Murder Unleashed

by Rita Mae Brown

  “They aren’t miles apart but he seems to have been a guy that rubbed some people the wrong way without trying and others liked him just fine.”

  “Ordinary?”

  “Lonnie, I’m not so sure. His death was anything but. We’re missing something.” On the ground floor Pete added, “We’re missing something over at Howie’s, too.”

  The glass door made a whoosh sound as the two young officers stepped into the cold, sparkling Nevada air.

  “We’ve crawled all over that ranch. Too bad so many people had driven in. We might have gotten a print of tire tracks.”

  “Yep.”

  “Think someone’s going to rustle all his cattle?”

  “I don’t know, but if they do they’d be smart to wait for a snowstorm. Like I said, we’re missing something in both cases.”

  “Stuff will show up.” Lonnie opened the squad car door. “Always does.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  They could share, you know,” said King, thrilled by the enticing aroma of fried chicken wafting into the backseat.

  “Maybe she saved some for us at home.” Baxter, too, was hopeful the largesse would be shared.

  The deep rumble of the big V-8 provided a counterpoint to their conversation and that of Jeep and Mags in the front seat of the truck.

  “Mother says that I can’t eat chicken bones. They’ll splinter and I’ll die. I don’t believe it. Not for one minute. She’s just being selfish about chicken. Look, we ate chickens in the wild. If dogs had died you and I wouldn’t be here. Human selfishness, I tell you.” King’s ears pricked upright.

  “It is a suspicious theory. Mags tells me that when she’s eating chicken at the table and she won’t give me any. Did you ever notice how much they dress up selfishness? It’s always something else.” Baxter twitched his well-groomed moustache.

  “The entire back of this truck is full of food. What’s a little chicken thrown to us?” King stood up to look through the center console out the front window. “What a clear day.”

  “Back home it’s spring by now. Daffodils in Central Park, light green buds on the trees. And, oh, the smells. All those hot dog vendors.” Baxter closed his eyes for a second.

  “A hot dog vendor?”

  “They don’t have hot dog vendors on the streets of Reno?” Baxter couldn’t believe this.

  “I don’t know. Tell me what one is.”

  “Sometimes you’ll see them in winter, but they are always out in spring, summer, and fall. It’s a person, usually a man, with a stainless-steel cart with an umbrella.” Baxter smiled in remembrance.

  “I’ve seen one or two now that you describe them.”

  “It can get hot in Manhattan in the summer. The fellow needs shade plus you can see the umbrella from far away. In this cart there’s a well with hot water. You stand in line, hand him money, he spears a long skinny hot dog, puts it on a roll that is kind of protected with wax paper. You get your change, maybe you give him a tip, and then you put on ketchup, mustard, relish. The smell, King, the whole city smells of these wonderful, wonderful hot dogs. And my mother always bought me one when she ate one. We’d sit on a park bench together and eat our prize. They’re all over the city.”

  “I’d like to do that,” King said wistfully.

  “I think these vendors make a pretty good living. At least, I’d think so just because of the smell.”

  “Carlotta makes hog dogs,” King noted.

  “Yes, but it’s not the same.” Baxter did not say this in a superior fashion.

  “Finally.” The truck stopped at Donald Veigh’s Spring Street squat.

  Donald, old jacket on, hurried out of his house. Mags called out to him.

  He climbed up on the back of the truck crammed full of groceries. “Wow. This is a real haul.”

  “We had some extra help today. Treasure City gave us a lot of food because the casino food manager overbought.” Mags smiled.

  She didn’t say that in years past Jeep had assisted him in some business dealings. He owed her one.

  Jeep got out from behind the wheel. She looked on as the two of them began removing the large plastic containers. The aroma affected her as it affected King.

  The two dogs clambered down from the backseat. Baxter, with his little short legs, had learned to go down into the footwell, then out onto the flat running board, which retracted when Jeep started the motor. From there, he could make it down to the pavement. Baxter, ever resourceful, rarely asked for help. Wishing for one chicken wing, just one, he watched the containers carried into Donald Veigh’s place.

