Muzzled

by June Whyte

  “Oh, did you now? Can’t say I’m surprised though,” he said, eyes shooting daggers at me—every one razor sharp and itching to slice me into tiny bite-sized pieces. “You’re always poking your nose in where it’s not wanted. Reckon you’re some bloody great sleuth, don’t you? A girly Sherlock Holmes?” He lifted his lip in a sneer as I tried to push to my knees and let out a yelp of pain. “Well, you’re not. You’re nothing but a freakin’ snoop.”

  “I—”

  “But this time, Katrina,” he broke in, his voice like chalk on a blackboard, “you stuck your nose into my business.” Two black holes of death stared chillingly back at me as Mick’s gun shifted closer, his finger quivering on the trigger. “And that means I can’t let you walk away from here.”

  I stared at the gun, mesmerized. I was going to die, yet my throat was suddenly too dry, too closed over with fear to do what all fictional heroines always do in mystery novels—keep the bad guy talking. Hell, my throat was too dry to even gulp.

  But not so, Gina’s. “For God’s sake, Mick, stop this nonsense and come to your senses before it’s too late. Think of your family.”

  Mick gave a mirthless laugh. “This is about my family, Gina. The bookmaking business isn’t what it used to be and I’ve had a long run of losses. How do you feed a wife and seven kids when there’s no money coming in? Beg on the streets?”

  “But you don’t want to add murder to your list of crimes.”

  His laugh was off-key, almost over the edge. “Who do you think did away with Jack Lantana, that idiot with the fashion sense of a 60s rock groupie?” Mick gave another hysterical laugh—but at least his gun shifted away from me which meant I could start breathing again. “Did you know, Lantana demanded a bigger cut of the profits? As if. Hell, I did the world a favor when I took him out. The decrepit old guy had the brain capacity of a lump of wood.”

  “And what about Scott?” Liz edged forward. “You tried to kill him too, didn’t you?”

  “His own fault. Scott overheard me talking to my mate, Garry Smart, so he had to go. In between races, Garry slipped a little something into Scott’s drink and then offered to help him to his car when he started feeling dizzy.” Mick turned his head in my direction and snarled. “It was a fool-proof plan too. Would have worked—except Sleuth Girl here stuck her nose in—again.”

  I sent him the sweetest smile I could dredge up under the circumstances. “That’s okay, Mick. Anyone in a similar situation would have done the same thing.”

  The snarl changed to a roar.

  “So, Garry was involved in attempted murder?” Gina’s voice grated against her throat, each word forced through gritted teeth.

  Mick tutted. “Gina, your boyfriend has been in this up to his foul-smelling armpits since the beginning.”

  “The pathetic little creep.” Gina let out a sigh. “And he isn’t my boyfriend—he’s my stepbrother. Ever since he came into my life at fifteen, he’s been trouble. Got let out of jail a couple of months ago and came whining to me for help.”

  “And helping him was your first mistake,” said Mick. “The whole scam was Garry’s idea in the first place. He owed me fifty thousand dollars in gambling debts and couldn’t pay, so the Slow Dog scam was a way out for him.”

  “I’m just as pathetic for believing him. He swore on his mother’s grave that he was trying to go straight. Said some guy had forced him to steal greyhounds and would kill him if he refused. I told him I’d dob him in unless he brought the dogs to me so I could hide them and eventually get them into GAP homes.”

  “And that decision landed you right smack in the middle of the scam.”

  While Gina continued to distract Mick, I transferred my weight to my hands and pushed upwards, attempting to stand. Wrong move. Immediately the nose of the gun swung around and pressed against my left temple. I froze, still kneeling in the sand, the pain in my ankle making me want to cry.

  In my peripheral vision I could see Liz, shovel half-raised, inching forward.

  But so could Mick.

  His eyes never leaving my face, he dug the gun harder into my head. “If your mouthy sister takes one more step, we’ll see daylight through the hole in your head, Katrina. And of course there’ll be a matching hole in hers too. Which of course will only leave Gina and me to get rid of the dogs. Still, no big deal. I’m tired of playing games and don’t need all this irritation.”

  Gina threw her shovel in the hole and stood, head up, shoulders back. “Shoot my friends, Mick, and you may as well shoot me too because I’m not going to lift a finger to help you harm the dogs.”

  The gun moved slowly in Gina’s direction. “In that case, I’ll shoot you first.”

  A whirlwind of white fur broke through the clump of bushes directly behind Mick. A four-legged flash of white, armed with a smug grin and with only one objective in mind.

  “Hey, how do you like your goat steaks, Mick?” I said, grinning inanely up at him as he stood, black coat wrapped around him, completely unaware of his fate.

  “What—”

  I held my breath as Atticus the goat, horns lowered, grin fixed in place, aimed for the most vulnerable spot at the back of Mick’s knees.

