The Truth About Delilah Blue by Tish Cohen

door. No wonder they let the dog screech and bray. Living in this fortress, they probably couldn’t hear it. When Lila rapped twice with the twisted knocker, the animal started trumpeting again from out back.
    Chinking and clinking sounds, then the door flew open to reveal a woman in her early forties with long, muscular legs and wispy brown hair pulled back in a knot. Her freckled face was devoid of makeup, and papery lines fanned out from the corners of her eyes. Her shorts appeared to be army issue, as did her black boots, and her sleeveless LIVE GREEN T-shirt was tied tight at the waist. “Yes?”
    The trumpeting out back twisted itself into high-pitched squealing.
    “Hey. I’m Lila. From next door.”
    The woman looked toward a dark room as if a pot were about to boil over or a child about to fall off a change table. Lila hoped it was the first. “Corinne. Can I help you with something?”
    Yip. Yip yip yip.
    Lila shoved her hands in her pockets and raised her voice to be heard over the noise. “We need to figure something out. About this barking. Or whatever.”
    The woman wiped loose hairs off her face, then pushed her upper body through the door and cocked her head, listening. “I can barely hear it.”
    “I can. So can my dad. It doesn’t stop. It never stops.”
    With eyes roving Lila’s body, the woman laughed. “Something tells me you’re not an animal lover.”
    Lila looked down at her abbreviated skirt, wondering how her fashion sense had managed to make such a statement. It wasn’t as if the mini was made of fur. “I just think you should bring your dog inside. At night anyway.”
    “Anaïs is very happy where she is.”
    “Dogs are social animals. They need to be around peop—”
    “Honey, I know what dogs need. We’re from Arizona.We’ve lived in the desert. We’ve raised orphaned wolf pups in our own kitchen.”
    Lila tried to look past her.
    “We released them once they were grown.”
    Lila glanced back toward the cabin and noticed her father at the window. She stood up taller. “Basenjis come from the Congo. They shouldn’t be sleeping outside. They’re equator dogs.”
    “Since you seem to be so interested,” Corinne said, crossing her arms and moving closer, amused, “the breed adapts very well to colder climates. Even as far north as Alaska.”
    A detail Victor failed to share. “Still, your dog is disturbing the whole neighborhood.”
    “And yet you’re the only one complaining. The same family who left a threatening note on our car.”
    “Look, my dad’s not sleeping. And when he doesn’t sleep, he gets—”
    A telephone rang from deep within the house and Corinne backed inside. “You take care now.” The door thumped shut and the backyard exploded into yelps and yodels.
    Lila tugged her skirt down closer to her knees and pressed her face into the closed door, shouting, “…confused!”

Six
    Around ten o’clock that morning, after a final check in the mirror, Victor slipped his signing pen into his briefcase and made his way toward the elevator with plans to drop in on a West Covina medical clinic run by a husband and wife. There’d been an issue two weeks prior whereby they’d run out of gloves and sterile needles. The Guzmans were longtime clients and Victor had promised to deliver the shipment himself to save time. But when he arrived, Rona Guzman had turned up her nose at his supplies. Insisted she’d asked for nasal swabs, alcohol wipes, and specimen containers.
    It was never Victor’s style to argue with a client. In spite of his irritation, he’d smiled politely, arranged to have the new order filled the next day, and tucked the unwanted supplies into the back of his car. Chalked the whole thing up to overwork on the part of the Guzmans.
    He heard papers being shuffled and stacked as he walked past his boss’s corner office. Douglas Siniwick was already halfway through his day, starting as he did at five A . M . so he could “get his thoughts