Sneak Thief (A Dog Park Mystery) (23 page)

T
he bowl was glazed
with a cheery cobalt blue, intended to distract Bailey from the flat, grayish legumes with curly white tails that filled it.

“This is your idea of post-seance eats? At least the dogs got liver.”

“Where's your sense of culinary adventure?”

“I tossed it in the garbage with the last smoothie you tried to feed me.”

“Bailey, you're a disgrace to vegans everywhere.”

Bailey sighed and dipped her hand cautiously into the proffered bowl of freshly washed lentil sprouts and popped a few in her mouth.

“What do you think?” Lia asked while Bailey crunched.

Bailey made a face. “Tastes like cardboard.”

“But they're so healthy!” Lia insisted.

“They still taste like cardboard.”

“They're dirt cheap and easy to grow.”

“Okay, they taste like dirty cardboard.”

“Living food, Bailey. And they're alkalizing out the wazoo.”

Bailey dumped the rest of the sprouts back in the bowl and dusted off her hands. “Exactly what is it about ‘tastes like cardboard' that you don't get?”

“Okay, okay. There's got to be a way to make them palatable.” Lia tapped her lower lip with her index finger, thinking.

“I find I can disguise almost anything in spaghetti sauce, especially if I use a lot of garlic.”

Lia just looked at her.

“Why don't you settle for a pot of mujadara? That's easy enough to make."

“Enzymes, Bailey. You cook them and you kill enzymes. You know that.” Lia scowled.

“A marinade, maybe?” Bailey suggested, conciliatory.

“Takes too long. I want something I can whip up. Miso maybe? It's savory, so it should go with the taste.”

“If you can call it taste. That might be too ambitious.”

Lia pulled out her blender and her single cup coffee maker from their place at the back of the counter. “I know! A miso lentil smoothie.” She poured a cup of cold water into her one-cup coffee maker to heat it up, then pulled the miso out of the fridge. While the water heated, she rinsed a cup of sprouts and dumped them in the blender. She added a heaping tablespoon of red miso, returned the tub to the fridge and emerged with a bag of washed, chopped kale. “I put this in my blueberry smoothies all the time. It should be fine with the lentils.”

“I don't know, Lia. You sure you want to make so much? What if it tastes bad?”

“Have a little faith. There isn't a smoothie alive that I can't swallow.” She dumped a large handful of greens on top of the sprouts. Now the hot water was ready. She poured it on top of everything, closed the lid and turned the blender on. Sixty seconds later, Lia turned it off and popped the lid.

They peered in at the lumpy green mess.

“This reminds me of something,” Bailey said. “I can't think of what it is, though.”

Lia filled a glass with her concoction. “Want some?”

“You first.”

“Bottoms up.” She tilted the glass and took a drink. Eyes wide, Lia thumped the glass down on the counter then leaned over and spat into the sink. She grabbed a clean glass, filled it with water and rinsed her mouth several times. Finally she set the glass back down and leaned back against the counter. All while Bailey doubled over with laughter.

“That was the single most revolting thing I've ever tasted,” Lia admitted. She dumped her invention back in the blender and hauled it into the bathroom, Bailey following.

“Must you watch?”

“I'm so starved for entertainment.”

Lia dumped the green mush into the toilet and flushed.

“Linda Blair,” Bailey said.

“Huh?”

“You looked just like Linda Blair spewing out vomit in
The Exorcist
. That's what that stuff reminded me of. You know, after her head spins around backward? Watching you spit it out reminded me.”

“So glad I could be of service. Still starved for entertainment?”

“Maybe. Got any DVDs with good beefcake?”

“That depends. Are you going to tell Peter about this?”

“Hmmm.”

“Bailey, promise me you'll never tell Peter I spit out one of my smoothies.”

“I dunno.” She held one hand out, palm up. “Beefcake,” she said, looking at her hand as if she expected a tiny stud muffin to appear there. “. . . humiliating you in a way that you will never live down.” She held out her other hand. She hummed while she joggled her upturned palms, mimicking a scale while she weighed her options. “This is a really tough decision.”

“Bailey, you tell Peter and I'll never talk to you again.”

Bailey pursed her lips, nodded her head thoughtfully, considering.

“Bailey!”

“I'm thinking, I'm thinking.”

“I'll download season one of
The Doll House
.”

“Well . . . I don't know . . . .”

“Okay, okay. If you'll go pick it up, I'll order Dewey's.”

“What's this obsession you have with lentil recipes?” Bailey asked around a mouthful of spinach, garlic and goat cheese pizza.

“I'm trying to up my raw food quotient. I ate lentils all winter because they're the only alkaline bean and I'm trying to keep my PH balanced. There has to be a way to eat them raw. I refuse to turn my back on all those lovely enzymes.”

“What about just munching them? I don't like eating cardboard, but that's just me.”

“I tried that while I was running errands the other day. I was so proud of myself for eating a whole cup of lentil sprouts. Then my car drove itself to UDF and when I came to, I was at the register with a couple of custard filled, chocolate-iced Bismarcks. It was totally counter productive.”

“Sure, but you got to eat chocolate.”

“There is that.”

