Death Fits Like A Glove
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I just wanted to see if any of them were buried in this
field.”
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Don Weston
“Did you find any?” Ray asked. He studied me
with brown eyes, dull as the dirt at my feet. “I just
wondered because I’ve seen some of those posters
and wondered why those people don’t keep a better
watch on their pets.”
“Do you know anything about the animals
buried here?” I asked.
“You’d have to ask Randy,” Ray said. “He buries
them.”
“Why?” I asked.
Randy wiped a tear from his face. “Cause they’re
dead,” he said, as if I hadn’t a brain.
“I mean, how did they die?”
“I don’t know. I just found them so I buried
them. You got pretty hair,” he added.
“Don’t mind him,” Ray said. “He probably thinks
you look like our mom, except she had red hair.”
“She does,” Randy said. “She’s pretty like
mom.”
“Was?” I said.
“Mom died last year,” Randy said. “Dad says she
had cancer.”
“She had enough of dad, if you ask me,” Ray
said. “She just gave up livin’.”
“Randy, Ray?” a voice called.
A man closed fast on the three of us. He noticed
me and his gait relaxed. He looked to be in his mid-
thirties with a classic profile, brown eyes, close
cropped brown hair, and a disarming nervous grin.
There was something else behind his smile I couldn’t
quite make out. I thought it might be fear, but when
he opened his mouth his words were smooth and
relaxed.
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Death Fits Like A Glove
“I hope they haven’t been bothering you,” he
said. “I’m their father, Samuel Miller.”
“No, I was just asking them about all the little
graves in this field.”
“Why would you be interested in some dead
animals?” he asked. The nervous smile turned into
one of perplexed indifference. He looked to Ray and
then Randy.
“My name is Billie Bly. I’m a P.I., and I was
hired to find some dogs and cats that have gone
missing in the neighborhood.”
“I can help,” Randy said. “I’m a friend to all
animals.”
“I think it best you boys go home and finish
cleaning your rooms,” Samuel said. “This lady has a
job to do and doesn’t need your interference.”
Ray walked away without a word. I gave Randy
my business card and told him he could visit me if he
came up with any leads.
“I really don’t mind them helping,” I said. “Kids
are very observant, more so than adults.”
“Maybe some other time,” Samuel said. “They
need to get back to work.”
“How long has Randy been burying animals?” I
asked.
“Probably since his mother died about a year ago.
He’s always been the sensitive one. Ray thinks he
buries dead animals as kind of a remembrance of his
mom’s funeral.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Sounds as good as anything,” he said.
“Have you thought of getting him counseling?”
“I have, but he seems to be doing okay. Why?”
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Don Weston
“Because someone has tortured most of these
animals,” I said. “I’m not saying it was Randy, but
it’s a red flag. The boy attacked me with a stick when
he saw me digging up the cat.”
Samuel looked down at the cat and at me, then
back at the cat. “Oh? Do you have any kids?”
“No.”
“I know you’re trying to be helpful, Miss Bly,
but I think you’d best mind your own business.
Randy’s just fine. He’s sensitive, and he wouldn’t
hurt a fly.” He was polite, but his face was rigid.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“I have to go now. If I don’t follow up they’ll be
goofing off somewhere else. It’s hard for a single
parent to keep up with kids. When Linda was alive,
we could take turns staying on top of them. I guess
she did most of the enforcement. I was on the road a
lot.”
“What do you do?” I asked.
“Sales,” he said. “Copy machines. I used to have
a state-wide route, but since Linda’s death my
company has allowed me to service the Portland area.
Sorry, but I really need to go.”
He turned away in a swift motion and marched
after his kids. Each step seemed more deliberate than
the preceding. I noticed his balled up fists were white
as chalk.
I stared numbly at the retreating figure, my face
flush, and a feeling of shame embraced me. I did not
handle the situation well and likely made an enemy. I
reburied the cat and limped home, aching from
traversing neighborhoods, crawling under wooden
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Death Fits Like A Glove
porches, digging up graves and fighting with an eight-
year-old.
On a corner of Twenty-Third, I ripped a flyer
with Marmalade’s photo from a telephone pole. When
I got home, I called his owner and listened to her sob
when she received the news and the location of the
cat’s grave marker. She thanked me and said she
would go over with her shovel and make the
identification.
