Chow Down (27 page)

N
ot that I was about to say a word to anyone until I was absolutely sure. Like scientifically, medical evidence sure. Pee-on-a-stick sure. It was one thing for me to get my hopes up. But if I was wrong, I didn't want Sam and Davey doing the same thing.

So I got on with my life as though nothing had changed. For the first time, I was actually happy to have a contest-related event to attend. At least it would serve as a distraction until enough time had passed and I could get the answer I was dying to have.

Better still, tomorrow's press conference would be the end of the line as far as my finalist duties were concerned. When that final appearance was over, the competition would be, too. One lucky dog and owner would continue on to fame and fortune and my life could go back to normal. The prospect was almost enough to make me giddy.

Would Yoda's name be the one announced as previously planned? Like Lisa, I wasn't sure. So many elements of the contest had gotten derailed since the five finalists had been brought together for the opening reception, it wasn't hard to imagine that the outcome might take an unexpected turn, too.

Before the final decision was announced to the press, however, I needed to corner Simone Dorsey and get some answers. Surely she had to realize that her manipulation of the results might have played a part in Larry Kim's death.

I sincerely doubted that she would have passed information like that along to the police. Now, however, I was armed with enough knowledge to bluff her into opening up. That gave me an unexpected advantage and I intended to make use of it.

The press conference was scheduled to take place at the Champions Dog Food headquarters at four o'clock that afternoon. I imagined that that time had been chosen to draw news teams from the local affiliates so that they could report on the story live at five. I put in a call to Simone's secretary and told her that Faith and I needed an appointment at three.

“I'll have to see if she's available,” the woman replied.

“Make her available. She won't want to miss what I have to say.”

All right, so maybe that wasn't strictly true. But the implication that I might have some vital information related to the contest was enough to get me a spot on Simone's calendar. The fact that the information was more vital to my interests than hers was something we could discuss when I got there.

Since this was to be Faith's last contest appearance, I went all out with her grooming. She'd looked good when we'd appeared on TV the day before, but now I was aiming for perfect. I didn't expect my Poodle to win, but I did want the judging committee to experience at least a small pang of regret at passing her by.

I reclipped Faith's face, her feet, and the base of her tail. I bathed her in the tub, then devoted two hours to blowing her hair dry, section by section, so that when I was done, her entire coat was straight and plush and full. Scissoring in the lines, I emphasized the length of the Poodle's legs, the crest of her neck, and rounded off her topknot and the pom pon on her tail.

Sam and Davey had borrowed Aunt Peg's beach card and gone to Todd's Point for the afternoon, so when Faith and I headed out, only the other Poodles were home to escort us to the door. Having spent more time on Faith's appearance than I had on my own, I paused in front of the hallway mirror and took a quick look to make sure that my hair was combed and my shirt was clean. The reflection I saw in the mirror looked pretty much as I expected.

Nope, I thought critically as I examined myself from several perspectives, if anything was glowing, I didn't see it.

Faith and I arrived at Champions with time to spare. My Poodle would have preferred that we take the stairs, but I wasn't ready to face them again just yet. Instead, we rode the elevator up to the third floor.

Even though we were a few minutes early, Simone didn't keep us waiting long. Promptly at three, the PR director opened her office door and stood expectantly in the doorway. I wondered whether she'd actually been working or whether she'd been sitting inside watching the clock until it was time.

“You wanted to see me?” she said.

I filed that under “R” for rhetorical and walked past her into the small room. Simone outranked Cindy Burrows and probably Chris Hovick, too, but her office wasn't any more impressive in size or decor. Idly I wondered if that rankled. If it was one of the reasons that she might not have seen anything wrong in diverting company funds in a friend's direction.

“Well?” Simone said, in her best get-on-with-it tone. “What's this all about?”

I helped myself to a seat. The chair looked like it had been designed by Le Corbousier. It was small and uncomfortable, but at least it made me sit up straight.

“I drove Lisa home from New York yesterday,” I said.

“So I gathered.” Simone didn't sound pleased. She walked around behind her desk and sat down. “I'd have been happy to bring her back myself, but once you swooped in like the Lone Ranger and spirited her away, I figured she'd made other arrangements.”

“She did. We had a long talk on the way.”

Simone lifted a brow disdainfully. Obviously she didn't feel threatened by anything her friend might have told me. I wondered if she'd spoken with Lisa since. I was betting no. Judging by her past behavior, Yoda's owner seemed to want to avoid confrontation.

