stupid. She flushed all over, hot with shame. Perspiration ran down her sides. The dog was crying. Her head was bursting. She had to get out of there. “I thought it would make a difference—”
“Well, it doesn’t make a difference. It doesn’t mean squat. There’s no way to prove who carried that dog into the boutique. Try that in court, and you’d get chopped to pieces. Stupid,” she said again.
April’s jaw set. She moved a step closer to Joyce’s desk. If she made Sergeant, she’d be out of here. If she failed, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Her voice did not falter as, very deliberately and clearly, she said, “Don’t ever talk to me like that again.”
“What?” Sergeant Joyce looked surprised.
“I’m one of the best detectives you have. Don’t ever call me stupid again.”
Sergeant Joyce pursed her lips as if preparing for another abusive outburst. Then, suddenly, her forehead smoothed out, and she turned her attention to the little dog in the cage. “Yeah, you’re right. Why don’t you get that animal out of here.”
April picked up the kennel and muttered a few soothing words into it. The ear-shattering noise ceased. “What do you want me to do with it?” she asked.
Sergeant Joyce waved her hand toward the door. “Take it back. The tooth man is finished with it. Some idiot brought it here and left it before I got in. When I find out who, I’ll cut his balls off.”
April’s head pounded. One confrontation a decade was enough. She didn’t have time for another. Her exam was in an hour and twelve minutes. “Take it back where?”
“Take it back where it came from. This is the NYPD, not the ASPCA. It’s not evidence. We can’t keep it here.”
“Where’s the other one?” April said faintly, afraid suddenly it wasn’t anywhere anymore.
“The other one is evidence. It’s still being held.” Sergeant Joyce waved her away.
“Oh.” Still April hesitated. If this was Camille’s dog, she couldn’t take it back. Camille was in Bellevue. Bouck was in intensive care in the hospital. There was no one to take care of it.
“It’s been released, April,” Joyce said impatiently. “Guy called Jamal phoned for it. He’s the employee. Take the dog over. Is that asking too much?”
Under the circumstances it was, but April didn’t want to push her supervisor any further. She headed for the door with the dog kennel in her hand. As she closed the door behind her, she thought that she heard Sergeant Joyce mutter “Good luck.”
84
In the car, however, April had a change of heart. Should she have left the damn dog behind, just dumped it somewhere else in the precinct? She felt like an idiot with the bulky kennel on the front seat of her car. The puppy was quiet, but April was really rushed and anxious now. She had less than an hour to get to her exam. She muttered to herself all the way across and downtown.
“Calm down, calm down. We’ll make it.”
She drove more aggressively than usual, weaving in and out between double-parked cars and vans, speeding up in momentary gaps in the dense traffic. She did not look at the clock on the dashboard, didn’t want to know.
When she got down to Fifty-fifth and Second, the iron grille was still in place across the front of Bouck’s shop. In spite of all the antiperspirant she had used that morning, she broke into another sweat at the sight of it. What if no one was there to take the dog? How could she walk into her exam with it? She didn’t think she had a choice here. The thing wasn’t exactly NYPD property. The examiners would think she was nuts. She had to get rid of it.
April could feel her good-luck shirt sticking to her back as she pulled the car into an empty spot in front of a hydrant and looked up at the windows in Bouck’s living quarters. The light was on in the living room. She could even see the crystals in the huge center chandelier sparkling faintly. The guy Jamal must be in the house.
April got out of the car, slipped her purse over her shoulder, then went around to the passenger side for the kennel. She figured she still had about forty minutes. It was almost a straight line downtown to One Police Plaza. She could take the FDR Drive and make it in thirty.
Puppy poked her muzzle out of the wire mesh and tried to lick April’s hand as she reached inside the car for the kennel. April stroked her wet nose. “Hi, sweetheart. Someone wants you. Guess you’ll never be mine.” She hurried across the sidewalk to the door of the building and pressed the buzzer. “Didn’t really want a dog anyway,” she muttered.
The downstairs door clicked open instantly. Carrying the kennel in front of her, April climbed the stairs. At the top, she rang the doorbell. A few seconds later the door swung open. A smiling face greeted her.
“Oh, it’s you.”
April’s jaw dropped. In the doorway, dressed in a lavender silk camisole and a long, loose purple skirt, Milicia Honiger-Stanton grinned at her.
“How nice of you to bring my baby back. Hi, baby.” Milicia reached for the kennel and took it inside the apartment, where she crouched down to open the wire door and release the excited puppy.
April followed her in. “That’s your sister’s dog. A man called Jamal telephoned for it.”
“No way, hon. This one’s mine. Hi, Hannabelle.” Milicia picked up the ball of fur and hugged it to her chest, laughing. “You think I don’t know my own puppy?”
April frowned. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I came for Camille’s things.” Milicia cuddled the puppy. “I had to check up on everything, you know. I’m responsible. Will you look at this place?” Still holding the puppy, she led the way down the hall to the living room. “All this stuff. It’s Camille’s. She bought it all. A compulsive shopper. Camille has money hidden everywhere. It used to drive me crazy. I can’t just leave everything here like this. Who knows what will happen to it? I’m so glad you brought my dog. I was so worried about her.”
“Where’s Jamal?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never heard of such a person.”
Milicia stopped in the middle of the jumble of furniture. Here a space had been made for a huge mirror. It sat propped up on the top of green-leather-covered rolling library stairs two steps high. The mirror was almost seven feet tall.
“Get a load of this, will you.” Milicia twirled in front of the big mirror with the dog in her arms. Her purple skirt swung out in an arc. The mirror reflected pinpoints of light from the sparkling chandelier above. Milicia smiled at the lovely vision of herself. “It just came the other day. Isn’t it gorgeous? Camille told me it’s the best pier mirror she’d ever seen. Dates back to 1703.”
April frowned, worried about the predicament Sergeant Joyce had put her in with Jamal and the puppy. Joyce had told her to return the dog to Jamal. And April was also intrigued by the change in Milicia. Yesterday the woman had been hostile, insecure, frightened of the police. Now she had invited the detective on the case into a house whose owner was in critical condition, was openly revealing her plan to remove what she wanted from the house, and chatting happily about the sister who had only the day before tried to strangle her.
“It’s a real horror, isn’t it?” Milicia preened in front of the mirror, at home in the cluttered room, much too comfortable with the situation. “Just the kind of thing Camille liked.” She laughed softly.
April’s scalp tingled. She shivered, uneasy about a lot of things. One was the way Milicia was now gripping the little dog. It clearly wasn’t her dog. The puppy struggled in her arms, trying to get down. And time was passing. She was going to be late for her exam. April had no more than thirty seconds. She told herself to get Milicia to sign a release for the dog and get out of there.
Instead, she said, “You don’t seem very upset about your sister.”
Surprised, Milicia swung away from the mirror to look at her. “Oh, honey, I’ve been upset for twenty years. Do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up with a wacko sibling? Believe me, I cried a lot. But I’m not crying anymore.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry she’s going to prison, but she hurt me. She hurt other people. She can’t get away with it. That’s what our laws are for.” Her voice was suddenly harsh.
In Milicia’s arms, the dog whined deep in its throat. Milicia glared at it, then abruptly put it down. Free, the
