Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega 4)

“Do you want us to come back later?” Leslie asked.

“No. It’s all right,” she said. “Waiting would only waste your time and mine. I only had two shots—okay, three. But I did it on a full stomach and I’ve been drinking water since you called.”

Leslie looked doubtful, but Anna said, “Look. We’re not after her. We are not going to use this testimony in court. If we need real testimony, you can come back and get it.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Leslie asked. “We can return later.”

“That stupid jogger set the police on me. Her uncle is a judge, I think. Now she’s set the FBI. Sure. Come talk to me about unicorns and dragons.”

CHAPTER

10

They followed her into the house, which smelled like cinnamon and vanilla in a combination not quite strong enough to cause Anna distress, though she’d be glad to leave. The entryway led them into a huge circular room with hardwood floors trimmed in stone around the smallish fountain in the center of the room and around the fireplace on the wall opposite the entryway.

Other rooms opened off the main room. Anna caught a glimpse of a kitchen, a dining room, a weight room, and a room where everything had been torn out down to the studs. The drywall, shreds of carpet, and bits and pieces of furniture were left in an untidy pile on the floor.

“My ex-husband’s office,” Katie caroled as she walked by. “I did the demolition myself. Better than therapy. But my contractor is sending people in the next few days to redo it. And clean up the mess.” She paused, then looked at Anna and winked. “He put that carpet in for me, right after we got married. When he came in to give me a bid on repairs, he asked me what had been wrong with the carpet.” She smiled. “I told him there wasn’t any blood on it.”

Katie led them into her own office, bright and airy with a view of a swimming pool dominating a huge backyard. Other than the pool, it was mostly xeriscaped but with patches of green hidden under fruit trees. The back fence was eight-foot wrought iron with a gate leading out to a waterway and presumably, because Anna couldn’t see it from the window view, a jogging path.

The office was big enough to swallow a desk and a couch and love seat with room left over. Katie plopped down on the love seat, tucking one sandal-clad foot underneath herself.

“So did she tell you that there must be a body in my garden because her dog barks at my yard all the time?” Her voice rose and sweetened. “‘Remington doesn’t bark anywhere else, just at her garden. Remington is an intellectual genius and knows, absolutely knows, that there must be a body buried there. He’s trying to tell us.’” She narrowed her eyes at Leslie, and when she continued, it was in her own voice. “Remington is a squat toad who pokes his nose in other people’s business. If I were going to bury someone in my garden, it would have been my hushband. Husband. Ex. Ex-hushband. But he’s still alive and living in sin with his girlfriend, who is the same girlfriend he’d just broken up with when I met him. Stupid dog. Stupid men. All of them should rot in hell.”

“So the jogger’s report was first,” Anna said, suddenly understanding what had happened. “She has connections, so the police came to ask you about your garden.”

Katie had been nodding, but she held up a finger to stop Anna. “Point of fact. They dug up my garden and it took me three weeks to get it back into shape. One of my yuccas is, I’m afraid, doomed.”

“And so you told them that there was a fairy living in your garden,” Leslie said.

Katie held up a finger. “No. I called them back at one in the morning and said that there was something dangerous here. Something. The police came and asked me what was dangerous. I told them I’d seen a unicorn and two smallish dragons running down the street. Which I had. My neighbors have a trio of delightful children who like to dress up in last year’s Halloween costumes. I suppose they’d escaped the babysitter I saw chasing after them. Both of the dragons were carrying lighters—you know the kind I mean. Not the ones for cigarettes but the ones for lighting a charcoal grill. The unicorn was armed only with her horn.” She paused. “I may have left out a few things in my story. And I might have called it in five or six hours after I first saw the unicorn.”

Anna saw Leslie’s face and didn’t laugh, though she wanted to.

Leslie said coolly, “So you deliberately called police officers to your home because they inconvenienced you. And kept them here when they might have been needed elsewhere?”

Katie’s eyes narrowed and she lost the soft, half-drunken act entirely. “No. I’m telling you that I called them on a possible threat. I never saw the babysitter actually corral the little hooligans, did I? Two ten-year-olds can do a lot of damage with fire lighters. It’s not my fault that the police officer didn’t ask the right questions.”

Leslie sat up straighter, and Anna interrupted her. They were here for information. A lecture on the stupidity of crying wolf, no matter how well deserved, was not going to get them anywhere.

“We are not actually here about the unicorn. We’re more interested in the green man in your garden,” Anna said.

Katie stiffened more, and her scent spiked with anxiety that was not quite fear.

“You needed to distract the police from your garden,” Anna said. “The unicorn and dragon story did that very nicely. They aren’t going to want to come back here anytime soon, are they? But they’ve written you off as a kook.” That had been quite a sacrifice for this woman who spent so much time and energy on her own appearance. “But that green man comment—just a throwaway, really—has the ring of truth and that’s what brought us here. What do you have living in your backyard, Ms. Jamison?”

“I think I would like to call my lawyer,” said Katie.

“We are here because we are looking for a five-year-old girl who was taken by a fae who left a changeling in her place,” Leslie said. “That fae kills children, Ms. Jamison.”

“You can show yourselves out,” she said stonily.

“Time matters,” Anna told her, not mentioning that Amethyst had been missing for months already. “How will you feel when we find that child’s body? Will you ask yourself if she might have survived if you had cooperated? Or will you be able to shrug it off?”

“He has nothing to do with kidnapping children.” The older woman’s voice was harsh.