twenty-seven

Delma remained at the Barkery for the rest of Janelle’s work day. I couldn’t help smiling at her each time I caught her eye.

She was definitely one wonderful friend to Janelle, although I wished she wouldn’t keep bringing up the whole murder situation each time the shop was empty of customers. Or at least she did when I happened to be in there with them.

But her take on it was that things would work out and the killer, Tim, would be found, and so would the dogs. Janelle would be fine. It had to be that way. Period.

I could only hope she was right.

I spent a lot of time in Icing, too, working with Vicky and with Dinah, who’d taken charge again after she’d returned from lunch. My human bakery had a lot more customers that afternoon than my dog one. I could never seem to gauge which shop would be busier. I just had to ensure that they all had enough product.

Having fewer customers in the Barkery also reminded me that I’d talked briefly to Billi before about maybe scheduling a pet adoption day at my dog treat store. It would potentially bring in more customers on the day of the event, get the word out about my shop even more, and, most importantly, hopefully result in more adoptions of pets from Mountaintop Rescue.

Maybe even find Sweetie, my favorite dog there, a home at last. Yes, I’d asked Billi again about the little golden dog that so resembled Biscuit, and she was still there.

Tempting … but I wouldn’t do anything that would take my attention away from my own beloved dog.

It was finally nearing closing time. Things started to slow down in Icing, so I made my way back into the Barkery to see how many customers we had.

Still not many. But one of the people there I knew didn’t currently have a pet, even though he was allegedly looking for one. Or many, as was the case—in his undercover PI role.

Garvy Grant.

I was puzzled by his presence, since I thought we’d planned to get together next week, and I approached him, knowing my gaze must look quizzical. I hoped he was here to tell me he’d found the missing dogs at last.

Even though I hadn’t given him the tiny clue that I’d learned about Tim’s whereabouts.

“Hi,” I said, putting more of a question than enthusiasm into my tone. “Can I help you find something here?”

“I just thought I’d pick up some treats to take to Mountaintop Rescue tomorrow.”

I didn’t tell him I was about to have dinner with its manager and could—and would—ask her about any purebred dogs who happened to be there now, including English bulldogs.

“That would be very nice,” I said instead. “I make sure that a lot of our leftovers are brought there while still fairly fresh, to be given out to the residents.”

“Very nice,” he echoed, and smiled, his green eyes looking straight at me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable, as if he could see inside my mind and realized I knew something I wasn’t telling him.

Janelle was behind the counter at that point, getting our cash register total for the day. Delma had been with the two dogs but I saw, around Garvy’s shoulder, that she was approaching us.

“Hi,” she said. “Do you have a dog?” Before he could answer, she said, “I’ve met you before—oh, yes, at the Knobcone Resort, I think.”

Garvy had turned to look at her. His expression had morphed from incisive to blank, as if he didn’t recognize Delma at all. I wondered if they’d seen each other on that fateful night at the bar.

Not that it mattered.

“Maybe so,” Garvy said. “And no, I don’t have a dog, but I’m looking for one.” Something about his tone suggested irony that Delma wouldn’t understand, but I did.

I had no intention of smiling at him about it or otherwise acknowledging it.

“Well, I’m sure we all hope you find the right one,” Delma said.

Or ones, as the case may be, I thought.

Although I considered hinting to Garvy that the cops might be aiding him in his quest, I didn’t get the opportunity, which was probably a good thing. He left almost immediately after that conversation, and I gave Janelle the go-ahead to leave soon thereafter. She unhooked Go from the enclosure and they and Delma exited through the shop’s front door.

I locked it after them, then finished the day’s initial accounting, checked the refrigerated case in the Barkery for items to put aside for the vet clinic or Mountaintop Resort, and then got ready to leave as well.

To go to dinner.

Dinner that night at Billi’s house was delightful. As a member of the Matlock family, she lived in the neighborhood where Neal had taken us on the hikes I’d participated in. Her place was a gorgeous stone mansion near the top of Pine Lane.

Before letting her know we were arriving, I drove onto Vistaview Place past the Arnist house. I saw no activity there beyond the closed gates, no indication as to whether Ada’s parents were still in town or not. I heard no dogs. Still, could this be the forwarding address for Tim’s dog food?

I had no idea.

I turned and headed back to the hillside street and stopped at the curb in front of Billi’s. I called her on my phone and said hi, and the huge wrought iron gate opened immediately.

I pulled onto the blacktop driveway and parked.

