Bulldog (Dev Haskell - Private Investigator Book 9)

by Mike Faricy

  I went back to the garage and got a pistol out of the glove compartment then cautiously returned to the house. I carefully stepped into the back room, quietly pushed the damaged door closed then listened for any telltale noise.

  I couldn’t hear anything, but just to play it safe I slipped off my shoes before I quietly started going through, searching the entire first floor room by room in the dark. I didn’t want to turn on a light for fear it would alert any intruder still here.

  The odds of some random knucklehead deciding to kick in the door were slim to nonexistent. There was only one name rattling around in my brain, Bulldog. I cautiously crept up the stairs to the second floor then started the process all over again, searching the place room by room in the dark.

  The pounding of my heart was getting louder as I worked my way down the hall. The door to the back bedroom was closed. I waited in the hall for a good five minutes, positive Bulldog was in there and just waiting for me.

  I finally pushed the door only to find it was closed, firmly. I crouched down and slowly turned the knob, after a long moment the knob clicked and I leapt forward into the room rolling on the floor with my pistol up ready to fire. The adrenaline was rushing through my veins and my entire system was on high alert. Thankfully, the room was empty.

  I approached the closet where the cabinet with the secret panel was, the absolute last place in the house to search.

  “I’ll give you till the count of five to come out or I’m going to shoot,” I said.

  I counted slowly, “One, two.” At three I went in, finger on the trigger ready to fire. The room was empty, I was breathing heavily, sweating and now stone cold sober. I turned on the light.

  The drawers were haphazardly thrown off to the side and the panel at the back of the cabinet was wide open. I was willing to bet whoever was here, and my educated guess was Bulldog, was probably in the house for no more than two minutes. He most likely stormed up here, tossed the drawers to the side and then got the disappointment of his life.

  I closed the panel, set the drawers back in the cabinet then turned on the lights as I walked back downstairs. I carried an upholstered chair from the front room through the kitchen and wedged it against the back door, then placed a couple of beer bottles against the door so if someone did happen to come back during the night they’d tip over the bottles and hopefully alert me.

  I went through the first floor, this time with the lights on. As near as I could determine nothing had been damaged. As I settled in to sleep on the floor behind the couch in the front room I was positive it had been Bulldog, the nagging concern was, now what?

  I think I slept for maybe a total of twenty minutes the rest of the night, and not all at once. What was Bulldog’s next move? Would he think the money was stolen by one of the renters while he was serving time? Would he blame Dermot and Casey? The only thing I was sure about was that Bulldog was not the sort of psychopath to just give up.

  My thoughts became more positive with the sunrise. I called the contractor first thing that morning and explained the break-in damage to the back door. They were there by midmorning making the necessary repairs. By noon I’d calmed down substantially, although it was a fairly warm day I was wearing a sport coat over my T-shirt to cover the shoulder holster.

  The rest of the day was mercifully uneventful and I was back at Casey’s place before dinner. As calm as I thought I was, I did do another search of the house with my pistol drawn ready to shoot. The only thing I found out of order was a coffee mug one of the contractors had left in the back room.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  My phone rang about a half hour later. I had my shoes off, feet up on the coffee table, and I was beginning to relax.

  “Haskell Investigations.”

  “Dev, are you busy?” It was Heidi and she sounded frantic.

  “You okay?”

  “God, I saw a mouse in the kitchen.”

  “You should probably go get some traps at the hardware store.”

  “Traps? Can’t you come over here and get him.”

  “Maybe he’ll just go away.”

  “Dev!”

  “Okay, okay, just relax.”

  “Relax? Are you kidding? You know what they say if you see one you’ve got a hundred or something.”

  “I don’t think you have a hundred. What could they live on? You never cook.”

  “Could you please just come over, please, please? I promise I will be very grateful.” she said.

  That last part sounded pretty good. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  “Don’t take any longer, the thing could be breeding right now. And bring your gun, maybe two guns.”

  I took my time. I showered, shaved, brushed my teeth, put on some clean clothes and picked up a bottle of wine at Solo Vino. Then I went to the hardware store and got some traps and poison. When I pulled up in front of her house, Heidi was sitting out on her front steps. She almost ran to the car.

  “What took you so long?”

  “I’m sorry, I was in the middle of something when you called.”

  “Probably a beer.”

  “You want this taken care of? Or, are you just going to bitch me out?”

  “God, I’m afraid to go back into my own house. He ran right along the kitchen wall, the little bastard.”

  “The thing is about this big,” I made a two inch gap between my thumb and forefinger.”

  “Just get him out of there.”

  “Here, I brought you a bottle of wine,” I said and handed her the bottle.

  “Believe me this isn’t enough,” she said. “What’s in the bag?”

  “Some traps and poison and…”

  “I don’t want you to catch him, I want the thing killed and out of my house, isn’t that what you do for a living?”

  “No, not exactly. I tell you what, why don’t you go pick up some dinner, here’s some cash,” I said and pulled out two twenties from my front pocket. “I’ll deal with this.”

  “Okay, my car keys are on the kitchen counter, I think.”

