3 Panthers Play for Keeps Read Online Free Page A

file all that information and someday he’ll get to use it .”
    I bit back my own response to that. Spot would have other opportunities with bodies? Should I be looking into corpse-retrieval programs?
    “Don’t need to. All the same skills. ” The response came even though I hadn’t voiced the question aloud. I had to remember how transparent I was.
    “You said it .”The bichon had moved on, and I was following him as he trotted, more slowly now, down the sidewalk. The movement didn’t seem to impair his reception in any way. “What got him was the panic. The—how would you say it?—the desperation .”
    I didn’t want to think of that body as anything but a puzzle, but Growler’s observation made me. Panic. Desperation. I sure didn’t want to see that still, torn flesh as a person. Now it hit me, hard. That poor woman.
    “No!” Growler’s response was as loud in my head as a bark. The lead had gone tight, and I realized that Growler had stopped in his tracks. I’d stepped past him. “Not her, ” he said again, looking up at me with obvious frustration.
    “Sorry.” I halted. Desperation…that could cover a lot of things. A lot of people. “You don’t mean me, do you?” I didn’t like to think of myself that way. Certainly not about men, about Creighton.
    Growler seemed to consider his point made. “Clueless, ” he muttered, doggie style, but he started walking again.
    “Okay, so she was scared. I get that.” I didn’t know if I had that right. Growler wasn’t helping. A sniff, almost a growl, was all he gave me, so I kept talking. “Do you have any ideas about that body?”
    “She’s pissed off because she lost him .”I started to object, when Growler barked. One short, sharp yelp. “Not you, walker lady. Focus! ”
    “Sorry.” So this was about Tracy Horlick. “Whom did she lose?”
    “Whom, ha! ” Another little bark. I thought perhaps Growler was getting tired but squelched the thought as quickly as it appeared. The bichon did not like being patronized. “Next block .”He’d heard me anyway. I silently voiced an apology. “Old sharpie .”
    “Excuse me?” I would imagine Growler would have appreciated company. But maybe he was more competitive than I’d thought. “A shar-pei?
    “No! Pay attention, walker lady .”A little snort and a shuffle. He was getting tired. “A sharpie—Mr. Sharpie, that’s what she calls him, you know, in her mind. ”
    Now we were getting somewhere. “What happened?” I’d never known Tracy Horlick to have any kind of intimate relationship, though she must have a source for her gossip. From her lacquered hair and those constant smokes, I’d assumed that Beauville’s old-style beauty parlor and maybe the convenience store were it.
    “He wasn’t there for games .”
    “Games?” I was beginning to see the appeal of gossip.
    “Huh .” The bichon was nearly panting. Well, if I had to, I’d carry him back. “Just try it .” I looked down in time to catch his glance. “Old Sharpie wasn’t there for her. He’s gone now .”
    I let that one sink in as we reached the corner and Growler paused, panting. In general, I trusted the bichon’s take on the world—ours as well as his—but I also knew he had a particularly grim view both of heterosexual relationships and, more deservedly, of his person, Tracy Horlick.
    “Was he old?” I asked finally, once the little dog had turned and started walking back. “Sick?” Any smoking buddy of Tracy Horlick’s was a good candidate for a coronary.
    But now that we were on our way back, Growler was saving his flagging energy for his own pursuits. I got images of a retriever, a beagle, and—strangely—a large and well-endowed opossum in rapid succession as he trotted, nose to the ground to pick up the various scents. Another short bark let me know I wasn’t supposed to have seen that last one, and a final stop to water an ailing rhododendron.
    “I didn’t say he was dead, walker lady .”