4 Yip/Tuck (3 page)

DARBY SHIVERED. “Maybe he had a heart attack.”

I sighed and sat down by the body. The coldness from the cement quickly seeped through my jeans. I barely noticed. “That’d be nice.” But doubtful.

Missy yawned. She sat and stared at the front door of the boutique. Fluffy looked at Darby, nose in the air, as if she was above such distasteful situations.

“There’s something around his neck,” I said quietly.

Darby patted her head absently. “You mean his tie?”

I shook my head no. “A dog leash.” I immediately recalled how angry Tova had been last night that Dr. O wasn’t coming. Had she been angry enough to kill him? Tova was demanding and annoying, but a killer? I didn’t think so. “We need to call 9-1-1.”

Darby did a double take, her blue eyes huge. “Detective Malone isn’t going to be happy to see us.”

Darby was right. Calling the police meant homicide detective Judd Malone would show up. He wouldn’t be thrilled I’d tripped over another dead body. (For those of you counting, this is body number three.)

“I don’t understand. Dr. O was fine last night. Why did he have to die here?” I looked at Darby knowing my eyes reflected the anxiety bubbling inside. “You should call Malone. Give him a heads up. I’ll call 9-1-1”

Darby shook her head. “No way.” She pointed at the dead man. “He was here to see you. You call the police.”

I stood and brushed sand and dirt from my backside. “Just because this is his, ah, almost final resting place, doesn’t mean he was here to see me. Come on Darb, Malone likes you better.”

“That’s not saying much.”

Warming to the idea, I smiled reassuringly and held out my fist. “Rock, paper, scissors? Loser calls Malone.”

“Mel, he’s used to getting these types of calls from you.”

Ouch. “Which is why you should call him.”

My buddy studied me for a nanosecond before holding her fist in front of her. God love Darby Beckett. She was my best friend for a reason.

“One, two, three,” we counted in unison.

I held out my fist.

Rock.

Darby held out her hand, palm down.

Paper.

Paper covers rock.

I looked up at her with my practiced beauty queen smile, holding my breath. “Best two out of three?”

NOT EVERYONE has a homicide detective on speed dial. I do. I’d prefer not to analyze that peculiarity. Especially since Judd Malone didn’t have a lot of patience for me. After losing that silly childhood game with Darby (I should have offered to flip a quarter, at least then I’d have had a fifty-fifty chance), I called Detective Malone to explain the situation. He told me to touch nothing and to keep everyone away. Yeah, I unfortunately already knew the routine.

Darby and I tried to act nonchalant. Most downtown businesses didn’t open until ten or eleven. It wasn’t tourist season, so it was fairly quiet on the streets. The way I figured, we’d upheld our end of the deal.

It was the police, blaring down the street, who drew attention, red and blue lights flashing in the low clouds. The few shop owners who were already at work spilled out into the sidewalk, circling my shop. Asking questions I didn’t want to answer.

You know the saying, “There’s no such thing as bad press?” It’s not true. A dead body lying in front of your business is bad press. There’s just no getting around it. Especially when the body in question was a new customer.

Bless her heart, Darby had wrangled the dogs inside Paw Prints. That left me to hover over Dr. O’s corpse and shoo away the rubberneckers.

“What happened?”

That was Detective Malone. A man of few words. Occasionally, I wondered if he was a man of fewer friends. He was extremely good looking in that heart-stopping way, but he had the personality of a souvenir paperweight.

I faced Malone, happy to concentrate on someone alive. He’d arrived in his detective uniform—jeans, T-shirt, and leather jacket. It was very similar to my usual dress, the main difference being I wore mostly dog-inspired graphic tees. Today my T-shirt read, “You had me at woof.”

My eyes narrowed on Malone. “As I said on the phone, Darby and I found him like this. Well, sort of. He was sitting on the bench, looking like a bum, but then Fluffy, you remember Fluffy, well she took it upon herself to sniff, uh . . . him, and then he tumbled off the bench and whacked his head on the cement.”

“Did you touch him?” Malone gave me his signature stone-faced cop look. Having recently been on the receiving end of that look more times than one could count, I was immune.

“I checked for a pulse. But that’s it. As you’re aware, I’m not a fan of dead people.” I glanced over my shoulder at Dr. O’Doggle, his crumpled body still in a heap in front of the bench.

“Yet somehow you continue to find them.”

“Yeah, well, there are just some things a girl can’t control. Apparently, for me, it’s dead bodies. I have to be good at something.”

“Detective Malone,” a female crime scene tech called out.

“Don’t leave,” Malone ordered.

I rolled my eyes. “Where would I go?”

The tech gently rolled Doc over then pointed toward his back. Malone blinked, leaning in for a closer look. I wanted to see, too. Was it the green leash they were looking at? They didn’t need to move him to see that.

I stood on my tiptoes and swayed side-to-side, angling for a better view. I didn’t see anything odd or unusual, but something had piqued the police’s interest, which in turn piqued my curiosity.

