by Mara Webb
I turned back and walked through the crowd. Stretching up onto my tiptoes I could see what looked like a backstage area that might have an office or something I could use as a private space. I was shuffling my feet along the ground trying not to trip over any small animals that had been dragged here by their owners. I was just about able to see over the heads of the people closest to the short fence around the training pen, there was another room with bleachers for the formal performances.
Dogs were rolling over and leaping up onto their hind legs for treats, jumping along in time to music. It was a wild sight. I finally made it to an opening in the wall that lead into a corridor for staff organizing the event. I flashed a laminated badge to the security guard who promptly waved me through. I had been holding a blank card, but thanks to Quin teaching me a spell to help in situations like this, I had been able to use magic to create the perfect ID.
I walked past multiple rooms that had their doors open and saw a flurry of activity in each. I saw two people trying to wrestle a rooster to the ground to give it a shot, another room contained a pony having its coat brushed and another had the largest rabbit I had ever seen sprawled across a desk as a women tried to complete paperwork around it.
The next door along was closed and, after I pressed my ear against it, sounded empty. Perfect. I pushed the handle down, but it was locked. “Resigno,” I said quietly. The handle then pushed all the way down and I opened the door. Lying in the center of the room was the dead body of one of the men I had seen arguing last night.
4
My scream of surprise must have caught the attention of the rooster wranglers down the hall and they had run to see what the noise was about. One of them had the bird under his arm and stood there with his mouth agape while the other ran to fetch help. The man on the ground was lying in a pool of blood and had been locked inside this room. I had no doubt that this was a murder scene, but what could I say to the police about it? How would I explain that the door was locked but that I magically opened it? What should I say to justify why I was wandering around in the ‘staff only’ section of the event building?
When the other rooster wrangler returned, he was accompanied by the security guard that I had flashed my fake badge to. He knelt down to check for a pulse but judging by the amount of blood on the ground it seemed like a fruitless endeavor. He then spoke quickly into his walkie talkie and ushered us out of the room. I felt compelled to look around as quickly as possible, darting my eyes back and forth to take in the situation so that I could refer back to the memories later.
“Well, where do you even start with that, huh?” one of the wranglers said. “That poor man has had a target on his back for years, important work he was doing and all, but jeez. Surprised he lasted this long to be honest with you.”
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Oh honey, that man was Joseph Hawk, don’t you read the papers?” he replied. I shook my head.
“He did some pieces for the news too, big hot-shot journalist he was. Had a thirst for bringing down the corrupt folks with the big pay checks. He hated good people being scammed out of their hard-earned money and he exposed a lot of fraud and stuff like that. Did a fine job of it to I’d say, but that didn’t make him a popular man in certain circles.”
I realized now that I had recognized him yesterday, when I’d seen him arguing with someone else, because he had been on the news. His photograph had appeared on screen during a story about an exposé he had published about bank fraud. I could understand why something like that might make him a hated figure. I agreed with the wranglers that Joseph was doing the right thing, but not everyone appreciates a do-gooder interfering with their schemes.
I needed to get back to Quin, he couldn’t be out there for too much longer by himself. But I could hardly leave without speaking to the police first. I heard a loudspeaker making an announcement into the main hall, it was a male voice asking that all attendees please evacuate to the parking lot due to an incident. I didn’t know if that included myself and the two wranglers, but we decided to stay put.
“Did you hear anything?” I asked the man holding the rooster.
“Oh, good gracious no, do you know how loud this bird is? Maybe that lady with the rabbit did, but a lot of us spend so much time around animals that we sort of block out external sounds. If I jumped up every time I heard a dog howling or a cat hissing I would never get anything done.”
We waited in the corridor in silence for about ten minutes before two uniformed officers appeared. “Here we go!” the rooster holder said.
I recognized Officer Emma but not the other women with her. Emma walked towards me and smiled.
“Jeez, you just can’t catch a break, can you?” she laughed a little. “Okay, so I will speak with each of you in just a few moments, I need to just have a look in that room first. Did anyone touch anything?” The security guard explained that he had checked for a pulse and had tried carefully to avoid stepping in any blood while doing so. Emma pushed the door open enough to see in and have a quick look around. She used her radio to signal that the forensic team could now enter and stepped back out of the room to look at the group awaiting her.
“Right, Officer Jenkins, could you please meet the forensic team at the front and guide them in? I will get started on witness statements. Ms. Wildes, this way please.” Emma gestured towards the end of the corridor where there was a small table with chairs. I sat down and braced myself for the questions.
“I’d like you to walk me through your involvement today. Just how you ended up in the hall outside a crime scene, again,” she smiled, “even if it seems irrelevant, tell me everything.”
“I needed to make a phone call, a private one. Everywhere else was so hectic and I could barely hear myself think, so I came back here looking for an empty room.”
“How did you manage to get into this area? I thought this was for organizers only?” she probed. I pulled out my enchanted fake badge again and showed her, she seemed satisfied.
