3 Panthers Play for Keeps (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-nine

“Hi, Jim. What brings you out here?” I nearly batted my eyelashes, only I thought Creighton might laugh.

“Pru.” His nod was his non-answer, and he looked around until he saw Albert, skulking toward the back of the pack. “Albert. May I have a word?”

Albert blanched, at least the part of him that wasn’t covered in beard did. But he took a few toddling steps forward, and Creighton did him the courtesy of escorting him around the back of his cruiser. The rain that had been threatening all morning had started, a thin mist that was beginning to bead on the car.

“Albert, what’s going on here?” Creighton asked. I, of course, tagged along, just close enough to hear.

“Nothing.” Albert couldn’t have looked guiltier if he’d tried. Being damp didn’t help.

“Doesn’t look like nothing.” Creighton had his cop look on. Even from where I was, I could tell.

“Jim, we went out already,” I broke in. “Spot led us back here.” I couldn’t believe I felt bad for Albert, but I did. “The trail was cold.”

Albert looked from me to Jim and back again, then started edging away. “We’ll be talking,” Jim called to his retreating back. Then he turned toward me.

“You took your time.” I felt bad for him. I did. But I didn’t like that he’d left me there alone for so long—or that he hadn’t bothered to tell me the news about Laurel.

“I had someone else to talk to.” The cop look again. I stared. Waited. It was pointless. He wasn’t saying anything more, and I was getting chilled. When he finally broke the silence, it was with a question of his own: “So?”

I filled him in, at least as much as I could without getting myself locked up. I didn’t care about getting that tech in trouble, and it didn’t make sense to hold out what I knew. Besides, it added to the strangeness about the hunt—and about its leader, Stu.

“He knows about Laurel. Knows she wasn’t killed by a cougar. Knows that Mariela was moved, too.” I concluded. “When I told him, he didn’t blink an eye. There’s something else about him, Jim.”

“Oh?”

I bit my lip. I wanted to say, “He knows about me, too. About my sensitivity.” I couldn’t, of course, but I shared what felt safe. “I have a feeling someone’s talked to him about me. Told him to look out for me—in both senses. And I think maybe someone’s paying him to be here. To hunt for a cougar that nobody has seen.”

“Interesting.” If I hadn’t just seen Creighton break down over Laurel, I would have thought he was feeling a bit possessive. I shook the idea off: Laurel was dead. Someone had tried to make her murder look like an animal attack. This was part of the case. Creighton’s interest was in the evidence, not me.

“Which of these clowns are you talking about?”

I nodded toward Stu. Now that Creighton was here, he looked smaller, somehow. It could have been the rain. Some of the crew had sweatshirts on, but most were just kind of ducking down, as if they could dodge the drops. In Stu’s case, I had a feeling the posture was intentional, like he wanted to melt away into the crowd of soggy good ol’ boys.

“Why him?” Creighton knew me better than to doubt me. He wanted my reasons.

“He was leading the hunt. He knows about animals.” I paused, unsure how much to reveal. “He knows I do, too.”

Creighton didn’t comment on that. He did take a few steps toward the shorter man. “Excuse me.”

Stu looked up and blinked. Except for the lack of a beard, it was a dead-on impersonation of Albert, blank face and all. “Who, me?”

“Yeah.” Jim’s eyes narrowed, trying to see what I had. “You were leading the hunt.”

A shrug. “I wanted to help the lady with her dog.”

“He had a scent rag.” I hadn’t wanted to show my hand. I also didn’t want him to get away without answering our questions. “Something from Mariela, he said.”

“What, this?” Stu reached into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of blue towel. “I just use this on my own dogs to get ’em started,” he said. “It’s got a mix of my own on it. Fox urine, basically.”

“He—” I stopped myself. It was pointless. In the few minutes since Jim’s arrival, he’d had a chance to ditch the white cloth, and the smile he now turned on me looked less ingenuous than smug. This round went to the mysterious stranger.

Creighton knew it as well as I and dismissed the crowd with a general warning about “taking matters into your own hands.” When I started to protest, he raised one hand, ever so slightly. It was a gesture I recognized from my own training, and I shut up. No sense in getting reprimanded in front of this crew; my status was tenuous as it was. Besides, they hadn’t planned on the weather. As far as they were concerned, it could have been a hurricane. It was definitely Miller time.

