No Such Thing as a Lost Cause by Shelly Fredman Page B

come
     to claim her, so I was thinking maybe you’d want her.”
    “Brandy, you know I’ve got asthma. How am I supposed to breathe?”
    “I’ll pick up some Benadryl on the way over. Please, Paul. Just until I find a permanent
     home for her. I’d take her, but I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.”
    “I k-know,” Paul said, his stress stutter kicking in, “I’ve b-been w-worried about
     you.”
    “No need, Paulie. I’m fine. Honest. Listen,” I said, feeling warm, wet, puppy breath
     on the back of my neck. “You don’t have to give me an answer now. Just think about
     it, okay? I’ll call you tomorrow.” I drove the rest of the way home with the puppy’s
     head on my shoulder.
    *****
    I woke up at 6:00 a.m. to a ringing phone and the combined weight of two canines sitting
     on my chest. Rocky was stretched out on the pillow next to me, unfazed by the puppy’s
     unexpected arrival. I shoved the dogs off me and grabbed the phone.
    “Brandy?” The voice was vaguely familiar.
    “Yes?”
    “It’s Roger King.”
    I have found that early morning phone calls generally fall into two categories. Either
     someone died, in which case you probably didn’t need to be woken up, they’d still
     be dead at a reasonable hour, or the occasional time zone mix-up. Since we lived on
     the same coast, I went straight to the worst case scenario.
    “Is Candice okay?” I asked, slightly panicked.
    “She’s fine. Listen, I’m sorry about calling so early, but I’ve got to get to work,
     and I didn’t think I should wait on this.”
    “Wait on what?”
    Roger lowered his voice. “Something happened about a week before Lewis got shot. Candice
     doesn’t know about it, and I want to keep it that way. Can you meet me at the McDonald’s
     at Broad and Snyder in an hour?”
    I had to be in Horsham by nine to cover their annual Police VS Firefighter softball
     game. I was throwing out the first pitch. I did a quick mental calculation. It would
     take me twenty minutes to shower, throw on some clothes, and feed and walk the dogs.
     No time for breakfast, but I could grab a bite at Mickey D’s.
Oh boy, breakfast fries!
    “I’ll be there,” I told him. “Can you give me a hint as to what this is about?”
    Roger hesitated. “I can’t say now,” he whispered, and hung up.
    Forty minutes later, I slid into a booth across from Roger King, balancing a tray
     of Egg McMuffins and coffee. He waited until I settled in, and then he turned an earnest
     eye on me and cleared his throat.
    “A couple of weeks ago, Candice spent the night at her sister’s, and I had a boys’
     night out.”
    “Oh.” I said, squirming uncomfortably in my seat. “Listen, Roger, I barely know you.
     Don’t you have a friend or someone more appropriate to confess that sort of thing
     to?”
    Roger laughed so hard that he choked on his coffee. “Candice is the only woman for
     me, and she knows that. This is about something I saw that night. I’d been over to
     a friend’s place for a poker game. It broke up at around two, and I came home and
     parked in front of the house. I’d just shut off the engine when a car turned the corner
     and cruised down the street. I got a little suspicious because they didn’t have their
     lights on, so I sat there waiting to see what they were going to do.”
    “Could you tell the make of the car?”
    Roger shook his head. “It was too dark out. I guess the city don’t want to spend money
     on street lamps. All I know is it was some kind of SUV, but I couldn’t tell the make.
     Anyway, it pulled up in front of Lewis’ house and this guy got out. He made a phone
     call and a few minutes later, Lewis came out of his house. He wasn’t wearing nothin’
     but a pair of shorts, and it looked like he’d just woke up.
    “The next thing I knew, two more fellas piled out of the car. Can’t be sure, but I
     think one of them was white. The other one was black. The black guy was holding a
     bat, and the