My office assistant, Angel, showed up at
seven-thirty Monday morning. I heard her close the
front door from my upstairs bed and groaned about
having to get up after a short weekend. I washed,
dressed, and climbed down the stairs to the fragrant
odor of Columbian fresh-ground coffee.
Angel is a brunette, about four inches shorter
than my five-foot-nine frame, and can only be
described as a fashion disaster. This morning she
wore a black jacket, blue skirt, and shiny metallic
gold spandex leggings, with abstract splashes of
black.
“Any new cases?” she asked.
I
mumbled
something
meant
to
be
unintelligible under my breath.
“Dognappers?” she said. “You mean you took
a case looking for lost dogs? This is too much. Wait
till I post this on my Facebook page.”
“You will not post anything about this on the
internet,” I said. “I’m only doing it as a favor to
Louise.”
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Don Weston
“Louise Parker, the neighborhood bitch?
Why?”
I explained my need to improve my standing
in the neighborhood after the garage incident and told
her about the number of missing animals in the area.
She took a puff from her imaginary cigarette and
nodded. Angel quit smoking a few years back after
seventeen years, but couldn’t rid herself of the gap
between her fingers where the cancer stick previously
&nbs
p; rested. When she gets nervous or uneasy, she extends
her fingers to her mouth and sucks on air. It seems to
calm her.
“I guess I can see your reasoning,” she said.
“If only it wasn’t Louise Parker. That woman walks
like she has a stick up her ass.”
“It was hard for her to ask, and I didn’t make
it easy,” I said.
“Did you see the newspaper about the woman
gone missing from Forest Park?” she said.
I nodded.
“Now there’s a case. Too bad we couldn’t get
in on that somehow.”
“And I’m working on a dognapping case,” I
said. “I know. It’s demeaning.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Angel said. “It’s just
that we’ve been in a slump lately. It would be nice to
get a case with some meat on it.”
“Yes, it would,” I said. “But in the meantime
we’ll have to settle for what we have.”
We brainstormed some ideas to locate the
missing pets. Angel offered to scan Internet bulletin
boards to see if she could find any thieves selling
dogs or cats matching the descriptions on the posters.
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Death Fits Like A Glove
She walked around the area and collected flyers from
streetlight poles and local in-store bulletin boards and
sat down and spent a good part of the day searching at
her computer.
I called Louise and talked her into helping me
with a doggie stakeout. She borrowed her sister’s
English Bulldog and met me at Food Front, the scene
of the crime.
“I don’t feel good about this,” she said. “Mr.
Higgins is worth at least three thousand dollars. What
if someone should steal him? What would I tell my
sister?”
I looked at Mr. Higgins, a muscular specimen
with a brown and white coat. He returned my gaze,
his wrinkled cheeks falling off an oversized square
black nose, and wagged a fat pink tongue playfully.
“Mr. Higgins seems up to it,” I said. “Nothing
will go wrong. I’ll sit at the outdoor café across the
street and you walk around the business area for a
while to attract potential dognappers. Pretend to
check out boutique windows, then tie him to a post
and go into the store. If I see anyone suspicious I’ll
call you on your cell phone to alert you. When the
thief nabs Mr. Higgins, I’ll handcuff the crud.”
“It sounds okay, I guess,” Louise said.
We wasted thirty minutes at Food Front and
moved on to a pastry shop down the street to
reconstruct the trap. After killing half an hour, we
moved on to Pepino’s, a Mexican eatery a few blocks
from my house. And so it went until about two
o’clock, when we arrived at a Whole Foods market in
the nearby Pearl District.
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Don Weston
I couldn’t find an outdoor hiding place and
settled inside a nearby art gallery. After strolling
through the art district for fifteen minutes, Louise and
Mr. Higgins stopped in front of Whole Foods. Mr.
Higgins waited patiently, tethered to a street sign
post, as Louise shopped.
My cell phone rang. “I don’t think this is
working,” Louise said. “We’ve been doing this for
hours and nothing’s happened.”
“Stakeouts take time. This is the work private
investigators do. It’s tedious and unfulfilling, unless
we catch our bad guy.”
“If you say so. I might as well pick up something
for dinner while I’m here. Call me if you see
anything.”
I watched Mr. Higgins as he sipped from a water
dish placed outside by a well-meaning store
employee. He started licking at a spot between his
rear legs and I glanced away. I didn’t need this
moment meshed into my brain. After giving him a
moment of privacy, I peered back in time to see a
man stooped over and petting the fastidious bulldog.
