it?"

"No idea where that gun came from?"

"Still looking. You got any ideas?"

"Not yet, my good man."

"You still got my card?"

"Indeed I do. And the search for the elusive source of Luthor's firearm continues."

Peter shook his head as Terry, Napa, and Jackson headed down the hill. "Does he always talk like that?"

"Like a good old boy with the vocabulary of a British country squire? Always, though I've never caught him saying 'pip, pip' or 'tally-ho,' thank goodness."

Peter meandered the park, chatting with the group he privately thought of as "the usual suspects." Anna introduced him to several others. Everyone was interested in Luthor's suicide. All volunteered whether they had witnessed Lia's argument with Luthor, or been in the park at all that day. Nadine charmed him with her sincere interest in his accent and Kentucky upbringing, as well as her appreciation of Appalachian culture. He found himself telling her all about his great-grandmother's quilts and his grandfather's wood carvings.

Marie put him on the spot, asking where people were supposed to go with pit bull complaints—the dogs were illegal inside city limits, but there were no provisions for enforcement.

While he was trying to come up with a reasonable answer for her, she changed the subject, and asked if he styled himself after fictional homicide detective Joe Morelli or Lucas Davenport, or was he a Virgil Flowers? She wiggled her eyebrows flirtatiously at that last name.

At this point a newcomer named Charlie told Marie to stop tormenting him. Charlie made a hobby of rehabbing classic cars. Peter spent several minutes hearing about Charlie's projects and debating the merits of Lincolns versus Caddys.

Viola raced up with a ratty tennis ball she'd found, so he took her to the back of the park where he could throw it for her while observing the crowd from a distance. They all seemed so normal. But that was the point, to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. It boiled down to two things: who had access to Lia's bag on Saturday, and who fit his profile.

He wondered about Terry. Some killers like to insert themselves into investigations. Was that the source of his interest in the gun? Did Marie's mercurial temperament hide secret taunts? Did Charlie's 'good old boy' demeanor mask a shrewd nature? Peter sighed as he leashed Viola and headed back to his car. Perhaps a few hours reviewing the file would give him some ideas.

The memory had been nagging at Terry ever since he spoke with Dourson. He'd seen an old Luger somewhere, sometime. Not recently. Now he thought he had it. He picked up the phone and dialed.

"Hey, this is Terry. I was just wondering. You know that old gun of your dad's?... Wasn't it a Luger?... You're certain? I can't believe I made a mistake like that. Have you seen it lately?... How long has your nephew had it?... Because Luthor killed himself with a Luger and I've been trying to figure out where he got it. But it couldn't have been yours... I agree, it's mystifying."

Lia considered the stack of molds waiting for mosaics. She'd start the 'truth' pavers, since truth was causing her so many problems: realizing she hadn't known the truth about Luthor, wondering what the truth was about her friends.

No, she knew the truth about her friends. None of them was a killer. Even if she was mistaken about that—though she knew she wasn't—why kill Luthor? He was self-centered, but not deliberately cruel. He wasn't the sort to mess with people, either. Who could he have stirred up enough to make them want to kill him?

If it was a serial killer like Peter thought—and it was like in the movies—the motive could be obscure. Maybe it was the color of his hair, or he said the wrong thing at the wrong time. Didn't serial killers stalk people they barely knew? Wouldn't that make it more likely it _wasn't_ one of the people she cared about?

She knew she'd never get over Luthor's death until the truth came out.

Jason was in his studio, and he had a phone. Maybe he'd let her use it. If Peter brought her Dewey's for lunch, she'd talk to him.

Peter ended his call with Cynth McFadden, the District Five information whiz. She'd done her best but her attempts to track down the current location of Lia's cell phone had failed. It could be the killer had been smart enough to remove the battery and SIM card. It could be smashed to pieces, lying in a ditch.

Chances of finding the phone intact with incriminating prints on it were nil. Unless the Tooth Fairy decided to deliver it to him. He visualized Dwayne Johnson in a tutu delivering the phone on a satin pillow. Then he imagined Dwayne Johnson in a tutu interrogating suspects, thwacking them with a fairy wand. He shook his head at this bit of foolishness, then turned to the rising stack of paper accumulating in Morrissey's binder.

He didn't mind reviewing files. It gave him a chance to step back and get perspective. In addition to his notes from his interview with Lia yesterday, he had more phone records from Morrissey.

It would be tedious work, matching up the numbers with names. Hopefully, most of the numbers were already identified on the contact list or the previous set of phone records. This proved to be true as Peter worked backwards in time.

Most calls were to Lia. More calls to her than from her, he noticed. Some were to Sharon, the waitress at Northside Tavern. Sharon wasn't on Luthor's contact list. Peter had to look her number up in the reverse directory. Desiree wasn't, either. He wondered why and decided Luthor was covering his tracks in case Lia got into his phone. Would she do that? She didn't seem the type.

In Sharon's case there were an equal number of calls going each way. Peter suspected Morrissey's would-be girlfriend had been deliberately not calling him any more times than he called her, so as to not seem needy. The occasional calls to buddies held no surprises. Likewise, the calls to Desiree. Then, about three months back, a new number appeared. A quick scan of the rest of the record showed it popping up frequently, more incoming than outgoing, several times a week. Peter turned to his computer to run a search on the number when his phone rang.

Terry's house sat on a steep slope that dropped away from the street. _Hell of a way to build a house._ His fourth wife had insisted they buy it. Then she didn't want the damn thing in the divorce. At least Donna liked it.

He set the ladder carefully using wood blocks under the right foot for leveling, then leaned it precisely against the eaves. He was getting too old to be climbing up on the roof, but this was an easy job and not worth waiting for his sons to come over. A little Black Jack in the right places should hold the flashing around the dormer windows for several more years.

While he worked, his mind drifted back to his last phone call. He never forgot a gun. This one was large and angular and he could have sworn it was a Luger. She'd said it was a Walther, but Walthers had a streamlined profile, designed not to bulge under a jacket.

Could the nephew—who now had the gun—have known Luthor? But if the gun was a Walther, it was a moot point. The arguments were circular, leading nowhere. He'd call Dourson anyway, right after he got down.

Terry tested the top rung of the ladder like he always did, to make sure it was still secure. A few rungs down, something shifted. He grabbed the gutter to steady himself, but the ladder continued to rock. It twisted slowly as it pulled over to the right, overbalanced, and then toppled. Terry had seconds to anticipate his impending death before he cracked his head on the flagstone steps and lay still.

Lia took a healthy bite from a hot slice of Edgar Allen Poe loaded with garlic cloves, then set it back on a paper plate. She leaned on her elbows and sighed with satisfaction. "I admit it. I'm a sucker for dogs and pizza. If a dog could make pizza, I'd marry him. I'd get legal advice from that lady in Europe who married her favorite dolphin. Maybe we'd run away to Europe, elope."

Peter kept a straight face. "And what if this pizza-baking dog is a girl?"

"You think, after I've crossed species, that gender is going to be an issue?" She raised an eyebrow as she looked at him.

"What if a guy makes really great home-made pizza, say he has a wood-burning oven in his back yard. Would he have to crawl around on all fours to get your attention?"

"With the year I've been having, it wouldn't hurt."

"I guess I can see that."

"You know, I had this mistaken impression that you weren't a high-maintenance woman."

"I'm really not. I guess I'm put out with your gender. I'm thinking of going on a man-diet. What are they calling it? Something silly ... a manbatical? I could join a nunnery." Lia wondered what perverse imp was saying the things coming out of her mouth. He was a nice guy. Why was she pushing him away? _Too normal. Not your type._

Peter pointed at the partially completed template sitting on her table. "Didn't you say you were working on 'truth' today?"

Lia sighed. "Truth is, I want to run away from anything that reminds me of Luthor's death. But I can't. I made a list. It's the people who were at the park when I had the fight with Luthor. Everyone I remember."

She handed a scrap of paper to Peter. He scanned the names:

> _Terry_
> 
> _Jim_
> 
> _Anna_
> 
> _Catherine_
> 
> _Bailey*_
> 
> _Nadine_
> 
> _Marie_
> 
> _José_
> 
> _Charlie_

"Why does Bailey have an asterisk?"

"I didn't see her at the park, but we had dinner later. She was trying to get my mind off the fight with Luthor. It didn't work very well."

"Who had access to your tote bag and your phone?"

"All of them, I guess. I left my bag on one of the tables while I threw balls for the dogs, and I chatted with everyone on the list. But that doesn't include people in the restaurant. My bag was on the floor under the table. Someone could have gotten into it."

"Where did you eat?"

"Ruth's in the American Can Building."

"Okay, that's something to look into. Let's stick with this for now."

"The people on this list, they're like family to me and I don't believe any of them would hurt anyone. But I know you have to go through a process. So as an exercise, I'll walk you through it."

Peter reviewed the list. "Thank you. We already talked about Jim, Catherine, and José. Who's next?"

"Bailey. She's intelligent. She's also organized, but not excessively so."

"So why couldn't she have done it?"

"You might think this is dumb."

"Try me."

"You know she's a woo-woo queen. She believes in reincarnation and karma. There's a Wicca saying that whatever you put out comes back to you threefold. I think Bailey would believe hurting someone would wind up hurting her more than them, in an eternal, karma sort of way."

"Payback with interest?"

"Exactly. Whatever reason she'd have for killing someone, she'd have a better reason not to."

"I wish more people thought that way."

"There's something else about Bailey. She doesn't tell people; you have to promise to keep this private."

"It won't come out unless it pertains to the investigation."

"I guess I'm okay with that. Look, she's a good friend of mine. One of the reasons she's so into the New Age stuff is because she has some problems and spirituality helps her sort it out."

"What kind of problems?"

"She's bi-polar. She was diagnosed years ago. She's on medication and she's stable. You'd never guess unless she told you. I don't think it means anything to your investigation, but you said you wanted to know everything. I appreciate you keeping this confidential."

"Thanks for telling me."

Lia sighed. "Okay, moving on. Terry, I'm having a hard time with. He lives with his girlfriend, Donna. I don't know what happened to his wife. He's smart enough; Mensa smart. He wins a lot of trivia competitions and he qualified for _Jeopardy_ though he didn't get on the show."

"So he's smart enough."

"He volunteers for a lot of groups. That makes him organized. He's not impulsive, except maybe verbally. I have a hard time knowing what goes on in his head. He's always quick with a joke but you never know what he's actually thinking or feeling. He's really friendly, but then he'll toss out stuff like 'The only good liberal is a dead liberal,' and not consider how many Democrats he's talking to. Or maybe he knows and doesn't care."

"But?"

She looked up from the template she was filling in. "Aren't serial killers supposed to be child arsonists, bed-wetters, animal torturers? You won't find animal torturers at the dog park."

Peter grimaced. "The movies make it look so easy. It's never that simple. What you're doing is tremendously helpful. Can we keep going?"

"Yeah, sure."

"I noticed you haven't mentioned Anna yet."

"Anna's smart, but not in a show-offy kind of way. Terry will overwhelm you with all this trivia you don't know enough about to ever call him on it if he was wrong. Anna's more people smart."

"Why couldn't she have done it, besides being your very close friend?"

"I can't imagine her getting excited enough about anything to want to kill somebody. If she doesn't like someone, she'll make some awful and funny remark about them and let it go. It's not like she stuffs it. You can usually feel it when someone's angry and pretending they're not. She's not into drama. She figures what goes around comes around, and people usually wind up getting what they deserve without her help. It's why I like hanging with her, she's pretty low-key and easy to be around."

"Okay. How about Charlie?"

"I'd count him right out."

"Why's that?"

"Cars are his life. If he was the murdering sort, Charlie would go after the juvenile delinquents who keep breaking into the barn where he keeps his cars."

"That leaves Marie and Nadine."

"They're both intelligent. Marie has to be organized because she's a technical writer; she writes instructional manuals. Her sense of humor is really twisted. She's a bit rebellious, she likes to push the dress code at the corporations she works for. But she's so small. I think it would be hard to kill someone if you're small."

"Guns are great equalizers."

"I still can't see her caring enough about Luthor or anything he did to bother with him."

"Why not?"

"She's gay. Men aren't on her radar, mostly. She used to joke with me about swinging her way, and Luthor would say it was fine with him as long as he could watch. But they were both just trying to out-stupid each other. She's been in a committed relationship for a long time. She can be inscrutably Asian and insulting at the same time. I don't think she believed Luthor was the sharpest tool in the shed, but she didn't have a problem with him. She said he amused her."

"And Nadine?"

"She's really sweet, and always busy." Lia tilted her head and worked her mouth while she thought. "She has ten grandkids. It's hard to imagine her plotting murder in between taking her grandkids to the mall and baking cookies."

"I see what you mean."

"Where does that leave us?"

"Good question." Peter closed his notebook and turned off the recorder. "Right now it leaves me back at the office reviewing paperwork and you here in the studio making pretty pavers."

Lia scowled at her template. "I hoped talking to you would help me sort this out in my head, but so far it's not really working. Some 'truth.'"

"Give it time."

Paper cups of bitter, vending-machine coffee dregs littered the scarred Formica coffee table in front of the couch Lia shared with Anna and Donna. Bailey and Jim sat on a matching couch facing them, looking as helpless as Lia felt. The waiting room clock was silent, and had not appeared to move the last five times she looked at it. She stared dully at the cracks in the aging turquoise vinyl upholstery.

"When did you find him?" Bailey asked.

Donna twisted a tissue into a rope, set it aside, picked up a Styrofoam cup. "It was about one. I'd been making lunch while he worked on the roof, and when he didn't come in, I went to let him know it was almost ready. He was on the side steps, all broken up and bleeding. If he wasn't already in the hospital, I'd kick him. I've been after him for years to get ladder levelers. He said it was a waste of a hundred bucks. I'm going to waste him when he comes out of this ... if he comes out of it." Tears rolled down her face. One dripped off her chin, landing in the cold cup of coffee in her hands.

"Do they know the full extent of the damage?" Jim asked.

"They'll have to remove his spleen and maybe one of his kidneys. He cracked his skull. They don't know yet how bad the head injury is. Both legs are broken. He was unconscious when I found him. He might be in a coma. They say when he comes around, even if he doesn't have any other brain damage, he'll probably have some memory loss."

"It's weird," Bailey said. "He called me this morning while I was still at the park, asking about my dad's old gun. He thought it might have been the gun Luthor had, but it's the wrong make. Terry was looking for a Luger. My dad had a Walther PPK. I gave it away ages ago. Did he tell you about that?"

Donna smiled wryly. "You know Terry with a puzzle, he doesn't let go. He's been muttering about seeing the gun somewhere, but he hadn't told me he thought it was yours."

Terry's sons, Joe and Robert, returned from the cafeteria. Joe handed a white bag to Donna. "We brought you some tapioca. Didn't think you'd be up to much else. Has there been any news?"

Donna shook her head and looked inside the bag. She set it on the table, shoving aside the empty cups. "I'm not ready for food yet; my stomach is still turning itself inside out. I know I'll have to eat something before too long." She bit her lip. "We missed lunch. Terry's going to be so mad. I made Rueben sandwiches, and those are his favorite. I don't make them often because the sauerkraut smells up the house. If he pulls out of this, I'll make them every day, every meal, until he begs me to stop."

Peter sat on his couch, one hand curled absently in Viola's fur as he stared at the number he'd spent the last 30 minutes highlighting on a year's worth of Morrissey's cell phone records. Now the yellow bars jumped out at Peter, repeating four, five, six times a week in a nine-month period.

The calls always came during business hours. Never at night. Never on weekends. They stopped abruptly in mid-February. Two weeks before Catherine started taking her Pomeranians to the park.

Catherine could be the answer to everything.

Catherine could get her hands on 25K. It could be blackmail money. But all the phone calls smelled more like gigolo, and maybe a bit of stalking by Mrs. Robinson.

He massaged Viola's neck. She looked up, meeting Peter's eyes.

"Your former master was a shit," he said.

I hated doing that to Terry. Well, not really. His rabid right-wing political opinions are not what I want to listen to first thing in the morning, no matter how cheerful he is about it. I have no qualms about removing him, but I've never had to remove someone to protect myself, or with so little planning.

If I'm honest, it was exciting. Once I realized he was remembering the gun, there was no chance I could derail him. I could only remove him. I had a window of opportunity and I had to take it or miss out on my best chance to make it look accidental.

It was the simplest plan I've ever executed. All I had to do was wait until he was on the roof, then move one of the blocks he used to level his ladder so that only an edge was supporting the downhill side. That way, the ladder appeared stable long enough for Terry to trust his full weight on it. His movement caused the ladder to shake and the block popped out of the stack, causing the ladder to fall.

It was a brilliant plan, appearing full-blown in my head when Terry announced his intention to reseal his flashing. The main difficulty was executing in daylight and not being seen.

Fortunately, most of the folks in his neighborhood work days. It was no trouble to wait in the car until I heard the aluminum ladder bumping the side of the house, and the sound of Terry climbing up. I gave it another fifteen minutes, then slipped through the neighbor's yard to Terry's property. I had to avoid the kitchen windows in case Donna looked out.

After that, it took seconds to lean against the side of the ladder to take pressure off the blocks, then slide the second block over while my heart pounded in my ears. I had to restrain myself from squealing my tires when I left.

It hadn't worked, but maybe it worked well enough. For the first time, I'd broken one of my rules and deviated from a plan. Had it been necessary? An investigation has never come this close to me before.

If Terry told Dourson about the gun he'd seen, I could have bluffed it out, produced another old gun or discovered my gun was, "Oh, my goodness! Lost? Stolen? Could that have been my gun? How horrifying!"

Now that I've had time to reflect upon it, that might have been the best tactic, but the tension had been unbearable. Any attention on me might turn over some very ugly rocks, if anyone looked at the right records with a suspicious eye. And, let's face it, I won't miss the right wing diatribes.

What's done is done. So far, everyone believes it was an accident. And that's exactly what they should believe.

_Oh, God, what a rush._

## 11

# Tuesday, May 17

"How is Terry?" Lia asked the morose crowd at the park. "Does anyone know?"

"I can't believe he fell like that," Bailey mournfully told her coffee. "He's always so careful."

"Last I heard, he was in a coma," Jim said. "His doctor thinks that's best for now. It'll give his brain a chance to heal while they bring the swelling down inside his skull. Donna spent the night at the hospital. Joe and Robert tried to talk her into going home, but she wasn't having any of it."

"Poor Donna," Nadine mourned. "I'm so glad the boys are there to help her."

"It's so strange. Barely a week since Luthor. It's like the park is cursed," Bailey lamented.

Catherine breezed up. "Oh, pish! No such thing as curses. Why all the long faces?"

Anna gave her a look. "Our dear friend Terry is in a coma because he fell off a ladder yesterday. And I'm sure Donna can use all the support we can give her."

"Aren't Joe and Robert falling all over themselves to take care of her? I'm not one for making casseroles, but let me know if you decide to send a card and I'll sign it. Does anyone know if José is coming today? I was wondering when he's going to break ground for my garden. Do you know, Lia?"

"I believe he's over at Terry's checking to see if there was any damage to the gutters when he fell, and to take care of the ladder."

"I hope you're not going to let this little incident interfere with your deadline. The invitations have gone out for the party. Everything has to be ready."

Lia felt steam building between her ears. "Don't you worry, Catherine. I'm starting on a new series of stones today."

"Really?" Catherine brightened. "Which one?"

"Compassion."

"Compassion?" Catherine looked perplexed. "That's not part of my mantra."

"Oh, it isn't, is it? My bad."

"Well, I'm glad to hear things are moving along. Caesar! Cleo! Mommy needs to go!"

As she turned away, Anna gave Lia a knowing look and passed her flattened hand over the top of her head. Bailey made a kitty paw and clawed the air. "Mrowl," she deadpanned.

Marie shook her head and laughed. "You girls are so mean."

Anna gave her best innocent look. "Who, us?"

Bailey said, "You know, Lia, that's not a bad idea. We should swap out some of those symbols. 'Compassion' would be a good start, or 'benevolence.' I'm wondering if it might have a subliminal effect on her. Masaru Emoto says that water responds to all language, and our bodies are 70% water, so maybe it'll impact her. I bet we can get paid before she finds out. What do you think?"

"I'd say make them all 'gratitude,' but if one of her society friends embarrassed her by pointing it out, she'd sue us. She can afford better lawyers. I don't think 'your honor, we were just trying to make the world a better place' will fly as a defense, do you?"

"Good point," Anna said. "Can we just tape a 'Kick Me' sign to her back instead?"

"You've got to stop," Marie gasped. "You're killing me here."

Nadine tsked and gave an exasperated sigh.

Charlie shook his head with an odd little smile.

"Poor Charlie," purred Anna. "You just don't know what to do with women of intelligence, do you?"

"You all frighten me, you really do."

"Why, that's the nicest thing you've said all day," Anna said.

"It's seven a.m." Marie said. "It's the only thing he's said all day."

A number of colorful phrases forbidden in the Dourson household came to mind as Peter left Captain Roller's office. Along with the words came the taste of Ivory soap and the memory of the one and only time he'd cursed in front of his mother. No one in District Five would blink if he said them out loud, but his early conditioning held fast. He settled on muttering mentally as he returned to his desk.

All he needed was a peek at Catherine's bank records to tie her to the cash in Morrissey's apartment. Roller hadn't been impressed with Morrissey's phone records: "You have someone at the Laroux residence calling Morrissey. That number doesn't have her fingerprints on it. Morrissey could have been screwing the maid. He could have been screwing her husband. You can't tie her to the gun or the missing cell phone. You can't put her at the scene."

Peter's response that you couldn't put anyone at a parking lot at 2:30 a.m. had gone unappreciated.

Roller continued his lecture with, "We're not Homeland Security. We have to respect civil rights."

Peter wanted to argue. Catherine's appearance at the dog park shortly after the phone calls stopped established her as the caller and suggested a pattern of stalking. Stalking a man who turned up dead might not be a smoking gun, but it was more than a whim.

Captain Roller's parting shot, "And _Lethal Weapon 2_ is not the video version of our procedural manual," had not made him feel any more empowered.

Peter's only option was to interview the dog park's resident cougar. Tackling Catherine at her Clifton home would be better than asking her to come to the station.

Northside's economic melting pot with its random gun shots and rampant drug trade commanded a high police presence, but Clifton was an upscale neighborhood that prided itself on culture and quiet refinement. A patrol car in Catherine's drive would be an event drawing the attention of everyone on the block, generating months of speculation. It would piss her off and raise her anxiety level, keeping her off balance and making her more likely to say something she shouldn't.

He'd grab a uniformed officer to heighten the effect. Better yet, he'd tag Brent Davis. He wanted to make detective and would appreciate the experience. Catherine would find Brent's Atlanta drawl and pretty-boy looks distracting. It was another tool Peter could use to keep her flustered.

