Double Dog Dare (The Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Series) (12 page)

She looked back at the inspector, set her shoulders, and replied calmly, “
Missing
.  The title of my new film is
Missing
.”

After that, really, there was nothing more to say.

~*~

Miles was tense and silent as we waited under the bougainvillea-laden portico for the rental car to be brought around.  I ventured a glance at him.  “I guess I should have stayed out of it.”

“Yes,” he agreed shortly.  “We both should have.” 

And then he glanced at me with a breath of apology.  “Sorry, babe.”  His hand caressed my back briefly, and dropped.  “I’m not mad at you.  I’m just pissed off in general.  I don’t like being played.  Again.”

I was a little confused by that.  “Do you think that’s what Alex was doing?  Playing you?  Why?”

Instead of answering, he asked, “What was that about the dog, anyway?”

I said irritably, “That woman spent the past two days in a hotel room somewhere on the other side of the island, and if you want my opinion, Cocoa was probably with her. I thought I could trip her up if she didn’t know Cocoa had run away, and I almost did too.   I mean, look at her.  Look at
me.
”  I gestured head to toe, and Miles did.

“Looking.
”  He smiled.  “Feeling less pissed.”

I ignored that for the sake of making my point.  But I did like the way he smiled.  “My skin is  burned to a crisp, my hair is like a Brillo pad, even my eyes are a different color
—and that’s just from a few hours playing in the surf while wearing sunscreen.  There’s no way she lay passed out on the beach until some peasant family found her, much less lay unconscious from dehydration for two days.  Could she even have swum to shore from the reef?  How far is it?  Who makes up stuff like that?”

Miles lifted one shoulder.  “Maybe.  If she’s supposed to be an Olympic-class swimmer, maybe she could do it.  Anyway, it doesn’t matter whether it’s true. She could have said she spent the last
two days in the belly of a whale and as long as the police can’t prove she didn’t, she’s off the hook.”

“All for a publicity stunt for a movie
!”  I shook my head in disgust.  “Who
does
that?”

“Welcome to the
glamorous world of the rich and stupid.”   

The valet pulled up in the red
Peugeot and bounced around the car to open the door for me.  Miles pressed a bill into his hand and got behind the wheel. 

“Do you really think Alex was in on this?” I asked as he pulled onto the narrow, crowded road that led back to the villa.

“He had to be, the cocky son of a—” A little yellow Smart Car darted in front of us and Miles blasted the horn.  The other driver flung his hand out of the window with a universal sign that did not mean
I’m sorry
.   Miles barely seemed to notice, scowling behind his sunglasses over matters of much more import.  “That’s why he wasn’t worried about being arrested.  He probably planted the damaged regulator himself, just to add drama to the story.  I’m guessing they had the whole big reveal lined up for that wake Amanda was planning for Wednesday, but when the police took Alex in yesterday, they had to move the timetable up. If they had pulled this in the US, they’d have a line out the door trying to sue them by now.  Probably why they didn’t try it there.”

I said, “Funny that
Alex would go to all this trouble to help promote her movie when she was getting ready to divorce him.”

“Maybe this was her condition for staying with him.”

“Maybe.  It’s just that—well, if Rachelle Denison is already Hollywood royalty, what does she need a stunt like this for?  Isn’t promoting a movie usually something a producer does?”

He was thoughtful for a moment.  “Yeah.
”  Then he reached across the console and squeezed my knee.  “Do you want to make me very happy?  Talk about something else.”

I said, “Okay.”  But I was pretty sure he wouldn’t like my choice of topics.
“What happened between you and Susan?  Why did you divorce?”

I think it was at that moment I knew why I would never feel comfortable in a place like this, for all its glamour and pristine beaches and water so clear you could see the bottom.  Sunglasses.  The sun was so bright there was no room for shadows, but sunglasses concealed more than shadows ever could.  I would have given all I owned at that moment just to see his eyes.

He took his hand off my knee, presumably to make a turn, and he was silent for just long enough to make me think he might not answer.  “Irreconcilable differences,” he said.

“After eight months?”

I felt, rather than saw the shutter close over his face. “I didn’t cheat on her, if that’s what you’re asking.  I am now, and always have been, the perfect serial monogamist.”

