Sneak Thief (A Dog Park Mystery) (15 page)

Lia sat back, stunned. She hadn't expected to find anything. Still, a candy heart was pretty innocuous. She peered closer. Something marred the surface of the candy. It looked scratched. She angled the magnifier, bringing the red candy into focus. “831” was scratched into the face of the heart. She tipped it over. “ICU” was etched into the back. ICU. Well either that meant intensive care unit and was some kind of threat, or it meant she was being watched. Which was another kind of threat. What could 831 refer to?

She opened up her laptop and searched the Urban Dictionary. “Monterey Bay area code.” No, that couldn't be it. “831 Eight letters, three words, one meaning. I love you.” Could Peter have left this? No, she decided. Peter didn't have the skill and he wouldn't have been so tasteless, considering her concerns.

She double checked ICU to see if there were any additional meanings. “IcU” meant “I'm cool. You?” She wondered if ICU meant the Foil Man wanted to give her intensive care. Whatever, with the engraving, the little doll and her canine escort had morphed from charming to creepy.

Lia leaned over. Julia lifted her head up off her paws, meeting Lia's gaze with solemn bug-eyes. “You be sure to bark if anyone comes near, okay? I don't need any creeps sneaking in here. Biting's okay, too, especially if it's someone you recognize. Deal?”

Julia tilted her head, blinked, and lay back down, sighing as if there were no light left in the world. Chewy bounced up, his paws on Lia's thigh, giving her an intent look that typically meant, “What am I, chopped liver?” Lia set down her bamboo skewer and ruffled his ears with her hands. Holding his face, she bent over and gave him a kiss on the nose. Not much for kisses, he jerked his head away and sneezed, then play-snapped at her hands. “You're still my little man. You know that, don't you?” Satisfied that all was still well with his world despite the clingy interloper's morose outlook, he returned to napping on his bed in the living room.

Cinnamon hearts . . . she'd seen some recently, maybe, but where? She didn't even walk down the candy aisle when she went grocery shopping. Most of the candy she'd run into lately was at Scholastic. Could one of her co-workers be Foil Man? She tried to visualize the various candy caches around Maple room. While she liked chocolate, she didn't go in for other sweets, so she hadn't paid much attention. She'd have to keep her eyes out on Monday when she went back.

T
he Watcher grunted
at the stationary dot on his GPS program. Lia hadn't gone anywhere since she'd returned from the park. He could not think of a pretext for getting a spy cam into her apartment, or a cam that he could sneak in that she wouldn't notice.

He wondered what she would think if she found out he'd pulled the tracking device off Desiree's car and installed it on Lia's Volvo. This time he was not satisfied with casually sticking it under a wheel well. He'd crawled under the car and attached it to the undercarriage behind the gas tank, where it wouldn't be seen unless the car was up on a rack.

It might not occur to Lia that he had followed Desiree and was now following her. If it did, he did not want her to find The Watcher's little helper.

He turned back to the sheet of foil laying on his desk, smooth, shiny, pristine, and stroked it delicately, lover-like, with one finger.
I wonder what you will become.

“
I
don't know
why we've never been in here before,” Bailey said to Lia as she pushed open the door to the dim bar.

“Maybe because you get up at 4 a.m. and I rarely drink? Good thing The Comet is open for brunch on Sunday.”

They stood in line at the end of the bar and considered the options on the chalkboard menu. “Eggs Benedict? Quiche?” Bailey said. “I was expecting a breakfast burrito.”

“I guess they class up on Sundays,” Lia said.

A man with black hipster glasses and well tended gray hair past his shoulders wrote down their order. He tore off the top copy and handed it to Lia. “Take this to the kitchen. They'll hand you a marker for your table.” He got their coffees. “Cream and sugar in the next room, in front.”

Lia and Bailey were almost through with their meal and discussing the merits of sharing a flan When Lia looked up to see Dave approaching, bar towel in hand.

“Hey, welcome back,” he said. “How's your quesadilla?”

“Terrific. I wish you were open for lunch all the time. Dave, this is Bailey. We're hoping you might help us with something.”

“Shoot. Never know till you ask.”

“I talked to the coroner's office yesterday. They said Desiree's father refused to take her body, and it's just sitting in the morgue.”

Dave shook his head. “Desiree said father frequently told her she was going to hell. He sounded like a total head case.”

“I'm looking for someone close to her to step up and take possession of the body.”

“Why don't you do it?”

Lia stammered. “I really didn't know her that well. I wouldn't know what she wanted or who was important to her. I'm traveling blind here.”

“So how does this work? Can anyone just walk in and claim her body?”

“I guess you could if you made a good enough case to the coroner that you were her nearest and dearest. It's a long process, though, and it would take weeks.

