4 Woof at the Door

by Leslie O'Kane

  “Stop him? From the dog fighting, you mean?”

  Her eyes widened and she gaped at me. “Yes. You knew about that?”

  “I found out only recently, but I don’t understand—”

  “See, Beverly claimed she felt the same way that I did about it, that she’d already notified animal control. One day, about three months ago, I came over to her place, and she had a pit bull. She told me he was Ty’s. That he’d adopted the dog and was angry to discover the dog wasn’t a fighter. She’d volunteered to take care of it so that she could protect it from Ty. A couple of days later, she told me that she’d found a home for it.”

  “Are you sure? I asked Beverly about that pit bull just yesterday, and she told me something completely different.”

  “I know. She called me yesterday. She gave me a feeble excuse for calling, said that she wanted to go over today’s schedule and ’make sure we’re on the same page,’ but she never does junk like that. Then she says to me, ’By the way, if Allida Babcock should happen to ask you about Ty owning a pit bull, tell her you don’t know anything about it.’”

  “But that’s…weird. If she wanted to cover up for her own role in this missing pit bull, why tell you not to mention it? I believed her when she lied about the dog. I would never have thought to ask you, too.”

  She leaned forward, elbows on knees, to look directly into my eyes. “I know. That’s what bothered me so much. When I asked her why she wanted me to lie about the dog, she said that you were such a straight arrow you’d insist on following up on the woman she gave the dog to, and she didn’t want you to bother her.”

  “She used the phrase ’straight arrow?’” I asked, my stomach tensing.

  “Yes.”

  That was the same wording Larry Cunriff had used to describe his boss, Damian. I began to worry that Rebecca’s tale could have some truth to it; that Larry and Beverly had been familiar enough with one another that they were picking up on each other’s pet phrases.

  “So you concluded that Beverly did something illicit with the pit bull? Sold it to a dog-fighting ring herself?”

  Rebecca frowned. After a pause, she said, “That was the only reason I can come up with for her to be so worried about you tracking down this pit bull. The more I thought about it last night, the more I decided Rebecca might have played me for a chump. Gave me this whole song and dance about how despicable Bellingham was to turn dogs into a blood sport.”

  “Did you ever report this to the police, or at least to animal control?”

  She shook her head. “I was going to, but, like I said, Beverly convinced me that she’d already called. Then, once I began to suspect she was part of it, I didn’t want to tell the police and damage her reputation. So, I kept quiet.” She stared at me, checking for my reaction.

  Frankly, my emotions were in something of a tailspin. I didn’t want to believe any of this. Was that because it was unbelievable? Or was it merely my natural reluctance to accepting something so heinous about a friend? “Why are you telling me this, Rebecca?”

  “It’s killing me to keep it to myself. I have to tell somebody, and I don’t know who else to turn to.”

  I pulled out my desk chair and sat down. Dozens of images of Beverly playing with dogs back when we were in high school together or recently with Beagle Boy popped into my head. That kind of affection can’t be faked; even if she could have fooled me, she couldn’t fool her own dogs. “Rebecca, I admit that I never knew Beverly all that well, certainly not as well as I once thought I did. But I absolutely cannot believe she had anything at all to do with a dog-fighting ring.”

  “Neither can I. I think she was playing me for a fool, all along. Don’t you see?” She wrapped her arms across her midsection, rocking herself from her position on the edge of the chair. “Beverly was in on it.”

  “In on what?” I asked.

  “Ty’s murder. But her partner in crime killed them both.”

  Chapter 13

  Rebecca’s eyes looked glassy. She seemed to believe her own words, but maybe she was completely nuts. I’d prefer to believe that, as opposed to my friend Beverly having been a murderer.

  “Rebecca, do you have any proof that Beverly plotted with someone to murder Ty Bellingham?”

  “No, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened,” she said, her voice a dry whisper.

  To give myself a reason to turn away from her, I rotated in my seat and snatched the first item my gaze fell upon—a paper clip. I mangled it between my fingers. “I can’t believe that. Even if she was involved in dog fighting, which I also can’t believe, she had no reason to kill Ty Bellingham.”

