Maximum Security (A Dog Park Mystery) (24 page)

“Of course. You are the
open-minded one.”

“Be fair, Libra-Girl.” Lia didn’t
respond. “Would you like me to leave?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She sat on his
lap, toyed with his hair. She didn’t meet his eyes. “It’s been a
long weekend. I’ve had a really great birthday, but I guess I’m
tired now. That was really intense, you know?”

He gave her a hug and put her off
his lap. “It’s okay. Can I leave Viola here for one more night?
I’ll pick her up tomorrow.”

“I hope you two had a good
weekend,” Captain Roller began.

Peter and Brent looked at each
other. Whatever was coming, they weren’t going to like
it.

“Stryker’s lawyer is raising hell
that you never looked into his story about the kid selling him the
phone. This makes a big, ugly hole in your case. While you were out
carousing, Stryker met with Officer Forman and created an E-FIT of
the guy he got it from. I want you to get out there and close that
hole up.” He shoved a copy of the computer drawing at them, then
waved them out of his office.

~

“This is not how I wanted to spend
Monday,” Brent said as they walked back into the bull pen.
“Standing around a convenience store in a bad neighborhood. The
locals will want to shoot us because we’re interfering with their
illicit business just by being there. You think anyone will tell us
anything? That place is too close to Fay apartments, which is not
exactly full of civic minded citizens.”

“Cop? Danger? What part of that
didn’t you understand when you signed on? But we have a worse
problem,” Peter said.

“What’s that?”

“You take a good look at that
E-Fit?”

Brent picked up the drawing off
Peter’s desk. Shook his head.

“Squint your eyes a little and
think back.”

Brent frowned as he considered the
dark hair and broody eyes, shook his head. “I give up.”

“The day we interviewed Monica
Munce. When we were leaving. The kid down the block with the evil
eye?”

“I remember.” Brent looked again.
“Could be.”

“Lia says he’s been hanging around
our widow. This could blow our case out of the water.”

“Isn’t that just peachy? Do we
know his name?”

“No, but the funeral is tomorrow.
I bet he’s there. Stryker said he bought the phone around four.
That fits with someone who’s still in school.”

“You really think there’s
something to this?” Brent asked. “What are the odds?”

“What are the odds of catching Ted
Bundy with a traffic violation? It happens.”

“You really think it could be some
kid? What about school?”

“One step at a time. First we
canvass the store. Tomorrow, we either see this kid at the funeral,
or we find out his name and chase him down.”

“
Bailey thinks my
present is a sex toy.” When this didn’t get a laugh out of Peter,
Lia knew it had been a bad day. He slumped down on the couch. Viola
jumped up beside him and whimpered for attention. He stroked her
absently while he stared ahead.

Lia got him a beer and sat down on
his other side. “Tell me about it,” she said, combing her fingers
through the hair hanging over his ears, brushing it back. It dawned
on her that she was petting him, as he was petting
Viola.

“We had to cut him loose. We had
him and then we had to let him go.”

“What happened?”

“He bought the phone off some kid.
Witnesses saw it. And the postman places him at home when Munce
died. Now all we’ve got on him is receiving stolen property, and
that’s iffy. Dammit! I just knew he did it. I hate being this
wrong.”

“So somebody saw him buy a phone.
How do you know it was the same phone?”

“We don’t. But we still had to
release him, based on the postman’s statement. The kid who sold it
to him looks like that neighbor kid you said was hanging around
Monica Munce.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Do you know his
name?”

“Jacob. I don’t know his last
name, but I’m sure Bailey has it because she had Trees research
him. He’s got bad grades and has been caught smoking
dope.”

“Big surprise. Do you remember his
address? That’s enough for me to run him. I hate duplicating work,
but I need it on paper.”

She wrote the information down and
Peter stuck it in his wallet. “Are you going to the funeral
tomorrow?” she asked.

“Yep. Gotta hope the doer feels
compelled to say good-bye. Brent and I will be sneaking pictures of
everyone and hoping for a Perry Mason moment. If no one confesses
and tosses themselves on top of the coffin, we’ll roust the kid and
see what’s what. He’s young. Maybe we can scare him into telling us
something worthwhile.”

“You don’t think he did
it?”

“I’d hate to think he did it. Not
exactly the same thing.”

“I guess I’ll see you at the
funeral,” Lia said.

“You barely knew this guy. Why are
you going?”

“I feel connected to this. Max
dumped his femur in my car. We found his remains. I’m looking for
his dog. I would feel weird if I didn’t go.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Peter
nodded.

“There’s this other
thing.”

“Oh?”

Lia took a deep breath. “I’m taking
Kate.”

Peter shook his head but didn’t say
anything.

“We’ll stay in back. We’re going
to arrive late and leave early. There are other dog park people
going, so we’re going to hang with them. She just wants to say
good-bye.” Lia said all of this in a rush, reminding Peter of a
teenager trying to talk a parent into an extended
curfew.

“This could turn ugly.” Peter
winced inwardly. Why did he have to sound like his Dad the day
after Bailey said that stuff about parental tendencies?

“Kate’s not like that.”

“It’s not Kate I’m worried about.
Just be careful, okay? And try not to mace anyone, no matter how
much they deserve it.”

Lia drove through the iron gates of
Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum. Kate sat beside her in the old
Volvo, fussing nervously with the hem of her blouse while she
stared out the window. The road dipped down under a stone arch,
then opened up into four lanes fanning out into the Civil War era
graveyard. Lia took the second road from the left, following a
broken green line on the asphalt.

“Look.” Lia pointed to a two-story
obelisk keeping company with a miniature Greek Parthenon among pine
and magnolia trees. They drove around the edge of a small lake,
passing a pair of swans drifting by a weeping willow. “The carp in
that pond are as long as your arm.” Lia slowed. “Check this out.
You won’t see this back in Oklahoma.” Ahead of them a lichen
covered Gothic Revival chapel soared, complete with flying
buttresses.