“I must have been given access to this area by mistake, but this is what my badge says.” I hoped I sounded like I wasn’t lying through my teeth. “Anyway, I came down here and tried the door. It seemed to be a bit stiff, but I gave it a shoulder shove and when I opened it, he was just lying there.”
Emma made some notes and handed me a card. I had quite the collection of these now. They bore the phone number that I should call if I had any further information relating to a crime. She thanked me for my time and then walked with me back to the group of people waiting for their turn. She took the rabbit lady down the hallway next and I watched as they sat down together to begin their conversation. I had been cleared to leave.
As I walked past the room containing the body, I peered in. There was no obvious cause of death, I couldn’t see a giant knife sticking out of his back or a slash across his neck. There was blood everywhere though. The forensic team seemed to have finished taking photographs and were now gently rolling the body onto its back.
I had been able to see the face of the victim when I’d walked in. He had been lying on his stomach, head facing the door. His eyes were wide open as if he had been terrified to death, what had he seen? As his body was turned, I could see a number of marks across his chest, blood had pooled in the side of his face due to gravity and it was a strange purple color. I had seen it on a medical drama once, I had hated it then too.
How long had he been dead though? Of course, it wasn’t my job to figure that out, but it would be important in narrowing down suspects. What were the marks on his chest? They were obscured by his clothing but, were they stab wounds? They had been such an odd shape, but I had only had the briefest of glances at him before the forensic team looked up and saw me staring. I hurried away from the door and tried to find the nearest exit, I needed to find Quin.
When I finally made it out to the parking lot, it seemed like there were thousands of people standing patiently to be let back in. The air was already rife with rum
ors and speculation. As I walked through the animated crowds, I heard all sorts of nonsense. Most people seemed to think some prankster had been swapping dog collars.
“Oh Nora!” I heard a familiar voice shout. I looked for its source and saw Judith. She was holding Quin like a human baby and he was wearing a crochet bonnet. “I was worried that his gorgeous little ears might get cold, so when the announcement came over the P.A. for us to leave the building, I quickly made him this little hat.”
Quin looked both humiliated and comfortably warm. I reached over to take him out of her arms. “Thank you, Judith. I owe you one.”
I carried Quin close to my chest as I weaved my way out of the crowd. My car was parked at the far end and I knew that inside it, we would be able to talk.
“Nora!” Quin shouted as I closed the car door behind me. “Get this thing off me right now!” I untied the little bow and removed the baby blue knitwear from his head. It wasn’t just any old bonnet; she had crocheted pointed areas for his ears to slot into.
“Where have you been? That women, that delightfully kind woman, put a hat on me Nora! A hat! I don’t have the head for hats, I prefer to accessorize with a nice watch, and you know that.” He was panting from the energy he had expelled from yelling.
“I’m very sorry that you were gifted a lovely hat, Quin. I hope that one day, somehow, you are able to move past this and live a happy life.” My sarcasm was wasted on him.
“Seriously, what took you so long? And where are the cakes?” he asked. He licked his paw and tried to tame his hat hair.
“I found a dead body Quin. I know, I know, another one. It was one of the guys we saw arguing last night. I had thought he looked familiar; it was that journalist that’s been busting all those corruption cases in the newspaper. It was weird, there was blood all over the place and he had these weird marks on his chest. I wish I could take another look.”
Quin looked up at me with big eyes and I saw a grin spread across his face.
“Oh, PLEASE can we solve this one? Please, please, please. It’s been weeks since we solved a murder and I’m getting all itchy. Help me satisfy my mystery hunger, please!” He was bouncing up and down on the car seat.
“Will you sit still, people might be able to see you, it already looks like I’m a lunatic talking to her cat in a parked car. And you seriously want to get us caught up in another murder investigation? I was pretty curious to know what discovery had finally gotten him killed. He has had so many people arrested for fraud or misuse of public money. It must be big...oh go on then.”
I didn’t need much convincing. I was already trying to figure out a way to get to the victim’s body for a closer look. I also needed to try and figure out who he’d been arguing with last night. Had we been the last people to see him alive before he was murdered? Just as my brain was getting caught up in crime-solver mode, my focus was broken by a blood curdling scream and a lot of loud shouting.
What now?
5
I jumped back out of the car and the parking lot was electrified with the sound of panicked voices. I overheard a couple close to me say that it must be a jealousy issue. Were they talking about Joseph Hawk? What jealousy? I could only assume that his body had been brought out or something, I didn’t know who had screamed or why.
I saw the rooster wranglers through the crowd and made my way over to them. “What’s happened? Is all this noise about the journalist?” I asked.
“Where have you been?” the rooster wrangler said. “No, it’s not that. The prize dog has gone missing, the owner just came out here screaming, she thinks there has been a theft. That dog has been winning awards left, right and center this year. She has made a lot of money out of that poor creature, now someone has taken it.
“Probably going to have a better life with its captors, won’t have to train all day, might get a week off every now and then.” The man with the rooster pointed over to a tall man with a short gray beard and thick white hair on the top of his head. “That’s the chief events director, he seems more upset about it than the poor woman whose dog is gone.”