Using Spot as an excuse, I wandered over to the edge of the clearing. Spot’s nose was on alert as we approached the hedge, but all I got as he sniffed the ground was the usual local fauna: squirrels, a raccoon. Two opossum, half asleep and stumbling. Spot was interested, but only reflexively. We were both hoping for something more. I was about to take Spot off the lead again, to let him go into that hedge, when Creighton called to me.

“Pru, a word?” The last of the hunters were dispersed. I waited, standing to the side. He watched, hands on hips, as they got into their vehicles. When they were gone, he moved closer. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier.”

It wasn’t what I’d expected. “You’ve got your hands full,” I said. I didn’t add the obvious—that he was also grieving the most recent murder victim. “You don’t owe me any explanations.”

“I think I do.” He was looking down the lane, as if he expected one of the hunters to drive back. Could be he was just avoiding my eyes. “You see, about me and Laurel…”

I didn’t wait for a pause. “Jim, you and I never had any agreement. We were what we were.”

“No, Pru, wait.” He looked down at the mud, where a puddle was forming. No help was coming from there, either. “Laurel and I, it wasn’t what you think.”

“Oh?” I couldn’t help the ice that dripped from that one syllable. I knew he was in mourning. I needed him to know I’m not an idiot.

He laughed. That was a good sound to hear. “Pru, I’d give good money to know what makes you tick sometimes.” He stopped himself. Motioned to his cruiser. “Want to come in out of the rain?”

Without answering, I walked around to the other side and got in the passenger side, letting Spot in the back. It wasn’t cozy, exactly. But, well, any shelter in a storm. After a moment, he started talking again, answering the question I hadn’t asked.

“Yeah.” He stared straight ahead at the windshield. “Laurel and I went out a few times. You’re a—You can be a maddening woman, Pru. Sometimes a man wants something simpler.”

“And Laurel Kroft was simpler?” I couldn’t help the smile that was making the side of my mouth twitch. I hadn’t realized that Jim Creighton was so clueless about women.

“No.” He sounded quite clear on that point. “But what she wanted was. And I…”

“You thought it might be nice to be housebroken?” I visualized Creighton in that sunny sitting room. His sandy hair would go so well with the white sofa and all that blond wood. The ultimate fashion accessory.

“Laurel didn’t want a serious relationship either.” Even in profile, I could see his own grin had twisted, acknowledging the irony of the situation. “Not with a small-town cop, anyway. And I realized, well…”

“Yes?” I drew it out. A girl’s allowed.

“I guess I realized that if I’m not going to be taken seriously, then I’d rather be not taken seriously by you.”

“Better a pizza delivery man than a rich lady’s boy toy, is that it?”

“That’s one way to put it.” He turned toward me now and had the decency to look a little ashamed.

“Well, I’m glad that’s settled.” A girl doesn’t want to think she’s only won by default. “But last night, I assume…”

He nodded. “We were over. She and I had talked, oh, a few days ago.” I thought back to his last nocturnal visit, only two days before. He hadn’t spoken much, driven more, I thought, by straight-up desire rather than a longing for any kind of emotional connection. At the time, I’d thought he was cooling on me, indulging a generalized hunger with a willing partner. Now I saw his silence in a different light: he’d come to me out of need. Knowing him, he’d felt bad, and that had prompted him to end it with Laurel. Well, I’d give him his little fiction about the date.

“When she called,” he was still talking, “she said she suspected something. Something that I should hear. She didn’t say anything about Mariela, but I had a feeling—and it wasn’t good. I pushed her to tell me what she had, what she thought, and to let me do the follow-up, but she wouldn’t. Said she needed to check it out herself. Then, when she didn’t show, I checked her calls. That’s why I confronted you. Not because…” His voice trailed off.

I got it. It was reasonable that he’d be worried about her. After all, Creighton is a decent guy. And, yeah, he’s also a cop. On occasion interests overlap.

Sometimes not. He was looking down at his hands now. We were sitting side by side, and I thought he was as aware of me as I was of him. Thought he was wondering if he should take my hand. Reach over and touch me. The parking lot had emptied out. The rain was likely to keep any other adventurers away.

But I am who I am, too. And I had information to share.

