Murder on the Equator Box Set

by Becca Bloom

Not having Lady in my arms for ballast, I stepped back to regain my balance. A wire, or something metal and sharp, jabbed into the side of my foot. I pulled up to release my shoe from whatever had caught it, but I was stuck. I had already ruined my favorite jeans. I did not want to ruin my favorite sneakers too.

  Carefully kneeling down, I felt around with my fingers to unhook myself from whatever had caught me. I felt the breath from the German shepherds’ barks against my fingers. The terriers didn’t improve the situation with their jumping and pacing about freely in front of the cage.

  "Just calm down. I'll get you out of here, but I don't trust your friends not to bite me right now," I said to the terrier pawing the gate containing his aggressive companions.

  If you asked me today, I would swear that the dog smiled at me just as the latch to the cage opened. The German shepherds bounded out and made a beeline for me. I could not get out of there fast enough. All concern about my shoe gone, I tugged on my foot until it my shoe was released. My eyes firmly set on my way out of the dog pit, I didn't dare turn when I heard a deep growl at my elbow.

  Jumping up to the wall and hurtling myself at it, I had to tug my sweatshirt from the toothy grip of one of the shepherds. The fabric tore loose from its hold and I toppled over, flailing my arms about wildly in an attempt to catch myself before I tumbled off the wall headfirst. My back hit against something, stopping me in mid-air. I only realized what it was when the Jeep’s alarm blared. Unwinding myself from where I dangled between roll bars, I slid down to the ground, trying to catch my breath as I limped to the opposite side of the alley.

  As it turned out, I didn't have to worry. Nobody heard the car alarm over the sound of the music at Christian's house. Had he thrown the same party in the States, somebody would have called the police by now. This being Ecuador, the neighborhood had closed the street for traffic so they could dance in the middle of it.

  My foot burned where the wire had poked it, but there was no time to worry about that now. Abuelita had not come behind me, and I didn't know where she was. Trusting that Tia Rosa was on her way back to the restaurant with Lady, I made my way back to the wall, climbing on top of the Jeep again to peek over the ledge. The dogs had found the treats Tia Rosa had thrown them.

  Where was Abuelita? I looked toward the house and noticed that the back door gaped open. I thought I had closed it, but in my escape from the mean geese, I must have left it open. I could only hope that the dogs and geese would ransack the house. It would serve those evil people right until I could get Animal Services over here.

  "What you do? We wait for you. We need go," Abuelita complained from behind me.

  There she stood, next to Tia Rosa, unscathed and intact.

  My jaw dropped. "Where did you come from? I was looking for you."

  "I leave through front door. Is so many people in the street, no one see me," she said, like it was obvious.

  My joy in seeing her unharmed quickly turned to frustration. "And you didn't think to say anything to me?" I winced as the stabbing pain in my foot reminded me of an injury I could've avoided had I, too, thought to simply use the front door.

  "You leave too fast."

  Feeling stupid as I limped down the alley to the sidewalk, I took comfort in the balled-up bundle in Tia Rosa’s arms. Lady was safe. We would take her home upon which I would call the police and Animal Services. Except … How could I tell them what we had found without telling them how we had found it?

  I must have groaned or something because Tia Rosa looked up at me and asked, "What wrong?"

  "I don't know how we can tell the police about those dogs without revealing why we were there and saw what we did. We can't just leave them there like that with those people."

  "Is okay. I solve the problem," said Abuelita confidently.

  I waited for more of an explanation, but all she offered was, "No ask. Trust."

  Having learned that sometimes it was best not to know, I refused to let my curiosity get the better of me by asking anything more.

  Tia Rosa frowned at me. "You have injury?"

  I continued to limp beside them, struggling to keep up. Whatever had stabbed me in the foot had pierced my skin, and I didn’t want a tetanus shot more than I could express. I would allow myself to be in denial until I could see the extent of the damage to my foot once we returned to the restaurant.

  "It's not that bad," I said. It wasn’t, so long as I didn’t look at it.

  Abuelita looked at me askance under the light of the street lamp. "You look terrible."

