Maximum Security (A Dog Park Mystery) (20 page)

“Speaking, of,” Jim said, “what
are you looking for?”

“I’m not sure, exactly. Just
trying to get a sense of Monica and her daughter, the dynamics. I
think it’s kind of a fishing expedition.”

“Don’t forget the hunk down the
street,” Bailey added.

“We think he’s crushing on Mrs.
Munce,” Lia explained, “and she seems to be crushing
back.”

“After school, then,” Bailey
added.

“What’s after school?” Terry
walked up with Nappa and Jackson.

“We’re skulking,” Bailey
announced. “You want to be a skulker?”

“Are detectival pursuits afoot? I
presume we are after the killer of the unfortunate George Munce?
Who is the quarry? Suspects! I must have suspects!”

“Well, there’s
–
” Lia began.

“Don’t tell me, I’m cogitating.
Obviously, you don’t believe it is the scheming mistress, or you
would just leave this to the police.”

“Kitty is
not
scheming,”
Lia protested.

“That leaves the recently bereaved
Mrs. Munce. Am I right?”

“She’s at the top of the list, but
her alibi is a problem. She was at work,” Lia said.

“We think she had an accomplice,”
Bailey added. “Maybe the kid down the street. He looks like he
could pull it off.”

“Intriguing.” Terry stroked his
chin, pursed his lips. “I must pay my respects to the widow and put
my ratiocination skills to work.”

“You can’t go before I take her my
cake,” Jim said.

“Wouldn’t the owner of that dust
mop you call a dog be upset if she found out you were visiting
other women? I should take the cake,” Terry announced.

“Make your own damn cake,” Jim
said. “You’re not getting mine.”

“Children, children!” Lia scolded.
“Terry, it won’t hurt for more dog park people to stop by. You’re
just going to have to find your own comfort food for the
Munces.”

“Tell me again why we’re returning
to the scene of the crime?” Brent asked.

“Because they always do it in the
movies,” Peter deadpanned. “It’s supposed to inspire
us.”

“Sweet bleeding Jesus.” Brent’s
head swiveled as a chrome car pulled onto the road in front of
them. “If that isn’t slicker than frog spit in August.” He patted
his steering wheel. “Celeste, Baby, would you like to look like
that?” He turned to Peter. “How much do you think it would cost to
have that done?”

“Chrome plating isn’t much, but
taking the car apart and putting it back together again will cost
you. I bet that’s a car wrap. You could do it yourself for around
five hundred dollars.”

“What’s a car wrap?”

“It’s vinyl with adhesive on the
back.”

“Contact paper for cars? On my
Celeste? Oh my ever-loving Lord, I think I’m going to puke. I’ve
never heard of anything so absolutely
tacky
. Pun intended.”
He stroked his steering wheel. “I apologize, Baby. Don’t you worry
your little head-gasket about it. I’d sooner trick you out in fuzzy
dice and spinners.”

“Justin Bieber has a chrome car,”
Peter said, straight faced.

“Tell me you made that
up.”

“Would I lie to you?” Peter’s
expression mingled mock-hurt with astonishment.

“I was lusting after the
Bieber-mobile? How will I live with myself?”

“You’ll manage.”

“I think I need to pluck out my
eyes.”

“We’ve got eye wash in the first
aid kit if you need it. Turn here.”

Brent peered up from the ground.
“Are you communing with the essence of murder yet? Are you inside
the killer’s head? Thinking his thoughts?”

Peter looked down from his perch in
the makeshift tree stand. “Wander over by that pile of downed
trees, will you?”

Brent made his way to George and
Kate’s love nest. “What am I doing over here?”

“Giving me a chance to think . . .
Say something in a normal tone of voice. I want to see if the sound
carries.” Brent began to recite the Pledge of
Allegiance.

Peter listened with half an ear as
the sound floated up.
Who are you? Why were you here? George and
Kate only met after the hunters were gone for the morning. You
weren’t hunting.

