I heard a noise behind us and turned. Some uniformed cops were joining us. “What’s going on here?” said the first, a muscular-looking guy.
“The person who dognapped my dog sent a map,” I summarized quickly, then followed Killer and Justin as they started to scale the path. Since he’d presumably been on his way to the station, Justin was wearing his typical nice-looking clothes, a blue button-down shirt and dark trousers. His black slip-on shoes appeared more dressy than utilitarian, I wondered how his traction would be on the slope.
I still wore my red Lucky Dog T-shirt, and the jeans I’d slipped on last night after taking off my dressy skirt. I also wore my work shoes, which was a good thing because of their nonslip soles—although that feature would be better on floors and paving than a mountain path.
I quickly caught up with Justin’s back as he followed Killer around a corner on the narrow path. I wished I could feel safe walking beside Justin and hold his hand for reassurance—though there wasn’t much he could assure me about right now. Instead, I remained behind him. If we ran into anyone coming down, that would work better, too.
Up and around we went. I breathed heavily, and the thinning mountain air didn’t help. Was this all for nothing?
Where was Pluckie? Would we find her?
Of course we would. We had to.
I heard men’s voices behind us as well as other noises like footsteps on leaves that suggested we weren’t alone on the path. Justin’s team of cops was keeping up with us. Would they be of any help?
It didn’t provide me with any more of the reassurance I was asking for.
And then—there was another noise. Louder, cracking and thumping and frightening, from somewhere above us. I looked up—in time to see a large rock catapulting down the mountainside.
“Justin!” I screamed. It was going to hit him! I leaped forward and pushed him ahead since sideways would potentially cast him down the mountainside. Killer had turned back to face us and barked.
I acted just in time. The rock would have struck Justin right in the face if he’d proceeded at the same pace as before. This way, it still hit him, but in the shoulder. It came close to my head, but I hadn’t thought of that as I’d tried to shove him away. It wouldn’t have stopped me anyway.
“Ow!” he hollered. Then, “damn” and some other swear words, most known to me but a few not. He slid onto his knees, holding his shoulder. Killer edged up and began nuzzling him.
“Is it bleeding?” I demanded. “Are you okay?”
I was summarily pulled aside by strong hands that weren’t Justin’s, presumably the cops who’d been following us. “Chief, are you okay?” the officer repeated.
“Fine.” But the way he spoke through gritted teeth and clutched his shoulder with the other hand shouted otherwise.
“Let’s get you back down the hill,” said the cop—Officer Bledsoe, according to the nametag on his uniform. “One of the other guys’ll get you down and I’ll go ahead.”
“Me, too,” I insisted. Justin might be hurt, but he was clearly going to survive, thank heavens. And I still needed to find Pluckie. If any of the other cops wanted to follow, then so be it. But I couldn’t stay there.
It took a little maneuvering to get beyond Justin and Killer on the narrow path, especially since Justin was also being manhandled by his cops while hollering at me to stay with him, that his men would find Pluckie. I considered briefly whether to take Killer with me but figured the dog would rather stay with his man. And not knowing what the terrain would be, or how I’d get Pluckie down, I didn’t want the additional encumbrance.
Instead, I plunged forward, wishing I could breathe more easily and that there was some kind of rail to hold onto for steadiness. But there wasn’t. And now I was plagued with a new fear. Did whoever had stolen Pluckie shove that rock toward us? Was I just heading into more trouble, more danger, with my only backup behind me?
Probably. But I’d come this far, and I was determined to see this through.
And besides, when I turned briefly to glance around, I saw that at least three cops remained behind me. I surely would be safe.
I kept hiking upward. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but it felt like hours. Probably no more than another fifteen minutes, though. Longer?
And then I saw it. And heard it. The set-up. The reason whoever had stolen Pluckie had sent that email that resulted in my being here.
In front of me was a leaning ladder. Its top had been roped to some overhanging plants. It covered nearly the entire path.
Walking outside it would mean being very close to the edge of the mountain on this narrow path. Too dangerously close.
Continuing forward would mean walking under the ladder.
Whoever did this must have seen the Destiny Star op-ed piece and known my mixed emotions about this superstition in particular.
And why wouldn’t I just turn around, not take a chance on the bad luck of walking under a ladder?
Because, beyond it, there was Pluckie. My little dog was leashed to a bush, lunging and barking. If the leash came loose, her lunge could send her tumbling down the mountainside.
I’d stopped, and one of the cops was now sideways beside me. “Shit,” he said, looking toward the ladder.
The others caught up with us. “You gonna go get that dog, Bledsoe?” one asked the guy who’d followed me and now was closest.
“Walk under a ladder? Hell, no.”
The others didn’t sound any more eager. Clearly, they were all Destiny residents and believers in superstitions. And would I trust them anyway?
As Bledsoe had said, hell, no.
I looked forward, priming myself to hurry toward my dog, no matter what stood in my path.
That’s when I noticed that there was a black cat near Pluckie, beyond where she could reach with her leash, and it appeared to be taunting her.
It would probably cross my path when I went forward. But I couldn’t let that stop me. Bad luck? This whole situation was bad luck.
