Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [40]
“Lucky that she’s as obedient as she is. Any other dog might have gobbled it down.” Selena leaned over the railing of her back porch to look down at Kendra, who stood on the grass below. “But I still don’t understand why someone would do something like that. I mean, spray insecticide on a sandwich.”
“Could have been an accident.”
“How do you accidentally get insecticide on your lunch?”
“Maybe someone was making the sandwich and sprayed at something—bees, maybe, or a fly—and maybe the window was open and wind blew the spray back and it landed on the bread.”
Selena stared at her.
“How do you come up with this stuff?”
“I’m trying to think of a logical way that this could have happened. That’s the only logical thing I can think of.”
“Even you would have to admit that that’s pretty remote,” Selena said dryly. “And how would this accidentally tainted sandwich end up in your backyard?”
“Maybe the person with the sandwich was canoeing downstream and eating at the same time. Maybe just as he was passing my place, he took a bite out of the sandwich and realized it was contaminated and he tossed it”—she flung her arm as if throwing away the imaginary sandwich—“without thinking.”
“I’m trying to remind myself that you’re actually an intelligent woman.”
“What other explanation could there be? Unless someone was trying to poison, say, the raccoons . . .”
“No one around here would do that, regardless of how annoying the raccoons are. No one around here would deliberately try to poison an animal.”
“Which means it had to have been accidental.”
“Well, accidental or not, I’m lucky to have my dog coming home tomorrow. Are you still willing to have her stay with you over the weekend while I run up to Trenton to see my brother?”
“Are you still willing to leave her with me, after what happened?”
“Kendra, I’d trust you with my life.” Selena smiled for the first time in hours. “And with my dog’s. Besides, what are the chances of someone tossing another poisoned sandwich into your backyard?”
Kendra wasn’t expecting to find another poisoned sandwich, but she did give the yard a thorough going-over before Selena dropped Lola off on Friday afternoon. Her ordeal apparently forgotten, the dog did her best to plant a few sloppy kisses on Kendra’s face before racing off after a chipmunk.
“You’d never suspect we almost lost her just a few days ago, would you?” Selena observed.
“She certainly doesn’t appear worse for having spent two days in the doggie clinic,” Kendra agreed. “Even so, I’m not letting her out of my sight all weekend.”
“That may be tough. She isn’t one to stay in one spot for long.”
“I intend to do my best to keep her amused and close to the house, all the same.”
Selena slid behind the wheel of her car and closed the door. “You have my cell phone number if you need me, but I don’t expect you’ll have any problems. Mark promised me that, except for a possible sore throat from the chemicals, Lola should be as good as new.”
“Oh, that reminds me. I got a call from Ray Kilmer at the police station this morning. They got the results back from their lab. It seems the chemicals used were your basic household variety of spray insecticide, just as Mark thought. You know, Bugs-Away, or whatever they call that stuff.”
“Curious,” Selena said as she began to back her car out onto the road.
“Selena,” Kendra called to her.
When the car stopped, Kendra walked to the open driver’s side window and asked, “Did you have any . . . feelings, or anything about this?”
“No.” Selena shook her head. She paused, then added, “But there was something . . . I don’t want to call it a premonition . . . on Tuesday afternoon. Before you came back. It wasn’t anything I could put my finger on. Just a, well, a chill would be the best way to describe it. I have no idea what it meant. If, in fact, it meant anything. You know that it’s sometimes hard to tell, sometimes hard to interpret . . . and you know how hard I’ve tried all these years not to have