He caught a whisper of something, a
scent that had been masked by the overwhelming reek of predator
lure during his last visit. He leaned over. Sniffed. Whiskey,
soaked into the wood.
Were you drinking up here?
He pulled
out his pocket knife and a baggie, scraped up a small pile of the
alcohol infused wood fibers and tucked the sample away for later
testing.

“Come on back, Brent.” He
scrambled down from the makeshift aerie. “I think I know who our
man is and what he was up to.”

“Do tell.”

“Stryker was hunting and brought
along a bottle. Got drunk enough up there to spill some of it.
Maybe he passed out, maybe not. He hung around long enough to catch
the George and Kate show, listened in on their plans to meet again.
He realizes he has an opportunity to kill Munce, but he doesn’t
want to get caught. He goes home, reports his bow as stolen and
then pulls the tranny out of his car. The big question is, why did
he shoot Munce? I think we have some more digging to do on William
Stryker. We’ve got to find a connection to George Munce and break
that alibi. We also need to come up with a plausible scenario for
how he got down off that hill without his car.

Brent popped the last onion chip
into his mouth and looked at the empty slider boxes scattered
across Peter’s desk. “Remember, you promised. You cannot tell
anyone I eat this stuff.”

“I took a picture with my phone
when you weren’t looking. I’m going to send it to Cynth and tell
her that’s what she has to look forward to on your first
date.”

“You do that, and I’ll tell Lia
you’ve been drinking Pepsi again.”

“That’s low.”

“Speaking of low, what could a
low-life like Stryker have to do with George Munce? Munce ever work
for Hudepohl?”

“Munce managed that Dollar Hut for
almost five years. I don’t know what he did before that, but I
can’t imagine Stryker waiting that long if he had a grudge, can
you?”

“No, I guess not. So where do you
want to start?”

Peter pulled up Bill Stryker’s
police record, scanned it. “I say we start with the ex-wife,
Colleen.” Another search revealed that Colleen Stryker now went by
her maiden name, Thomas. Peter tapped a few more keys to pull up
her driver’s license.

“Hel-lo.”

“What is it?” Brent rolled his
chair over by Peter so he could see the computer
monitor.

“Look familiar?”

Brent narrowed his eyes, cocked his
head to one side. “Let’s see. Dump a gallon of peroxide on her head
and put a red smock on her, and I think we have the lovely Carleen
from Dollar Hut. Now isn’t that a surprise?”

“Do you suppose he offed Munce
because Munce helped her get away from him, or do you think he did
it so she would get a promotion?”

“Could be, it’s a twofer. Maybe he
thought that was the way to get his punching bag back.”

“Murder is a real romantic
gesture. What do you want to do first? Talk to Carleen or pull him
in?”

Carleen smiled when they walked
into the store. Peter noticed her front tooth was chipped. He
wondered if the dental defect was courtesy of Bill
Stryker.

“Back again? Did you find what you
wanted on those security tapes?”

Peter mentally smacked his head.
They hadn’t even looked at the video files. “They were helpful.
Thanks for getting those to us. Ms. Thomas, we have a few more
questions for you. Can you take a break? Is there somewhere we can
go?”

“Sure, we can go to the
office.”

Carleen informed the cashier on
duty that she would be off the floor for a while. Then she led them
through a door in the back of the store which opened into a small
hallway. This, in turn, led to the stockroom. The employees’
restrooms were on one side, a time clock and a rack of time cards
on the other. Next to that was a tiny office.

The office held a small desk with
an aging secretarial chair. Two stackable chrome and plastic chairs
were against the side wall. A pair of battered file cabinets were
against the rear wall.

