Three Barks For Murder

by Gayle, Susie

  “I’m so sorry about all of that,” she tells me, her tight smile pulling her cheeks taut. “I just don’t think we’re ready to decide.”

  “No problem,” I tell her. “I can keep Cheese at the shop for another day or two, until you make a decision.”

  She nods curtly. “That would be great, thanks.” She looks around, as if only just now noticing that Jeff is gone. “Where did he run off to?”

  “I saw him go out to the shed,” I offer.

  Anna rolls her eyes. “That shed is his little sanctuary. It’s where he goes to pout. Will someone go fetch him and remind him he’s being rude to our guests? I have to tend to the tart.”

  “I’ll go,” Steven offers, setting his wine glass on the coffee table.

  “I’ll come, too,” Sarah adds. “I want to check on the dogs anyway.”

  The two of them head outside to the backyard, and Anna turns on a heel and goes back to the kitchen—leaving me and Karen alone in the living room.

  Great.

  I stand there awkwardly for a moment, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. She doesn’t seem perturbed; she takes a sip of wine and regards me casually.

  “So,” I say slowly. “Steven seems nice.”

  She laughs a little. “Yes. Steven seems nice. And it’s obvious that Anna is trying to set me up with him.” She sighs. “But I just met him, and I’m not sure I’m ready to date again.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “Oh, not because of you,” she says quickly. “Because of Glenn.”

  “Glenn,” I repeat. “Portland Guy?”

  “Portland Guy,” she confirms. I never actually knew the man’s name.

  “May I ask what happened there?”

  She sighs again, heavier this time. “Well… if you must know, he—”

  She doesn’t get to finish her statement, on account of being cut off by a long, loud scream from outside.

  CHAPTER 6

  * * *

  The five of us sit in a row on the long white sectional. At one end, Karen glances nervously from one of us to the next. Next to her, Anna stares blankly ahead, the tight-lipped smile gone from her face. Steven, beside her, pours himself another glass of wine from the second bottle, having polished off the first. And at the other end, Sarah and I sit side-by-side, her holding my hand in her lap. Cheese and Crackers nap alongside each other on the white carpet, oblivious to what’s going on around them.

  Seaview Rock’s chief of police, Patty Mayhew, enters through the French doors that lead out to the backyard. One of her officers, a lanky younger guy named Tom, leans against the wall near the doors, his arms folded. Patty walks slowly around the sectional until she faces us, her boots trailing dirt on the otherwise pristine carpet. I’ve known her for a long time, and I know that she’s as capable of being jovial and humorous as she is at being logical and objective.

  She hooks her thumbs in the utility belt at her waist, or whatever cops call it, and shakes her head at the lot of us.

  “Alright,” she says finally. “Here’s how this is going to go down. We have a little bit of time while the coroner van comes and they do what they need to do. In the meantime, I’m going to take each of you, one at a time, into another room and we’re going to have a little chat. The rest of you are going to sit very quietly. Officer Tom over there is going to stay here and make sure of that. When we’re all done, I’ll decide who’s coming down to the station with us.”

  She reaches over and gently takes the wine glass from Steven. “And I’m going to have to ask you to stop drinking.” She looks right at me and says, “Come on, Sullivan. You’re up first.”

  “Me?” I ask stupidly.

  “Yes. Now. If you’d be so kind.”

  Sarah gives my hand a reassuring pat before I get up and follow Chief Mayhew through the kitchen, where she sets down Steven’s wine glass, through a den and into a small home office. (And by “small” I mean small compared to the rest of the rooms in the house—not at all actually small.)

  She pulls a wheeled leather chair around one of the two desks and sits in it, and directs me to do the same. Then she takes a small silver rectangle out of one of the pouches on her utility belt and sets it on the oak desk between us—a digital recorder.

  “Before I turn this on,” she says quietly, “let me just tell you how tired I am of finding dead bodies around you.”

  “Chief, I had nothing to do with this. I barely know these people—”

  “Relax, Will. I know. That’s why I’m talking to you first; I figure it’s my best shot of getting an objective view on this whole thing.”

  I let out a breath of relief. “So I’m not a suspect?”

  “Of course you are,” she answers simply. “At least in the eyes of the law, until it’s proved otherwise.” Before I can say anything further in protest, she presses the record button and recites her name, my name, the date and time.

  “Alright, Will. Tell me what happened. Let’s start with how you know these people, why you’re in their house… and why in the world your ex-wife is here.”

  “Okay.” I take a steady breath. “I met them at our adoption event yesterday…” I run through the whole story, starting with Jeff, Anna and Karen coming into the shop; the couple’s argument about Cheese; and the invitation to bring the dog by their place today. I tell her how Steven and Karen were already here and everyone seemed to be in good spirits. I talk about the fight in the kitchen, and how Jeff stormed out to the shed.

  “When we heard Sarah scream, we all hurried outside,” I tell Patty.

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Me, Karen and Anna,” I answer. “Wait; actually, me and Karen went out first, and then Anna.” I think hard about it, trying to remember the details. “She took off her white apron first, then came outside. Sarah was outside the shed with her hand over her mouth. She said that Steven had knocked on the shed door and called Jeff’s name, and when he didn’t answer, Steven opened the door—”

  “Did you witness any of that?” she interjects.