Catherine was trotting down her front steps in an eye-watering hot pink, lime green, and orange yoga outfit when Brent pulled the patrol car into her drive, deliberately blocking her car.

Brent got out first, pressed and polished in a look Peter dubbed "GQ meets Officer Friendly." Catherine's eyebrows rose appreciatively as her head canted in a flirtatious tilt. Still, Peter noted a worried quirk to the corner of her mouth which was quickly suppressed. _Game on_.

"Officer, is there something I can do for you?"

"Yes, ma'am, I surely hope so." Brent's voice hinted of mint juleps and magnolia-scented breezes.

Catherine's eyes softened and remained on Brent. Peter exited the passenger side of the car. He slammed the door to get her attention.

Catherine's head jerked. Her eyes widened as she recognized Peter, morphing into an expression of pleasure as fake as Milli Vanilli's musical career. "Detective Dourson, whatever brings you here? Did you stop by to see Lia's masterpiece in progress?"

Peter eyed the torn-up lot and piles of gravel. "I'm afraid this is all business, Catherine."

Catherine stretched her lips in a brief, tight-lipped smile. "You sound so very serious. I'd be glad to help you if I wasn't on my way to class. You'll have to move your car."

"Mrs. Laroux, I'm Officer Davis," Brent said. "It's important that we interview you. I know you want to be cooperative."

"What could possibly be so important that it can't wait until later?" Her voice was a steel girder covered in frosting. Pink frosting.

"We have questions about Luthor Morrissey," Brent said apologetically.

"Luthor shot himself." Catherine said this as if she was speaking to a pair of very dull children.

"Questions remain," Peter said.

"I can't imagine how I can help. I already told you everything I know."

"We just need some clarification, in light of new information. We'd like to keep this informal, if we can. Can we go inside?" Peter nodded at a neighbor who'd abandoned any pretense of weeding her garden. "Or you can follow us to the station if you'd rather. Of course, the interview room is smaller than your average broom closet, but—"

"Inside," Catherine snapped. She led them to her living room. "Please sit. Rita!" Her voice, now razor sharp, addressed a young Hispanic woman dusting a curio cabinet. "I'm sure you have shopping to do."

Rita, whose income no doubt depended on navigating Catherine's moods, left without comment.

Catherine eyed them once she had seated herself, then spoke to Peter. "What don't you understand about a man putting a gun to his head that is so important you had to invade my home and disrupt my day?"

_She's gone on the offensive._ Peter stood. "I apologize. I understood that you invited us in. We can leave."

"That's it? You'll go?" Surprise warred with suspicion on her face.

"Certainly, ma'am," Brent said, standing. "Of course, we'll have to come back. I can't say when that would be."

"Or we can wait outside until it's more convenient for you," Peter said.

Catherine closed her eyes, inhaling deeply as she did so. _Probably reciting her magic Zen mantra._ The smile she gave them when she opened her eyes was too brittle to be genuine, but it signaled cooperation. The pretense of cooperation, anyway.

"Please sit down."

"Just a moment, Mrs. Laroux, I need to record our conversation. This protects all of us from misunderstandings."

Despite Catherine's pleasant expression, the hairs stood on Peter's neck as he bent over to set up the recorder. The woman was not happy. Probably thinking murderous thoughts. About him.

He considered reading the Miranda warning. It wasn't required for non-custodial interviews, but a good lawyer—and Catherine could afford a good lawyer—could get anything she said tossed with the right judge. He weighed his better-safe-than-sorry tendencies against the risk of getting her back up so much that she decided to call that good lawyer now and shut everything down before he got started. _Damned if you do, damned if you don't._ He tossed Miranda out the window and prayed he wouldn't regret it.

Caesar and Cleo padded in and silently sat on either side of Catherine's legs, observing the interlopers with beady eyes. They looked like a pair of baleful dolls from a horror movie. _Creepy_.

Catherine's expression turned imperious. "How can I possibly help you with Luthor's suicide?"

"There are details that need to be nailed down, Ma'am," Brent responded.

"Call me Mrs. Laroux if you prefer not to call me Catherine. Please don't call me ma'am. It makes me feel a hundred years old."

"No, ma'am," Brent replied. Peter knew no irony was intended. He caught the snicker in his throat before it could erupt.

"We're reviewing our interviews," Peter said. "When I spoke with you before, you stated your contact with Luthor Morrissey was limited to the park, that you met him there and barely knew him."

She lifted one eyebrow, giving Peter an imperious look disguised as a question. "And?"

"Is there any reason your number would show up on Morrissey's phone records?"

"I can't imagine how that would happen."

"Catherine." Peter deliberately softened his voice. "This doesn't look good, and lying about it only makes it worse. I'm trying to help you out. We're talking hundreds of calls. It's not something you can sweep under the rug. Why don't you get out in front of this thing? Tell us about your relationship with Luthor."

Catherine looked away, blinking rapidly. Red lipstick migrated from her mouth to her front incisors as she chewed her lip. She'd be mortified if she knew.

"What was your relationship with Luthor Morrissey?" Peter asked. "We'd like to have your side of things for the record."

"We _had_ an affair."

"How long did this last?"

"Two years, give or take."

"When did it end?"

"You know when. Valentine's Day. When the calls stopped."

"What happened on Valentine's Day?"

"He went away. Some little B & B. Ravenwood, I think."

"And?"

"He wasn't entertaining anymore. I moved on."

"Really?" Peter's voice held a deliberate note of disbelief.

Catherine narrowed her eyes, drilling Peter with a haughty look. "Really." The single word was so dry, Peter swore he saw tumbleweeds rolling down her hallway.

"How did you meet him?" Brent continued.

"He works—worked—at the art museum, installing exhibitions. I would run into him there. I thought he was charming."

"How often did you meet?"

"Why on Earth would you need to know that? It's been over a long time."

"Mrs. Laroux," Brent, eternally patient, continued, "perhaps you would like a lawyer who could explain to you what we need to know and what the ... _definition_ _..._ of cooperation is?" He drew out the word, his Southern drawl now dripping with humidity and lurking alligators.

"Like hell." She glared. "Bridge club."

"Bridge club?" Peter repeated.

"I met Luthor at that dump of his on club days. My husband just assumed I was having cocktails with the girls afterwards. We met two, three times a month. Is that what you wanted to know?" The tilt of her head mocked. Him? Herself? Peter didn't know.

"Were you in the habit of giving him gifts, Mrs. Laroux?"

"Perhaps one or two. What does it matter?"

"The man's closet doesn't fit his income."

"I enjoy dressing a man properly. We talked about that."

"Did you also give him money, Mrs. Laroux?"

"Now, why would I do that?"

"Mrs. Laroux, right now we're just talking. However, if we're not satisfied with the results, we can always get a court order for your bank records. If we were to get those records, would we find cash withdrawals totaling twenty-five thousand dollars?"

She sat, an angry stone idol flanked by furry acolytes.

"Mrs. Laroux?" Peter inquired again.

Nothing.

"Of course, if we serve that court order, it's likely your husband will hear about it and be brought into this investigation," Brent said.

"I can't believe it."

"Can't believe what, Mrs. Laroux?" Brent asked.

"He said he needed the money for gambling debts. I thought I was saving him from being beaten with a tire iron. And he just stashed it away. Lia said you'd found it in his apartment. I don't think he spent any of it, unless it was for that weekend at Ravenwood. I didn't know he wanted me for his retirement fund."

"Did all the money come from you?" Brent asked.

"I don't know. I didn't keep track, did I? It's so insulting."

"What's insulting?" Peter asked.

Stony silence again.

"Mrs. Laroux?" Brent prodded.

Nothing.

"Tell us about your dogs," Peter said.

"You think Caesar and Cleo did it?" The sarcastic quirk of her lips had a nasty edge.

"We just find it curious," Brent commented. "You... ah... _dump_ Morrissey and then buy two dogs and start _frequenting_ the park where Luthor and his girlfriend are sure to be."

"I needed new interests, Officer. Dogs love you and they're there when you need them. I can't say that about too many people. Can you?"

"The dog park? Do Pomeranians require that much exercise?"

"They require socialization. I don't like Washington Park. Lipstick on a pig if you ask me. Indian Hill is too far and the other dog parks are just nasty. Luthor did not concern me. We were friendly at the park, that's all. You act as if I were stalking him."

"Weren't you?" Brent's voice had Peter imagining a gator slicing through water towards prey with only its eyes visible, all danger hidden under murky water.

"No, I was not." Catherine's eyes flashed hot, angry Death Valley winds. Peter could swear he heard a low growl, but that could have been Caesar. Or Cleo.

"Something I don't understand," Peter said, "why cozy up to Luthor's girlfriend and give her an expensive commission?"

"You really don't understand women, do you, Detective?"

"None of us do, ma'am, and that's a fact. Can you help us out here?" Brent said.

Catherine rolled her eyes. "Why does any woman check out a former beau's new flame? I wanted to know who she was. I guess I was a bit jealous. I liked making Luthor squirm."

"Did he squirm?" Peter asked.

"Not a bit. He egged me on, no matter how much I cooed over her. Before I knew it, I'd commissioned that garden."

"Luthor died. Why build the garden?"

"Have you seen the plans? It's going to be fabulous. I imagine I'll tell Lia about my little affair with Luthor, but I'll wait until she's finished."

Peter's face must have shown his thoughts, because Catherine sat back in her chair and threw her hands up.

"Go ahead and ask me, gentlemen."

"Ask you what?" Brent asked.

"I'm presuming you think I had something to do with poor Luthor's death. I can't imagine you'll leave here without demanding that I tell you where I was that Saturday night. So ask me, then leave."

"All right, Mrs. Laroux, where were you the night Luthor Morrissey died?" Peter asked.

"Right here in bed. Just like I told you last time we talked."

"You mean the same day you told me Luthor pulled twenty-five grand out of his change jar?"

"Was there a question in there, Detective Dourson, or are you just bent on humiliating me?"

"Mrs. Laroux?"

She lifted an eyebrow.

"Stay available." It was a poor excuse for a parting shot, but Peter could see from her expression that it had scored well enough.

Once outside, he turned to Brent. "What do you think?"

"I think I wouldn't want my Johnson anywhere near those sharp little teeth of hers."

Peter choked. "And?"

"She was all sugar and spice until you called her on lying to you. I don't think calling her 'Mrs. Laroux' all the time helped."

Peter grinned. "No, it didn't. I don't imagine you calling her ma'am improved her disposition, either." He looked back at the house. Catherine was glaring at them from the porch.

"Doesn't look like she's in the mood for yoga anymore," Brent said.

"I suspect not."

They were silent as they got into the patrol car and pulled out. Once they turned the corner, Brent said, "I wonder if she dumped him after he started blocking her calls."

"Interesting thought. Why do you think he was blocking her calls?"

"Because there's not one call after February 13th, according to the records you showed me. Before that, there's up to ten calls in one week. I figure she thought he was her personal toy and how dare he cut her off after she'd bought and paid for him. I bet she tracked him down after he blocked her calls on Valentine's Day. She doesn't strike me as the sort of woman who likes taking second place. She'd want her boy toy to jump every time she snapped her fingers."

"I bet her demands became too much for Morrissey," Peter said. "They tell me it's an unwritten rule for cheaters that you don't talk to your partner in illicit lust on holidays. Still, you gotta wonder why Morrissey would ditch the goose that laid the golden egg."

"And why the goose bought herself a pair of furry bookends, if it wasn't to provide an excuse to intrude on his life with Lia. That business about needing to go to the park to socialize her dogs is bogus. She lives in Clifton. Dogs everywhere. All she needs to do is walk them down the street. She was too insulted to play nice and fade away. I wonder how many thousands of dollars she's paying to have the girlfriend under her thumb. Is she really that hot? Anderson, I mean."

"Not hot," Peter said. "She's too natural for that. But she's—not beautiful, or pretty, those aren't the right words. I'd say she's lovely."

Peter ignored Brent's speculative look. "The question is, was Catherine insulted enough to put a bullet in Morrissey's head and a gun in his hand?"

"Think about it," Brent said. "She spends megabucks buying him presents and giving him money. For all that, she has a few, teensy little expectations, one of which is remembering who his mama is on Valentine's Day. Instead he blocks her calls and is rolling around on an antique bed with another woman. She won't be tossed away like used Kleenex, so she follows him to the dog park, where he openly flirts with her in front of Lia, but he's still blocking her calls. This goes on for months. Wouldn't you be ready to kill him?"

"It's plausible." Peter spotted a UDF convenience store and told Brent to pull in. They grabbed coffee and Krispy Kremes and headed back for the car.

"Why are we being so stereotypical?" Brent asked.

"It makes the public feel more secure," Peter deadpanned. He selected a glazed doughnut, held the bag for Brent. Took a sip of his coffee and watched the traffic on Clifton Avenue heading up to the University. "So what do you think of Mrs. Laroux? Did she do it?"

"She's narcissistic enough to not let it go when her boy toy dumped her. She's got to be fairest of them all so if something destroyed that little fantasy, I can see her deciding he has to go. But I don't know if I see her faking a suicide."

"How come?"

"Two reasons. First, narcissists don't think they'll ever get caught, so I don't think she'd go to so much trouble to cover it up. She would have left finger prints on the shells, something."

"Okay."

"Second, while I can see her shooting him, I think she'd be in a real pique. I don't think she'd stop at a bullet in the skull. She'd go for the family jewels, tattoo 'asshole' on his chest, something."

"Good arguments. What do you think about her husband?"

"Her husband? We haven't talked to him yet."

"He'd have motive."

Brent took a bite of blueberry muffin and took his sweet time chewing.

_Probably buying time._

Brent held up two fingers, swallowed. "It wasn't him. Two reasons. One, the affair was over. Two, Nobody's ever mentioned him. I'll bet you fifty dollars he's never been to the dog park. He wouldn't know the setup and he wouldn't have had access to Lia's phone. Probably doesn't know enough to use Lia as bait, much less, about Lia's fight with Luthor."

"Excellent. When are you taking the detective exam?"

Brent grinned. "Next month."

"Good luck with that."

"By the way, I read Morrissey's manuscript last night."

"What did you think?"

"I'm still trying to figure out why anyone from another dimension would care what we do in our little corner of the universe, and what use they would have for Earth currency. Writing mostly sucks, but you might want to read it."

"Why?"

"A lot of beginning authors base characters on people they know. I don't know the players, so I can't say. There's this one that's seriously crazy. Any of Lia's friends have bug eyes and a beaky nose?"

## 12

# Friday, May 20

Lia and Bailey each grabbed an end of the canvas tarp and dragged it off the stacks of finished pavers.

"How are they doing?" Bailey asked.

"We need to spray them down again. We're ahead of schedule. We might be able to finish a bit sooner than expected."

"Let's not tell Catherine. If we say anything to her, she'll forget "might" and hold us to a new deadline no matter what the contract says."

"Truth." Lia made a moue.

"Are we ready to pour the next batch?"

"Tarps are on the floor. If you mix the topping concrete, I'll lay out and oil the first set of molds."

They worked efficiently. Once the topping was ready, they split it into two batches and used a combination of pouring, scraping with a spatula, and tapping the base of the molds to force the concrete down between the tiles. It was slow work.

Bailey finished her smaller batch and began adding water to the regular concrete that would form the body of the pavers. While she did this, Lia laid precut eleven inch circles of chicken wire into the molds to reinforce the pavers. Bailey scooped the new mix into the molds. Lia followed, pulling the edge of a planed one-by-two across the top in a zigzag motion to level out the mix, scraping the excess over the rim into a gallon milk container with the top cut off.

Bailey circled behind Lia, tapping the sides of the molds with a paint stirrer to force trapped air to rise to the top. Lia started the row over again, using a trowel to 'finish' the concrete with strokes that resembled icing a cake, a step which caused aggregate—stones mixed into the concrete for strength—to sink below the surface.

While she did this, Bailey dumped the rest of the concrete onto a slag pile outside, dropped the tools into a five-gallon pickle bucket half-full of water, and hosed out the tub she'd used to mix the concrete.

"Ready for a break?" Lia held out a Starbucks Frappuccino ice-cream bar for Bailey, then ducked back into her fridge to get one for herself.

"Do I get a Frappuccino bar after every set we pour?"

"Hah. We'd both blow up like Jabba the Hutt on Prozac if we ate that much ice cream."

"Let's see, three hundred pavers, divided by ten, that's thirty bars apiece. Surely we could handle that?" Bailey asked.

"Next time we bid a job, I'll add in the cost of ice cream and a week at a spa to work it off." Lia nibbled delicately at the chocolate as she relaxed on a stool.

"Make the spa in Costa Rica," Bailey said.

"Sure, whatever you want. I assume you also want a pair of hunky masseurs to feed you grapes after your yoga sessions?"

"Can they be twins?"

"Absolutely. Sven and Niles at your service."

"Make it Juan and Roberto. I like my men exotic."

"Hey, we keep doing this, we might get to build our own little spa down in Costa Rica."

"You can forget the spa. Just send Sven and Niles." Bailey deposited her ice cream stick in the trash. "Any word on Terry yet?"

"He's stable. Right now they feel the coma is helping him heal. If it goes on too long, they'll re-evaluate his condition."

"That's so rotten. Weird, I got that call from him at the park, and a few hours later he's in the hospital. Can you believe he thought Luthor got that gun from me?"

"Where'd he get that idea?" Lia asked.

"Not sure. I don't recall ever showing Dad's gun to him. I might have told him about it. Terry seemed to think he'd laid eyes on an old Luger somewhere around here. Where do you suppose it was?"

"No telling. As many gun shows as he goes to, I'm surprised he can keep straight what he's seen and where he's seen it," Lia said.

"His brain reminds me of the Ace Hardware on Hamilton Avenue, back when Bill was still alive. He was like a hoarder. Decades of stock piled all over the place. You could barely squeeze through the aisles. Some going back to the eighties, with tags and prices to match. Anything you could want was in there, but only Bill knew where it was and how to get to it."

"That," Lia said, "is amazingly apt."

"Is Donna taking care of Jackson and Napa?"

"Donna's a wreck. She spends every minute she can at the hospital. José is helping out. He picks them up on his way to the park."

"What's happening with the delightful Detective McDreamy? I've seen him at the park a couple of times, but never when you're there. I thought he had a little thing for you."

"I've been going early to avoid him. He's still trying to find out how Luthor got that gun, and there's nothing I can tell him."

"Is finding out where the gun came from so important?"

Lia wanted so badly to share with Bailey the last revelation, that Luthor had been murdered, that the gun was critical. She ignored the question. "I feel a bit guilty. He called as I was getting ready to come here and I didn't pick up. Didn't want to deal with him. He's been really decent, but every time I talk to him, I find out something even more horrible than the last time we spoke."

"That would put a girl off. Poor guy. If you don't want him, can I have him? I promise to treat him badly."

Lia shook her head. "You're a true friend."

Despite Brent's observations, Catherine was the only true person of interest in the Morrissey case. But without a connection to the gun or the cell phone, there was no case. Peter hadn't shared his belief that they were looking for a serial killer with Captain Roller. Brent had cautioned him on that point.

Brent was right. Inventing unsolved homicides out of yet unidentified deaths was not a good career move. With nothing but instinct to support his theory, he'd be asking for trouble.

He wondered how Terry was doing. Jim told him about Terry's call to Bailey right before his accident. He wished he could pick Terry's brain. It might be the break he needed.

Catherine was avoiding him at the park. Apparently she hadn't told anyone about his visit with her Tuesday. Probably didn't want anyone finding out about her affair with Luthor, and figured keeping her mouth shut about the whole thing would keep a lid on it. She kept staring at him with murderous looks from across the park. Jim asked him what he'd done to make her angry. Peter just shrugged.

Lia wasn't taking his calls. He guessed he couldn't blame her. At least he had Viola, and he could count on one female to like him.

My favorite removal was a convenience store clerk. I bought a cup of decaf at this store every single day, for years. Then a snotty little blonde began working Saturdays, and there was never any decaf when I went for my paper. She always said she would make a pot if I was willing to wait, which I wasn't. This went on for several months until one day I went in and found a full pot of freshly made decaf. Ken, the manager, was at the register. I expressed to him my delight that it was available. He said, "I keep telling them that if they brew it, people will buy it."

The next Saturday, Miss Snot Face was back on the register and there was a full pot of decaf. She was ever so friendly when she sold me my coffee. I was in the Kroger's parking lot, 100 yards and a key away from the nearest restroom when my bowels loosened.

Little Miss Snot Face had dosed the entire pot with Visine. I'm sure she believed I was not aware of this old waitress trick for revenging on nasty customers.

A few drops of Visine in a drink will bring on diarrhea in less than thirty minutes. In most cases, said waitress gets to yuck it up while Mr. Grabby-Hands-Non-Tipper hauls up his drawers and makes a run for the men's room.

It can be dangerous though. With a certain heart condition it can be fatal. Too bad Miss Snot Face Blonde didn't have a heart condition, I would have dosed her right back.

I thought about reporting her to Ken, but then she'd know she'd been successful. I decided to act as if nothing had happened to deny her any satisfaction. Since she had to dose the entire pot, she couldn't be sure she got it right.

She was particularly difficult to plan for. I knew little about her. I started walking Baby near the store when her shift was over to see what direction she went when she left. I did a bit of social engineering with one of the weekday clerks with whom I was chatty and learned her last name and looked her up in the directory. This was before I was aware of Google Earth, Map Quest, Facebook and all those other internet sites that now make my task easier.

I drove by her house, a charming cottage up a long, steep drive on West Fork Road. West Fork twists and winds up through Mount Airy Forest with no berm. Shallow, rocky ditches line the uphill side with guardrails above a steep gully opposite. The flimsy guardrail was little protection, evidenced by many repairs from cars going off the road in bad weather.

I waited for the temperature to drop. I needed specific conditions, on a Saturday. Finally the weather shifted.

There is no place to park on West Fork Road. This meant I had to park a quarter mile away.

At 2:00 a.m., I turned off my engine and coasted down the hill. I pulled into her drive and unloaded eight boxes into the ditch, then coasted further down the hill to park in the drive of a repossessed home. I hiked back up the hill. I was wearing jeans and a navy blue hoodie with brown work gloves and hiking boots so I would blend into the darkness in case anyone drove by.

Each box contained four gallons of water. One at a time I carried the boxes two-thirds of the way up the drive. I trickled the water on the concrete, forming a long, wet path in freezing conditions. I worked slowly, emptying one box, repacking it with empty jugs, taking it down the drive, hauling up another box, building an ice patch layer by layer.