“The person I talked to at the morgue said there was a slim chance Desiree had a designated agent form.” Understanding by Dave's expression that he was as clueless about this as she had been, she went on to explain. “. . . so tomorrow I'm going through her papers to see if I can find one. But I thought I'd stop in here and ask about her friends, in case I come up empty.”

“I'm glad you stopped in. I'll put the word out and see if we can't dig up the right person to take charge. I'd be glad to help you search. I'm off tomorrow.”

“That would be a godsend. No one else is available, and this needs to be resolved.”

“Once we find this person, did you have any idea how her funeral would be paid for?”

“I hadn't gotten that far yet. Truthfully, I hoped to find Desiree's BFF and end my involvement there.”

“Desiree wasn't exactly a BFF kinda gal. But don't worry, we'll think of something.”

L
ia and Bailey
left the bar an hour later.

“You know,” Bailey mused, “you wouldn't think ginger-ale would go with eggs, but it does.”

Lia stopped on the side walk. “Okay, what's wrong with him.”

“What are you talking about?” Bailey asked.

“An attractive, single man sat at our table for half an hour and you haven't said anything about him.”

“You mean the guy carrying a torch for Miss Double D, A.K.A. Dead Desiree?”

“Yeah, that one. Don't you want to soothe his wounded heart?”

“Oh, I figured you could have him.”

“Me? Why would I want him?”

“I figure you need a distraction since Peter's decided to take a vacation. Anyway, he didn't know I was there.”

“That's not true.”

“Which part? That you need a distraction, that Peter's on vacation, or that Dave Cunningham only had eyes for you? You may not have been paying attention, but I was.”

D
ave was leaning
on his car by Terry's storage unit when Lia pulled up. Lia opened the lock and lifted the door. The garage-sized unit was packed with furniture and stacks of boxes that towered over their heads.

“All this was Desiree's?”

Lia laughed at his astonished look. “Only a small corner is hers. Most of it belongs to the guy who owns this unit. We need to go through that pile of boxes over on the right.”

The indicated boxes were penned in by an upended sofa and stacked dining room chairs. They worked in tandem to move the furniture out of the unit, opening up space to spread the boxes out.

“If I'd known I was getting back in these boxes so soon, I would not have let Terry talk me into blocking them in like that,” Lia said between grunts as they tipped the monstrous sofa over and carried it out. They plopped down on the sofa, never minding the seat cushions were still on top of an old depression era armoire.

“I could use something cold to drink right about now,” Dave said as he wiped sweat off his forehead with his sleeve.

“They have a Coke machine at the office. What's your poison? My treat.”

“Coke or Pepsi. I prefer Coke. Unless they have Red Bull.”

“Coming up.” Lia drove to the other side of the storage facility, got a can of Coke and chose an ice tea for herself. When she got back, she saw that Dave had pulled the first stack of boxes down and was now placing them outside the unit.

“I went though this batch. Mostly dishes and books. Looks like it was packed in a hurry. Shame the boxes aren't marked.”

“We didn't have much time. If we'd left it up to the landlady, it would all have gone out on the curb.”

“I'm glad you were able to save it then.” He popped the tab on his soda can and took a long pull. The way he tilted his head back, the way his throat contracted as he drank, it reminded her of Peter and had her fingers itching to reach out and stroke the long line from his chin to his clavicle. She shoved the thought away, annoyed by the wistful impulse.

He wiped off his mouth. “Tell you what. I'll pull the boxes down and you go through them. Then we can shove them out of the way so we don't confuse ourselves.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Lia sat on her heels as she opened the third box, finding a mess of papers on top of a half-dozen Beanie Babies. She recalled gathering the pile up off the floor and shoving it in a box, counter to Terry's insistence that he didn't have room in his storage unit for garbage. “We don't have time to figure out what's garbage and what's not. We can always throw it out later if it's not important. This is Desiree's life, what's left of it, anyway.”

She pawed through unopened junk mail, advertising circulars, some bills. Digging a little deeper, she unearthed a copy of the insurance policy for Desiree's car. Under that lay a plain, white envelope she didn't remember. The flap was tucked instead of sealed. She opened it, withdrawing the thin stack of paper. The pads of her fingers rubbed against the bumps of a notary seal.

Lia had figured this afternoon to be a necessary exercise in futility. Stunned by her unlikely find, she unfolded the paper and scanned it. Dave turned away from the pile of boxes to read over her shoulder.

As she scanned the paper, her excitement grew:
I, Desiree Willis, an adult being of sound mind, willfully and voluntarily appoint my representative, named below, to have the right of disposition, as defined in section 2108.70 of the Revised Code, for my body upon my death. All decisions . . . .

“I don't believe this! I can't believe we found it.” She continue reading, her eyes racing back and forth. Then they fell on a name and stopped. Lia sighed and shook her head, poked her tongue in her cheek.

“What's the problem?” Dave asked.

“Do you really expect me to believe this?”

“Believe what? That Desiree would want a responsible, business-owning friend to care for her after she died?”