“I think I may know who she was checking in with.” He sat up straight again, which reminded me to tread carefully. “Look, Jim, I told you about Benazi. That I think she was meeting with him?” I hadn’t told him why. He didn’t ask again, however. He only nodded. “I’m pretty sure Benazi is doing some kind of deal with the Haigens. That’s his circle, and I’m wondering if Laurel was trying to get some information out of him.”

“You’re thinking he killed her?” He was watching me, gauging my reaction. “Is he capable of that?”

I shook my head, more because I didn’t want to answer than because I didn’t know.

“Is he capable of mutilating a body to try to disguise the cause of death?”

That was a harder one, as Creighton well know.

“I don’t know.” I did know I didn’t stand a chance of finding out what Jim thought, so I took his question at face value. The silver-haired gangster was capable of murder—and he wasn’t squeamish about gender. I was pretty sure that one woman had already disappeared because of him. True, she had deserved it, but then, I didn’t know Laurel that well.

“Could Laurel have been involved in anything shifty?” Maybe I was falling prey to my own prejudices, but I thought the old man probably had a code of honor, and that Laurel would have to have fallen afoul of it to meet her end at his hands. “You know, a black market deal or some kind of financial scheme?”

He did me the courtesy of considering it. After a few moments, however, he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. She was honest. More than that, she thought she was smarter than everyone, and that she’d come out on top because of her intellect and education. You know, the rest of us were just animals.”

I nodded and held my tongue. I’d already won, and besides, my rival was dead.

“I’m going to bring this guy in, though. As soon as—” He didn’t have to finish. He held out his hand. “Your phone, Pru?”

With a twinge that felt suspiciously like disloyalty, I handed it over. Benazi had done nothing but scare me. Then again, he did so in the most courtly manner. I watched as Creighton scrolled through my calls.

“You did call Laurel several times.” I nodded. He looked up from the phone.

“About the dog, Jim. About Spot.” At the sound of his name, Spot wagged his tail, making a thumping sound against the car seat. He’d been very good, sitting silent while we spoke, but now I found myself looking back at him and wondering.
“What are you thinking?”
The question was formed almost before I realized.

“She’s gone
.”
The phrase I’d heard before. Only this time I noticed something strange. Spot wasn’t sniffing at the air. He wasn’t looking for the potent traces of Laurel’s blood—or her car or any other trace of the fallen women. He was staring back at that hedge. And the sadness I felt, the regret? It was more akin to longing than the grief that an animal can feel.

“What is it, boy?” I twisted in my seat. I felt Creighton start slightly beside me. I didn’t care. “What are you picking up?” It wasn’t what I meant, not exactly. But it gave me an excuse. Just in time, too.

“Uh, Pru?”

“Wait a minute, Jim.” I got out of the car and let Spot out, too. He was instantly on alert, and I put one hand on his back, my eyes on his quivering snout. “Spot’s gotten a scent.”

I heard him get out of the car. Heard him come up behind me, but I didn’t turn, and he had brains enough to not ask me to. Let him think I was super sensitive in a normal way. Better he should believe that I’d picked up a normal signal, rather than the truth.

“What is it?”
I left the question open, and breathed in, my mouth open. My own dull senses couldn’t give me a quarter of what Spot received. Still, I was hoping to get something, thanks to our connection.

“She’s…scared. Lost
.”
The wet air tasted of leaves, of the last of the winter ice. A snowy landscape in the dark. Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe he was recapturing Laurel’s last memories.
“She’s gone
.”

“She died here
.” I made the thought as simple as possible. As I’ve said, animals understand death better than most humans. It’s more present, every day, and they don’t sugarcoat it with any fables. I’d misunderstood animals before. Wallis would say I did so regularly. So maybe I was misinterpreting Spot’s thoughts, putting nice-sounding human words to a more generalized canine grief. For sure, something wasn’t right.

“She’s gone
.” A low whine started in the back of his throat.
“Gone
.”

“Laurel is dead, Spot.” I spoke aloud, holding the dog’s head. Let Creighton think I was a little nutty. I needed to be sure of what was happening.

“Yes, her warm is cold. Feeding lady is dead.
” Well, I didn’t have to worry about Spot grieving overmuch, if that was his reaction. So what? I waited. Took in the air—and got it: that heady aroma, wild and intoxicating, spiked with spices and something strong. Coming from the hedge.