LITMIR.BIZ

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had big plans for it—shrubs along the back fence, bulbs and perennials on one side, more bulbs and annuals on the other, a brick patio with room for a grill, a table and chairs and maybe even a fountain close to her bedroom so she could open the windows at night and sleep to the sound of bubbling water.

      She didn’t have room in those plans for a dog who would poop on the lovely grass, dig up the flower beds and probably pee in the fountain, all while annoying both her and the neighbors with its incessant burglar-warning bark.

      Considering the matter closed, she opened the screen door and waited. “Are you ready to get back to work?”

      They went inside, finished the job of sorting, then merged their two sets of papers. “Now what?”

      He sprawled in the chair beside her. “When you checked the other night to see if Roy Jr. had a listed phone number—can you do it the other way?”

      “You mean a reverse search? Put in a number and ask for a name? Sure.”

      “Why don’t you take the most recent phone bills and check her long distance calls? I’ll start with the bank records.”

      She went online and pulled up the site she needed. Checking Olivia’s long distance calls for the last year of her life wasn’t much of a task. Business calls had been made at the office on the city’s bill, and personal calls were few and far between.

      At least until the March preceding her death. Once a week for three months there was a call, usually between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m., lasting an hour or more, to a number in Miami Beach, Florida. Curious, she typed in the number, hit the enter key and waited. “You ever hear of a Jason Scott?”

      Martin shook his head.

      “Olivia called him regularly for three months. The last call was the week before she died.”

      “Call him.”

      She picked up the cordless phone from the china hutch and dialed the number. “And say what? ‘Hi, you don’t know me, but I was just wondering what your connection to Olivia Stuart was?’ As if any sane person would actually tell me.”

      He grinned. “If he’s a red-blooded man, he will, if for no other reason than to hear you talk some more.”

      On the second ring, a recording came on. The number you have dialed has been disconnected…. She went back to the website and tried a search for Jason Scott in the Miami area. There were a number of hits, but the addresses were different. “So what do we do? Call every one and ask if he’s the Jason who used to live at that address?”

      When he shrugged, she printed the listings, then began dialing. It didn’t take long to hit a dead end. After the last wrong number, Martin took the phone and placed one call. Eve Redtree had never heard of Jason Scott and knew of no reason her mother would place so many calls to Miami.

      “Maybe Scott is a private investigator and she had hired him to find Roy Jr.,” Juliet mused. “Maybe he is Roy Jr. Maybe when he ran away from here, he knew his mother would try to find him, so he changed his name.”

      “She left him more than fifty thousand dollars. Don’t you think, if she knew he’d changed his name or had known where to find him, she would have mentioned it to her attorney, her children or the insurance company?”

      “Probably. Anything interesting in her bank statements?”

      “Maybe. She wrote a couple of large checks to Hal, one a year before she died and one five months later. Repaying a loan?”

      “Or maybe making one.”

      He shook his head. “Hal’s a lawyer. He makes decent money. He’s not married, has no kids and no obligations besides himself. Why would he need to borrow twelve thousand dollars from his widowed mother, who certainly wasn’t rich herself?”

      “You don’t drive a car like his or wear clothes like his on a decent salary. Hal’s got very expensive tastes. Maybe that’s how he pays for them—Olivia gave him his inheritance while she was still living.”

      “Then, in all fairness—and Olivia was a fair woman—there should be similar checks to Eve, but there aren’t.”

      Perhaps she’d given Eve her share in cash—and Martin hadn’t come across the withdrawal yet—or in property. The money could have been Olivia’s contribution to Hal’s ill-fated wedding, or he could have gone in debt buying those expensive things and his mother had bailed him out. There were plenty of possibilities.

      “Wouldn’t you like to see a credit history on Hal?”

      Of course she would. She was as nosy as anyone else. “You think you can talk one out of Stone?”

      “I doubt it. I’m not a suspect, but as long as we don’t know who or what I am, I’m not a trusted confidant, either. Besides, he’d probably just tell us to mind our own business and leave the police work to the police.” He grinned. “You think you can sweet-talk one out of that computer?”

      She had the contacts to accomplish it, but it would be illegal and probably wouldn’t have any relevance whatsoever to Olivia’s murder. If they both didn’t dislike Hal, the subject never would have come up. “Only as a last resort. This isn’t real, remember? We’re playing.”

      He grinned again, a slower, lazier, make-a-woman-weak grin. “I can think of a lot better games to play, darlin’, especially with you as my playmate.”

      If she were a braver woman, she would duplicate that wicked grin and the husky bedroom voice and issue an invitation no red-blooded man could refuse. But she wasn’t brave or wicked. She was blushing and fluttery, flattered and skittish. She was no temptress.

      But, oh, how she wished she was.

      * * *

      Dragging a thirty-gallon trash can, Martin made his way to the Dumpster out behind the church Monday afternoon. He hefted the can, filled with debris from the remodeling job, to the lip of the Dumpster and was about to up-end it when movement inside caught his attention. Slowly he let the can slip back to the ground, then moved a chunk of Sheetrock to better see the puppy who’d been scrounging inside.

      He wasn’t the sort of cute, lovable and oh-how-adorable puppy who would easily find a home. He was skin and bones, more than half starved. His coat was filthy, coarse and marked with scars from his nose all the way back to his rump, and he looked likelier to bite a hand than lick it.

      “Hey, buddy.” Martin removed his gloves, then rested his arms on the edge of the Dumpster. He didn’t reach out. “If you’re looking for food, pal, you picked the wrong place. This is a church. The only time you’ll find food in this trash is when they have their annual bean supper, and that’s not for another six months.”

      The dog backed into the corner, settled his rump on a two-by-four and gave him a wary look. Black and tan, he appeared to be a mix of Lab and hound and about six or eight months old.

      “I have a sandwich inside. If you’ll wait here, I’ll get it.” He’d stopped at the deli on his way to work and picked up a club sub for lunch, but then he’d run into Stone and Jack, who had invited him to the diner with them. He’d decided to save the sandwich for dinner, but the dog needed it more than he did.

      When he returned, the puppy was standing near the Dumpster, watching him with dark brown eyes. As soon as he crossed the invisible line of the dog’s comfort zone, the pup darted away, then turned to watch again.

      Martin sat down on the ground, his back against the trash bin and unwrapped the sandwich. At the first whiff of food, the dog became still, his gaze riveted on it. Martin fed him slowly, tearing the sandwich into pieces, tossing them a few feet away. When it was all gone, he and the puppy watched each other for a time.

      “Life hasn’t been too kind, has it?” He wasn’t an empathetic person, he’d told Juliet, but he could certainly relate to this scruffy, scarred creature. All the puppy wanted was food in his belly and a safe place to sleep. All he’d gotten was

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