Stalking Steven Page 3

  And it did, but not as badly as I had expected. The reason was obvious once I peered inside. The odor was residual. There was nothing inside the can. No trash, and nothing else, either.

  I blinked.

  Not recycling is one thing. Not throwing anything away is quite another.

  What kind of people don’t generate trash?

  There was nothing I could do about it, though, so I just drove the Lexus back down the driveway again.

  I was passing Mrs. Grimshaw’s house when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and stepped on the brake the way you do when a squirrel is about to jump in front of the car.

  There was no squirrel, but the small, spotted dog was moving through the grass close to the road. I glanced at the house, expecting to see Mrs. Grimshaw on the stoop, watching it, but the front door was closed. I squinted, but didn’t see a figure behind the glass in the picture window, either.

  Of course, that was Mrs. Grimshaw’s business. The dog was on her property, and might even be safe behind an invisible electronic fence.

  Nonetheless, I didn’t like it being loose so close to the street. The last thing I wanted was for it to dart out suddenly, in pursuit of a squirrel, in front of a car, and get turned into roadkill. Those short legs probably couldn’t move very fast.

  I pulled into the bottom of Mrs. Grimshaw’s driveway, parked the car, and got out. “Hi, sweetheart.”

  The dog stopped rooting through the grass to look up at me. It had round black eyes set wide apart in a broad face with a flattish snout, two big, black bat ears, and a white blaze down the middle of its nose. Some sort of small bulldog or boxer mix, maybe. Not a pug, but similar.

  “What are you doing out here by yourself?” I asked.

  It didn’t answer, of course. But after a second, it abandoned the ditch and trotted up the grassy yard toward the house. I watched it go. After a few seconds, it stopped to look at me over its shoulder.

  Do dogs have shoulders?

  I’ve never had a dog. David didn’t want anything that might ruin his expensively decorated house, and before that, it was just my mother and me, before I went off to college. We had enough trouble feeding ourselves. We couldn’t afford a dog.

  Anyway, they don’t have arms, so it doesn’t make sense that they’d have shoulders. But they probably don’t have two sets of hips, either.

  At any rate, the dog looked back at me, clearly expecting me to follow.

  “Fine,” I said, and headed up the driveway.

  Instead of going to the front door, the dog headed for the rear. I turned the back corner in time to see its hind quarters, with a tiny stub of a tail, disappear through a pet flap into the house.

  So that explained how the dog had gotten out, and why Mrs. Grimshaw wasn’t watching it. For all I knew, it might be doing this every morning.

  For all I knew, Mrs. Grimshaw was ninety-five, and much too decrepit to walk her dog. This trip into the front yard might be the animal’s daily constitutional.

  At any rate, there was clearly no point in knocking on the door and telling her that her dog was loose. Not only was it not loose anymore, but it was obvious that she must know about the dog’s coming and going, since presumably she knew about the pet flap that was attached to her house.

  I was about to turn around and go back to my car when something struck me.

  There were tiny doggie footprints coming out of and going into the house. But it hadn’t rained for days. So why were the dog’s paws wet?

  I moved closer, squinting in the darkness under the carport.

  Only to stop short when I realized that the paw prints weren’t black, like water. They were red.

  “Shit.”

  I fumbled for my phone with hands that shook. And stopped with it in my hand. Talk about jumping to conclusions.

  Maybe Mrs. Grimshaw was an artist and the dog had stepped in red paint.

  Or maybe there was a broken can of marinara sauce on the kitchen floor and the dog had walked through it before Mrs. G could shoo it away.

  Or hell, maybe it really was blood, but all that had happened was that the dog had stepped on the glass from the broken jar and cut itself.

  Even if it was blood, that didn’t mean that Mrs. Grimshaw was lying inside in a pool of it, with her throat cut.

  Before I caused an alarm, I should probably endeavor to find out whether there was cause for alarm.

  I walked to the back door and knocked. “Mrs. Grimshaw? Can you hear me?”