  I gave her a look.

  “I’m not going back in there, Dev.”

  “All right, let me get them for you, princess.”

  I got her car keys and handed them to her out in the front yard. “Did you see him?”

  “Yeah, he told me his name was Mickey.”

  “This isn’t funny, Dev,” she said and hit me on the shoulder, then suddenly she looked like she was on the verge of crying.

  “I’ll deal with it, Heidi. You go pick up some dinner and take your time.”

  She nodded and half ran to her car. I retreated to her kitchen. As usual there was virtually no food in the house except for some crackers and rice cakes in a cupboard above the stove. Everything else was in a can. There were two take out Styrofoam containers in the refrigerator which I didn’t have the courage to open and a bottle of mineral water. I found a jar of peanut butter in another cupboard. I baited the traps with peanut butter and some of the puffed rice cake. I figured he’d either get caught in the trap or once he saw what there was food-wise he would just take off and go to another house.

  Heidi returned a good hour later. She rang the doorbell.

  “Oh it’s you,” I said when I opened the door.

  “Did you get him?” she whined.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  She opened the door, gave me a big kiss and suddenly seemed her old sexy self. “I got a bunch of take out and some more wine,” she said and walked into the kitchen.

  I followed.

  “Did you shoot him?”

  “No, I set one of the traps and he just threw himself onto it, sort of a suicide thing I guess.”

  “You did get him, right?”

  “Yes, he’s out in your trash bin. I set some traps under your sink just in case there might be another one, but I didn’t see any signs.”

  “Oh, God, I hope not. I don’t know if I could deal with another one.”

  “Ho
pefully you won’t have to, what’s for dinner?”

  “There’s this great little Thai place I just love so we can eat healthy and it will taste good, too.”

  I must have made a face at the word healthy.

  “I think you can miss out on pizza just one night and you’ll live.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  We were working our way through the second bottle of wine, Heidi was laughing, feeling no pain and completely relaxed. I wasn’t far behind her and after the past couple of days it was feeling pretty good.

  It was one of those pregnant pause moments. We’d been joking and laughing and then we were suddenly quiet for the briefest of seconds at exactly the same time. The unmistakable sound of a mouse trap snapping reverberated through the kitchen like a howitzer going off. Then we heard high pitched squeaking coming from under the kitchen sink.

  Heidi looked at me, whined, “Dev” and jumped off her kitchen stool and onto the kitchen counter, kicking over the wine bottle in the process. “Dev, do something, damn it.”

  The squeaking continued and occasionally something rattled from under the sink. My first thought was to just shoot through the cabinet door.

  “God, Dev, don’t just stand there stupid, do something. I think he’s trying to open the door.”

  “I was going to clean up the wine you spilled.”

  “Leave that. Oh my God, listen to that thing. Do you think he’s hurt?” she said and then her eyes began to tear up.

  I didn’t want to open up the cabinet door, but I was running out of options when all of a sudden the squeaking stopped.

  “Oh God, now what?” Heidi half screamed, she was still on top of the kitchen counter with her legs drawn up and her arms wrapped around them. Her face was buried between her knees.

  “I think I better open another bottle of wine.”

  “Don’t you dare, not until you deal with that,” she said and pointed beneath her kitchen sink.

  “All right, all right,” I said then took a deep breath and cautiously opened the cabinet expecting to see a dead mouse. Instead the thing jumped onto the kitchen floor dragging the trap behind him.

  Heidi shrieked.

  The thing startled me and I went to stomp him with my foot. It must have been the wine because I missed and just caught the trap. The pressure was enough to cut his tail off and the little bastard shot across the kitchen floor, minus his tail and dripping blood along the way.

  “Oh my God,” Heidi screamed.

  He was at the kitchen door trying desperately to squeeze underneath and getting stopped by the riser on the floor.

  Heidi continued screeching.

  I grabbed the wine bottle off the floor and backhanded it at him. The bottle caught him just as he rose up on his hind legs. He splattered in a bloody mess against her white enamel kitchen door.

  “Oh God, I can’t look, I can’t look. Clean it up, Dev. Get rid of it, please, I’ll do anything, just get it out of my house.”

  I grabbed a handful of paper towels and wiped up what was left of the mouse, then picked up the trap and opened the drawer with the wastebasket. I dropped everything in the wastebasket then pulled the trash bag out, knotted it and marched out to her trash bin.

  Heidi was still on the kitchen counter when I came back in. I wet some more paper towels, cleaned up the little trail of blood running across her kitchen tiles then wiped the door clean. I sprayed some Windex on the door for added measure and wiped that off.

  “I’ll be back in a moment, I expect you to be off the counter and sitting on the kitchen stool by the time I return.”

  She stuck her tongue out at me, but didn’t say anything.

  By the time I came back in the kitchen, she was on the stool, but she was sitting cross legged making sure her feet were nowhere near the floor.

  “How would it be if I opened another bottle of wine and we can put this all behind us? Maybe you’d feel more comfortable in your living room.” I said. I was on my hands and knees, mopping up wine from the kitchen floor with a sponge.