“Lisa told me how you had set up the contest so that she and Yoda would win.”

“That's ridiculous. I don't have any idea what you're talking about.”

“I think you do. I know that you and Lisa are old friends. That the two of you went to college together.”

Simone looked briefly startled, then her expression turned bland again. I'd managed to get her attention though. Good.

“So?” she said.

“So she needed to find a way out of an unhappy marriage and you offered to help.”

“Naturally I offered emotional support. A bit of advice, a shoulder to cry on. That's what friends are for.”

“You offered more than that. You offered a contest, specially engineered with her in mind. Nationwide publicity, thousands of entries, good PR out the wazoo, all of that controlled by a small committee of handpicked people who would select the winner. Yoda would end up being the spokesdog for Champions' newest product and Lisa would gain a new direction in life, not to mention the financial security she needed to leave her husband.”

“That's an interesting story,” Simone said evenly. “But that's all it is, a piece of fiction. It's not what happened.”

Time was passing and we weren't getting anywhere. I needed to shock Simone out of her complacency.

“What happened next was all your fault,” I said. “The plan that you and Lisa made resulted in Larry Kim's death. What went wrong, Simone? Did you begin to get nervous when he nearly took his dog and walked out of that first meeting? That would have ruined everything, wouldn't it? Were you the one I heard arguing with him that day in the stairwell? Did he make you so angry that you reached out and gave him a shove?”

“No, of course not!” Simone had picked up a paper clip from her blotter. She twisted and untwisted the small piece of metal between her fingers. “I wasn't anywhere near Larry when he fell. It was up to Lisa to make sure that Yoda remained a contestant. I didn't have anything to do with that.”

“But you admit that you and she had cooked up a scheme—”

“I'm not admitting anything. Why should I?”

“Well for one thing,” I said, “if you don't, I'll take my information to the police. I hear they're having a hard time narrowing down their list of suspects. This ought to help them sort things out, don't you think?”

“Wait!”

I'd started to rise, but now I paused. Faith, who'd stood when I did, stopped, too. Faster than most humans at picking up on nuances, she looked back and forth between us, waiting to see who was going to cave in first. Thankfully, the answer was Simone.

“I don't think that's necessary,” she said. “Especially now, when we're just about to announce the winner of the contest. That's the last kind of publicity Champions needs. I'm sure you and I can discuss this between ourselves and come up with an equitable solution.”

“Like what?” I asked. Just my luck, she was probably thinking of offering Faith the top prize in exchange for my silence.

“Let me think,” Simone said. “And in the meantime, you should do some thinking too. I hope you realize that you have nothing to gain by exposing the contest to undue scrutiny.”

“I disagree. Exposing irregularities in the contest judging will help the police find Larry's murderer.”

“Oh please. Surely you don't want me to believe you're doing this to be
helpful
.” She stared at me across the width of her desk. “Did you even know Larry Kim?”

“No. We met for the first time at the opening reception.”

“You wouldn't have liked him.”

“Does that matter?” I asked.

“Of course it matters,” Simone snapped. “Lisa never should have married Larry. He was all wrong for her. I told her at the time but she wouldn't listen. She thought she knew better.”

“It was
her
life. Right or wrong, Lisa had a right to make her own decisions.”

“Not when she was going to come running to me after the fact to clean up the mess she'd made of things. It was just pure luck that Chris had already come to me with the idea—”

Simone stopped speaking so abruptly that it was like putting an exclamation point on what she'd left unsaid. I sank back down slowly into my seat.

“
Chris
came up with the idea for the contest?” Quickly I filled in some blanks and rearranged the pieces of the puzzle to fit. “That's interesting. I was sure I'd heard that you were the one who deserved the credit for that.”

“Not entirely.” Simone gave a careless shrug. She couldn't quite pull it off. “It was more of a joint effort. You know, colleagues brainstorming for the good of the company.”

“Except that Chris thought of it first.”

Simone, I noted, didn't refute the assertion a second time.

“There were four of you on the judging committee,” I said after a minute. “Lisa had your vote, we know that. Who else had you gotten to agree to your plan?”

“Yoda was the best candidate for the position. He'd have drawn votes from the other judges even without my support.”

“Maybe, maybe not. After all, Cindy prefers big dogs and lately she's been spending her own downtime hanging around with Ben O'Donnell. Then there's Chris, who got his pet Scottie from Dorothy Foyle. So I'm assuming that Doug must have been your ace in the hole.”

