Death on a Short Leash

by Gwendolyn Southin

  “Now that we’re up here,” Maggie said breathlessly, “we might just as well take a look around.”

  “Something must have scared them off,” Midge observed after they had looked in the two back rooms and the bathroom. “They’ve taken everything except the beds and mattresses.”

  “There wasn’t much to begin with,” Maggie replied.

  “Oh, hell!”

  “What’s up, Nat?” Maggie and Midge ran toward the front bedroom.

  “Don’t come in here,” he warned. “It’s Brother Francois.”

  “What . . . what’s . . . happened to him?”

  “He’s very dead,” Nat answered grimly. “And it’s very messy.” He came out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind him. “He’s been shot through the chest.” He headed for the stairs. “We’ll have to call the police.”

  “How?” Maggie asked, following behind.

  “I’m hoping the Brother wasn’t too worldly to have a phone.”

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” Midge asked, moving toward the door. “Do you think I should examine him to make sure?”

  “Too late for that, Midge. He’s been dead for quite awhile.” Nat led the way down the stairs and into the office. “Now, is there a phone?” There was. The black instrument was on the desk among strewn papers, seed catalogues, ledgers and other unidentifiable papers.

  “Seems to me that someone else has been in here,” Midge commented, looking at the mess. “I wonder if they found what they were looking for.”

  “Shouldn’t we have a quick look around before you call?” Maggie said.

  “I’ve got to call them, Maggie.”

  “I know, but we won’t have a chance once they get here.”

  “Ten minutes,” Nat conceded. “I’ll go through this mess, and you two start on that pile over there on the table.” But they soon saw that there was little of interest. Nothing to show where they had stashed the dogs or where they could have fled. Nat reached for the phone.

  Maggie, sitting down to wait in front of an old Underwood portable typewriter on the table, idly lifted off its tattered cover. Two fresh sheets of paper with a piece of carbon paper between them were rolled around the patten. “Carbon paper!” she said.

  “What do you mean, carbon paper?” Midge asked, peering over her shoulder.

  “It means they kept copies somewhere.” She gazed around the room. “There,” she said, “on that top shelf.” She pointed excitedly to a couple of box files. “Can you reach them, Midge?” A few moments later, the two of them were rifling through the filed papers.

  “What am I looking for?” Midge asked.

  “Any clue that will tell us where they’ve stashed the dogs,” she answered. “But we’ve got to be quick, because the police will be here very soon.” But the contents were very disappointing. “Just invoices for feed, hay and stuff,” she said disgustedly.

  “I wonder what these funny notations mean?” Midge said, pointing to a piece of paper. “It says received payment for . . . and then there is this funny code.”

  “That’s weird,” Maggie commented. “It says: 2 CKSP, 3 PKS, 2 DKS, 3 CKPS.” She quickly leafed through the rest of the papers in the file. “There’s lots more. Damn!” she swore. “I can hear the police siren.” Quickly, she sprang the file open, and grabbed as many of the papers as she could and pushed them into her coat pocket. “Quick, Midge. Get the boxes back up on the shelf.”

  “They’ve arrived,” Nat said, walking out of the office. “Now we have to think of an excuse of why we’re here in the farmhouse.”

  “We could try the truth,” Midge said.

  But telling the truth over and over again to disbelieving RCMP officers took them a couple of hours. At last they were allowed to leave, but Nat knew perfectly well that they would be summoned once again to Inspector Farthing’s office.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “You find those poor little puppies when you go to Abbotsford?” Henny asked when she arrived on Monday morning.

  “No, just a . . .” Maggie stopped in time. She wasn’t ready to tell Henny they’d found another body. Then she watched, fascinated, while Henny slowly unwound her long woollen scarf.

  “Henny, I thought you left your scarf behind at the . . . the . . .”

  “Ja!” Henny said triumphantly. “I get it back.”

  “Get what back?” Nat asked, coming out of his office “My scarf,” Henny said triumphantly, waving it in the air. “I get it back from that Silver Springs place. You know,” she continued, seeing the puzzled look on his face, “when I was detecting.”