Carleen had apparently started to
make the space her own. The desk and the tops of the filing cabinet
were decorated with chipped and broken knick knacks, probably
salvaged from damaged merchandise. Her taste leaned toward
cringe-worthy-cute ceramics that Monica Munce wouldn’t decorate her
garbage can with. On one filing cabinet, a struggling snake plant
grew in a pot decorated with Halloween jack-o-lanterns and black
cats. It was surrounded with a schizophrenic jumble of decorative
objects. Peter imagined the antiseptic and oh-so-tasteful Mrs.
Munce attacking the display while wearing a haz-mat
suit.

Carleen nodded to the two chairs,
then sat at her desk. She swiveled her chair around, facing them.
Peter sat. His chair rocked slightly. He leaned forward and rested
his elbows on his knees to put his weight on the front
legs.

Carleen looked at them
expectantly.

“We’d like to ask you a few
questions about your ex-husband,” Peter began.

“Is this about Billy?” She gave
them a confused look. “I thought you were here about
George.”

Peter ignored the question. “How
long have you been divorced, Ms. Thomas?”

“Please, call me
Carleen.”

“About that,” Brent said. “Your
driver’s license says your name is Colleen.”

“Oh, everybody calls me Carleen.
My baby brother couldn’t get my name straight, and it stuck. I’ve
been Carleen since I was in grade school. Why do you want to know
about Billy? We’ve been divorced for six months. He hasn’t done
anything, has he?”

“We don’t know,” Peter said.
“Shondra said Munce helped when you were having trouble with your
husband. We were wondering how your ex felt about that.”

“We were fighting a lot back then.
I came in with a black eye and George was upset about it, and he
kinda pushed me into leaving Billy.”

“Did your ex-husband ever say
anything about George?” asked Peter.

Carleen fidgeted. “No man likes it
when someone interferes with their business. Billy wouldn’t do
anything about it. He was all talk.”

Except when it came to planting
his fist in your face
.

“We’re very concerned, Carleen,”
Brent said. “We believe your ex-husband’s crossbow was used to kill
George.”

“
His bow? His bow
was stolen. He told me so.”

“When did he tell you this?” Peter
asked.

“Right when it happened, after he
called the police. He called me, bitching about not being able to
pay child support. He said someone took his bow right in the middle
of his session of the deer cull and he wouldn’t be able to give us
any venison because of it. Last year he took a deer. It fed us all
winter.

“Billy didn’t kill George,”
Carleen insisted.

Peter did not note any of the usual
signs of deception when she said this, or during her previous
responses. Whether or not Bill Stryker killed George Munce, Carleen
wholeheartedly believed he hadn’t done it.

“Why do you think his bow killed
George?” Carleen asked.

“We found the bow,” Brent said,
“with George’s wallet and phone.”

“You did?” Carleen’s eyes went
wide with fear.

“We find the coincidence
interesting,” Brent said. He pulled the photo of Kate out of his
breast pocket. “Have you ever seen this woman?”

Carleen glanced at Peter, looked at
the photo. She shrugged. “Maybe. I might have seen her in the store
a time or two.”

“Have you ever heard the name
Kathleen or Kate Onstad?” Brent asked.

She shook her head, looked down in
her lap. “Is that the woman you were looking for? Is she dead,
too?”

“No, she’s alive,” Peter said. “We
were wondering if there might be some connection between her and
your ex-husband.”

“I wouldn’t know about
that.”

“The first thing out of Bill
Stryker’s mouth when he opened his door was ‘I want a
lawyer.’”

Peter was chopping onions while Lia
tended to a pot of quinoa. She turned on another burner to heat a
larger pot with olive oil in the bottom. “Put those in here.” She
gestured to the pot with a wooden spoon. Peter obliged. The onions
began to sizzle. Lia stirred them with the spoon to keep them from
burning. “You think Carleen called him?”

“I’m sure she did.”

“Did you get anything out of
him?”

“Nothing worthwhile. But we were
able to get a warrant based on his connection to Carleen and
probable motive, along with his ownership of the crossbow. Guess
what we found.”