I supposed that was what I was asking.  Asked and answered, but I couldn’t let it go.  “Did she cheat on you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then what—
”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Raine, what difference does it make?  It was a long time ago. We were different people back then.  I’ve had another marriage and a kid since then.  I can’t even remember.”

That, I knew in the marrow of my bones, was a lie. 

I
turned my face to look out the side window.  The traffic crept along the winding little hillside road.  I kept remembering the way Susan’s face had softened when she first had seen him this morning.  The way he had looked at her, and not Alex, during the press conference. 

After a long time
, he spoke again.  “My first wife’s name was Cynthia,” he said. “It was an impulse military marriage, and lasted three years because I spent two of them in a war zone.  Melanie’s mother was Therese.  We got married because she was pregnant.  It was all about passion with us, about pushing the boundaries, and it ended because she eventually pushed the boundaries too far and slept with another guy.  It lasted five years, which was probably five years too long, but it gave me Mel and it was worth it.  Susan was…”  He hesitated, but still did not look at me.  “Susan was a mistake.  We should never have gotten married.  We were friends, and probably should have kept it that way.”  There was more, but he didn’t say it.  What he didn’t say rang between us.

And, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t want to hear it.  Perhaps because I was afraid that the unspoken truth would break my heart.

So I just smiled a little and said, “I could really use a nap before dinner.  This has been the most exhausting vacation I’ve ever been on.”

He seemed to relax
marginally.  “And it’s only Day Two.”  He glanced at me.  “Are we okay?”

Another quick smile.  “Yeah, sure.  Everything’s fine.”

I was getting good at convincing people of that.  Maybe one day soon I’d even be able to convince myself.

~*~

EIGHT

W
hile Miles put the car away, I followed the sound of voices through the house and out to the pool deck to discover my dog making an absolute fool of himself over the fellow who had introduced himself as Rick, Cocoa’s dog walker.  Rita and Melanie were chatting with him while Cisco, flat on his back and splay-legged,  enjoyed the ecstasy of a chest rub.  I stopped, surprised, and said, “Hi.  This is weird. I just had drinks with your boss.”  And more, a lot more, which, if they had had the television on they would no doubt already know.  Clearly they had not.  

Rick stood up, and Cisco rolled over, got to his feet, and trotted over
to me, tail wagging affably.  I dropped to my knees and hugged him, burying my face in the sweet sunny golden smell of him, loving the wriggling enthusiasm with which he greeted me, the shape of his muscles, the silk of his fur, even the smell of his hot-dog scented breath. Grounding myself in him for even those few seconds took away all the ugliness, shock and stress of the previous two hours, gathering up the negativity like a magnet gathers metal shavings.  That’s what dogs do, that’s why we love them.  They make bad things go away.  I couldn’t help thinking about Rachelle, coming home after a two-day absence—even if it hadn’t been the near-death experience she had professed—to the dog she loved.  Would her reunion with Cocoa after two days have been any less enthusiastic than mine was with Cisco after an absence of only two hours?  Yet she had barely seemed to remember it.

“Hey, Raine,” Melanie said excitedly, bounding to her feet.  “Rick came looking for Cocoa.  I told him Cisco was a search and rescue dog and that he could probably find him in no time flat, but Grandma said I should ask you first.  So what do you say? Can we take Cisco out searching?  Did you bring his gear?”

I stood up, looking at Rick, thoroughly confused now.  “Oh,” I said.  “I thought he had come home.  That’s what Susan said.”

He looked startled, then recovered quickly.  “Really?  That’s great news.  I hadn’t heard.
”  He laughed a little uneasily.  “I guess we can call off the search.”

Melanie looked disappointed. “Too bad.  Cisco could’ve found him in a flash.”

I told Melanie, “Probably just as well.  Cisco’s on vacation, and I’m really not sure he’s licensed to work in the French West Indies.” 

She saw the quirk of my smile, and grinned back, patting Cisco’s shoulder.  “Maybe next time, dude,” she told him
, and she cheered.  “Say, that means Cocoa and Cisco can have their play date after all!  We’re going to the beach after dinner.  Why don’t you bring Cocoa down?”

Rick said, “I don’t know.  I’d have to check with Mr. Barry.”

I was dying to tell my news, but Melanie went on happily, “Raine, wait until you see the new trick I taught Cisco.  We’ve been working on it all afternoon.  Watch this.”