  “No.”

  “Then stick to just what you saw.”

  “Sure, okay. Uh… when we ran outside, Steven was in the shed, trying to do CPR on… on Jeff.” What went down, according to Sarah, was that Steven had pushed the shed door open and saw Jeff lying on the floor with a length of thick twine around his neck. His face was purple and his eyes were open and bulging. Steven shouted something—“Oh my god,” she thinks it was—and immediately tried to resuscitate his friend.

  “But it was too late,” Patty finishes my thought.

  I nod, and then remember that the recording is audio only. “Yes. He was already dead.”

  “So Steven was the one that extricated the murder weapon?” she asks.

  “Huh?”

  “He unwrapped the rope from around Jeff’s neck?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I didn’t see him do it, but Sarah did.”

  She nods thoughtfully. “And how did everyone react to seeing Jeff like that?”

  “Well, like I said, Sarah screamed. Karen was nearly ill. Steven tried CPR. Me, I looked away, to be honest. And Anna, she kind of went into shock. She just stared, and… hasn’t said a word since, actually.”

  “Okay. One more question, Will, and I want you to try to remember real hard here. Where was everyone, to the best of your knowledge, in the time between when you saw Jeff heading out to the shed, and the time you heard Sarah scream?”

  “To the best of my knowledge,” I repeat. “Sarah and Karen were both in the living room, chatting with each other. Neither of them left, at least not that I saw. Steven was in the basement getting a bottle of wine, and then joined us in the living room. Anna was in the kitchen. She came into the living room only briefly…”

  I trail off as a realization strikes me, the same realization that Patty is likely coming to herself, judging from her expression.

  Almost all of us wer
e all in different places. None of us can prove anything.

  CHAPTER 7

  * * *

  Once we’re finished, I take a seat on the sofa again and Patty takes Sarah back into the home office. About a minute later, Officer Tom gets a call on his phone and excuses himself to let the guys from the county coroner’s office into the yard.

  The three of us—me, Karen and Steven, since Anna is still just staring blankly ahead—glance at each other nervously, knowing we shouldn’t talk but all of us wanting to. Sort of like after-school detention when the teacher steps out for a minute.

  “Anna,” Steven says softly, “I’m so very sorry for your loss.”

  She shakes her head a little, almost imperceptibly.

  “Please, say something,” he implores her. “Let us know you’re alright.”

  Her lips part, and while still staring at the empty air, she murmurs, “Which one of you did it?” With all of us looking from one to the other with our eyes wide, she asks, “Which one of you killed my husband?”

  “Anna…” Karen says quietly, “none of us wanted to see anything bad happen to Jeff. It’s a terrible loss, but I don’t think anyone here was capable of that.”

  Another full minute of silence goes by, and then Anna says, “So should I believe that someone climbed over our fence, snuck past our very territorial German shepherd, and then out again without being heard or seen?” She turns to look at Karen, her lips quivering. “Is that what you’re suggesting?”

  “I don’t think she’s suggesting anything,” I finally speak up. “I think that we should just let the police do their job and hope that they can figure all this out.”

  “Yes,” Anna agrees. “You’re right. And when this is all over, I don’t want to see any of you ever again.”

  Aaaaand we’re right back to silence.

  ***

  It’s well after ten o’clock at night by the time we head back to the Pet Shop Stop. Patty took statements from each person, taking the longest time with Anna—who I imagine was hesitant to speak much, given her state of mind. Then the chief had all five of us come down to the police station, where we were fingerprinted and had the lining of our cheeks swabbed as a DNA sample—except Sarah, whose records were already on file on account of being a murder suspect once before. (Long story, don’t even get me started.) Then, surprisingly, Chief Mayhew released all of us to go home, albeit with the warning that we should stay local and that they’d be checking in on us randomly.

  On the drive home, I can tell that Sarah is distraught, and reasonably so. I give her hand a squeeze. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She shakes her head a little, but says, “It’s just so hard to process.”

  “I know. I remember when I found Derek Dobson’s body back in the spring… I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t feel real…”

  “No, that’s not what I mean,” she says. “This is a clear-cut case of murder, and Anna is right—it’s ludicrous to think that some outsider did it. Will, someone that was in that house with us tonight killed Jeff Abernathy.”

  Of course I realize that. Chief Mayhew realizes that. Anna and all the others realize that too. Doesn’t make it any easier to come to terms with it.

  “Someone,” I say thoughtfully. “At least we know it wasn’t you… or Karen, for that matter. You were the only two that were in the same room as another person at the time. And I know it wasn’t me, of course—”

  “That’s not entirely true,” she says quietly.

  My eyes nearly bug out of my head. “What? You think it could have been me?”

  “No, doofus. About me and Karen. She did leave the room while we were talking.”

  “She did?”

  “Yeah. To use the bathroom.”

  “But… I was in the bathroom.”

  “Oh,” Sarah says quietly. “Well… She was only gone for about a minute. Maybe they have a second bathroom.”