  Boy was I on a roll tonight. First, I was heavy. Then, I was crazy. And now, I looked terrible. Next, Abuelita would say I was estúpida. The funny thing was, despite her absolute lack of tact, her insults really didn't bother me.

  I looked down at the swollen welts covering my bruised legs and pulled the arm of my sweatshirt away from my body, revealing a gaping hole by my elbow.

  "The dog bite you?" Abuelita asked, poking her fingers through the hole and jabbing me in the ribs.

  Jumping out of her way and quickly being reminded of the stabbing pain in my foot as I set it down too sharply, I finally looked down at my shoe. The wire, the nail, or whatever sharp metal object it was, had somehow hooked itself in one of the little holes at the base of my shoe and had ripped a clean line from the sole of my sneaker to the top of my ankle. The fabric was brown surrounding the entry point, making me anxious about what awaited me when I finally pulled off my shoe and sock.

  Abuelita and Tia Rosa exchanged a look.

  Tia Rosa said, "I take Lady home. I feed her and stay with her."

  Before I could follow, Abuelita looped her arm through mine, clamping down on my elbow so hard it pinched. Even if I could have broken away from her, she would have caught up with me. It's difficult to run with a limp.

  And still, I tried. “But the dogs,” I argued, vainly pulling against her.

  “You no worry. I take care of the dogs.” She put her free hand over her heart, adding, “I promise. The dogs good. They safe very soon. More safe than you. When you have the last injection of tetanus?"

  Evidently, she understood the length of time it took me to think of an answer to mean that it had been long enough to require another one. Dr. Montalvo's office (Jake and Adi's ancient pediatrician) was on our way back to the restaurant, and I knew we would make a stop there. My only hope was that it was past office hours.

  I braced myself for his alarmist personality, fully prepared by the time we had reached the pharmacy at the bottom of his office to hear that my only hope to escape certain death was the amputation of my foot.

  Abuelita helped me hop up the flight of stairs. Dr. Montalvo's secretary was not there, but we found him with his loafered feet propped on the corner of his desk reading the newspaper with a pipe in his mouth, blowing the smoke out of the open window behind him.

  He tapped out his pipe and waved the air with his newspaper as we entered.

  With an impish smile spreading crags and lines over his face, he said, "I trust you will not tell my wife. She thinks I have been burning incense in my office." He shrugged his rounded shoulders. "If that's what she thinks, who am I to correct her?"

  He rounded the corner of his desk toward us, bringing a large, glass jar full of suckers with him.

  "Just one," he said to Abuelita as she reached in.

  She clucked her tongue at him, but I saw her release her hold on one of the suckers in her hand.

  I grabbed a red candy and popped it into my mouth. If I ended up getting a shot today, it was well deserved.

  Dr. Montalvo returned the jar to his desk and asked me to sit on the examination table. Pulling out some cotton and soaking it with something I hope didn't sting too much, he gently dabbed at the welts and bite marks covering my arms and legs.

  "She attack by gooses," explained Abuelita.

  "Mean, old birds," mumbled Dr. Montalvo. With a chuckle, he looked up at me and muttered, "The geese, not Bertha."

  Cha
pter 26

  "I old, no deaf, Ignacio," Abuelita grumbled.

  Dr. Montalvo's smile deepened and he winked at me. "Her English has improved. That must be your influence."

  After cleaning most of my bites and examining them for breaks in my skin, he said, "You are very lucky, Señorita. Now, let me have a look at your foot."

  I took off my sneaker and sock, cringing at the blood caked to my foot.

  “Oh no, this is very bad. Very, very bad.” Dr. Montalvo removed a pair of spectacles from his lab coat pocket, settling them on the tip of his bulbous nose.

  After his magnified inspection, he pulled up a rolling chair and said, “This is much worse than I had originally thought. When was the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

  I still couldn’t remember, but I reassured him, “I made sure I was up-to-date on all my vaccinations before coming here.”

  “That’s good, but did you get any booster shots before coming?”

  “No. My shot records were fine.”

