Dog Dish of Doom by E J Copperman

Author:E J Copperman [Copperman, E J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cThriller
ISBN: 9781250084286
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

“They’re all busy,” Det. Alana Rodriguez said. “Everybody’s getting ready for the show. But you probably knew that would be the case, didn’t you?”

I held Bruno’s leash tightly, although he had shown no signs of anxiety since we’d come back to the Palace. I was more anxious about this evening than I’d anticipated, and I couldn’t figure out why. All I had to do, after all, was sit with a dog and watch a musical.

“Well, I tried to say something, but you hung up on me,” I protested, but even I wasn’t buying it. I was trying very hard not to grin at the detective, who was standing in the wings, stage right, watching pieces of scenery moved into place and seeing actors in varying states of undress flitting about in an incongruously casual fashion. Most of them, after all, had been doing this every day for months. There were no opening-night jitters in this crowd and hadn’t been for quite a while. “Still, you are the police. Wouldn’t they talk to you when you flashed your badge or something?”

One of the dancers, stretching hamstrings, wandered a little bit too close to us, so Rodriguez said, “Ms. Powell, I’m just trying to find out what happened the day before Trent Barclay was murdered. Don’t you think you could be a little more cooperative?”

She was covering for me, making sure nobody would find out I was her theater snitch. And she seemed just a little irritated when I stifled a laugh at her attempt.

“These are performers,” I told Rodriguez. “They’re thinking so hard about themselves now, concentrating on the show and wondering when they’ll get a call from their agents telling them they have a shot at a featured role that will get them out of the ensemble, that you could scream confidential information into the rafters and nobody would hear it.”

But Rodriguez was not breaking character. I guess cops can be Method too. “This is not my idea of cooperation, Ms. Powell,” she said. “Do I have to run you in on a charge of obstruction?” Classy.

I made my face serious again by focusing on my own anxiety. Maybe it was being so close to a show about to start, I thought. The old instincts were kicking in and I was getting butterflies vicariously. I didn’t have to go on tonight, but my digestive system didn’t know that.

“Okay,” I said quietly as the dancer stretched herself away from us. “Sorry to spoil your mood. What can I do tonight? I’m just sitting up in a mezzanine box with Bruno.”

“There isn’t much,” Rodriguez admitted. “I spoke to your Akra, and got the same story you did, just from her mouth. She went to school with Barclay back when he was Berkowitz, hadn’t seen him in years until he showed up with the dog the other day.” She pointed at Bruno, in case I didn’t know which dog she might have meant.

“Do you think that’s likely? She just runs into this old school chum and he gets a knife in his back that very night?”

Rodriguez shrugged.

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