“Doug's my boss. Why would he do anything just because I asked him to . . . ?” Abruptly Simone went still. “Wait a minute!
Cindy's been seeing Ben?
”

“Yup.”

“That stupid girl. What the hell is she thinking?”

“Maybe the same thing you're thinking when you're with Doug.”

Simone started to speak. Then she stopped and sighed. “Shit. Is there anything you don't know?”

Plenty, but I started by stating the obvious. “I don't know who murdered Larry Kim.”

“It wasn't me.”

“That's what everybody says. But Lisa thinks her husband's death was related to the contest, and I have to agree. Someone saw Yoda as a threat. The killer must have known that the Yorkie was supposed to win. He thought he saw a way to eliminate her from the competition and he took it. So this is important, Simone. Who else was in on your plan?”

For once, the PR director didn't argue. Finally she seemed to have found my logic compelling enough to try and help me work things through.

“Lisa and I came up with the idea,” she said slowly. “And once Doug had seen Yoda and realized what a great spokesdog she would make, he agreed to go along.”

“So it was just the three of you?”

That would have been enough to decide the outcome in their favor. Yoda would have had two votes out of four, including Doug's, which Cindy had told me earlier counted for more than the others.

“And Chris,” said Simone.

“Chris?” I repeated. That was the second time his involvement had surprised me. “How did he find out what was going on?”

“It was during a meeting we had about the direction we wanted the contest to go. Upper management only.”

I assumed that meant just the vice president and the two directors, excluding Cindy, who was only a product manager.

“Chris felt that his input wasn't being given the weight it deserved. He thought we were ignoring his contributions. Oh, let's be frank. He threw a hissy fit. He wanted MacDuff to win the contest, and if MacDuff wasn't going to win he wanted to know the reason why. Finally, just to shut Chris up, Doug told him that Yoda was our pick and there was nothing he could do to change that.”

“I wonder where Chris was when Larry was killed?” I asked. I'd been thinking out loud and didn't really expect an answer, but it turned out that Simone's thoughts had mirrored mine.

“He'd already left the conference room. He said he was going upstairs. Chris's office is on the fourth floor. He said there was someone he needed to see.”

Bingo, I thought.

T
he door to Simone's office opened. Her secretary stuck her head in. “Everybody's going down to the lobby for the press conference. And Mr. Allen just called. He wants to see all the finalists in the conference room for a quick briefing before they head downstairs.”

“You'd better go.” Simone rose quickly. I got the impression that she didn't mind having an excuse to get rid of me. “Doug hates to be kept waiting.”

“What are we being briefed on?” I asked. Surely Doug wasn't planning to spill the beans about the winner. More likely, we'd be receiving a lecture on how to conduct ourselves in front of the press when we lost.

Simone just shrugged. Now that our meeting was over, her thoughts had clearly moved on.

“Go,” she said, making shooing motions with her hand. “Tell Doug I'll see him downstairs.”

Faith and I left the office and headed in the direction of the conference room. Walking down the hall, my feet were dragging. Faith kept scampering on ahead, then having to stop and wait for me to catch up.

The truth was, now that my association with Champions Dog Food was about to come to an end, I wanted more time. As soon as the contest winner had been announced, the finalists would disperse and the committee members would move on to new tasks. And I'd be out of excuses for hanging around and asking questions. I might be forced to concede that I hadn't been able to figure out who killed Larry Kim.

Faith and I hadn't gone very far when I heard the door to Simone's office open behind us. I paused and took a peek back.

Though nearly everyone on the third floor was gathering by the elevator to head down to the lobby, the PR director was striding purposefully in the other direction. As I watched, she reached the door to the fire stairs, shoved it open, and ducked inside.

Briefly, I gazed back in the direction of the conference room. The other finalists were probably already there with Doug. No doubt they were waiting for me and Faith to show up.

Duty warred with curiosity. Sad to say, it was a brief battle. I wanted to know where Simone was in such a hurry to get to and there was only one way to find out.

“What the heck,” I said to Faith, chucking her under the chin and alerting her to the fact that we were about to go the other way. “It's not like we were going to win anyway.”

We reached the stairwell just in time to hear the heavy fire door shut on the landing above us. Together, Faith and I went running up the steps to the fourth floor. I eased the door open slowly.

Simone's heels were beating a brisk tattoo on the shiny floor. Thankfully, they covered any noise I might have made. I watched Simone detour right when she reached Chris's office. She shoved open the door and marched inside without knocking. Faith and I slipped out of the stairwell and followed.

