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Anita looked at Liam, raised her eyebrows questioningly.

Liam, who had instinctively hopped off the stool and back a step when he saw the gun, pulse quickening, tried to pull himself together. “Um, do you know anybody who might have wanted to hurt her? What about any of the guys she ripped off?”

“No, don’t know any of them. Anything else?”

Liam tried to think of another question. There had to be something this man could tell him. There just had to be. But he couldn’t think of one, so he reluctantly shook his head.

“Best of luck to you two on this little detective thing you got going on.” Dale winked. Then, as if Liam and Anita had already left, he returned his attention to the keg.

“This was a waste of time,” Anita said. “Let’s go.”

Liam slid out between the stool and the bar. He felt a little foolish thinking he could solve Elise’s murder, and after seeing the gun, further out of his element than he’d expected to be.

Maybe it wasn’t just coming here that was a waste of time. Maybe this whole thing was.

As he and Anita turned to leave, Dale said, “Wait. I’m sorry. I don’t know what you two think you’re going to accomplish, but if you want to talk to somebody who might be able to send you in the right direction, give Karen Bennett a ring. Last time I saw Elise, those two were living together.”

“You know where we can find her?” Anita said.

“Pretty sure she works over at Barking Good. It’s like a kennel for rich people or something. Used to, anyway.”

Liam Parker

The lobby at Barking Good was small. A wooden kiosk occupied most of the floor space and every inch of the kiosk was covered with toys and treats for sale. Leashes hung on the wall to the right. Half-a-dozen monitors mounted by the door broadcast indoor and outdoor play areas where dogs, grouped by size, roamed free.

Liam and Anita maneuvered around the kiosk to the counter and rang the bell. A short, stocky woman entered from the back. Her hair was trimmed to her ears. She was dressed in a Barking Good tee shirt and carrying a handful of rawhides. “Can I help you?”

“We’re looking for Karen Bennett,” Anita said.

“You found her. What can I do for you?”

“Do you remember Elise Watson?”

Karen dropped the rawhides into a jar on the counter. “Oh, God. What has she gotten herself into now? Whatever it is, I didn’t have anything to do with it. I haven’t seen that girl in years.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Liam said. “We just need to ask you some questions.” On their way over, they had decided it would be best to avoid mentioning to anyone else Elise had been murdered. They didn’t need any more Cagney and Lacey wisecracks. They also agreed that if they could frame their conversation in such a way that led Karen to think they were cops, so much the better. Anita had even gone so far as to suggest they say they were cops, but Liam wasn’t comfortable breaking any more laws than he had to and was pretty sure they could accomplish the same thing by simply implying it.

Judging from the way Karen was regarding them at that moment, Liam thought it might be working, too.

“Elise lived with you, right?” Anita asked.

“For a while.”

“I gather you two don’t talk anymore,” Liam said.

Karen made a face while she began arranging the rawhides, spreading them out along the lip of the jar. “You gather right.”

“Why did you two part ways?”

“She met some guy and, I’m not sure how to say it exactly, but she . . . changed. She started flashing around cash she shouldn’t have.”

“Do you know where it came from?” Liam asked.

“Nope. I told her I didn’t even want to know what it was about. The whole thing made me uncomfortable.”

“That’s why you kicked her out? Because of the money?”

“I let her live with me because I thought it would do her some good to get out of her parents’ house. But whatever she was up to, that wasn’t what I signed up for. I told her she needed to knock it off, that whatever she was doing was going to make things worse for her.” Karen slid the jar with rawhides to the edge of the counter. “She didn’t listen, so eventually, yeah, I asked her to leave.”

Anita nodded. “Do you know where she went?”

“No, I don’t. Honestly, at that time I didn’t care. For a while I thought she had gone to stay with that guy she was hanging around with, but . . .” She shrugged.

Liam and Anita waited. After several seconds, Liam said, “But what?”

“Well, the thing is, Elise came home with a black eye one night. I asked her who did it and all she said was that it was some jerk at a bar. She didn’t give a lot of details.”

Liam wondered if that might have been Dale. He’d said he hadn’t hurt Elise when he found out she was hustling the johns that stopped to pick up his girls, but was it true? Or had this happened sooner? Maybe he did it when she refused to work for him and that was why she had started hustling the johns in the first place. “Do you know if the man she was talking about was named Dale?”

“That slime ball? I doubt it. This was long after she stopped going to Brewskis. I never found out why those two fell out, but I was glad he was out of her life.”

Karen pulled a slip of paper out from under the register, wrote $9.99 on it, and stuck it to the jar. “She told me a couple nights after it happened it was this other guy,” she continued. “We were watching the news and this financial dude came on and she just kinda muttered, ‘That’s him.’ I believed her at