  Bull’s eye.

  The gun flew in the air. I reached out with one hand and grabbed it on its way down, and Liz swung her shovel in the direction of our captor’s head and connected as he catapulted past.

  “Yay!” I yelled, waving the gun.

  “Woohoo!” said Liz, waving her shovel.

  “Good boy,” said Gina, cuddling the goat whose rough tongue was busy cleaning the dirt from her face.

  I painfully climbed to my feet, leant against Liz for support and we all stood and silently regarded the fallen bookie as he lay at the bottom of the hole.

  If Atticus hadn’t come to our rescue, this man—a cold blooded killer—would have shot the dogs, forced us to bury them and then shot us too.

  I shivered.

  You couldn’t always tell what evil stirred in another person’s mind.

  Okay, I’d never regarded Big Mick as a friend, and he’d always put his hand up to participate in any money-making scam, but—a killer? No way. An image of Mick’s children eating at the kitchen table sprang to mind. Five still in high chairs—a giggling baby Eddy throwing spaghetti. How would these children feel in years to come when the kids at school teased them, called their father a murderer?

  He deserved everything the court threw at him.

  I raised the gun. Cocked it. “Okay, scumbag,” I said as I pointed the gun at a vulnerable spot between Big Mick’s legs. “Just move ya little pinkie finger—and your family jewels are history.”

  I could hear several police sirens wailing in the distance and looked up as a four wheel drive pulled off the road and came bumping across the sand toward us. It screeched to a halt and out tumbled Detective Sergeant Adams followed by Ben and Tanya.

  I grinned like an insane Cheshire Cat at the sight of the three people I most wanted to see. “So, you did get my message.”

  “Yep, but it seems like you and the girls have everything under control,” said Ben. “We’re just in time to applaud.” He smiled at me, a smile so warm and tender, I had to swallow to stop myself from crying. Still smiling, he hurried over and slipped an arm around my waist, pulling me tight against his body to plant a kiss on my nose. “You okay, babe?”

  “Sprained ankle, that’s all.”

  Tanya, eyes bulging, stared, horrified, at the body lying at the bottom of the hole. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. “Is he dead?”

  We stood in a circle around the hole, all eying Mick. Twenty seconds passed and no-one spoke.

  At last, I shook my head. “Well, I’m not volunteering to go down there to find out.”

  “Of course not, Ms. McKinley,” said Detective Adams, harrumphing and evidently deciding it was time he took charge of the situation. “This is police business now.”

  “What I mean is, I couldn’t a
nyway—can’t walk—hurt my ankle when I went for a tumble down the hill,” I said waving the gun in the air to demonstrate how I rolled over and over when I lost my footing.

  Adams turned white, gasped, and then ducked. “For God’s sake, give me that gun before it goes off.”

  “Here, take it.” I shoved the gun in his direction, then winced as the detective ducked again. “Sorry.”

  Adams snatched the gun and disposed of the bullets. “Fine,” he said. “Now, stand back and leave this to me.” While reading the comatose man his rights and fumbling in his many pockets for his set of handcuffs, Adams slid down into the hole. We watched as he bent forward, attached handcuffs to the man’s wrists and then felt for a pulse. Finally, he looked up and nodded. “He’s alive,” he said. “But whoever hit him must have given him a decent old whack. This man’s out for the count.”

  Gina and I turned to Liz and gave her a high five. She laughed and the tension drizzled out of me.

  “Yep! My sister, by a knockout!”

  29

  It was a week since Big Mick Harrison had been arrested and thrown in jail. I stood at the front door of my house, a crutch digging into my armpit, my back resting against Ben’s six-pack stomach and saying goodbye to the family who’d adopted Stanley.

  The endearing GAP greyhound trotted down the path toward the unfamiliar bright yellow family station wagon. Every now and again he’d cock his head to one side as though listening intently to something the ten-year-old boy on the other end of the lead said to him. Earlier the pair had been rough housing on my back lawn, yet the moment the boy’s eighteen month old sister toddled out to play, Stanley froze, then sauntered across, licked her face and when she plopped down on her rear end, lay beside her, head in her lap. That was the cincher. The Murphy family couldn’t get the dog’s collar and lead on quickly enough. They signed the GAP papers and paid the fee and now the exuberant greyhound with the heart of a marshmallow was off to his new home with his brand new adoptive family.

  “Alone, at last,” Ben growled in my ear. A growl that caused goose bumps to spring up along my bare arms and other unmentionable places. “Now, how long did you say that sister of yours would be gone? Was it in two or three hours?” Ben bent to nibble on one of my earlobes while I forced my hand to continue waving at the yellow car now pulling out of the gateway.

