Free Doggie Day Care Murder by Laurien Berenson Page B

year before.”
    Oh Lord, I thought, I’d forgotten about that. When Alice got nervous, she babbled. And once she got going, who knew what she might blurt out in an attempt to be helpful? I hoped she didn’t babble us right into trouble.
    â€œHow nice.”
    The detective favored her with a smile. Like he was sure they were going to be friends. This was a variation on good cop/bad cop that I hadn’t seen before, considering that there was only one of him and two of us. Nevertheless, it wasn’t hard to see that I wasn’t the favorite.
    â€œAnd your dog, Berkley, he comes here for day care?”
    â€œNot yet, but I was hoping he was going to be accepted. You see, I’m going back to work. For the first time in years, I’m going to be gainfully employed. Well, you know, not just a mother. It will be mostly half days in the beginning, but then full time in the fall when the kids go back to school. Carly and Joey are their names. She’s seven and he’s nine. Would you like to see pictures?”
    Amazingly, she got that all out without even pausing for breath.
    â€œNo, that won’t be necessary. So you came here this morning to meet with Steve Pine. Did you see him?”
    â€œNo,” I said. The answer seemed pretty obvious to me. “He was dead.”
    â€œAnd when did you find that out?”
    â€œRight after Candy screamed.”
    â€œWhere were you when that happened?”
    Alice shot me a look. I don’t think she liked my brief answers any more than the detective did. She decided to take over and elaborate.
    â€œWe were sitting in the reception area. And we’d been waiting, like . . . forever . The girl behind the desk was supposed to be locating him for us, but she kept stopping to do other things.”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œCheck in morning arrivals,” I said.
    â€œYou mean dogs?”
    I left that one for Alice. Once again, it seemed to me that the answer had to be obvious.
    She nodded her head. Her strawberry blond curls bobbed up and down. “There was a little white one, and a big terrier-type dog, and a Collie, and a couple of spaniels, right?” She looked to me for confirmation.
    Close enough, I thought. “You got it.”
    â€œOkay, so you were waiting for Mr. Pine to come to the front office. What time was that, by the way?”
    â€œWe got here at eight-thirty,” I said.
    â€œAnd then what happened?”
    With help from Alice, I walked Detective Minton through the rest of the morning’s events. It didn’t take very long. As I had told the other officer in the beginning, we didn’t really know anything.
    â€œHere’s what I want to know,” he said when we were finished. “According to Madison Vega, you were here yesterday.”
    The detective nodded in my direction.
    â€œThat’s right,” I said.
    â€œYou didn’t think that was worth mentioning?”
    â€œNo, not particularly.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œWell for one thing, Steve Pine seemed fine yesterday.”
    Okay, maybe that was a little rude, but come on. Plenty of people had been at Pine Ridge both days, including probably most of the employees and the clients. So why was my presence, in particular, considered to be suspicious?
    Detective Minton was simply yanking my chain, I suspected. Just because he could.
    â€œMelanie was here yesterday because I asked her to come,” Alice said quickly. “I asked her to scope out the place because she knows more about dogs than I do and I wanted to be sure that Berkley would be happy here. I mean, I know he’s a Golden Retriever and all, but other than that he’s really like part of the family. Joey and Carly have their own activities now so they don’t care what I do during the day. But if Berkley was going to be miserable all the time I was gone, then maybe I was going to have to rethink the whole job thing, you know?”
    â€œI