The fourth floor, like the one below, was now mostly deserted. The majority of the Champions employees were down in the lobby, waiting to share in the excitement of the press conference and the big announcement. Nobody noticed what Faith and I were doing as we crept quietly along the corridor.

I'd expected that we would have to be right beside the doorway to hear what was going on, but Simone must have been counting on nobody being around. Either that, or she was simply too angry to moderate her voice. Even though we were still two doors away, I was able to hear the first words she addressed to Chris.

“Are you crazy? What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“Calm down, okay?” Chris's voice was pitched much lower than Simone's, but it didn't matter. Faith and I were close enough now. I could hear just fine. “What's the matter? What's going on?”

“I'll tell you what's going on,” she snapped. “The deal we made is off!”

“No, it's not. You can't do that.”

“I can and I am.”

“It's too late,” Chris said. He sounded triumphant. “The announcement's about to be made.”

“There's still time. Doug won't start the press conference until I get there. All I have to do is pull him aside and tell him I've reconsidered.”

“You'll just end up making yourself look like an idiot. You already told him you thought MacDuff should win.”

What?
I shrank back, shocked. Where had
that
come from? Wasn't Simone supposed to be Yoda's most ardent supporter?

“Only because you blackmailed me into changing my vote when Lisa went AWOL,” said Simone.

“Hey man, Larry was dead and she was gone. Nobody had any idea when she was coming back. You've got a lot of influence around here, but even you couldn't convince Doug to name a missing finalist as the winner.”

I leaned forward again, hand cupped around Faith's muzzle to ensure her silence. This was getting more interesting by the moment. Simone had thought she was doing the right thing by keeping Lisa's whereabouts a secret and it looked as though it had ended up costing them both.

“Besides,” Chris countered. “Blackmail is a pretty strong word coming from someone who stole my idea and passed it off as her own.”

“I told you at the time that that was an accident. It wasn't supposed to happen. Doug and I were going through a rough patch when you approached me with the proposal for the contest. I was going to give you credit when I took the idea to him. Honestly, I was. But next thing I knew he was calling me clever and innovative—”

“Words he would have applied to me, if he'd known the truth.”

I maneuvered until I could see Simone through the crack between the door and the jamb. She had her arms crossed over her chest.

“You could have told him,” she said.

“Yeah, right. Like he'd have taken my word over yours. Especially after you'd already gotten to him first.”

“You know what they say about the early bird . . .”

“Oh, stuff it,” Chris said impatiently. “This discussion is over. Nothing is changing. We're both going downstairs to stand and smile for the press while Doug announces that MacDuff is the very deserving winner of the ‘All Dogs Are Champions' contest.”

“No way,” Simone replied. “Trust me, that is not happening. Now that I've been made privy to
additional information,
I'm going back to my original plan, and you won't dare to try and stop me.”

“What additional information?”

“Are you sure you want me to spell this out for you, Chris? Because you don't come off looking very good. You were the one who was in the stairwell with Larry Kim when he fell, weren't you?”

Chris shook his head in denial, but Simone ignored him and kept speaking. “I guess you thought that if you could eliminate Yoda, MacDuff would have a clear path to winning the contest. Is that why you pushed Larry down the stairs? Were you hoping to injure Yoda so badly that she couldn't continue to compete? You ended up with more than you bargained for, didn't you?”

The phone on Chris's desk rang. Looking murderously at Simone, he reached over and picked up the receiver.

“I'm on my way,” he said. “Yes, she's here, too. We'll be coming right down.” There was a pause, then he added, “No I haven't seen Faith or Melanie. I don't know where they are.”

“They went to the conference room,” Simone said. “That was at least ten minutes ago.”

“No, we didn't.”

Faith by my side, I stepped through the doorway. I've never been very good at skulking around, and besides, I wanted to hear Chris's reply, too. Simone might let him get away without answering her questions, but I wasn't about to.

“Oh, fu—” Chris looked up. Then he turned back to the phone and said, “No, nothing's wrong. Melanie's just shown up. We're all on our way.”

“How much did you hear?” Simone asked.

Chris hung up the phone and walked out from behind his desk.

“Everything. Except the answer to your last question.”

Chris turned his back on Simone and looked at me. “Seriously. You didn't believe all that garbage she was saying, did you?”

“Most of it.”

“You think
I
killed Larry Kim?”

“Someone did. Why not you?”

“What would I have stood to gain?”

