by Jessica Beck
“Dusty doesn’t have a real job,” I said. “He’s living off his inheritance.”
“Is he rich?” Jake asked with skepticism. “If he is, he certainly chose an odd place to live.”
“I didn’t say it was a vast inheritance,” I said. “This house belonged to his folks, and I’ve heard him say he owns it free and clear.”
“He still needs money for other things like food, gas, utilities, and property taxes, if nothing else,” Jake said.
“So maybe he got more than just the house,” I said.
“Would he really steal Emily’s stuffed animals?” Jake asked me as we walked back out to the Jeep.
“I can’t think of a single reason that he wouldn’t. Think about it. It would be a double victory for him,” I said. “He’d get back at Emily for rejecting him and he’d make Max’s life miserable at the same time. He’s my favorite suspect at the moment.”
“More than Michelle and Hattie?” Jake asked. “What are you basing that on?”
I shrugged. “I can’t say. I’ve just got an inkling,” I said, fully expecting him to tease me.
Instead, my husband simply nodded.
“Really? You’re not going to make any comment on that statement at all?” I asked him.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Suzanne. Over the years, I’ve grown to respect your inklings,” Jake said. “Let’s see if we can figure out what Dusty is up to.”
“I’m not sure how we’re going to do that,” I admitted.
I grabbed my car keys, but Jake put a hand on mine, stopping me. “What’s wrong?”
“I might have given up too quickly,” he admitted.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you didn’t tell me about your inkling before,” Jake said solemnly.
“You’re not making fun of me, are you?” I asked as I studied his face. If he was teasing me, he was doing a remarkable job of hiding it.
“Not a chance. Come on. Let’s go back.”
“What if we get run off again like we did at the Jefferson place?” I asked him. “Word is going to get around town that we’re peering into strange windows without cause.”
“Would anyone really be all that surprised once they found out we were looking for Emily’s stuffed animals?” Jake asked me as we got out and moved to the back of the house once again.
“Probably not,” I admitted. “I thought the curtains covered every window. Besides, they are too tall. You’re right about that.”
“Not all of them,” Jake said. “I thought I saw a gap in one toward the back.”
“But you still aren’t tall enough to look inside, and I don’t have a handy ladder in my Jeep for you to use.”
“I might not need it,” he said, “but I could use a hand. Come on.”
“Are you going to put me on your shoulders?” I asked him.
“Truthfully, I never even thought about that,” he said.
“Well, I certainly can’t put you up on mine,” I protested.
“You don’t have to,” he said with a smile. “There’s a window well for the crawlspace right below one of the windows.”
“What do you need me for, then?” I asked him.
“I need you to steady my legs so I don’t fall,” he requested.
“That I can do.”
Jake started to mount the precarious thin metal semicircle buried in the ground protecting the crawlspace vent, but he quickly hopped back off.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s not stable enough to hold me,” he said with a frown. “It looks like we’re going to have to do it your way.”
“Like I said, you’re not getting on my shoulders.”
“That’s not what I meant. You’re getting on mine,” he said as he squatted down.
I didn’t have any better ideas, so I backed onto his shoulders, planting my rump firmly behind his neck. With one swift motion, Jake stood up, and I nearly lost my balance and fell. He grabbed me at the last second, and a moment later, I found my balance again. After taking a few careful steps, we were by the window. Jake had been right. Enough of the curtain was open so I could see inside.
It was a bedroom, but it wasn’t empty.
At first I thought Dusty might be asleep, though how he’d managed not to wake up with our pounding and doorbell ringing was beyond me.
Then I noticed the blood on his chest.
What was even worse, one of Emily’s stuffed cows was sitting beside him, a bloodied knife resting on one of his front hooves.
For all of the world, it appeared that Spots had committed murder, killing the man who’d kidnapped him and his two best friends, who were both staring at the deadly tableau.
Chapter 6
“Jake, put me down,” I said as I pulled away from the window.
“I’ve got you, Suzanne. You don’t have to worry. I promise I won’t drop you.”
“Dusty’s dead, and I know it sounds crazy, but it looks as though Spots killed him.”
Jake took a step back, squatted again, and I found my feet once more, though I wasn’t all that stable at the moment. “Suzanne, if this is some kind of joke, it’s in bad taste, even for you.”
“I’m not kidding,” I told him. “Dusty is lying on the bed with a bloodstain on his chest, and Spots is sitting across from him with a knife resting on his hoof.”
“How can you tell it’s Spots?” Jake asked me as we both raced for the front door.
“He has a ribbon around his tail,” I said. “I thought everyone knew that.”
“The entire world is not as acquainted with them as you are. Call 9-1-1.”
“What are you going to do while I’m doing that?” I asked him.
