The puppies had grown amazingly in one week. Their soft fur coverings were starting to show distinctive colors. They were still blind, though, and helpless. They squealed and squirmed in terror when Peppy stood up and left them. She sniffed my legs to make sure it was me and indicated that she wanted to go outside.
“Yeah, you take her out, doll. I’m still tracking down Mitch’s address,” Mr. Contreras called to me.
Peppy didn’t want to stay out long. She made a brief circuit of the yard to spot any changes in her domain and headed straight back to the kitchen door. Our quick tour suddenly reminded me of my insane agreement to do evening duty with Mrs. Frizell’s dogs.
When we returned to the living room, Mr. Contreras was leafing through a crumbling address book.
“Got it, cookie,” he announced. “I’ll just write it down for you.” A handful of pages dropped to the floor while he hunted for a pencil and paper.
“Just tell me what it is,” I suggested. “I can remember it long enough to get upstairs… By the way, did Mrs. Hellstrom up the street drop off keys for Mrs. Frizell’s house?”
“Huh?” He was copying Mitch’s address onto an old envelope with the slow hand of someone who doesn’t write much. “Keys? Oh, yeah, slipped my mind in my worry over Mitch, but I got them here for you. Hang-on a second. I thought you wasn’t going to get involved with any more dogs. Isn’t that what you said?”
“My lips said ‘No, no,’ but my imbecile conscience said ‘Yes, yes.’ But I’m not backing down on an addition to our menagerie.”
“Okay, doll, okay. Cool your jets.” He handed me the envelope with Kruger’s old address, Thirty-fifth Street west of Damen, spelled out in caps. Really just walking distance from Diamond Head. “Is that where you lived too?”
“Huh, doll? Oh, you’re thinking about when we was kids. No, no. My folks lived on Twenty-fourth, off Oakley. Part of Little Tuscany. Mitch lived closer to California. We was always on his case about how he was gonna end up at the county jail. It’s right there, you know.”
“I know.” A lot of my life had been spent at Twenty-sixth and California in my days with the homicide task force.
“You gonna go down to his old place tomorrow?” Mr. Contreras asked as I headed up the stairs.
I turned to look at him and bit off a variety of short answers; the concern in his soft brown eyes was too immediate. “Probably. Anyway, I’ll do my best.”
In my own place I resisted the longing for a bath and a double whisky. I stayed just long enough to dump my handbag and check my messages. Daraugh Graham wanted my report. Lotty hadn’t tried to call—maybe we were still pissed off with each other. I didn’t have the energy to sort that out tonight.
When I got to Mrs. Frizell’s, the house was quiet. The dogs weren’t there. I stood in the hallway, foolishly calling to them even though I could tell the house was empty, then made an even more foolish search of the premises. Someone had been through the place, cleaning it—all the bedding was washed and neatly stacked on a freshly polished bureau in the bedroom; the stairs and floors had been vacuumed and the bathroom scrubbed down. Only the living room was still a wreck, with papers strewn all over it. Presumably Mrs. Hellstrom had been continuing her job of good neighbor. She probably had the dogs too.
Relieved, I headed back to my own home. Now I could take a bath and watch the Cubs-Astros game in peace. I was at my front stoop when Mrs. Hellstrom caught up with me. Her round, fair face was flushed and she was out of breath from chasing me down the street.
“Oh, young lady! I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name, but I was watching for you—only, the phone rang, so I missed you coming up the block. I’m glad I saw you leaving.”
I mustered an interested expression.
“It’s the dogs, Hattie Frizell’s dogs. They’ve disappeared.”
“Into thin air?”
She spread helpless hands. “I’m sure I locked them in the house this morning. I mean, I can’t leave them in the yard—that big black dog is always all over the neighborhood, and I don’t like it myself. She can’t admit they ever do anything wrong, but he dug up all my irises last fall and ate the bulbs. Then when I went to talk to her about it… well, anyway, I just meant I locked them in the house even if it does seem a little cruel. And I’m sure I did. I don’t think I would have been careless and left the door open. But when I came back from the store and went over to let them out they were gone.”
I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. “Was the door open when you went over?”
“It was shut but it wasn’t locked, that’s what worries me. What do you think could have happened to them?”
“I don’t think even Bruce could open the door with his jaws. Have you talked to anyone else on the street? Maybe someone broke in and let the dogs out.”