When I was finished I jogged down to the car, drove it back up the hill, turned around, coasted down to Miss Snot Face's drive, loaded in the boxes of empty water jugs, then coasted the rest of the way down the hill. I drove to the Saint Boniface Church recycle bin and dumped the jugs and boxes. Naturally, I had ensured there were no fingerprints on the jugs.

Miss Snot Face did not arrive for work that day. The store opened two hours late and Ken was behind the counter. At that time, all he knew was that she hadn't responded when he called the store at 7:00 a.m., and didn't answer her home phone or her cell.

Ken had not been too angry to remember to put a pot of decaf on. I savored the taste and aroma as I wondered when she would be found.

The newspaper later reported that the broken guardrail had been called in mid-morning by a passing motorist. When police found her, she was comatose, her Karman Ghia rammed into a tree. By that time, the ice on her drive had melted so there was no evidence remaining.

Her broken bones took many months to heal. Her coma persisted for three years until her family finally decided to pull the plug. It gave me three years of pleasure to imagine her conscious, trapped inside her comatose body and unable to move or communicate.

Of course, I don't know if she was aware or not, but I understand sometimes people are aware in comas. I liked to imagine her relatives sitting in her room, discussing pulling the plug while she could hear and was incapable of begging them not to kill her.

I normally do not gloat over removals. This woman had been deliberately malicious towards me and deserved my ire. I had mixed feelings about Terry. His generosity and good nature were at odds with his smugly erroneous opinions. I'd considered removing him so I wouldn't have to listen to right wing rhetoric over my morning coffee. I'd always refrained because at heart he was a decent, if misguided, individual.

Terry's removal was damage control. He was too smart, his memory was too good. His coma was not pleasurable. It was worrisome.

## 13

# Wednesday, May 25

"Catherine, are those daggers I see shooting out of your eyes?"

The smile Catherine shot Marie didn't reach her eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"You seem unhappy with Detective Hottie." Marie pinned Catherine with the one eye not hidden by her magenta bangs.

"I don't see why he has to drag Viola up here. Lia's coming at the crack of dawn to avoid him. She doesn't need to see that dog every day. I'm sure all it does is upset her."

"Has she told you that?"

Catherine sniffed. "She doesn't need to."

"I thought she was getting up at the crack of dawn to make your pavers."

"You make me sound like a slave driver."

"How could anyone think that? I'm sure she's still upset about Luthor, but she's also absorbed with your garden project. I imagine she's eager to get to the studio as early as she can."

"You think so?"

"I don't think she minds seeing Viola. I think she sees her as the best part of Luthor."

"Perhaps you're right."

"So how is the garden coming?"

"I've got to keep my eyes on them every second, but it's going to be wonderful. You're coming to my party, aren't you? I'll be horribly upset if you don't."

"I wouldn't miss it. June 18th, isn't it?"

"Six o'clock. There will be plenty of food. We're having a sushi bar."

"You know I don't eat that stuff."

"A nice Asian girl like you? Afraid of a little smoked eel?"

"I'll stick with egg rolls, thank you."

"You really should broaden your palate."

Marie looked over Catherine's shoulder and spied Detective Dourson approaching. _The man must have a death wish._ "What do you think, Detective? Should people eat raw fish?"

"Gollum seems fond of it."

"Gollum?" Catherine puzzled. "Who's Gollum?"

Marie laughed. " _Lord of the Rings_. Lived in a cave, crawled around with a live fish flapping in his mouth. Didn't you see the movie?"

"How revolting."

"He lived a nice, long life," Peter added. "Maybe it was the fish and not the ring. As long as it's not pufferfish, I'm in."

"Don't be silly," Catherine sniffed, "Pufferfish isn't available in Cincinnati. Since you're such a big fan of sushi, Detective, you must come to my party. Bring your young friend, Officer Davis."

"A party, Mrs. Laroux?"

"I'm celebrating my new garden with a Summer Solstice party on June 18th. Any time after 6:00 p.m."

Marie turned to Peter in amazement. "You actually eat raw fish? You're from Kentucky. Why would a Kentucky boy eat raw fish?"

"I'm a Kentucky boy of unplumbed depths. I even know how to use chop sticks." He turned to Catherine. "Thanks for the invite, I'll try to make it. I see Viola is doing her daily duty. Please excuse me, ladies." Peter strode away, pulling a plastic bag out of his pocket.

"Weren't you just telling me you didn't want him at the park? Why invite him to your party?"

"Superior breeding never allows a little thing like personal feelings to interfere with one's social endeavors. I think a detective will add intriguing cachet to my petite soirée, don't you agree?"

Marie shook her head. "You amaze me."

"Why, thank you, Darling."

Peter spotted Nadine tossing balls for her basset hound, Rufus, as he deposited Viola's latest "present" in the trash. She smiled in welcome as he walked up. "Hello, Detective. How are you and Viola getting along?"

Peter smiled back. "We're getting used to each other."

"I hope that means you're keeping her. She's a sweet dog."

"I'm leaning that way. How long have you had your basset hound?"

"Oh, he's not really a basset hound."

"No? What is he?"

"He was beagle, then the grandkids got hold of his ears, and well, this is what happened." Her expression was all sincerity and innocence.

"Why, Mrs. Moyers, I do believe butter would not melt in your mouth."

Nadine laughed. "Seriously, he's half beagle. Lia calls him a bagel. She says that sounds better than calling him a beasett. I've had him for four years now. He still has a lot of energy, so I have to exercise him. But what about you, Detective?"

"What about me?"

"We're all wondering how a fascinating young man like yourself wound up so far from home, and still single."

"Now I can't imagine you want to hear my sordid history."

"Small town scandal? What could be better? There has to be a sad story about a girl who didn't deserve you."

"Can't imagine she'd see it that way."

"What was her name?" Nadine asked.

Peter sighed, giving in to the inevitable. "Susan. I knew her in high school."

"And you were going to get married." Nadine stated this as fact.

"Yep. She didn't like the idea of struggling while I was in college, so we waited. I got the bug to become a cop. She wanted a lawyer for a husband. I told her she was welcome to be the lawyer in the family, but she didn't want to do anything more challenging than carry menus at Cracker Barrel."

"Are you a champion of equal rights?"

Peter shrugged. "Goose, gander, makes sense, doesn't it? The women in my family are homebodies, but everyone should have a choice."

"What happened with Susan?"

"First she encouraged me to be more ambitious. Then she tried to wait me out. Finally she admitted that she couldn't handle being stuck with a cop's pay-grade and married this guy we knew at high school. He used to be a football hero. Now he owns a furniture store and they do commercials together on late night TV. I like small towns, but it was feeling too small. So I came here."

"Has there been no one since?" Nadine's genuine sympathy was like a balm to the still sore spot on his heart.

"Once you're a cop, most folks think it's all you are. Some women chase the badge, and some are put off by it, but I haven't found anyone yet who sees past it. Some guys live the badge. I believe in it, but it's not who I am."

"You poor man. No wonder you're attracted to Lia."

"Say again?"

"We can all see you're interested in her. An artist might be good for you. To an artist, every grain of sand on the beach is unique. And she has a life of her own. She doesn't need to turn anyone into her own personal Ken doll. We all love her, of course. You would be much better for her than Luthor Morrissey."

Peter shook his head. He guessed the dog park was its own kind of small town.

"It's okay," she said brightly, "we approve."

Peter stood at the open door to Lia's studio. _What's that phrase, "Beard a lion in its den?" Is it possible to beard a lioness? Do they even have beards?_

Lia knelt, her back to him, running one hand across the surface of a cast paver as if she were reading braille. It was one of dozens lined up in rows across the floor, still in their molds.

She had a kind of intimacy with the concrete and made a humming sound as if touching it pleased her. It made him feel like a voyeur, spying on a moment that was both private and mundane. He knew little about art, but seeing Lia this way reminded him of some famous French pastel drawings of naked women crouching clumsily in small tubs, washing themselves and unaware they were being observed. Uncomfortable, he rapped on the jamb.

Lia's head jerked up. _She looks almost as flustered as one of those bathing women would be._

"Can I come see?"

"Yeah, sure."

"How are you doing?"

"As well as can be expected, I guess. Good days and bad days."

Peter got a mental image of pulling teeth from a lioness. "How goes the project?"

Lia stood. Peter noticed she rose straight up without boosting herself with her hands, appreciating the strength in her legs. She brushed her hands off on her shorts and gave him one of those puzzled smiles women give you when they want to know what the hell you want.

"It's coming along. We've got one more set of pavers to pour. While those are curing, we'll build the bench."

"I didn't know you were going to make a bench, too."

"Madam must have a proper bench from which to peruse her very expensive koi and achieve Nirvana. Luckily for us, it adds another eighteen hundred dollars to the price tag."

Peter nodded at the pavers. "So what are you doing now?"

"Getting ready to un-mold these puppies."

"What keeps the molds from sticking?" he asked.

"You can get fancy mold release sprays. Vegetable oil does just as well." Lia eased the square of Styrofoam from around a finished paver, set it aside, then turned the stepping stone over and peeled off the contact paper. Brilliantly colored bits of tile stared back at Peter.

"Impressive."

"Thank you."

"Hard to believe that's busted up tile and concrete. What happens next?"

"Today I inspect the surface, clean off any stray bits of concrete, run a file around the top edge. Then they get stacked and I soak them with water before I cover them in plastic." She gestured to the amorphous, plastic-draped pile behind her.

"Why do you keep them wet?"

"The longer you keep it wet, the stronger concrete becomes. It's a chemical reaction."

"I didn't know that."

Lia carried the paver over to her work table and set it down. Peter noticed she had set up a pair of six foot folding tables alongside it.

"Can I help?"

"Sure. I'll pop the molds, you set the pavers on the tables."

They worked with a pleasant, satisfying rhythm and an easy silence. Peter chose not to break it until both tables were full of concrete circles. "I haven't seen you at the park lately."

"I have to get cracking early. Mistress Catherine is a demanding taskmaster."

He looked directly into her jade eyes. "Is that the only reason?"

She looked away, bit her lip. "I've been wanting to let things settle a bit. Your last bombshell was a lot to take in."

"I'm sorry for that."

"You're just the messenger. It's not like _you_ shot him."

"I can still be sorry."

"Thanks. I've been racking my brains and I still can't make sense of it. I can't believe I never noticed what Luthor was up to. I thought he was spending all that time writing. No wonder the book never went anywhere."

Peter considered what else Luthor had been up to that Lia still didn't know about. He couldn't tell her about Catherine. Maybe it was chicken of him, but even if he could, he wouldn't. He didn't think Lia was self-destructive enough to take a hammer to Catherine's pavers, but it would not improve working relations. He imagined her embedding spikes into the bench.

"How is the investigation going?"

"I think I'm supposed to say, 'We are pursuing all leads.'"

"You have leads?"

"Nothing that places anyone in the park at 2:00 in the morning. Forensics hasn't turned up anything on Luthor, his car, or the gun. Anything they picked up in the lot is useless. I'm convinced my guy was a park regular. His trace could be all over the park and it wouldn't prove anything."

"I keep looking at everyone, trying to see them through your eyes. I still can't imagine anyone I know killing someone."

"Just about anyone will kill someone under the right circumstances. Sometimes it's a matter of figuring out their breaking point."

"Self-defense, sure, if someone has their hands around your neck. But to plan something like this? Not just fantasize, but pull the trigger? It's inhuman and evil. None of my friends are evil."

"What about self-defense of a different sort? What if Luthor threatened someone's security or position in some way?"

"How could he possibly do that?"

"I know this is hard, but what if we haven't uncovered all of his girlfriends? What if one was married?" _What are you doing, Dourson? Do you really want to open this can of worms?_

"Luthor in an affair with a married woman at the park? The only person I can think of would be Catherine, and she has children older than Luthor."

_Too close for comfort, and it didn't take a flying leap to get there._ "Did you and Luthor always go at the same time? Is it possible he knew people at the park that you didn't know about?"

"It's unlikely. Some of my friends go at different times and they would have mentioned if they'd seen Luthor. But you've been up there. It's dirty and muddy and people wear their grungiest clothes, and they're walking around picking up poop. It's not exactly conducive to steamy affairs."

"Nadine said there have been marriages in your crowd."

Lia searched her mind for an explanation. "You see the same people all the time, and the crowd isn't big enough to easily avoid someone. When two people are on the outs, everyone knows it. When people hang together, everyone knows it."

"And?"

"If Luthor was having an affair with someone at the park and then dumped her or was going to create a problem for her, everybody would notice—like they've all noticed Catherine doesn't like you for some reason. She likes all men, so how is it she doesn't like you? Did she make a pass at you? You turn her down?"

"You'd have to ask her. Anna suggested I'm not paying her proper attention, and my investigation is spreading bad energy all over her pavers. Rumor is, I'm the reason you're in and out at dawn these days, though Jim says it's because you're busy with your pavers."

"You've certainly found your way into the grapevine." Lia sighed. "Mostly, it's the project. Part of it's you. Every time we talk, things get weirder. Part of it's them. I'm having a hard time dealing with the possibility that one of them killed Luthor. Add that to everything you've told me about Luthor and I don't know what to think."

She looked at him with a wry twist to her mouth. "I'm relieved that Luthor is out of my life but it was awful the way it happened so I feel guilty that I'm not grieving more." She took a deep breath. "And then I'm furious because he was running around behind my back and I want to kill him. And then I realize that I can't because he's already dead, because someone else killed him. And then I feel guilty again. After that, I miss him."

"Sounds confusing."

"It is. I don't know if it's good that I have this huge, repetitive project that I can do while I'm not thinking clearly, or if it's a bad thing because it gives me too much time to obsess."

"It'll sort itself out."

"I hope so. It's easier to come here and arrange tile scraps."

"I guess I can't blame you."

Lia snorted quietly and busied herself lining up tools and rags on her worktable. Her movements were jerky and she knocked a dish of water, causing it to spill. She stopped, squeezed her eyes shut, and took an audible, frustrated breath. Peter extended two fingers and tilted her face towards him.

"I know this isn't easy."

Her eyes opened, glistening up at him. Silent tears appeared, trailing down both cheeks. Peter felt that part of him, the professional distance he facetiously called his "inner Jack Webb," crumble into dust. He reached out and tentatively stroked her cheek. Lia turned on her stool and leaned into his chest, now sobbing openly as she wrapped her arms around him.

He stroked her hair while she buried her face in his shirt, soaking it with tears. They stayed like that for an eternity of minutes, Peter not daring to respond. Lia's grip on him lightened. He felt her tug his shirt out of his jeans, slide her hands beneath it. Her cheek rubbed back and forth across his shirt as if she wanted to burrow into him.

Peter reached behind his back to twine his hands with hers, pulling her hands between them, creating a much needed space. He hooked a stool with his foot and dragged it over, sitting so that he could look in her eyes. They were bright, fluid, and woeful.

"This is quickly becoming improper."

"I don't care." Lia's tone was heartbreaking and petulant.

"I do. I'm afraid you'll abuse me and cast me aside." He realized his thumbs were chafing her palms.

"Did you ever feel so intensely that it was hard to live in your skin? Like you were about to burst out of it?"

"I'm not sure I know what you mean. Is that how you feel right now?"

"I can't stand it. I can't stand thinking about any of this anymore. Will you please shut the door and hold me?"

"Are you sure?"

"Throw the latch."

_I'm on duty. Someone could interrupt. She doesn't know what she's doing._ These thoughts flitted ineffectually against his brain like moths outside a lit window. He watched, as if outside himself, as he latched the door and walked back to Lia, still perched on her stool. She pulled up his shirt and lay her cheek against his stomach. She kissed it, tracking across his flesh. He pulled the tie off her ponytail and buried his hands in her hair.

They stayed like that, absorbing the feel of flesh on flesh. He drew her up and kissed her, softly, on her brow, her cheeks, the corners of her mouth, the spot on her neck just below her ear. His hands stroked her back, now kneading her flesh, crushing her against him. She opened her lips and he took them, teasing the inside of her mouth with his tongue. Lia pulled away, nodding to a pile of blankets in the corner. She pulled off her shirt.

Lia lay with her head against Peter's long, lean chest, her cheek brushing the lovely and unfashionable flurry of dark hair arrowing down past his navel. She dragged her fingers lazily up and down, combing through the curls. Her top leg was thrown across his thighs. She soaked in the heat of his skin and enjoyed a relaxation she hadn't felt since she discovered Luthor's body.

Lia did not want to do anything that would allow reality to intrude. She especially did not want to think about what just happened, or what was going to happen next with this person she'd dived into intimacy with. _Why does it have to be more awkward with nice men?_

"Thank you."

Peter kissed the top of her head. "For what?"

"For going with the moment."

"It was some moment."

"It was a very nice moment," Lia agreed. She raised her head so she could see his eyes. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure. Shoot."

"You don't have any ink. That's unusual these days."

Peter shook his head and grinned up at the ceiling. "Every time I think about getting a tattoo, peanut butter and sardine sandwiches pop into my head and I don't do it."

"Excuse me?"

"I lived on them when I was thirteen."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. Had one every day after school, until one day I couldn't stand the idea of them anymore. Haven't had one since. Mom didn't know what to do with all the sardines in the house because I was the only one who ate them. It's a hell of a lot harder to get rid of ink."

Lia shuddered. "How did you ever come up with peanut butter and sardine sandwiches?"

"I wanted to gross out my sisters so they wouldn't steal my food."

"That would do it. Is that really the reason you don't have any tattoos? Sardines?"

"That, and I wanted to be a cop."

"Lots of cops have ink, don't they?"

"Some do. People with tattoos are telling their stories on their skin. If you have ink and go undercover, the folks you're around will expect you to have the right tattoos. It gets tribal with drugs and gangs. Better to explain having no ink than to justify having the wrong ink. An Eagle Scout tattoo could get me killed."

"Eagle Scout, huh? What was your service project?"

"You really want to know?"

"Sure I do."

"I adopted a bit of forest and organized volunteers to manage invasive species. We still go out at least once every spring."

"You have your own kudzu patrol?" Lia felt Peter's chest ripple under her cheek as he stretched.

"I don't know if you're ready for a discussion about kudzu. Damn, I keep thinking about those sardine sandwiches. Now I'm starving. Are you hungry?"

Lia's stomach responded to her mental inventory with a quiet growl. In an hour she'd be ready to eat the Styrofoam molds. The trail mix she kept in the studio for emergencies—when had she bought it? Too long ago to remember. Her mind warred between hunger and the potential for awkwardness that occurs when two people with nothing in common try to pretend they aren't weirded out after having sex. "Chinese or pizza?"

"Those are my only choices?"

"Those are the only choices that deliver. I don't want to go out into the world just yet."

"Me neither. Are you going to let me romance you?"

_How the hell do I answer that?_ "Please?"

"Okay, since you asked so nice."

She gave him a mild thump with her fist. "You know what I meant."

"Cincinnati is the only city in the world that has to say 'please' instead of 'pardon me.' Who made that up, anyway?"

"Not sure. Probably Cincinnatus."

"Couldn't have been him; he spoke Italian."

"So now you're going to split hairs."

"Seriously, can I call you on the phone and maybe take you to dinner or is this just a 'thanks for being here in my moment of need, but let's pretend it didn't happen' kind of thing?"

_Geezelpete, how am I supposed to know? I didn't exactly plan this._ "Do I have to decide right now?"

"If you're just going to use me and throw me away, I want Chinese and you're buying."

"You're pretty casual about this." She felt him shrug.

"I'd like to see you again, but if not, this has still been a very fine afternoon."

"Does this happen often?"

"Some women like to jump on cops. I never jumped back before."

"Why me?"

"I never wanted to before."

"We're getting pizza. We'll go Dutch."

"You set on pizza?"

"No, but I don't want you to think I go around ripping the clothes off of any man who's handy." _Way to go, Anderson. That's exactly what you just did. And you've been having pillow talk with a near stranger because you don't want to be alone and start thinking again. His damn fault. I was maintaining until he showed up._

"How about Kung Pao Shrimp and I'll call you anyway?"

"I have a question for you."

"Fire away."

"Guys say they're attracted to me because I'm an artist. Then we start dating and they get upset because I spend so much time painting."

"That sounds idiotic."

"I always thought so."

"I like your paintings. Your exes were really stupid. Do I pass the test? Can we go steady now?"

Laugher bubbled up out of Lia, shocking her. "You're a trip, do you know that?"

"Will you sing Viola's Pee Song for me? You should know me well enough, since we're laying here naked. I hear it resembles Doris Day singing 'Do the Hokey Pokey' with a touch of Texas soul yodel."

Lia bolted up. She sat on their improvised nest and glared at him. "Who said?"

"I've been sworn to secrecy. You were overheard when you thought no one was around."

"I refuse to comment."

Peter took her hand and tugged her back against his chest. "Don't pout. They were very complimentary."

"Right."

"I've been singing to Viola, but I'm afraid I'm not so original."

"Oh, really?"

"If she needs to do a number one, I sing 'Louie, Louie,' you know, 'We gotta go now.'"

"Fascinating. So what do you do for a number two?"

"She gets the Star Wars theme. Dump dump; Dump dump dump dump dump; Dump dump dump dump dump; Dump dump dump dump."

Lia shook her head, chuckling into his chest hair. It stirred, tickling her face. "Viola must be mortified."

"Don't know about her, but the guys at the station are getting their yucks. Especially when I do the 'Aye-yi-yi-yi' during 'Louie, Louie.'"

"Detective Dourson, a poet, you're not."

"What can I say?" He shrugged comically.

"You can say, 'Hey, Lia, what's the number for the Chinese place on Ludlow?'"

"Why would I say that?"

"Because I don't have a phone."

## 14

# Thursday, May 26

"Goodness, it's the Phantom Artist."

"Hello, Anna," Lia said as she climbed on her favorite table.

"Running late today?"

"Slept in." Lia fumbled in her pocket for a tennis ball. She sent it on a high arc, keeping her eyes on Honey as the retriever scrambled after it.

"You certainly look relaxed."

"Do I?"

"Yes, you do. What's happened?"

"Nothing's happened."

"Does nothing drive a Chevy Blazer and stand about six-two?"

Honey returned with the ball, now sopping with dog saliva. Lia heaved the ball down the slope. "I wish I hadn't left my flinger at home. This is messy."

"I knew it! Deets! Give!"

"Absolutely not."

"You're no fun."

"Go find your own guy."

"Don't tell Catherine. She'll think you broke him in just for her."

"Catherine? She's old enough to be his mother!"

"Won't stop her from trying."

Kita loped up and shoved her head under Anna's hand for a scratch. Bailey climbed on the table next to Lia.

"Bailey, dear, our Lia's been a busy girl."

"Really? What did I miss?"

"Check the rosy cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes..."

"I'm not talking to you two," Lia said.

"It's okay," Bailey said, "I'm totally clueless. You can talk to me."