  My words seemed to shake her out of her zombielike state. She glared at me and said purposefully, “The booby-trapped flooring was her idea. There was this crazy power struggle going on between Ty and Beverly. I think she told me the whole story about Ty and Doobie and the dog fights just to enlist my help in punishing Ty.”

  “So who were her accomplices? And how did you know she was involved? Did she confess to you?”

  “No, but I know that she’d been talking to some man that worked for the wolf owner. I think she was cooking up something with him.”

  “Larry Cunriff?”

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “Yes. That’s the name. She had to pay him off to get the wolf. I think she was the one who unlocked the dog door so that Larry could get the wolf inside, and she also cut his phone cords so Ty couldn’t get help.”

  I froze for a moment. I could see how word of the unlocked dog door might have innocently spread to people within Ty’s circle, but not of the phone cord having been severed. When everyone’s grannie and child owned a cellphone, it took someone with Ty’s sixties affinity to have been vulnerable to a land line.

  “How did you know about the phone cord and the dog door?”

  “Beverly told me. Yesterday, when she called. She claimed knew because she stepped into the kitchen while you and the wolf’s owner were taking the wolf out the front door.”

  Beverly had stepped into the kitchen? Was that possible? I distinctly recalled Beverly already being at the front of the house when Damian and I came out with Atla. Was Rebecca lying about Beverly having told her about the phone cord, Rebecca having cut it herself? My thoughts raced as I tried desperately to argue myself out of my suspicions. “But the furniture in the living room. That had all been moved out.”

  “The furniture had been moved?”

  I nodded. “Ty had to have done that prior to the wolf arriving on scene.”

  She leaned forward in her seat, elbows on her knees. Finally, Rebecca let out a big sigh of relief and smiled. “You’re right! Ty had to have been preparing for the wolf to be there! Nothing else makes any sense.” She chuckled, as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “I’m so glad I talked with you about this. Maybe I’m completely off-base. Maybe she had nothing to do with any of it.”

  “That’s what I hope,” I said, too alarmed by Rebecca’s story to feel reassured. Even if Ty did know the wolf was about to be delivered to his house, that didn’t necessarily mean that Beverly was off the hook. Furthermore, if Rebecca was the killer and merely feeding me a story, it wouldn’t take long for her to figure out that my next step would be to report all of this to the police.

  Meanwhile, Rebecca smacked her forehead. “I’m such an idiot. You know, I didn’t get any sleep at all last night, running all of this through my head. But there’s no proof for any of it. She might have been telling me the complete truth all along. See, if Ty knew this wolf was coming over, his death could have been an accident. Or, I should say, it was caused by his own negligence.”

  I faked a smile and nodded. Ty might have expected the domesticated wolf Kaia, but had been tricked into meeting Atla. More importantly, the murder weapon was a knife. And, how could Rebecca miss the obvious connection that somebody had to have cut the phone cord?

  Her face fell. As if she’d been reading my mind, she said, “But, what
about the phone cord? Ty had to have been murdered. And I can’t believe Beverly noticed the phone cord, just by stepping into the kitchen.” Rebecca let her voice fade. She looked more crestfallen now than when she’d first arrived.

  Rebecca’s mood swing was convincing and reminded me of how grief-stricken she’d been yesterday at finding Beverly’s body. Of all the people I’d met from Beverly’s immediate circle during the past few days, Rebecca was by far the most likable, and the least likely, by my book, of being a killer. “Maybe she only thought she saw for herself that the chord was cut, after the real killer accidentally told her about it. If so, that might be why she wound up a victim herself.”

  Rebecca wrapped her arms around her chest. As if mulling the likelihood of my last statement, she finally nodded. In a near whisper, she said, “In which case, you and I could be next.”

  That was a chilling statement, and for a moment, it left me nonplussed. “You’ve got to tell the police all of this, Rebecca. Even if it does make Beverly look guilty. It’s ridiculous to protect someone’s memory at your own expense.”