“Let me guess. The notary is your cousin, Vinnie. The witnesses owe you money and you traced Desiree's signature off of a cancelled paycheck. You stuffed it in that box while I was getting your coke. Fast work, Cunningham.”

“You wound me.”

“Yeah, I see the blood.”

“Think they'll buy it?”

“If I don't tell Amanda that you helped me find it. I'm sure she'll be so delighted to have official paperwork taking this off her hands, that she won't check to see if the ink is actually dry.”

“I'll owe you one.”

“You're asking me to lie to a friend about a felony, and it could get her in trouble.”

“The coroner is your
friend
?” His eyebrows shot up.

“Assistant coroner.”

“I'll owe you two, then.”

“Help me up. My legs are stiff.” She extended the hand that wasn't holding the felonious document. He pulled her up and she limped over to the sofa, picked up the now-warm half-can of tea. Dave plopped down beside her. He watched her while she considered.

“Dave, what's your investment in this? Why did you go to all this trouble?”

He shrugged, looking down at his hands draped between his knees. He gave her a wry look. “I always had a soft spot for Desiree.”

“You and everyone else,” Lia grumbled.

“Oh, I think everyone else had a hard-spot, if you don't mind me saying. She was a good kid, trying to find her way. She would have found it, too, if she hadn't been shot.”

“Were you in love with her?”

His head drooped. “I figured once she grew out of her taste for pretty bad boys, she might realize I'd always been there for her. It'll never happen now.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“I'd like to do her justice. She had friends at the bar. Last night I started a collection to pay for a cremation. We can have a memorial service. You decided what you want to do with all that?” He nodded towards Desiree's now-scattered belongings.

“We were thinking of selling it at the Northside garage sale in August and donating the money to Three Sisters Rescue. That's where she got Julia. Why? Do you have something in mind?”

“I'm sure she didn't have a will, though I guess we'll need to go through all this to make sure. I imagine her friends would like a chance to have something of hers. We can have a silent auction at the bar during the memorial, give the proceeds to charity. We'd raise more money that way than at a garage sale.”

Lia blinked. “Well,” she said. “I guess that's worth lying for.”

“I was only trying to give you plausible deniability.”

“You couldn't have put someone else's name on there?”

“Let another man have the body of the love of my life I'll never have? I don't think so.”

Lia tucked the document in the glove box of her Volvo. They resumed combing the boxes, now looking for a will. Ninety minutes and a couple of overly sloppy Big Bufords from Ralley's later, they completed the job of unearthing every piece of paper and relegating it to the status of Not-Desiree's-Will.

Lia looked around at the foraged boxes strewn across the concrete like shipwrecked flotsam. “Oh, goody. Now we get to put it all back. Let's sit down for a few. I'd like to let my sweat dry so I can layer fresh new sweat over the old when we start up again.”

“Shall we label the boxes as we put them back?”

“What's the point? We didn't pack her things in any particular order, just grabbed what was closest and jammed it in a box. I guess we'll get to organize it when we get it back out for the auction. You really going to have a silent auction, with all her undies in it?”

Dave twisted his mouth.”I don't know about that. I'm sure there are people who would buy them, but I'd feel funny about it. So what do we do with them?”

“I'll ask Bailey. She'll know.”

L
ia stopped
by Avery's desk on the way to her work station that evening. The transparent sides of a pyrex mixing bowl (courtesy of his wife, she imagined) revealed a kaleidoscope of sugar: Dum Dums, Smarties, miniature Tootsie Rolls, saltwater taffy, and little cellophane packets of cinnamon candies. She dug her hand in and pulled one out. Red Hots. Not hearts. Darn.

“Lia, I'm so glad you stopped by,” Avery said, dropping a stack of files on his desk and taking his chair. “Is there any word about Desiree's funeral?”

“There isn't a date yet. It's probably going to be a simple memorial service after a private cremation. By the way, thank you for taking up that collection. Three Sisters really appreciates the donation.”

“Of course, of course. This may only be seasonal work, but you're still family to us. Such a beautiful girl. Such a shame.” He sighed, then opened the top file. Avery spotted the little bag of candies in her hand. “You like cinnamon candy? I thought Ted was the only one around here besides me who did. He's been gradually making his way through my store of them.”

“Cinnamon is a brain booster,” Lia said lamely.

Avery looked up and gave her an assessing look. He stretched lips in an oily smile.

“I was not aware. Maybe we should hand it out to everyone.”

Lia swept both sides of the aisle with her eyes as she made her way back to her team, scoping out the bowls and tupperware containers of candy. She spotted the usual sweet potpourri, but no more Red Hots.
I could be going about this the wrong way. Maybe I should sniff everyone's breath at break time to see who smells like cinnamon.

So that kept Avery and Ted on her list. Perhaps she would leave the little packet out by her monitor and see if he commented on them.