Pooches, Pumpkins, and Poison

by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson

  Whoever had Allie before, whether it was the man who’d just turned her in or someone else, had trained her some, or she was just a really smart dog. She wagged her tail again and stepped closer to me.

  “Come on, sweetie. Get your treat.”

  Allie stretched out her paw and swatted the treat away from my leg, then nabbed it with her mouth and swallowed it down.

  Kerry and I both laughed. “That’s a good girl,” I said. I took a treat from the bag and held it in my hand. “Here’s another one. Come get it.”

  Allie barked.

  “Nope. I’m not going to set it down. You need to come get it.”

  She barked again.

  “I don’t care. If you want it, come get it.”

  She barked again, and I shook my head. It was a battle of wills, but I wouldn’t let her win.

  Allie took two small, slow steps and then sat in front of me. She didn’t touch the treat in my hand, but her tail swept across the floor like a broom. A big pittie smile draped across her face.

  “Look at that. You’re the flipping dog whisperer,” Kerry whispered.

  I held out the treat. “Here you go, girl.” I gently moved my hand toward her mouth and just slightly under it. When she took the treat, I softly rubbed under her chin, and she laid down, munching on the bone on my legs.

  From that moment on, I knew we’d be the best of friends.

  I patted her on the head and rubbed her behind the ears. She moaned, and I did then a little, too. It always made me happy to watch a dog relax, to feel them feel loved. It also made my eyes water. For someone that did a bang up job of hiding her true emotions, those darn dogs got me every single time.

  I spent thirty minutes in that kennel with Allie, hanging out, giving belly rubs, having a fascinating conversation about politics and religion. Dogs were the only souls other than Sam I talked with about those subjects, and Allie must have been on the same page as me because I received an incredibly unsanitary but satisfying arm bath. When I finally forced myself up from the floor to leave, Allie just casually followed me out and pranced along as I greeted and introduced myself to the other two newbies. We all chatted, shared treats, and all agreed dogs were superior to humans.

  My time at the kennel was healing, and I’d completely forgotten I’d found a dead body at the fairgrounds earlier.

  A few hours later, Gina called and said they’d cleared the fairgrounds and I could return to continue my set up, so I headed back. I’d grabbed a leash for my new right arm, Allie, and brought her along for the ride. She sat in the car smiling out the window like a princess waving to her people. I couldn’t help but laugh at the girl. She found joy in everything she did, and I admired and envied that in her.

  I finished setting up the turf and fenced area for the dogs, leaving enough room for ten crates each on the back and right side of the turf. I’d originally planned to bring twenty-five dogs, but with only two additional volunteers committing to helping per shift, decided on just twenty. Ten dogs a person with me overseeing the event was manageable, any more than that might have been too much.

  The city had very specific guidelines for the shelter to follow, and since shelter dogs often had unknown pasts, we had to be careful with which dogs we chose to bring as well as keeping a strong eye on all of them.

  I’d spent the last two years volunteering for the animal shelter as their canine adoption manager, which, in a nutshell, meant I did everything within my power to make sure the dogs were adopted. I’d come up with the idea to have pooch parties, as I’d called them, adoption events at city sponsored public events that allowed the community to interact with the dogs and show them the animals were adoptable and loving, and worthy of good homes of course.

  It had been the most rewarding and heart breaking job I’d ever had, but I’d needed something to do after Sam died. With my daughter Hayden working in Atlanta, I was alone more than I liked, but since I wasn’t big on socializing without a reason, and I loved dogs, the shelter work was a perfect fit. Hayden wasn’t far from me, but she had her own life and didn’t need me or my widowed neediness holding her back from living her dream. And I didn’t need to be an emotional widow dependent on her only child to make her feel whole. In fact, I refused to be that person.

  Over the past year, I’d worked with a local trainer on collar training and he helped me train the dogs, especially the ones that had been with us the longest. That training had paid off. Those dogs were showed more and were adopted more often than before the training. It was exhausting though, because while I paid for the collars and training with the trainer, he could only train so many dogs. He’d ended up training me to train them, and I became certified and trained other volunteers. I’d spent my free time training the dogs until I had help from volunteers, and still did a lot of it myself. We had over seventy dogs at any given time, not including the fosters, so it was good that I didn’t have much of a private life.

  I took a break and sat in at the adoption desk I’d set up by the crates. I’d brought a Benebone for Allie and she chewed on it happily by my side. The desk was really just a simple folding table, but it would do the trick.

  Since I’d started the pooch parties, we’d adopted out over two hundred dogs with sixty percent of them being older than four, and because of that, we’d received a lot of local press. I’d established a professional friendship with the local newspaper reporter, Jim Decon because of it, and Jim was gracious enough to always give our events top priority both online and in print.

  Max Hoover, a local city councilman Sam used to play golf with, introduced us. Max and I had also become sort of friends, though Hayden thought he wanted to be more. He’d recently divorced, and she thought he was interested in me, but I didn’t see it. He was a sweet guy, but I’d already found my soulmate, and I didn’t see a reason to bother relationshipping with someone else. I didn’t think anyone could live up to the standards Sam set, and I saw no reason to even ask them to try. I was grateful for his friendship, though, and I hoped it continued to grow.