  “True. I’ll go there now.”

  Not willing to take any chances, I said, “Let me call Detective Rodriguez right now, and you can tell him you’re on your way and why.”

  I dialed the detective and, after identifying myself, immediately asked, “Could Beverly Wood have heard from one of the investigators that Ty Bellingham’s phone cord was cut?”

  After a pause, he said, “I’ll look into that. She said something to you about the phone cord?”

  “Not to me, but to her business partner. She’s here now and is just about to head to the station to talk to you.”

  “Put her on, please.”

  I followed his gruff instructions, thinking that if any officer had gossiped about the condition of Ty Bellingham’s phone cord, it wasn’t Detective Rodriguez. He seemed very careful to make sure that he was the one asking—not answering—all the questions.

  Rebecca muttered a few words of agreement into the phone, then hung up, and said to me, “I’d better go. Thanks for listening, Allida.”

  The words made me wince. They were eerily similar to the last words I would ever hear from Beverly.

  She headed out the door, just as Russell was coming in, giving him an appreciative double-take. Russell, however, acted oblivious to the fact that he’d just passed a pretty girl. His right arm was still snuggly held by its splint. In his left hand he carried his brief case plus a handful of what looked like stems.

  “Good morning,” he said, giving me a sheepish smile. He set his case down as he got his key out, switching his bouquet of stems to his other hand.

  “Morning, Russell.” Eying the paltry condition of his flowers, I chuckled and asked, “Have you been shopping at Cheap Flowers Are Us?”

  He unlocked the door to his office, then held his stems out toward me. “No, these were daisies, petals and all, when I got them for you this morning. And, my dear, you will note that there is but one petal left.”

  Grinning, I came toward him, focusing on his stem bouquet. Playing along, I said, “Indeed, there is but one petal.”

  “And do you know what this last petal means?” He separated out the one-petal flower and dropped the other stems into my waste basket. “It means, ’She loves me!’” His face had reddened slightly, but he continued, “So you see, Allida, all you have to do is pull off this last petal to make me the happiest man in the world.”

  I half laughed, half cried. “Oh, Russell. This is the corniest, sweetest thing anyone’s ever—”

  My phone rang.

  At the interruption, Russell leaned over my desk and stuck the all-important daisy in the vase with my roses. He winked at me and said, “You’d better make up your mind about me soon, or there’s going to be a whole lot of petal-less daisies in Boulder. Their fate is in your hands.” He went into his office and shut the door.

  Feeling torn between answering my phone and going after him, I hesitated, then picked the phone just before my recorder would have activated.

  A woman said, “Hey, Allida, wha’s happ’nin’?” Unnecessarily, she went on to say, “It’s Chesh Bellingham. I’m at work right now, but I’m closing shop early this afternoon to go pick up Doobie from the vet’s. Can you come work with Doobie right away? I want to start a whole new training regimen with him from the very first time he sets his foot in my house.”

  “You’re already back in your house?”

  “No, I mean the place I’m staying at. It could still be a couple of days till I get back in to my own place, but my friend says she doesn’t mind my having Doobie come live with us, as long as he’s quiet. That means I need to get him quiet, fast.”

  I checked my schedule and agreed to work with Doobie as a house call, rather than at my office. She gave me the address, and we set an appointment for four p.m. I referred again to my appointment book, taking care to look at Russell’s neat and copious notations about exactly what I was to do regarding the two appointments he’d rescheduled.

  One of those appointments was with the quiet malamute—Hank’s referral from his job installing the security system. She was now scheduled for Wednesday, the day after tomorrow. I called to double check, and the dog owner was fine with that. Not the case with my second reschedule. She was overwrought, and Russ had penciled her in for tomorrow. I told her I was free now if that worked for her, and she said she’d be right over.