"Our girl has a love life," Anna said.

"Does she now?" Bailey said.

"Geez, Louise. Chinese interrogators have nothing on you two. It was nice, but it was a one-time thing and it just happened. It can't go anywhere."

"What can't go anywhere?" Bailey asked.

"Lia got busy with that lovely detective and now she refuses to talk about it," Anna said.

"I'd think you could use him a few more times before you toss him out," Bailey said. "What's wrong with him? Is he flatulent?"

Lia stared forward. "Not talking."

"Horrible in bed?"

Lia pressed her lips together and said nothing.

"She's growing pink, so that can't be it," Anna said.

"I know," Bailey said. "He wants you to paint a life-sized Elvis for his living room!"

The laugh burbled out of Lia. "It's just... he's so... so _wholesome_."

"You say that like it's a bad thing." Bailey said.

"He grew up on s'mores. Going over to the dark side meant grossing out his sisters by eating sardines in front of them. His parents like each other. A guy like that could never understand me."

"He's a cop. I'm sure he's seen worse than your mother." Bailey said.

"Then he gets to take off his gun and go home. It's not part of his personal life."

"I don't think you're giving him enough credit, but there's something more here. What's the real problem?" Anna asked.

"You know how I grew up. I'm not equipped to play Ozzie and Harriet. I don't know how to be that woman. He's going to want something from me that I can't give him. One afternoon with him and I can feel the picket fence closing in around me. It's freaking me out. He wants to _date_."

"The nerve! And he seemed like such a nice man." Anna said.

"He's too nice. I don't know what to do with him and I don't want to think about it." Lia turned to Bailey. "Anna says Catherine will try to steal him from me."

"Maybe, maybe not. She's not taken with Detective Hottie lately. If Catherine decides he's distracting you, she's going to be even more put out with him. Of course, she may decide she has to seduce him to stop him from interfering with our project."

"What a scary thought," Anna said. "That poor man."

"If we chipped in, we could get him some stainless steel jockey shorts," Bailey said.

"You two," Lia said, laughing, "you're so bad."

"Does he have a brother?" Bailey asked. "I'd like to be distracted."

Brent eyed Peter curiously from the next desk. "Why so glum?"

"I'm in a weird situation. Things have heated up with Lia Anderson."

"If you're upset about that, you really do have a problem."

"She doesn't know about Catherine and Luthor. At some point it'll come out. She'll hate me for not telling her."

"Would it be insensitive of me to suggest that you get as much as you can before that happy day?"

"I thought you were an evolved, new millennium kind of guy."

"That's what you get for believing stereotypes."

"How do I handle this?"

"What happened to your oh-so-noble and admirable decision to keep your distance until Morrissey's case was resolved?"

Peter sighed. "She was crying, and I guess I was patting her or something and it just happened."

"Ah, it just happened. A very popular defense."

"Shove it."

"Didn't think you swung that way. Will you tell Lia about your bi-sexuality?"

Peter rolled his eyes. "Any ideas?"

Brent considered Peter's dilemma. "Wear Kevlar?"

"Funny."

"She likely to turn clingy?"

Peter shook his head. "Doubtful."

"How easy would it be to retreat some?"

"She's already backpedaling. All I have to do is stand still."

"Then what's the problem?"

"The problem, dumbass, is I don't want her to back away. She's the first woman I've wanted to spend time with since I moved up here."

"Don't get all wounded about it. Her boyfriend just died. You don't have much choice but to let her work through it. Just don't push her. Is she reasonable?"

"Well, sure."

"Then she'll eventually realize you have a job to do and you can't gossip about cases."

"It's that 'eventually' that worries me. Like how long is 'eventually' going to be? This could get awfully messy."

"You're a detective. Haven't you detected that life is messy?"

A potted orchid sat by the door to Lia's studio. The note wedged between the leaves read:

Rare and beautiful, like you

A trill of pleasure warred with the frisson of alarm inside her.

Lia lifted the plant and eyed it. The vintage pot was glazed in a lovely, pale Celadon blue. Extra marks for repotting it, and double—no, triple—word points for the choice of pot.

_What am I going to do with you?_ She wondered if she meant the plant or the man as she traced the edge of a soft, violet petal with her index finger. Honey whuffed, reminding Lia that they were standing in the hall.

Lia brought Peter's gift into her studio and placed it on her work table. She stepped back, looked at it, turned the pot a quarter inch, then a hair more so the light made a strong statement.

Every painting was a ritual that began with her camera, viewing her subject through the lens to see the lines and shapes as they would appear on canvas. She snapped more than a dozen pictures, playing with the scale and framing, adjusting the pot to change the way the light hit it.

Once satisfied, a square canvas went on her easel. Next, a smear of burnt umber mixed with a dribble of linseed oil made a fast-drying, pale brown for her sketch. The same brush started every painting, a size four with the bristles worn down almost to the ferrule.

She wielded the brush like a dueler with a fencing foil, exploding shapes onto the canvas, seeking to pull the eye into the center of the flower. A rag dipped in oil served to erase lines that didn't work. She drew and redrew, an act that was surprisingly physical as she danced back to see the effect and moved in to attack the canvas.

When the initial drawing was completed, it was time to switch brushes and cover the background with a glaze of bottle green. A clean rag served to pull pigment out so the canvas showed through.

Lia laid out her paints, mixing delicate hues: cream, pink, violet, lavender, pale fuchsia. These were used to model the elegant petals.

Two hours later, she stood back to view her creation. The core of the flower was luminous but partly hidden. A mystery that enticed.

"That's wonderful. You just did that?"

Lia smiled and turned. Peter leaned against the doorjamb. _Dammit, the man looks edible._ "I was inspired."

"You liked your gift?"

"It's lovely. Where did you get the pot? I could hit estate sales for months and not find one like it."

"My seventy-year-old neighbor, Alma, has a green thumb and never throws anything away. She's lived in the same house for fifty years. She knew exactly what was needed."

"Did she provide the orchid, too?"

Peter shoved his hands in his pockets and lifted a shoulder. "She felt sorry for me."

"You'll have to introduce me to her so I can say thank you."

"Don't I get any thanks?"

"Not sure you deserve any, taking advantage of a nice old lady like that."

"I'm hurt. Deeply."

"Play your cards right and maybe someone will want to kiss it and make it better."

"Really?"

"Then again, maybe not." She eyed him, considering. "You don't look like much of a card player, Kentucky Boy." She gave him a hug and leaned her head against his chest. It was as warm and comforting as she remembered and not nearly as awkward as she expected. He wrapped his arms around her waist and they swayed gently.

Birds trilled.

"Nuts." Lia reached into her hip pocket and fished out a cell phone, looked at the screen, tapped "accept." "Where are you? ... Sorry, I got distracted. I'll be there in ten minutes. Can you wait that long? ... See you." She hit "end" and put it back in her pocket.

"Find your phone?"

"New one. Bailey made me get it. She also programmed the ring tone. I'm sorry, I was supposed to meet Bailey at the greenhouse five minutes ago to pick out plants for Catherine's garden."

"I was going to ask if you wanted lunch, but it looks like you're busy."

"Pretty much. Rain check?"

"Counting on it."

She cleaned her brushes quickly and hustled Peter out of the studio.

"You know," Peter offered, "I could drive you to the greenhouse and take both of you to lunch after."

"Seriously?"

"Sure. Why not. Does Bailey like Indian? We could go to Dusmesh."

"Great idea."

They were more than ten minutes. Bailey's eyebrows rose when she saw Lia's company. "Is this your distraction?"

"No," Lia said. "I was painting and totally forgot we were meeting. Peter happened along right before you called. So where are we at?"

"Catherine's making me insane." Bailey looked at Peter. "You're like a priest, right? You can't repeat anything we say when the client isn't around."

"My lips are sealed." Peter crossed his heart solemnly.

"What's the problem, Bailey?" Lia asked.

"She wants an aromatherapy garden, and she wants all native plants and she wants a lot of big, showy blossoms. In other words, she thinks we can somehow magically make everything she wants into a therapeutic plant with Ohio ancestry."

"Ah. The princess from Jupiter waved her scepter and declared it so, did she? What are your inclinations?"

"I say we let it all go to chicory and chickweed and remind her they're native herbs," Bailey said.

"You might get away with that if you put in a cone flower or two, maybe some four o'clocks."

"I like native plants. I just don't think they'll be showy enough for Dame Catherine."

"So we have to ignore the bullshit and figure out not only what will make her happy but also how to present it so that she knows she's happy."

"Exactly. Damn it, I really wanted to do the high vibration garden."

"Let's walk and talk. By the way, Peter's taking us to Dusmesh for lunch after this."

Bailey turned to Peter. "In that case, you can stay."

Peter followed Lia and Bailey for the next thirty minutes as they examined plants. The women discussed color, growing season, and conditions in pursuit of the perfect combination to encourage butterflies and hummingbirds as well as provide blooms all spring and summer. Trillium, Dutchman's breeches, turtlehead, fairy wand, butterfly weed, maiden-hair fern, Jack-in-the-pulpit; all plants Peter knew from roaming the hills of his childhood, along with many others with names he'd never heard before. It struck him as ironic, cultivating something that did best when you left it alone. It was a thought he wouldn't voice.

Bailey trailed a graceful hand along the edge of a long table holding dozens of young plants. "She'll have to choose between aromatherapy and native plants. She can't have both."

"Steering her towards native plants is the responsible thing to do. Think she'll be okay giving up the aromatherapy angle if she's got hummingbirds to play with?" Lia asked.

"Possibly. Planting a native garden is more complex than cramming in flats of whatever annuals are in bloom to make a nice show. We've missed spring blooms and whatever we plant won't be established in time for her party. She won't appreciate the full effect until next year."

"I have a suggestion," Peter said.

Bailey and Lia turned in unison and looked at Peter with owl eyes. They'd forgotten he was there.

"If I'm hearing this right, if you give Catherine what she hired you to do, she won't have a big show for her party."

Bailey pursed her lips, nodding. "It's more complicated than that, but if it weren't for the party, she'd be more open to reality."

"What if you bring in some color?"

"How would we do that?"

"Don't people raise butterflies for special events? What if you set up a tent of mosquito netting, like a dining canopy, and released butterflies in there. It would be like Krohn Conservatory's butterfly show in her back yard."

Lia and Bailey frowned at each other.

"The island, maybe?" Lia ventured. "People could sit on the bench."

"None of her friends have done it," Bailey said. "Getting a canopy on the island will be a tight fit, but it could work."

Lia grinned at Peter. "I knew there was a reason I brought you along."

"And I thought it was free food for the starving artists."

"We'll take the food, too," Bailey said.

"She's going to love this idea," Lia relished.

"Shall we give you credit, Peter?" Bailey asked.

"Umm ... no, don't do that. She doesn't seem to like me lately."

"Why is that?" Bailey asked, turning the full power of her Marty Feldman eyes on Peter.

_Me and my big mouth._ "You take the credit," he said, dodging the explanation he couldn't make.

"Why does Bailey get the credit?" Lia demanded.

"You got an orchid. I thought Bailey could get the credit. Unless you want to give your orchid to Bailey?"

Lia raised one eyebrow and gave Peter an evil look.

"Watching you brilliant, creative geniuses work has given me an appetite. Are you ladies ready for palak paneer?"

Peter leaned back in his chair at Dusmesh and toyed with mounds of different colored, spicy mush from the buffet. He enjoyed Indian food, though he often wasn't sure what he was eating. Lia and Bailey plowed through lunch and bounced ideas off each other, their conversation flowing around him like a babbling brook. The words registered somewhere in the back of his brain. If anything interesting popped up he'd get an internal nudge.

The words didn't matter so much. He was interested in the nuances: inflections, what they called micro-expressions, gestures. Bailey's hands were alive, dancing in the air as she spoke, regardless of whether she held eating utensils. So far everything between the women impressed him as easy affection. Not like the hesitations, the nerves and ducking eyes he'd seen in Lia when he showed up at the studio. _What do you expect, Dourson? She barely knows you._

The need to include Bailey in his surprise lunch date had thrown him off, but her presence provided a chance to be with Lia while her guard was down, without Luthor's death hanging over every word they said to each other. And the opportunity to observe one of Lia's closest friends was potentially too illuminating to pass up. He was okay with using the time to get a bead on Bailey. _Beats sitting in my car with a mason jar for gathering intel._

Could Bailey be his killer? Motive was an issue. Jealousy? While Luthor's girlfriends multiplied faster than tribbles, he couldn't see Bailey as one of them. She might be polyamorous—that's what they called free love these days, wasn't it?—but she wasn't Luthor's type and he suspected he wasn't hers.

Could Luthor have been blackmailing her? Just because Catherine gave Luthor money didn't mean that was the cash in the Lazy Boy. What could you blackmail Bailey about? The woman showed no embarrassment about wearing grass-stained jeans and a sweaty bandana in the pristine dining room with its white linen tablecloths. Peter had the feeling Bailey would respond to a blackmailer by writing her own tell all memoir. Every indiscretion not celebrated as life well-lived would be chalked up to a woman doing the best she could with no regrets. _She'd thank her blackmailer in the acknowledgements and make a million bucks._... _Maybe she has no motive. Maybe she's a psycho-killer and Luthor wore the same brand of shoes as the kid who bullied her in second grade. And maybe I'm grasping at straws. She's too easy with Lia for there to be secrets between them. But then, your average psycho-killer would have no trouble with that._

Bailey wore synthetic sandals even though leather was tougher and more comfortable. She'd passed up everything on the buffet that hinted of meat, sticking with chickpeas, lentils, veggies, and rice. When she hit the palak paneer, she'd scooped out the spinach and left the cheese behind. _Not a pretend vegan._

Lia swore the woo-woo queen would never commit murder due to the karma she would incur. Could Bailey's metaphysical leanings be an act? The person he was looking for would have an act of some kind. Maybe the love she had for animals didn't extend to her fellow humans. Didn't Hitler claim to be a vegetarian?

"What do you want to bet Catherine tries to hire Luella Zuckerman to talk to the butterflies during her party?"

Lia's comment brought Peter back to the present and his saag vindaloo. "Can you talk to butterflies?"

Bailey snorted. "Luella would tell you butterflies don't have much to say except 'Sweet! Pretty! Flower!'" Her squeaky imitation made him smile.

"So what's your next step?" Peter asked.

Lia swallowed a bite of mango chaat. "We take Catherine down to Enright Avenue to see the native gardens and get her expectations in line with reality. Then we sell her on butterflies by showing her pretty pictures."

"Sounds like you think Catherine's pretty clueless," Peter said.

"She's not dumb," Bailey said. "She's a new moon baby with Venus in Gemini."

"Translation?" Peter flicked a glance in Lia's direction. Her mouth was twitching. _Which one of us is she laughing at?_

"People born on a new moon are a lot like babies. Have you ever spent any time around infants?"

Peter thought about the number of times his nieces and nephews had spit up on his shoulder. "Some."

"They're always sticking everything in their mouth. New moon babies never grow out of it. Toss in Venus in Gemini and she's got a permanent case of ADHD, always off on the newest fad and barely scraping the surface."

"Like those butterflies?" Peter asked.

"That's it! We'll tell her the butterflies remind us of her. She'll love it." The grin she gave Peter stopped his heart, just for a second. "You, sir, are brilliant."

"Why all the strategizing and manipulation?"

"Alas, Detective," Bailey mourned, "not being public servants, we are subject to the whims of our patrons. Catherine is especially whimsical. We caught her at the right phase of her infatuation to secure the commission. Now we have to apply strategic interventions to keep her focused until the project is complete. Otherwise, she'll want to scrap it for some new idea, and not pay for the work we've done. We must preempt any stray thought that will lead her off the garden path by constantly appealing to her ego. It's exhausting."

"You've really thought this out."

"Survival, Detective, pure survival."

Bailey was obviously a planner, aware of subtleties. And if it was Bailey, it would kill Lia.

## 15

# Monday, May 30

"Damn." Peter set the receiver down gently, despite the urge to slam it.

"What's up?" Brent inquired from the next desk.

"I thought we were okay, but she's not taking my calls again."

"Okay, Potter."

"Huh?"

"You're in the middle of a Harry Potter scenario."

"What does some kid with a weird scar have to do with me?"

"Literature holds the meaning of life, Dourson. This is just like _Order of the Phoenix_. Harry has a big crush on Cho Chang. She likes him back, but she acts wiggy because her last boyfriend was killed by Voldemort in _Goblet of Fire_ , and Harry was there when it happened."

"You think Morrissey was killed by Voldemort?"

"I'm talking about Lia. She's confused like Cho Chang. Harry blew it with Cho because he didn't understand her moodiness. And, hey, he had Hermione and Ron to hang with."

"So I'm an unfeeling jerk?"

"I'm just saying she's got to work it out and if that seems like too much trouble to you, then maybe you really belong with Ginny Weasley instead."

"Who's Ginny Weasley?"

"You know, you could do with a date with Lavender Brown. It might shake that stick out of your ass."

"Go away, Brent. Get a real girlfriend."

"Careful, or I'll sic Hermione on you. She's got one wicked right hook."

"Don't you look all down in the dumps," Jim said, joining Lia on her favorite picnic table.

Lia launched a ball for Honey, then leaned over and gave Fleece a scratch behind the ears. "I feel guilty."

"You couldn't possibly be guilty of anything worth feeling bad about."

"Luthor just died and I'm having feelings for Peter Dourson. What kind of person does that make me?"

"Did you love Luthor?"

"I'm not sure. I know I didn't love him as much as he loved me. Now I find out he had other girlfriends and a boatload of cash he hid from me. He said he couldn't live without me. Why would he say that when he had other women?"

"Sounds man-manip-manipulative to me."

"What if I drove him to looking for love elsewhere?"

Jim stroked his beard. "Men are cheaters or they're not. You weren't the cause, but I bet you were the excuse. Looks like you had good reason not to love him."

"But I didn't know about the women, or the cash. It never occurred to me that anything else was going on."

"You didn't know, but I bet you felt it. If he was still alive, would you feel bad about seeing someone new?"

"I guess not."

"I'm sorry he shot himself."

"That's just it. He might not have shot himself."

"What are you talking about?"

"Dammit. I shouldn't have said anything. Peter thinks Luthor was murdered."

"Why does he think that?"

"He says they can tell someone else was in the car when he was shot, and that he didn't pull the trigger."

"What do you think?"

"You know how he was about guns. Part of me thinks he would have been too chicken to pull the trigger."

"Oh."

"You can't tell anyone. Peter thinks someone at the park did it. I don't know if I believe him, but he says you have to know this place to think of it as a rendezvous point, and they had to get close to me to steal my phone. Someone sent Luthor a text from my phone right before he came here that night."

"We're all suspects?" Jim asked.

"Peter says I'm not a suspect. I guess I should be. He's only got my word that I lost my phone. I don't know what they think about anyone else."

"That's a lot of people. Why would anyone kill Luthor?"

"Peter thinks it might be a psycho serial killer. But we don't have any psychos. Kooks and eccentrics, but no psychos unless you want to count the weird guy who used to bring his Akita last spring."

"How long have you been carrying this around?" Jim asked.

Lia thought back. "Almost three weeks. If it's a crazy person with no motive except they're crazy, doesn't that mean they can do it again?"

"Are they certain it's murder?"

"Certain enough to have Peter investigating. I keep thinking they're mistaken, but then I remember the text message they say came from the phone I can't find. If he shot himself, then where's my phone, and who sent that text? I don't want to look at my friends and wonder if they shot my boyfriend. Right now, you're one of the only people I trust. I hate feeling this way."

"Who have you talked to?"

"Just you. Didn't mean to, it sort of busted out. I despise secrets, and I'm sorry I dumped this on you. Look, you won't tell anyone, will you?"

"No, I won't, unless you say it's okay."

CarGo and Rufus bounded up, tongues hanging out in canine good cheer that refuted Lia's mood. Lia ruffled CarGo's neck as she watched Anna and Nadine approach. Jealous, Fleece crowded in.

"So serious over here!" Nadine announced. "What are you two cooking up on the back side of the park?"

"Lia's wrestling with some devils today," Jim responded.

"I'm so sorry. Can I hit one of them over the head for you? Bean him with CarGo's tennis ball?" Anna offered.

"This must be about that nice detective," Nadine said.

"How'd you guess?" Lia asked.

"You young girls. It's always about a man, and with him around, who else could it be?" Nadine patted her on the knee.

"If you're so smart, what am I feeling bad about?"

"Well, I'm sure you haven't done anything truly heinous. I think it has something to do with your back-to-the-Mayflower Puritan roots."

"What are you talking about, Nadine?" Anna inquired.

"Lia's feeling bad about feeling good."

"Uh... well... it's just not that simple," Lia mumbled.

"Sweetie, feel bad about Luthor if you need to. But don't let that stop you from feeling good about Peter," Nadine said.

"It's awfully confusing."

"Of course it is," Anna said. "But do you really want to tell the charming detective to go away until you figure it out? Do you suppose he'll still be twiddling his thumbs when you've tidied your life up?"

"Anna," Jim said, "that's not fair to either of them."

"Anna's right," Nadine said. "Don't let bad timing get in the way of your happiness. Luthor made you unhappy when you were together. We could all see it. Don't let him continue to make you unhappy now that he's gone."

"He's not gone, dammit, he's dead! Sorry, I didn't mean to yell at you.... I just need some space." Lia pushed off the table, calling Honey and Chewy to her as she stalked towards the woods.

Lia was halfway down the gorge behind the dog park when Kita ran up the path and play-bowed to Honey. Honey barked and bowed back. Bailey called to Kita from the bottom of the trail. Kita turned and the dogs flew down the hill. It looked like company was inevitable.

She made her way carefully down the steep incline to find Bailey sitting on a log by the creek, a book in her lap. "Hey, what are you reading?"

"It's a book about reincarnation and soul-groups."

"Soul-groups? What are those?" Lia asked as she joined Bailey on the log, glad to have something to talk about besides Peter Dourson and her personal life.

"Soul-groups contract to support each other by performing certain roles in various incarnations."

"How does that work?"

"Families are often soul-groups. In another lifetime, your mother might have been your sister or your child, or even your husband."

"Weird."

"It gets weirder."

"How so?"

"The harder the life, the more you can learn. Sometimes souls decide to come into life handicapped in some way, physically, economically, emotionally."

"I can see that."

"So you decide you want to experience living in squalor in a war-torn third-world country. Some of your soul-group is likely to come along with you."

"You mean instead of opting for a life of leisure on the Riviera."

"Exactly. Sometimes souls choose to go into situations that are toxic and even dangerous to support each other."

"That would be a true friend," Lia said.

"Now suppose someone wanted to increase their compassion by having a traumatic experience, say, being a rape victim."