  He shook his head. “Ay, ay, ay. We will have to give you a tetanus shot to be safe.”

  I then received a rather long and absolutely terrifying lecture about the painful spasms to be expected by a patient suffering from lockjaw. The sting in my foot was nothing compared to the worry twisting my stomach.

  And when he asked me how my sweater had gotten ripped, and I told him about my close encounter with the German shepherd, I then had to endure another bile-inducing discourse about rabies. Evidently, they still gave the rabies shot in the stomach here. I made a mental note to myself to never get bitten by a dog in Ecuador.

  Thankfully, the phone rang before he got out any needles and bringing his speech to an end (although from what I understood, the news he received was every bit as alarming to him as his talk had been to me). Abuelita watched him like a hawk while I eased my shoe over my newly bandaged foot.

  Dr. Montalvo scribbled on a notepad and handed it to me as he hung up the phone. "I must leave immediately for the clinic. This is for something a little stronger than your average pain pill, but not so strong to make you sleepy. The pharmacist’s wife is a nurse. She can give you the injection."

  He ushered us out of his office, locking his door behind him, already on his way to the clinic. Whatever had happened was urgent.

  I asked Abuelita, "What was that about?"

  "A woman poison. I no hear who was it." She looked frustrated, so I didn't press. Was it the same poison that killed Alex?

  They gave me a cup of water at the pharmacy so I could take my pain pill right away. Unfortunately, it didn't kick in until well after my tetanus shot. The pharmacist had been kind enough to recommend a liniment for the bruised swells covering my limbs. I smelled like menthol.

  Back at the restaurant, Tia Rosa had filled Sylvia and Adi in on all of the details regarding Lady’s rescue, and Lady herself was contentedly chewing on a bone at her spot in front of Adi's apartment door.

  Adi took one look at my shoe and reassured me, "It's a clean enough cut, I bet I can fix it. I'll add a cute, sparkly embellishment to hide the stitches." She was a good friend. She knew what was important. She also saw how bushed I was.

  Helping me upstairs, and letting Lady inside, Adi brought the phone over to me as I was settling on her couch.

  “You should let Christian know that the operation was a success unless you want him to swing by in the morning,” she suggested.

  Ugh. He deserved a heartfelt thanks, but I didn’t look forward to how he’d use it against me. Looking through her list of contacts, I finally found Christian's number. I knew Dr. Montalvo had said the pain medicine wouldn't make me drowsy, but I couldn’t afford for my senses to be dulled at all when I needed to thank Christian for his help.

  Before I heard a ringtone, Abuelita snatched the phone away from me. (She had ninja skills! I hadn’t heard her come in.) “First, I call police. Rosa already call for the dogs. Now is my turn to make trouble for the mean bad people.”

  Adi had a rough time trying to hold her laughter in as she translated what Abuelita said to the poor officer in charge of the reception desk.

  “She’s reporting a robbery at those crazy people’s house. She says she noticed that the front door was wide open, and she thought she saw someone inside. When she called out to them, they jumped over the wall and ran down the crowded street.”

  “Well, that’s an interesting twist on events.” Now, at least, I understood why she’d left the doors open. She must have had this planned the entire time to cover our tracks … so long as they didn’t look too closely around the wall or ask us too many questions.

  “She’s insisting that they send a policeman over there to investigate,” Adi said, then asked me, “What did you find over there? She’s being really pushy. More than normal.”

  I shivered, my injuries small in comparison to the suffering in that backyard. “It was awful. They had dog cages too small for them outside in the mud. The females had just had puppies, which have probably already been sold. Is there a place here in Baños for rescued dogs?”

  “There is. Now I get it. If the police show up and happen to find the illegal dog-breeding operation, the couple will go to jail and the dogs will be rescued without having to reveal that you were there to get Lady back.”

  Abuelita was a smart cookie. Much smarter than me for waltzing out the front door instead of facing the army of geese and a pointy-toothed German shepherd to clamber over a concrete wall. Not to mention my inelegant descent from said wall.

