Double Dog Dare (15 page)

And then the three of us squeezed into the car and headed for the Yurick offices.

UNSURPRISINGLY, I WAS the only attorney there so late on that Saturday. All other lawyers at the Yurick firm were senior legal beagles who’d joined Borden because of his humane approach both in ignoring the age of his compatriots and bringing them on for their experience, and in practicing law in as enjoyable a way as possible, which usually meant no weekend work at all.

That also meant support staff was seldom around on Saturdays unless there was some real reason to be there— not just increasing anyone’s billable hours.

I checked first, though, using my key to enter and finding all the lights off inside. Even so, I shouted out, “Hello? Anyone here?”

No response, not even a cry from Gigi, the sometimes resident Blue and Gold Macaw who’d belonged to a now-deceased attorney, Ezra Cossner, and who was now the pet of another proud attorney, Elaine Aames. But neither Elaine nor Gigi was here. Nor anyone else, for that matter.

Which gave me unfettered leeway to bring in my canine companions. Not that I generally stinted anyway.

I kept Lexie and Odin leashed until we reached my really nice corner office, then let them loose after shutting the door.

I’d used Borden’s database subscriptions with his okay even before joining his firm. Now, I was fully entitled to do so. And so, one by one I typed in all the names I’d gathered, and gleaned all the info I could: on Mason Payne and Debby Payne. On Melba Slabach and Wally Yance. On the people I hadn’t met but who had been mentioned: Earl Knox’s ex, Edwina Horton. And owner of Earl’s former employer, Clark Weiss, and his company, CW Ultra Technologies.

I’d already gotten some info on Earl, but I checked him out again. And also The Clone Arranger.

I printed out a substantial amount of data. I even did some additional research on cloning and how it was supposed to work.

But I didn’t get the answers I sought. And so I was relieved to finally hear from Althea.

“Kendra, sorry I didn’t call you before, but I was up in the Palmdale area trying to get some more information about that damned aqueduct and anyone who’d dived into it and emerged alive.”

My heart rate quickened as I leaned so hard against my desk that Lexie, now on my lap, moaned in complaint. “Sorry,” I whispered, giving her a gentle hug. Then, into the phone, I said, “And what did you learn?”

I heard nothing but a sigh initially, and then, “Nothing helpful, except that my cell phone carrier apparently doesn’t get a good signal up there. How about you? Have you found out anything at all?”

My turn to give her a rundown of my visit to The Clone Arranger, then of my feeble attempt at doing what she excelled at: online research. “I’d love for you to dig into all those much more helpful sources you have,” I said to her.

“Dig . . . or hack?” she responded with a laugh.

“Whatever.” When she said she had pen and paper in hand, I gave her a list of everyone and every company I’d already searched for. “I found stuff on all of them, but by the looks of it they’re all model citizens with nothing to hide—and no proclivities for making P.I.s who might be investigating them disappear.” My eyes welled up, and my throat all but closed.

“Yeah,” Althea said, also suddenly sounding hoarse. “Well, I’ll see if I can find anything more useful.”

We hung up shortly thereafter, and once again I sat and started nearly to sob. Damn, but this was getting old. I hated hurting this way. But until I had some closure about what happened to Jeff . . . Hell! Closure suggested that he was gone for good, and I wasn’t about to accept that.

I was grateful when my phone rang again, needing this newest diversion. It was Avvie Milton.

“Hi, Kendra,” she said. “Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Could you come now and get the key and info for watching Pansy?”

“Sure,” I said, “but give me about an hour.” I wanted to drop Lexie and Odin off at home.

I bundled my printed prizes from my computer searches, determined to take them along and scan them in greater detail later, in case I’d missed something important about anyone. And then I bundled the pups into the car with me.

And damned if I didn’t see another Escalade as I drove out of the law firm’s Encino parking lot. The driver? Looked like a lady from here.

But often, as I drove, I stared at the occupants of nearly every automobile, as if, somewhere inside one, I’d see a sign of Jeff.

Chapter Twelve

NO JEFFS IN any car around me. I thought I counted an unusual number of small, cute, blunt-butted hybrids, mostly silver Toyotas, as I took the dogs to my place, then headed down Coldwater Canyon toward Avvie’s. But these days, with the price of gas, I knew a lot more people were buying vehicles that used less of that smelly, pollution-promoting liquid.

Avvie lived on the city side of Coldwater, in a charming, small blue house with diamond-paned windows that always reminded me of a quaint European cottage. After I parked and headed up the walk toward the front door, I saw yet another silver hybrid car scoot by on this narrow but nice residential street. As I’d been doing, I checked to see if the driver happened to be Jeff.

Yeah, right. I shook my head as I rang the bell.

Avvie answered the door nearly immediately. “Kendra!” she cried, enfolding me in a hug.

I hadn’t gotten together with Avvie for a while. She hadn’t changed much from the attractive, coolly confident attorney who’d been my protégée way back when, at the Marden firm. I’d helped her learn to dress with elegant sophistication instead of the girlish silliness she had initially effected. She’d kept her later look, today clad in designer jeans and an attractive lacy blouse. Her highlighted hair was sleekly styled.

I glanced down at my own pale blue slacks and darker tunic top. Not bad. Conceivably even more lawyer-at-play than pet-sitter-at-work. Not that I was in competition with Avvie here and now. Or ever, even at my former firm. At least not in the dress department.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said.

“You look great, as always,” I countered.

In Avvie’s living room, which was decorated with an assortment of antiques, sat Pansy, the potbellied pig. She was fuzzy in black and white, porky in girth, and adorably porcine of snout.

“Watch this, Kendra,” Avvie said. “See if your Lexie is as well trained.” She reached into an old china tureen on a carved table beside her even more carved sofa with red velour cushions, and pulled out some kind of piggy treat. “Pansy, sit.”

Pansy sat, much to my surprise. Pigs did doggy stuff? She hadn’t seemed so well trained when I last pet-sat for her.

“Lie down.”

She did that, too, right on the old-appearing Oriental rug in the center of the well-polished hardwood floor.

“Play dead.”

“You gotta be joking,” I said, even as the cute little pig collapsed into an immobile heap of ham. And I do mean ham—as in an actor who emotes too much. For nearly as soon as Pansy crumpled into stillness and even closed her eyes, those same eyes popped open, and damned if she didn’t seem to smile. “Adorable!” I exclaimed.

After another minute, Avvie waved me to join her on the sofa, and we both sat. Pansy lay down by our feet.

“So how have you been, Kendra?” Avvie asked, looking at me with obvious interest in her hazel eyes. “Do you really enjoy practicing law with Borden?”

Her tone suggested a smidgen of disgust, which was how all remaining Marden lawyers seemed to regard the boss I adored, Borden Yurick. None of those high-powered, high-stress sorts seemed at all interested in enjoying the rest of life while practicing law. Neither had I, actually, until a rest was forced on me by the awful circumstances that had included accusations of unethical conduct followed by suspicions of murder.

But now, I wouldn’t trade my usually enjoyable existence for even double the lucrative salary I’d brought home as a high-priced litigator for the Marden firm.

Well, maybe I’d like a little more, so I could afford to live in my rented-out house. Much as I enjoy Rachel and her dad, Russ, I want my own, bigger digs back one of these days.

“I get some interesting cases for Borden’s senior citizen clients,” I informed Avvie in response to her inquiry. “And my own animal advocacy stuff—can’t beat it!”

“Not even with your pet-sitting?” Avvie sounded amused, in a manner suggesting mild tolerance of someone incredibly eccentric.

“That’s fun, too,” I admitted with a huge grin.

“If you say so. And I’m glad you do, since I want you to watch Pansy again for me.” At her name, the pig lifted her head from the floor and regarded Avvie as if she understood every word. And then Avvie asked, as she had on the phone, “So, are you still seeing Jeff?”

Avvie had met him some months ago. She knew I was seeing him not solely on a professional level.

Even so, I wasn’t prepared to respond.

I found myself blurting, “He’s been missing for a couple of weeks, Avvie. His car was found submerged in an aqueduct canal up near Palmdale, but I just can’t—won’t— believe he’s dead, no matter what the authorities think.”

“Oh, Kendra, I’m so sorry.” Avvie and I had been good professional cronies, but not of the close and huggy sort. Even so, she leaned over and gave me a squeeze. “What happened?”

I wasn’t about to relate any complicated details or suspicions, so I simply wailed, “I wish I knew,” and burst into tears.

Avvie sat up, then told Pansy to keep an eye on me for a minute. She returned nearly as quickly as she’d promised, large glasses of red wine clutched by the stems in her shaking hands.

“Here. We both need this—mostly you.” She thrust a glass toward me, and I took a deep sip of the fruity, pungent stuff as if I was parched and it was water. So what if it was only afternoon? It was Saturday. My mind didn’t have to be sharp enough to spiel legal arguments, only alert enough to drive skillfully and take excellent care of pet-sitting clients.

And stay wise enough not to reveal too much, even to this obviously sympathetic friend.

Still, I told Avvie more of the emotional stuff. It’s a girl thing, I guess, to want to confide some of the hurts inside. I told her how I’d come to feel as if Jeff and I could share a future. I explained about his going off on one of his frequent trips to conduct an investigation, lecture on security, or install a security system, and how he had failed to call me—or even his office and close-knit staff—when he returned.

And how his Escalade had turned up at the bottom of the canal near L.A., when no one even knew he’d been back in town.

No one? Not necessarily true.

“You poor thing,” Avvie said, her eyes filled with sympathetic tears.

“Enough about me,” I made myself say. “How are you? Tell me about your big business trip with Bill this week.”

Big globes of wetness suddenly cascaded down her cheeks, and she thrust them away with the backs of hands whose nails were elegantly polished, as I’d taught her. “It’s a huge conference for litigators in Napa Valley. Sightseeing and wine tasting planned between continuing legal education sessions.” She sucked in her breath. “Lots of attorneys are taking their spouses and significant others. Bill’s wife is coming, too.” She said this last with what was obviously forced brightness. “I’ve been too busy for a social life lately,” she said, as if I’d buy into the fiction she’d created long ago when she’d first started sleeping with Bill, wife or not. “So, I’m going on my own.”

“Oh, Avvie,” I said. My turn to turn on the sympathy. “I’m really sorry.” And I honestly was. Not because the day I’d predicted to her many times in the past had actually come to pass, but because I knew she, too, was hurting.

What a couple of sorry people we were at this moment. Good thing pets are prime in cheering humans up. Pansy rose and snuffled up to her best friend. Avvie reached down and gave her a hug.

Time for my delayed departure. Avvie handed over her keys and pet-sitting instructions.

“My contract’s the same as before,” I said, handing her a couple of copies, which she signed immediately, having already seen it. So did I, giving her one for her records. I’d started off sitting without using any of my legal skills—no official, asset-protecting company, no signed agreements with human customers—but when I realized that this was going to go on for a nice, long time, I formed a limited liability company, Critter TLC, LLC, and papered it with all the stuff I’d advise a client in similar circumstances to use, including insurance.

“I’m taking off first thing tomorrow morning,” Avvie said.

“Have a good time,” I told her. “In fact, have a great time. There’re bound to be some hunky unattached male attorneys at this conference who’d love to engage in wine tasting with a lady lawyer as lovely as you.” I tossed a sideways smile at her. “Imagine how much it’ll gall our buddy Bill to see just how wonderful a time you’re having.”

“Yeah,” Avvie said, appearing pensive. And then, “Yeah! Absolutely. Kendra, you’re the best. And I’ll keep my fingers crossed that Jeff will be back safe and sound right away.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Me, too.”

OKAY, I ADMIT my head wasn’t perfectly clear as I slipped into the car. I hadn’t imbibed overly much of the wine Avvie had generously served me. As much as I thought I’d enjoy drowning my sorrows, I kept focusing on that word . . . drowning. Which kept me from wanting my mind to get totally muzzy. Slightly muzzy was more than enough.

I glanced around Avvie’s pleasant residential neighborhood, which I’d visit a lot over the next several days. Unless, of course, I enlisted Rachel to spell me. She’d enjoyed her previous stint of playing with Avvie’s adorable potbellied pig. In fact, I suspected she’d insist on an opportunity to visit here again when she learned of our latest Avvie assignment.

For late on a Saturday afternoon, I couldn’t say the area was abuzz with activity. I didn’t notice any of the neighbors out . . . except, at the home catty-cornered across the street, was that—Hey, it sure seemed to be.