"Someone would volunteer for that? Sounds harsh."

"And brave. Once they make that choice, they would contract with a member of their soul-group to be the rapist."

"You're kidding me," Lia said, appalled.

"Truth. According to this book, anyway," Bailey shrugged.

"But wouldn't the rapist be messing with their own karma?"

"I haven't gotten to that part of the book yet, but I think they might get special dispensation, since it would be a soul agreement serving the higher good."

"That would mean someone who gets raped literally asked for it. That's whacked."

"Not all the time, only sometimes, and that's over-simplifying."

"I don't know about that book, Bailey."

"I haven't made up my mind yet. It's certainly thought-provoking," Bailey said.

"So you're saying we might have asked Catherine to come into our lives to make us crazy?"

"Very possibly."

"Geezlepete."

Something's up. I don't know what it is, but things are not settling down the way they should now that Terry's out of the picture. Is it just Lia's confusion about Detective Dourson, or is there more to the story? There's too much gossip at the park, people hanging out without anything else to do but take small inferences and blow them into raging tsunamis of rumor. Perhaps this was a dangerous pool for me to dip in. Nothing can be done about that now, but keep still and watch. Then again, maybe there's another way to look at this.

## 16

# Tuesday, May 31

This time the pot sitting outside Lia's studio door held a cactus with a single coral bloom. Chewy nosed the alien object, yelping when he encountered a spine. Honey rolled her eyes at Lia, as if to say, "kids." Lia carried the pot in and set it on her table. There was no note.

She sat, glowering at the spiny plant as she jerked out her phone. Peter answered on the fourth ring.

"Are you suggesting I'm prickly?"

"Hello to you, too. How are you?"

"I'm wondering what it means when a guy gives you a cactus. That's how I am."

"You don't like it?"

"I don't know yet."

"I thought it was pretty cool when Alma told me how rare it is when they bloom."

"Uh huh."

"She also told me about that plant at Krohn Conservatory that has one flower every hundred years and stinks like rotting meat. I didn't think you'd go for that one."

_Dammit, now he's making fun of me._ "It wouldn't fit in my studio, anyway. They had to pull out part of the roof last time it bloomed."

"Oh, you'd be dead before you had to worry about that. If you don't like the cactus, I'm sure Alma wouldn't mind taking it back. She has a big heart for rejected strays."

Lia brushed the tips of the spines with her finger, traced the petals with her eyes. That red really was gorgeous. "Are you an Indian giver now?"

"I can't win, can I?"

"Probably not."

"Will you paint this one, too?"

"Maybe."

"If I buy you lunch, will you tell me what's wrong?"

Lia sighed. "I like you, Peter."

"But?"

Words spewed out before Lia could think. "I keep freaking out about Luthor being murdered. I don't understand why anyone would want to kill him, and I'm looking at all my friends and wondering if someone's going to pull out a knife. At the same time, I can't believe any of them would have hurt him. Then you tell me he was cheating on me. So I'm dealing with _that_ , and I start wondering how clueless I must be if I never noticed what he was up to. Everything is too squirrelly for me to think about seeing someone new."

The other end of the phone was silent. Silent like an empty house during a power failure. No mice skittering in the walls, no creaking joists, no branches blowing against the windows.

Finally, a deep intake of breath. "I wish I could make it go away. I'm almost sorry I told you about Luthor. But I couldn't stand to see you blame yourself."

"What about your investigation?"

The sigh that gusted over the phone held weary frustration. "I've been reassigned to the car-jackings at Knowlton's Corner. The captain is outraged they're knocking off cars a quarter mile from the station."

"How can he do that? What about Luthor?"

"You can't investigate what doesn't exist. There's no physical evidence to link to a suspect. We've got nothing unless your phone shows up. If our man is as smart as I think, he pulled the SIM card and carp are nibbling on your phone at the bottom of the Ohio River."

"Will he do it again?"

This time the pause on the other end of the line was shorter. "I wish I knew. Since we don't know his motive, we can't guess when, where, or even if, he'll strike again."

"Oh." The small, distressed word had Honey sniffing at Lia's knee. She sank her free hand into Honey's fur, seeking comfort.

"Can you do me a favor?" Peter asked.

"What's that?"

"Don't agree to meet anyone in an isolated area, especially if they ask you by text."

The painting, when it was done, had an edgy feeling to it. Delicate tissue petals set against vicious spikes. A Jekyll and Hyde kind of thing. Translucent reds and oranges against dull, dense greens. A study in contrasts. Lia thought it summed up how she felt, the tension of jagged edges of pain and mistrust against fluttery warmth.

Peter closed _The Order of the Phoenix_ when Cho Chang ran out of Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop. He dropped it on the coffee table next to a two-inch stack of paper that was Morrissey's manuscript. _Cho Chang is a serious head case, and Brent is an idiot._

Viola nudged his now-free hand with her nose. He gave her a scratch behind the ears before upending his third and final beer for the evening, downing the last inch. This action brought his watch inches from his nose. Ten o'clock.

The stack of paper tugged at him. Colorful paper flags jutted out of the stack at odd angles, the interesting parts thoughtfully flagged by Brent weeks ago. Brent was wrong about Lia, but he was probably right about Morrissey's novel. Luthor's perceptions about the people around him were likely to be inside.

The first sticky note read "Va-va-voom," marking a passage where a beautiful but simple-minded alien with chestnut hair and green eyes threw herself into the arms of the incredibly handsome, blond detective and slid her hands, now turning into tentacles, down toward his—Peter dropped the pages on the floor, surprising Viola, who danced on the scattered paper until he scooped her up. He set her on the sofa and pointed a finger at her. "Stay."

_Way to go, Dourson. Like no one will notice paw prints on the evidence._

Viola whined, staring at him with hurt eyes.

"Oh, for Pete's sake. You didn't do anything wrong. Come here." Viola followed him to the fridge, where he ransacked the shelves for a bribe. He pulled out an aging package of salami, sniffed it. _Probably okay._ He held out a slice to Viola, who must have agreed with him because she gobbled it down.

"Are we okay now?"

Viola grinned.

Amends made, he returned to Morrissey's novel. He hadn't avoided it because he was a literary snob. He'd avoided it because he didn't want to be privy to Morrissey's memories about Lia. _Man up, Dourson._ He picked up the next section.

A Catherine twin sicced a pair of tiny, mindlessly-vicious furballs on the bug-eyed, beaky woman, whose eyes popped out on stalks. A long, prehensile tongue shot out of Bailey-twin's mouth and grabbed the furballs, who continued snapping all the way down Bailey-twin's gullet. _Huh. I thought she was a vegetarian._ Anna-twin watched from the sidelines, leering with evil intent.

He flipped to the next note. Lia-twin recruited Desiree and Sharon to join her on a mission to find out what the blond detective knew. Her plan? A three-on-one seduction.

_Six years as a detective and nobody's ever tried to seduce information out of me. I'm working for the wrong department._

The next sticky-note had three exclamation points after the "va-va-voom." He skipped passed it and began flipping through the pages at random. There was something oily and smug about Morrissey's viewpoint, a contempt for his characters disguised as irony. Lia couldn't have read this. If she had, she'd have killed him.

## 17

# Saturday, June 4

A wisteria-entwined pergola sat in the center of Bailey's showcase backyard. Beside it, a low, fieldstone wall doubled as a planter. Wandering Jew bushed out, spilling over the sides and trailing to the ground. Honey and Chewy raced off to sniff the elegant plant beds. "No digging," Lia yelled.

She brushed the vine-like stems aside to count stones. _Second row, fourth stone to the right._ A shadowy gap outlined the stone where mortar should have been. The stone wobbled under Lia's hand. It tipped out of its niche and fell to the ground, exposing a dirty baggie. Bailey's spare key.

Bailey hadn't been at the park that morning and hadn't answered her phone. Not surprising after the last several days. A month ago, Bailey had been able to toss off a joke at Catherine's impossible requests, roll those buggy eyes, and stay focused. Wednesday, Bailey ran out of last nerves for Catherine to hit.

Catherine had been complaining about the noise of the rototiller, unaware Bailey stood six feet behind her with an armful of garden stakes.

"... worst headache. My book club is coming. I can't have..."

Bailey grabbed a stake from the top of the pile, knuckles white, fist shaking, eyes wild. Lia opened her mouth—to warn Catherine? Yell at Bailey?

"... I don't see why you can't use shovels—"

Bailey spun around, the stakes clattering to the ground as she stormed off.

Catherine turned and watched Bailey's retreating back. "I'm sure Bailey knows her business, but I really wish you were working with someone who wasn't so moody."

Lia showed Catherine the math: they'd already paid for the rototiller, using a shovel would multiply labor costs by ten, and the extra week it would take to till up the lot by hand meant they would still be digging during the party. Catherine sighed and agreed to move her meeting to a room on the far side of the house that was totally unsuitable.

Lia thought it had been a close thing and resolved to meet with Catherine while Bailey made supply runs. She and Bailey worked in tense silence for the next few hours while Bailey burned off her mad with the rototiller.

Thursday, Lia saw her chance as she and Bailey drove to the nursery to return the edging Catherine had rejected. She crossed her fingers and asked when Bailey was due to see her doctor. Bailey slammed her brakes in the middle of Colerain Avenue. Rush hour traffic veered around them, drivers honking and cursing while Bailey screamed. "Why should I see my doctor? Do you think I'm crazy? I'm perfectly fine..."

With cars whizzing by at forty miles per hour, Lia couldn't hop out of the truck. She prayed they'd make it off the road in one piece.

The tirade lasted less than a minute and longer than forever. Bailey dropped her head against the steering wheel and spoke to the floorboard. "I'll make an appointment." She pulled over and handed the keys to Lia. "I'm okay, but I think you'll feel better if you drive."

Thankfully, Catherine had been gone all day. Bailey rototilled in silence while Lia marked the labyrinth path with garden stakes.

Yesterday they shoveled sand in the path and Bailey's mood improved. Probably the physical labor. That or Catherine's continued absence as she turned her attention to the caterer. _Hopefully the menu will keep her out of our hair for the next two weeks._ She spared a moment to feel sorry for the caterer.

Now it was Saturday and they had until noon to pick it up the compactor at the tool rental. It was Bailey's account and her discount, which meant Lia couldn't go alone. _Damn fine time for Bailey to be unreliable._

The dogs followed Lia into Bailey's bedroom. They found Kita dragging the duvet off the bed while Bailey lay curled in a ball, clutching the other end over her head. Kita spotted Lia's dogs and abandoned Bailey to romp with friendlier company.

A voice emerged from the blanket. "Go. Away."

Lia sat on the bed.

Bailey's voice came again. "I don't want you here. I don't want anyone."

"There's a compactor with your name on it. It turns into a pumpkin in less than three hours. Then we can forget about José because Sunday is his only day off for the next three weeks."

"I quit."

"You screw this job up and Catherine's soon-to-be-acquired koi will feast on your dismembered body for the next six months."

"Some friend you are."

"Tea and sympathy aren't working. I'm going to put on a pot of coffee and take Kita for a walk. When I get back, you will be dressed, or I'm tossing you in the truck in your underwear."

Lia herded the dogs out the door. What was she going to do if Bailey flaked on her? They had two weeks till Catherine's party. She couldn't finish the garden alone. Maybe she could do the critical parts in time for the party. Would Catherine accept that? _This is a disaster._

It took Lia a mile to sort through her options before returning to the house. She found Bailey at her kitchen table, hunched over tofu on toast and a mug of coffee, her hair wet from a shower. Bailey nodded at a gray bin in the corner. "Kibble's over there."

Lia fed Kita, poured a cup of coffee, and sat opposite Bailey. "Did you reach Doctor Pearson yesterday?"

Bailey rubbed hard at her temple. "He called in a new prescription. I'm supposed to see him next week."

"And?"

"I haven't picked it up yet."

"We'll do that after we get the compactor."

"All heart, aren't you?"

Lia started Bailey's truck and backed out the drive. The truck was old and steered like a boat, but there weren't any cars parked on the street to avoid. She worried briefly about the dogs, but they'd be back in an hour. Not enough time for the them to get into trouble. _I hope._

Bailey slumped in the passenger seat, dropping her head against the headrest. "Why are people allowed to have mountains of money they didn't earn? It just turns them evil."

"Because most of them wouldn't be able to survive without it."

"There's a thought. Put them all on a desert island and let Darwin have his way."

"Then there'd be nobody to pay us. We provide luxuries. We need people who can afford them."

"Do you have to be so logical? Let's talk about something else. What happened with Detective Hottie last night?"

"I wish you'd stop calling him that."

"Why do you care? You keep telling me he's not your type."

"He's not... exactly."

"And yet you won't give him to me."

"I'll give you his number. You can call him."

"Nah. I'm not his type. How was the movie?"

"Fun. Snarky raccoon space pilot and rampaging sentient plant with a one word vocabulary save the universe. Peter's idea. You would have liked it."

"Strange choice for a first date."

"It was a great choice. I could relax and enjoy myself. If we'd spent two hours watching Jake Gyllenhaal wrapped around Anne Hathaway, I would have spent the entire evening wondering when his arm was going to sneak around me. You know what the problem is with impulse sex?"

Bailey sat up and look at Lia. "There's a problem?"

"You're such a slut. I used to think it was waiting for the guy to never call back. That wasn't the problem. The problem is having a near stranger show up afterwards, expecting intimacy. I was so relieved Peter didn't do that."

"He didn't try to seduce you?"

"He let me hug him."

Bailey fell back against her seat. "Where's the fun in that?"

## 18

# Tuesday, June 7

Donna set her book aside and took Terry's limp hand. For three weeks she'd sat by this bed, reading Bernard Cornwall to him, slipping in deviations from historical fact in the desperate hope Terry would bolt up and call her on the discrepancies.

The swelling had gone down in Terry's brain. The neurologist assured her there were no signs of long-term damage, yet Terry continued to lie in this bed, immobile. She'd taken to reading everything she could get on traumatic brain injury. The newer articles were terrifying, despite the doctor's assurances.

Terry's eyelashes fluttered. She held her breath. Had it been a trick of the light?

It happened again, a twitch at the outside corner of one eye.

Frantic, she ran to the nurses' station and demanded a doctor. By the time one arrived, Terry's eyes were open. An hour later he spoke. Donna sat by the bed, Terry's hand gripping hers as a resident gave him a mental status exam.

"Sir," the resident asked, "Can you tell me what year it is?"

Terry clenched his eyes shut as he struggled with the question. His voice croaked. "What calendar, man? Gregorian, Julian, Mayan, or Jewish?"

The confused resident continued. "Can you name the president?"

Distaste colored Terry's face. "You mean that fellow who let a serial killer babysit his children?"

The neurological resident looked bewildered. "Sounds delirious," he muttered to the nurse. "Sir, can you give me a name?"

"How about asking me something worth answering, like the Pharaohs of the 19th Dynasty, in order?"

Tears ran down Donna's face.

"... That was a government worth talking about. Ramses I, Seti I, Ramses II, Merneptah, Seti II, Amenmesse, Siptah... and we must not forget little known and under-appreciated Queen Twosret." Terry's free hand lay on the covers. He punctuated the last name with a lifted index finger.

"Sir, you aren't making any sense."

"Only due to your limited intelligence. Fetch me a doctor with a classical education."

The resident turned to Donna. "Is this typical?"

"Terry is never typical. But this is normal for him."

All wasn't normal. Terry could recite the periodic table. He could calculate pi to twenty decimal places in his head. This he chose to do instead of counting backwards from 100 by three, as requested by the idiot doctor. He named all the prime numbers under 500.

He could not remember falling, or even being on the roof. They told him it was expected to have some memory loss of the events preceding a concussion.

Terry was bothered. He suspected that somehow, he'd forgotten something important.

## 19

# Saturday, June 18

Lia hung the last basket of tuberous begonias in the improvised butterfly house and considered the effect. The begonias, along with an equal number of fuchsia's, made a colorful complement to the pots of geraniums and impatiens stacked around the pavilion's support posts and along the perimeter of the tent.

"It's a bit much, isn't it?" Lia asked as Bailey twitched the mosquito netting, adjusting the drape.

Bailey dusted off her hands. "Like an explosion in a silk factory. But I'm willing to do anything to make the princess from Jupiter happy, and I'm sure the butterflies will be entertained."

"They certainly won't go hungry."

"They would be happier with weeds, rotting fruit, and piles of dog poo, but we won't tell her that."

"Ugh. Let's not. Your plan to show her photos of native gardens belonging to famous actors was brilliant. She now knows she's in exalted company and she has names to drop."

Bailey snorted. "Only because you showed them to her. I'm still the help."

Catherine's voice drifted across the pond. "Lia! Have I told you how wonderful this is?"

Catherine pick her way across the stepping stones in her spiked heels, her face alight with anticipation. "It looks lovely. Is everything ready to let them loose?"

"Whenever you say," Lia said.

"I thought about waiting until everyone was here later this evening, but then I thought, why keep them cooped up any longer? Their lives are so short, they should get all the sunshine they can."

"If you want, you can sit in the tent and open the hatchery. You'll get to watch them come out, and you can spend some time alone with them."

"What a marvelous way to get ready for the party!"

Lia pulled a round, white box topped with a coral ribbon from under the bench. "We'll leave you, then. Just be sure to close the netting all the way when you come out." She showed Catherine the strips of magnets designed to ensure the flaps sealed securely.

Lia and Bailey left Catherine sitting on the bench, the box on her lap, face raised to the sun with her eyes closed. Lia imagined Catherine was prolonging the anticipation, waiting for the perfect moment to lift the lid. They strolled the twisting path, pausing for Bailey to inspect a grouping of cone flowers.

"At least these babies are in full force," Bailey said.

"It turned out well, didn't it?"

"I'd say so. Maybe some of Catherine's society friends will want one of their very own."

"You going to be okay now?"

Bailey wrapped Lia in a warm hug. "Thanks for running interference. For a while, I was wondering if I would be able to see it through."

"What are friends for? I could wait awhile before we tackle another one. I'll never agree to such an insane schedule on a big job again."

"It's like childbirth. They tell me you forget all the pain and that's the only reason anyone ever does it a second time."

"God's ear. I get in the middle of some huge project and I promise myself I'm never going to do it again. Then I turn around and make a proposal for something twice as big. Come on, girlfriend, let's go put on our party shoes."

Catherine's smile was bright and impersonal as she ushered Peter and Brent into her side yard. "I'm so glad you made it."

She waved a hand toward the completed meditation garden. The piles of dirt were now in oddly-shaped beds dotted with plants in no discernible pattern. Unlit tiki torches speared up from the ground every twenty feet or so, for late night labyrinth runs, Peter supposed. Two women paced the meandering mosaic path. The pond in the center now held water. A lone woman sat under a mosquito netting canopy on the little island. _Lia_.

"You must visit the marvelous labyrinth Lia built," Catherine continued. "It's wonderfully soothing. There's food and drinks by the back deck. Don't forget the sushi bar."

She wafted off, a silk caftan the color of lilacs and anemic cherries fluttering behind her. _As if we hadn't grilled her like tuna a month ago_.

Strains of exotic music pulsed from the rear of the property. "What _is_ that?" Peter asked. "Sounds like the death throes of a hyena in heat."

"Ethno-trance-fusion? Something like that. I bet it's Mayan Ruins. Can't beat those tribal rhythms. Gets the glands going," Brent said. "You check out the maze. I'm looking for cold beer and a woman in search of adventure."

Peter shook his head at the thought of Brent finding a hook-up among Catherine's Clifton friends. _He probably will, too._ He let Lia's colorful pavers lead him through the loops and turns winding through the garden, edging by the two women when they met. His mind wandered with his feet, the pavers reminding him of the hours he'd spent in Lia's studio.

Lia was shy and graceful as a doe, fiercely independent and so vulnerable. He sensed something wounded in her, yet it had to take a kind of strength to see beauty and share it with the world when it was so easy to get lost in ugliness. He wondered what she saw in him, an ordinary guy, a hick with no special abilities.

One more turn brought him to the edge of the koi pond... no, "koi moat," as Lia told him Catherine insisted on calling it. Brightly colored fish darted among rocks and aquatic plants. Across the water, Lia sat on the meditation bench, still as a statue. Painted ladies and swallowtails danced in the air around her. He crossed to her.

"I'd knock, but there's nothing to knock on," he said.

She smiled, her expression relaxed and happy. "I saw you on the path. Did you enjoy the walk?"

"Not as much as I'm enjoying myself now. Is there room on the bench for two?"

She scooted to one side. "If you're quiet, one of the painted ladies may land on you."

"Really?"

"Three of them have come to me so far."

He leaned over and inhaled the scent of her floral body wash as he sat down beside her. "That's because you smell so pretty."

"That's because I didn't have you here for competition. Just sit still and wait. Don't talk."

He wrapped an arm around her and she dropped her head against his shoulder. She fit, like she belonged there. He had a fleeting thought of Adam's rib and imagined himself sitting with her, just like this, when they were old and arthritic. _Maybe looking at a fire, or watching a sunset._

A butterfly fluttered down and perched on his shoulder. Lia grinned at him and he leaned over to kiss her, a brush of lips as soft as butterfly wings.

"Aw. She flew off," Lia pouted.

"That's okay. I got a grip on the prettiest lady here."

"You're sweet."

"On you."

"Really?"

"Really."

Lia pulled away, considering him.

"You can't be surprised," Peter said.

"You're not exactly the Sphinx."

"What do we do about it?"

Lia leaned back against his shoulder. "Can we just keep it like this? This is nice."

"Yes, it is."

"I really like you. You're so solid. I just don't want to jump in and fall flat on my face. After Luthor, I'm having a hard time trusting—trusting me, trusting my judgement, trusting anyone. But I don't think I've ever felt so comfortable with anyone before."

"That's good enough for now. Want to find some food? Patronize the famous sushi bar?"

"Might as well. After all the agony Catherine put us through, Bailey and I better get our money's worth tonight."

"This is great. I hope I get to see it again when the plants are established."

He used the excuse of the stepping stones to hold her hand, then kept it after they crossed the water. They found Brent and a chic blonde at the sushi station, waiting for the chef to slice their California rolls.

"So this is the lovely Lia," Brent said. "How'd you get mixed up with this clown?"

Lia's face morphed into something between earnest and serious. "It's the itty-bitty car and the big red nose. It's a sickness. Are you having a good time?"

Brent winked at the woman beside him. "I am since I found Lydia." Lydia tilted her head and gave Brent a cat-like smile. He rested a hand on her waist while he continued to talk to Lia. "I've met some of your friends. Terry—the guy in the wheelchair—is he for real?"

"Afraid so," Lia and Peter said in unison.

"He's tracking down Luthor's gun for you. Said he thought he knew where it came from, but it was a dead end."

