Page 121 of Ground Truth

“You love kids and you had too much time on your hands anyway.” Flint laughed.

Scarlett balled her fist and punched him in the arm.

“Oh, come on. You don’t have a man in your life, and you can’t work all the time,” he said seriously.

“Yeah? Well, let me know how you feel about this after you’ve spent two weeks taking care of Whiskers,” Scarlett said, but she wasn’t really angry.

“What? I thought you got a real dog sitter,” Flint replied with mock horror.

“I did. Drake. And he’s not up to the task yet.”

“I saw him yesterday. He’s up and moving. How hard can it be to deal with a ten-pound puppy?”

“Yeah, no.” Scarlett’s grin widened. “You’re at bat, my friend. Two weeks. We’ll be lounging by the pool in Orlando and dining with Mickey Mouse and you’ll be cleaning up after Whiskers. Anything happens to him and Maddy will kill you.”

They watched Maddy and Whiskers for a few minutes, both smiling at their antics on the grass. Now and then another puppy would approach and instantly Maddy made a couple of new friends.

Maddy was a great kid, but she spent too much time alone because her mother worked too much. Whiskers would force Scarlett to take it easier and take better care of herself, too, Flint hoped.

His recent health issue reminded him again that neither of them was invincible. The work they did made life a precarious proposition every day.

“So when are you leaving?” Flint asked.

“Tomorrow. I’ve got all of Whiskers’s stuff in the car. I’ll drop it off when we’re done here.”

Flint leaned back on the bench and crossed his ankles. “Okay. Is he house-trained at least?”

“Sometimes.” Scarlett smiled.

She cleared her throat and said in a more serious tone, “I checked those phone records for the call to the crematorium the day we went to check on Marilyn Baker.”

“And?”

“The call came from a burner, now untraceable,” Scarlett said. “And the caller didn’t come to collect Baker’s remains before they were sent off for burial in a mass grave.”

“Interesting,” Flint replied. “Who else would be interested in Marilyn Baker?”

“You think Baker had more than one kid?” Scarlett asked, eyebrows arched. “Maybe another relative of some sort?”

Flint shrugged. “Possibly. But the caller asked about me, specifically.”

“So you’re gonna follow up? Find out who the dude was? What he wants?”

Flint didn’t reply because he didn’t know the answers to her questions.

They sat with their thoughts, watching Maddy and Whiskers.

“Now that we have that settled, I need to confess something,” Scarlett said, uncomfortably breaking the silence. “While you were busy on the Greta Campbell matter, I sent one of those bones you took from the box off for DNA testing.”

Flint kept quiet.

“Your DNA is already on file,” Scarlett said. “So they were able to compare the results.”

On some level, he wasn’t surprised. Scarlett always did whatever the hell she wanted, regardless of his stated preferences. Why should this situation be any different?

Because he’d asked her to respect his wishes, that’s why.

If he’d wanted Marilyn Baker’s DNA tested, he’d have done it himself. He’d made that perfectly clear.

---