“Okay. Just let me know when you’re ready to question them, and we’ll work something out.”
“Thanks Shelby. I owe you one.”
My brows rose. “Really? Wow… I won’t forget that.” He almost regretted his words, but, from my grin, he knew I was mostly teasing. “Guess I’d better see if Williams can use my help. I mean… if I’m helping you, I might as well help him, right?”
I glanced at Williams, who sat at his desk with his shoulders hunched. “He doesn’t look too happy.”
Bates huffed out a breath. “I guess. Just remember you’re helping me first.”
“I will.” I sent Bates a smile and made my way to Williams’s desk. From the discouragement that hung over him, it was obvious that he wasn’t happy.
His partner sat at the desk across from him, glancing at her computer screen and thinking they had spoken to just about everyone, and nothing had come of it. Now she was checking his financial records for any kind of discrepancies, like a big deposit or withdrawal, but she hadn’t found anything.
“Hey Williams,” I said, sitting down in the chair beside his desk. “You’ll never believe this, but I have a connection to the case you’re working on.”
His eyes widened. I’d never worked closely with him before, but he was interested in anything I could give him. “What’s that?”
“I adopted a dog yesterday. His name is Coco, and his late owner was Mack Haywood.”
“Oh wow. That’s crazy. How did that happen?”
I explained the whole story about taking my kids to the shelter to adopt a dog and finding Coco there. “They didn’t know anything about him except his name, but he responded so well to me and my kids that we adopted him. Then, this morning, I took him on a walk.”
I told him that I had a premonition to walk the dog in a certain direction, and that’s how we ended up at Mack’s house. “I know it’s hard to believe, but there it is. His son, Austin, was there, and he filled me in.”
“That’s nuts.” Williams could hardly believe it, but then… it was me, so it had to be real. He glanced in Dimples’s direction and shook his head. Having another psychic here was weird, and he was glad he wasn’t the one working with her. At least I wasn’t some pretender like she seemed to be.
Oh… that was so nice. Too bad I couldn’t thank him. Still, it lightened my heart just the same. “I told his son, Austin, that I’d see if you’d made any progress.”
Williams snapped his attention back to me, then glanced at his partner. “Shelby, this is Clue Ventenilla, my new partner.” To Clue, he continued. “Shelby is the psychic that the chief keeps talking about.”
“Yeah… I got that.” She sat in the adjacent desk and had listened to my story about Coco. She wore the standard detective jacket over dress slacks with a white shirt, and had dark-brown, shoulder-length hair.
Her brown eyes held a hint of wariness, like she expected the worst. The coincidence didn’t seem possible to her, and her brows drew together with suspicion. Another psychic? Was there something in the water around here?
I extended my hand for a quick shake, which she returned half-heartedly, waiting for the inevitable question about her name. Yes, she was named after her aunt, but where it originated, she had no idea. She just knew that most people liked to give her a hard time about the unusual name.
“Hi Clue, it’s nice to meet you.” Not liking her distrust, I decided to use my psychic powers about her name to convince her I was the real deal. “I think Clue is a great name for a detective. I’ll bet you’re named after someone, right? An aunt maybe?”
Clue’s eyes widened, and she sputtered. “How… How did you know that?”
“Well… I’m the resident psychic… or I used to be.” I glanced over at Willow and shrugged. “Anyway, it’s nice to meet you.”
Williams saw his chance to ask her about her name, since he’d always wondered about it, and jumped into the conversation. “So it’s not short for anything?”
“No. It’s just Clue. Besides, what could Clue be short for anyway?”
Williams thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Uh… Cluella?”
“What? Ugh… that’s terrible. No… absolutely not.”
Williams hid a smile, thinking that if he ever wanted to rub it in, he’d call her Cluella. Cluella Ventenilla. That had a nice ring to it.
I tried not to smile, and kind of felt sorry for her. On the other hand, maybe I should feel sorry for him if he followed through on that thought, since she was thinking of punching him in the face if he ever did.
“So… about the case.” I interrupted. “Any ideas on what happened?”
Williams sighed. “There’s not a lot to go on. We’ve checked Mack’s phone records, and now we’re looking into his financial records to see if he made any big deposits or payments. So far, nothing looks out of the ordinary.”
“But you think he was murdered by someone he knew?”
“Yeah. He’d obviously invited them in and put the dog in the other room. We think he must have been headed toward the kitchen when he was struck on the head. The forensic results indicate the person was probably shorter than the victim, and used something like a hammer, but we haven’t identified the murder weapon.”
I nodded. “Well, I hope you don’t mind if I look into it, too. I feel a connection since I own the guy’s dog now.”
“What do you have in mind?” Clue asked.
I shrugged. “I’ll probably just talk to his neighbors and maybe the search-and-rescue people he worked with.”
“We already did that. There was nothing there.” Clue thought she was a darn good detective, and she didn’t want me to waste my time. Plus, it rankled that I was stepping into her case,
