Dial C for Chihuahua Read Free Page A

Seattle, over green socks.
    Pepe lifted his head. “You should not be here,” he said. “We must leave right now.” He headed toward me, leaving a trail of tiny red footprints behind him.
    â€œNo, we can’t leave!” I said darting toward the prone figure. I bent over and put my fingers against his neck. “What if he’s still alive?”
    â€œBelieve me, he is muy muerto! ” Pepe said. He was right. The man’s skin was gray and felt cool beneath my fingertips.
    I willed myself to study the corpse. He had sandy-colored hair pulled back into a short ponytail at the base of his neck. He wore a pair of khaki pants and a yellow T-shirt with some sort of lettering on it, hard to read now because it was mottled with brown stains.
    â€œWho is he?” I asked.
    â€œI do not know,” said Pepe. “All I know is we must get out of here! Something stinks about this situation, and it is not just the smell of death.” He wrinkled his nose expressively.
    A gun lay a few inches from the man’s right hand. “This must be the murder weapon,” I said, picking it up.
    â€œDo not touch that!” said Pepe. “Do you not know anything about crime-scene investigation?”
    Too late. It was already in my hand.
    â€œHow do you know about crime-scene investigation?” I asked, turning the gun over to examine it.
    â€œI am a big fan of TV crime shows,” he said. “ CSI . Forensic Files . I watch them all. CSI: Miami is the best. Now put that down!”
    But before I could put it back, somebody behind me yelled, “Drop it, lady!”
    â€œSet it down nice and slow,” another voice commanded.
    I turned and saw two uniformed policemen. Both had pistols trained on me.
    â€œI said drop it!”
    Without even thinking, I did as they said. The gun slid from my grasp and fell onto the glass coffee table, which shattered into a million pieces.
    â€œ Policía . . .” I heard Pepe mutter as he slunk underneath the sofa.
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    In no time, the police had put me in handcuffs. They had taken a quick look at the corpse and then called for backup. Soon the room was full of policemen, four or five in blue uniforms, two in suits, and three or four in white jumpsuits and blue paper booties. A pair of detectives (the ones in suits) took me into the dining room, which was just as huge as the living room, but all done up in gold, from the gilded coffered ceiling to the bronze satin on the chair seats. I shuddered to think about the rest of the color scheme in the house. I was willing to bet there was a bathroom done all in shades of purple.
    One of the men looked a bit like my father, with his wire rim glasses and thinning brown hair combed over a bald spot. He wore a rumpled navy suit. The other one was a handsome black man with a shiny, shaved head. His suit was gray, paired with a blue silk shirt and silver cufflinks. The older man said his name was Detective Earl Larson; the other guy was Detective Kevin Sanders.
    â€œDid you find Mrs. Tyler?” I asked. It occurred to me that she might be somewhere in the house, perhaps in one of the upper rooms, as dead as her husband. (I had learned from overhearing snippets of conversation that the body in the living room belonged to David Tyler). But the police had fanned out and searched the house and grounds without finding any other bodies or any trace of Rebecca Tyler. “She was supposed to be here.”
    â€œWhy were you meeting her?” Larson wanted to know.
    â€œI’m a private investigator,” I said. I didn’t want to say more. I knew from reading detective novels that PIs had the right to keep their conversations with their clients private, just like priests and lawyers.
    Larson asked to see my license.
    â€œI don’t have one yet,” I explained. “I was just hired. This is my first assignment.”
    â€œWho’s your boss?”
    â€œJimmy Gerrard of