Dogs Don't Lie: A Pru Marlowe Pet Noir (Pru Marlowe Pet Noir, 1) - Softcover

Simon, Clea

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590588622 ISBN 13: 9781590588628

Verlag: Poisoned Pen Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Pru Marlowe isn't your ordinary animal psychic. A tough girl on the run from her own gift, Pru left the big city to return to her picturesque Berkshires hometown looking for a little peace. Too bad that her training as an animal behaviorist got her mixed up with Lily, a rescue dog, and Charles, her person. Now Charles is dead, and Lily looks good for it. After all, Lily is a pitbull, a fighting-ring dropout, and way too traumatized to give Pru a clear picture of what she has witnessed. But Pru knows something about bad girls trying to clean up, and, with a sense of justice strong enough to overcome her dislike of human society, she takes the case. Listening to the animals, Pru picks up clues―and learns there are secrets in the pretty little town that make murder look simple. Unable to tell anybody about her psychic abilities, uncertain at times about her own sanity, Pru comes to realize that if she clears Lily, she'll likely become the prime suspect―or the next victim. While the only creature she can totally trust is her crotchety tabby Wallis, Pru's got to uncover the real killer―and find a way to live with her gift―before the real beasts in the town savage her and those she has come to love. The first in the Pru Marlowe "pet noir" series.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Clea Simon is the author of the Pru Marlowe, Dulcie Schwartz, and Theda Krakow mystery series, as well as three nonfiction books. A former journalist, she lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with her husband Jon and their cat Musetta.

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Dogs Don't Lie

A Pru Marlowe Pet NoirBy Clea Simon

Poisoned Pen Press

Copyright © 2011 Clea Simon
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59058-862-8

Chapter One

The problem with murder is that it's messy. Not just the blood, the viscera, and what have you, but the boundaries. And when you're trying to save a life—provide an alibi—for someone you know is innocent, well, the guilt tends to splash back onto you. Especially when there's money involved.

That's the problem I was facing on a perfectly fine September morning, when I'd rather have been back in bed ... drinking coffee on the porch ... Cleaning litter boxes. Anything rather than trying to explain why I had my hands on the bloody collar of a panicked pit bull named Lily, and why neither of us was responsible for the corpse at our feet.

It had started four months ago when Lily's person, the mangled corpse formerly known as Charles, had first called me for a consult. As a rule, I don't like to work with pit bulls. It's not the breed, it's the people. Which, come to think of it, is usually the problem. But Lily was special. Lean and tightly muscled, with a short, soft coat of creamy white and the kind of brown eyes you could lose yourself in, Lily was a youngster who had been through too much for her years. She was safe now, but the memories showed, and that's where, in theory, I came in. I was going to help her get over those memories. Not forget them, I'm not a miracle worker. Just move on, reclaim what was left of her doggy life. Leave the past to be scooped up by some other poor slob.

People, they're trouble. But animals? When it comes to fur and four legs, I'm a softie. That's why I'm a behaviorist, or almost, because at some point way too long ago, I wanted to know how our fellow creatures thought, and why. If I could make a living translating that for other humans, well, I thought I'd be doing honest work. That's all different now, but this is my job, and I'm good at it. Most of the time, of course, the so-called owners don't want to understand what's going on with the animals that share their lives. They just want the behavior changed. Not that they're willing to change their own.

Which didn't explain what I was doing here in the sun-drenched living room with a bloody dog, a cop, and Charles. I had a hard time looking at Charles, what was left of him. Before something tore his throat open, leaving him to bleed out on his own refinished white oak floor, he'd been better than most. Tall, skinny guy, more brains than brawn, he'd had some heart, coming along for Lily when she'd needed him, and she'd had enough good animal sense to know it. All things considered, she'd been doing okay, too. Some nervous tics, fear issues ingrained on her from her less-than-ideal puppyhood. We were making progress. A little less frantic barking, a lot less cringing.

