Snipped in the Bud (16 page)

His gaze traveled the length of my kimono, which wasn’t much of a length at all. “Wear that and it’s a deal.”

“Marco, if I show up in this, my parents won’t let us sit anywhere near each other. You’d be at one end of the table and I’d be in the restroom with my mother, a stack of linen napkins, and a handful of safety pins. But, hey, I’m wearing it now, and the day is still young.”

Marco gave me an apologetic look. “I can’t, Abby. Chris is off tonight and I’m shorthanded on waitstaff, too.”

“This bar business really cuts into our personal time,” I said with a sigh.

“I’ve only owned the place for six months. Once I get settled in, things will improve.”

Somehow I didn’t see that happening. Marco loved being at the bar, not that I could blame him, because I loved being at the flower shop. But where did that leave me? Hanging around the bar until the wee hours? I didn’t think so, not when I needed to be up at six a.m.

“Tell you what,” Marco said. “Tomorrow night we’ll tackle Puffer at the country club, dine with your family, and then have time to ourselves afterward. How does that sound?”

“Fine, but let’s not wait until Monday to interview the other suspects. In fact, what are you doing this afternoon?”

“Meeting with liquor distributors.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“No good. I’ll be tied up all day. Don’t frown, Sunshine. If you were in immediate danger of being arrested, Reilly would give me a heads-up.”

“Well, that’s reassuring,” I muttered crossly.

Marco crooked his index finger at me. I leaned across the console and he did the same, our lips meeting in a long, hot kiss that left me wanting more. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Abby,” he whispered.

Oh, how I wanted to believe him. The problem was, I was too much of a realist. I knew that there was only so much one person could control. At that moment, however, I didn’t want to think about reality. I pulled back my head to gaze into those dreamy eyes. “Are you positive you have to work this evening?”

“Yes.” He kissed me again, and I nearly climbed across the gearshift to get closer. But just because I was in an alley didn’t mean I was an alley
cat,
so we ended it before the windows steamed up completely.

I got out and walked around to his side to lean in for one last, lingering kiss. “See you tomorrow evening,” I said in a sexy purr. Then I straightened, gave him an over-the-shoulder smolder of a glance, and walked away—no, make that sashayed away, shaking my booty for all it was worth. If he couldn’t see me tonight, at least I could make him wish he could.

But as I trudged up the steps to the second floor in those high-heeled torture chambers Jillian called boots, I started thinking about all the hours between now and tomorrow evening. It was only two thirty in the afternoon. I couldn’t go to work. I couldn’t sit at home watching TV all day, wondering whether the police were about to show up with an arrest warrant. So what was I going to do? Hunt for the killer myself?

Why not?

T
here wasn’t a single reason in the world why I couldn’t hunt for the killer myself. I had a brain. I knew how to use tact. And I’d start by talking with Bea. She’d be an easy one to check off the list. As Grace liked to say, why put off till tomorrow what you could do today?

My cell phone rang, so I reached into my purse and glanced at the screen. “What’s up?” I asked Jillian, not bothering with the niceties.

“Where are you?”

“In the hallway, just about to step into my apartment.”

I heard a door hit the wall and turned to see Jillian shoot out of her new place and come hurrying toward me. “Abby, I don’t know what to do,” she said, following me inside as Simon, who had come to greet me, took off for parts unknown. “I haven’t had any luck finding Peewee, and when I called the police, they told me there’s been a rash of pet thefts over the past month and they haven’t found any traces of the animals. They’ve just vanished. Poof! Also, I just told Mrs. Sample that Peewee was dognapped and she didn’t take it well.”

She flopped down on my sofa. “You should have seen Mrs. Sample’s face, Abby. It was awful. It was like someone cut out her heart. I’ve never felt this bad in my entire life.”

“You jilted four men at the altar.
That
didn’t make you feel bad?”

She shot me a scowl.

“Okay,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll go talk to Mrs. Sample and try to console her.”

“Um…that’s probably not a good idea. In fact, you’d better stay away from her for a while. Maybe you should even consider moving.”

“Jillian, what are you talking about?”

“She thinks the dognapping is your fault.”

“You didn’t explain that
you
were in charge of Peewee?”

“And have her think I’m irresponsible?”

“You
are
irresponsible, Jillian. You lost her dog!”

“And you are a judgmental snot.”

“You better believe I’m judging you. I’m also finding you guilty and sentencing you to go talk to
Mr
. Sample to explain what you did. He’ll know how to calm his wife.”

Jillian wrinkled her nose.

“What?” I asked her. “Did you already talk to him?”

“Mr. Sample is in the hospital. They had to take out his appendix in an emergency operation. He’s fine, but now Mrs. Sample is in her apartment all alone and, well…” She stopped talking and cupped a hand to her ear. “Can you hear her sobbing?”

