Paw Enforcement 02 - Paw and Order by Diane Kelly Page B

girl with the crutches. By that time, whoever had taken my purse was long gone.”
    â€œOne of the girls had a broken leg?”
    â€œI don’t think so. There was no cast on her leg. I suppose she just had a sprained ankle or something like that. She had on the cutest pair of boots I’ve ever seen. Tan on the foot with bright pink on the upper part.”
    The boots did indeed sound cute. They also sounded irrelevant. Maybe if this woman had paid as much attention to her purse as she had to the girl’s boots, she’d still have her bag.
    I unzipped my police-issue jacket and pulled my notepad and pen from the breast pocket of my shirt. After jotting down the woman’s name— Catherine Quimby —and some notes— Suspect: Pink nails/dark leather jacket. Witnesses: 2 women/ 20s/crutches no cast?/tan & pink boots —I resumed my questioning. “Were the two women who were in the bathroom there together?”
    Catherine’s brows tipped inward as she thought. “I don’t believe so. They were at opposite ends of the counter. Friends would have likely stood closer together.”
    Unless they were pretending not to know each other. After all, women often traveled in pairs or groups when going to the restroom. Hmm  …
    â€œWhat did they look like?”
    She looked up, as if trying to visualize them in her mind. “Unremarkable, really. Brown hair. Average height and build. Wearing jeans and jackets and boots, like I said.”
    Just like virtually every other young woman at the stock show and rodeo tonight.
    â€œWhat all was in your purse?” I asked.
    â€œHairbrush. Makeup. Tissue. Gum. My wallet, of course.”
    â€œHow much cash was in it?”
    She looked up in thought. “Forty or fifty dollars maybe? I don’t know the exact amount. Oh, and my pills were in my purse, too.”
    â€œPills?”
    â€œMy prescription arthritis pills. Vicodin.”
    Painkillers, a mix of hydrocodone bitartrate and acetaminophen, a type of legal drug sometimes sold illegally on the streets. Interesting. “How many pills were in the bottle?”
    Again she looked up in thought. “Maybe a hundred and ten pills? It was nearly full. I just had the prescription refilled.”
    The gears of my mind began to turn. Was it possible someone had targeted her for the Vicodin? “When’s the last time you took a pill?”
    â€œThis afternoon around three,” she said, “before I left the house.”
    â€œSo you haven’t taken any here at the rodeo?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDid you take the bottle out of your purse for some other reason while you were here?”
    â€œI took it out and sat it on the counter when I stopped to buy a corn dog. I was digging through the bottom of my purse for change and it was getting in my way.”
    Someone might have spotted the bottle and targeted her for the pills. Then again, she could just be a random victim, chosen because her outfit and purse indicated she was well off.
    I motioned for Catherine to follow me and Brigit into the bathroom. Whipping my baton out once again, I used it to poke around in the trash cans. Nope. No sign of a discarded purse.
    I looked back at the woman. “Which stall were you in?”
    The woman pointed. “The one on the end.”
    I stepped over and went inside to take a look around. Brigit took advantage of the opportunity to grab a drink from a toilet. I yanked back on her leash. “Stop it! That’s disgusting.”
    It was bad enough when she did it at home, but a public toilet? Yick!
    Nothing in the stall provided any clues, though writing on the wall in pink lipstick informed me that Sophie + Clint McCutcheon = ♥ .
    Hmm. I wasn’t sure that math worked out. If a rodeo groupie throws herself at a bareback rider at two hundred miles an hour, how long until their genitals meet?
    I decided not to put any time into answering that word