by Abby Byne
There was no animal shelter in Little Creek. Impounded animals were taken to a shelter in Fayetteville. Bitsie called the shelter. No dog matching Kipper’s description had been brought in.
The only thing she hadn’t tried was making flyers and posting them around town, so when she got to work, she went straight to the tiny office in the back and set to work making a flyer.
Nick stuck his head around the door and asked what she was doing.
“We’re trying to find Bill’s dog.”
“Does that mean Bill has finally turned up?”
“No, he called Stan from a payphone, but refused to say where he was,” Bitsie answered. “Do you know if he had any family in the area?”
“No, but he brings up having a sister in Dallas every once in a while.”
“Does he ever go and see her?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Do you know what her name is?”
“Gwen, I think.”
“And Bill’s last name is—“
“Hotchburger.”
“Hotchburger?”
“Pretty unusual, name, eh?” said Nick.
“Yes. And that could be our lucky break.”
“You want to go get something to eat later this evening when I get off?” Nick asked.
Bitsie hesitated.
“I just thought,” Nick said. “Well, Liz said something about this being the day that your divorce was final and it being their anniversary and all—I didn’t think it would be a very good evening for you to be alone.”
“So, Liz assigned you the duty of being sure I didn’t eat supper by myself,” Bitsie said.
“If that’s how you want to put it—“ said Nick, smiling, “then sure. Liz put me up to it.”
“I have one condition,” said Bitsie. “I want to stop off at the Charter Health Clinic on the way back from the restaurant.”
“Won’t they be closed, by that time?”
“That’s what I’m counting on. I don’t want to go inside. I just want to sit in the parking lot.”
“Sure,” said Nick. “But, I expect a complete explanation as to why you’re so eager to sit in a car alone with me in the middle of a darkened parking lot.”
He really was incorrigible, Bitsie decided. He seemed to enjoy nothing more than making her uncomfortable.
Chapter Eight
Bitsie had arranged to meet Nick at the bakery at 7:45, but it was almost eight when she finally arrived. She’d spent way too much time deciding what to wear—there’d been several wardrobe changes involved and, in the end, she’d taken off the casual sundress and put on jeans and her least flattering t-shirt and removed half of the carefully-applied makeup she’d spent forty-five minutes putting on.
“Sorry, Nick,” said Bitsie. “Something came up—“
“That’s alright. Shall we go eat first, or are we doing the cop thing with takeout sandwiches and coffee in a thermos?”
“Eat first, I think,“ said Bitsie.
It was after nine when they pulled into the parking lot of the clinic. Nick was driving. They’d left Bitsie’s car at the bakery. Nick parked under the shadow of a couple of trees at the edge of the parking lot and as far away from the lights illuminating the entrance to the building as he could get.
“What exactly are you expecting to see here?” Nick asked. “Who’d be here at this hour?”
“Just wait,” said Bitsie. “You’ll see. Or not. I could be wrong.”
“You could be wrong? I’m sure you are never wrong.” Nick laughed.
Bitsie loved Nick’s laugh, but she wished he stop laughing. She wished he’d stop smiling at her like that and looking at her with those big green eyes of his.
“Look!” Bitsie hissed.
Nick looked.
Pulling up to the front entrance was a long, white, windowless van with Speedy’s Cleaning Service emblazoned in big red letters on the side.
Two women got out, one from the passenger side and one from the driver’s seat. The driver went to the front door and entered some numbers on the keypad beside the entrance, while the passenger unloaded a vacuum cleaner from the back of the van. The driver pulled open the front door, waited for her partner to struggle in with the vacuum, and then both women disappeared inside.
“Is that what you expected to see?” Nick asked.
“Not exactly,” said Bitsie, “but it’s a good start.”
“What do you want to do now?”
“We can go,” said Bitsie, “but first, I want to get that phone number off the side of the van.”
As Bitsie was eating breakfast the next morning, her phone rang.
“You the lady looking for the dog?”
“Yes!”
“I think I got him.”
Kipper, it seemed, had turned up at a farm a couple of miles outside of Little Creek. He was thin and thirsty and covered in mud, but otherwise no worse for the wear.
Bitsie drove out and collected him before she called Stan, who agreed to come to get Kipper as soon as he and Liz got home from Eureka Springs. Bitsie wouldn’t have minded keeping Kipper at her house, but she lacked a secure fence, and keeping him indoors was out of the question. Max, like most cats, was staunchly anti-canine.
After Bitsie had stopped by the grocery store to get dog food and tied Kipper up in the backyard in the shade of a tree with a big bowl of food and water, she sat down and scratched behind his one and a half ears while she dialed the number she’d taken off the side of the Speedy’s Cleaning Service van.
“Speedy’s Cleaning Service,” a woman’s voice answered. “How can I help you?”
“I’d like to speak to Speedy,” said Bitsie. It was a silly way to start, but she hadn’t come up with anything better.
“Uhm, there’s really no Speedy. It’s just a name.”
“Can I speak to the owner, then.”
“Ahh, you want to speak to Pete.”
Pete picked up a few seconds later.
“Do you do restaurant cleaning?” asked Bitsie.