Peter shook his head. "Barely out of the hospital, and he's already back on the case."

"Bailey's a trip. She wants to have a séance so Luthor will tell us where he got the gun. Terry went off on a riff about 19th Century table-tipping fraud. Then he offered to be in charge of manufacturing her special effects."

"Looks like cracking his head open didn't slow him down any," Peter said.

"Peter!" Lia scolded.

Lydia's eyes were now glazing over. Brent bent to her ear and murmured, "Why don't we find a quiet place where we can enjoy our nibbles in private?"

Lia waited until the pair strolled off before she snorted.

"There's a sharp mind under that shallow exterior," Peter said.

Lia's response was dubious. "Really?"

Nadine rounded a bush, her eyes pinched in worry. "Have you seen Catherine?"

"Not recently," Lia said. "What's wrong?"

"It's Marie and Terry. They're at it again."

"Surely not."

"Surely yes."

"How are Catherine's other guests taking it?"

"They're appalled. Can you blame them? We've got to put a stop to this. It's a party, for Heaven's sake." Nadine stalked off towards the band, shaking her head and muttering to herself.

Peter frowned, mentally switching into cop-mode.

"Sorry, Detective," Lia said. "You may be the long arm of the law, but there's not a thing you can do about this." She gave him an appraising look and sighed. "I suppose you'll have to see for yourself."

She led him around the house to a crowded patio. In the center of a circle of slack-jawed and gaping party guests, Terry sat in his wheelchair, facing off with Marie. Terry's eyes were predatory slits behind his wire-rim glasses. Marie's head was canted to a dangerous angle, her magenta bangs a bold stroke of defiance.

Marie spoke first. "Sarah Palin filed a complaint of sexual harassment against Dick Cheney for talking about her enormous rack."

"Oh, really?"

"But it didn't go anywhere. He claimed he was talking about the antlers on the last moose she bagged."

Terry grunted, then leaned forward and gripped the arm rests of his wheel chair. "In the Eighties, when Ronald Reagan was president, Bob Hope and Johnny Cash were still alive. Now we've got Obama, no Hope and no Cash."

Marie snorted derisively. "Why didn't Sarah Palin cross the road?"

Terry rolled his eyes. "I don't know. Why?"

"She had a new laser-scope and it wasn't necessary."

"What will we have when they put Obama's face on a quarter?"

"I don't know. What?"

"Finally, 'Change you can believe in.'"

"Why did Sarah Palin bleach her hair?"

"No idea."

"It was time to shoot dinner and it was snowing outside."

Donna sidled up to Lia and Peter. "They have an audience. I don't think there's any stopping them."

A rail-thin, cultured brunette leaned over. "How long will they keep this up?"

"It could be hours," Donna moaned.

The brunette shook her head. "It's like a train wreck. I can't look away."

"Fascinating, isn't it?" Lia asked.

"In a very weird, sick way," the brunette said, shaking her head.

"They score points, you know," Donna said.

"Seriously?" Peter asked.

"They can't repeat a joke and the one who runs out first has to buy at the next Burger-Mania. José is their independent judge. He awards points for originality. Right now, I think Marie is winning."

"And what do you get for putting up with it?"

Donna smiled. "I get Terry."

The music stopped. After a moment of dead silence, a single drum began the familiar rhythm of the conga. The sound grew louder, moving closer. A tambourine joined in, then a cowbell. The crowd parted, revealing Paul Ravenscraft, the band's bearded drummer, carrying a djembe in a parade harness as he rapped out the syncopated siren song. Nadine clung to the waist strap of his harness with one hand while she shook a tambourine with the other. She waved the tambourine at Lia and Peter in a beckoning gesture. Catherine gyrated behind Nadine with the cowbell, giving an extra twist to her hips on the downbeat. José, Bailey, and Brent followed. Brent gave a "what the heck" shrug as he shuffled with the beat, Lydia clutching his waist. The conga line snaked through the crowd, picking up dancers as it moved along.

Lia grabbed Peter's hand and pulled him towards the expanding train of party guests.

"Must we?"

"You'd rather listen to bad political jokes?"

"Good point."

Paul led the dancers in a serpentine path around the garden. He looped into the street, then headed around the house. The crowd surrounding Marie and Terry had defected and were now half-shuffling, half-cha cha-ing across the yard. When they returned to the patio, only Terry and Donna remained. Terry banged on the cowbell while Donna pushed his wheelchair back and forth with the beat.

The band joined in as Paul zig-zagged across the patio, turning it into a make-shift dance floor. Mission accomplished, he rejoined his bandmates. The band segued into the softly pulsating rhythm of an original tune. Lia turned around, into Peter's arms.

Peter froze. "I'm from Kentucky. I can't dance."

"Do Kentucky boys keep time?"

"That, we do."

"What if we just stay like this and keep time? You just have to sway a little. It's so crowded, nobody will notice us anyway." She wrapped her arms around his neck and looked into his eyes. Peter thought maybe Kentucky boys could dance, just a little.

When they left the dance floor, Catherine grabbed Lia and introduced her to three of her friends with a flourish. Peter would rather face a gang of meth heads than this group of gushing, high-maintenance admirers from Hyde park and Amberly Village. It was all in the fingernails. Fake fingernails were a repellent reminder that some people had more money than sense. Money enough, perhaps, to commission a garden of their own? He excused himself, promising to fetch a mojito for Lia. He pried Bailey away from Anna and sent her back with the drink. As long as there was gushing, she might as well get some. Better her than him.

He joined Brent, Jim, and José talking to a bear of a man who was Catherine's husband, Leo. Lydia clung to Brent's side, in for the long haul, or at least the night.

Leo was a Steelers fan, in opposition to 90% of Cincinnati. He said only the brain-dead held to home-town loyalties in the face of superior skills and a solid winning record. Jim replied that true love is unconditional. Brent said he didn't care one way or the other, as long as he didn't have to go around calling himself a 'Cheesehead,' which was the fate of Cincinnatians who chose Wisconsin over Pittsburgh in the last Super Bowl. José thought this was funnier than it deserved to be.

When Leo asked what his game was, Peter said that baseball was a real thinking man's sport and turned the conversation to the Reds' current season, the Reds being much easier to love than the Bengals.

Under the cover of darkness, mascara flaked on shiny cheeks, lipstick desperately needed repair, and fancy silk dresses hung limp with sweat and heat. Lia was tired of artifice, of conversations that strived to be cultured and lofty, of the need to be "on" around potential clients.

Bailey had already left so she could return first thing in the morning to repair any damage to the garden. The band was silent except for the noise of hasps opening on equipment cases. The remaining guests murmured in shadowy clusters.

Lia found Peter sitting on the back steps with a beer, watching the sky, all but the brightest stars obscured by light pollution. Did he miss them? Miss home? There was plenty of urban forest to give him trees, but you couldn't do anything about the stars.

She dropped beside him, giving him a hip bump. He moved obligingly to the side to give her more room. She leaned against him, relaxing for the first time in more than an hour. _If only all these people would go away._ "There are severe penalties for deserters."

"I sent reinforcements and a mojito."

"I needed tequila shots. Flaming tequila shots. A dozen of them."

"I thought they were fans?"

"Most of the cooing you heard was Catherine's friends showing off for each other. It was like, 'I can pretend-commission a bigger artwork than you can.' They've already forgotten me. Bailey will find dozens of my business cards littering the lawn in the morning."

"An attitude like that could kill business."

"I'm a realist. It keeps me sane. I liked Renee Solomon. She wants something to mark the solstice and equinox points, some kind of Stone Henge-y thing. I have the sense she's been thinking about it for a while. Of course, she may have been doing a better job of pretending than the rest."

"So young to be so suspicious."

"Hah. Says the man who wouldn't stick around to listen to it. But maybe one of them will come through. That or maybe someone will get a jones after they see the labyrinth during the annual garden tour next month. It was nice of you to send Bailey over."

"I figured you might like some backup."

"It made it easy for me to make sure she got her share of the credit. And I think she's going to get some gardening work out of it. So thank you."

Peter shrugged, took a pull on his beer. "It was nothing."

She looked down and found her hand comfortably nestled in Peter's. "Are you enjoying the party?"

"I met Leo."

"He's a force to be reckoned with."

"He's something. Brent and José seemed to have hit it off."

"Really?"

"Kid you not. Mr. Atlanta Metrosexual meets the West Side's slider-eating champ."

She shook her head. "How will they ever find a bar where they both can drink?"

"One of life's great mysteries. They may have to settle for Bar-B-Que and ice tea."

"I hate to ask, but what did Lydia think about this bromance?"

"It wasn't enough to scare her off. Last I saw, they were headed for Brent's car." Peter took another pull from his beer, then traced a zig-zag shape in the sky with the bottle. "Terry's been giving astronomy lessons. That big W is Cassiopeia. The queen so vain the gods decided to punish her by giving her daughter to a sea monster."

Lia gave him a skeptical look. "Wouldn't an Eagle Scout already know that?"

"Cub Scout. I learned about Cassiopeia when I was seven. But I didn't know about the twin nebulae just to the left of the queen."

"Oh?"

"They're called the Heart and Soul nebulae. The Heart Nebula is also known as the Running Dog Nebula."

Lia thought about Honey. There was nothing more joyful than her golden retriever when she ran. "Oddly appropriate. How about the Soul Nebula?"

"Also known as the Embryo Nebula. They're both star making factories."

"Doesn't seem fair to have heart and soul entwined with the vain queen and her heartless gods."

Peter spoke to the sky. "The most amazing people sometimes come from the ugliest places."

Lia stiffened, forced herself to relax. He couldn't know. It didn't mean anything. "I didn't realize you were a philosopher."

He winked at her. "Only after three beers."

"Do you miss the sky?"

He peered at her from under lowered lids. Lia couldn't decide if he was sleepy or half-lit. _Why are you still here, Dourson? Have you been waiting for me?_

"Sometimes. I say hello to the Milky Way when I go home. Funny how there's so much we can't see because we're shining too much light on it."

Lia wondered if she'd been shining too harsh a light on her own life. Maybe it was time to stop analyzing her feelings. "What do you have planned for the rest of the evening?"

Peter took a pull on his beer before he spoke. "My dance card appears to have a few vacant spots on it."

"Not surprising, since you don't dance. How about I say my good-byes and you say your good-byes and you swing by my place? We can see about filling those spots on your dance card."

"Sounds fair to me."

Lia stood, tugged Peter's hand, pulling him up. "Ain't nothin' fair about it, Kentucky Boy."

## 20

# Sunday, June 19

Like one of Pavlov's dogs, Peter's hand responded to the familiar beep, extending to the bedside table before he was fully awake. He groped for his phone, eyes popping open when his hand encountered the base of an unfamiliar lamp. Slivers of daylight revealed exotic slashes of color and a fringed amber lampshade. Confusion lasted only long enough for Peter to remember where he was. He glanced at the other side of the bed, where Lia lay with her dogs curled possessively against her.

The phone beeped again. One look at the screen wiped the smile off his face. _Dispatch_. The time was 6:43 a.m. Thank God he'd only had a few beers the night before. A hangover after less than five hours' sleep would be murder. He tapped the "accept call" icon and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "Dourson."

"We have a suspicious death at 843 Hosta Terrace. The responding officer said the vic is connected to one of your cases."

"Who's the deceased?" He scanned the dim room, looking for his clothes. Honey poked her muzzle over the edge of the bed, seeking attention. He reached out a hand to ruffle her ears.

"Her name is Catherine Laroux."

"I'll be there in ten minutes."

Peter looked back at Lia. Should he tell her? _What a way to spoil the mood.... Not yet. She'll find out soon enough_. He stroked her hair.

"Mmmph."

"I gotta go."

"Do you have to?" she murmured, half asleep.

He nuzzled her neck. "Duty calls." Nipped her earlobe.

She turned her face, meeting his lips with hers. "Sure. See you later, Kentucky Boy," she breathed into his mouth.

By the time Peter was dressed, Lia had fallen back asleep. _So much for romance._ He kissed the back of her head before he left and reminded himself to call Alma. She'd be keeping Viola longer than expected.

Yellow tape draped the perimeter of Catherine's shiny new garden, tacked to the tiki torches. Two crime scene technicians and a uniformed officer combed the area with their eyes on the ground as they trampled Bailey's carefully nurtured plants. Peter ducked under the tape, flashing his badge at the officer posted there, and was directed to the center of the maze. A new path cut a straight line across the center of the garden, avoiding the mosaic trail. He understood that walking Lia's mosaic path would destroy evidence, but he hated stepping on the plants.

It occurred to him that he was more concerned about the garden than he was about Catherine. Maybe because he never met a flower who would sleep with its friend's boyfriend, if flowers had boyfriends, which they probably didn't, since pollen was delivered by bees. Like getting sperm in the mail. A depressing thought which explained why gardens were such peaceful places. Nothing for the flowers to fight over.

Brent knelt at the end of the path, conferring with Dr. Amanda Jefferson over a colorful heap of wet silk in the mulch at the edge of the koi moat— _Catherine's caftan_. As Peter drew closer, he spotted bruised arms and legs extending from the shapeless mound, the gold lamé gladiator sandals a garish counterpoint to the pale, bruised flesh. Catherine's head appeared, her halo of dandelion-fluff hair now sodden and lank around her purpling face. Across the water, butterflies flitted from flower to flower in their tent, unaware of the drama outside their safely-contained world.

"Amanda, Brent," he said, "What have we got?"

Assistant Coroner Amanda Jefferson was a sturdy black woman sporting a long, heavy mop of braids gathered into a tail at the base of her neck. She looked up at the sound of Peter's voice. "Can't say until the autopsy, but it _looks_ like—no pun intended—a garden variety drowning."

"What happened?" Peter asked.

Brent jerked his chin at the pond. "Gardener showed up shortly after sunrise, found her floating in the water. Thought she might be alive and hauled her out."

"Bailey's here? Where is she?"

Brent pointed to a figure huddled on an Adirondack chair by the house. "She's on the patio. The woman is quite distressed."

"I don't doubt it." Peter squatted beside Amanda. "Do we have any idea about time of death?"

"Several hours, at least. We've got rigor mortis in her face and jaws. That could be as little as two hours ago but the water would slow it down. The livor mortis says it was several hours ago," Amanda said, referring to the bruising that occurred when blood stopped circulating and pooled in the lowest parts of a body. "Brent said she threw a party last night."

"Yeah, we were both here."

Amanda raised an eyebrow. "Undercover work?"

"Nah," Brent said. "Mrs. Laroux was demonstrating her charitable nature after Peter and I gave her the star suspect treatment."

"Oh?"

"Her boy toy took a bullet to the head six weeks ago," Peter explained. "These are the same clothes she had on last night. She never made it to bed. What makes this suspicious?"

"It's questionable more than suspicious," Amanda said. "The water is less than three feet deep. Hard to drown when all you need to do is sit up. There's a contusion on the side of her head. Someone might have hit her, but she has no defensive wounds and there are no obvious signs of a struggle. If there'd been a fight, these plants would have been trampled before Brent laid his size elevens on them."

Peter glanced at Brent, who winced. He nodded at Catherine's body. The bruising looked like she'd been face down in grape jelly. "How can you tell none of that is defensive?"

"I can't yet. But the pattern of lividity is consistent with someone who floated face down in water for several hours after death."

"Don't bodies sink when they drown?" Brent asked. "I thought it took days for the bodies to come back up."

Amanda shifted off her knees, settling back on her heels. Mulch stuck to her slacks. "She never hit the bottom. If she had, you'd see white compression spots where the weight of her body against the bottom of the pond kept blood from pooling at the contact sites. If she went in face down, the air in her lungs would have no place to escape. It would have kept her afloat, small as she is. It's most likely she slipped, knocked her head on one of those stepping stones, and rolled in. If the tox screens show she was falling-down drunk, that would explain it."

"She seem drunk to you, Brent?" Peter asked.

"Not when I left. Doesn't mean she didn't knock back a few after everyone was gone. Some of these society ladies like to do their serious tippling in private."

Peter surveyed the crime scene techs poring over the ground in search for minute treasures that would reveal the truth about Catherine's death. He wondered if they would find his footprints on the island. "Let's see what Bailey says."

Bailey hunched in the oversized Adirondack chair, feet drawn up on the seat, arms wrapped around her knees in the fetal position, looking much smaller than Peter knew her to be. Her swing of Cleopatra hair obscured her eyes from his view, but the direction of her face suggested that she stared at nothing.

Peter pulled up a chair and sat across from her, stooping his shoulders a bit to bring him lower than her. It was an interview technique designed to make victims and witnesses feel more comfortable. He kept his voice soft. "I'm so sorry."

Bailey tilted her head, allowing one protuberant eye to peer out from behind her hair. It was a disturbing image. "I don't understand. First Luthor. Then Terry. Now this."

"I know it's hard, but we need to ask you some questions. Do you remember Officer Davis?"

Bailey nodded into her knees.

"Can I get you something?" Brent offered. "Water? Coffee?" He stood several feet away. Two men invading Bailey's space would overwhelm her right now.

"I can't stomach anything." She looked up, turning a deer-in-headlights look on Peter with her Shelley Duvall eyes. "Am I a suspect or something?"

"We don't know if there's been a crime," Peter said. "Can you walk us through it?"

She chewed on a thumbnail and looked past him, nodding.

"What time did you arrive this morning?"

"I got here just before six."

"What brought you out here today?"

"Catherine expected damage to the plants with so many people wandering around last night. I agreed to check it out first thing today."

"And was there?"

"Not until you guys got here." Her tone was as wooden as her face as she contemplated the techs combing the garden.

Peter winced. "Sorry about that. How did you find Mrs. Laroux?"

Bailey took a deep breath, and brushed her hair away from her face. "I was walking the path, checking everything out. Halfway in, the path runs along the pond for a bit. I saw this lump in the water by the stepping stones. I was getting pissed and wondering what it was and then I saw her hand, floating there. I ran over and pulled her out. I was going to do CPR, but she weighed too much and her face was purple. That's when I called 911."

"Weighed too much?"

"Things weigh more after they die."

"Excuse me?"

Bailey bit her lip. "You ever have to put a dog down?"

Peter shook his head, wondering where she was going with this.

"I've outlived several dogs. When they're old, there comes a point where their bodies shut down but they're still alive and the only kind thing to do is release them. You carry them into the vet because they can't walk anymore. When you carry them out they weigh twice as much, or they seem to."

Peter didn't know how to respond to that. He decided to lead her through the facts instead. "Do you remember how her body was laying?"

"She was to the right of the stepping stones."

"Face up or face down?"

"Face down."

"And were her feet towards the island, or away?"

"Away. Does this matter?"

"We don't know yet. It's a good idea to get as much information as possible while it's still fresh in your mind. Was anything disturbed, that you noticed?"

"I didn't notice much of anything after I saw Catherine."

"When was the last time you talked to her?"

"Around 10:30. That's when I left."

"Did you notice anything unusual then? Anyone acting strange at the party?"

"Like what?"

"Anyone acting unhappy, any tension, anything out of the ordinary?"

"Catherine was just Catherine. A bit manic, but she was in a good mood. It was a nice party. Nothing odd."

"Can we call anyone for you? Lia, maybe?"

"Lia's going to freak."

Lia was brave when Peter called her. He commandeered an officer to stay with Bailey until she arrived.

Unlike the looky-loo neighbors not-so-discretely observing the investigation from their yards, Leo hadn't responded to the presence of the officers or the official vehicles. Bailey said he was a late sleeper and often didn't make an appearance until noon. That he hadn't come out to ask why they were trashing Catherine's garden might mean nothing. Or it could mean something.

Peter wondered if they would find Leo's body inside. Perhaps he was huddled in the bathroom, clutching the rock he'd bashed Catherine's head with. _Maybe both._ The back door swung open when he tested it. _Unlocked all night, I bet._

Brent helped him search the first floor before they proceeded upstairs. Peter was surprised to find the house spotless, with none of the usual post party debris. No doubt the result of having an excellent caterer.

They found Leo in bed, asleep. Turning on lights and calling his name did not wake him. He finally responded when Brent grabbed one beefy shoulder and shook it. Leo remained groggy as Peter informed him that there had been an accident and he needed to get up. Peter made a mental note to check the man's medications before he left. Ever practical, Brent went downstairs to make coffee.

Leo sat at his kitchen table, morning light etching harsh shadows into a face that had lost all animation as he clenched a mug of black coffee. He ignored the beady, accusing eyes of Catherine's Pomeranians as they paced nervously around the kitchen, occasionally peering into empty kibble bowls.

"Catherine's dead?"

"Yes," Peter said. "Bailey Hughes found her in the pond. She'd been there several hours."

Leo blinked as he processed this information. "I don't understand."

"Neither do we. That's why we need your help."

Peter walked Leo through the usual questions with the appropriate mix of straight fact and compassion, while keeping one eye open for signs of guilt. Brent stood by as a witness. You never knew how a husband would react, especially if he'd murdered his wife.

"What was her mood last night?"

Leo scrubbed his face with one large palm. "You saw her. Catherine was in her element. She loves parties. I hate them."

"When was the last time you saw her?"

"I went upstairs around 11:30. She still had guests."

"Can you recall who was still here at that time?"

"That Asian woman with the pink hair. Some of her literary friends. I don't know their names."

Peter wrote "Marie Woo" in his notebook and underlined it. "You didn't notice when she didn't come upstairs?"

Leo's voice moved from wounded to testy. "I snore. We have separate bedrooms so I don't disturb her."

"Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt her?"

"Someone did this to her? I thought she slipped."

"She might have. Right now there's no indication anyone else was involved. We're just covering all possibilities."

"Catherine was a vain woman, and often silly. But I can't think of anyone who hated her, not like that."

Peter regretted his next step, but he didn't have a choice. "Were you aware that Catherine was having an affair?"

Leo exhaled heavily. He looked sideways, working his mouth as if he chewed something distasteful. "She had her hobbies. It was over."

"How did you know that?"

"He wasn't her first. When one of her flings plays out, she gets on some kick. Remodels the house. Takes up pole dancing. This time it was those brainless dogs and that garden."

"Did that upset you?"

Leo turned to Peter, his eyes like the black bores of twin pistols. "What do my wife's peccadilloes have to do with anything?"

Peter looked at him steadily. _Time to find out what Leo is made of._ He said quietly, "That man is dead. Now your wife is dead. Strange, don't you think? You ever meet Luthor Morrissey?"

"Was that his name? Catherine and I were married a long time. Our lives were often separate. I don't know half the people she associated with."

"You didn't care?"

"Of course I cared!" Leo exploded. "I loved her. But we both had our faults."

Peter and Brent finished with Laroux and walked back out to the deck. Lia sat next to Bailey, holding her hand. She looked up at Peter, tears in her eyes.

