Read Online Muzzled by June Whyte - Free Book Online Page B

and betting guides covered every available space on the desk and spilled over onto the floor. Desk drawers lay open and the contents scattered across the room. Books dragged from shelves littered the carpet.
    What a mess! I didn’t have to be a detective, fictional or real, to realize either Lantana was the world’s worst housekeeper or he’d had a visit from an intruder. Even Linus from the Charlie Brown comics could work that one out. Questions crowded my mind. Why would an intruder break into Lantana’s house? And did they find what they’d been searching for? And the Million Dollar Question –how did the intruder manage to get past the dogs without losing at least one limb?
    And then another big fat ugly thought hit me.
    Tanya and I were inside the burgled house. If anything was missing, guess who’d get the blame? And unless Tanya found some munchies for the dogs pretty damn quick, we’d be sitting here twiddling our thumbs when the owner of the house arrived home and rang the police.
    Caught between the desire to poke through papers on the floor and fear of being charged with break-and-entry, I hovered a few feet inside the doorway. It wouldn’t do to leave my fingerprints on anything. Especially as my fingerprints were now on the database down at the local police station.
    I let out a sigh of frustration and shook my head. Yep, I’d be better off helping Tanya distract the dogs so we could get the hell out of here.
    As I turned to leave, a glint of deep red on the desk beside the computer caught my eye. I took a step closer. No, it couldn’t be. Surely that wasn’t the bracelet from the set Dad gave my sister, Liz, for her fourteenth birthday? The ruby bracelet that matched the necklace Liz left behind for me when she ran away from home?
    Fingering the familiar necklace at my throat, I glanced up and down the passageway, noted it was currently empty, so scurried across to the desk. And, hand hovering over the piece of jewelry, I paused to reconsider. Did I really want to know if the bracelet was Liz’s? If so—what would that imply? It couldn’t bear thinking of for it would mean Liz and Lantana knew each other. Which didn’t make sense. Mind swirling, I scooped the bracelet up and turned it over. Yep. There on the back next to the gold clasp were the same initials engraved on the underside of my necklace— E.J.M.
    Elizabeth Jennifer McKinley .
    A shiver, colder than a blast of wind blowing across the icy stretches of Antarctica set my teeth chattering. What was Liz’s bracelet doing on Jack Lantana’s desk? Had she been in this house for some reason and left her bracelet behind? Or was there something more sinister going on? Did it have anything to do with her moving on, disappearing, and leaving Scott, her boyfriend, behind?
    Still shivering, I swallowed the lump in my throat, slipped the ruby bracelet onto my wrist in case the police found us here and leaned forward to get a closer look at a small block of yellow post-it notes lying beside the phone. The top sheet had indentations from the last reminder Jack had written to himself. A phone number? A helpful name? A clue linking Lantana with my sister, Liz? If I tore off the top page I’d leave my fingerprints behind. Not a good idea. Instead, I slipped the whole block of yellow post-its into my pocket and turned my attention to the flashing computer. Now, if only I could move that damn screensaver without leaving fingerprints and get a look at what Lantana had been working on…
    Both hands clasped firmly behind my back so there’d be no chance of accidentally losing a print I nudged the mouse with my hip. Immediately, the dancing nude disappeared from the screen and in her place was a web page, downloaded from a greyhound breeding program. What dog was Lantana interested in? I bent forward to study the particulars and almost wet my pants when a blood-curdling scream sent my heart into free fall.
    Something bad had happened to Tanya.
    “Hang on,