  This trio of one middle-aged, well-dressed woman and her two dogs were new clients for me. Twenty minutes later, they’d not only arrived at my office, but we’d finished with the preliminary set of questions. The dogs were a neutered male and a spayed Welsh corgi named Corgi and Bess. I silently mused that if I ever had room for another pair of dogs, I might just get a couple of Corgis and steal the names. I have a soft spot in my heart for Corgis. Maybe it’s our mutual short-leggedness. Corgis have big, upright, pointy German shepherd-type ears, a tapered muzzle, and squat little legs that are way out of proportion with their solid bodies.

  The reason this woman was having with her dogs was readily apparent. The male, Corgi, was fighting with Bess. Last week, he’d gotten hold of one of Bess’s ears, and the severity of the wound had motivated their owner to contact me. And yet, she was making the glaring mistake even now of holding Bess, while Corgi snarled by her feet and Bess cowered in her lap.

  “What am I going to do?” she cried in exasperation. “I can’t protect Bess from Corgi all of the time. I’m going to have to consider putting Corgi up for adoption.”

  “We’ve got to start by switching which Corgi you’re treating as the alpha dog. That’s what’s causing this friction.”

  “I don’t understand. I’m not…treating Bess as the pack leader. I’m just trying to protect her. If I were to put her down now, Corgi would attack her.”

  “No doubt that’s true, and that’s going to continue to be true until you make it clear to the dogs that you understand and support their self-assigned hierarchy.” I reached into my drawer and grabbed a pair of dog biscuits. I handed one to the woman. “Tell Corgi to sit, and when he does, reward him with the treat.”

  “I’m supposed to ignore Bess completely? Not even give her a treat?”

  “For the time being, that’s exactly what you’ll have to do.”

  She grudgingly followed my instructions. Corgi was playing up his getting a treat for all it was worth, giving Bess the nonverbal dog’s version of “Nanny nanny boo boo. I got a treat, but not you you.” Bess, meanwhile, did not beg or even look for a treat of her own. This was highly unusual dog behavior and indicated to me how severe the hierarchy problem really was.

  “Now instruct Corgi to lie down,” I told the woman. “When he does, give him a second treat, and while he’s eating that, put Bess down a short distance away from both of you.”

  Just in case the dogs immediately went at it, I got my noisemaker ready—an electronic toy that made an obnoxious sound at the push of a button—w
hich I was prepared to use to distract Corgi from hostile actions toward Bess. I then handed their owner the second treat. She followed my instructions. Bess backed away immediately, and Corgi trotted up to the woman. Success! I had her pick up Corgi and put him on her lap.

  “This is so unfair to Bess, though,” the woman complained.

  “Does she look upset?” I asked, gesturing at the very complacent dog sitting between us.

  “Well, no, but….”

  “When a pet owner interferes with their dogs’ hierarchy, such as by doting on the lowest-ranking member and ignoring the top dog to greet the bottom-runger first, problems are created. The alpha dog instinctively works all the harder to keep the omega in his place, which sometimes injuring that dog.”

  “But it’s so unfair!” she cried again.

  “No, it’s not. Dogs are not like humans. They simply need to know what their status is; they don’t feel sorry for themselves or mope over the unfairness of a caste system that assigns them a lower spot on the totem pole.”

  The woman nodded and said, “Oh. I see,” as if she meant it. From then on, we had no more snarling and cowering on the part of the dogs or either of us, and I gave the poor dog owner my full lecture on how to handle such common things as greeting the dogs upon her arrival. We set a follow-up visit, and she even included a sizable “tip” in the payment that she insisted on giving me today.

  The rest of the morning passed with blessedly few hitches, and I managed to push my worries from the conversation with Rebecca as far into the back recesses of my brain as possible. To that end, I surprised Russell with a picnic lunch for two in the small yard behind our office building. The fare that I scraped together on short notice—crackers, apples, and some odds and ends from the vending-machine in the building lobby—wasn’t exactly romantic, plus we had to sit on the furry blanket from my back seat. But Russell clearly appreciated the thought, and we made small-talk easily throughout our makeshift meal.