4 Woof at the Door

by Leslie O'Kane

  What was my concern, due to my sense of professional duty, was to check into the missing pit bull’s whereabouts. That discovery could verify my theory that Ty Bellingham had been staging some sort of wolf-versus-dog fight when he died. The police had acted noncommittal about that theory when I expressed it to them yesterday afternoon.

  Suddenly, the image of Ty’s living room returned to me with almost as much clarity as the physical view through my windshield. The furniture had been moved and the curtains drawn so that Ty could stage the fight, perhaps take photographs or video in progress. That would explain much of Ty’s strange attitudes about dog ownership. He’d been building a champion dog fighter in Doobie and didn’t want me to train the dog, for fear that it would curb Doobie’s dominance instincts.

  Then, yesterday, Ty or someone else could have nabbed the one wolf of Damian’s that wasn’t used to being around people. If my theory was correct, the killer could be a partner in the dog-fighting ring.

  I had a little bit of trouble locating “Way Cool Collectibles,” but finally did. It was at the tail end of a mall-ette, otherwise known as a “strip mall,” but my coined term was nicer sounding. A little brass bell jingled as I opened the door and then stepped into a room so overloaded with cloying incense that it would immediately fell a canary.

  The store had no shortage of customers—five, not counting me. I wondered if this was why Chesh Bellingham had rushed to open up the store despite her husband’s death; her merchandise was collectibles, and few things made collectibles more valuable than the untimely and dramatic death of their previous owner.

  Four of the customers were teenagers and seemed to be two couples who knew one another. They were giggling amongst themselves as they checked out the strobe light and the black light in one corner of the store. That corner was partitioned off with black velvet curtains, and it made me nervous when they shut the curtains behind them. There was also a very obvious wide-angle mirror on a stand in the corner above it, making it immediately apparent that the person behind the counter could see what was going on inside. Not that that would discourage anyone who wanted to “make out” in a store in the first place.

  Cheshire was involved in a spirited conversation with an elderly man. If she recognized me, she gave no outward sign. I walked up to speak to her. Though the man was doing his best to keep his voice down, his face was red with anger.

  “You listen to me! I know what you two did, and I want my money back! You hear me?”

  “Mr. Melhuniak, I’ve had about enough of this! My husband died less than twenty-four hours ago, and all you can do is accuse him of ripping you off! Where is your compassion?”

  “Where was yours when you two stole from me? Besides, you’re the one who chose to open for business before his body was even cold! I’ve been patient enough! You know just as well as I do that Ty got exactly what he deserved.”

  “How dare you say—”

  “Your husband has pulled these kinds of shenanigans in our neighborhood for the last ten years. It’s high time somebody—”

  She held up both palms and alerted him to my presence with her eyes. “If you’ll excuse me, I have customers.”

  Drat! I was dying to know what kind of “shenanigans” Ty had pulled in the neighborhood.

  The irate man gestured with his chin at the wide-angle mirror. “Yeah? And some of them are having quite the time of it in your spit-swappin’ booth.”

  “Hey!” Chesh yelled in the direction of the booth. “You cut that out in there! Get out of here, now, or I’m calling your parents!”

  “As if you’re someone to talk,” Mr. Melhuniak grumbled. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyers! Count on it!”

  The man flashed an indignant what-are-you-looking-at glare my way, then left, throwing the door open so hard the bell nearly came off its mounting. I recognized him. He was the old man I’d nearly collided with outside Ty Bellingham’s house yesterday. The two couples emerged from the tiny corner, wearing I’m-so-cool smirks on their faces. They sauntered out of the store.

  Cheshire cleared her throat, but otherwise seemed unfazed by what I’d witnessed. Today her long blond hair was in braids, and she wore a black armband over her loose fitting off-white blouse, and denim bellbottoms. “Allida. Hello. Welcome to our…my store.”