The house looked like a European castle, both inside and out. All it needed was a moat. The front door was large, ornately carved wood, with round towers of worn stone on either side. The door opened almost eerily as Biscuit and I approached, but I nearly started laughing when Billi’s dogs—Fanny, a beagle mix, and Flip, a black Lab—raced through it right toward us.

What followed was a love session of woofs and sniffs and wagging tails. They’d both met Biscuit before. They occasionally all got together at Mountaintop Rescue since Billi brought her dogs there sometimes, although she most often left them at her day spa. All were buddies.

Billi stood in the doorway. I was used to seeing her in her workout clothes or shelter apparel, but sometimes got an occasional glimpse of her all dressed up for a City Council session. Today, though, she was dressed not like a wealthy local citizen at home but like anyone else, in jeans, athletic shoes, and a loose-fitting gray T-shirt.

I looked even dressier than she did in my black slacks, snug black knit shirt, and dressy black loafers.

“Come on in.” She motioned for me to enter. Biscuit scooted ahead of me and so did her canine companions.

Billi was the only Matlock in Knobcone Heights these days, so she lived here alone. She had been married once, or so she’d told me when we’d first bonded over our love of dogs. That had ended in what sounded like a nasty divorce, and she’d been alone since.

Although recently she had hinted that she might be seeing someone … I still wondered who, and how serious it was, but figured she’d tell me when she was ready, at least if it continued.

She showed me past the entry to the living room and down a high-ceilinged hallway into the dining room. There, the long table of thick wood was already set for two people at the end closest to the kitchen door.

“It may be too late,” I said, “but is there anything I can do to help?”

There wasn’t. She was just happy to have me be her guinea pig of sorts for her new veggie spaghetti sauce. She’d cooked penne pasta to serve it on. She also brought out some cabernet from a California vineyard around Napa.

Even so, I accompanied her into her kitchen, where I made sure the dogs had water in the metal bowl near the refrigerator. Plus, she’d put out some high quality kibble in another bowl, and I assured her it was okay if Biscuit partook of it.

In addition, I handed her a large paper bag. It contained some of the doggy treats we’d baked that day at the Barkery, as well as a small box of red velvet cupcakes and a bag of chocolate chip cookies for her from Icing.

And then, after she placed pasta on two plates and ladled out generous helpings of a delicious-smelling tomato sauce—obviously containing onions, green peppers, mushrooms, and more—I carried them in and set them at the table.

As soon as we sat down, I took a forkful of her creation and grinned. “Mmmm,” I said. “Delicious.”

“Glad you like it.” She took a bite of her own. “Yeah, not bad if I do say so myself.”

“Which you did,” I reminded her with a smile that she returned.

We continued eating for a few minutes while talking only about our respective careers and how they were going and how much we enjoyed them. That was one thing we had in common. We both liked who we were and how we’d gotten here.

After a while, though, I decided it was time to address what I really wanted to talk to her about.

“Care to put on your City Councilwoman hat for a while?” I asked.

“I wondered when you were going to get serious,” was her reply. She donned an equally serious expression and used well-manicured fingers to push her dark, highlighted hair away from her face. “So tell me what’s going on.”

I gave her a quick rundown on everything, including my discovery that real estate agent Garvy Grant was actually PI Grant Garvy. “I know that you can keep things like that confidential,” I warned her, and she promised to do so.

Then I got into his ruse of trying to find a replacement for his supposedly deceased bulldog, and how he had actually been hired by some of the people in LA whose dogs, like Janelle’s, had been stolen—
including a bulldog, the kind he ostensibly was seeking. His investigation had led him to Knobcone Heights, similar to Janelle’s quest. He had sought Ada as part of his attempt to find the missing pets, and now he was after the guy known as Tim Smith, aka Tim Thorine.

“Could he have killed Ada after finding her?” Billi issued the question that had run through my mind.

“He claims he didn’t—said he wouldn’t have done that, certainly not without finding the missing dogs first. And his continued failure to find them, or Tim, gives some credence to that.”

“Maybe,” Billi said.

“Maybe,” I echoed.

I then hurried through the rest of the scenario: meeting Tim at the vet clinic; tracking down the address he had given and not finding him or the dogs; discovering a house on the same street, where dogs in fact were located; discovering they weren’t there the next time, but talking to a neighbor who provided a lead about a possible forwarding address given to a dog food delivery company.

“I told Chief Jonas about the delivery company today. But I don’t know if she’ll follow up on it.”

“She will,” Billi said grimly. “I’ll make sure just the right amount of information leaks to the media to ensure that it’ll look really bad for the local police department if they don’t follow up.”

“My hero!” I said to her.

“Of course,” she responded.