“I don't know yet. But I do know that you really wanted MacDuff to win the contest. Just like Simone really wanted Yoda to win. Maybe you had some sort of deal going with Dorothy.”

“Goddamn deals.” Chris snorted out an exasperated sigh. “I've heard enough of that crap to last me a lifetime. I'll tell you what the
deal
was that I had going with Dorothy. If I could get MacDuff to win the contest, my mother would get off my back. How's that for an incentive?”

“Your mother?” Simone looked just as puzzled as I felt.

“What does she have to do with anything?”

“Dorothy Foyle is my aunt. She's my mother's dotty sister, excuse the pun. When she was busy traveling all over the place showing MacDuff, my parents never saw her, which suited them just fine. Then MacDuff got old and got retired and suddenly Dorothy had time on her hands. For the past several months she's been calling every day, dropping by my parents' house to chat, and basically driving my mother nuts. And when my mother's unhappy, everyone else around her had better watch out.”

Every once in a while it was nice to be reminded that I wasn't the only one with problem relatives.

“Next thing I know, Dorothy comes up with this big plan. Or maybe it was my mother's plan. Who even cares anymore?” Chris reached up and raked his fingers back through the sparse hair at his crown. His frustration with his family was so palpable that I couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

“Wouldn't it be nice if MacDuff could be on television? Wouldn't that be a wonderful outlet for his talents instead of just letting them go to waste? As if a dog his age has any ambition left. For Pete's sake, he's nearly fifty in human years. Let's see who we know who has connections . . . What about Chris? Surely he could be useful somehow. He works for a major dog food company . . .”

Chris was rambling on, almost talking to himself now. Simone was staring pointedly at her watch. She was probably wondering how much longer Doug could continue to hold up the press conference. As for me, I was waiting for Chris to get to the point.

“So my aunt and my mother sit me down at the kitchen table and feed me cake and tell me all about this supposedly brilliant idea they've cooked up between them to hold a contest—”

“Wait a minute!” Simone cried. “You mean you had the nerve to put me through the wringer for taking credit for your idea and it wasn't even yours to begin with?”

“Yeah, something like that.” Chris's watery blue eyes blinked behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “Ironic, huh?”

Sheesh, I thought. These two deserved each other.

“And then what?” I asked impatiently.

“And then,” Chris said, “Simone grabbed the idea for the contest and ran with it. Next thing I know, not only was I not getting any credit but Dorothy and MacDuff weren't winning either. Talk about your basic lose-lose situation.”

“And that was worth committing murder over?”

“How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not a murderer and I didn't kill anyone. If I'd thought that was a plausible way out, don't you think it would have occurred to me that it was simpler to fix the problem at the source and just strangle my Aunt Dorothy? The only thing I did was talk to Larry and try to make another deal.”

My head was spinning from all these back-room machinations. Were Faith and I the only ones who hadn't been approached? I wondered. I supposed that said something, probably unflattering, about how seriously we'd been taken as contestants.

“Fine,” Simone snapped. “We'll have to finish this later. We're holding everything up downstairs. Let's go.”

The four of us filed out of the office. Later my ass, I thought. We could all walk and talk at the same time. Simone and Chris headed for the elevator. Faith and I followed. I wasn't about to let the two of them out of my sight.

“So you didn't intend to kill Larry,” I said to Chris. “You only wanted to make a deal with him.”

“That's what I'm trying to tell you. By that time, I'd pretty much figured out that Simone was backing Yoda because Larry and Lisa needed the money from the advertising contract. Well, Dorothy didn't care about the money. What she wanted was the fame and the excitement. The chance to see MacDuff back in the spotlight again. So after the opening reception, I pulled Larry aside—”

“In the stairwell,” I said, just to make sure that I was keeping things straight.

“Right. It's not like I wanted anyone to overhear what I was saying. I told him that since the fix had already been put in once, if he'd agree to work with me, I was sure we could make a mutually beneficial business arrangement. All he had to do was withdraw Yoda from the contest and let MacDuff win and I'd make sure that he and Lisa got the money they needed.”

“Oh . . . my . . . God,” Simone said softly as the elevator doors opened and the four of us stepped inside.

Chris hit the button that would take us to the lobby. “What's the matter? It's not as if I was doing anything worse than what you'd already done yourself.”

“You idiot!' she said. “Larry didn't know about the arrangement I'd made with Lisa. He wasn't supposed to know anything about that. The Kims didn't need money, Lisa did. She was going to use it to buy her freedom. From him.”

Chris gulped. “I guess that explains his reaction.”