  There was no answer. I cupped my hands over my eyes and peered through the glass in the door.

  All I could see was a washer and dryer, and an ironing board. No Mrs. Grimshaw. No blood. The door was locked. The knob rattled in my hand, but it didn’t turn and the door didn’t budge.

  I made my way around the house, peering into the windows I could reach. The first room I came to was a den, paneled in mid-century knotty pine. It was empty, of people and of blood.

  Beyond that were a couple of bedrooms, the beds made and pristine. Guest rooms, I assumed. A small window between them, too high for me to reach, was probably a Jack-and-Jill bathroom.

  The master bedroom was on the far end of the house, and pristine, also. The bed was sort of halfway made: the pillows stacked on the floor, the comforter smooth, but folded down. Mrs. G had either started to turn it down last night, and stopped before getting into bed, or she had started to make the bed this morning, but had stopped before finishing the job.

  There was no sign of her in the bedroom. The light was on in the adjacent master bath, which struck me as a little peculiar when it was bright and sunny outside, but it wasn’t necessarily sinister. She might not have been into the bedroom since earlier, and might not realize the light was still on.

  In the front of the house was a dining room, with what looked like a carved mahogany dining room set, and then the front door and picture window.

  I went up on the stoop and knocked again. There were three small windows in the top of the door, too high for me to see in.

  There was no answer, but the dog started barking. A second later, it threw itself at the panes in the picture window, yipping hysterically.

  I left the stoop and waded through the flower bed over to the window, pushing my way through prickly holly bushes and taking care not to step on flowering mums. The dog went crazy, hopping stiff-legged inside the window. Funny, when it hadn’t barked at me outside earlier.

  Must be a protective thing. It was inside the house now, and it had to protect its territory.

  The picture window was huge. Almost floor to ceiling. I could see the hardwoods a foot below the window inside, and when I peered up, the ceiling wasn’t very high above the window frame, either.

  There was some very nice morning light in Mrs. Grimshaw’s formal living room.

  Enough light to let me see, clearly, hundreds of tiny red paw prints meandering back and forth in front of the window.

  I cupped my hands over my eyes again and peered inside.

  Flowered chintz furniture, dark coffee table with a glass top. Small TV on a stand against the wall. Small, rabid dog jumping up and down, bat ears flapping.

  And a pair of feet, toes pointing at the ceiling. One wore a fuzzy, pink slipper; the other nothing. Another fuzzy pink slipper lay a foot or two away. The rest of the body—Mrs. Grimshaw’s, I assumed—was out of sight behind an upholstered wingback chair.

  I stepped out of the flowerbed and away from the window, fumbling for my phone.

  I gave the 911 operator my name and Mrs. Grimshaw’s address, and explained that I could see her through the window, lying on the floor, and that there was a lot of bloody paw prints on the floor, but I couldn’t see anything else.

  “Have you gone inside the house?” the operator inquired.

  I said I hadn’t. “The back door was locked. I haven’t tried the front door. I can do it now.”

  “No,” the operator said. “Wait for the police.”

  “But w
hat if she’s still alive? What if there’s something I can do, and I’m just standing here?”

  “There’s an ambulance on the way,” the operator told me. “Stay on the line with me until it gets there.”

  I could already hear the sirens in the distance. The nearest fire station must be nearby. “I can’t,” I told her. “I have to call someone. Sorry.”

  I hung up. And then I called Mendoza.

  The phone rang twice, and then he came on. “Mrs. Kelly.” It was impossible to say whether he was happy, exasperated, or something else, to hear from me.

  “You have to come out here,” I told him, through chattering teeth. “Something’s happened to Mrs. Grimshaw.”

  “Who?”

  “The lady who called you yesterday. About the suspicious car. The one with the little dog. Something’s wrong.”

  Immediately he was all business. “What?”

  “There’s blood on the floor. The dog stepped in it. It was outside in the street. When I followed it back up to the house, I saw bloody paw prints. So I started looking through the windows. She’s in the living room. On the floor. On her back. And there are bloody paw prints all over the room.”