Malone mumbled something under his breath only the tech could hear. She nodded. A couple of uniformed officers asked me to step back as they taped off the area around Dr. O, which happened to include the front door to Bow Wow.

“Uh, you can’t do that. My customers won’t be able to get into my store.” Once word got out about Jack, I’d have plenty of foot traffic. Not a whole lot of purchasing, but a ton of gossiping. That’s just how it worked here.

“Mel, you know the drill. This is a potential crime scene,” Officer Salinas ground out.

“Thanks for the reminder.” This wasn’t my first two-step with Salinas. He hadn’t been receptive to my Texas charms the last time I’d wanted to enter a crime scene, either. All I’d wanted then was to go inside Fluffy’s owner’s home and retrieve Fluffy’s hairbrush and a towel. You’d think I’d threatened to take Salinas’ cop car on a joy ride through our little oceanside town.

I have to commend myself, though. I was handling this situation much better than the last one. I only felt like throwing up. The lack of blood on Doc’s body made a huge difference.

I checked my watch, just after ten. Customers would start trickling in soon. I didn’t want to sound insensitive, but I needed to know if a schedule shuffle was in order.

“Salinas, how long do you think you’ll be?”

“Longer if you keep talking to me.” He continued to stretch bright yellow police tape across Bow Wow’s front door. Dang, this was bad for business. Bad, bad, bad.

Darby popped out of her studio and made her way toward me. She’d found a black-felt pea coat to ward off the chill. I noticed she avoided Malone. “What’d I miss?” she asked.

“Nothing. Malone doesn’t want us to leave. He has questions.”

“I don’t like his questions.” Darby had every reason to be wary. It wasn’t that long ago when she and Malone were at odds. He thought she’d killed Mona Michael, Fluffy’s original owner. You couldn’t blame him. The evidence at the time pointed in Darby’s direction. It certainly didn’t help that she’d kept a major secret from all of us.

Malone noticed Darby standing next to me. He finished his conversation and then made his way back to where we waited.

“Ms. Beckett.” His mouth split into what I’m sure he thought was a smile. Man, it needed a lot of work.

“Detective Malone.” Her voice cracked. Nerves.

I winked at her in an effort to boost her confidence. Darby wrung her hands then caught herself and tucked them in her jean pockets.

“When the two of you arrived, was anyone hanging around?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said.

Darby cleared her throat. “Mr. Forester across the street arrived at his shop about the same time we did. But that’s all. This place doesn’t usually get busy until eleven.”

“No customers, delivery trucks, pedestrians?”

I shrugged. “I wasn’t really paying attention. I was thinking about what I had to do today.”

“He was here to see you specifically?” he asked.

I wanted to look offended, but I couldn’t pull it off. “I suppose. I overheard an argument between him and Tova last night when he called her. He planned to pick up a gift for Kiki during the private party I threw last night for a new designer. But something came up, and he never showed.”

“Did he say why he wasn’t coming?”

I shook my head. “I never talked to him. Just Tova.”

He narrowed his eyes and asked, “Are you sure she was talking to him on the phone, not to someone else?”

“Well, not one hundred percent. But I did see her caller ID, and it said Jack, so I assumed that’s who she was talking to.”

“Did she mention how he sounded?”

“Tova usually only talks about herself,” I explained.

He nodded and scribbled mysterious notes in his black notebook. “When did you speak to the doctor last?”

“Yesterday morning.” When I didn’t elaborate, he motioned with his hand for me to continue. I sighed. “It was nothing. He called in between surgeries and asked me to set aside a pair of dog booties for Kiki. Tova’s dog.”

“Is that the gift you mentioned earlier?”

I nodded.

“And neither of you know why he didn’t show up last night?”

“I wasn’t at the party,” Darby offered.

“Ms. Langston didn’t invite you?” he asked evenly.

Darby threw her shoulders back and mustered her moxie. “I had plans.”

“How’s Fluffy?”

Darby blinked rapidly, completely caught off guard. “Fine. We’re fine. Thank you for asking.”

He nodded. “Ms. Langston, how was Dr. O’Doggle acting the last time you talked to him?”

I frowned, not sure what he was getting at. “What do you mean?”

“Happy, sad, scared, depressed?” he rattled off the emotions as if he were reciting his grocery list.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. We talked over the phone. I don’t know him all that well.”

“What about Tova?” Mr. Personality asked.

“She was ticked off. And impatient.” Boy, was I familiar with the latter.

“Do you know how he died?” Darby asked the one question on both our minds.

He slapped his notebook closed and tucked it into his inner jacket pocket. He gave us the don’t-ask-questions look. “Too early to know for sure.”

What he was really saying was it’s none of our business. But it was, as long as Dr. O’Doggle lay dead in front of Bow Wow.

“I know you and your crew have a lot to do. Should I take the day off, or will I be able to open for business today?” I motioned to the activity behind us.

“I’m sure you can find something to do for a couple of hours.”

Well, there was something I needed to do. An important something I’d put off for too long. “Do I need to call before I come back?” I asked.

“You’ll know when we’re finished.”

Wow. Such a communicator.