Page 36 of Don't Cross Mo Ellery

But Benny doesn’t take the bait. “I didn’t see the accident, but I trust Claudia’s gut on this. And I knew Cran. He loved his car. And his poodles. He wasn’t a drive-into-a-sinkhole, Thelma-and-Louise-but-with-dogs kind of guy.”

Sure, I think.More like a drive-into-a-crossing-guard guy.

“Poodles are really smart,” Benny says. “We just need to get them in front of the murderer and they’ll tell us.”

“Poodle detectives, why didn’t I think of that!” I try to keep a straight face. “So how’s this going to work? Are we doing a dog lineup? Are they going to look through a one-way mirror at all our suspects?”

“Of course not.” Benny rolls his eyes. “They’ll tell us by sniffing, or whining, or pawing at the guilty person, something like that.”

“So by doing generic dog things, got it.”

Claudia holds up a hand. “Mo, I’ve known Benny for a long time. There’s no one I trust more. You’re new to the neighborhood, so to help you on the case—”

“Look, I love neighborhood gossip as much as the next guy, but I’m not ‘on the case’—”

“—you’ll need a little background. Cran Johnston and his brother are the ones building that hideous parking monstrosity.” Claudia waves her hand at the construction site across the street, the one all the kids like to sneak through. “I’ve been digging into their business dealings.Veryshady.”

She starts talking about rezoning things and I do my own personal rezoning. Zoningout, that is. Ooh, sick burn, Claudia.

But seriously, does Benny work out all the time, or are those forearms a good-genes thing?

Also, for a lovesick person, why am I so horny all the time now? It’s really confusing.

Oops. They’re both looking at me.

“Oh no,” I say, vaguely.

“Exactly,” Claudia says.

“So the Johnston brothers have been pressuring Claudia to sell her house,” Benny explains. “They want to put up fancy condos attached to the garage.”

“That’s my place.” Claudia points to the little bungalow next to the construction site. “But I won’t budge. I bought that house when I got my first job and so help me, I’m gonna die in it. No communal living for me, I’m not ahippie.”

She spits, which seems unnecessarily harsh on hippies.

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing for you to downsize,” Benny mumbles, and I can instantly sense this is not the first time they’ve had this conversation.

“Plus,” Claudia says, pretending she didn’t hear, “all this construction has opened up that sinkhole, which proves my point. And Cran was not well-liked. He’s pissed off some very important people.”

“Like who?” I ask.

“Likeme, for one,” she says indignantly. “Benny too.”

“He fired me a couple weeks ago,” says Benny with a shrug. “Guess he thought the dogs didn’t need me anymore.”

“Soyou twokilled him?”

“That is not what I’m saying,” Claudia huffs. “I’m explaining that he was very murderable! Why are you deliberately misunderstanding me?”

“Becausenobodymurdered him, Claudia!” I say.

“Then where did the radium poisoning come from?” she asks, like she’s got me.

I throw my hands in the air—enough is enough. “You guys are nuts. Cran was an angry dick who drove too fast, and when I saw him yesterday, he was swerving and stumbling, slurring his words, and making drunk guy faces.Clearlyhe liked to start his day off with a one-man party and it should be no surprise to any of us that he ended up in a sinkhole. Okay? Can we all just let this go?”

We’ve made a full circle and reached our final corner, thank goodness, but Claudia looks at Benny, whose eyes widen.

“Mo,” Benny says. “Cran didn’t drink alcohol. Ever.”