  “Are you there now?” Mendoza asked.

  I nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “Have you called 911?”

  “Uh-huh. I can hear them.”

  “Stay there,” Mendoza said. “Don’t touch anything. I’m on my way.”

  He hung up before I had a chance to tell him that I had no plans of touching anything whatsoever.

  While I waited, I got back into my car, still parked at the bottom of the driveway, and drove it up and around the corner to the carport. No sense in blocking access for the ambulance—or for Mendoza, once he arrived. And as he’d mentioned yesterday, cars parked on the street were conspicuous around here. The neighbors would notice the ruckus once the ambulance and police cars arrived, assuming there was anyone home on the street to notice, but there was no sense in attracting their attention sooner.

  And then I sat there and waited for someone to arrive. It was tempting to call someone—like Rachel—to tell her what was going on, and to whimper against her shoulder long distance, but Mendoza was coming—with better shoulders—and besides, I didn’t know that Mrs. Grimshaw was actually dead. Blubbering might be premature. So I just sat there and concentrated on breathing deeply while I listened to the sirens coming closer.

  It wasn’t a long wait. Two minutes, maybe three, and then a vehicle came screaming up the driveway and stopped with a squeal of brakes. I got out of my car and peeked around the corner. It was the ambulance, having come to a quivering stop by the front walkway. Two paramedics jumped out. I went to greet them.

  Mendoza zoomed into the driveway about five minutes later, in the same gray sedan he’d been driving yesterday. The same gray sedan he’d been driving every time I’d seen him. I figured he must have a personal vehicle, and in my spare time I amused myself by trying to imagine what it might be—pickup truck? Jeep Wrangler? Maserati?—but I had no real expectation that I’d ever find out. We didn’t have a personal relationship. I only saw the detective when he was on duty.

  By that point, the ambulance personnel had determined that the front door was open, or rather unlocked. They had gone inside and had examined Mrs. Grimshaw, and determined that life was extinct—or in layman’s terms, that Mrs. G was dead. I didn’t get a good look at her—nor did I want one—but her chest was a bloody mess. I assumed she’d been shot, or maybe stabbed. It wasn’t natural causes; I could tell that much.

  And then Mendoza swept through the door and looked around. “This the way she was when you found her?”

  The paramedics nodded. He glanced at me. I nodded too. “This is where she was lying when I looked through the window.”

  Mendoza nodded. “You can go,” he told the paramedics. “Nothing you can do here. I’ll call the ME’s office and get them out here to remove the body. Thanks for your help.”

  They gathered up their equipment and filed out. Mendoza turned to me. “You can go, too.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “This is a crime scene. I can’t let you wander around and compromise evidence.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I told him. “The crime scene is the area between the door and where the body is. The whole rest of the house is available.”

  Including the patch of floor where I was standing, out of the direct line between the door and the body.

  His brows arched. They’re nice brows, thick and dark and elegantly shaped. “Your PI classes tell you that?”

  “No,” I said, annoyed. “Logic told me that. The door was unlocked. She didn’t strike me as the type to be careless, so I don’t think she would have left it that way.” Not the woman who had called the cops because of a suspicious car on her street yesterday. “She’s lying on the floor in front of the door. It looks like she was shot. My guess is, someone knocked on the door. Probably last night sometime. Late. After dark. She opened it, so it might have been someone she knew. Whoever was outside shot her, and then pulled the door shut so it wouldn’t look suspicious. Then he—or she—walked away.”

  Mendoza’s lips had started quirking when I was about halfway through my reasoning. “Not bad for your first time. But not necessarily accurate. We don’t know why someone wanted Mrs. Grimshaw dead. Whoever shot her might have been looking for something. If so, he—or she—might have come inside after the shooting, to look around. The entire house could be a crime scene.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. Now I did, and shuddered at the idea that someone had shot this poor old lady, and then, while she was lying on the floor dead or dying, had callously stepped over the body to ransack the house.

