“What?” I asked, feeling like I’d missed something.
“Strangers on a Train was a book, then a Hitchcock movie where two guys killed someone for the other one. Then they had alibis for the killing that mattered to them, and no one would suspect the real killer because there was no motive. Sometimes I swear, I think you live under a rock.”
I groaned, ignoring the comments about my knowledge of pop culture. “There’s a small problem here. Both of them were at the hotel in Lima the night that Mrs. Adamson killed herself. So they both couldn’t have done it.” I followed up by telling Sheila Green how easily I’d left the room without being seen by anyone.
“Then we need to find someone who did? Could the girl from the hotel tell you anything more?”
I thought back to her and what she’d told me. I wondered if she could remember much more about what happened. Adamson had arrived first. He had to since the room was in his name. Therefore, Mrs. Givens would be the person to arrive later, giving her more of a window to kill Mrs. Adamson.
However, Mrs. Adamson had been strung up and hung to emulate suicide. I wasn’t sure how Mrs. Givens, who was a small woman would have been able to do that on her own. So it boiled down to the fact she had more opportunity, but less means. I shared all of this with Sheila.
“That doesn’t mean that one or both of them couldn’t have left in the middle of the night, killed her and then driven back. It’s very unlikely that they’d be seen at 1am or 3am, and no one would call the room either. So we’re stuck with two horses in the race, and no way to tell which one is the winner here,” she added.
“Couldn’t you arrest both of them? Charge them together?” I asked, thinking of all the legal thrillers I had seen when not watching Strangers on a Train.
“Not when there’s a perfectly good suspect who could have done it too. It would be reasonable doubt that one or the other of them acted alone as well. It’s a mess. We need to be able to figure out which one did this, and we need to do it soon. The bodies are piling up here.”
“What about their alibis for the two killings that you have? Could it have been either one of those?”
“We haven’t checked. We’re going to have to now. It seems like one or more of them is involved in this. Up until now, we still thought of them as separate cases. Now we have an angle to work on. I wonder what was said there that sparked such bloodshed.”
I cleared my throat. “My thought is that Mr. Givens and Mrs. Adamson talked to each other and found out somehow that their spouses were cheating with each other. That would fit the personal, but quiet talk they had by the cookies.” I explained my call to Allison, reminding Sheila that she’d met Allison before. I hoped that was good protocol for the dating situation I was now in.
“So there were words by the two victims that night and the other two were present. Witnesses?” Sheila Green was back into detecting mode, and I felt much more relaxed in discussing this now.
“It’s possible, but why just those two and what could they have heard?” I wondered if they could have heard anything that would have led to murder. Allison had been in the same room, but nothing had been done to her. Why not?
“I’m going to start asking some questions of the Marksberry family. Maybe someone in the family will remember that meeting. Maybe she said something when she came home from the meeting that will give us a clue to what really happened.”
“Would you let me know?” I asked, unsure of what her response would be. I thought it would be helpful to my own investigation.
“I’ll try. It depends on what I get and when I get it. Maybe you should ask around some more too,” she suggested. “By the way, I got your request for the phone calls for your sister’s phone. I’ll see what I can do. Siever is being a real jerk about this. I’m not sure why he’s so involved still.”
I told her what I’d learned about my mother and Sergeant Siever. She didn’t say anything for a long time. I heard her breathing so I knew that she was still there. Finally, she said, “That would explain why he’s been blocking so much on this. I wanted to bring you more, but he stopped me from getting the information. Now I’m really interested to get that call log. I wonder what’s on it that he doesn’t want you to know.”
I had no idea at all. Maybe I’d just been out of the loop for too long, but I had no clue why her calls would be that important. First my mother and then my brother and now Siever were all keeping this information from me. Granted I’d been the youngest kid in the family, and probably the most likely to have missed any subtle things going on in the household, but I wondered how I could have missed whatever this was.
We finally hung up. Things seemed to be much better than they had been before the call. My investigation was still just that, and not a surreptitious way of dating Dr. Wilson.
I decided that I was going to do some thinking while I walked the dogs. I put the harness on Number 32. Before I could finish fitting Bruno into his, 32 had escaped down the hall. I picked up the harness and found that at some point she had chewed through the side of the harness which had allowed her to escape from it. I thought back to the life jacket that had been cut. Could this have been used in the same manner?
I realized that I was going about this all wrong. If I wanted to learn who did this, then I was wasting my time in looking at alibis. Either person could have cut the life jacket well in advance of the day they went boating. Then they were relieved of having to find a boat and overpowering Givens. They had to just wait until a time when he jumped in the water and found that his life jacket was cut. He’d know in his last minutes that he’d been set up to die. It was as patient of a way of killing someone as putting a poison pill in a bottle of otherwise healthy medicine.
This was going to boil down to motive. I needed to find out who was the person who gained the most from all of this.