  Jeep pitched in and carried small containers.

  Once the truck was unloaded the three humans stood in the empty living room.

  “Donald, do people around here make coffee?” Jeep inquired. “I know they can’t use electric pots.”

  “Mostly people use the plain kind, you know like chuck wagon cooks. Heat it over an open flame. That’s what I use anyway.”

  Outside playing, the dogs chased each other into the next yard, 230 Spring.

  A skinny Manchester terrier scooted out behind a dead bush at Donald’s to follow the two dogs.

  “Who are you?” Baxter turned his head.

  “I live next door. Help me.” The little dog trembled in the cold. He was skin and bones, no fat to fight the frigid temperatures.

  “Stick with us. We’ll get you food,” King said.

  “There are lots of us down here. We have to avoid Animal Control. They take us to pens. If no one claims us, I hear they kill us. So we hide. There are fewer and fewer of us. It’s been a long hard winter.” The small black and tan tried to nudge them to the front door of 230 Spring Street.

  “I can smell him now,” King barked.

  Their sharp ears detected a rattle and wheeze.

  “Let’s get Mom. This isn’t good!” Baxter tore off to Donald’s.

  As Donald’s door closed, the two set up ferocious barking, scratching on the door.

  The skinny dog, upset, watched.

  Jeep opened the door. “Settle down. We didn’t leave for Tunis. We’re right here.”

  “Come quick!” King danced on his hind legs.

  “Trouble.” Baxter howled.

  Donald thought the two dogs must be sick or something. Jeep and Mags, being dog people, knew otherwise. They hurriedly followed their two companions out the door. Donald, puzzled, brought up the rear with the starving dog.

  Donald wondered if they weren’t having a moment, as his late mother would say. But they were good to him and the neighborhood. They’d brought all this food and other people could pick up their portions at will. This saved time for Jeep and Mags, plus it gave Donald an opportunity to know his struggling neighbors better. So what if the girls were a little tilted? He’d tag along.

  King reached the door first, scratching frantically.

  Baxter repeated himself, “Trouble, Mom, trouble.”

  “It is trouble.” The little dog barked.

  Jeep boldly opened the door. A young man, a boy in his teens, crumpled to the floor, wheezing. The terrier ran to him, licking his face.

  Mags reached him before Jeep did. Donald, too, knelt down at his side.

  “Faint pulse!” Jeep said, holding the wrist of the painfully thin young man.

  “230 Spring Street. Ambulance.” Mags, on her cell, described as best she could what lay before her: a young man, no wounds that she could see, who was having great difficulty breathing.

  The cold room didn’t help his condition. He opened his eyes. A dreamy look crossed his face. He reached up to touch Mags’s beautiful face, then his hand fell to his side. A rattle, a twitch.

  “He’s gone,” King said, knowing the humans did not yet know.

  Sensing his human’s distress, Baxter walked to Mags, sitting tight next to her leg.

  In the distance, a siren wailed. The little dog wailed, too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Loneliness,” King stated emphatical
ly.

  “Right,” Baxter agreed, which was always the best strategy in getting along with the larger King.

  Though in this instance, the wire-haired dachshund actually did agree. “People need one another.”

  “They do but then again they miss a lot, they even miss their own mating odors. They can’t always connect because they listen to talk. Can you imagine living with such dull senses? If they had better senses I don’t think as many would be lonely.”

  Baxter replied, “Remember their sight is good. And they think about things we don’t so I like living with Mags. I learn things.”

  King swayed a bit in the backseat of Jeep’s truck. “Really? Like what?”

  The scrawny little dog was there, too. Jeep murmured, “We couldn’t save the kid. We’ll try to save the dog. Starved, too.” Jeep was terribly upset. She couldn’t bear to see an animal or person mistreated or abandoned.

  “She reads me things,” said Baxter. “I like that. She tells me what happened before I was born and what she thinks will happen.”

  King harrumphed. “Who cares about what happened before we were born? And whatever is in front of us, we’ll find out when we get there. Why worry?” King spoke with his usual sense of authority.