  “Thanks. I, uh, couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.” Nor could I help but notice that she was in one of her clear-headed moods. Was this because her husband was no longer around to insist upon her acting like a druggie? “Is everything all right?”

  She gave a wave at the door where the angry man had just left. “Oh, you mean him? Sure. He’s got this ridiculous notion that I”—she held up her hands and lowered her voice—“owe him something because Ty had cashed in on a valuable collector’s set of Beatle statuettes that he was foolish enough to sell us at his garage sale. Like, what are we supposed to have done, warn him to get an appraisal before we buy stuff? It’s both buyer- and seller-beware when it comes to garage sales.”

  “Mr. Melhuniak lives in your neighborhood?”

  “Yeah.” She pursed her lips and fidgeted with a lock of her long blond hair. “You’d think the guy would give me a break, considering I’m officially a widow now.”

  Meaning she was unofficially a widow ’til her husband died?

  Chesh appeared to be no more upset about her husband’s death than she might have been by her van breaking down. Perhaps she meant by her comment that she wasn’t the typical grieving widow—that their relationship hadn’t been based on love. That wasn’t my concern. As a canine advocate, I just wanted to find out if there was some sort of dog-fighting ring that Ty—and Doobie—had belonged to, so that I could do my part in putting a stop to it.

  “What can I do for you, Allida?” Cheshire asked, leaning her elbows against the glass case that held a variety of tacky-looking figurines and paraphernalia.

  “I was looking into Doobie’s personal history, and I stumbled across a confusing piece of information I’m hoping you can clear up for me.”

  “If I can. And that reminds me. Now that I’m in sole charge of Doobie, we can train him out of his bad habits much faster, right?”

  Ease of dog-training. Yet another reason not to mourn the death of one’s spouse. “You still want me to work with Doobie?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve got him at the vet’s for the next day or two, which is good because the place where I’m crashing till the police let me back into my house is too small.”

  “Plus there’s that darned messy kitchen to deal with,” I grumbled.

  Not picking up on my sarcasm, Chesh replied, “No kidding.”

  Doobie was at his veterinarian’s. The dog had been in a fight with Atla yesterday. Of course he’d gotten hurt. Somehow I’d missed this obvious consequence. It seemed as though my brain were operating on a twenty-four hour tape delay. “Was Doobie badly injured?”

  “Injured? No. Not at all. When I said he was at the vet’s, I just meant that’s where he’s being kenneled for the time being. But I was hoping you’d start working with him right away, once I can pick him up. Maybe now he’s learned his lesson.”

  “Learned his lesson?” I repeated with more than a hint of animosity in my voice. Did she mean that, now that he’d lost a dog fight and watched his owner get murdered, he might be easier to control?

  The color rose in her cheeks. “I just meant that now that he’s on doggie downers, he might mellow out.”

  “Doggie downers? I thought you said he was uninjured!”

  “Well, yeah, but the vet had to give him something to get him into the cage. Doobie was completely out of control. You should have seen the state he was in last night when I finally got him out of that bathroom. He was frothing at the mouth. The vet was afraid Doobie might hurt himself.”

  I had to force myself to keep my voice calm. “Chesh, Doobie could physically be in a lot of trouble. Ty used to arrange dog fights for Doobie, didn’t he?”

  “
No.” I held her gaze, and finally she averted her eyes and added, “At least, not that I know of, for sure.”

  “Have you talked to the vet since you brought Doobie in?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I’m concerned about drug interactions. The owners of fighting dogs often put cocaine on the dog’s nose. It drives the dog wild. That could have explained Doobie’s frothing mouth and his overall agitated state. I don’t have medical training myself, but if Doobie had cocaine in his system, it might have caused an adverse reaction to whatever soporific medication the vet gave him.”

  She listened carefully, her lips pursed into a thin white line. “Doobie’s fine. I’m pretty sure Ty never would have done something like that.”

  That begged the question, though, of what despicable things Ty would have done. My mind’s eye flashed again on that almost barren living room, except for a tripod in the corner. “Did Ty have some sort of black-market operation, selling photos or videos of dog fights?”