"Poor Catherine. I can't believe she's dead. And now people are stomping all over her garden. It's like they're stomping all over her."

"I'm so sorry," Peter said helplessly.

Peter studied the men combing the garden for evidence. One of them, a short, stubby rookie named Cal Hinkle, spotted Peter and stopped what he was doing to pick up a plastic evidence bag. He headed over to the group on the patio. As he grew closer, Peter could see the bag held a small black oblong with a red smear on the side.

Lia looked up as the young officer arrived. She had a puzzled expression on her face. "Where did you get my phone?"

Stunned, Peter asked, "How do you know that's yours?"

"See the thumbprint? It's paint. Alizarin crimson. I did that."

Peter looked at Hinkle expectantly. "Officer?"

"It was in Ms. Laroux's pocket, sir. Dr. Jefferson found it."

"What was Catherine doing with my phone?"

Panic grew on Lia's face as she tried to connect the dots.

"Why would Catherine have it? If she found it, why didn't she return it to me?"

"Maybe she didn't find it," Peter said gently.

"But—you think she had it all along? Why would she have it? Unless—she called Luthor?—Catherine?—How could Catherine do that? Why would Catherine do that?" Lia pleaded. "Why would she shoot Luthor?"

"I don't know that she did. We just found it. We don't know what it means yet."

Leo came outside, likely in response to Lia's rising voice. "That's ridiculous. Catherine never shot a gun in her life."

"Please, sir," Brent said, moving between Leo and Lia, "something has turned up that may be connected to a suspected homicide. We don't know why Catherine had it in her possession."

"Is this about that sleaze, Morrissey? Catherine screwed him, she didn't kill him."

"What?" Lia and Bailey shrieked simultaneously.

Lia stared first at Leo, then at Peter. Her eyes widened. "You knew and you didn't tell me! How could you lie to me like that?"

"Lia, please, I couldn't tell you."

Bailey struggled to catch up. "Luthor was murdered?"

## 21

# Sunday, June 26

Lia listened to the message for the fourth time. "Lia, please call me. Give me a chance to explain. Viola and I miss you." _Low blow, bringing Viola into it_. Her finger hovered over the delete button, but she couldn't bring herself to lower it the inch necessary to erase his voice. It didn't matter that she still had another half-dozen messages from Peter on the machine from the past week.

"I do not need another man keeping secrets from me," she told Honey. She turned to Chewy. "Don't look at me like that. I know you're on his side, men always stick together. You need to remember where your kibble comes from, young man."

Geezlepete, she needed to get a grip. She turned to her latest canvas, her second painting of the cactus, and dug into her paint box. The ritual of setting up her palette soothed her.

The bloom had faded weeks ago, leaving behind the fleshy lobes with their inch-long spines. It struck her as ironic that she felt the need to create something so aggressive while she was avoiding Peter. Perhaps that was why she was ducking him. She was too stirred up, too angry, and not sure exactly what she was angry about.

The smooth green lobes in her painting looked naked and vulnerable, defenseless. _Time to fix that._ She took a slim brush with exceptionally long bristles and dipped it into her linseed oil, then some Naples yellow. She felt the spines on the plant as she drew them, like pricks to her heart. She began to name them in her head, one by one. _Here's Luthor calling me a cunt. Here's finding out he wasn't broke. Here's being told he had other women. Here's discovering Catherine slept with him. Here's working for that bitch while I didn't know about it. Here's realizing that Peter knew about it for weeks and kept it from me. Here's feeling like a fool._

The spines weren't sharp enough, dangerous enough, hard enough. She shaded one side of each spine with a hairline of purple as she continued her litany. _Here's thinking Peter was different. Here's believing I was falling in love with him. Here's finding out I can't trust him. That I can't trust any man._ Pain stabbed through her gut like knives. She sat down on the floor with the brush still in her hand, hugged her knees, and howled.

Peter stood behind Alma in her tiny greenhouse, careful not to jostle the stacks of old clay pots inches from his feet while she explained how they would repot her overabundance of root-bound Aloe Vera plants.

He didn't want the plants she promised him, didn't know what to do with them. But she reminded him of home with her no-nonsense way of looking at things and he needed someone to talk to.

"I know she's been through a lot," he told Alma, "but this is too much like work."

Alma was a bird-like woman with an efficient cap of hair that remained stubbornly black on her aging head. She gave him a sympathetic pat and two of the bizarre succulents for his apartment. "Won't do anything for a broken heart, but they're great to have around for burns. You and that girl have had nothing but bad timing. It'll sort itself out, it always does. Wouldn't hurt you to keep practicing that 'sorry' look."

As advice went, it wasn't helping. Sorry looks were useless if Lia wouldn't see him. He stuck the pots on the kitchen table and forgot about them.

He tried ESPN, always a good distraction during football and basketball season. This was baseball season. Baseball was too slow and allowed too much time to think.

Viola stretched beside him on the couch while he watched television, laying her head on his thigh and staring at him with her liquid brown eyes as if she knew something was troubling him.

He channel surfed until he stumbled on a _Hawaii Five-O_ marathon, the original version with Jack Lord. Viola twitched her expressive brow in concentration as he pointed out absurdities and technical errors, appearing to agree with him that if cop shows were more accurate, his job would be easier.

He found himself talking to her about Lia. She didn't answer, but she seemed to understand. "We'll give it some time," he told her. "Not a good idea to go to the park now."

She gave him a morose lick, seeming to resign herself to leashed walks around the neighborhood. It made him feel like even more of a jerk.

## 22

# Monday, June 27

A for sale sign sat in front of the Laroux house when Peter stopped by to give Leo the results of Catherine's autopsy. Leo said nothing as he opened the door and ushered Peter into the living room, where an ostentatious brass and marble urn now sat on the mantel. _Catherine's ashes._ The room was clean, company-ready. Peter wondered who was caring for it.

When most people mourned, they became soggy and indefinite, sagging rag dolls unable to formulate clear thoughts. Not Leo. The lines of grief on Leo's face had hardened into stone, like craggy rock faces Peter had seen in Vermont, stoicism softened only by five-day stubble and pajamas that looked like he hadn't changed out of them since Brent hauled him out of bed the week before.

Leo sat and raised an imperious eyebrow at Peter. This was a man who did not want sympathy. Most people would think Leo was selling the house to escape painful memories. Peter suspected it was to avoid the pity of his neighbors.

Peter delivered the facts unvarnished and dry, as Leo's demeanor demanded: the ruling on Catherine's death was inconclusive. Minimal alcohol in her system meant she hadn't fallen into the pond in a drunken stupor. The lack of defensive wounds suggested she had not been attacked. There was nothing about the wound on her head to determine whether someone hit her or she fell on a rock. The most likely scenario was that she tripped on her high heels in the dark, hit her head and drowned while she was unconscious.

When Peter finished, Leo nodded, his chin tucked down, and asked Peter to let himself out while he reached for a cut glass decanter.

Peter hadn't mentioned Lia's phone or the conclusion Captain Roller was only too happy to reach, that Catherine killed Luthor Morrissey. Leo hadn't asked. For that, Peter was grateful. Anything he could say would only deepen the desolate chasm of Leo's grief to no purpose. If and when he had something conclusive to report, he would return. Not before.

Peter was flummoxed by Lia's phone. What was Catherine doing with it in the labyrinth? Had she decided to hide it in the garden? That would be dangerous, with Bailey still digging around. And why hide it then?

Maybe she wanted to take it to the special place Luthor's lover built for her, take it out and gloat over it after her social triumph. That was possible. Catherine had fooled them all with her society floozy act. It was unsettling to think his instincts had been so far off.

And Lia still hadn't called.

## 23

# Thursday, July 7

It was July when Peter gave in to Viola's mournful looks and decided to chance the dog park. No fool, he waited until he was certain Lia would be gone.

Terry was there, holding court from his wheelchair with José and Charlie in attendance. It must have taken both men to wrestle the chair up the drive.

Terry called to him, his voice cheerful despite the formidable casts on both legs. "My good man, we assumed you and the lovely Viola were lost to us forever."

"I thought I was persona non-grata."

"An unacceptable person? Stick with us lads, we'll provide sanctuary from hostile entities."

"Thanks. And are there hostile entities?"

"Indeed. Indeed there are. The female contingency is dangerous right now."

"I figured."

"Don't worry," José winked and flexed his muscles. "We'll protect ya."

"Gee." Peter said. "Thanks."

"We haven't seen you since the party," Charlie said. "Is it true what they're saying? Did Catherine shoot Luthor? I find that hard to believe."

"So do I. But someone stole Lia's phone and used it to lure Luthor here that night, and Catherine had it. What other explanation is there?"

José shook his head. "You think you know someone. She could be a pain, but I never woulda thought she'd kill somebody."

"Spooky," Charlie said.

Terry stroked his chin. "She was always the decorative female. Hard to conceive of her as competent and soulless enough to plan and execute murder. Did you find out where the gun came from?"

"Nope. I don't think we ever will."

"I was convinced I had it solved. I remembered a Luger I saw years ago and thought Luthor could have lifted it—but she said it was a Schimel air pistol, not a Luger, and she packed it way in the attic before she met him. I understand the two are virtually identical to casual inspection. Easy mistake to make. If Catherine shot him it would be even less likely. The two women couldn't stand each other. Catherine wouldn't have been in her house and couldn't have known about it. Moot point, since it's not the right gun."

"Sounds like a dead end." Peter said, half-listening as he watched Viola chase Napa in circles around them. Charlie's lab, Oggie, was playing tug-of-war with José's Sophie. At least the dogs were having fun.

## 24

# Saturday, July 9

Lia watched the shifting pattern of leaf shadows cast on the ground by the tree over her picnic table and was grateful for the shade. Barely 7:00 a.m. and the sun was already cranking up. Her studio would be a sweatbox. _Maybe I'll take the day off._

She glanced at Anna, now watching CarGo thrash in a child's wading pool someone had brought to the park and left by the water pump. _If only people would mind their own business._

Anna sensed the attention and turned to her, picking up their conversation from the day before. "Are you sure you're being reasonable? Why don't you talk to him?"

"All that time we were building Catherine's stupid garden and feeling sorry for her because she was such a twit, and here she—she—cuckolded me! She stole my phone and shot Luthor. And my boyfriend, who said he couldn't live without me, was a cheat and a gigolo. Peter knew, and he said nothing about it while Bailey and I were grubbing in Catherine's dirt. I've never felt so humiliated. I'm giving up on men. Entirely."

"I can't imagine how you feel. But I can't believe Peter had any choice."

"Well, he shouldn't have slept with me."

"As I recall, you moved on him, and you were crying at the time."

"Yeah. So what?"

"What man was ever rational around a crying woman, especially one who's trying to take his clothes off?"

"It's still humiliating."

"Think about it. If he had told you, would you have finished the garden with Bailey?"

"Of course not."

"That would have been a shame, because it's beautiful. I know how much doing this project meant to you. That's yours. No one can take that achievement away from you, and you wouldn't have that if you'd quit. So maybe he did you a favor by not telling you."

"Some favor," Lia grumbled.

"I know you're hurting, but maybe he's hurting, too."

"Must you always be so sensible?"

"He's a good man, Lia. Much better than Luthor."

"Don't you think I know that?"

"And circumstances have been difficult."

"I know, I know."

"Maybe you should give him a chance, now that all this ugliness is over."

"I don't know if I can. And what about Catherine?"

"What about her, dear?"

"I don't know how to feel. I know she was silly and we didn't always like her. I should hate her, but in her own way she was our friend. Or at least she meant to be. I can't understand why she shot Luthor. It boggles my mind."

"Lia, darling, Catherine was a vain, air-headed, narcissistic woman who cared only for herself. She was nice to us when it suited her purposes. She's not worth agonizing over. And you're better off without Luthor. Really. She did you a favor when she shot him. He would have kept bleeding you emotionally forever."

"You don't know that, and that's cold."

"I'm just trying to get you to see that life is better now without them, if you'll let it be. Here you've had this delightful detective panting after you and if Luthor had been around not only would you have not met him; if you _had_ met him, you'd have been unavailable. Can't you see Luthor's death for the gift it is? You're free of him. You have a chance to have a new relationship with a lovely man. Can't you be happy with that and let Catherine and Luthor go?"

Lia stared at Anna, appalled. "You think it's a gift?"

"Freedom from rude, selfish people is always a gift, don't you think?"

Anna's cool rationality made Lia want to scream. She took a deep breath. Exhaled. "Perhaps you're right. Maybe I've been looking at this all wrong." She didn't think that for a minute, but there were times you just didn't argue with people.

She shoved herself off the table, looked around for the dogs. "I'm taking the kids for a walk in the woods. I'll talk to you later." She called Honey and Chewy and they headed for the trail behind the park that led into the forest. She kept her walk deliberately casual though part of her wanted to run.

Peter sat at the kitchen table with his first Pepsi of the day while Viola waited for her morning walk. He couldn't get it off his mind. No matter how happy Roller was to have Morrissey's murder solved and Laroux ruled accidental, Peter kept coming back to what Bailey said: "First Luthor, then Terry, now this."

Before Catherine surfaced, literally, with the phone, he'd been looking for someone smart enough to make a murder look like a suicide. Someone who maybe had done it before.

What if Luthor's supposed suicide, Terry's near-fatal accident and Catherine's death were all part of the same pattern, meant to look like something they weren't? Catherine having the phone on her conveniently wrapped up Luthor's death before Peter could track the gun. Terry had been asking questions about the gun. _Maybe he made someone nervous._ Who? Terry talked to everyone about his hunt for the gun's owner. It could have been anyone.

Did Catherine know something, or was she just handy? Who knew about her affair with Morrissey? Plenty of people knew Catherine planned to spend time alone in the garden that night. If it was murder, Catherine's death was a crime of opportunity.

He should just file it away and move on, but no matter how he worked it, he couldn't buy Catherine as coldly homicidal and able to stage Luthor's death without leaving a truckload of physical evidence. If he was looking at two murders and an attempt, how could he prove it? The only anomaly—aside from the blood spatter and Lia's phone—was the gun. So far it had proved untraceable.

Terry said something about a gun—when?—Thursday? Peter had been preoccupied so the comment hadn't registered. Someone had a gun that looked like a Luger but it wasn't.

In the world of television, Terry's accident would have been an attempt to divert suspicion that went wrong. Terry would be the real killer, easily identified by his interest in the case. _If only it were that simple._ _I'd have wrapped it up by the first commercial._

This case reminded him of the driver's side door on his uncle's old Chevy. He'd had to roll down the window and hold the door shut from the outside every time he drove it. Luthor's murder felt the same way, it wouldn't stay closed. He needed to talk to Terry. Maybe he could manage a quick trip to the park before he went to work.

Lia sat on a fallen log at the bottom of the ravine behind the park. Chewy and Honey chased each other across the creek and through the trees. Lia listened as they traded insults with a pair of chittering squirrels safely taunting from a high perch. The dogs gave up and ran off to sniff for deer.

Lia raised her eyes, examining the network of intertwining branches and the layers of leaves overhead. She followed the linear pattern and splashes of variegated green limb by limb. Today the filtering sunlight failed to bring her peace.

She tried some deep breathing. She'd never been much for yoga and meditation, but Bailey swore by it. How was it done? In for a count of four, hold for a count of four, out for a count of four, hold for a count of four. She kept it up for two minutes, quitting when her head grew light and started spinning. _That sure helped._

She couldn't grasp Anna's attitude. Anna had always been one to sit aside while people thrashed around in their personal dramas, but expecting Lia to be happy about Luthor being shot was inconceivable.

And no matter what Anna said, she couldn't wrap her mind around Catherine shooting Luthor. She _could_ see them having an affair. She didn't like it, loathed thinking about all the times she'd brushed off Catherine's flirtations with Luthor as meaningless. What did that say about her, that it was so easy to deny it then, and so easy to see it now?

She had to be the world's biggest chump. And, dammit, what was wrong with grieving, with taking time to feel? But what was she grieving, really? Was it Luthor, or was it the illusion of a relationship that never existed?

She'd thought he was giving her the space she needed. Instead, he was using the extra time to run around on her. And if she took that a bit further, was that what made Luthor attractive to her? That he wasn't as demanding of her time and energy as other men had been?

She felt like she was touching on an ugly truth about herself. Something about intimacy, and maybe about control. Maybe dating someone who was busy with other women allowed her to maintain control over her life.

Luthor had always been someone she could never marry. Had that been part of the attraction, knowing the relationship could go no further? Maybe she didn't want a truly intimate relationship, the way she kept shoving Peter away. Was that the problem with Peter, that he wanted the kind of relationship that terrified her?

_Geezlepete._ All the whirling thoughts only made her crazy. She remembered something Bailey mentioned, the Buddhist practice of mindfulness. How you open your senses and take in everything around you without having thoughts about it. Pure experience with no judgments. Just soak it all up like soaking in sunshine on the beach.

She closed her eyes and listened to the wind in the trees, felt the sun warming her skin where it penetrated the leaf canopy. Slowly, she distanced herself from her thoughts, letting them float by like leaves on a gurgling creek, carried further and further away.

A twig snapped behind her.

Peter opened the door of his Blazer. Viola bounced on his lap, landing one painful paw dangerously close to the family jewels as she leapt out. She bolted for the woods before he could get his seatbelt unbuckled.

_Freaking fantastic._ He spotted Jim watching from the hill inside the park and called up, "I've got an escapee loose in the woods. What do I do now? "

Jim trotted down to the fence. "You can wait until she comes back on her own, or you can go after her."

"How long will it take for her to come back?"

"An hour, maybe two."

"I can't wait that long, but I don't know the way through this mess," Peter said, tossing a hand at the six-foot weeds barricading the forest.

"There's a path. Not many people use it anymore. Wait a minute and I'll show you." Jim took the circuitous path up the hill, through the corral, and back down the service road to the parking lot.

Jim grabbed a branch blocking the overgrown trail and held it aside so Peter could pass. "You know, I'm having a hard time getting a handle on everything that's happened."

"How so?"

"Lia told me your serial killer theory, how you thought it was one of us. I guess it's true Catherine shot Luthor, since she had Lia's phone, but do you really think Catherine was a serial killer?"

Peter stepped over a log. "Hard to say. What are your thoughts about it?"

"Catherine was very social. You always knew when she was around. She liked attention, always fishing for compliments. She put a lot of energy into staying in shape, and she loved for people to notice it."

"And?"

"Seems like a serial killer would want to fade into the background. I don't think Catherine knew how to go unnoticed. I can't see her skulking around like someone would if they were sneaking up on people and killing them."

He held another branch aside. "Can't see her getting rid of a handsome young man who sweet talked her the way Luthor did. They're saying she gave him money and maybe she wanted revenge. I don't think the money would have mattered to her, and for her to want revenge, she'd have to admit she lost him. Her pride wouldn't let her go down that path. She'd convince herself she'd dumped Luthor and get a younger man to parade in front of him. Someone like that fellow you brought to her party. You can't prove anything to someone who's dead."

"Interesting thought."

"If she was going to kill anyone, it would be a woman. Cut out the competition."

"Who do you think it was?"

"Hard to say. Makes me nervous, thinking that someone here killed Luthor and then framed Catherine and killed her, too. Makes me wonder if any of us are safe."

Bailey scrambled down the path and dropped onto the log beside Lia. "What's up with you? I haven't seen you in ages."

Lia looked at her friend and wondered where Kita was. _Probably off chasing deer._ "I was having myself a good think but it's not getting anywhere."

"What's the problem?"

"Something Anna said. She was talking about Luthor and Catherine and she sounded so heartless."

"Really? What did she say?"

"She thinks I should be happy Luthor's dead and just get on with my life. Said it was a gift that they're dead."

"Harsh," Bailey admitted, "but aren't things easier without their drama?"

"It's not right to be happy about people dying. She said awful things about Catherine."

"We've been saying awful things about Catherine for months."

"This was different. Like she was talking about a bug and it didn't matter if it got squashed."

"There's another way to look at this."

"What do you mean?"

"Now Catherine can start over and try again in the next life."

"Try again?"

"She pretty much screwed this one up. She either deliberately taunted you by commissioning us to build her garden, or else she was so self-involved, so clueless, she didn't understand how hurtful that would be to you. Either way, I can't imagine her seeing the light this time around. So maybe it was time she started over."

"I don't know, Bailey. How can drowning be okay?"

"Life and death are illusions. We all just pass to another plane of existence. She's in a better place now. She can see her life on Earth and understand how she affected the people around her. Maybe it was karma for Catherine to die like that after she killed Luthor."

Irked, Lia snapped back, "You think? And what about Luthor? Was it karma for him to die like that? With his brains all over his car? Was it my karma that I had to see it?"

"I wouldn't wish that on you or anyone. I can't say what Luthor's karma was, but he wasn't doing anyone any good here."

"Anna said Catherine did me a favor when she shot Luthor."

"Maybe she did, if you can let it go."

"I don't understand how you can think that."

"As long as I've known you, you've found a reason to be miserable no matter what's going on. When you and Luthor were together, he made you crazy. When you broke up you felt guilty. When you took him back, you hated yourself. Now he's gone and you're feeling guilty again. Happiness is a choice. You can accept what life gives you, embrace your circumstances, or you can change things. But you just sit in your mess and obsess."

"That's brutal. Have I really been that bad? Have I been that awful to be around?"

"I've been your friend the best way I know how. You're talented and funny and you have a lot to give. But you choose to be caught in this cycle, and nothing I or anyone else says makes any difference. You disliked Catherine when she was alive. Now she's dead and it's like you lost your best friend, even though she had an affair with Luthor. Luthor cheated on you. He was a total scum-bag and you're still giving him space in your head after he's been gone for two months. He doesn't deserve it, and it does him no good. You're using him as a reason to be miserable. I thought if Luthor was gone, you'd lighten up. But you seem determined to be unhappy, no matter what."

Lia stared hard at Bailey. There was something feral in Bailey's eyes, something she hadn't seen since Bailey dropped those stakes in Catherine's garden. "You're usually all 'love and light.'"

"Since when is putting something out of its misery not a loving thing to do?"

At Lia's shocked look, Bailey relented. She put her arm around Lia and gave her a squeeze. "Don't take me so seriously. I'm just thinking out loud. I just want what's best for you, you know that, right?"

"Yeah,... sure."

"José tells me you got a gun. Is that true?"

"Yep. I'm on a waiting list for the concealed-carry class."

"What brought that on?"

Lia traced a finger across the log, feeling tiny pinpricks from the rough bark. "Too much happening. It made me nervous."

"That's wild."

"Aren't you afraid? You dragged Catherine out of her pond. Doesn't it stay with you?"

"Not really. What happens, happens. Fear isn't going to stop it. Fear just ruins everything else."