I looked over at the events director and tried to place him. He was wearing round glasses with a thin rim, a tweed blazer with a horse embroidered on the top pocket and he was wearing sneakers. The severe look on his face was conveying fury and, in that moment, I realized that he was the man that had been arguing with Joseph last night.
“She’s only had that dog just over a year you know. Such a shame. We’ve had Sally for six years now, I’d take a bullet for her.” The rooster wranglers were now both gazing at the angry bird with adoration. “Noisy little thing she is, but I wouldn’t change her.” I gave them a thin-lipped smile and tried to edge away as I gathered my thoughts.
An investigative journalist had been murdered and a prize-winning dog had been stolen, all on the same day. When was the dog last seen? Was there CCTV anywhere? Was the dead body a distraction to get the dog out of the building? I stopped that line of thought very quickly. Joseph had been left in a locked room, so the killer couldn’t have known when the body would be discovered. It had only been a few minutes since Quin and I had decided to involve ourselves in solving this murder and it had almost immediately become more complicated.
The initial excitement of a new drama had faded, and the crowd began to disperse. People started to make their way back to their cars and drive off the lot. It was barely midday, but with a bloody crime-scene interrupting proceedings, it wasn't clear when things would resume. It turned out that nobody wanted to wait around on the off chance that they might see a horse counting to ten with its hooves.
An ambulance arrived quietly, and a team of people went into the building with a bunch of equipment. They came back out a few minutes later with a large black bag on top of a stretcher, it must be Joseph. I lowered my head respectfully as he was transported into the back of the van and peeped through my hair to see what everyone else was doing. The chief events director was staring at the ambulance with a stern look on his face. The woman whose dog was missing was now running up to the police officers that were leaving the building and chattering incoherently.
The idling engine of the ambulance had made it hard to hear, but as it pulled away, I could hear the woman saying that ‘the police should investigate her missing dog immediately and that there was no time to waste!’
The kiosk owners started to filter back inside under the watchful eye of the police, and I decided to go and grab Quin before I joined the people dismantling their setups. I walked back over to the car and unlocked it, climbed in and closed the door.
“What was all that about then?” Quin asked.
“Someone has stolen a prize-winning dog,” I replied.
“Oh, nothing important then,” he said.
“The owner is very upset, what if this is connected to the murder?”
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. It’s just a dog though, it’s not like it matters. Who cares about dogs? Not a single one of my friends like dogs, they are just the worst things on the planet.”
“Quin,” I said with a short tone, “all of your friends are cats. So of course, you don’t like dogs.”
Quin looked at me in horror. “Nora, you’re my friend and you don’t like dogs, do you? Nora? Nora? You don’t like dogs do you Nora?”
“I wish to not comment at this time. Come on, we need to pack up our stuff. This event is over, big time. It’s a real downer to find a corpse and everyone has gone home. We should go pack our things away and see what we can find out, maybe someone knows something about why that journalist was there.” I wanted to get another look at the room, but I wasn’t sure how I could possibly get access. I had seen officers carrying in reels of yellow tape, no doubt the area would be closed off.
I opened the car door and Quin followed me out, jumped into my arms and we walked back towards the building. It seemed that many of the kiosk holders were annoyed about the abrupt end to their sales day, some of them had been hoping f
or a more profitable weekend. Judith was happily packing up her things when we approached our own table.
“Shame our day together has come to an end so soon,” she said, tucking yarn into a tote bag, “are you joining us in the next city over?”
“No, just here for today. We managed to get a last-minute slot. Do you tour around with them?” I asked.
“Oh yes, quite a lot of us do. It usually lasts for a month or two every year and we all make great money. I can sit out in the sun with my grandchildren and do nothing for the rest of the year, that’s how profitable this is for me!”
I was surprised, but I had heard about people like this. I had seen a show about food trucks that travelled about with carnivals, they would make so much money in one weekend that they took the rest of the year off. I had no idea that crochet teapot covers were such a lucrative business.
“Had you ever seen that journalist before?” I asked. I didn’t want to push the topic too hard, but if Judith had been with the animal show for a while it seemed that she would be the best person to ask.
“Who hasn’t around here?” she laughed. “A pushy young man, but he had the best of intentions I’m sure.” She noticed the look on my face that suggested I required further explanation. “He had some opinions about this place and would get into many arguments with people about it. Not with me, I always gave him the answers to his questions, but I don’t think they were what he wanted to hear.”
“What was he trying to find out?” I probed.
“It was all silly rumor. Not worth adding fuel to the fire in my opinion. I would keep an eye on that cat of yours, he has already eaten two brownies, that can’t be good for his digestive system.” She was putting an end to our conversation.
I turned to Quin and whispered, “for crying out loud, let me pack up and you can eat whatever you want in the car. Just please do normal cat stuff in front of these people.” He pouted a little but silently complied. It took longer to collapse down all the displays and table decorations we had put up because we were now doing things the human way. After about an hour or so, I was done. Quin was not able to help because there were too many eyes on us.