  “God! No! That would be disgusting! He’d never pull something like that while I was around!”

  This time, Cheshire was convincing. “There was an empty tripod in your living room. Got any idea where its matching camera is?”

  “Ty sort of used to be into still photography.”

  “Did he own a video camera, too?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  But that just meant she might not have known what he was up to. Nor could he get away with being undetected as he staged fights in his suburban home. Unless…

  “You must have a warehouse for your store merchandise, right?”

  She nodded. “Down in Broomfield,” she said with a wince, as if making the mental connection herself that this warehouse might be an ideal location to stage the illegal activity. She wrapped her arms around her chest as if protecting herself from the cold. “I hope you’re wrong. Ty was the type of person who followed his own set of rules. If he did stage dog fights at his warehouse…” She let her voice fade away, then murmured, “The thought’s just sickening.”

  “Is it possible?”

  She nodded. “He had a hidden staircase that led to a basement. You have to move a panel in the back to find it. He claimed it was just his office down there, and that it was off-limits. I didn’t even have a key. One day, though, I needed some cash and dropped in on him. Saw the basement. It was really weird. He did have a desk in there, but the whole rest of the room was partitioned off with these big ugly sheets of plywood set up in a hexagon. I asked him what was in there, and he just told me it was none of my business.”

  “So it could have been an arena?”

  She said nothing, merely paled.

  “I called the animal shelter, Chesh, to ask about Doobie’s background, and—”

  “Why would you ask them?”

  “Because Ty told me he got Doobie from a dog rescuer in another state, and I was hoping they had some records or that Ty had registered Doobie.”

  She shook her head. “No, that’s not true. Or, at least, that’s not what he told me. Doobie was already part of the family by the time I met Ty.”

  That conflicted with what Ty had told me as I’d gathered the dog’s background information. “So, when Ty was still married to Paige, they owned Doobie together?”

  “I guess so. The subject never came up. He told me that Doobie was a stray he picked up himself when he was in New Mexico. Or Nevada. Something like that. He was nearly starved to death, so Ty brought him home with him to Colorado and, essentially, saved Doobie’s life.”

  Chesh had no reason to lie. But why had Ty lied? To cover up for the fact that his dog was dangerous, perhaps? “What can you tell me about a pit bull that Ty adopted from the shelter last winter?”

  She shrugged, her eyes wide in her confusion. “Ty never owned a pit bull. At least, not that I’m aware of. Doobie is the only dog Ty’s had since I met him, over a year ago.” Her smile seemed a little forced and her guise of casualness was fraying at the edges.

  “The animal shelter told me Ty adopted the pit bull last December. Were you living with him then?”

  “Last winter?” she repeated, rubbing down the glass showcase with a yellow dust cloth as she spoke. “I wasn’t around much then, but Ty would have told me if he had another dog.”

  “Where were you? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Pain therapy. An in-patient treatment. I’d injured my back pretty bad, thanks to Beverly’s incompetence. She did some work for Ty and cut a hole in the flooring that she didn’t mark off. I stepped in it and fell. Hurt my back.”

  “How is it now?”

  “Oh, it’s all healed.”

  “I’ll bet you must have been on some pretty heavy-duty medication for a while there, huh?”

  Her brow furrowed. “You’re friends with Beverly Wood, aren’t you? Sometimes the injury still flairs up. When it does, though, I take something, and I’m fine.”

  A middle-aged couple entered the store, and Chesh excused herself to assist them. I left, thinking to myself that if she had cause to marry a man she didn’t love, she might have felt she had cause to kill him.

  My opinion so far was that Ty had been a compulsive liar. Perhaps he acquired the pit bull as a sparring partner for Doobie. Ty might have tried to do the same thing with Atla. Maybe he couldn’t swing staging a fight at the warehouse for some reason, so he opted for his living room. If my hunch that he took pictures was correct, the killer’s image could be on those negatives, which meant the camera and film was likely in the killer’s possession.