He appeared to be in his twenties, with a black
beard, blue jeans, and a second-hand tweed sport
coat. A salt and pepper sports cap, a racy looking
thing a car driver might wear, hid his face as he bent
over the dog. I scurried toward the gallery door in
case I needed to give chase. It was not a good position
for a stakeout. I spotted a potential villain fifty yards
in a foot race. The man mashed Mr. Higgins’ hairdo
with his hand and walked off.
“Racing cap is a false alarm,” I said to myself.
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Death Fits Like A Glove
“Can I help you with something?” A hip looking
women in a Page style hairdo and black dress put her
fingers to her cheek and smiled. “I noticed you eyeing
the sculpture of the Indian maiden in the window.”
“No,” I said, “I’m just window shopping.”
“The price on that piece isn’t firm. I could knock
fifty dollars off, if it would help.”
“No thanks, I’m not a buyer today.” I averted
her gaze and peeked back through the door.
“Did you see this piece?” She steered me away
from the door to show me some god-awful paper
scrap triangular sculpture.
“Really, I can’t. I’ve got to go.”
I turned, intent on finding a better spot to secret
myself and froze in the doorway. Mr. Higgins was
gone. Mr. Higgins’ leash, likewise, was adios. I ran
out to the street corner and scoured four directions.
Maybe Louise came back.
“Son-of-a–bitch.” A block down the street,
Racing Cap legged it on a two-wheeler like the devil
was on his tail. On the back of his bike, in an
oversized wire basket, Mr. Higgins sat and wagged
his pink tongue, obviously having the time of his life.
I ran through the middle of the intersection and
almost got sideswiped by a cargo van drifting down
the thoroughfare hot on Racing Cap’s trail. I double-
timed it down the bicycle lane after Mr. Higgins and
his new friend. I ran a hundred yards before I sucked
wind and saw Racing Cap and Mr. Higgins hang a
left two blocks down.
I was about to swear again, when I spotted a
bicycle in a rack outside a coffee shop. It had no lock.
I jumped on it and pumped like hell after my quarry. I
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Don Weston
whipped around a corner in time to see the bad guy
four blocks ahead, steering a hard, right turn.
My cell phone chirped. “Louise,” I cried. “Not
now.” I tapped at my screen and shouted. “I’m
chasing him.”
“What? Who are you chasing? Where is Mister
Higgins?”
A traffic light went against me and I challenged
it and two cars.
“I can’t talk now,” I said.
Horns honked and someone gave me the finger. I
pocketed my phone in mid-stride, returned the ill-
conceived gesture, and pushed onward. The suspect
and dog were not aware I wa
s after them, and I hoped
to gain an advantage when they slowed. But Racing
Cap had another trick up his sleeve. When I followed
his right turn, and travelled another block, he was
gone. I stopped and scanned the area frantically
looking for a friendly English Bulldog.
It was only after the Max train pulled away from
its stop a half-block away, I caught sight of Mr.
Higgins standing up in his window seat, gawking out
at the world, and laughing at me. Racing Cap sat next
to him, still not visible enough to catch a description,
and a bicycle swung on a rack in the aisle.
“Shit,” I said. I pedaled faster, but the train
wheeled around a final corner and jaunted up a hill,
across the Steel Bridge, and over the Willamette
River. I ran out of gas halfway up the hill leading to
the bridge and fell over on the bicycle, defeated.
My phone rang again. What would I ever tell
Louise? I fished it from my jeans pocket and
answered.
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Death Fits Like A Glove
“You won’t believe this, Louise, but . . .”
“I can’t believe you lost Mr. Higgins,” Angel
said.
“Louise said the same thing. By the time she
finished reading me the riot act, I wished we were
back on non-speaking terms.”
“It’s a no-go so far on these internet bulletin
boards. There are tons of breeders selling dogs and a
few selling older breeds, but none match the
descriptions of our missing pets.”
“Do you see any of the same people selling more
than one dog or cat?” I asked.
“Not really. But a thief would try to disguise his
web presence and many of the bulletin boards are set
up to respond with anonymous email replies.”
“If I don’t find this guy in the next twenty-four
hours, I’d better find a new neighborhood. The people
here are likely to run me out of this one.”
There was a knock at the door, which startled us