I heard her. I’m sure people in the next county heard her, too. On top of everything else, I now had a good neighbor angry with me. I took Jillian’s hand and led her toward the doorway.

“Where are we going?”

“Not we.
You,
Jillian. You’re going to apologize to Mrs. Sample for losing her dog and promise to continue searching for him.”

Ignoring my cousin’s protests, I knocked on the Samples’ door. Before I could push Jillian to the front, Mrs. Sample opened the door, saw me, and crushed me to her bounteous bosom, wailing so loud I feared my ears would bleed. “I knew you’d come,” she sobbed. “I forgive you for losing him, Abby! Just, please, find my baby.”

“Me?”

“The police aren’t of any help,” she continued, “and the animal shelter doesn’t have him. But he can’t have just disappeared. He has to be somewhere. With my husband in the hospital, I don’t have anywhere else to turn.”

“I’d love to help, but the thing is—”

Hiccuping, she gazed at me forlornly, and the rest of my sentence died. “Do you have a photo of Peewee?” I asked. As she ran off to find one, I turned to glare at Jillian.
Now
there was a reason why I couldn’t start interviewing suspects.

Wearing a short, curly, blond wig from Jillian’s collection, a pair of tan cargo pants, and a white blouse, trying to look as bland and harmless as possible, I dragged my cousin with me on a trip around the neighborhood to canvass everyone who’d had a pet stolen in the past month. Jillian, too, donned a disguise—a cropped black wig, a white T-shirt, and farmer’s overalls. She claimed it was to protect her image, but I had my doubts. Jillian always had ulterior motives.

In a four-block area, we discovered that no one had seen Peewee, and twelve pets had gone missing, too many to be a coincidence. Everyone agreed someone was stealing the animals, but no one had seen the thieves at work. However, several people remembered seeing a gray minivan parked on the street, its engine idling. My guess was that the guys Jillian had asked for help had been the thieves. They must have gotten a kick out of pretending to look for Peewee.

At six o’clock we called it quits and went home, mainly because Jillian’s platform sandals were giving her blisters and she was overheating. She’d tolerate blisters for the sake of fashion, but she refused to perspire. At least we had one thing to go on—the gray minivan—so the next step would be to track down that van. I’d have to enlist Reilly’s help for that job.

Back home, we ate buttered toast and omelets with salsa on top, then at seven o’clock Jillian left to meet with a client at her new apartment. I tried to reach Bea but got an answering machine, and I didn’t know how to reach Kenny, so I sat there tossing a rubber band for Simon and watching a rerun of
That ’70s Show,
which I never liked when it was new. I needed to find the killer, but since I couldn’t tackle that until tomorrow, what was I going to do?

Lottie and Grace were taking care of everything at Bloomers. According to Lottie, customers were still pouring in, but with her cousin Pearl’s help, they were managing just fine. All that business and they didn’t need me? Was Pearl that efficient? Or had I been that slow?

I moped around for another half hour, then at eight o’clock I decided that if I went to the shop and simply sat in the workroom and breathed in all that good air, maybe I’d have an inspiration as to how to solve the case. So, wearing the blond wig and the bland outfit that went with it, I snuck out to my car and headed toward the town square.

Half a mile from my apartment, driving along Glendale Boulevard, I glanced up a side street and spotted a gray van double-parked with its headlights off, facing in the opposite direction. Immediately, my inner alarm kicked in—was it the pet thieves at work?—so I made a quick right and headed toward the van. As I drew up behind it, I could see that two people were inside. The license plate was the temporary kind, handwritten on cardboard and taped to the back window, as if the vehicle had recently been purchased.

Just as I pulled out my notebook to copy the numbers, the van drove off, continuing up the street and around the corner. Had I made them nervous? A quick survey of the houses on the block showed that fences enclosed the backyards, making them safer for pets. Maybe that was why they hadn’t stuck around. Following their lead, I turned at the next corner and went a few blocks farther, and there was the van again. This time I killed my headlights and pulled over.

Moments later, a figure dressed in dark clothing, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, darted out from between houses carrying a bundle in his arms. He jumped in the van’s side door and slammed it, and they took off. Damn! They stole a pet right before my eyes. I flipped open my phone and punched in 911 as I sped after the van.

“I want to report a possible petnapping,” I told the dispatcher, making a right turn onto Concord.

“A
possible
petnapping?”

“I didn’t actually see the pet, but I did see what looked like an animal in a sack.”

“You didn’t see the animal. Just a sack.”

“And the van—a gray Chrysler minivan with a temporary plate in the back window. I’m following the suspects now.” Ahead, the vehicle turned left on Lincoln and headed east. “Look, it’s a long story and I’m running out of time because they’ll be at the highway in a matter of minutes and then I’ll lose them. Could you please send a squad?”