  Could Larry Cunriff have killed Ty in some fight between the two men? If so, perhaps the only answer lay in finding Larry. That would be the police’s job, of course, and with luck, they would nab him. Though the entire possibility of this dog-fighting thing had me so upset that the least I could do was try to learn more about it on my own.

  I wandered to the opposite corner of the mall. It might prove handy at some point to learn how I could get in touch with Damian’s ex-wife. She might know where Larry Cunriff was, and that information could prove useful to the police in their pursuit of Ty’s killer. I dialed the radio station on my cellphone and asked to speak to Tracy Truett.

  The receptionist put me on hold for a minute and an instrumental version of “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” was piped into my ear. You’d think a radio station would have a more current selection. Nonetheless, there was nobody in my immediate vicinity, so I indulged myself by singing along until Tracy picked up.

  “Tracy Truett,” she barked into the phone.

  “It’s me.”

  “Oh, hi, Allida! You’re on your cellphone?” she asked. “Does this mean it’s important?”

  “Yes.” She knew I kept my cellphone off most of the time, because with canines’ excellent hearing, a badly timed ringing or vibrating phone could derail my training. “I need you to tell me the number and business that Janine Hesk called you from.”

  She rattled off the number, which I jotted down. “She works at a place called Business Images. They’re a consultant and advertising agency. You were listening to my show, eh?”

  “Yes, I was listening, and it annoyed the heck out of me. You’re barking up the wrong tree, here, Tracy. That wolf is very well managed, from what I can see. Don’t mislead your audience like this.”

  “Let me put you on the air now, and you can tell my listeners all about what tree I should be barking up.”

  “No. Bye.” I hung up.

  I went back to my office. Russell’s car was in the parking lot, but his office door was closed. This was ridiculous. He wasn’t going to be able to escape seeing me forever.

  I got on with my work. A customer brought in her woefully trained eight-month-old mixed-breed puppy. The woman had gotten so disenchanted with puppy kindergarten, she opted to use me as a training consultant, and I was happy to oblige her.

  After they’d left, I returned the one phone call that had come in my absenc
e. It was from a woman whose name, Henrietta Wilcox, meant nothing to me. She had given no information, just her number and a request to call her back. When she answered, I identified myself only as “Allida Babcock, returning your call.”

  “Is this the Allida Babcock who’s a dog psychologist?” the woman asked.

  As far as I knew, I was the only Allida Babcock in Boulder. “That’s right. How can I help you?”

  “My name is Henrietta Wilcox.”

  That much I already knew. She said nothing more, so I prompted, “Your dog is misbehaving?”

  “Not exactly. In this case, it’s more of what he’s not doing. See, he’s a Malamute. I bought him as a watch dog, but he won’t bark.”

  “I see. You know, Malamutes tend not to bark very much. They really aren’t ideal watchdogs.” As a general rule, Malamutes are highly intelligent but have a strong independent streak that makes them hard to train, and they don’t bark. Hence the “mute” in Malamute.

  “Oh, dear. See, I adopted this dog a couple of months ago. I answered one of those ’free to a good home’ ads in the paper.”

  Under the circumstances, just the mention of any “free to a good home” ad made me tense. There was no easy method to ascertain how “good” the home actually was, and, tragically, that was one of the ways trainers of fighting dogs could get “lambs” to lead to the slaughter.

  Henrietta continued, “I made it very clear to the owners that I lived alone and was looking for a good watch dog, and they told me Titan would be perfect. What can I do?”

  I thought for a moment. “Well, describe Titan’s personality.”

  “He’s…like a big pussy cat with people. He wants to be petted all the time, even by complete strangers. I put him on a leash, and it’s all I can do to stay on my feet. He wants to pull so bad, he’s like an old sled dog, or something.”

  “Do you want to keep him, even though he isn’t much of a watch dog?”