Free Drool Baby (A Dog Park Mystery) (Lia Anderson Dog Park Mysteries) by Carol Ann Newsome, C.A. Newsome

glass of tea. "I made some guacamole and salsa. Would you like some ice tea? I've got raspberry tea and plain sweet tea, if raspberry is too girly
    for you."
    "Raspberry sounds good, thank you." Lia poured the tea, then set out the chips and dip while Jim looked around the sunny kitchen, "Seems too cheerful in
    here, considering why we're meeting."
    "Sorry, left my cloak at the cleaners, and my dagger is out getting sharpened," Lia said. "I suppose we could meet under a pier at midnight, but that would
    be inconvenient."
    "True," Jim agreed.
    "We start acting all mysterious, and people will notice," Lia continued.
    "We still have to come up with a reason for me being here, in case anyone asks," Jim said.
    "I thought of that. You came by to look at my drawings for Renee. You're reviewing the plans from an engineering standpoint. I want you to do that anyway,
    so it'll be the truth."
    "I guess that'll work."
    "That's settled," Peter said. "Shall we get down to business?"
    Lia and Jim turned polite expressions to Peter.
    "I got the report about Bailey's Depakote back from the lab."
    "And?" Lia asked.
    "The meds were doctored, and not by Frank."
    "How can you tell?" Jim asked. "You said there was no way to know who did the tampering."
    "There's no way to tell who did it, but I can say for sure that who ever it was, they didn't want anyone to find out about it."
    "What makes you say that?" Lia asked.
    Peter laid out the findings for them. He concluded, "So someone removed the Depakote and replaced it with BC Powder to get Bailey off her meds and make her
    unstable. At the same time, or at a later date, they added some meth and a hallucinogen, possibly buried these down in the bottom of the pill bottle. That
    way, once Bailey had the Depakote out of her system, the street drugs would set her off in some way. After this was accomplished, they came back and
    replaced the Depakote in the capsules so no one would find out.
    "I'm convinced Bailey's right. I thought she was trying to run a scam to get out of trouble, but she'd want us to find something and this person went to a
    lot of trouble in an attempt to hide it."
    "Poor Bailey," Lia murmured. "Is this enough to prove she was off her meds?"
    "At some point, she may need to get hair analysis. That could be helpful. It may also tell us what she was on that sent her over the edge. For all we know,
    there were additional drugs we didn't find because she'd taken them."
    "Why didn't they just replace the doctored capsules with new ones?" Jim asked. "Then we'd have never found this."
    "It's likely our perp didn't have access to a prescription for Depakote, or didn't want to leave a paper trail," Peter responded.
    "This changes everything," Lia said. "I don't know if I can ever forgive her, but I don't want her to go to jail on my account. Who do I speak to about
    dropping the charges?"
    "We can't do that yet," Peter said. "We've got a bigger problem."
    "Officially, Catherine killed Luthor, then drowned by accident. Baileys's assault is being treated as a separate incident. Unofficially, the powers that be
    believe Bailey killed Catherine and Luthor, but we haven't been able to prove it. So they're hot to put her away with any excuse they can find. They won't
    want to drop the case. With attempted murder, they can proceed without you. If you don't cooperate, you can be charged with obstruction of justice."
    "What do we do about it?" Jim asked
    "Whoever tampered with Bailey's meds is still around. It couldn't be Catherine, because she died before Bailey went haywire. The second tampering would
    have taken place after that. And if we drop the charges against Bailey, it will tip off our perp."
    "And we don't want that," Jim said.
    "Wouldn't tipping them off force their hand and cause them to make mistakes?" Lia asked.
    "This isn't the movies. Playing games like that could get someone killed. Right now they should be feeling pretty safe. We want them to stay that way. It
    will give us time to