  “My human says the past is prologue. She thinks about this stuff all the time. She read a book about the crash of 1907. She’s reading everything about bad times except for the Great Depression. She says everybody is studying that and it seems that they’re learning nothing from it. She’ll go elsewhere. She read me stories about the South Sea Bubble and the Tulip Craze. I like that she wants me to know.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t have anyone else to talk to,” King teased.

  “She has Jeep and Pete.” Baxter flopped onto King as Jeep took a sharp turn. “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault. Momma’s at the wheel.”

  And so she was.

  Mags, strapped in, figured she was up high enough that if Jeep did get them into an accident it might not be so bad. She knew not to criticize her great-aunt’s driving. After all, if she could fly big, complex planes, she could handle a new Ford pickup. Mags repeated this to herself whenever her great-aunt was scaring the bejesus out of her.

  The pint-sized stray, warm for the first time in months, fell fast asleep, whimpering in his sleep.

  A furious Jeep hurried to the local CBS affiliate. It would have been easier to simply call advertising but Jeep preferred face-to-face meetings, and she was going to have one.

  The station’s utilitarian building was located in an industrial park east of the airport. She pulled in, opened the windows a crack for the dogs, hopped out, and locked the truck.

  Mags followed, hoping her beloved great-aunt was not about to suffer an intemperate moment.

  The dogs watched the two humans walk across the tarmac.

  “We weren’t going to suffocate,” King complained.

  “It is kind of cold but not as bad as it was.” The little guy inhaled the bracing air sifting in through the cracked windows.

  “What did you mean when you said Mags told you about the Tulip Craze?” King asked.

  “In Holland way back in 1634 those people paid what would be hundreds of thousands of our dollars for tulips. Tulips.”

  “That can’t be true. You can’t eat tulips. They blossom and die.”

  “It is true. But a person can store the bulb and it will bloom again next spring. Mags reads me everything. It really happened.”

  King’s ears pricked up. “Do you ever wonder why you love someone from such a demented species?”

  “No. I just love Mags. I don’t much care about the rest of them,” Baxter hastened to add. “I love Aunt Jeep and I like Pete and Enrique and Carlotta, but my job is to protect Mags.”

  “Baxter, if dogs left humans they would perish. They just can’t fend for themselves,” King said solemnly.

  “Perish.” Baxter repeated in enthusiastic agreement.

  They both looked at the canine ragamuffin sound asleep, and Baxter then curled around him.

  As if echoing the dogs, Jeep, standing not sitting, said, “Perish. It is unconscionable that someone should starve in Reno.”

  The advertising director, standing because Jeep was standing, swept his hand toward the leather and steel sofa. “Miss Reed, Miss Rogers, please sit down. And I quite agree. Tell me what I can do.”

  Realizing he was a decent man, Jeep turned around, looked at the sofa, and plopped down.

  Mags also sat, smiling at the director, Jonas Forloines.

  He was in his midforties, slightly balding, clean shaven, and dressed a bit more colorfully than a lawyer or an insurance executive, which is to say he had his coat off, wore a French blue shirt with an expensive silver tie and expensive cuff links bearing the CBS logo.

  “I will be happy to discuss a contribution from our station manager,” Forloines said as he returned to his desk chair.

  “Oh, Mr. Forloines, I didn’t expect that and I’m sorry I blew in here and just, well, perhaps stated my feelings too forcibly.” Jeep realized she had done just that.

  “If I’d seen what you’ve just seen, I’d be upset, too.”

  “What I want to do is to create a series of ads highlighting the problem. I don’t know a thing about how to do this. You do. I’d like to run these ads, say, once with the morning news and once with the evening news.”

  Mags interjected quietly, “Aunt Jeep, there are so many different news programs now. Perhaps Mr. Forloines can help us identify the time with the most viewers. You’d like your dollars to reach the widest audience.”

  “I can certainly do that.” He swiveled around in his chair to pluck glossy folders from a beautiful enameled shelf running the length of one wall. “These give you a breakdown of advertising rates, news times, prime time, everything. Allow me to make a suggestion.”

  “Anything.” Jeep meant it.