  When his soft nibbles became tiny fairy flicks of the tongue, my legs turned into lettuce leaves. And if I hadn’t leaned heavily against Ben’s chest, I’d have melted into a puddle at his feet.

  “Liz and Jake are at the local hospital protesting about the new parking meters,” I murmured, repositioning my head to one side for easier ear access. “Could be gone for the rest of the day.”

  “Hmm. That long, hey?” Ben slowly spun me around to face him, rescued my tumbling crutch at the last minute and propped it up against the door. “So…with all that time to kill—how about we do an in-depth study of positions one to twenty of the Kama Sutra?”

  “Only one to twenty?” I grinned. “My Grandma McKinley always insists it’s practice that makes perfect.”

  “Your grandma is a very wise woman, Katrina,” Ben purred as he bent forward to tease my lips with his oh-so-tantalizing tongue. A tongue that would have won any reality show’s Sexiest Tongue contest. Instead it was mine.

  All mine.

  Clinging to Ben for support, I groaned my surrender, softened my lips and sucked the heat of all that desire into my mouth. Ben aligned his body against mine, his tongue exploring every intimate crevice inside my mouth, his hands under my T-shirt, inside my bra, cupping my breast, thumb circling the engorged nipples.

  There was a damp spot spreading between my legs. A damp spot that needed urgent, immediate attention.

  Gasping, I pulled away, fitted the crutch under my armpit and slammed the front door. “Hang on, I’ll just give Tater and Lucky a handful of kibble each and shut them outside.”

  “Gotcha.” There was a spot of drool in one corner of Ben’s lips and I swear the pupils in both eyes were dilated. “I’ll dig out a bottle of Chardonnay and fluff up the cushions on the sofa.”

  I almost tripped in my hurry to reach the kitchen. Hell, this was the first time in the last week Ben and I had been alone. No way was I going to waste one precious minute. Between Liz staying with me until my ankle healed, DI Adams swooping in and out asking questions, Tanya popping in to fill me in on her love life—yeah, she and Paul Simmons, the cop, had actually been together for three whole weeks now—and Gina helping with my greyhounds while I recovered from my ankle sprain, there hadn’t been an opportunity for more than a few stolen kisses.

  “Did you know they’ve caught up with Gina’s stepbrother, Garry?” I yelled from the kitchen. “He was hitch-hiking his way up North and got picked up by an off duty cop. Not what you’d call the luckiest guy on the planet.”

  “Has Liz heard from Scott?”

  “Yeah,” I said collecting the two dog dishes and a box of kibble from the cupboard. “He’s in the clear with the police. Should be out of hospital in a few days.”

  “And—”

  “He’s going home to recuperate at his parent’s house until he’s stronger. Seems the carbon monoxide affected his lungs.”

  “Another charge against Big Mick and Garry.”

  Dodging Tater, who was ordering me to hurry up with the grub, I called Lucky and let both dogs outside.

  “Be good now,” I told them both, then poured kibble into their bowls and left them to their morning snack.

  The moment I hopped back inside, Ben grabbed me. “Come here, wench,” he growled, kissing me firmly on the mouth, then, holding me by the shoulders he regarded me, his expression serious. “Kat, have you ever done it in the lotus position?”

  “The what?” I laughed and shook my head. “Ben, I am not attempting anything resembling a lotus position on that narrow couch. One sprained ankle for the week is enough, thank you very much.”

  Before I could take a breath, he’d nudged my wooden crutch away with his foot, scooped me into his arms and started for the stairs. “In that case, my gammy-legged wench, let’s proceed to the queen sized bed.”

  A scattering of gravel outside indicated a car had pulled up out the front. Ben let out a groan and closed his eyes. I could hear Liz laughing and the sound of Jake talking as they approached the front door.

  “How long did you say your sister was staying?” Ben asked through gritted teeth.

  “As long as she wants,” I confessed.

  I heard the front door crash against the wall as it was flung open. “Hey, Kat,” Liz called out. “Where are you? We’re back! Protest was called off. Stupid council backed down before Jake and I could even chain ourselves to the parking meters.”

  Defeated, I let my head drop onto my chest.

  “You know,” whispered Ben, a grin tugging at the corner of his lips as, still carrying me, he turned and tiptoed toward the back door. “My car is parked around the back”

  “It is?”

  “Yep. And what’s more, I have a top of the range queen sized bed in my caravan, at home.”

  “You do?” I whispered, my arms tightening around his neck as I leant down, turned the knob to open the back door so the dogs could come in and we could sneak out.

  “There’s even fresh sheets on the bed and a deadlock on the caravan door.”

  “Mmm. Sounds perfect.”

  “No, what I call perfect is the fact that I have a second copy of the Kama Sutra stashed in my sock drawer. Right next to the condoms.”

  I let out a contented sigh and snuggled closer.

  Now what could be more puuurfect than that?

 

 

 
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