I found another harness and put Number 32 into it, so that she wouldn’t escape during our walk. I thought about the best place to start, and I decided to start with the other people at the rescue seminar. Four people from that session had ended up dead. Two in what appeared to be an accident and a suicide, the other two flat out murders.
I found the paper that Dr. Wilson had given me and I began calling the numbers. The first three were not home, but I got lucky with the four-person on the list. Her name was Blanche Graham and she remembered the evening all too well.
“I should say that I did remember it. I’ve never seen anything like that,” she humphed as she told me the story.
“What exactly were they upset about? Someone told me that they’d heard them discussing something personal in a loud voice, but they didn’t hear the words.” I tried to pretend like I was in the know about everything that had happened there last night. People were more inclined to confirm something that you already knew rather than tell you brand new information. I wasn’t sure why, but it was definitely a trick that worked in my business.
“Several of us did,” she replied. “It wasn’t hard to do. The woman who was there told the man that his wife was having an affair with her husband. It was more soap opera than seminar. Several people in the audience tried to ignore them, but it was hard to do. Those two finally got up and went over to the refreshments. They almost ran into the man who was setting up the refreshments. Given that I think half of the audience just came for the treats, I think there would have been a riot.”
She was a second confirmation that Hale had been at the rescue seminar that night. I wanted as much as I could documented before I turned this over to Green and the TPD.
“What else do you remember? Anything specific would be greatly appreciated.”
She sighed, and there was a silence over the line for a few minutes. “Well, we’d been there a few minutes, and the lady leaned over to the man and asked if he was Mr. So-and-so, sorry I can’t remember the name. He said that he was, and she said that his wife was sleeping with her husband.”
“Wow, that’s quite an announcement during a
seminar at the vet’s,” I said, hoping to get her to tell me more.
“Several people turned around and looked. He said something back to her, and then they moved over to where the refreshments were. She told him that they were planning to divorce and marry each other.”
“I wonder why they didn’t go out into the hallway or to get a cup of coffee?” I asked, thinking of the roomful of witnesses they were providing.
“She said that she really wanted to hear the seminar, but she thought it her duty to tell him.” She snorted over the word “duty” as she said it.
“How did he respond? I would have left after that. I certainly wouldn’t want to hear about dogs and cats in a rescue center.”
“He laughed it off. He said that he had his own divorce funds that he’d stashed away. She didn’t even know that he’d put over $100,000 in a hiding place at his home where she’d never find it. He laughed as he said this.”
“You certainly were able to hear everything. Were they that loud?” I wanted to make sure I had a credible witness to give Detective Green. She was always skeptical of my stories, since she said that I got many of them from talking to animals. She liked her witnesses to be jury proofed.
“Well, I turned up my hearing aids that night. Between their arguments and the background noise of the pets in the clinic, I had trouble hearing what the girl from the rescue center was saying. It was very rude, and I didn’t like it at all.”
I felt my spirits drop as she said this. Her testimony would be questioned because of the mechanical help she had in hearing the conversations. I could hear what the police would say now about it.
“Was there anyone else around who would have heard what was being said? I always like to get two versions. It’s hard to remember things word for word when you’re not really expecting to have to recall it later.”
“The guy who brought the treats. He was standing right there. He had to hear what was going on. He’d have heard every word.”
Allan Hale had heard it all. I didn’t quite understand why that would be a motive for murder. Blanche Graham had heard the words, and she was alive and well. It didn’t make sense why only certain people were being singled out for murder after the event. What had made them special?
I thought about this some more and had a thought. What if Hale had heard about the $100,000 and decided to take it for himself? Then he’d not be just a witness to the scene between the two victims; he’d be someone who was trying to take that money away from them. There was an easy way for me to find out if he had come to the Givens’ home.
I picked up the phone and called Detective Green again. “I have a big favor to ask. Could you review some of the old video feeds of the last few days and tell me if Allan Hale stopped by the Givens’ home? I’m suspecting that he did.”
“Why? What would make you think that he was going to visit the widow? I thought you said she was sleeping with the Adamson man. Now you think she was involved with Hale too? What is up with this case?”
I took a deep breath and let it out. “This is only a theory so far, but I was told that the two original victims were arguing at that rescue seminar. Givens said that he’d hidden $100,000 in the house where no one would ever find it. I’m wondering if Hale didn’t decide to accept that challenge and try to find it on his own.”
“So he would have been killed to stop him from getting the money. That’s a decent motive right there. Do you think that anyone else is going to come after the money? Do you think that Harriett Marksberry went after it as well?” She paused to write something down. The scratches of her pen were audible over the phone. I thought of all the things we heard each day that we didn’t pay attention to. Someone had heard $100,000 and decided to take it for themselves after Givens turned up dead. They likely thought that it would never be found, since presumably the wife wouldn’t have known anything about it.
“If the tapes go back that far, I would suggest looking for her as well. It can’t hurt.”
