The Dog Who Ate The Flintlock

by Edward Coburn

  “And you let them in,” Donati yelled.

  “But they had this search warrant, and they said they’d arrest me if I didn’t let them in,” Erik whined, handing the warrant to Donati.

  “All right,” Donati said, “don’t whine. It’s undignified.” He walked out from behind his massive desk looking at the warrant as he did so. “Let me talk to them.”

  “What is this?” Donati asked as he approached Robert. “Another fishing expedition?”

  “We have a dying man’s declaration about some evidence stored in your wine cellar. You do have a wine cellar don’t you?”

  “You know I do. You and your minions have been there before and found nothing because there’s nothing to find. And what dead beat did you take a dying declaration from?”

  “Harold Morgan AKA Ronald Wilkerson gave you up after you sent his daughter and son to kill him,” Ken put in.

  “So he says. Do you have any proof that I sent them?”

  “Not yet,” Robert said, “but we will.”

  “Fat chance of that since I didn’t send them. So Morgan was still alive, I take it. I thought he died about ten years ago in a fire.”

  “I’m sure that’s what you wanted us to believe, but he was living in LA under an assumed name. And he was still alive when we left LA,” Ken said. “But neither Miranda nor Roman is.”

  “Who?”

  “You know who Miranda and Roman are. We know you’ve used their services in the past.”

  “Where’s your proof? And speaking of proof, how could you have taken a dying declaration from Morgan if he hasn’t died?”

  “Doesn’t matter how we found out about the evidence you have stored in the wine cellar; it only matters that we did.” Robert brushed past Donati on his way to the door to the wine cellar. When he tried the knob, it was locked as usual. Robert waited until Donati came into the room. “Unlock the door.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then we’ll break it down.”

  “Good luck with that,” Donati said. “It’s solid hickory.”

  “Either open it, or we’ll use an ax if we have to,” Robert said.

  “No need to get violent. I’ll open it.” He took out a key and swung the door wide. He was confident that Drummond, his SWAT guys, and the FBI grunt wouldn’t find anything in the cellar.

  “You go first,” Robert said. “But keep your hands where we can see them.” He had the SWAT guys remain at the top of the stairs.

  “You’re welcome to search. You won’t find any more than you have in the past.”

  When they reached the cellar, Robert and Ken pulled the bottles out of the rack one after the other thinking there might be some kind of trip mechanism connected to the bottles.

  “Having fun,” Donati smirked but the color was draining from his face, and he was starting to sweat.

  Adam reached out and grasped Donati’s arm and was instantaneously overtaken by a vision. In it, he saw Donati reach behind a particular bottle before a door beside the wine rack slid open. “There’s some kind of switch on the rack itself. It’s behind one of the bottles on the third row from the top.”

  Together Ken and Robert pulled all the bottles from the third row of the rack standing them neatly on the floor. Then Robert ran his hand along the back of the boards that had held the bottles. He grinned at Adam. “You’re right. I found a switch.” He flipped the switch, and a section of the wall beside the rack slid neatly aside revealing a room that had always been hidden from his men in the past. Just as Morgan had promised, there was a display counter on the far wall housing Donati’s grisly trophies and each finger, or sometimes pairs of digits of the his-and-hers variety, were indeed labeled and dated.

  Donati’s face was now white as snow and sweat was dripping into his eyes. “Care to explain these?” Robert pointed at the case.

  Donati tried. “I didn’t know this room was here. Someone must have put the fingers there. I know nothing about them. Those horrid things are grossing me out.” He acted like he was gagging, but he didn’t convince any of them.

  “Nice try,” Ken said. “But I don’t think anyone is buying that load of crap. Carlo Donati, you’re under arrest.” Ken read Donati his Miranda Rights as he turned Donati around and slapped the cuffs on. He peered at the SWAT guys at the head of the stairs. “You two take the big guy upstairs into custody. I suggest one of you have your gun out to keep him subdued. I don’t think you want to tussle with him.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” one of them answered as they turned to find Erik.