  “No,” Nat said, his suspicions aroused. “What detecting?”

  “When I rescue that poor Mrs. Williams. I leave my scarf there.”

  “I think you two had better come into my office,” Nat said, taking one look at Maggie’s stricken face. “I think some explanations are in order.”

  “How could you have done this?” he exploded, after listening to their Friday adventure. “You not only involved this agency, Maggie, but two other innocent people besides, and . . .”

  “Nat,” she said firmly, “there was absolutely no way I was leaving Pru Williams in that place.”

  “But can’t you see, Maggie,” he thundered back, “you can’t interfere in other peoples’ lives? Especially Dr. Williams.”

  Maggie was unmoved. “He was holding his wife under duress.

  We had to rescue her.”

  “Ja!” Henny added. “And I did good detective work, Mr. Nat.

  I get her out all by myself.”

  “Don’t you realize that if Williams had caught you,” he rushed on, ignoring Henny, “he could have had the three of you arrested?

  You kidnapped his wife, for God’s sake!”

  “But he didn’t catch us, did he?” Maggie replied coldly. “And it’s now up to her parents. They’re flying back today.” She walked toward the door. “Henny, we have work to do.”

  Once they were in the outer office, she turned to Henny.

  “How did you get your scarf back?”

  “I went on Sunday and told them I left it in Mr. Herbert’s room.”

  “Weren’t you afraid they would recognize you?”

  “No. They are not seeing me rescuing Pru. Just with Mr.

  Herbert.” She laughed. “He told nurse he would like me to come again.”

  The coldness between Maggie and Nat lasted until the middle of the afternoon, when he left for a meeting with a client. The problem is, she thought, women see things differently. They see things with their hearts, while men need to have logical reasons for their actions. She was not sorry when it was time for her to leave for home.

  Nat still hadn’t called by seven that evening. “He must be really mad at me,” she said, picking Emily up into her arms. “But I did the right thing.” She put the cat on one of the chairs beside the fire and turned on the TV. But there was no way she could settle down. Her thoughts kept going back to finding Brother Francois’ dead body. But why was he killed? Keeping dogs in those disgusting conditions was terrible, but why would anyone kill him over some dogs? And why was little Jasmine attacked so brutally? And how could the two attacks be connected to Johanna Evans’ visit and subsequent death? She went to the kitchen, got herself a notepad, and began writing down her questions, then sat staring at them for awhile. Then she suddenly remembered the papers she had squashed into her coat pocket. She retrieved them and as she spread them out on the kitchen table, Emily jumped up and settled on her lap. The first invoice was made out to a Burnaby Pt St. And they had received 2 CKSP, 2 PKS, 2 SKT, 1 BL 1 WT. The next was to a Sur Pt St and there were the same kind of notations on their invoice. The rest were the same, except for a receipt for BRD, FD & STR. from a NH Farm in Chil, and a receipt from a DrW for payment of seven hundred and fifty dollars for goods consisting of 2 SL, 2 PDL, 1 LH and 1 PK.

  “Of course,” she yelled out loud. “They’re dogs!” She leaned back in the kitchen chair and laughed. Poodl
es, Pekinese, Maltese terriers. She had to really work on the SKT, but once she remembered that all the dogs in the barn were of the small, lapdog variety, she came up with Sky Terriers, Dachshunds and Scotties. LH had to be a Lhasa Apso.

  “I can’t wait until I tell Nat,” she said to an unresponding Emily. Then she remembered that she and Nat weren’t exactly buddy-buddy at the present time. But now that she had broken the code, she went back to the pile and picked up the receipt from DrW again. That has to be our Dr. Williams, and the receipt is for dogs he has sold to the puppy mill. One Sealyham, two poodles, one Lhasa Apso and one Pekinese. “And I bet the Peke was the one belonging to the late Mrs. Slater,” she told Emily. She was so engrossed in deciphering that it took awhile before she realized that there was a loud banging on the front door. She made sure that the safety chain was in place before opening it.