  With a finalizing nod, Abuelita hung up and handed the phone back to me. “Now, you call. We no have problems.” Her business seen to, she returned to the restaurant while I found Christian’s number.

  He answered his phone on the second ring, the music in the background dying down as he must have gone to a quieter part of his house.

  "Hey, Jessica, was the mission a success?"

  I waited for the one-liner, but it thankfully did not come. I relaxed a bit. "It was, and I have to thank you for your help. I hope you will let me contribute toward the cost of the booze for your party—"

  He interrupted with a laugh. "You are kidding, yes? I am, how do you say … making a killing … tonight, and it is I who must thank you."

  He explained when I answered with a pause.

  "I gave my neighbors free beer, okay? It is inexpensive. But I tell them if they want liquor, they pay. By the end of the night, I will make enough to buy a new sixty-five-inch TV for my room."

  Relieved to hear that he didn't consider me to be indebted to him, I said, "Was the woman I saw standing next to you your mom? She looks really nice."

  I could've kicked myself after my question. He would understand that I was asking out of jealousy, not simply out of curiosity and the need to say something nice before I hung up.

  "About that," he began. "My mother says you look like a nice girl. She approves of you."

  I sunk deeper into the couch cushions, wishing it would swallow me whole. I so did not want to have this conversation with Christian, but I had brought it on myself. Even Adi smacked her forehead and rolled her eyes at me.

  I kept my mouth shut, not trusting myself to dig myself further into a misunderstanding of my own doing.

  Christian continued. "I’ve worked hard to build my image, yes? I’m a manly man; tough, yes?”

  He waited for an answer.

  “Yeah, sure. Definitely,” I answered, not wanting to compliment him or insult him unnecessarily.

  He sighed. “Ah, good. Then you’ll understand why we can only be friends.”

  “What?” I asked in surprised relief.

  “It’s not you. It’s me. Well, it’s my mom, really. I can’t see a woman my mom likes too much. It’ll mess with my rebel image. I’m a lone wolf, and people will think I’m soft if I’m with a serious girl my mom likes. You get it, yes?” he asked. I could hear the desperation in his tone.

  I’d never been broken up with by a guy I hadn’t even been
dating. It was an odd sensation. I could empathize with Bleak House’s Esther when Mr. Guppy withdrew his proposal after he saw the consequences of the small pox she’d survived all over the face he’d once declared angelic. Only, instead of a physical mark on my face, it turned out I was too nice.

  “I’m totally okay with that,” I said, feeling that a truce had been made. “So, no more serenades at three in the morning? No more awful one-liners, winks, and kissy lips when you see me?” I asked, just to make sure.

  “No more, I promise. Of course, if you want to put in a good word for me with your pretty friends, that is always welcome, yes? I know how to treat a lady good.”

  There was no way I’d do that to a friend. I could think of a few girls from high school I wouldn’t mind inflicting with Christian’s unwanted flirtations, though….

  “Do tell!” Adi pounced as soon as I ended the call.

  “Christian broke up with me,” I said with a large grin.

  “Aw, you poor thing,” she said sarcastically. “Still, I have a carton of Oreo ice cream in the freezer waiting for an excuse to dive into it.”

  She was already in the kitchen. I thought the pulsating pain in my foot, the shot in my arm, and the gazillion beak marks over my skin merited a treat anyway, so I said nothing to stop her as she returned with two large soup spoons and a tub of ice cream.

  It had been a long day … that got longer when the phone rang. It was Luis.

  He said, “Someone has been poisoned.”

  Chapter 27

  My mind went back to Dr. Montalvo’s office. He’d been in such a hurry and I’d been so distressed at the shot awaiting me, I hadn’t asked when I should have. Some detective.

  "What? Who?" Determined to give the investigation my full attention, I anchored my spoon in the ice cream and handed the tub to Adi. She crossed her legs on the couch facing me and dug in, listening in on my conversation with the interest of a housewife watching a soap opera.

  "It happened to Shirley during the dinner. I was seated at the table next to hers when all of a sudden, she started retching and, before I could catch her, she had fallen to the floor. She gasped for breath as if she couldn't breathe."