  Robert turned to Donati. “Where did you bury the bodies?”

  “How could I possibly know that when I didn’t know anything about this room. I assume you’re talking about the bodies the fingers came from?”

  Robert turned to Adam. “Can you help?”

  “Maybe. I’ll try.” Adam grabbed Donati’s arm again and this time saw a man standing in front of a cemetery.

  “So…?” Robert said.

  “I saw a man standing in front of a cemetery. I didn’t see anything to indicate what cemetery it was, however.”

  “Do you think you can recognize the man?”

  “I might be able to. Do you have mugshots of all the funeral directors in the area?”

  Robert smiled knowing Adam was only kidding. “I’m afraid not. I guess we’ll have to visit all of them. But that will be okay since there aren’t that many in town. After we put this slug behind bars, of course.”

  “But there’s also a chance he didn’t use a cemetery in Morgantown. I know there are dozens of small towns in the area and he may have used one of those,” Adam said less than enthusiastically before reaching out to clutch Donati’s arm again. This time he saw the same man standing in front of the funeral parlor and clearly saw the sign for the Flannigan Funeral Home. “It’s Flannigan’s,” Adam said rubbing his hands together.

  “Are you sure?” Robert said.

  “I’m sure,” Adam said. “Do you know it?”

  “Yes, I know it. It’s a fairly new cemetery all the way out of town to the north.”

  Adam realized the enormity of the task ahead of them. “But bodies buried in a regular cemetery? How will we ever figure out where,” he pointed at Donati, “his victims are buried?”

  This comment made Donati smile briefly. “Like I’m going to tell you. Besides, as I’ve already said, I know nothing about any of this.”

  “Actually, maybe you will tell us,” Adam said with a smirk.

  Ken and Robert stared at Adam in confusion. “What do you mean?” Ken asked.

  “With a little help from a friend of mine the fingers he cut off may lead us to the bodies.” Adam had an idea other people might think ridiculous. He thought maybe Bagel could help find Donati’s victims in amongst all the other interred souls at the cemetery. It would be worth a try anyway. Though he’d never tried anything like this with Bagel, he thought if he showed Bagel a finger, Bagel might be able to find where the person it belonged to was buried. Bagel had once found several lost boys, one of them with a broken leg, by sniffing the boy’s jacket much like a bloodhound might do. So he knew Bagel had capabilities far beyond what ordinary dogs had.

  “All right, I’ll bite,” Robert said. “Who’s your friend?”

  Suddenly Adam was a bit reluctant to tell them what he had in mind, and he had to suppress a giggle at what Robert had said. Bagel might be able to do it but whether he could convince anyone else remained to be seen. He took the chance and disclosed what he had in mind.

  “And you think your dog can out bloodhound a bloodhound?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. We can start by seeing if the funeral director will admit to burying Donati’s victims, but if he won’t, we don’t have a lot of options. It’s not as if we can dig up an entire cemetery to see if we can find bodies with their ring fingers missing.”

  “And a cadaver dog would be less than useless in a cemetery,” Robert put in. “As Adam suggested, let�
��s start with the funeral director and then give his dog a try if necessary. There can’t be any harm in trying.”

  “Agreed,” Ken said. “You say you know where this cemetery is?”

  “I do.”

  Chapter 59

  The crew took Donati and Erik to the station where they were searched and then booked. Robert wrote up a search warrant for the Flannigan Funeral Home and rewrote the search warrant so the rest of Donati’s house could be searched for whatever clues might be uncovered. He was gone only about twenty minutes to get them signed by the same judge who had signed the warrant for Donati’s cellar. He complained to Ken and Adam that, unfortunately, the judge would not sign off on the warrant for the funeral home but said they could look at the cemetery and if anything seemed suspicious, bring a remade warrant back with sufficient probable cause, and he would sign it and any exhumation order or orders Robert felt necessary. The judge easily bought the idea that Donati had used a cemetery to dispose of his victim’s bodies but didn’t feel that constituted probable cause to sign a warrant for that particular funeral home. Based on their gruesome discovery in the cellar, the judge had signed off on the warrant to search the rest of Donati’s house, however, so Robert passed this information on to his supervisor and his supervisor assigned CSI techs to do the search. Robert spoke briefly to Jenny before he, Ken and Adam left for the Flannigan Funeral Home.