"I feel safer with a little protection when I'm in the woods."

"Protection is supposed to be something you get at the pharmacy."

Lia snorted.

"What kind of gun did you get?"

"I went to see Terry and Donna a few days ago. Terry gave me a little two-shot derringer. He said I could give him a painting sometime, something for Donna. You should have heard him telling me all about the history of derringers, how with the old ones, the bullets flew slow enough that you could see them in midair."

"I've never seen a derringer. Can I look at it?"

"Sure." Lia pulled the tiny gun out of her pocket and handed it to Bailey. "It's nothing special."

Bailey turned it over in her hand. "Aren't you concerned someone might take it away and use it on you?"

"Terry and I talked about that, about being ready to shoot if you pull your gun, not pulling it just to intimidate. He said people don't find derringers intimidating anyway, so you're better off shooting than waving it around."

Bailey turned it over. "Cute little thing."

"Absolutely adorable. I love the rosewood grips. Doesn't look like you could hurt anything with it. Never thought I'd own a gun. Times change, I guess."

"Will you start doing target practice?"

"I suppose I'll have to. I need to know how to use it."

Bailey held the gun in her lap. Her protuberant eyes took on a manic look as she faced Lia. "I'm sorry if I came on too strong earlier. You know I love you, right?"

Lia felt uneasy but she had no clue why. "Sure. I love you, too."

"I hate seeing you unhappy. I hate seeing anyone unhappy. It's a mission, you know? Eliminating pain and suffering."

"I've never seen you so serious."

"Sometimes the loving thing is the hard thing. Tell me, if you had the chance, would you like a fresh start?"

"What do you mean?"

"A do-over. Just get off the merry-go-round and start again."

Lia looked down at her hands. "I haven't been that unhappy. Maybe lately I've been struggling, but—"

The circle of cold steel that was the derringer's muzzle pressed into Lia's temple. She heard a metallic click—the hammer. Everything froze but the constantly-shifting pattern of light and leaf shadow on the forest floor. Honey and Chewy barked from somewhere over the next rise. _Too far away._

The world narrowed to the pressure of the derringer's barrel against her skin. A single bead of sweat trickled down the side of her face, following the line of her jaw before it dripped off her chin. Lia fought to push air past the constriction in her chest to speak.

"Your meds." The sound was hoarse, barely a whisper. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. "I think... there's something wrong with your meds."

"Are you afraid?"

"Very."

"Hold still. I've got my finger on the trigger—you don't want me to flinch. It's a mission, like I said, getting rid of pain and unhappiness. This is the best way."

"Bailey, please, you're not thinking clearly. Something's—"

"Nothing's wrong," Bailey snapped. "My meds are fine. I'm thinking more clearly than I ever have. I'm not hallucinating, I'm having visions. Amazing visions."

Tears blurred Lia's eyes, washed her cheeks. "This isn't funny. Please, Bailey, give me the gun."

"Keep your hands in your lap. If you so much as breathe, I'll pull the trigger."

Lia cried harder. "What do you want? Tell me what you want."

"I want the world to be a better place. Can you honestly say the world isn't better without Luthor and Catherine?"

"N-n-no."

"That's right. Luthor was a bad person. He lied and he used people. Catherine was mean-spirited and selfish. You're stuck in a destructive cycle. You had a chance to change that but you didn't take it." The barrel of the gun shoved against Lia's head. "So maybe you need a fresh start."

"Please don't do this."

"I envy you, really. So many times I wanted to start over, but suicide is a sin."

"Isn't what you're doing a sin?"

"How can it be sinful to help someone move on without the stain of suicide on their soul? How can it be sinful to rid the world of self-generated misery?"

Lia grasped at a straw. "What about your karma?"

"Souls at the highest levels take on karmic burdens that ultimately serve enlightenment. Hitler was an ascended master who galvanized the world through his actions. Hitler served a higher purpose, and so do I."

"Please, let me go. I won't tell anyone. I don't want to die."

"I won't enjoy this. You're my best friend. I'll miss you."

"This is wrong, Bailey."

"It'll be okay. You'll see," Bailey soothed. "Think of that wonderful place you're going, and it'll all be over before you know it."

Lia forced one word, the most important word, through paralyzed vocal cords. It came out on a whisper of air, barely audible. "No..."

"Think loving thoughts, Lia."

The impact came like a flying fifty-pound bag of kibble, tumbling Lia onto the litter of last year's leaves around the log. Claws dug into her spine, then pushed off. A gunshot blasted. Someone screamed. Bailey rolled on the ground, bleeding, harried by two balls of fur, one black, one golden. Chewy scolded in his high-pitched bark.

Lia pawed desperately through the old leaves, searching for the gun. She caught the glint of steel out of the corner of her eye and lunged for it, fumbling Terry's gift into her hands.

She pointed the derringer at Bailey, panting raggedly. "Honey, Viola, stay!" The dogs stilled, but kept up a menacing growl. Bailey crouched on the ground with her arms over her head, begging, "Don't shoot! Don't let them hurt me!"

Jim and Peter came crashing into the clearing. "My God, Lia," Peter shouted, "What are you doing?"

# Epilogue

Peter opened his screen door to find a painting of the cactus flower he'd given Lia propped inside. He tipped it forward, exposing a sheet of paper with Lia's bold writing tucked under one of the stretchers.

Dinner at 8? My place.

The flower reminded Peter of Lia: softly-vulnerable underneath a guarded exterior. He suspected she'd be appalled if she knew it was a self-portrait. He carried it in, punching her number one-handed on his phone while Viola danced around him.

"Hello, Peter."

"I found your very attractive invitation." He held the painting against the wall, visualizing how it would look over the sofa then rejecting the spot, wanting a place where he would see it while he was vegging out.

"And?"

"Eight o'clock is a long time. I'm hungry now." It looked better on the opposite wall, propped up on the book case. He bent down, ruffling Viola's fur. She licked his nose, urgently reminding him she needed to go out.

"What did you have in mind?"

"Depends. What are you going to feed me?"

"Liver."

"I'll send Viola instead. She loves liver."

"It would serve you right. It's a surprise."

"Promise it's not liver."

"I'm not making any promises, but you can bring dessert."

Peter followed the scent of wood smoke and the familiar, pulsing music to Lia's backyard. She stood over the grill, poking at coals. Honey and Chewy were stationed nearby, tracking Lia's every move and drooling like Pavlov's dogs.

Peter stood by the gate, taking a moment to enjoy Lia's fluid movements as she arranged a pair of baking potatoes on the grill and lowered the hood. Viola whimpered, straining at her leash.

Lia turned at the sound. "Hey, Detective Peter. Come in and have a beer."

"Hey, yourself." He opened the gate and unclipped Viola so she could join the other dogs, then set a bakery box on the picnic table. He grabbed a Grolsch swing-top from a convenient ice chest and took a long pull while he continued to study Lia.

He was feeling wary, but hopeful. She looked subdued and a bit tired. He noticed that instead of her usual T-shirt and paint smeared cut-offs, she wore a lavender tank top and purple paisley Bermuda shorts. Her hair was loose, and it curtained her face as she turned.

Peter sat at the table, facing her. "How have you been?" As conversation openers, it was unimaginative and inadequate, but sometimes unthreatening is best.

Lia picked up a tall glass of that murky tea she liked and traced her finger through the condensation. "I'm doing better. This whole summer has been one bombshell after another. That business with Bailey was the worst, worse than finding Luthor."

"You didn't have to go to all this trouble."

She shrugged. "Grilling's easy as it gets and cooking is therapeutic. Hang on a minute while I pull some things out of the fridge."

"Need a hand? I've got two."

"Sure, why not?"

He followed her into the kitchen, which was warm and smelled of yeast. "Fresh bread?" He raised his eyebrows.

"Punching dough is very satisfying." She handed him a bowl of romaine and tomato wedges topped with a blackish paste. Peter looked at it and wondered if this was a bad sign. "My therapist thinks baking bread is a good outlet for my aggressions. As good as working clay, but I'm not set up for that."

"I didn't know you had a therapist."

"She's new. It's been a rough summer." She pulled a plate out of the fridge and gestured to the door. "Shall we have some eats?"

He eyed the bowl suspiciously. "I'm not one to look a gift meal in the mouth, but what is this black stuff?"

"What it is, is delicious. That's tapenade. It's a puree of olives and spices. If you don't like it, you can give all of yours to me. But I never took you for a culinary coward."

"I'm not, normally, but this stuff resembles something that came up in my drain once."

She rolled her eyes. "Have a little faith, Dourson. Tell you what, I'll eat it first so you'll know it won't kill you."

"Thank you. That's a big load off my mind. Is that plate what I think it is?"

"Tuna sashimi. I know you like sushi."

"I didn't know you could make the raw fish stuff at home."

"You can with tuna. That's the safest fish for do-it-yourselfers. Appetizer first, then salad."

Lia showed him how she liked it best, laying a piece of pickled ginger on a tender slice of fish, then rolling it up and using a fork to dip it into wasabi-spiced soy sauce.

"Aren't you supposed to use chopsticks to do that?"

"Pretend it's fusion cuisine. Open wide." She popped it into his mouth.

They saved the last three slices of tuna for the dogs. Chewy and Honey gulped theirs down. Viola carefully laid hers on the grass and sniffed at it. Peter watched with amusement. "I guess my dog is a culinary coward, too."

Viola eyed the morsel a bit longer, licked at it, then eyed it again and suddenly snarfed it up. Chewy sighed disappointedly.

A timer beeped. "Bread's ready." Lia dashed into the kitchen and emerged a few minutes later with a steaming loaf on a breadboard. "We have to wait a little bit while it cools down."

"Must we?" Peter gave her the mournful look that had always worked on his grandmother.

Lia laughed, "Yes, unless you want to hurt yourself. Here, try this." She held out a fork holding a smidgeon of the black paste.

"I thought you were going to try it first?"

"Peter Dourson," she said, shaking her head. "Some things are all about trust. Do you trust me?"

"I don't know. You've been really angry at me. You could be setting me up." _Might as well get it all out there._ "I'm sorry you found out about Catherine the way you did. I would have found a better way to tell you once it was going to be public knowledge. Until then, I couldn't say anything."

"I've worked it out every way I could think of, and I don't believe you could have done any different. You did warn me there might be more women. If I'd been paying attention, I would have known something was going on between Luthor and Catherine. I finally realized that underneath all the drama Luthor created, I really didn't care enough to notice. So I'm going to forget about them, and I hope you will, too."

"Really?"

"Really. Enough serious stuff. Are you going to eat your sewer sludge like a good boy or am I going to have to send you home without your moo-cow?"

"We're having moo-cow?"

"Duh. Grill. Moo-cow. It should be obvious."

"I thought you might be feeding me something girly, like Portabella steaks or veggie burgers."

She sighed. "Dourson, Dourson, Dourson. We are really going to have to work on your trust issues."

She offered the fork again. This time he opened his mouth. "That's better," she cooed.

The rich flavor of olives and garlic burst over his tongue. "Intense. Tasty stuff."

Lia picked up a large, serrated knife and cut a generous heel off the loaf. The whole wheat bread steamed as she slathered it with butter. Peter felt saliva pooling in his mouth as rivulets of butter soaked into the bread.

She handed him the slice. "Take a bite of this."

He closed his eyes as he savored, concentrating on the flavor while it dissolved in his mouth. "This is Heaven. What did I do to deserve it?"

"Not a thing. But we could both use a break. I've been thinking you don't want your filet to cook very long, so why don't we finish our salads before I put the meat to the fire?"

"Sounds like a plan." Peter ate every last bit of salad, just in case that would have any bearing on the quality of his steak.

After the rare meat and fully dressed, grilled potato were safely in his belly, after they fed scraps to three eager dogs, he said, "I didn't know you were so carnivorous. Those were positively bloody. It doesn't fit with the carrot juice."

"I'm a girl of depth and complexity."

"I can see that. You know, I just realized where I heard that music before. Is that the band from Catherine's party?"

"Yes, but we won't hold that against them. I've got their CDs." It was full dark now, with a bright quarter moon rising above the trees. The music pulsed, a heartbeat of smoke and fire. "Kentucky Boy, I think they might be playing our song."

"Do you think so?"

"Yes, I absolutely do."

He took her hand and led her out onto the grass and into his arms. They swayed gently to the sensual syncopation until the maracas shimmied and the drums kicked up tempo, until it became a throbbing in his blood. Peter stopped. He took Lia's face in both hands and leaned down to kiss her, gently at first, then sinking, sinking.

Peter raised himself on his elbows after the pounding of his heart subsided. He watched Lia's face in the moonlight coming through her bedroom window, then kissed her lightly on the nose. She scrunched it up at him and sighed.

Peter said, "I was afraid I'd never get to do that with you again."

"That would have been a real shame."

"You know what's a real shame?"

"What?"

"Our dessert, sitting in the backyard, waiting for the raccoons to get it."

"Oh! I forgot all about it. Do you suppose it's still there?"

"I'll pull on my shorts and go check."

Lia grabbed a cotton robe and joined Peter on the stoop. The white box was still intact. "What is it, anyway?"

"Open it up and see."

"It's dark."

"I'll grab a fork and you'll just have to trust me this time."

"Sauce for the goose?"

"Something like that. Open wide."

The morsel was dark and creamy and bittersweet. "Oh. My. God. Chocolate cheesecake. And dried cherries. This was sitting out here all this time and I didn't know it?"

Peter took a bite. "I hope you had better things to do."

"I don't know. This is pretty wicked."

"Are you insulting my prowess?"

"Hey, Dourson?"

"Hey, what?"

"You dance just fine, Kentucky Boy. Now gimme another bite." She opened her mouth like a little bird. Peter obligingly fed Lia the rest of the slice, bite by bite. When it was gone, she examined him carefully. "I wasn't going to ask, but I think I'm gonna."

"Ask what?"

"Can you talk about Bailey?"

Peter took a moment to run through the ramifications and decided some things really were about trust. "Probably not, but I will."

"Peter, I was never so scared. I froze. I was petrified. I just couldn't think, couldn't move. She had my own gun to my head. All I could do was cry and beg."

"I've never had a gun aimed at me except in simulations. I can't imagine it."

"How could she think she would get away with killing me?"

"We don't know. She quit talking shortly after we took her into custody. First she was babbling nonsense and then she became non-responsive. They had to send her to a psych ward. She hasn't said a word in over a week. What we know is pieced together from interviews with other people and speculation."

Peter took a bite of the second slice of cheesecake before he continued. "She knew you had the gun because José told her. Her truck was parked up at Maple Ridge Lodge. We figure she cut through the woods so no one at the park would see her. She left Kita at home. You take a lot of walks in the woods. I think she was looking for you and she planned to make it look like another suicide, like you were so distraught over Luthor that you decided to end it all. She factored everything in except the dogs."

The trio had been lolling on the grass. At the word "dogs," they perked their heads up. Peter laughed. "Yes, we're talking about you. Don't get big-headed on us."

"What will happen to her?"

"We won't know until she comes out of this non-responsive state she's in. You said she mentioned Catherine and Luthor. You're absolutely sure she never said she killed them?"

"She said the world was better without them and she had a mission to end pain and suffering. I don't remember her saying she killed anyone."

"Damn. We've got nothing to connect her to Catherine and Luthor. The crime scene folks have torn her house apart, looking for any connection to the gun, anything she might have kept as a souvenir. Our computer guru, Cynth, has been reviewing her computer to see if she can dig up any incriminating files. She's also looking at Bailey's browser activity."

"What would her browser activity have to do with this?"

"Bailey visited some fringe websites and forums, places that support that whole Hitler thing you told me about. You can see her coming apart in her posts, though she hasn't admitted to anything about Luthor or Catherine, or any direct action."

"I wish I'd known."

"I think she went to a lot of trouble to hide how she was feeling from you. If she's smart, she won't say anything when she comes back around, since we have no physical evidence to implicate her. We're examining her life, looking for any evidence that she killed before. In that case, she might not have been so careful and we might get a conviction. I'm not holding much hope."

Peter sighed, ran a hand through his hair. "Right now, all we have is an attempted murder charge, and that will be pled down to assault with a deadly weapon. She'll spend time in a psychiatric unit for violent offenders. I'm not happy about any of this. We need to put her away permanently, and we may not be able to do it."

"Do you think there's any chance that she didn't kill Luthor and Catherine, that she really didn't mean to pull the trigger?"

"How big are the odds that you have two homicidal maniacs at the dog park?"

"Bailey's been my friend for years. I still can't believe she'd try to kill me."

"If we're lucky, when the time comes she'll ignore her lawyer and spill it all. Self-righteous types often do."

"She was acting so crazy. Still, there was a piece of what she was saying that really hit me, about choosing to be happy or unhappy."

"I don't think life is that black and white."

"No, it's not. But I sat on that log with that gun to my head and her finger on the trigger. She kept saying all this wild stuff about sending me to the other side. All I could think was, 'I'm going to die and I wasted all that time obsessing about that jerk, Luthor, and never gave Peter a chance.' Every time things got sticky, I pushed you away instead of dealing with it."

Peter put his arms around her and pulled her close. Their eyes met and held for a long moment, his searching, hers earnest. The world stilled while she waited for him to respond. Finally he gave her an odd half-smile and said, "Do you want to give us a chance?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Really?"

"Really, Kentucky Boy."

"Sing me Viola's pee song."

# Viola's Song

You gotta circle to the left and

then you circle to the right

Sniff, sniff, sniff until it feels just right

Move along, do a little prance

That's Viola's dance

* * *

And so I circle to the left and then I circle right

And I sniff and I sniff, but nothing seems quite right

So I'll do it all again with a step that will entrance

That's Viola's dance

* * *

One more time!

* * *

Circle left, circle right

Sniff, sniff, oh boy, that's outta sight!

Do a little squat with a wiggle of my pants

That's Viola's dance

* * *

Ahhhh!
> Get the second Lia Anderson Mystery as my gift when you sign up for my newsletter.

**_Who do you trust when everything you believe is wrong?_**

Artist Lia Anderson survived the murder of her boyfriend and betrayal by a friend, emerging from trauma with a hunky new beau, an exciting commission, and a straight-talking therapist to help her sort everything out. Then a disturbing message raises questions about Luthor's death.

* * *

Detective Peter Dourson launches a clandestine investigation into the closed case while Lia struggles to accept that her world is still not safe. Neither of them realize digging for the truth will place Lia in the crosshairs of a killer increasingly out of control.

* * *

(75,000 words)

# Author's Notes

This is the second edition of _A Shot in the Bark_. _Shot_ was the first book I ever wrote. I love Lia and Peter's story, but in some places the execution suffers from my ignorance.

Most authors either adopt new pen names when they finally hit their stride, or they ignore their earlier titles. Lia, Peter and the gang are so close to my heart that I could not abandon them. After writing five more books in this series, I had many ideas to improve _Shot_. This is the result.

There really is a Mount Airy Dog Park (A.K.A. Doris Day Dog Park). I've been taking my fur kids there almost daily since 2003. A few of the park regulars made it into the book under aliases (with their permission). Any truly heinous character is a product of my mind, and not to be confused with any real person.

Terry Dunn is only slightly less intelligent in real life than he is in the book. José really is the nickname of an Italian guy whose family has called him José since he was a baby, though the origins of this name remain a mystery. Many of the dogs in the book exist. Mayan Ruins is a real (fabulous!) band. Paul Ravenscraft, is a talented massage therapist as well as the band's drummer.

The bars and restaurants mentioned are also real, but don't expect to go to the Comet to see Desiree's butt cleavage. The real Desiree Willis isn't a tattooed bartender, though she enjoys being one for fictional purposes (Look for Desiree to reappear in _Sneak Thief_ , where she and her beagle, Julia, enjoy starring roles.)

To avoid jurisdictional issues, I have redrawn Cincinnati police districts to include the dog park in District Five. Any deviation from proper police procedure is a product of my fevered imagination and no reflection on the Cincinnati Police Department.

Peter doesn't understand Catherine's reference to Oliver North because he's under forty. For those of you who are also under forty, Catherine is referring to the Iran-Contra scandal of the early Eighties. During a congressional hearing, Oliver North was asked where he got the money to pay for a $17,000 alarm system. He responded that he saved the money in his change jar. Alma would have happily explained this to Peter, but alas, there was no good place to slip that conversation into the book.

The voyeuristic pastel drawings Peter refers to in Chapter Thirteen are by Edgar Degas, one of my favorite artists since childhood.

Ryan Widmer's case captivated Cincinnati for years. I started writing shortly after the mistrial, and the case was on my mind as much as it was on the mind of Luthor's killer as I considered how a person could get away with murder. At that time the case was too new for me to reference it as something that happened years before the story began, and I changed the names to Joe and Rebecca Harris. Now, with the curious compression of time that happens when you write a series, I feel comfortable using it.

# Acknowledgements

Many, many thanks to Lou Marti for being my main sounding board and critic while I was writing this book, and to Angie Hall for her colorful feedback on the MS. Thank you Mom for editing and for always believing in me. Special thanks to Tom Sansalone, John Cunningham, Anna Woo, Nick "Jose" Misch and Lou Marti for allowing me to base characters on them. Thanks to Anna Woo and Pat North for their eternal, unwavering support.

For the second edition, I have to add my thanks to Marilyn Calhoun and lee Burton for feedback on my revisions, and to Taylor Stevens and Stephen Campbell, whose critiques and encouragement have been vital. I will never look at the word "it" in the same way again.

# Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries

A Shot in the Bark

**Detective Peter Dourson is convinced the suicide of Lia's deadbeat boyfriend is not what it seems.**

Drool Baby

**Peter's search for the truth behind Luthor's death brings Lia into the cross hairs of a killer increasingly out of control.**

Maximum Security

**Lia's loyalties are tested when Peter arrests the wrong woman for murder.**

Sneak Thief

**Lia's kindness to an orphaned beagle draws the attention of an obsessed stalker.**

Muddy Mouth

**A Fourth of July parade, 89 feral cats, and a missing author. It's nothing Lia and her schnauzer can't handle.**

Fur Boys

**There's no end to the drama when Lia stumbles on a dead diva.**

Like What you've read? Sign up for C. A.' s News and receive Lia's second mystery, **Drool Baby,** as your special gift. Members of C. A.'s News are the first to know about upcoming releases. Other perks from the dog park: dog tips, Lia's recipes, book recommendations, exclusive giveaways, and access to Carol's online file of deleted scenes, all delivered at the whim of the author.

# About the Author

Carol Ann "C. A." Newsome is an author and painter who lives in Cincinnati. She spends most mornings at the Mount Airy Dog Park with a zombie swamp monster named Gypsy Foo La Beenz.

_Carol loves to hear from readers._

_Contact her at_

gypsy@canewsome.com

* * *

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