  “Don’t preach. Create a powerful visual image. This is a visual medium and words are always secondary to the image. State what you wish the viewer to do and know, giving an address, email, or whatever. But take time to find that image or images. I know the station manager would love for me to talk you into a three-minute ad but, Miss Reed, two is more effective if you’ve got it right.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Forloines.”

  “Of course, I know of you, but I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting you. I know you can buy this station if you so wish but that doesn’t mean I want to waste your money. What you’ve told me upsets me. No one should go hungry or suffer from cold in Reno. I will do my best for you and I will talk to the station manager about some contribution, be it financial or a discount on running the ads. He’ll suggest public service, but you simply won’t reach your target audience, which I understand to be all of Reno.” He smiled. “Most stations, and ours is no exception, wedge the public service ads in the least expensive time slots. And I can’t fault anyone for doing so. It’s advertising that keeps us in business.”

  “I understand that and I am grateful for your candor.”

  He smiled a little and shook his head. “Not everyone agrees with you on that, so that’s music to my ears.” He paused. “Right now people’s idea of foreclosed homes is the deterioration down on Yolanda Street, that area.”

  “The part of town Patrick Wentworth is trying to build his career on.” Jeep leaned forward putting her hands on her knees.

  “Yes. His campaign ads aren’t brilliant, aren’t particularly well shot, but that’s part of his shtick, to make it look like the footage is from an amateur with a handheld. I can assure you it isn’t. But it’s subtly meant to convey honesty and integrity—that he’s not paying a big ad agency for slicked-up ads. Again, those ads aren’t brilliant, no special compelling images, but the cumulative effect is clear: bad doings in your town and I’ll fix it. You’ll be safe.”

  “Yes, I’ve watched them, too,” Jeep said without enthusiasm.

  “I’m waiting for the incumbent An
son Sorenson to mount his campaign. He’s awfully slow. He’s underestimating Wentworth.”

  Jeep said sincerely, “Mr. Forloines, thank you for taking the time, and for withstanding my outburst. I’ll be in touch, as they say.” She looked at her great-niece, “What do they say?”

  Mags touched her aunt’s hand. “It’s a wrap. At least I think that’s what they say.”

  “And the check will be with it, even better.” Jeep smiled.

  On that note the two women left the station. Walking out the front entrance, Mags asked, “Do you have an agency in mind?”

  “Holland and Fille. First, I want to call Babs, and set up a meeting with her there tomorrow. Oh, will you call the hospital on your cell and see what you can find out?”

  Mags called West Hills Hospital, described the patient, and gave the time of the ambulance call. “We don’t know his name.” Before getting into the truck, Mags had her answer. “I see. If you can establish his identity and find the next of kin, let me know.” A pause. “Yes, yes, it is. Thank you.”

  Once in the truck, she looked at her aunt. “Starvation.”

  Jeep inhaled sharply. “Call the Reno Gazette-Journal and get them on the story.”

  “Aunt Jeep, if I might suggest. Let me call CBS. Give them the story first.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” She didn’t start the motor. “This is the richest nation on earth. Our agricultural wealth is so great we can feed millions above and beyond our own population and a young man starves to death in Reno, Nevada.”

  “Aunt Jeep, I feel terrible. What a dreadful thing to die so young, so alone.”

  “What about the homeless dogs, cats, and horses?” King allowed himself an indignant moment.

  “They think of themselves first,” Baxter said. “But they’re letting this little guy come home with us. That’s a start.”

  “If King and Baxter hadn’t started barking and pawing at the door, we’d have never found that poor soul. As it was, too late.” Jeep finally started the motor.

  “Right next to Donald Veigh. He said he thought he saw a light in there but he didn’t want to snoop around. If we hadn’t checked up on Donald, if we hadn’t brought King and Baxter, who knows how long before he would have been found, months? A year?” Mags slipped her cellphone into her purse. “Aunt Jeep, let’s get to your advertising company first thing tomorrow. I doubt this would be too useful for Wentworth’s campaign, after all, since there’s no drugs or prostitution, but still if he can find a way to use it, he will.”