Free Triple Shot by Sandra Balzo Page A

using my words to make her point.
    She swung her door open and slid in. ‘I never met any of her friends and she was all alone in the office. I fired everyone else, remember?’
    ‘You are not a bad person,’ I protested.
    She turned her key in the ignition. ‘Maybe, but I’m not a good one, either.’ Then Sarah slammed her driver’s door shut, gunned the engine and drove away.
    ‘You are, too,’ I said to the receding tail lights. Maybe not a nice person, but Sarah in her own way was good-hearted. She just . . . well, buried it under a load of defensive crap.
    I tweet-tweeted the Escape’s key fob to open my door and got in.
    I was worried about my partner. ‘Bipolar disorder’ was jargon for what once was simply and descriptively called ‘manic depression’. Thanks to the meds, Sarah’s manic phase seemed controlled, but I wasn’t sure what accumulation of grief would tip her over into depression.
    Pavlik hadn’t liked that Sarah’s employee was found dead, and under Sarah’s building. It wouldn’t take him long to discover the complaint Brigid had lodged with the state against her employer.
    And then what?
    When Sarah had opened that envelope – Brigid’s corpse practically beneath our feet – she’d been shocked. Blindsided.
    And even if Sarah had been aware of the complaint before then, she certainly wouldn’t kill somebody over it and stash the body on her own property.
    Ridiculous. I knew it and I’d make sure Pavlik did, too.
    I started the Escape, feeling more confident. Of course, I could help my friend. I was capable, I was responsible. I . . .
    ‘Yoo-hoo, Maggy?’ Tien was in the doorway. ‘You forgot something.’
    Frank came bounding toward the car.
     

Chapter Nine
    The next morning I was bouncing around the tiny house like a pinball, but it was just habit. Out of bed and into the bathroom, down the hall to the kitchen to start the coffee, back to take a shower, then half-dressed to the laundry room in hopes of finding a clean Uncommon Grounds T-shirt, quick detour for coffee on the way to the bathroom to redeem a ‘gently worn’ shirt from the hamper, back to the kitchen to fill Frank’s food bowls and my travel mug, a search of the living room for my keys.
    And every time I entered a room, Frank left it.
    ‘I told you I was sorry,’ I said as he pushed himself up from the floor in front of the unlit fireplace and walked stiff-legged into the hallway.
    ‘Not that you shouldn’t share some of the blame,’ I called after him. ‘If you hadn’t scarfed down all Tien’s meat loaf, you wouldn’t have become so logy that you fell asleep on Luc’s bed.’
    I still didn’t see how the plus-sized sheepdog had made it up the circular staircase. Though it might explain Frank’s creakiness – in addition to his crankiness – this morning.
    The big galoot probably pulled something.
    ‘Fine, sulk if you want,’ I said, catching sight of my car keys on the chair by the door. ‘I have to get to work. Someone in this house needs to do more than eat and sleep.’
    OK, add pee and poop, though I always remained hopeful that, at least for Frank, these last two would be exterior operations.
    Walking out into the cold morning, I thought about how my life had changed from three years ago, when I had a husband and a son, a prestigious job in corporate PR and a big house.
    And no pets.
    Today I was divorced, with my son away at college and my fledgling shop struggling. My house was small and my sheepdog was large.
    Oh, and I talked to him. A lot.
    Not that I wasn’t happy, you understand. It was just . . . yeah, ‘different’ captured it well enough.
    I had a sudden surge of loneliness and thought about calling Eric at the University of Minnesota. As I turned the key in the Escape, the time flashed 8:09. Nope. Just into his third year, my son had one early class on his schedule and the last thing I wanted to do was make him late for it.
    The last couple of years had been tough on