  “Didn’t you hear me knocking?” Nat asked in an aggrieved voice. “I’ve been out here for ages.”

  “I thought you weren’t talking to me,” Maggie answered as she took off the chain and opened the door wide. “My God! You’re soaking wet.”

  “That’s why I was banging,” he said, taking off his coat. “It’s blowing a gale out there.”

  As she took his coat from him and hung it up to dry in the bathroom, he said, “I’m sorry I yelled at you today, but you make me so . . . so mad sometimes.”

  “Well, let’s not go into that,” she interrupted him. “I’ve got something to show you. Come on.”

  “What about a drink first? I’m frozen.”

  She led him into the warm kitchen and sat him down in her chair at the table. “I’ll get you a hot drink while you take a look at these.” She indicated the pile of invoices. “And here are my notes.”

  “Where the hell did you get these, Maggie?”

  “I found them in Brother Francois’ office.”

  “How come you didn’t mention them before?”

  “Because,” she answered patiently, “when I heard the police arriving, I slipped them into my coat pocket. And then I totally forgot them.”

  “But we should have handed them over to the RCMP.”

  “Nat! I forgot them, okay? Now shut up and look through them while I make you a drink.”

  A short time later, while sipping hot chocolate generously laced with brandy, Maggie excitedly explained what she thought the coded words meant.

  “Well, I’m damned!” Nat put down his empty cup. “You’re becoming quite a detective.” He riffled through the invoices again. “I take it the Pt. St. are invoices to different pet stores. It won’t take us long to locate most of them. But there are a few here I don’t understand.”

  “You mean like this one?” And she pulled out the one to NH Farm, YL Rd Chil. “‘Chil’ must be Chilliwack.”

  Nat sat pondering for a moment. “Yeah. It’s only another twenty-five miles beyond Abbotsford.” He took the receipt from her hand. “But what was he paying them for . . . ‘BRD, FD and STR.’”

  “What’s the date on it?”

  “Looks like October 11.”

  Maggie stood staring at the calendar on the kitchen wall. “Nat, that’s the day after I rescued Rosie from the barn! The dogs had gone when the police arrived there two days later. That’s the bill for boarding, food and . . .”

  ”Straw. That’s it! Boarding, food and straw. You’re right! That’s where he’s stashed them!” He grinned at her. “What about another hot chocolate?”

  • • •

  THE NEXT MORNING the clouds had lifted, the sun was out and the temperature mild. It was as if the storm of the night before had washed everything bright and clean.

  “Boss in good mood, ja,” Henny remarked after taking Nat his coffee and homemade cookie.

  Maggie, preoccupied with looking up pet stores in the telephone book, nodded. “He’s still not too happy with us rescuing Mrs. Williams, but . . .” she shrugged, “her parents should have arrived by now. Answer the phone, would you, Henny?”

  “It’s that nice Sergeant George,” Henny said, replacing the receiver. “I’ve put him through to Mr. Nat.”

  “I suppose the Abbotsford detachment’s been in touch with Farthing.” Maggie rose from her desk and opened Nat’s door. Still on the phone, he motioned for her to pick up her own receiver.

  “But there was no reason for us to call Farthing, George,” Maggie heard Nat say. “The body was found in Abbotsford. It’s out of your jurisdiction.”

  “What about common courtesy?” Maggie heard George reply. “You knew that commune was probably connected to Johanna Evans’ death, and you knew that the girl Jasmine had lived there. Anyway,” he continued. “Farthing wants to see the pair of you around four o’clock this afternoon.”

  “We don’t know any more than the Abbotsford guys,” Nat insisted. “Just our bad luck that we stumbled on the corpse.”

  Maggie interrupted. “You any idea how we can get a list of farms in the Chilliwack area?”

  “Why?” George asked suspiciously.

  “I’m just following up on a case, that’s all.”

  “You’d have to go to the town hall in Chilliwack,” he answered.

  “They’ll have a list for tax purposes.”

  “Now why didn’t I think of that?” Maggie answered sweetly.