“Sure,” Pete answered. “We’ll clean anything. Be happy to come out and take a look at your premises and give you an estimate.”
“Would you?”
“Sure. I’ll be leaving early today since it’s Saturday, but I could come over first thing on Monday.”
“I’m all the way over in Little Creek,” said Bitsie.
There was a short pause. “No, sure. We can do Little Creek. I have a crew over there every Tuesday and Friday.”
“Great. It’s Bitsie’s Bakeshop. Fourth and Lyle. When should I expect you?”
There was a much longer pause.
“Bitsie’s Bakeshop,” Bitsie repeated.
There was another pause.
“Uhm—we don’t really do bakeries,” said Pete hastily and hung up.
“Doesn’t do bakeries, my sweet pickled plums,” Bitsie mumbled under her breath. But at least she knew what to do next. It was time for her to meet this Pete in person, and she knew this time who had to go with her.
Bitsie smiled to herself as she dialed Raina’s number.
Midmorning on Monday, Bitsie and Raina, trailed by Stan and Liz in another vehicle, in case things went really wrong, pulled into a curbside parking space a block from the only address she’d found for Speedy’s Cleaning Service. Bitsie walked back to Stan’s truck.
“If we’re not back in ten minutes, you know what to do,” she said.
Stan nodded grimly.
“Here, Raina,” Bitsie said, handing her a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses, “put these on.”
Speedy’s Cleaning Service shared its premises with a car detailing shop, and, when they first entered, it was hard to tell where to go.
“I’m looking for Pete,” Bitsie said to a pair of legs sticking out of the back seat of a luxury sedan.
The pair of legs emerged from the back seat, followed by the body of a young man with a scar down one cheek and a pair of bright blue eyes.
“Pete’s in the back,” he said, gesturing down a hallway at the back of the garage. “Knock on the red door.”
“Come in,” said a man’s voice, in response to Bitsie’s sharp knock.
“You ready?” she whispered to Raina, who gave her a nervous nod.
“Remember, when you’ve seen all you need, start coughing,” Bitsie whispered and pushed open the door.
Pete came around his cluttered desk, all smiles, his hand out to greet them.
She’d seen this man somewhere before, Bitsie realized with a jolt, but where? He was tall and muscular, with dark hair and nondescript features. His one distinguishing characteristic, aside from his physique, was a tiny mustache. Mustache!
Bitsie had just figured out where she’d seen Pete when Raina started coughing.
“I’m sorry,” said Bitsie, “My friend seems to—is there a water fountain in here?”
“Out in the garage. I’ll take you.”
“Oh, that OK,” Bitsie protested hastily. “No need. I just remembered seeing it on the way in.”
Back at the car, Raina was in no mood to stick around long enough for Bitsie to go back and fill in Stan and Liz on what had happened.
“Just go,” she insisted, swigging from a bottle of water. Her fake coughing fit had triggered a real one.
Bitsie pulled away from the curb, and Stan followed.
“That was him,” said Raina and they turned onto the highway back toward Little Creek. “That was the man who was pretending to be Dr. Montgomery.”
By now, Pete would be wondering why they hadn’t returned after Raina’s coughing fit. Hopefully, he hadn’t recognized Raina. Bitsie had taken the precaution of telling the young man out in the garage to apologize to Pete for them. She told him that her friend was very sick, and she’d have to come back later. Hopefully, the ruse had worked.
In any case, Bitsie now had a lot more to go on than before. Not only had she successfully located the man who had been impersonating Dr. Montgomery, but she now also knew that Pete was connected to Jennifer. But what was their relationship?
Stan accompanied Raina to the police station, where she told them about Pete impersonating Dr. Montgomery.
The next morning, an officer assigned to the investigation into Marco’s death made a visit to Speedy’s Cleaning Service to question Pete.
Pete, it turned out, was more than willing to talk. He immediately admitted to being Jennifer’s younger brother, and what he had to say about what Jennifer had been up to was extremely enlightening.
Pete confessed to impersonating Dr. Montgomery. His sister had put him up to it, he said. She’d given him a sob story about how terrible Marco had been to her and how this was a perfect way of getting back at him.
He’d known it was wrong, Pete said, right from the start, but Jennifer had convinced him that sneaking into the clinic on a few Sundays and pretending to be a doctor was nothing more than a rather cruel practical joke. Pete wished he hadn’t done it, he said, especially now that the man he’d fooled was dead. Pete claimed that he didn’t know anything about how Marco had died, other than having heard from his sister that it was an on-the-job accident.
“Did the officer who interviewed Pete believe that he was telling the truth?” Bitsie asked Stan.
“He seemed to.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I’m inclined to, but occasionally my instincts steer me wrong.”
“What do you think about trying to find Bill? Nick said that Bill has a sister in Dallas. How hard do you think it would be to find her?”
“We won’t know until we try,” said Stan.
Later in the afternoon, when Bitsie was sure that Raina had had time to recover from her grilling at the police station, Bitsie dialed Raina’s number. She had a little grilling of her own to do.
Raina agreed to meet Bitsie for a few minutes at the same park they’d met the first time.