  Max and Jim opened the small white baby gate I’d put across the turf.

  Jim smiled, his big toothy grin stretched the width of his swollen, red face. “Hey there, Missy, word is you’re the one that found Traci. Care to chat for a minute?”

  I smiled at the men. “I guess they’ve already released her name?”

  They both nodded.

  Jim said, “Just a minute ago. Already let Jake know, but that didn’t take too long seein’ as he was already at the fairgrounds.”

  Jake was Traci’s soon-to-be ex-husband. Their messy divorce had been dragged all over town and made horribly public due to Jake’s desire for several local women, plus his inability to keep a specific body part zipped up where it belonged. I wasn’t a fan of men that cheated on their wives, and I was less of a fan of men that tried to bully their wives out of what they deserved when said wife busted them for cheating. Traci wasn’t the kindest woman in town, and a bit of a control freak, but she didn’t deserve to be treated like that. No woman did.

  Jake, or Jake Fielding, was a big business man in town with his hands in several companies, mostly restaurants and sports bars across the entire state of Georgia. Sam had once said he was a good business man but had no ethics, and my husband struggled with that. I understood his feeling.

  “So, what can you tell me about finding Traci?” he asked.

  Max patted my shoulder. “Miss, if you aren’t up for talking,” he eyed Jim with a stern expression, “I’m sure Jim here can wait until you’re feeling better.”

  “I’m fine, but I really don’t have much to say. I was heading over here, and looked down, and there she was. I knew she was deceased, but I checked her pulse on her neck and then her wrist just to be sure, and when I didn’t get anything on either, I called the police. That was it.”

  “Must have been hard for you to go through that again,” Max said.

  I appreciated the reference to my husband. “It is what
it is.”

  “Did you see anyone? Notice anything strange?” Jim asked.

  “Nothing unusual, but like I told the police, I had things in my hands so I was paying attention to the pumpkins on the ground, which is probably how I noticed her in the first place. Have they figured out what happened to her?”

  “You the one that smelled the almonds?” Jim asked.

  I nodded.

  “They think it was cyanide,” Max said. “Sometimes it’s got a faint smell of almonds, though not everyone can smell it. They’ve removed the pumpkins from the area and cleaned up. They’re testing everything, and I’m assuming Traci, too.”

  I gasped. “Cyanide?”

  The two men nodded.

  “So they think someone poisoned her?”

  Jim shrugged. “Don’t know, but looks like they’re fixin’ to find out.”

  Chapter Two

  Hayden’s voice went up several octaves. “Wait, what? Do you want me to come home?”

  “Honey, I’m fine. I’m not going to fall apart because I found a woman dead in a pumpkin patch.” I didn’t explain to my daughter how the woman died. The last thing I needed was Hayden panicking more and then rushing home to take care of me.

  She sighed heavily over the phone. “Mom, I worry about you.”

  “I know, but you can’t come home every time something happens to me. You’re not responsible for my care and well-being. I’m fully capable of taking care of myself.”

  “That doesn’t stop the worrying.”

  “I know, and I appreciate it, but it’s really annoying, so knock it off.”

  She laughed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Besides, you’re a young woman with a life. Don’t you have plans tonight?”

  I put the phone on speaker and tossed a cup full of kibble into a bowl for Allie and another one for Bandit, my most recent foster fail though I’d yet to fill out the paperwork.

  “Is that dog food? I hear dog food, don’t I? Is it for Bandit?”

  “I plead the fifth.”

  “You got another dog?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And you’re replacing me yet again with a four-legged baby, aren’t you?”

  Allie barked just to drive the knife deeper into Hayden’s heart.

  “Allie, shush,” I said. “You’re upsetting the human.”

  “That’s why you don’t want me to come home. You don’t want me to meet my newest arch nemesis.”

  “I don’t want you to try and steal your newest arch nemesis.”

  She laughed. “What is she?”

  “A pittie.”

  “Blue?”

  “Yup. With a little white under her chin already.”

  “Oh, I’m already in love and I’ve never even met her.”

  “And you live in an apartment in Midtown. You can’t have her.”

  “Mom, you have a hundred dogs already, you don’t need another one.”

  “She followed me home. What was I supposed to do, tell her no?”

  “You’ve told me no my entire life.”

  “That’s different. You talk back.”

  “When can I meet her?”

  “The festival is this weekend. She’ll be there. She’s trained, too.” I set Allie’s food bowl on the floor and told her to sit. She sat. When I released her for the food, she ate.

  “I’ll try to come, but I’ve got a deadline, so I’m not sure I can make it.”

  Later that evening, I researched cyanide poisoning online, and even though it was likely I was fine, I decided to go to the emergency room just in case. My research stated most people died within thirty minutes of poisoning, so the odds were that I was okay, but I wasn’t clear on what the exposure issue was, having read that there is cyanide in things like chicken, something I eat often, so I decided I was better safe than sorry to get checked out.