“Oh, my,” Kitty said. “No, I don’t
think we have anything that old in Oklahoma.”

“This is a National Historic
Landmark. It’s the second largest cemetery in the country. I’m
taking the scenic route so we won’t arrive too early. You might as
well enjoy the view.”

Lia navigated narrow blacktop lanes
mazing over gently rolling hills. She loved the quirky
juxtaposition of monuments, from weeping angels, to a sphinx, to a
dog resting on top of his master’s crypt and more obelisks than
ever existed in Egypt. They passed a pair of joggers stretching
along the side of the road.

“I’m glad people use this for
something. It’s too beautiful just to keep dead bodies,” Kitty
said. “Do you bring your dogs here?”

“An unknown artist once called
this ‘a more magnificent park than any which exists for the
living.’ No dogs allowed, or I’d be here more often. The building
on the other side of the gatehouse up front used to have a jail
cell in the basement for people who drove their carriages too fast
on cemetery grounds. You can still see the bars on one side of the
building. They’re very strict here.”

Gradually the eclectic assortment
of nineteenth century statuary gave way to modern gravestones, then
to flat plaques embedded in the ground to create the illusion of an
uninterrupted park.

“That row of cars is it,” Lia told
Kate. “I see Bailey’s truck and Jim’s Caliber. “We’ll just hang in
the back. It’ll be fine.”

“Thank you for doing this. I
couldn’t stand it if I didn’t say good-bye to George, and I don’t
have the courage to come alone.”

The group of mourners was smaller
than it might have been. Lia suspected Monica wanted to avoid
sensationalist gawkers and arranged a graveside funeral, a service
which incidentally lacked chairs, as a deterrent.

Lia also suspected that dog park
regulars would not have been invited except for her food
deliveries. That, and the ongoing search for Daisy had likely
created an obligation the very proper Mrs. Munce couldn’t
ignore.

People were dressed in everything
from jeans to full black. Lia thought her own black broomstick
skirt patterned with wild roses struck a nice balance between
casual wear and formal mourning.

A clutch of women, black, white and
Hispanic, stood to one side. Lia pegged them as Dollar Hut
employees. One had a mass of fried blond hair with significant
roots that echoed her running mascara. A young black woman wore
braids spilling down her back, reminding her of Asia, a therapist
she had seen the previous year. The women were mostly dressed in
jeans with black tops. Some of them were probably going to work
afterwards.

Lia looked over at Kate as they
made their way up the slope. She was conservatively dressed in a
borrowed skirt and low heels. They’d tried on a wide-brimmed black
hat as a sort of disguise, but it was the wrong season and would
draw attention instead of deflecting it. Kate hid behind a dark
scarf and sunglasses instead.

A walnut casket was suspended over
the grave, supported by a casket lowering device. This consisted of
four heavy chrome rails mounted around the edges of the grave and
joined at the corners by a series of gears inside a housing. The
long rails could rotate and acted like spools for the casket
lowering straps. With the excess rolled onto the rails, the straps
formed a sling that held the casket up. When the service was over,
the gears in the corner housing would be unlocked and the device
would then be cranked, playing out the straps and lowering the
casket into the grave at a decorous pace.

The edges of the grave were draped
with green outdoor rugs that resembled Astroturf. Green rugs also
covered the mound of dirt behind the casket. A spray of white roses
lay atop the coffin. A photo of George grinned crookedly inside a
frame of matching roses, hung on a skinny wire easel beside the
dirt mound. On either side of the casket, floral tributes were
mounted on more flimsy easels. A large and lurid cross of pink,
spray-painted daisies stood out from the other arrangements. Lia
attributed this excess of sentiment to the women from Dollar
Hut.

Lia glanced nervously around the
crowd, looking for Peter and Brent, hoping not to find them. A peek
to the side revealed the pair observing the crowd from under a
spreading oak. Peter caught her eye, lifted one eyebrow in a subtle
acknowledgment. She shrugged back at him and resolved not to look
in his direction during the rest of the service.

Lia and Kate stopped at the back of
the group, behind Bailey and Jose. Bailey turned and whispered, “I
thought you were never going to get here.” She turned back toward
the minister, who continued to drone on. Lia looked sideways at
Kate. She suspected that behind her sunglasses, Kate was ready to
bolt. She gave her arm a squeeze of encouragement and saw the
woman’s shoulders relax.

Lia plucked out a sentence from the
reading.

“
. . . As gold in
the furnace, he proved them, and as sacrificial offerings he took
them to himself. . .”

Lovely, cheery stuff
. She
found herself mesmerized by the faint drone that was the minister’s
voice. The service would have put her to sleep if she had not been
standing up. Blinking, she focused, narrowing her eyes as she
concentrated on the words.

“. . . He who pleased God was
loved; he who lived among sinners was transported—snatched away,
lest wickedness pervert his mind or deceit beguile his soul; for
the witchery of paltry things obscures what is right and the whirl
of desire transforms the innocent mind . . .”

Did Monica pick that out?
Did she guess that Kate would show up?
Does she believe
Kate somehow bewitched her husband and God snatched him away so he
wouldn’t be corrupted?
A quick peek at Kate’s resolute
expression confirmed that the “scarlet woman” had heard every
word.

Lia peered around Bailey, looking
for the righteous widow. Monica Munce stood in front of the coffin,
to the left of the minister. Her head was bowed and Stacy stood by
her, a hand on her elbow. Lia estimated the widow’s line of sight
and decided that there were at least five people obscuring Kate
from Monica’s view. Still it would be best to leave as soon as the
service was over.