L
ia pulled
out her phone on break at Scholastic that night to check her messages, hoping Peter called. She had one message on voicemail. It was Steve from the Homeless Alliance. She almost hung up her phone out of disappointment. “Lia, It's Steve Reams. I kept asking around, and I finally talked to someone who remembered your mystery guy's real name. It's Eric Flynn. Hope this helps. Let me know if you need anything else.”

Lia's ears rang and her breathing became shallow.
Eric?
Nice Eric, who she picked out for Desiree?
Eric is a stalker . . . a killer?
She looked at the clock. Seven minutes, and she had to be back at her workstation. Next to Eric. She felt nauseated, as if she might throw up.
What am I going to do about this? How am I going to make it through the next two hours? Act normal. Just act normal, and after you get off work you can tell Peter. He doesn't know you know and he can't hurt you while you're at work.

Lia avoided looking at Eric as she made her way to her chair. She kept her eyes on her monitor and tried to concentrate on her work. Good thing employee chatter was discouraged. Her mind extrapolated possibilities.
Eric killed Desiree. Eric made me a doll. Is Eric going to kill me?
She would have given anything to leave right that moment, but she didn't want to call attention to herself.

She had to reread many papers several times to get her focus. Twice Eric showed her scoring mistakes she'd made. She kept her eyes down while her heart pounded and nodded in response to Eric's concerns, promising to try harder.

The clock moved so slowly it would have lost a race with continental drift.

Finally Eric announced that it was time to finish scoring the current paper and shut down.

Lia grabbed her bag and scooted her chair back, preparing to make a quick exit. Eric put a hand on her arm to stop her.

“Lia, can you stick around? I need to talk to you.”

“I, uh, someone's waiting on me,” she lied.

“Five minutes?”

“Uh . . .” She did rapid mental calculations. Five minutes, and people would still be in the building, even if they weren't in this room. There would still be cars in the parking lot. She could hold it together for five minutes, sure she could.

Her insides froze as Eric collected folders and her teammates gathered their belongings and joined the evening exodus.

Finally, the room was empty. Eric sat back down.

“What did you need, Eric?” she asked, anxious to get away.

“You've been off your game the entire second half of shift. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine, really.”
Except for my heart pounding in my ears.

“Something's bothering you, I can tell. What happened over break?”

“Look, it's personal. I promise I'll do better tomorrow. I've got to go.” She stood up, fingering the kubotan in her sweater pocket anxiously.

“I really have to go.” Her voice turned into a squeak. Appalled, she lunged for freedom.

He grabbed her arm, “Lia, you're freaking out. What is this?”

“Let me go, Eric,” she exploded. “Don't ever touch me. I know what you are. I know what you did to Desiree.” Shocked, he dropped her arm. She backed away, keeping her eyes on him.

“Now wait a minute. . . .” he began, coming towards her.

“Stay back!” She pulled her hand out of her pocket and before she thought about it, she depressed the plunger on her kubotan, hitting Eric in the chest with pepper spray. He howled with pain and surprise.

She turned and ran, not stopping until she'd crossed the parking lot and arrived, panting and sobbing at her old Volvo. Only to see a little foil doll perched on her driver-side mirror.

Lia gave a strangled cry of frustration and struck the doll. It bounced off the next car and passed through the headlights of a car pinned in the nightly logjam. It landed on the asphalt where another departing employee stepped on it.

She looked back as she fumbled with the Volvo's lock, her hand shaking so hard she dropped her keys twice.
If this were the Terminator, he'd pop up in front of me right now, looking like Terry and calling my dog by the wrong name.
. . . A security guard was standing in the doorway, scanning the nightly traffic jam.
Yep, that's Eric, he's killed the guard and morphed into a replica of him so I won't realize he's following me. I've got to stop this. I'll go into hysterics and I won't know if it's because I'm laughing or freaking out.

There were too many cars. No way would Eric be able to pick her out. Heart pounding, she eased her car into the melee. The stop and go traffic increased her distress as she attempted to avoid rear-ending the car in front of her while struggling to absorb her confrontation with Eric. The nightly exodus snaked around the building at a snails pace until, finally, she pulled out on the boulevard. She gunned her car, squealing her tires as she tore down the road. She slammed on the brakes when she saw the lights of the first gas station, over a mile from Scholastic.

Lia sat in her car with her phone in her hand and waited for her heart to stop pounding.
Breathe. Remember what Asia taught you.
When she thought she could speak again, she speed dialed Peter.

“Hey, I wasn't expecting to hear from you tonight. What's the occasion?”

“Peter,” she quavered. “I know who killed Desiree, and he knows I know.”

P
eter tapped
his foot impatiently as he sat on Lia's porch, waiting for her to get home. Four dogs watched through the living room window, paws propped on the sill, heads in a row, whining to get out.

Lia had refused his offer to come get her, saying she'd feel better if she kept moving. He'd promised to wait for her.
That creep knows where she lives.
There wasn't much chance that Eric could beat her home, not since she'd maced him and he'd be busy filing an incident report, if not a police report.
No.
He won't go to the police. Too much explaining.

Really, she was at greater risk of having an accident than she was of being accosted. He'd made her promise to drive carefully.