  “Thanks, George.”

  • • •

  “HERE’S A LIST OF possible pet stores,” she said to Nat while they were eating their lunch. “And it looks as if we’ll have to make that trip to Chilliwack for the farms.”

  “Talking of trips,” Nat said, biting into his sandwich, “I didn’t tell you where I went yesterday, did I?”

  “You mean after your appointment with Dodds and Grimm?”

  Nat nodded. “I got to thinking about that car. You know, the one the girls saw out back of Pandora’s. So I had another little chat with the manager and he told me that several regular clients, as he called them, had big cars with ornaments on the hood.”

  “I can understand that,” Maggie commented. “You’d need money to be a regular at Pandora’s.”

  “But when I pressured him about this particular one that used to pick up Johanna, he got very cagey. Said he never saw anyone pick the girl up. But he wouldn’t let me talk to the girls again, either . . .”

  “So you didn’t get anywhere?”

  He shook his head. “I waited until the manager was busy and slipped the bartender a twenty. And he told me that Peterskill was often there when Johanna was “dancing.” In fact, she would come out front and sit with him between acts. When I asked if that wasn’t sort of unusual, he told me that if the manager orders them to sit with certain clients, they have to.”

  “I wonder what else they’re ordered to do?” Maggie remarked dryly. “Anyway,” she added, “we need to find out what kind of car Peterskill drives.”

  “Exactly. So before we make that visit to Farthing, we’ll take a look in the car park behind Peterskill’s office block. Perhaps we’ll be lucky.”

  • • •

  THE ENTRANCE TO THE car park had a chain strung across it, and there was a large notice nailed to the outside of the attendant’s kiosk. It read: PRIVATE PROPERTY: CARD HOLDERS ONLY.

  “I guess we have to park someplace else,” Nat said with a grin.

  “That side road over there will do.”

  “That’s all very well,” Maggie replied, “but how do we get past that attendant?”

  “If you reach over the back for my briefcase,” he said, cutting the engine, “I’ll show you.”

  A few minutes later, they approached the car park, Nat carrying his briefcase and Maggie a clipboard. “I’m from Providential Insurance,” Nat said to the attendant, who was leaning on a small counter inside his kiosk, smoking a cigarette. “Mr. Rolland Peterskill told you we’d be coming by?”

  “I’ve only just come on duty,” he answered, “but can’t see nothing about any insurance adjuster here.” He searched half-heartedly amongst the sca
ttered papers and empty cigarette packets. “No. Nothing here.”

  “I have to get Mr. Peterskill’s claim in this afternoon,” Nat insisted, flashing one of his business cards. “We just need to examine the rear of the vehicle. You can come with us, if you wish.”

  “Can’t leave the gate. You sure that’s all you have to do?” He took another drag on his smoke.

  Nat nodded. “You point the way and we’ll be back in a matter of minutes.”

  “That big black Lincoln over there. Peterskill’s name’s on the wall at the back.”

  And there it was. Large, black and beautiful, the flying eagle on the hood shining in the last rays of the sun.

  “Wow!” Nat whispered reverently. It was a ’58 Continental Mark Four. “Isn’t she a beaut?” Then, pointing at the rear light, he continued, “The attendant’s bound to be watching, so scribble something on your clipboard, Maggie, and let’s get out of here.”

  “Not too much damage, I hope?” the man said, stepping out of his booth as they left. “Lovely car, that.”

  “Hardly a scratch,” Nat replied, unhooking the chain for Maggie to get through. “But you know how these people love their cars.”

  “That’s a fact. But they’re stingy with their tips,” he said hopefully.

  “No need to tell Mr. Peterskill we were here today,” Nat replied, slipping the man a fiver. “We were supposed to have inspected it a couple of days ago.”

  “Thanks. Mum’s the word.”

  • • •

  FARTHING SAW THEM right away. “Finding more bodies, I hear,” he said to them, pointing to a couple of chairs. “Getting quite a thing with you two.”

  “Not of my choosing,” Maggie replied tartly.