“Your name please.”

Did she not understand that time was critical? “Abby Knight,” I said, and rattled off my cell phone number. “Is Sgt. Reilly on duty?”

“I’ll check. Hold please.”

The van sped up the ramp and got on the interstate, heading north, with me in hot pursuit. But when it began veering around cars, weaving dangerously from lane to lane, I gave up the chase. I was willing to sacrifice my time for an animal, but not my life.

“Sgt. Reilly said he will contact you, Abby,” the dispatch operator said.

“Tell him never mind. It’s too late. They’re gone.”

Frustrated, I drove back to the neighborhood where I’d seen the van. Just as I had feared, in front of a small, yellow frame house I saw an elderly, gray-haired couple searching behind their shrubs with flashlights. “Sparky!” they called in turn. “Sparky! Here, boy.”

Poor people. I couldn’t stand the thought of them searching for hours in vain. “Are you looking for your dog?” I asked, stepping out of my car.

The woman put a hand to her heart. “Yes. He was in our backyard. Now he’s gone and the fence is open. Have you seen him?” So much for the safety of fences.

“I saw somebody take him. They drove off in a gray minivan and I tried to follow, but they lost me on the highway. I think they’re the same people who took my neighbor’s Chihuahua. Anyway, I just came back to let you know.”

“Our friend’s cat went missing a week ago,” the elderly gentleman told me as his wife turned to sob against his shoulder.

“There’s been a rash of petnappings lately,” I said. “Spread the word to your neighbors not to let their pets out without supervision. And please call me if you see a gray Chrysler minivan in your area.” I dug out one of my business cards and handed it to him.

“You own Bloomers?” he asked, which made his wife stop sniffling and turn to look at me. “Are you the one that was in the newspaper the other day?”

“That’s me, and please don’t believe everything you read. All I did was deliver a flower. I didn’t kill anyone.”

“You don’t look like the girl that was in the papers,” the woman said, studying my blond curls.

“This is a wig,” I said, giving a tug on a curl. “I’m not the most popular person in town right now. I thought it would be better to go incognito for awhile.”

“You don’t need to hide your identity around us.” The man stuck out his hand to shake mine vigorously. “I’m Digger Johnson. This is my wife, Helen. We’re very pleased to meet you, Abby. We marched at the protest rally and saw how you stood up to those bastards at Dermacol. You’re a hero in our book.”

“A heroine, Digger, not a hero,” his wife said, giving me a tearful smile even as she corrected him—another trait that all women inherited. “We admire you for standing up for those poor animals, Abby. We’d love to see that lab closed down.”

Wow. Someone
was
on my side.

Suddenly Helen looked at her husband with a gasp of horror. “What if the thefts are related to the testing at the lab, Digger? What if they took our Sparky for their research?”

I didn’t want to alarm her further, but that thought had crossed my mind, too. I’d read about such cases before. Dermacol had to get their animals somewhere, and stealing them would be a whole lot cheaper than buying them. But why had the van headed north toward Lake Michigan instead of south, to the laboratory?

Duh.
To throw me off the trail. “Please call the police and file a report,” I said, backing toward my car. “If I come across any information about Sparky, I’ll let you know.”

I hopped in the Vette and headed straight for Dermacol Labs. If my hunch was right, the thieves would show up soon to drop off the animals. But what was I going to do if I caught them? Make a citizen’s arrest? Yeah, right. I could call the police again, but even if they did buy my story, by the time they arrived, the animals would be tucked away inside, and the cops couldn’t search the lab without a warrant. And to get a warrant, they’d need proof.

So I detoured to Walgreens drugstore to buy a disposable camera.

Hurrying through the automatic doors, I nearly collided with Kenny Lipinski, his arms loaded with bags of chips and liters of Coke.

“Sorry,” he muttered, giving me a quick glance. Then he did a double take. “Abby?”

“Yeah, it’s me, trying to avoid the press.”

“No kidding. It seems like someone is working hard to make you look guilty.”

“Yeah, and I have a strong hunch who that someone is.”

“Are you talking about the Dragon?”

“Who else?”

At that moment the doors swished open and a customer came out, so Kenny stepped off to the side and motioned for me to join him. “Just so you know,” he said quietly, “Puffer wasn’t the only one who had a beef with Professor Reed.”

“Kenny, if you know anything that will help me clear my name, please tell me.”

He pursed his lips, as though debating what to say. “I’m not sure if this will help, so take it for what it’s worth. Professor Reed came in Monday morning in a foul mood. He’d just ended an affair with a woman who wanted to leave her husband for him. I don’t know who she was, but she didn’t take the breakup well and even made a few threats about his job.”