  “Could be. It’s a big house. I didn’t exactly take the grand tour.” But why would Anna have told me to go upstairs if they had a bathroom on the first floor? “Did Patty say anything about that?” I ask as I pull into the small lot behind the pet shop.

  Sarah shakes her head. “I didn’t tell her that.”

  “Sarah!” I scold. “Doesn’t that seem like important information to you?”

  “I know! But it’s just… we were talking, and actually getting along, and she seems like a nice person. I had these dumb hopes that maybe we could, I don’t know, coexist without needing to be jealous or worry that she’s going to do something to try to ruin our relationship. Besides, I had a clear view of the back door the whole time. I would’ve seen her if she tried to get outside.”

  “Sarah,” I say slowly, “there was a second back door. Through the den. I saw it on my way to talk with the chief.”

  Her face pales. “I… I didn’t notice that.” Then she shakes her head. “No,” she says firmly. “I know you’re biased because of what she did to you, and I’ll admit I don’t care for her much either, but I refuse to think she could have killed someone.”

  I can’t help but agree with her. Besides, Karen is tiny—she’s like five-three, a hundred and twenty pounds, max. Her getting the drop on, and strangling, a guy as big as Jeff would be hard to imagine… though not impossible.

  “Look, let’s just try to get some rest. Are you going to be okay, or do you want to come spend the night?”

  “I’ll be okay,” she says.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.” She gets out of my SUV and right into her car. I watch until she pulls out of the spot and rounds the corner. And then I sit there in my car for a few more minutes, Cheese the schnauzer panting behind me, while I think.

  Sarah might have omitted the detail of Karen’s absence because she’s compassionate to a fault, but there’s one big wrench in the gears there—if Karen told Patty that she’d left Sarah alone, even for a minute, that means that Sarah had access to the back door and the shed with no witnesses.

  And that could make her a prime suspect.

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  I head inside the shop and collect Rowdy, who is so excited to see me that I can’t help but smile despite everything that’s happened, and then I lock up and the two of us get into my SUV to head home.

  Problem is, my brain is buzzing with possibilities and I know there’s just no way I’ll be able to sleep right now. So instead I take a detour and head down to the Runside.

  The Runside Bar & Grill is the Seaview Rock establishment, originally built from planks of the old pier when the town was little more than a fishing village. Storms and seasons wore it down, and it’s had to be almost completely rebuilt twice. It’s been in the family of the owner, Holly, since the early twentieth century. She runs it with her son, Nick, who brews the magical elixir that is Whale of an Ale.

  They don’t mind if I bring Rowdy in as long as he behaves himself, which he does, so the two of us enter and nod to Holly behind the bar. I’m surprised to see Sammy seated on a stool in front of the taps. I take a spot beside him.

  “Hey, you’re up late,” I tell him.

  “Hey yourself. Sorry I didn’t make it to the adoption event.” He shakes his head. “Heck of a day, Will.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He looks me over. “Actually, it looks like yours was worse. Want to talk about it?”

  I shouldn’t. But it’s Sammy, and I know he wouldn’t say a word to anyone.

  “Yeah. Let’s grab a table.” No offense to Holly or any other patrons, but I really can’t have other ears listening to the details of an open investigation that’s not yet public.

  Once we’re seated at a small table a safe distance from the bar, with Rowdy lying between my feet, I open up. I tell him everything. When I get to the part of finding Jeff’s body, instead of looking shocked or perturbed, Sammy runs a hand over his smooth hair and sighs.

  �
��Man,” he says when I’m finished. “How do you keep getting mixed up in things like this?”

  “I’m as baffled as you are.”

  “Well, I know one thing for sure. They won’t be able to lift prints off a piece of twine,” Sammy muses. “It was smart thinking on the chief’s part to get DNA samples; there are likely skin cells on the rope… if they’re lucky and the killer didn’t wear gloves.”

  “Been watching police procedurals again, Sammy?”

  He shrugs. “Just saying. So what’s your next move?”

  I blink at him. “What do you mean, my next move? I have no moves. The police are handling it.”

  “Sure, sure. Because you were so good at keeping your nose out of it the last couple times.” He strokes his chin thoughtfully. “Alright, first let’s assume that it wasn’t an outsider. As the wife said, it must have been someone in the house.”

  “Sam, I’m not sure I’m up for Sherlocking through this thing…”

  “But you’re thinking about it.”

  I roll my eyes. “Yes, I’m thinking about it.”

  “Great. Next, let’s assume for a moment that it wasn’t you or Sarah.”

  “Thanks, pal,” I say sardonically.

  “That leaves three possible suspects: Karen, the wife, and the friend. All three were alone at some point, even if just for a minute, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And all three had access to a back door?”

  “Yes. Well, sort of,” I admit. “Anna definitely did; she could have gone from the kitchen to the den and outside without anyone seeing her. The other two, Karen and Steven, would have had to go through the kitchen, which means that Anna would have seen them.”

  Sammy holds up a finger. “That’s assuming that she was paying attention. You said she was making a dessert, right? What if her back was turned and they snuck through?”