“So any thoughts on where the money is? Where is it hidden?”
“It’s not hidden. Mrs. Givens found it a few days ago. She called me to ask Nelly what the dog knew about that money. Nelly said that Mr. Givens had put it in the crawl space in the attic one day after work.” It always helped my business when I was able to tell the press that talking to an animal had helped solve a case. In this murder, Nelly would have told me what I needed to know.
“I’m not even going ask how you figured that out, but she has the money now. I’m betting that one of the victims told those two that Givens had put away money in a hiding spot. Mrs. Givens had all the time in the world after that to look for it.”
I had a sudden idea that made me think we were on the right track. “Maybe that’s why there was so little furniture around. Perhaps she’d torn it apart looking for the money. She’d have to split some cushions and things like that. So it could explain the state of the house.”
“Okay, you’ve sold me,” Sheila said. “I’m going to get someone to review the footage and see what we find.”
I cleared my throat. “Any chance of me getting to hear what happens?” I knew that I was supposed to stay out of the two open murder cases, but now they had all seemed to merge into one big mess.
I busied myself with things around the house, as I now thought that would be a better path towards staying under the radar.I fixed a gutter and trimmed a few bushes. My neighbors probably wondered what had happened to me to get this miraculous change.
After a shower, I fed the dogs, and the cat, who seemed somewhat pleased to see me for once. I worried that she felt overwhelmed in a dog and human house, but so far she held her own. She’d just moved to a higher level like people waiting out a flood. Number 32, who still needed a real name, had begun to get used to her and now spent time that did not include worrying the cat.
The doorbell rang, and I was nearly certain it was Sheila with news of the traffic light footage. I opened the door to find Mr. Adamson standing there. He pushed past me and entered the house.
This was not a good situation. I had not shared my name, and certainly not my address, with the man, which meant he’d gone to the trouble of tracking me down. It’s never good news when people put that much effort into getting in touch with you. I took a few steps back from him into the house.
“Imagine my surprise,” he began, “when I saw the ad for the man who talks to pets and it turned out to be the guy who was looking into the house where my wife died. Especially when I learn that you’ve been over at the Givens house talking to their dog Nelly. Was I supposed to believe it was just a coincidence? Business was just so good that you went looking for a nicer house.”
I shrugged. “No more coincidental than four people who were at a pet rescue seminar who have all ended up dead.”
“Yeah, Dr. Wilson really screwed us over on that one. Why did she have to open her mouth on that?”
I looked around for something to use as a weapon, but the logic that had taken everything sharp or dangerous out of the room to accommodate a new puppy also took anything that could have been used for a weapon out of the room as well. I was going to have to hope that my martial arts training would help. My mother had insisted on years of training to ensure that I wouldn’t be snatched away by the same faceless criminals who had taken Susan. Now I had to wonder if that had all been a charade to cover the fact that she’d either been killed by a family member or had left of her own accord. The way I’d been treated by my family who either blocked my curiosity or spoke in riddles about it angered me, and I decided to channel that anger into my self-defence.
“Maybe she was concerned about the drop in business?” I asked, trying to stretch out a bit without appearing to do so. I tried to make my posture casual, as if I didn’t suspect he was going to try to kill me at any moment.
“It wasn’t like we were going after her. She could have just left us alone.” He looked at me like I wasn’t quite right, but I get that a lot. Anyone who tal
ks to dogs can’t be all right.
“We?” I asked, hoping to keep him talking instead of attacking. I wanted the time. In addition to getting ready for a strike against him, I was hoping that Sheila Green might bring over the information on the two homicide victims or the phone log from my missing sister. A police officer with a loaded weapon would be appreciated right about now. The fact that she’d been unreasonably jealous might cause her to come around for an in-person apology. At least I was hoping so at the moment.
“Oh please. You think you’re going to question me into a long discussion of what happened so that you can what – develop some plan to get me out of the house? Nice try. I think you know everything you need to – and more. There was no need for you to get involved. None.”
I shuffled my feet to get into a better stance. So far he hadn’t noticed my moves, which had allowed me some time to get mentally prepared. Normally I only attacked punching bags and kick bags. I was sure that kicking a human being was going to be a very different experience. “Actually I was hired by Dr. Wilson to look into why so many people died.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m sure that Nelly told you all sorts of stories about how Givens beat his wife, right? I heard how she told you that he’d hidden the money in the garage. Nice work. I’m not sure how you pulled that off, but you did. He’d been hiding the money there so he’d have a nest egg for when she divorced him. There was the cash and some off-shore accounts.”
“You could have hired someone to go after those assets if you knew they existed. It would have been better than killing people.” I was ready now. I could visualize a kick to the head and a takedown. I wanted to do it.
“That would have run through all the money. She deserved it as much as he did. It was their money, not his.” He was trembling a little bit now.
“So what happened?”
Losing Patients (Animal Instincts Book 4) Page 8