You’re a superstition agnostic, I reminded myself. I started walking again toward that ladder.
And then I heard the howl of a dog, as I had on the night Tarzal was killed …
I halted only for a second near a pine tree and knocked on its wooden bark-covered trunk. Then I plunged ahead, right under that damned ladder. The cat did cross my path—and just then some more rocks started sliding down the mountainside toward me. They were smaller, at least, than the one that had hit Justin. But one struck my arm as I emerged at the far side of the ladder.
The path here was a little wider. I knelt briefly to give Pluckie a reassuring hug, ignoring the slight pain in my right arm. When I rose I pulled at her leash—which was as loose as I’d feared. She could have yanked it off the branch with her lunges and fallen … and died.
No time to think about that now. I needed the leash so I’d feel safe with one of us leading the other back down the mountain. Carefully, I picked Pluckie up and tucked her under my left arm after unhooking the leash from her collar, aiming my back toward the hillside where a few rocks still slid toward us. I used my right hand to finish undoing the loose knot in the leash. My fingers got it free even as another stone slapped my butt.
Oh, well. Though it hurt like the other injury, that area was better padded than my arm.
I reattached Pluckie’s leash to her collar as she snuggled against me. Then, still holding her, I strode back under the ladder.
Twice. Two times I had walked under that ladder. Did the second cancel out the first, so I wouldn’t have bad luck? Or would I receive twice the amount of bad luck? Had knocking on wood helped at all? But was any good luck that may have been garnered canceled by the black cat?
Was this walk under a ladder similar enough to what had happened to my Warren that I was about to die, too? Or was that superstition simply a sham?
I had no idea. But the three cops were waiting on the path where I’d left them.
“Are you all right, Miss?” asked Bledsoe.
“I guess that remains to be seen,” I said.
That was when I saw Justin. He was making his way up the hill behind those cops, clutching his shoulder. I saw some blood on his shirt near his fingers. At least he didn’t have Killer with him. Maybe his dog, at least, had been taken back down to the parking lot.
On the other hand, it might have been a good thing to have him here, sniffing the ladder for a familiar scent or whatever. But as far as I knew he wasn’t trained as any kind of K9 with special sniffing skills.
“What are you doing here, Justin?” I demanded. “You’re supposed to be getting first aid.”
“Yeah? And you’re not supposed to be dealing with this by yourself, let alone walking under a ladder.” He aimed glares at his subordinate cops, who let him get by them. “Are you okay, Rory?”
“Better that you ask that about Pluckie.”
“Are you both okay, then?”
I didn’t tell him then about the two rocks hitting me, or the howling dog or black cat. Or even knocking on wood. It was enough that he knew about the ladder … for now. Once we got back down the mountain would be enough time for me to let him in on the rest.
“Yes,” I said. “We’re fine.”
I raised my voice at that, as well as my eyes. I hadn’t seen any motion on the mountaintop, but there were enough plants and overhanging cliffs to obscure anyone who might be there. Like everything else that had happened, I didn’t believe the rocks had begun to tumble on their own any more than Pluckie had come up here by herself, set up the ladder, and tied her own leash to those plants.
And whoever had done this to my dog was going to pay.
twenty-seven
Justin was going to be okay. As it turned out, I was worse off than him.
Not my injuries from falling stones. They were minor. And Justin did require some bandaging, antibiotics, and low-key painkillers.
But my psyche—that was what really hurt. Someone had tried to injure me, yes. Worse, though, was that they’d taken Pluckie and put her into a precarious position.
What if I hadn’t found her there … or I didn’t until it was too late?
What if they tried it again?
One of the officers who’d joined us drove us back to town in Justin’s car, which meant the chief sat in the front passenger’s seat, and I got the backseat with both dogs.
Yes, one of those superstitious officers, who hadn’t volunteered to go get Pluckie when it meant he’d have had to walk under a ladder, was driving.
Never mind that I would have gone anyway, even if one of the cops had stepped up and volunteered.
And yet I was alive, and my poor Warren wasn’t. Why?
We were driven first to Justin’s doctor, whose office was near the hospital where Martha had been treated. As they checked Justin, I stayed outside with the dogs.
While I walked Pluckie and Killer in the remote neighborhood that looked like it could have been in a town besides Destiny, I thought again about Martha and almost smiled. Surely even Justin would be able to see that, though her health was improving, she wasn’t in good enough condition to have set this up to harm Pluckie and me way up on that mountain. I still believed the person who’d killed Tarzal was guilty of this, too, as a distraction and a warning. That meant Martha was also innocent of Tarzal’s murder.
Unless, of course, I was wrong and there’d been some other reason for this horrible situation besides trying to get me to back off from my now-public nosiness in locating the killer. But what would it be?
And also unless Martha had an ally who’d taken care of this nastiness. And who would that be? Arlen? I’d already thought he could be involved, since I knew his awareness of that mountain area. Even though the two family members didn’t see eye-to-eye on everything, maybe he cared enough about his aunt to try to clear her of being a murder suspect by doing something wild to implicate someone else.