  “Murder isn’t pretty,” Mendoza told me. “Please, Mrs. Kelly. Go home and let me do my job. And take this—” He bent and scooped up the small dog with a hand under its belly, “with you.”

  He dropped it into my arms. It almost ended up on the floor before I got a good grip on it. And I’m sure it was leaving nasty, red paw prints all over my nice silk blouse as it scrabbled for purchase. “I can’t take it!”

  “She can’t stay here alone,” Mendoza pointed out. “And she can’t go with the body.”

  I shifted the small, quivering body to a better hold. “Why don’t you take it?”

  “It’s a she. Her name is Edwina. And my kid’s allergic.”

  Mendoza had a son. Five years old. Elias. All of which I knew because Mendoza had told me, not because I’d ever met Elias. He lived with his mother and the PI, but sometimes he stayed with Mendoza. If Elias was allergic to dogs, then no, Edwina couldn’t go home with Mendoza. She’d probably prefer it—she was eying him with adoration, even from my arms—but she’d have to put up with me. At least until I could figure something else out. I wasn’t even sure the Apex allowed pets.

  “Maybe Rachel wants a dog. Or Zachary.” Although if Zachary wanted a dog, it would probably be something bigger than this. Rachel might enjoy her, though.

  “That’s the spirit,” Mendoza said. “Now take her away and let me work.”

  I stayed where I was. “Will you call me later and tell me what you find out? I feel…” I hesitated, looking for the right word. Not responsible, because what had happened to Mrs. Grimshaw had nothing to do with me, but… something.

  “I’ll do my best,” Mendoza said. “Please, Mrs. Kelly. The longer you stand there, the longer before I can concentrate on figuring out what happened here.”

  I withdrew. With a final, “Call me.” Mendoza didn’t respond.

  I put the dog in the passenger seat and walked around the car to the driver’s side. By the time I had backed down the driveway and was headed up the street, the dog was standing on my thighs with her nose against the window. I had one arm snaked over her back, and the other in front of her chest, with her head on top of my arm. It made turning the steering wheel difficult.

  “This isn’t going to work,” I told he
r.

  She ignored me, in favor of watching the world go by. Her nose was making a damp spot on the window.

  I dumped her back in the passenger seat. She gave me a wounded look before turning to the other window.

  “Oh, dammit!”

  Those bloody little paws were leaving marks on my cream leather seat. And worse, they had marked my linen slacks, too. Blood’s impossible to get out, unless you do it right away.

  “That does it,” I told the dog. “We’re going home. You can walk around in the bathtub while I soak my shirt.”

  She didn’t answer, of course. Just kept looking out the window. Although I swear she was grinning.

  Chapter 4

  When David left me for Jacquie —actually, before David left me for Jacquie—he bought himself a love nest on the top floor of the Apex, one of the new high-rise condo buildings in the Gulch, a neighborhood on the south end of downtown. I stayed on in the house in Hillwood, even after David died. Until someone set fire to the family room, directly below the master bedroom, and I had to jump out a second story window to save myself. I moved into the Apex after that. It was available, and felt safe, and the house needed repair before I could move back into it.

  At this point, I thought I might not want to move back in. I had spent eighteen years in Hillwood, as David’s trophy wife. Now that I was single again, I just wanted to put my marriage behind me. What better way than to sell the house we’d shared and take over possession of David’s bachelor pad?

  When I sailed through the front doors with Edwina under my arm, short legs scrabbling for purchase on my hip, there was a new guy behind the desk in the lobby, where Zachary used to sit. He didn’t say a word to me. I’m not sure he even saw the dog. All he did was glance up, confirm that I was someone whose face he knew, nod, and go back to whatever he was reading behind the desk. Penthouse, Marvel Comics, or the National Enquirer.

  I made my way through the lobby and up in the elevator. The first thing I did was fill the big tub with two inches of water and drop the dog in. The sides were too tall for her to climb back out—or so I hoped—and she could waddle around in the shallow water and clean the blood from her paws.