man’s right name. Quarles’s memory is pretty shaky.”
“I’m on it soon as we hang up. You still in Dogpatch?”
“Yes.”
“Then how about you take a look around the McManus property? Perfect time for it, nobody there.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” I said. “But don’t get too excited-I’m not about to break any laws.”
“Just bend them a little, huh?”
I let that pass. “Get back to me right away if Alex has anything to report.”
“Will do.”
I left the car where it was, walked down to the McManus place. Trespassing on private property is a tricky business, but if the house was deserted I ought to be able to get away with a look around the exterior areas without making inquisitive neighbors or passersby suspicious. First rule: always act as if you belong. I opened the front gate and marched up onto the porch, not hurrying and not looking anywhere except straight ahead.
I leaned on the bell for half a minute. Empty echoes, as expected.
There was a path that angled over to the driveway. I followed that, again taking my time and trying to look purposeful, and turned down the driveway past a narrow side porch to the backyard. Beyond the house was a low building that ran most of the property’s width, fronted by an empty wire-enclosed area-kennels and dog run. The rest of the yard was flower-bordered lawn crisscrossed by flagstone paths. The near end of the kennel building ended close to a tall neighboring fence; the entrance would be around on the far side. I headed in that direction. And that was when the frantic barking and whimpering started up inside.
At least two dogs, judging from the different cadences. Which meant what, if anything? Worth taking a look.
I opened the door, stuck my head inside. Canine odors mingled strongly with those of excrement-the kind of smells you get when a place hasn’t been cleaned in a while. No lights on, the interior shrouded in gloom. I fumbled around on the walls, found a switch, and flipped it. A couple of low-wattage ceiling bulbs chased away the shadows, let me see two facing rows of wire-gated cages.
The barking and whimpering picked up as I moved along the cement floor between the cages. Two occupied, the rest empty. The bigger and louder of the dogs, the one doing the frantic barking, was a shelty that hurled himself against the gate as I passed. The other animal, smaller, short-haired, a breed I didn’t recognize, lay on her belly with her front paws scrabbling at the cement floor; the whines and whimpers she was making had a frightened, mournful edge. It wasn’t me that had them so frantic; it was hunger, thirst. The food and water dishes in both cages were empty, apparently long empty. And the cement floor in both was stained with urine, spotted with piles of feces.
Abandoned. Coldly, cruelly left here to starve.
Anger welled up in me, cold and hot at the same time. One thing I can’t abide is the mistreatment of any living being, human or animal.
There was a utility table built against the wall farther along; a couple of twenty-pound bags of kibble sat on it, one half-empty and the other unopened. The empty cages were clean and contained water and food dishes. All of their doors, like the ones housing the shelty and the smaller dog, had thick wooden pegs for fasteners. I got clean dishes out of two of them, filled two with kibble, the others with water from a spigot alongside the table, and replaced them in the empty cages.
The shelty was still barking and frantically throwing himself against the mesh, but he didn’t look mean. And wasn’t. He bounced up against me when I opened his cage, let me take hold of his collar. He’d seen where I put the food and water, all but dragged me into the first of those cages, and immediately began wolfing the kibble. The smaller dog, a female, was harder to transfer. She cringed away from me, cowered shaking against the outer wall. I had to drag her out of there, into the other clean cage and up to the two bowls. She went for the water first, with wary eye shifts in my direction as I backed out and repegged the door.
There wasn’t anything else I could do for the dogs now. They’d be all right until I could get the SPCA out after I was through here.
Outside, I sucked cold air for several seconds to clear my sinuses of the kennel stench. The windows in the bordering houses all looked empty-no nosy neighbors to wonder what I was doing on the property. I went first to the rear entrance, still trying to look as if I belonged here. A screen door was unlocked, but the hardwood door inside it was secure.
Up the driveway, then to the side porch, up the stairs to the door. I expected this one to be locked, too, but it wasn’t. The knob turned under my hand and the door eased inward a couple of inches. According to Chavez’s report to Tamara, this was the door McManus and Carson had used to haul their belongings out to the SUV; they’d been in such a hurry they’d neglected to lock it before leaving. Or hadn’t cared enough to bother.
If I went inside I’d no longer be bending the law; I’d be breaking it. From illegal trespass to unlawful entry. Chances were I wouldn’t find anything anyway. On the other hand, there was always the possibility they’d forgotten or overlooked something incriminating. I’d never know for sure unless I looked.
Well?
The hell with propriety, I thought. McManus and Carson were guilty of Christ knew how many crimes, and the only one we had any real evidence of was negligent cruelty to a couple of boarded dogs. All I was doing standing out here was wasting time and running the risk of calling attention to myself.
I shoved the door open and walked in.
This was the part of the house they’d used for Canine Customers. Combination storage and supply room: more bags of dog food, extra dishes, a couple of carrying cages, leashes hanging from wall pegs. And a stack of moving cartons near the door. I opened one of them. Clothing, odds and ends. Left here because there was no more room in the SUV? Or did McManus and Carson intend to come back from wherever they were heading for another load?
I went through an open doorway at the far end. Office. Desk, a couple of cabinets, cords and wires where a computer and printer, both now missing, had been hooked up. The cabinet and desk drawers were open and there was a scatter of papers over the desk and floor: they’d done their packing in a hurry. I picked up several papers at random for a quick look. Paid customer invoices, paid utility bills, and the like. What was left in the drawers was more of the same. No income records, no bank statements, nothing pertaining to individual or professional finances. No correspondence or anything else of a personal nature.
There was nothing to see in the Canine Customers anteroom. I went from there through the foyer, into a sprawling living room.
Enough daylight filtered in past drawn blinds and shades to let me see without having to put on a light. A lot of money had been spent in furnishing it, but in a haphazard and tasteless way. Heavy antique tables and chairs of different styles, woods, and time periods, a glass-fronted cabinet crammed with gilt-patterned chinaware, heavy floor lamps with fringed crimson shades, an intricately patterned red and blue Oriental carpet that clashed with a couple of big, ugly modernistic paintings hung on two walls.
Here and there were empty spaces marked by dust lines where other, smaller pieces of furniture had stood. A section of a third wall above a secretary desk and next to a closed-off fireplace was bare except for a couple of metal brackets where something large and rectangular had been mounted; its faint outline was also visible when I got up close enough. One of those monster flat-screen TV sets, probably.
Too many items missing for them all to have been included with the boxes and other stuff Chavez had seen the two women loading into the SUV, so they must have been taken away on previous hauls. Told me two things: McManus and Carson had been planning to move out for at least a couple of days but weren’t panicked enough to leave behind the bulk of their easily transportable possessions, and wherever they were hauling the stuff to, whether a permanent or an interim location, had to be relatively close to the city.
In the inner wall was an open doorway that led into a cluttered sitting room. Nothing for me there. And nothing in the kitchen and dining room except more residue of hasty and careless packing. Behind the kitchen at the back of the house was a smallish bedroom, comfortably but not as opulently furnished as the common rooms, with a connecting cubicle that contained a toilet, sink, and tiny stall shower. The room they rented out, likely. The double bed was made, everything clean and in its place, but the bureau and nightstand drawers, the closet, and the bathroom were empty. Nobody living here now. I wondered how long it had been vacant. There was a faint odor of cleaning fluid in the bathroom.
I went back the way I’d come, through the sitting room. Between the carpet there and the one in the living