“Dusty might still be alive,” Jake said. “I’m going in, and I’m not waiting for backup.” With that, he kicked the door at the jamb with so much force that it shattered the wood as it was flung backward. Either that door was ripe for the breaking, or my husband was on some kind of adrenaline rush. As soon as the doorframe was splintered, he reached for his weapon from its ankle holster and headed in. As I dialed 9-1-1, I followed close behind him.
He gave me an angry frown for a moment when he realized that I was shadowing him, but he didn’t say anything, which I decided to interpret as his acceptance of my presence.
“9-1-1. What’s your emergency?”
“Somebody killed Dusty Baxter at his house,” I said.
“Suzanne, is that you?”
I didn’t even bother answering as I hung up. All the dispatcher would have said was that I shouldn’t go inside, which I was doing anyway, so there was really no need for further instruction.
Jake quickly but thoroughly searched each room on his way to where I’d seen Dusty’s body.
“He’s back there,” I said urgently, pointing in the direction I’d seen his body.
“I need to make sure the attacker isn’t still here,” Jake said patiently.
That made sense. After all, it wouldn’t do Dusty any good, even if by some miracle he was still alive, for us to get ambushed trying to save him. In a few short moments Jake had finished his search of the rest of the house.
Apparently we were alone.
Jake raced to the bed as I started to reach for Spots. I hated seeing him posed with the murder weapon like that. It offended my spirit on so many levels. Jake must have seen what I was doing out of the corner of his eye. “Don’t touch anything, Suzanne.” He knelt down and touched Dusty’s neck, searching for a pulse.
After a few moments, he stood and shook his head. “There’s no pulse, but he’s still warm to the touch. Unless I miss my guess, we didn’t miss the killer by more than a few minutes.”
That thought chilled me to my core.
We’d just managed to avoid a confrontation with a murderer!
The theft of Cow, Spots, and Moose had gone from a bad prank to homicide, and I knew that there was no way that the police would be able to dismiss the investigation now that murder was a part of the scenario.
I wasn’t sure how the three stuffed animals fit into the whole thing, but it was obvious enough that every last one of them was involved from hoof to head.
Chapter 7
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Police Chief Grant said the moment he was on the scene. He came in with his gun drawn, just as Jake had.
“It’s serious enough that I wouldn’t joke about it,” my husband said. “Dusty is dead.”
“Did either one of you happen to touch anything?” the chief asked Jake and me as he studied the body.
“We’ve both been putting our hands on everything in sight since we got here. Why, was that wrong?” Jake asked him, the sarcasm dripping from his voice.
“I have to ask,” the chief said with a shrug.
“Me?” Jake queried.
“No. Of course not. Sorry.” The chief at least had the decency to blush under my husband’s scrutiny.
“I didn’t touch anything either, if anyone cares,” I said.
Both men looked at me with the exact same expression. I figured that my input wasn’t needed at the moment, so I went back to taking in the scene. “Why would someone try to make it look as though Spots was the killer?” I asked.
“How can you be sure it’s Spots?” the chief asked after looking carefully at the stuffed animal with the weapon. It sounded just as ludicrous in my head when I thought about it that way.
“It’s the ribbon,” I said, pointing to the frazzled and once-bright green ribbon, now faded to hold barely any color at all, tied around his tail. “Emily did that when she first got the guys.”
“Why would she do that?” the chief asked.
“How else would she be able to tell them apart?” I asked him incredulously.
It was clear the police chief wasn’t interested in getting into that particular discussion with me. “He’s still warm to the touch,” he noted.
“We noticed that, too,” Jake said, being gracious enough to include me as well, though I hadn’t touched Dusty’s lifeless body, nor did I have any desire to confirm. I’d been forced to touch enough corpses in my life, and I wasn’t about to go out of my way to touch any more of them if I could help it.
“That should at least give us a pretty tight time of death,” the chief said, and I had to wonder if he was mostly talking to himself.
“I still don’t understand why anyone would try to frame Spots,” I said, repeating myself.
The chief said, “Suzanne, it’s a stuffed animal, remember? Nobody’s going to believe that it killed someone.”
“I know what he is,” I said, “but you can’t honestly believe that the knife placement isn’t significant.”
“That’s exactly what I believe,” he said. “A mentor of mine once taught me that the world is full of people who only think they are funny and clever, and killers are no different.”
“I didn’t mean it was always the case,” Jake said.
I’d suspected that he’d been the mentor in question, since he’d taken the current chief under his guidance when he’d held the job himself.
“Well, you can think whatever you’d like to, but I happen to think it’s significant,” I said firmly. Stephen Grant was getting a little too stuffy for my taste lately. I suppose being the chief law enforcement officer for our area was a heavy responsibility, but that shouldn’t mean that he wasn’t open to ideas from outside the force, even ones that initially sounded a little odd.
Chief Grant bit his lip for a moment, and then he said, “I appreciate you calling this in. We’ll take it from here.”
“Are you dismissing us?” I asked him, my ire showing a bit more than I’d wanted.
