"There? Easy. I've been hanging in this park long enough to notice the pool service truck that coasts through those gates every day at four pm. If you can hitch your wagon to a chlorine machine, you're in."
"Thank you!"
My watch read 1:00 pm. I had time to plan.
Ric fingered my elbow-length mesh sleeves. Holding a dowsing rod like a psychic set of reins had given him a touch that could veer from sheer gossamer to a grip of iron. I'd felt that as intimately as I'd seen and experienced the dead couple's passion and death.
"I'll be in touch, Delilah. Okay?"
Oh, yeah, even though my knees were knocking about what that might mean.
Or maybe because they were.
Chapter Twelve
Three hours to kill. Oops. That phrase had an ugly echo in Sunset Park now that I'd viewed the skeletons in the ground.
I wandered around, avoiding the crime scene I'd been banned from. I bought my own hot dog and drenched it in mustard that made my mouth pucker, avoiding onions for my possible interview later. I stared at the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse across the street, meditating on Hector Nightwine and who, or what, he might be. Nice man, bogeyman, entrepreneur, thief?
At the lower end of the park, I spotted a dog run and stood watching from a distance, sawdust in my throat. I couldn't help being drawn there, thinking of Achilles. The signs advertised obedience trials at 5:00 pm every day. The word "obedience" made me smile through my tears. Achilles wasn’t big on obedience but he was spot-on about everything I needed. Loyalty. Spirit. Elegance. Love.
My throat was clogging, caught in a vise. Here I was, a new woman in a new city, and my past still had me by the throat harder than any vampire.
Las Vegas SPCA the sign read. Women bustled around wire cages while I wandered among them, eavesdropping. What else is a reporter but a professional snoop? Just browsing.
"Gosh, I hope one of these guys goes soon," a petite redhead fretted as I passed. "The city shelter will have to kill any one that comes back today."
"Maybe we should put a sign out." The plump, gray-haired woman sounded bitterly passionate. '"Adopt me now or I die tomorrow.'"
"Shhh! Truth doesn’t get good homes. People can't face that."
I'd seen death up close and personal at the park's other end. I couldn't face a return encounter here. So I hunted for an Achilles look-alike. Small, white, cute.
These were all big dogs. Crossbred. Unwanted.
One in particular hunched hopelessly in a big wire crate still way too small for it. It was a shaggy gray ghost of a dog, ten times Achilles' size, nothing cute and apartment-sized about it.
I approached the cage, then tapped the wires to see the most beautiful pale blue eyes ever, way better than my own, turn to me from a silver-and-cream furred face. A widow's peak of darker fur over those amazing eyes made them seem almost human.
"Too big," I heard the women whisper behind me. "What a shame."
Am I easy? Maybe. Or maybe I'm just ambitious.
"How big?" I turned to ask.
"A hundred and fifty pounds. He's definitely from the wolf-spitz family, but really big for the breed. Maybe a touch of Irish wolfhound or Alaskan malamute in him. The eyes are blue, but pale to gray in the right light. Random-breds are hard to tell sometimes, you know?"
No, I didn't know, except for the hole in my heart. I scanned the organization's single-spaced adoption papers. Eighty dollars, no other pets, a permanent address…
I copied Ric Montoya's street address in the appropriate blanks.
"Really? You want this guy? He's a monster dog. You'll need to exercise him daily."
"I run," I told them. "A lot."
So forty minutes later I walked out of the area with a huge gray dog wearing the black leather-and-steel two-inch-wide collar he came with, attached to a new limp nylon half-inch-wide leash, blue with white letters reading Nevada SPCA.
He will go where I lead, and that's to Sunset Road coming up on 4:00 pm.
"Okay," I told him like he could get it. "I'm new here too. We've got to swing on a star and get into this place by hook or by crook. You ready?"
The pale blue eyes said yes.
We lurked outside in the juniper bushes until the pool service truck paused, then gunned past the electrically opened gate. We slipped in after the truck. I led. He followed. I held his leash. He already held my heart.
Can we really storm this castle? And, if so, who will care?
The truck chugged past the second round of gates, but I spotted the needed squawk box here. Also a camera eye. I'm attuned to recognizing cameras. I went on tiptoe to hit the lever and speak my piece into the impersonal infrared eye.
"Hi, Mister Nightwine. My name is Delilah Street. I'm a TV reporter from the heartland, and I've got a few questions about a dead body on a recent episode of Las Vegas CSI V."
I heard the echo of my own words. Recorded. Dismissed. No go.
Suddenly the box squawked back at me, sounding like a televangelist. Rotund. Ponderous. With great big bad hair.
" Miss Street. My deepest apologies for keeping you and your, er, associate, waiting. My man will be down post haste."
"Post haste," I told my new dog.
He tilted his huge head, then whimpered and strained at his leash, showing his teeth in a big grin. My God, he had a maw the size of a grizzly bear's! Good dog.
When the butler appeared he was half what I dreamed him to be: natty, with an amiable, worry-corrugated forehead. A forty-something dude with a bit too much tummy and a smidge too little chin, but charming nonetheless. Not sexy, but certainly cute, especially with that pencil-thin mustache. I pictured Ric with same and was so not turned off that I banished that idea…post haste.
This butler guy wore a real monkey suit from a Fred Astaire movie, white tie and tails, and his skin matched the outfit to a T. It was paler than any vampire could manage on his darkest day. He was a literal symphony in living black-and-white.
"Please come in, Miss Street. And your little dog too." He gave-whoever-a welcoming but sardonic grimace. "However, I will keep custody of his, hmmm…leash, I suppose. Might as well put the Minotaur on a string. Gracious, he's ready to eat a grandmother-hopefully not mine-isn't he?"
Dog growled and showed his teeth. My, what big teeth he has!
"It's okay," I told butler dude.
Dog sat and lolled his tongue sideways out of his mouth. My, what a huge tongue he has!
The butler I wanted to believe was named "Niven" led me down acres of marble and tile-paved hallways to show me into a magnificent office where a magisterial man of size, dressed all in black, bearded and mustached, awaited me.
"I will take Mister, ahem, Dog to the kitchen for a soup-bone repast," the butler announced. "Don't worry, Miss. He'll be returned even fatter and happier than he left you."
Since Dog looked lean and hungry and still somewhat sad at the moment, I hoped so.
"Fine," I said.
"Thank you, Godfrey," said my host. "Do keep him out of the lamb for tonight's supper."
Dog immediately turned and dragged Godfrey out of sight. This did not bode well for the lamb.
We were alone now, and my heart was beating like one of the drums in Rod Stewart's "The Rhythm of My Heart." It wasn’t reacting the erratic way Ric Montoya made it hiccup, but with the steady elevated rate I felt when I was hot after a story.
The magnificent office reminded me of Hearst Castle. I could barely absorb the details: enormously high coffered ceiling twinkling with gilt. Exquisitely carved wainscoting up to twelve feet, at least.
"Sit," Nightwine said before I could speak further. Did this feel like a dog-training class or what?
I sat, surprising myself. The rococo wooden chair would easily hold an archbishop. I felt like Alice in Wonderland. My feet didn't even touch the thick Turkey rug under my feet and I'm five-eight without heels.