“What is it that you wanted to ask me?”
“Somebody must know the truth about what was going on between Marco and Jennifer in the weeks before he died,” said Bitsie. “I’m thinking you might have some ideas about who that person could be.”
“Marco was very close to his Mom,” said Raina, “but he always kept stuff from her, so she wouldn’t worry, and his Dad has been gone for years.”
“Is there anyone else he might have confided in,” Bitsie pressed, “if there was something serious worrying him?”
“I don’t know,” said Raina. “When we were married, that person was me.”
“Did Marco have any siblings?”
“There were nine brothers and sisters, but most of them don’t live around here.”
“Was he particularly close to any of them?”
“Daisy,” said Raina. “His sister Daisy moved up here around the time we divorced, and I think they were pretty close as kids, so he might have told her stuff he wouldn’t have told anyone else.”
“How can I find her?”
“I have her number,” said Raina. “Sometimes, she’d come and pick up the kids when it was Marco’s weekend to keep them.”
That evening, after leaving the bakery, Bitsie hurried home and fired up her computer. What she really wanted was a long hot bath, and Max was agitating for his dinner, but both of them were going to have to wait. Before she did anything else, Bitsie was determined to track down at least a few scraps of information which might lead them to Bill’s sister, and, hopefully, Bill himself. Talking to Marco’s sister Daisy could wait until later.
Bill had promised Stan that he’d call back after the weekend, but it was now Monday evening, and there’d been no word. It was time to take more aggressive measures.
Bitsie remembered Nick saying that he thought Bill had a sister named Gwen. Bill’s last name was Hotchburger. Possibly, Gwen might have gone through a name change or two by this time, but there was still a chance of finding her.
It took some doing, but forty-five minutes later, Bitsie had managed to find a list of recent addresses and one phone number for a Gwen Hotchburger in Dallas, Texas. It might not be a current number, but it was worth a try.
Bitsie dialed.
A woman’s voice answered.
“I’m looking for Gwen Hotchburger.”
“This is she,” said the woman on the other end.
“My name is Bitsie George. My brother is a friend of your brother’s.”
There was a short pause before Gwen spoke.
”What can I do for you?” she said at last.
“I was wondering if I might be able to speak to Bill.”
“Bill doesn’t live here.”
Bingo! She’d managed to track down the right Gwen Hotchburger.
“Do you know where I might reach him?”
“I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
“That’s too bad,” said Bitsie, “because I was calling to tell Bill that we’ve found his dog.”
There was a short silence on the other end, then a period of muffled conversation, as if Gwen had placed her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone while talking to someone else.
The phone changed hands, and a man’s voice said, “Hello.”
“Am I speaking to Bill?”
“Is Kipper OK?”
“Yes. Kipper is doing just fine. He was really hungry. He’ll need fattening up a bit, but otherwise—“
“I was worried they would get him. They said they’d kill him if I—“
“If you what—“
Bill didn’t say a word.
“Who would get him? Who said they would kill Kipper?”
Bill remained silent on the other end of the line.
“Was it Monty? Did Monty threaten you?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“That’s fine,” said Bitsie. Clearly, pressure tactics weren’t going to work. “Stan and Liz have Kipper. He’s perfectly safe. What would you like for them to do with him?”
“I’ll come and get him,” said Bill. “When
I can. Tell Stan they said that. Tell Stan they plan to kill Kipper.” Bill’s voice was rising, and he sounded perilously near tears. “Tell Stan not to let Kipper out of his sight.”
Poor Bill. No wonder he wouldn’t talk. Someone had threatened to kill his best friend if he told what he knew, and Bitsie was betting that Bill knew plenty.
Chapter Nine
The very next day, while Bitsie was helping Nick open, she got a text from Stan.
They took Jennifer in for questioning, it read.
Three hours later, when the morning rush was over, Bitsie retreated to the alley and called Stan back to see what he knew.
“She was hardly a font of information,” said Stan. “She finally admitted to being at the bakery shortly before Marco died, but she claims that when she left, he was still alive. She says that Marco called her and asked her to come because his van wouldn’t start.”
“An odd choice. Why would Marco call his Ex out in the wee hours of the morning to do him a favor? And even if he had, why would she have agreed to come?”
“That’s what I thought, too. It’s a very fishy story. According to Jennifer, she arrived only a few minutes after Danny says that he left the bakery. It would have made much more sense for Marco to have called Danny to come back and give him a jump.”
“Is that what Jennifer is claiming? That she came back to jump his van?”
“Sort of. She claims that when she got there, there was nothing at all wrong with his van and that it was all just a pretext on Marco’s part. According to her, Marco wanted to make up and get back together with her.”
“At two in the morning, on the job site, at the end of a long day of work, Marco calls up his ex and asks her to get out of bed and drive all the way over to the bakery for a relationship-status discussion? That’s what’s she’s saying?”
“Yep. But it gets even weirder. She claims to have seen Monty on her way out. She says that she left only because Marco told her to. She says that Monty came in the back door, totally unexpected, and started yelling at Marco.”
“Yelling?” Bitsie asked. “What exactly was he yelling.”