Yet that email I’d received claimed that Martha was, in fact, guilty, and I was getting in the way of her arrest.
So who could have stolen Pluckie and gotten up the mountain in time to set up the ladder, too?
Nearly anyone. Even someone who’d been at the Destiny Welcome, if they knew the site and had left early or had someone helping them.
Those disjointed and dispiriting thoughts made me eager to go in for my own medical exam—which meant they really grated on my mind, since I wasn’t overly fond of doctors.
And I was sure there had to be a lot of superstitions dealing with health and physical exams and all other related stuff.
As soon as Justin came outside and took over canine patrol, I got my examination, too. Nothing major was found, so I was quickly released.
Both of us were done. Even though it wasn’t a long walk back into the downtown area, I waited with Justin for his driver to pick him up and chauffeur him back to the police station. Soon, we both stood in the filled parking lot among both civilian and cop cars, each of us holding a dog leash. The canines on the other end didn’t seem to mind but sniffed the ground around them.
“I’ve already got one of my best detectives looking into what happened, Rory,” Justin assured me as Pluckie and I prepared to walk back to the Lucky Dog.
His best detective, like Alice Numa? Or someone else who hadn’t yet solved Tarzal’s killing but zeroed in on an ill senior lady as top suspect?
That didn’t exactly reassure me that even this less critical situation than a murder would be solved soon.
But all I said was, “Thanks.”
I’m sure he recognized my skeptical, sad, and angry state of mind since he reached out and grabbed my arm. The gesture must have caused him pain, because a wince darkened his face, making me want to touch his cheek in sympathy. But I didn’t. I just looked at him.
As his eyes sought mine, I saw sympathy radiating from them. “Rory, I’m pretty sure this all was related to Tarzal’s murder, and the fact that it’s now known to the Destiny world and even beyond that you’ve gotten involved. I won’t remind you that I told you to back off.” But of course he had just done it by saying that. “I’m sorry about what happened to Pluckie, but I’m glad she’s okay.” It looked painful, but he bent from the waist and patted my dog’s head. “And now, though you don’t want to hear it, maybe you’ll understand the reason better now. Civilians, even with the best of intentions, should not get involved in a police investigation, especially one as important as attempting to nail a murder suspect.”
“Okay.” I stared straight at him. “Suppose I’ve learned my lesson and have every intention of backing off.”
“Do you?”
I didn’t respond directly. “The thing is, now, I’ve been given one warning, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that warnings or worse are ended, even if I figured out how to announce to the world, or even just all of Destiny, that I got it and don’t give a damn who killed Tarzal. Especially now, when I’m sure you’ve figured it can’t be Martha—”
“Now, look, Rory,” he interrupted.
But I didn’t stop. “Okay, maybe you do still think it could be Martha—or are using your publicized suspicion of her to throw the real killer off track.” He blinked and stared as if I’d read his mind, but when he opened his mouth to respond I kept going. “Do you really think the murderer would buy into any protestations I might make now, figure I’m out of it and leave me alone? Maybe, but a person who’s a murderer isn’t all of a sudden going to trust someone he or she must somehow be afraid of.”
“Then you’re not going to back off even now?” His voice sounded ominous, and I took a step back, which made Pluckie scoot around my legs.
I recalled Serina’s suspicion that Justin could be the killer. Interest
ing, especially now. My suspicions flipped a bit. Could he have set this all up about Pluckie and allowed himself to get injured to make it look like it was as impossible for him to be a murderer as it was for Martha?
Of course not. Right?
At the moment, I felt stymied.
Who was the murderer?
Who had dognapped and endangered Pluckie—and me? And Justin.
And was I really going to stop looking, even knowing that the killer wouldn’t necessarily believe it and leave us alone?
“I hope you feel better, Justin,” was all I said. I patted Killer’s head, then Pluckie and I left.
_____
Martha was still downstairs at the Lucky Dog Boutique when my lucky, rescued, lovable dog and I returned there. So were Millie and Jeri.
And Arlen. Interesting. I recalled my wonderment whether the two family members were, in fact, in collusion about some things, even if they didn’t agree on everything.
But since my form of investigation had been undertaken to help Martha, why would they attempt, in such an odd and menacing manner, to scare me off ? And why claim in that email that Martha was the killer?
Unless it had just been Arlen … He’d have had time to get back here while Justin and I were at the doctor.
“You found her!” Martha exclaimed immediately as Arlen bent to pat Pluckie’s head and smile up at me.
From different areas of the store, Millie and Jeri waved and grinned, too, so they must have known about Pluckie being missing, but they were waiting on customers and didn’t join us.
“I’m so glad, Rory,” Martha continued, then tilted her head and looked at me. “I guess this is a silly question, but what’s wrong?”
I supposed my anger and pain were apparent in my expression and perhaps looked out of place since Pluckie was with me. I’d found my dog. I should be relieved. Happy. Ready to get back to what my life had become here, a store manager in Destiny. Or maybe I could just head for home.
But it wasn’t as easy as that. I’d found no answers, only a lot more questions.
1 Lost Under a Ladder Page 23