  When they arrived, they were greeted by the funeral director. “Hello,” he said with a quiet voice as if they were in a library instead of the entrance to the funeral home. “I’m Gerald Cooper, proprietor of the Flannigan Funeral Home. How may I be of service?” When they spoke about why they’d come, he categorically denied having anything to do with the disposal of the bodies of Carlo Donati’s victims. He said he’d heard of Donati but had never met him and was incensed by the accusation that he was involved with anything so heinous. He assured them they could feel free to look around without a search warrant, but he drew the line at them digging up any of his clients.

  As they walked back to Robert’s car after a cursory search of the funeral home and cemetery, Ken said, “I guess we’ll have to see what your dog can do, Adam. As you said, it’s not as if we can simply start digging randomly. This is a cemetery after all, and we would need an exhumation order to dig up any grave much less the whole place.” He scanned the cemetery and did a quick estimate. “There must be at least a hundred tombstones and grave markers here. We will definitely need to narrow the search.”

  “I guess we will. I hope Bagel can help with that. As I said, we’ve never tried anything like what we’re going to attempt.” Adam focused on Ken. “On a slightly different subject, you do know he was lying about not knowing about the victims and not personally knowing Donati?”

  “I could tell. The shock on his face when we mentioned Donati and disposal of the bodies would have given him away to just about anyone. I presume that’s what you read as well.”

  “That and the fact that I can actually tell when someone is lying. I’m sort of a living lie detector. I can always tell when someone is lying to me.”

  “That must come in handy as a reporter,” Ken said.

  “It has many times.”

  As they drove back to the police station, Adam asked Robert to drop him someplace where he could rent a car. “I can rent a car to drive to Charleston to pick up my car at Richard’s house and then pick up Bagel at home in Canary Corners.”

  “I have a better idea,” Robert said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Why don’t we pick Jenny up and I drive both of you to Richard’s house. I talked to Jenny, and she wants to meet Mary Beth. I think Mary Beth and Jenny will get along. Besides, I’d like to see Mary Beth…and Richard, of course. I wonder how he’s doing.” His eyes misted over.

  “That sounds like a good idea. I’d appreciate the company, and I agree. I think Jenny and Mary Beth would enjoy meeting each other. Richard will probably like Jenny too.”

  “I’m sure he will,” Robert agreed.

  Before they left, Adam called Marti and let her know he was on his way home to pick up Bagel, but he would stay the night in Morgantown. He planned to leave first thing in the morning with a couple of stops in Charleston. She said she would fix him a nice welcome home supper.

  “Wouldn’t you rather I take you out?”

  “Not necessarily. You know I like cooking for you, or anyone,” she said just to tease him.

  He thought he’d go along with the gag. “Does that mean there’s going to be someone else there besides me?”

  “Certainly. There will be six others besides you and me.”

  “I’ll buy that. How are the pups doing?”

  She glanced at the dogs where two of the puppies were climbing on Butter while the other two were playing tug of war with the edge of Butter’s blanket and smiled. “They’re quite rambunctious. Right now two of them are ganging up on Butter.”

  “Who’s winning?”

  “I guess the puppies are. I think Butter has figured out their teeth are extremely sharp. As a matter of fact, I figured that out too as some of the Boggle dice have very tiny holes in them.”

  “Oh. Did you let them chew on the dice?” He said in a scolding tone.

  She knew he was less than serious. “I didn’t let them. I turned my back for an instant and then had to fight them for the dice. I got stabbed a few times for my trouble. Maybe they’re practicing to be like Bagel.”

  “Or they’re just being puppies.”

  “Probably,” she agreed. “When do you think you’ll be home?”

