Free Double Dog Dare by Linda O. Johnston Page A

Arranger.
    So what did I have to jot down? Not a lot, yet much too much.
    A missing lover whose Escalade was located at the bottom of an aqueduct canal. A missing lover whom I really missed. . . .
    No, Kendra, concentrate on your list, not your possible loss.
    Okay. Next was a friend of that lover, Lois, who’d been put in touch with me by that lover’s mother, Irene. Irene belonged on the list only peripherally. Lois, on the other hand, seemed of central significance. She claimed to have set Jeff on a supersecret investigation of The Clone Arranger.
    I’d visited there to commence my own look-see into the secretive place. Met a quasi-famous lady there, Beryl Leeds, star of a long-ago TV show, who’d brought her Lab to be cloned. She’d had a prior good experience with The Clone Arranger.
    I also met two Arrangers—CEO Mason Payne and Earl Knox. The latter was subsequently and swiftly murdered. Because of me? Unlikely. But didn’t his death smack of some too-incredible coincidence?
    Well, hell. As much as I despised giving credibility to such stuff, my whole life had shifted into a series of incredible coincidences. Once again, I’d become a murder magnet. Too many people I knew became victims or suspects.
    Like Lois Terrone, now an apparent suspect. I didn’t really know her any better than I’d been acquainted with Earl, but she had the advantage of Irene Hubbard to vouch for her. And, presumably, Jeff—once he was found.
    Unless . . . could Lois have killed Jeff, then gone after Earl? But though she had an apparent motive for killing the guy at The Clone Arranger who’d failed to clone her elderly dog before its demise, why dispose of Jeff?
    Okay, this list was way incomplete. Assuming Jeff’s disappearance had even a slight relationship to his investigation into The Clone Arranger, I needed to know more about that organization and its personnel, and people with grudges against them—especially against Earl.
    I swiftly woke the dogs and displaced them as I stood and headed for Jeff’s home office, where I got on his computer. I checked my e-mail. Nothing from Althea, so I sent her an inquiry: Anything new to report? Her immediate response? Negative.
    Shaking my head, I headed for bed.
    AND DIDN’T SLEEP much, not even after taking a relaxing, warm shower.
    I got up early, groggily and grumpily, but I wouldn’t take it out on Lexie and Odin. “Let’s take a quick walk,” I said to them. “Then I’ll let you come pet-sitting with me. And romping in a dog park. I owe that to some of our slightly neglected clients.”
    Lexie cocked her cute head until one of her long ears nearly swept the rug. Odin simply stood and wagged the tail curled over his back, his tongue hanging out as if suggesting starvation. I couldn’t help laughing and giving them both big hugs. At least I wasn’t alone on this disconcerting morning.
    My cell phone rang before I loaded canines into the car. It was Tracy Owens, my friend and fellow member of the Pet-Sitters Club of Southern California. In fact, she was the PSCSC pres.
    “Good morning, Kendra,” she said. “Are you still up for that dog park visit you mentioned yesterday?”
    “I’m on my way there now. Care to come?”
    “Wouldn’t miss it. I’ll only have Phoebe with me, so I can help if you have some extra dogs along.”
    We agreed to meet in forty-five minutes. Our choice for our canine outing was a dog park nestled high in the hills above Lake Hollywood, midmountain beneath slopes including the one that houses the famed Hollywood sign. It was a relatively central meeting place between Tracy’s abode in Beachwood Canyon and Jeff’s home in the San Fernando Valley.
    I parked at the curb on the steep street and sat for a few seconds, attempting to calm the extremely excited dogs. Since Lexie and Odin had been here before, they knew where they were. And I’d picked up Stromboli, whom I was sitting, and his next-door neighbor Meph.
    Four pups to exercise? Was I