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“I didn’t ask,” he said. “Here, let me call her.”
He dialed the number from his desk phone, and a moment later said, “Mrs. Conway? It’s Detective Watkins again. I had one more question to ask you. Did George, by any chance, have a dog?" He paused a moment, then grinned at the two agents. "I see," he said, "How would you say he was with the dog?" Another pause. "I'm sorry to hear that. One more question, actually, ma’am. Did the dog see a vet or groomer regularly? Maybe a dog walker? Excellent. Yes, please."
He grabbed a notepad and pen and said, “All right, go ahead.”
Faith and Michael crowded around him and looked over his shoulder as he wroteGoldwood Dog Grooming, followed by a phone number. "Wonderful. Do you know if he spoke with anyone in particular at the groomer? No, that’s all right, I’ll follow up with the Groomer. Thank you, Mrs. Conway.”
He hung up. “Well, you all saw it. Now we have to see if the others brought their own dogs there.”
Michael and Faith stepped away and dialed their respective numbers. When Elizabeth answered, Faith said, “Hi, Miss Wade, thank you for taking my call. We’re following up on a lead in your ex-husband’s mother. I was wondering if you took your dog to a groomer regularly?”
“Yes, I took him to Sunrise Groomers on Saguaro and Goldwood Boulevard. Why? You don’t think someone there killed George, do you?”
“We’re just looking into some loose ends right now, Miss Wade,” Faith replied, hiding her disappointment that Elizabeth’s dog didn’t go to Goldwood Dog Grooming. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” She paused a moment, then said, “Am I a terrible person for not being upset that George is dead?”
“That’s outside of my wheelhouse, Miss Wade,” Faith said. “As long as you didn’t kill him, that’s enough for me.”
She hung up before Elizabeth could respond. She had good reasons to be callous about Gerald’s death, but Faith didn’t feel like dealing with her thinly veiled triumph over it, especially after seeing what seemed like her best lead evaporate.
She returned to Tom's desk, and when she saw Michael's expression, she knew already he had been disappointed as well.
“No luck? She asked.
“A private groomer who would visit once a week in one of those mobile grooming vans. Called itself the Happy Paws Grooming Company.”
“Lovely,” Faith said irritably.
“Hold on now,” Tom said. “Before you all get upset, let’s look at the employee history of these businesses. Goldwood’s not a one-horse town, but we're not a big city either. Odds are, someone's worked at both of these groomers. The mobile one’s a little more concerning, but it’s worth looking into before we give up.”
“Sheriff Watkins,” Michael said drily, pointing at Tom. “The master of grabbing at straws.”
“You don’t know until you know,” Tom replied.
The two brick-and-mortar businesses gave Tom the usual runaround about not revealing their employees’ personal information but eventually provided him a list of employees from the past five years—the state mandated records requirement. The lists were surprisingly long for such a small time period in such a small town, so it took a while poring over both lists before they found a match.
“Here,” Faith said, pointing at a name. “Foster Chase. He worked for Sunrise Groomers five years ago for two years, then moved to Goldwood Dog Grooming. He was there up until last year, it looks like,”
“When he founded Happy Paws Grooming Company,” Tom added, turning his computer monitor so the two agents could see Foster’s smiling face on the home page of happypaws.com. “Looks like we found our guy.”
“Our next person of interest, at least,” Faith said. “Tom, stay here and see if you can find anyone else who might be connected with all three victims. Michael, let’s go talk to Foster Chase.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Michael stole a glance at Faith as he drove toward Foster's home address. His partner showed no sign of anxiety. She looked excited to follow up on this lead, as she always did whenever there was a good lead in an investigation. She stared intently out of the windshield, stroking Turk's fur absently, and didn't seem to notice Michael's gaze.
His worry relaxed a little, but only a little. He knew that Faith had pressured David to leave town just as she had pressured him into asking Ellie to leave town. From what he overheard at the end of her conversation with him, he wasn't happy about it.
Honestly, Michael wasn’t happy about it either. He knew Faith was overreacting to the note that Gordon’s killer had left. Hell, he was half sure that the killer wasn’t even the Copycat Killer but some other individual who used the Donkey Killer’s name to throw the FBI off the scent.
But he had still sent Ellie away. He had still told the woman he planned to marry that she needed to leave town with no notice because his partner at the Bureau, whom he had dated for a year before he met Ellie and who had been flirting with career ruin ever since, was paranoid, and reacting poorly to her friend's death.
What kind of power did Faith have over people that she could convince them to abandon all reason just because she had a hunch?
Then again, in the ten years he had worked with Faith, her hunches were nearly always right. Still, it was sobering to think that he would so willingly disrupt Ellie’s life at Faith’s unsubstantiated whim.
The ghost of his old argument with Ellie resurfaced. She had accused him of still having feelings for Faith. At the time, he dismissed her suspicions as absurd, but since then, he had paid more attention to himself around her, and he wasn’t sure he liked what he saw. He didn’t want her romantically, he was sure of it, but he still cared for her more deeply than anyone but Ellie, and the first night at the hotel he had thought a little too long and a little too curiously about what Faith looked like naked in the shower.