It didn't matter. Standing there, trying not to show the strain of holding back forty pounds of pure muscle, I knew how it would come down. The gore that had soaked into Charles' faded MIT sweatshirt would make everyone jump, and the pieces would fall like dominoes. An autopsy would list cause of death as heart failure, brought about by a combination of shock and blood loss. Forensics would show canine saliva in the jagged wounds that kept drawing my eye. If I were Lily's guardian, I could probably press for DNA that would show the shell-shocked animal had nothing to do with the raw tears in Charles' neck. But I wasn't, and Lily would be dead by then anyway, euthanized as a precaution. Click, click, click.

"Lily—" I'd slipped up. On her license, the three-year-old white bitch—I use that word in the technical sense—was listed as Tetris, after the game. An ugly name, but one of Charles' little computer-nerd jokes. "I mean, Tetris is not a vicious animal."

"And you are?" The young cop who'd gotten the call was in a bad mood. Tossing your breakfast burrito at a crime scene will do that to you.

"Marlowe. Pru Marlowe." Usually my first name gets me a slow once over and a smile, the kind I didn't mind missing. "I'm the behaviorist." A blank look, blue eyes flat as slate in his unlined face. "Like a trainer. I'd been working with Charles, with this dog, for a few months."

"Really." I'm good with animals, but I couldn't read this young buck. "And do you train dogs to attack?"

* * *

Half hour later, the young cop had all my info, and I didn't like it. Anyone in town could have told him who I was. It was more the way he asked his questions. Tall and impassive, he had the cocky look of a high school stud who had kept both the muscles and the attitude, wondering out loud why I'd come back to this nowhere burg and why I seemed to be siding with the panicked beast still screaming herself hoarse in her crate.

I'd given him what I could, but there was a lot I couldn't say. Not and stay a free woman. And pup that he was, that young cop sensed it. This was, I realized, the perfect crime. A murder disguised to look like an animal attack; poor Lily made the fall-dog for someone else's misdeeds. And by stepping in to protest her innocence, I'd only made them interested in me. I mean, I had Charles' key, and here I was saying I had come in to find him like this, all the while protesting that, no, the dog didn't do it. I couldn't explain that I knew Lily well enough to know she'd never willingly kill again. That she still had nightmares about some of the darker scenes in her past. That she was, at the moment we were speaking, telling me that she had nothing to do with Charles' death. To do that, I would have to explain that although I was a few credits short of my certification as a behaviorist, I was a natural animal psychic. No, this young cop, all pissed off after he'd puked his guts out in front of me, would not go for that.

Best I could do was buy some time. The folks at animal control knew me, knew my record anyway, and I'd been back in town long enough to help them out of some jams. Summer people's pets, a nuisance in season and abandoned in autumn. The occasional hoarder. Small towns tend to get the crazies. Yes, I had some credit there. Still, if I didn't act fast, Lily would be as dead as the man who had bought her four months earlier for a hundred bucks from a busted-up gambler who'd needed cash fast. In any other hands, Lily would have been dead already. She wasn't a fighter, not at heart. I needed her to be safe. I needed her to calm down, so I could figure out what had happened. Otherwise, she'd take the rap, and a murderer would go free.

* * *

"Dogs." Wallis hissed out the word, as close to a curse as she comes. "They lie."

Wallis is a thirteen-year-old tabby with whom I share my rundown old house. As a cat, and the matriarch of our little household, she holds rather firm opinions. No loud noises. No cursing, and definitely no dogs.

"Lily isn't lying." I was home, trying to sort out my thoughts. Wallis, sprawled across the big farm table that served as my all-purpose food and workspace, wasn't helping. "She isn't that bright."

I was pandering to Wallis and she knew it, rolling back over to tuck her feet under her snowy white breast, all proud of herself with that satisfied smile. I needed a little space, a little quiet, to work things out. But what I'd said was also the truth. Lily, like most dogs, was too straightforward to lie. And although the creamy bitch didn't have a mean bone in her muscular body, I knew she was also too inbred to plan a sentence before she...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Poisoned Pen Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1590588622
• ISBN 13: 9781590588628
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar