Murder Unleashed (6 page)

A bit of white dog fluff wafting on the air landed on his navy suit. Helen had to restrain herself to keep from picking it off. The detective’s suit was well cut, but it didn’t quite fit him. The pants were a smidgen too short and the sleeves were a fraction too long. Helen wondered if he’d bought it at a resale shop. Brogers probably couldn’t afford custom tailoring on his salary, but he was shrewd enough to know rich people were offended by cheap suits. He knew everything that might upset the wealthy of Wakefield.

The rich were temperamental as racehorses. They expected special treatment. A bigger city might send a uniformed officer for Willoughby’s call. Wakefield Manor sent a detective to hold the victim’s hand.

Willoughby presented Detective Brogers with a dainty paw and smiled bravely. She was going to play the victim to the hilt. She was a man-pleasing combination of pink, pearls, and blond curls. Helen could see the detective calculating the price of Willoughby’s Kate Spade purse, designer clothes, and salon cut. Definitely someone to placate.

“What seems to be the problem here?” the detective said. His face was broad and red as a slab of rare roast beef.

“This person let my husband—my ex-husband, almost, we’re divorcing—steal my dog.”

“I didn’t—” Helen said.

“Let her finish,” Brogers said. Judging by his sharp tone, the detective had also added up the cost of Helen’s worn wardrobe and resoled shoes.

“She gave my dog to Francis,” Willoughby said, pointing dramatically at Helen. “He’s my husband. She gave Barkley away without telling me. It’s so awful.” A tear glittered like a diamond in the corner of her eye. Helen wondered how Willoughby had mastered the art of ornamental crying. Helen’s nose always turned red and dripped.

“It’s a very valuable dog, Detective Brogers, sir,” Willoughby said.

Detective, sir? Oh, barf. Surely the detective was smart enough not to fall for that.

Brogers’s chest swelled at this show of respect, and he gave Willoughby some of his vast worldly experience. “This happens a lot, mostly with cars and animals, when a couple is in the process of divorcing,” he said. “But unless a court has awarded you custody, then the dog is your hubby’s, too.”

Hubby. Married to the little woman.

“But I do have temporary custody,” Willoughby said. She looked up at him. “You’re the only one I can depend on, Detective. I certainly can’t count on her.” She glared at Helen.

“I—” Helen said.

Brogers ignored her.

“What I can do is write out a civil complaint for you, Miss . . .” He paused.

“Barclay,” she said. “Willoughby Barclay. I live in Wakefield Manor.” She sweetly let him know who paid his salary.

“And I’m a Wakefield Manor businessperson,” Jeff spoke for the first time. “I’m terribly sorry this has happened, but we’re not responsible—”

“You’re certainly not,” Willoughby said. “A responsible person would have never given my dog to Francis.”

“Your husband often picks up the dog,” Jeff said.

“Not since I threw that asshole out,” Willoughby said, forgetting she was supposed to be sweet and helpless. “I called you and told you we split.”

“I never received such a call,” Jeff said.

“OK, OK,” Brogers said. “Let’s settle down and talk one at a time.”

The boutique doorbell rang. “Can I wait on my customers?” Jeff asked.

Brogers waved him away. A manly detective had no interest in someone like Jeff.

Jeff rushed to the boutique side, desperate to keep the customers away from the grooming room. A dog had disappeared while under his care. Helen knew Jeff must be frantic to keep this scandal quiet, but she still wished he hadn’t abandoned her. She hoped the new customers couldn’t hear what was going on. Industrial hair dryers were roaring. Water splashed in the washing tub. Bored caged dogs were barking themselves into frenzies, demanding their masters. Willoughby was weeping prettily.

“Now,” Brogers said. “What happened, Mrs. Barclay?”

“Call me Willoughby,” she said. She batted her tear-bright eyes. Helen noticed that Willoughby’s eyeliner didn’t run. How did she do that?

“I took my dog Barkley in for her regular Saturday grooming with Jonathon. I always take her in about two. I was supposed to pick her up at five. But when I got here, this person had already given my dog to my husband.”

“But—” Helen said.

“I said, let her talk,” Brogers said.

“You must help me.” Willoughby raised her eyes to the detective, like a Victorian maiden pleading for protection. “My dog is supposed to have a photo shoot in Miami tomorrow at ten. She’s the Davis department stores mascot. She can’t miss that shoot. They’ll cancel her contract. Do you know how much money I’ll lose? Thousands. Absolute thousands.” Helen thought she sounded more worried about her money than her dog.

“Do you think your husband will take the dog to Miami himself?” Detective Brogers said.

“No. Not now,” Willoughby said. “Not since I got temporary custody. He’s trying to ruin me. He’s been acting crazy ever since I filed for divorce. He’ll keep Barkley locked up somewhere. He could hurt my dog. He’ll do anything to get even with me.”

Helen thought it would take a heartless human to harm Barkley. But Francis seemed colder than a Canadian winter. Barkley had begged for his attention, and he wouldn’t even give her a pat.

“Are you sure it was your husband who took the dog and not someone else? A kidnapper maybe?” Detective Brogers said.

“I’m positive,” Willoughby said firmly.

Helen wasn’t. She’d only seen Francis once before, when he was with the charismatic Barkley. There was no other reason to notice the man. All she could say was he had roving hands. And he’d mumbled his name, like he wasn’t sure how to pronounce it. Helen had a sudden horrible thought. Maybe the detective was right, and a kidnapper had taken Barkley for ransom. Oh, God. Would he cut off the pup’s ear to show he meant business? Helen had a vision of a bloody pup ear in an envelope. Her stomach lurched. The little curly-haired pup had looked at her so trustingly, and Helen had carelessly betrayed that trust.

“Are you going to take fingerprints?” Willoughby asked. She added five more to the grooming counter by putting her hand on it.

Helen had wiped down the counter that morning, but since then thirty dog owners had left their prints on it, and thirty dogs had walked, shed, drooled, or, in the case of one elderly chihuahua, peed on the counter.

“What’s to fingerprint?” Detective Brogers asked. Good point.

“Someone on this staff knows something,” Willoughby said, staring at Helen. “I made that call, no matter what that Jeff person said. I told them not to give my dog to Francis, and she deliberately gave it away. He bribed her. I know he did.”

“He did not!” Helen was furious. But Willoughby’s anger seemed righteous. Helen was sure the woman had called the store. A man answered the store’s phone and—either by accident or on purpose—did not enter the vital information in the computer. It couldn’t be Jeff. He’d never jeopardize his business. It had to be Todd or Jonathon. Did they forget the call in the drama of the morning? Or did someone want to punish Jeff by driving away his most important client?

“You need to get to the bottom of this,” Willoughby said. At the word “bottom,” Helen felt Francis’s hand again, groping her.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll interrogate the staff,” Detective Brogers said. He pointed to Helen. “We’ll start with you. Step into the back room.” Brogers wasn’t wasting any charm on a poor nonresident of Wakefield Manor. “Please wait here, Willoughby,” he said, and gave her a toothy smile.

Todd was at the bathtub cleaning a poodle’s anal glands when Brogers walked through the grooming-room curtains. The detective turned slightly green and made a U-turn back into the shop. “And I thought crime scenes were bad,” he said.

“Groomers earn their money,” Helen said. “We can talk in the stockroom. It’s quiet there.” She’d keep him away from the lamb lungs.

In the stockroom, Brogers took the only seat, the tall stool next to Jeff’s pot-roast sandwich. Helen dropped a towel over the lamb lungs. Lulu strolled in after them. Now she was wearing a rhinestone collar and a hot-pink feather boa. Her nails were fuchsia. On anyone else the outfit would have been overdone, but Lulu looked like a countess.

“Whose little girl are you?” Brogers asked, and bent down to scratch her ears. The detective toadied to any resident of Wakefield, even the ones who weren’t human. Lulu wagged her tail and stared soulfully at Brogers. She could teach Willoughby a few lessons when it came to flirting.

The detective wasn’t nearly as kind to Helen. He hit her with rapid-fire questions: “Who brought the dog in?”

“Willoughby,” Helen said. “Mrs. Barclay.”

“And the husband picked it up?”

“Yes,” Helen said.

“Is that normal?” Brogers said.

“I don’t know if it’s normal, but he’s done it before.”

“How often?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Helen said. “Often enough that Jeff knew the man’s voice.”

“And the wife never complained before when her husband picked up the dog?”