Jake clearly decided it was time to head off an argument between us.
“Suzanne, let’s get out of here and let the chief do his job.”
“I appreciate that,” Stephen Grant said, and then, after studying my frown for a moment, he added, “Suzanne, I’m not trying to be mean to you. I just need to do things my own way.”
“I understand that,” I said, though I really didn’t, at least not completely. “May I at least have your permission to tell Emily that her stuffed animals have been found? She’s sick with worry, even if they are only toys left over from her childhood.”
“I never said that,” the chief replied quickly, “but I’d appreciate it if you’d hold off on that just for now.”
“She can’t do that, and it’s not fair to ask her to,” Jake said, surprising me by speaking up in my defense.
“You’re not going to start giving me trouble too now, are you?” Chief Grant asked him.
“I’m not saying a word to anyone, but you can’t expect Suzanne to keep quiet about this. She genuinely cares for Emily, and I know for a fact that there’s no way she’s not going to tell her about this.”
The chief frowned for a few moments before he finally spoke. “How about this? You can tell Emily you found her pals.” I was about to thank him when he held up a finger to signify that he wasn’t finished yet. “You just can’t tell anyone about the knife.”
“I didn’t think you believed that it was even significant,” I said a little starkly.
“I don’t, but only one other person knows about this besides the three of us, and I mean to keep it that way.” As we watched, he took some photos of Spots, the knife, and everything around them. Once he was satisfied with the shots he’d gotten, he took out an evidence bag, turned it inside out, and then he put his hand inside and collected the knife.
“Should you really have done that?” Jake asked him in a surprised voice, clearly a little startled by the man’s actions.
“Maybe not, but the positioning of the knife is knowledge that is limited to only four people. By the time my crew gets in and photographs everything, the entire town is going to know what we found. Do you honestly think I should put it back before anyone gets here?” There was a shade of doubt in his voice as he asked the question, reminding me of the beat cop I’d known once upon a time before he’d taken on so much responsibility.
“No, it’s a bold idea and a gamble worth taking, and it might just turn out to be worth the risk,” Jake said.
It clearly wasn’t the ringing endorsement the chief had been looking for, but it was going to have to do. “I promise that we won’t tell anyone about that part,” I said.
“Good,” he replied. He was still staring at the knife in his hands ten seconds later when one of his deputies came in.
The chief was about to speak when Jake touched my arm. “Come on, Suzanne. Let’s go.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to hang around for just a bit more?” I asked him.
“I’m sure,” Jake replied. Once we were outside, he said, “Suzanne, Chief Grant could get into a great deal of trouble if anyone found out about what he did in there.”
“You wouldn’t have done it yourself, would you?” I asked him.
“I can’t say. I’m not in that position,” he said with a shrug.
It was a surprisingly vague answer. “But you once were in exactly that position.”
“The point is that I’m not now,” he said with a quick shake of his head. “You might as well give up, because that’s all that I’m going to say on the subject. Now let’s get going.”
“Where to?” I asked him.
“You want to tell Emily about finding the guys, don’t you?” Jake asked me.
“I thought I’d j
ust call her,” I said, surprised by my husband’s attitude.
“Trust me, news like this is always better in person,” he said.
“Jake, what are you up to?”
“What do you mean?” he asked me much too quickly.
“Why do you want to see Emily’s reaction when we tell her about Dusty and the guys?” I asked him.
He merely shrugged, but it wasn’t a response I was in any mood to accept from him.
“Jake, you don’t honestly think Emily had anything to do with Dusty’s murder, do you?”
“Suzanne, I like her nearly as much as you do, but that doesn’t give her a free pass here. Emily needs to be on our list of suspects.”
“But we found the stuffed animals,” I said. “Isn’t the case over?”
“That one is, sort of, but we’ve got something a lot bigger on our hands now.”
“Are we going to try to solve Dusty’s murder?” I asked my husband.
“I thought we might. Are you up for it?”
“I am if you are,” I said without hesitation.
“Even if the trail leads us somewhere you don’t want to go?” he asked a little pointedly.
“The truth is what matters. I don’t for one second think Emily killed Dusty, even if he was the one who stole her stuffed animals, but if she did, she has to pay for it, just like anyone else would.”
“Then let’s go have a chat with her and see how she reacts to the news that Dusty is dead and her stuffed animals have been recovered.”
The only problem with our plan was that Emily wasn’t at the newsstand when we got there. Christine frowned a moment when we walked in and asked about her daughter. “Was she expecting you? I hadn’t realized you were meeting her here.”
“We didn’t think we’d have to call ahead for an appointment,” I said with a smile. “Do you have any idea when she’ll be back?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say,” Christine replied.
“Where exactly did she go?” Jake asked as nonchalantly as he could. He’d come a long way in changing his inquiries from demands for information to requests, but he wasn’t quite there yet.