She took a step back, held up her palm, and said, “Cisco, high five!”

Cisco, standing between Melanie and me, almost knocked me over in his enthusiastic leap onto his back legs.  He swiped at Melanie’s hand with his paw, missed, and bounced down on all fours.  She tried again.  “High five!” and this time she stepped closer, so that when Cisco jumped up his paw automatically hit Melanie’s hand.  She was really getting good at this, and I applauded them both, laughing, while Melanie rewarded Cisco with a hot dog treat.

“Good job!” I exclaimed.  “Both of you.”

“Want to see it again?”

“I do,” I assured her.  “But first, I wanted to tell you all something.”

I took a breath, looking from Rita to Rick, enjoying my moment of importance.  “Cocoa’s not the only one who came home,” I said.  “You won’t believe who just showed up at Alex Barry’s press conference.  His wife.  Turns out Rachelle Denison wasn’t dead after all.”

Rita whipped off her sunglasses and sat up straight.  “What?”

Melanie said, “You mean the drowned lady didn’t drown?  Hey, maybe she was a werewolf after all!  Cool.”

Rita said, “Are you serious?  After two days?  How is that possible?”

But Rick just stood there, looking astonished.  When he noticed my gaze on him he managed, “I—is that right?  That’s wonderful news.  For Cocoa.  And Mr.  Barry.  He must be so relieved.”

Rita demanded impatiently, “Raine, really! Don’t keep us in suspense!  What happened?”

I turned my gaze from Rick back to Rita. “She says she washed up on a beach somewhere and has spent the past two days being nursed back to health by a French couple, but the prevailing theory is that it was all a publicity stunt for her new movie.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Rita sank back onto her lounge chair and replaced her sunglasses with a look of contemptuous disbelief on her face that mirrored my own.  “These people will stop at nothing.”

There was a plate of nibbles and a frosty pitcher of what looked to be pink lemonade on the table under the shade.  I helped myself to a date stuffed with gorgonzola.  Fabulous.  I noticed a cellophane-wrapped package tied with paw print ribbon next to the snack platter and picked it up.

“Actually, that’s the main reason I stopped by.”  Rick stepped forward, making what appeared to be a valiant effort to recover his equilibrium. “Things were a little, well, hectic when I was setting up and I forgot to leave that. Deer antlers,” he explained as I examined the contents through the cellophane.  “Dogs love them, but be careful not to let him chew them all at one time. Also, there’s a card listing our services.  Dog walking, pet sitting, day care, even grooming and massage sessions, all part of the service.   Any time you’re going to be gone for the day, just give me a call and I’ll be happy to come by and let him out, or take him on a run, whatever you like.”

Melanie put a possessive hand on Cisco’s head.  “We never leave Cisco.  He goes everywhere we do.”

As though I would really trust Cisco to a dog-walker who had already lost one golden retriever.  I smiled anyway, and said, “Thanks, but she’s right.  I might take you up on the grooming services, though.  And I really loved the way you set up Cisco’s room.  That was a nice touch.”

He smiled briefly
, and suddenly seemed in a hurry to get going. “Well, it was nice to see you all.  You too, Cisco.”  He gave Cisco a perfunctory scratch behind the ears and Cisco grinned up at him. “Just call the number on the card if there’s anything we can do for you.  Bye now.”

He hurried down the path to the front drive, and Rita waited until he was out of earshot to observe, “California.  He’s definitely from California.”

I poured myself a glass of lemonade and regaled Rita with the details of our afternoon while Melanie scrolled through a list of entries about Rachelle Denison on her electronic tablet, occasionally speaking up to apprise us of some particularly salient piece of information, like how many stars her last two movies had gotten—more than the first two—and  how much money she had purportedly been paid for signing for the new one, which was less than I imagined, although still more than a dog trainer could expect to make in multiple lifetimes. 

“She’s twenty-nine years old,” Melanie reported,  “but not for long.  Her birthday is
tomorrow.  Hey, here it is, on Entertainment News.” 

Melanie turned the tablet around so that we could see the video of the press conference I’d just attended.  It was clearly unedited footage and the report was brief; I was sure they would have a much more polished version by air time on the national news.

“She certainly does look cool and collected,” observed Rita.  “But her husband doesn’t look particularly pleased, does he?”