“No,” Helen said. She kept her answers short. The less she said, the less chance she had to trip herself up.

“Do you know the husband?” Brogers said.

“Not really,” Helen said. “I’ve only seen him once before.”

“Did you talk to him on the phone today when he wanted to pick up the dog?”

“No, my boss did. Francis called Jeff about four thirty and asked if the dog was ready. Jeff said he could pick up Barkley anytime. Francis was in the store two minutes later. He paid and left.”

“Anything unusual about that?”

“No,” Helen said. “People often call to see if their dogs are ready.”

“Were you at the store all afternoon?” Detective Brogers said.

“Most of it,” Helen said. “I had to go out for a dog pickup and return.”

“Where was that?”

“The Grimsby home in Stately Palms.”

The house with the dead body, Helen thought. She wished Brogers would stop. She was too frightened to think straight.

“When did you return?” he asked.

“About four thirty.” After I found the murdered woman, destroyed evidence, and left the scene of the crime, she thought. Helen could feel herself flushing.

“Did you ask for any ID when the husband picked up the dog?”

“Why would I? He was the dog’s owner.”

“You didn’t check the computer for Mrs. Barclay’s message?”

“There was no message,” Helen said. “It would have popped up on the screen when I rang up the grooming fee.”

“Unless you erased it,” Ted Brogers said. His eyes grew suddenly hard. “How much do you make an hour, Miz Haggard?”

Helen didn’t tell him that her name was Hawthorne. “Six dollars and seventy cents,” she said.

“Francis didn’t offer you a little bonus to keep the dog in a safe place, maybe give the wife a scare?”

“I would never do that,” she said.

“Then you should be more careful who you give your dogs to.”

“I—” Helen started to say, then stopped herself. She couldn’t afford to argue with Brogers. “I will,” she finished. She was furious and frightened.

Helen hung around outside the stockroom while Brogers questioned Todd and Jonathon. A curtain divided the room from the boutique, and she could hear everything. The two groomers knew nothing about Barkley’s disappearance. They’d been working on the dogs in the back room. They both denied taking any call from Willoughby instructing the shop not to give the dog to her husband. Brogers gave them both his card and said, “Call me if you remember anything useful.”

Jeff trotted in next, running his fingers through his thick brown hair. He looked so worried, Helen was afraid he might tear it out. Helen knew he blamed himself for Barkley’s disappearance.

At first Brogers sounded as if he couldn’t decide whether to treat Jeff as a Wakefield business owner or a potential dognapping conspirator. But Brogers knew who stuffed his pay envelope. He turned on the charm for Jeff. “Francis called and asked me if he could pick up the dog early. But that’s not unusual,” Jeff said.

“Of course not,” Brogers said. The detective even slapped Jeff on the back as they walked out to the front of the store, where Willoughby was waiting.

“This sounds like a marital misunderstanding,” the detective told Willoughby. “Don’t you worry now. I’ll drop by Francis’s place and have a little talk with him.”

Willoughby gave him another grateful smile and Helen another glare. Detective Brogers escorted Barkley’s owner to her car, as if he expected attackers to be lurking in the lot. Helen and Jeff watched Willoughby walk across the parking lot, her pink purse swinging at her side.

“She’s going to sue,” Jeff said.

“How can she?” Helen said. “You didn’t know she was in a custody fight with Francis. She should have given you the instructions about her dog in writing.”

“It won’t make any difference,” Jeff said. “This has been my nightmare. I’ve been afraid something like this would happen, and now it has—and with our most high-profile pup. Willoughby will sue. Her kind always do. The publicity will kill my store. I’ll lose everything I worked for.”

Publicity? Oh, Lord, Jeff was right. This story was made for the media. Hour after hour, they would run clips from Barkley’s commercials. Helen’s name would be all over the TV. She was the idiot who’d handed over the priceless pup.

That would be the end of her life in Florida. Helen’s ex-husband would find her, and so would the court. She could see herself in handcuffs, heading for St. Louis. She hoped the police would cuff her hands in front, not in back. The trip would be more comfortable that way.

There had to be some way to hold back the flood of publicity, before they all drowned.

“Why don’t you talk to Willoughby? Tell her you need time to find the dog. Ask her for mercy,” Helen said.