Mina took a deep breath. Time to man up.
“I’ll help you.”
“Thank you!” Lyndsey sounded as if she might cry. “Thank you. Please, come soon. They have me in Sheriff Carter’s little jail here in town right now, but if we don’t get this cleared up they’ll take me to real prison. They have my mother, too.”
Mina frowned. She’d just as soon let that trash stay in prison. “Why is your mother in jail?” Again.
“They think she was in on the dog-napping. I’m afraid it’s going to trigger some kind of prison PSTD for her.”
Mina sighed. She’d have to help Lyndsey. If that meant helping her mother too, so be it. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. And I’ll tell them the dogs were my idea. That will clear the puppy charges and then we’ll come clean about him falling.”
I’ll maybe say I moved a little faster than I did, though.
“Thank you.” She could hear the relief in Lyndsey’s voice as she hung up. Mina gripped the phone, battling back another wave of fear.
They’ll think I had something to do with Kimber’s death. Did I? Did I drag my feet on purpose?
Mina called the family’s lawyer and told him to bail Lyndsey out of jail. She was finishing that phone call when she heard the crunching of gravel and looked down the driveway to see a sheriff’s cruiser rolling towards the house.
No. Not yet.
She hadn’t had time to get her thoughts straight.
She wanted to run but knew it would be a bad idea. Not that it mattered. It felt as if her feet had taken root. She couldn’t move.
Sheriff Carter parked his car and got out to saunter towards her as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“How are you doing this morning, Mina?”
“I’m fine.” She had to push the words past her lips.
“Sheriff Carter. We met yesterday.”
She nodded.
“Lyndsey call you this morning?”
She nodded again.
“She told us you had a lot to share with us.”
Feeling faint, Mina took a step back and sat in the porch chair. The officer climbed the steps and turned another chair towards her to sit down.
Mina found it hard to look into his eyes. “I have a lot to do. I need to plan the funeral—”
“I know this is a busy and terrible time for you, but I’m going to have to ask you some questions.”
She nodded.
Carter pulled a small notepad from his breast pocket and opened it to a clean sheet before slipping the pencil out from the coiled binding. “Tell me what happened the night you found Mr. Miller dead.”
He wasn’t dead.
That was the part she couldn’t say. How was she not going to say it?
“I heard something upstairs.”
“What? Screaming? Was Mr. Miller calling for you?”
“No…I don’t know. Something didn’t feel right.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“I ran up the stairs and saw Kimber on the ground. He was, I mean he seemed…”
“Dead.”
“Yes. Dead. Then I heard a commotion in the whelping room next door. The puppies were yapping.”
“Is that unusual for puppies?”
Mina paused. “No. I guess not, but they don’t usually all go off all at once like that. I opened the door and Lyndsey was in there. Hiding.”
“Was that unusual?”
“Of course. Why would she—” Mina realized she was looking at the sheriff as if he was a little simple and wiped her expression clean. “Yes. It was especially strange because she isn’t allowed on that floor.”
Why did I tell him that?
Mina knew why. She wanted the sheriff to force Lyndsey into telling them what Kimber wanted from her. He’d have to ask why she was up there. Mina wanted to know for her own selfish reasons.
What’s wrong with me?
“What do you mean she’s not allowed?”
“She’s not allowed upstairs. It’s a house rule. She’s never been upstairs before, as far as I know.”
“Why is that?”
Mina shrugged. “Kimber liked to keep his life separate from the girls’. He didn’t like them in his stuff and the easiest solution was to split the house into his space and their space.”
Carter looked up and away, telegraphing his disapproval. “Okaay...” He seemed to chew on the information for a moment before continuing. “Did you ask her what she was doing up there?”
Mina’s brain spun. Tell the truth. Say what she said the first time.
“Yes. She said she’d gone up to see the puppies.”
“So then you told her about Mr. Miller’s death?”
“Yes. I mean, I did, but she already knew.”
“Right. Because you said she was hiding in the puppy room. Not that she was in there playing with the puppies.”
Mina nodded. He’d already caught a fact she hadn’t considered evident from her story. She made a mental note to try very hard not to lie. The sheriff would know. “Right.”
“So how did she know Mr. Miller was dead?”
“I’m not sure. I think she heard him fall and maybe saw him?”
“And that’s when she hid?”
“I guess.” Mina shook her head. “I’m not sure about all the details and the order of things. It all happened so fast.”
“I understand. Take your time. So you both knew Mr. Miller was dead. That’s when she took the puppies and left?”
Mina took a deep breath. “I told her to.”
“You told her to take the puppies or you told her to leave?”
“Both.”
“Why?”
“Because it was an accident. She was worried she’d get in trouble. She thought her DNA was all over the puppies and everyone would know she’d been upstairs when she shouldn’t have been. She looked so scared.”
“So you told her to take the puppies and run.”
Mina nodded.
“You wanted to make it look like