  “I’m not really sure. Robert is driving Jenny and me to see Richard and Mary Beth. I might hang around there for a while, and I have an errand to run in Charleston too. How would it be if I call when I’m leaving Charleston? That way you’ll have enough time to get supper ready unless you’re fixing something extra special.”

  “Even if I am, if you give me an hour’s warning I’m sure I‘ll have enough time to put the finishing touches on it.”

  “That sounds intriguing.”

  “You’ll see when you get home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  As soon as Adam walked in the house, he knew precisely what she’d fixed for supper. Without trying very hard, he smelled the pot roast and the coconut cherry pie baking in the oven. Marti had gotten the recipe for the pie from Adam’s sister who’d gotten it from their mother. She knew he loved her pie almost as much as he loved her.

  He walked through the living room into the kitchen, and she greeted him with a warm hug and a kiss that hinted at more to come. He hoped it was more than a mere promise. He reached in his pocket and felt the small velvet box he had picked up in Charleston.

  “I trust you saw Richard?”

  He nodded. “He seems to be doing as well as can be expected and Mary Beth and he are getting along famously. It’s almost as if they’ve been together all these years instead of being separated. I can already see the love they share whenever they look at each other.”

  “And how about the other one?”

  “You mean Jenny?”

  “Yes. How does she fit in?”

  “That’s still to be discovered, but they seemed to hit it off. I wasn’t there very long, but Mary Beth took Jenny up to the nursery that Ricard had built for her before she was taken. I went along, and as Mary Beth excitedly gushed about the books and toys, some of which she claims she remembers, Jenny seemed almost as excited. Robert had Jenny bring a bear, named Beer, believe it or not, for Mary Beth from his house. Mary Beth hugged it as if it was an old friend and then handed it to Jenny who also hugged it. Yes, I think they’re going to get along fine.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Famished.”

  “Can you guess what we’re having?”

  “I don’t have to guess. I know you fixed pot roast.”

  “And for dessert?”

  “Coconut-cherry pie. You didn’t think you could get that past my nose did you
?”

  “No. I didn’t think I could. Shall we eat?”

  “Good idea.”

  Marti had already set the table, and she walked over to the oven and took out the pot roast pan and set it on the stove. “Can you bring me the platter please?”

  “I certainly can sweetheart.” He took the platter to the stove, and together they maneuvered the pot roast out of the pan and onto the plate. Marti then fished the potatoes and carrots out of the pan. While Marti made gravy using the grease in the pan, Adam carved the pot roast. He filled two glasses with water and put them on the table in front of each of their traditional places. Before she sat down, Marti took the pie out of the oven to cool.

  After they had eaten their fill of the pot roast and fixings and had a slice of pie, Adam helped clear the table and had Marti sit back down at the table. She regarded him questioningly because they generally adjourned to the living room after supper. “What’s up with this?”

  He knelt beside her chair, and she smiled, reasonably sure she knew what was coming. He took her hand and looked deep into her eyes. “I know we have talked about this from time to time, but I thought now was the time.” He reached into his pocket and removed the velvet box. He opened it and held it out. “Martha Rose Blossom, I love you and have since the first time I met you. Will you consent to marry me?”

  “Of course I will,” she gushed, her eyes tearing. A warm glow spread throughout her body while she picked the ring out of the box. It was an emerald-cut diamond larger than any diamond she’d ever seen. “It’s gorgeous.” She handed him the ring and held out her finger. It slipped on her finger like it was made for her which, indeed, it was. He had picked the diamond out several months ago along with several settings. He had been carrying pictures of the settings in his wallet and finally decided which design seemed to suit Marti best. He called the jeweler from Boston and instructed him to finish the ring, and he picked it up later.

  “I’m surprised you remembered.”

  “What?” he asked genuinely confused.

  “My middle name, Rose. I don’t think you’ve heard it since Livinia introduced us.” Livinia was Marti’s Great Aunt who had been Adam’s next door neighbor when Adam moved into the Canary House Apartments. This was before he moved into the house he was currently renting from the Rambling Foundation.