  When I explained who I was and what I’d been exposed to, the person at the emergency room desk had me in a room immediately. They drew blood and had me pee in a cup, something I always struggled to do upon request, but the doctor assured me that given the fact I was still alive, he was ninety-nine percent sure I was fine. The test would take twenty-four hours to be returned, and they wanted to admit me, but I declined. If I were to die, I didn’t want it to be in the hospital, and I had things to do anyway. Dying wasn’t on my to do list.

  I left the hospital confident I was fine, and before I even got to my car, a detective from the police department called and asked if I could come in for a detailed interview first thing in the morning, just as I suspected would happen.

  I arrived at the station at eight o’clock as planned. I’d never been in an interrogation room before, but it was exactly as I’d expected. Cold, emotionless, and full of stainless steel and metal with one of those big mirrored windows for others to check out the criminals without the criminals knowing they were there. I smiled into the window. I didn’t think anyone was in there watching me, but maybe they were, so just in case, I showed them my pleasant side.

  A stout man with broad shoulders and a balding head with an almost cone shape walked into the room. His short sleeve black polo shirt fit tightly over his muscled chest. “Mrs. Kingston?” He glanced at his papers as he read my name.

  I adjusted my bottom in the uncomfortable seat. “Yes.”

  He thrust out his hand. “Detective Bruno. I’m the lead on the Fielding case. Thank you for coming.” He pulled out the chair across from me and sat.

  “Of course.”

  He skimmed through his papers and then looked up at me over the rim of his dark glasses. “I understand you’re the one who found Ms. Fielding?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can you tell me about that?”

  I detailed out what happened just as I had to Jim and Max and the officer the night before.

  “How about the surroundings? Can you tell me if you heard anyone around you? Maybe what you saw on your way to the, what’d you call it, the pseudo pumpkin patch?”

  I pondered on that, trying to step back in time to the moments I spent walking toward the patch. “I’m not really sure I remember much, but of course there were people around. Everyone’s getting ready for the festival.”

  “Take your time.” He tapped a pencil on the hard metal table. “Maybe you saw someone coming toward you, people off to the side?”

  A picture of the scene developed in my head. “Come to think of it, I did see Jake talking to someone, but I don’t think it was near the patch.” The image became clearer, and I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t. They were over by the Ferris wheel. He was talking to Jennifer Lee, one of the volunteers.”

  Detective Bruno took notes as I spoke. “Jake Fielding?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you happen to hear what they were discussing?”

  “No, I was too far away, but it kind of looked like they were arguing.”

  He glanced up from his notepad. “How so?”

  She had her hands on her hips, and he was leaning back with his hands spread out in front of him. When my husband and I argued, which was rare really, I always had my hands on my hips.”

  He noted that and then lifted his head, making eye contact again. “Did you notice anything else in the area? Hear anyone talking? See Traci before you found her?”

  “I did see her earlier, yes.”

  “And?”

  “I saw her talking to Gina Palencia, another volunteer.” I adjusted myself in the chair. “But that would be normal. They were working on the festival together. She was Traci’s assistant.”

  He nodded.

  “Oh.” More came to me. “And I overheard a little of their conversation, too. Traci was upset because Gina booked a clown that looked like the one from the movie IT and she thought that was too much. Said it would upset the kids.”

  He smirked. “I can understand that.”

  “Me, too. Who thinks that’s okay?”

  He smirked again. “Clearly not you or Mrs.
Fielding.”

  “Traci was pretty upset about it. Told Gina if she didn’t cancel the clown, she’d remove her from the team. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier.”

  “This kind of thing happens a lot, it’s why we bring in witnesses. Once we start asking questions, they usually start remembering things they didn’t realize.”

  “Oh, that makes sense.”

  He gave me a blank stare and then tapped the pencil on the table again. It must have been a nervous tick or something. “Anything else you can think of?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  He asked me a few more questions. Did I touch the body, about the smell, did I notice anything out of place, those kinds of things, and I answered honestly. When he walked me to the door, he shook my hand.

  “Thank you for coming in. If we need anything else from you, we’ll give you a call.”

  “Detective, do you have any idea who did this to Traci?”

  “We have a list of suspects, yes, but that’s all I can say at the moment. Though, I would expect an arrest to be made soon.”

  “I spoke to someone who said cyanide was found on the pumpkins near her. Is that what killed her?”

  He released a long, slow breath. “You mentioned you smelled almonds, and the officer responding to the call knew cyanide can smell like them, so we are looking into it. The lab did test the pumpkins, and yes, there was evidence of cyanide on one of the pumpkins near the victim, but I can’t confirm if that’s the cause of her death. We have to wait for the autopsy results.”

  “When you have them, will you let the public know?”

  “It’s my understanding the public has already made an assumption, ma’am, but we will provide accurate information if the chief allows.”

  I nodded. “I was tested just in case.”

  “Given the effects of cyanide poisoning, if you had been affected, you’d likely be dead by now.”

  Detective Bruno wasn’t the most sensitive guy on the block, but I didn’t mind his bluntness. In fact, I appreciated it. “That’s what the doctor said.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep our conversation private, ma’am. It will help with the investigation.”