“I think he’s supposed to be looking stunned.”

“He’s doing a pretty good job of it, for someone who isn’t a professional.”

“The only thing I wish is that she had hung around long enough for some reporter to ask how she had time to get her nails done.”

Rita chuckled at that and sat back, reaching for a canapé.  “What I don’t understand,” she added in a moment, frowning thoughtfully, “is why someone would report seeing a body being tossed overboard, if there was no body to dispose of.”

“People get a little hysterical when something like this happens,” I said with a shrug. “They see things that were never really there at all, or the things they thought were perfectly innocent at the time suddenly look ominous.  Maybe it was a fisherman throwing back a catch, or tossing out garbage illegally.”

“Or something else illegal,” volunteered Melanie helpfully, “like a bale of marijuana or maybe even a cargo box filled with cocaine.”

Melanie’s
current ambition was to join the DEA and train drug-detection dogs.  It was an ambition I knew Miles did not like to encourage, but apparently her grandmother had not received the same memo.

“That’s an awful lot of cocaine,”
Rita said. “What kind of self-respecting drug dealer would toss that much money overboard?”

“Oh, he wouldn’t be tossing it,” Melanie countered, warming to her theory. “He would be stashing it for his partner to come pick it up in one of those fast little cigarette boats and run it to Miami.  We’re right on the drug route, you know.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, intrigued.

“Oh, sure.
Bogotá, the Philippines, Miami.  Isn’t that right, Dad?”

Of course Miles had chosen that moment to join us.  He had changed to his beach clothes, and I could tell by the expression on his face that the last thing he wanted to talk about was the drug trade.

“Geography,” I tried to cover quickly.  “We were just talking about the geography of the western Caribbean.”

Cisco
, who had planted himself hopefully between Melanie and me, watching for dropped snacks, bounced over to greet Miles.  Miles bent to pet him, giving me a skeptical, “Hmm-mmm.”

“And also about Rachelle
Denison,” supplied Melanie helpfully.  “We think she’s a total phony.”

“I wouldn’t disagree with you there, sweetheart.”  He straightened up, took a shrimp from the chilled bowl on the table, and fed it to Cisco.  Cisco gobbled it down and looked at him worshipfully.

“Hey!” I objected.

He tilted a raised eyebrow at me.  “Vacation,” he reminded me.

“Hey Dad, want to see Cisco’s new trick?”

“Can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”

Melanie scrambled to her feet, took her stance, and this time when she commanded, “High five!”  Cisco struck her palm with perfect precision.  We all laughed and applauded, and Miles gave him another shrimp.  What dog wouldn’t like that game?  Melanie tried it three more times, with three more shrimp, until I complained, only half joking, “Save some for me, will you?” 

Miles grinned, wiped his hands on a paper napkin, and said,  “Okay guys, let’s take a break.  Speaking of shrimp, where would you ladies like to go for dinner?”

“Oh dear,” his mother said.  “I thought you and Raine had plans, so I
called the concierge service to bring dinner for Melanie and me.”

“Spaghetti from Embargo,” Melanie
added, “the best in the
world
.”  She looked at her grandmother hopefully. “You could order more.”

Miles glanced at me ruefully. “Actually, I did have a plan,
and it sounded great this morning.  I thought you might enjoy a sunset dinner on the reef, but given that we’ve just spent the entire afternoon listening to stories about deadly diving accidents on the reef…” He shrugged. “Maybe not such a fun way to spend the evening after all.”

But I was interested.  “Do you mean the same reef where Alex and Rachelle went diving?”

His tone was guarded.  “That’s the one.”

“Are you planning to push me overboard?”

“That depends.  Are you planning to talk about Rachelle Denison all night?” 

I grinned.  “I’m a strong swimmer.  And you’ve got a dinner date.”

~*~

Melanie and Miles went down to the beach for another paddle board lesson, but I was content to settle in the shade with Cisco and Rita, the platter of goodies within reach and a glass of white wine in hand.  I am really more of a beer girl
, but when in Rome, I suppose.  I gave Cisco one of the deer antlers, and he crunched it up in no time flat, looked at me hopefully for another, then settled under my chair with a huge disappointed sigh when he saw nothing more was forthcoming.  I could feel his watchful eyes, though, waiting for a dropped cracker or another tasty shrimp.