A Justified Bitch. H.G. McKinnis
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referring to her dogs.”
Bobby laughed. No, her sex life.
Helen gave the uniform a toe-to-head scan, and decided this one wouldn’t appreciate a sarcastic remark about Bebe’s career. “Her animals have been howling and barking for a while.”
The uniform leaned in close, as if wanting to say something confidential, caught a whiff of her aura and jerked back. Pansy. She wasn’t against taking a shower once in a while, but she wasn’t a fanatic about it. He backed up a couple of steps, trampling her fragile grass. “Ma’am, please look at me when I’m talking to you. Now, when did the dogs start barking?”
She stared at his shoes crushing her brittle lawn. “She only has one dog. The big one, Lupe, is a wolf.” She let her eyes flick up to his sunglasses. Forty-nine dollars at Big Five, but would go for fifteen at the swap meet.
“A wolf?” he repeated, his voice heavy with disbelief. “Right.”
Bobby moved around behind the uniform, mimicking the man’s tone. A wolf? No kidding? Ain’t they hard to housebreak?
Helen suppressed a laugh. “She looks like a big dog.”
“Did you see anyone go into your neighbor’s house this morning?”
Bobby nodded encouragement. Go ahead, tell him.
But she couldn’t, not until she was certain. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
Was she? Maybe she had, but maybe she hadn’t. She shook her head.
Annoyingly persistent, the uniform had yet to move his toxic feet off her grass. “Do you know what time the dogs started barking?”
“Not exactly.”
“Please, ma’am, give it a little thought. Was it before breakfast?”
“No,” she answered, not appreciating his condescending tone.
“Was it after breakfast?”
Bobby rolled his eyes. Do these guys go to charm school?
“It was after breakfast.”
“Was it …around lunch?”
Does he think you’re an idiot?
The electricity in her skin might make her watch run a little fast, Helen thought, but she could still tell time. “Perhaps a little before”—she paused, waiting for the howling and barking to subside—“noon.”
The uniform frowned, turned his head and spoke into his shoulder radio. “Stone here, uh . . . listen. We’ll need Animal Control at the crime scene on Tsunami Avenue. We have a couple of dogs for impound.”
A woman’s unintelligible voice crackled back, but Bobby took a stab at translating. They’re on the way. Hide the cats!
The uniform kept yapping about time and dogs, pacing back and forth until he stepped on Bebe’s finger. He glanced down, turned it over with his shoe, then with Olympic agility leapt onto the porch.
Helen smiled to herself. Finally, his shoes were off the grass.
“God!” The uniform leaned forward and gagged.
Helen grabbed his arm, steering him to the stoop, then opened the spigot and filled a cup with water. He took a big gulp and immediately spit it onto the lawn. The cup, she realized, might have been a little gritty from digging up gladiolus bulbs.
Bobby sneered. Wimp.
Officer Stone took a deep breath and shuddered. “God damn!”
Sacrilege! She hated it when people took the Lord’s name in vain.
Other uniforms turned in their direction, and immediately an entire shoe department of footwear scuffed and trampled their way across the lawn.
I’ll bet they all have yard service, Bobby growled, and a variance for extra watering.
“Get off my grass!” Helen screamed. It was too much. She was a law-abiding homeowner. She stooped to collect Bebe’s finger and a gang of uniforms grabbed her.
“Calm down, lady.”
“Get her out of here.”
Angry at the interference, Helen tried to stiff-arm the uniforms away, but there were too many. Giving up, she turned toward her door, but before she could escape inside, one of the uniforms had cuffed her wrists.
“Look, lady, we’re just doing our job. We can’t have you interfering with evidence.”
Evidence! “This is my yard! Get off my grass!”
A pair of dust-gray Lucchese python boots, retailing for three hundred and fifty dollars, stepped between Helen’s high tops and the chorus line of black shoes. “Hey guys, lighten up. I checked around. This is the local cat lady—eccentric, but not a suspect.”
A pair of familiar cop shoes stepped forward. “I found a finger from the victim on her property, Detective. Very close to where she was sitting.”
“I appreciate your diligence, Officer Stone”—the cowboy boots moved closer, warm fingers closing around Helen’s arm—“but there are two things I look for in a suspect connected to this type of investigation: blood on the suspect’s clothing, or no blood on a freshly washed suspect. I gotta tell you, this woman doesn’t fit either description.”
The detective steered Helen into the backseat of a police cruiser and buckled her in. “You just sit tight, ma’am. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Helen leaned back, enjoying the feel of the upholstery and the cool breeze of the air-conditioning. She had forgotten how nice a new car could smell. Bobby drummed his hands against the mesh cage that separated the back from the front. This is great. I could see you driving around town in something like this. You should get one.
“I can’t afford it,” she snapped, and before he could object she added, “and don’t tell me to use your money. You know I won’t.”
Officer Stone leaned against the fender. “You really don’t think she did it?” He indicated Helen with a jerk of his head. “Have to be a real wack job to cut somebody up like that. Jesus, there are pieces all over the place.”
Bebe? Helen felt her breathing quicken as the possibilities swirled and rattled through her mind like abandoned paper cups. She wished she could remember what happened, but as usual when she absolutely needed to recall something, it hid away inside the cracks and fissures of her brain.
Bobby chuckled. Don’t these idiots realize the cruiser’s window is open?
The detective shook his leg, trying to dislodge an affectionate plastic bag that had attached itself to his jeans. “Hard to say at this point.” He leaned in through the open window and pulled a printout off a small fax machine attached to the dashboard. Parking his butt against the fender, he scanned the paper. “Might have been a dissatisfied customer. Our victim has been quite a busy girl. Prostitution, drugs, did some time for fraud, and has a whole bunch of unpaid parking tickets. My guess, it was Parking Enforcement. Those people are relentless.”
The uniforms started stringing yellow tape around Bebe’s property while the detective and Officer Stone took pictures of the finger. They measured its position from the fence, then from the stoop to the sidewalk, and from the sidewalk back to the fence. They measured its length and its width. Finally they picked it up with a pair of tongs and placed it in a small Ziploc, which they put into a brown paper bag and sent off in a van with dozens of larger bags. Helen wanted to wave good-bye, but with her hands cuffed, couldn’t. Bobby stood in the middle of the street and watched Bebe’s departure.
A few minutes later an Animal Control van pulled to the curb and two AC officers, a man and a woman dressed in light-blue uniforms, climbed from the cab. They walked around to Bebe’s back gate—the woman