Love Handles (Oakland Hills #1)(25)

She hiked back up to the front door, regretting she hadn’t tried that first. But the key didn’t even fit into the lock, let alone turn, and she was left in the growing darkness with a pounding headache and an exhausted longing to get inside and sleep. Tomorrow was going to be even harder than today.

A short post-and-rail fence divided the house from the neighbor’s, a big Craftsman lit up with outdoor and indoor lights, the house spilling over with the sounds of music and people. She crept over to the fence, peered over. If she walked on their side down the hill, she could get around the lemon trees to a landing in front of her grandfather’s side door.

Eh, what the hell.

Grateful for her long legs, she swung one over the fence, then the other. Her heart pounded. Here she was, on some Oakland hillside in the dark, climbing into somebody’s yard wearing torn pants. She kept her head up and strode down their side of the fence, not bare earth but mulch and ground cover, towards the lemon trees. Just a few more yards and she could climb back over.

Then the dogs came.

They weren’t big, or angry, or even particularly fast. But they were many and they were loud, and heading straight for her like a swarm of yapping, ground-hugging bees. With an athleticism she never managed in normal life, Bev loped down the hill, shimmied over the rails to the other side and stumbled up to the patch of concrete outside her grandfather’s side door. She pressed her back against the house and faced the dogs, struggling to get air back into her lungs.

The dogs yapped and yapped. Hands shaking, Bev took out her key and turned around to feel the door. Just get inside. But she couldn’t find a lock. Her heart was flopping around in her throat and the dogs were getting louder and this was obviously not the door into the house.

While the dogs—there had to be twenty of them, none bigger than a loaf of bread—continued to yap, Bev rested her head against the door and wondered how she was going to get back up to her car. Vaguely she wondered why the dogs had stopped at the fence; the high posts were hardly an obstacle for such small animals.

A man’s voice carried over the din. “What the hell’s the matter with you guys?”

Bev stood up straight, smoothed her palms over her pants and tugged down her jacket, trying to look not like a woman who had just fallen in dirt and climbed over fences, but a decent, quiet neighbor lady just trying to get into her house after a long day.

“Somebody there?” the man called out. “Hello? Hey, you guys, easy!”

Bev pushed away from the door and stepped out from behind the lemon trees. The hill under the house sloped fast into a wild, rocky outcrop—she could never go around the house in that direction. She’d have to admit her situation.

“Sorry for disturbing you!” she called out. Eyes on the dogs, now lined up like miniature cavalry along the property line, Bev walked a few feet closer to the fence. The man was lit from behind, a tall and powerfully built silhouette that got larger as he approached.

A woman’s voice called from the house. “Liam? What is it? Don’t let them get into the raccoon den. The mother just had a litter. They can be vicious—”

“It’s not a raccoon,” the man said from fewer than ten feet away, while Bev imagined several ways she could kill herself. Did he recognize her?

“Liam, it’s just me,” Bev said, trying to feel relieved it wasn’t a stranger who would need convincing not to call the police. “Bev Lewis. I’m trying to get into my grandfather’s house.”

He stopped walking and said nothing for a long moment. Then, to the dogs, “Quiet! Friend. Friend!”

“Who is it, Liam?” The woman came up behind him and bent down to the dogs. “Hush, now. Hush. Such tough guys.”

Bev waved, at a disadvantage from the house’s floodlights shining in her eyes. The woman who had joined him was tall, pear-shaped, but too hidden by the backlighting for Bev to make out her age or features. “I am so sorry to disturb you.” Bev took one more step towards the dogs, which only set them off again. Drawing back against the house, she raised her voice over the din. “I’m Bev Lewis, Ed Roche’s granddaughter. My key doesn’t seem to work.”

The woman bent over to calm the dogs. “But that’s the closet for the water heater, isn’t it Liam?”

“Indeed it is,” he said.

Bev looked back at the door. Crap. She turned back to Liam and the woman. “I tried the other doors first but they didn’t work either. I’ve never been here, you see—”

“Ed had a granddaughter?” the woman asked, sounding shocked. “I thought it was just Johnny, Ellen’s son.”

An unfamiliar ache struck Bev in the chest. “I’m Gail’s daughter. One of two.”

“Gail?”

“Ellen’s older sister. She left home really young,” Bev said, wishing she’d taken her chances with the lemon tree.

“Mom,” Liam said. “Beverly is the new owner of Fite Fitness. Beverly, this is my mother, Trixie Johnson.”

With the conversation easing their minds, the dogs had broken ranks at the fence and regrouped around Trixie. She leaned over and picked one of them up, peering closer at Bev. “Nice to meet you. I had no idea you existed. We moved up here when it was just Ed. Were you at the funeral?”

A sense of loss struck Bev full in the chest, and she could only blink into the blinding light and try to keep her unexpected distress off of her face. No idea you existed. “I sat in the back.”