  “I’ll wait for you out there,” she said and quickly exited the room. She was back to happy a glass of wine later.

  We both slept in late the next morning, but only because we were up a good portion of the night paying and collecting the debt. Just in case any little visitors might still be lingering, I banged around the kitchen while I put the coffee on the next morning, then I went out and picked up caramel rolls and we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  I didn’t make it into the office until well past the noon hour. I’d gone home to get cleaned up then swung by Casey’s just to check on things. Everything looked fine, both the front and back door were in one piece. I was still worried about her coming back to town tomorrow, but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I could only hope Bulldog assumed one of the low-life renters he’d brought in had gotten their hands on the money and disappeared.

  I thought it might not be a bad idea to check in on Swindle Lawless, aka Cougar to see if Bulldog had tried to shake her down. If she was the main attraction at Nasty’s for the after-work-banker crowd I figured she probably arrived an hour before, right around four. I was in the parking lot waiting for her.

  She drove in about fifteen minutes before she was due to go on stage. I might have missed her, in fact I was ready to take off after sitting in the parking lot for the better part of an hour waiting for her to show up. At first I thought it was a motorcycle with rumbling pipes, then I saw the Lincoln with the cracked windshield, buckled hood and the trunk held down with an elastic cord.

  Swindle pulled into a parking place, scraping the side of someone’s car in the process. An alarm sounded on the car and she backed out of the spot then hurriedly pulled into another spot a row over. I was pretty sure she’d been talking to Bulldog. At least I thought it was probably a safe guess once I saw her black eye.

  “Swindle,” I called and then hurried to cut her off before she made it to the ‘Employee’s Only’ door. The car alarm continued to chirp.

  She attempted to dodge me and go around the far side of another car, but I was too fast and caught up to her.

  “Hold on, Swindle, I just wanted to talk to you for a moment.”

  “Not really interested, sweetheart,” she said then looked at me and said, “Hey, I know you, don’t I? How’d you know my name?”

  “Yeah, Swindle, it’s me, Dev Haskell. I was buying you some shots the other night, hoping to get a little more personal, but it didn’t quite work out.”

  “There’s always tonight, Denny.”

  “What’s with the eye?” I asked.

  “Oh nothing, a little misunderstanding is all, someone thinking wrong, or just not thinking at all.”

  “Your friend Bulldog?”

  “That son-of-a-bitch better watch it if he knows what’s good for him. Accusing me of stealing. I got no idea what in the hell he’s even talking about.”

  “I heard he’s been shaking down a lot of folks.”

  “Not you, too. Why is everyone suddenly interested in Bulldog? First it was Tubby, then that young fool that was the bouncer.”

  “Fat Freddy?”

  “That’s the one. Why all the sudden interest in Bulldog? Ungrateful is what he is, he ain’t getting’ anymore from me after the other night, that’s for damn sure. He’s cut off as far as I’m concerned. Not that he was any good at gettin’ it up, anyway. Look, we should maybe link up after, I’ll give you a discount, but I’m on in a couple of minutes. All them suits just can’t seem to get enough of old Cougar. What’d you say your name was again?”

  “Dev.”

  “I’ll remember that and I’ll be looking for you in there, Des. You just remember to tip me real nice now, hear?”

  “Yeah, Swindle, I’ll do that.”

  She headed toward the ‘Employee’s Only’ door, unbuttoning her blouse along the way. She punched in a code on the key pad and by the time she had the door open t
he blouse was hanging over her arm. She’d just begun to undo her belt when the door closed behind her.

  As I walked back to my car I thought, ‘Well, there was my answer, Bulldog was still looking.’ The car she scraped was chirping intermittently now. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go so I headed down to The Spot.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  I hadn’t been at the bar for very long and for all practical purposes I’d been behaving myself. Mike was bartending and I was content to sip and just think. Casey was due back in town tomorrow and after seeing Swindle sporting a black eye I had fresh concerns. I had just signaled Mike for another when my phone rang.

  “Haskell Investigations.”

  “Dev?”

  It was Heidi and she sounded frightened. I really didn’t feel like dealing with another mouse. “Yeah, Heidi, what’s up?”

  A rough voice snarled across the phone, “You better get you ass over here if you ever want to enjoy your little friend, again.”

  The juke box was playing. People were talking and laughing. Mike was sliding a fresh pint across the bar to me. I was unaware of everything except Bulldog on the other end of the phone.

  “I’m coming, so help me, you touch her and I’ll kill you.”

  “Sure you will,” Bulldog laughed. “Better hurry or we’re gonna start without you,” he said then hung up.

  I left Mike holding the beer with a shocked look on his face and ran to my car. I pulled a U-turn across Randolph and blasted through the red light on the corner. I was climbing the hill, doing about sixty on the city street and picking up speed. At the Lexington stoplight I veered into the right turn only lane, gave a quick look then shot through another red light. I figured Bulldog heard me from a block away as I skidded around the corner then screeched to a stop halfway up the block in front of Heidi’s house. There was a long green Jaguar parked across the street. I was pretty sure it was the same vehicle Fat Freddy slit the tire on the other day after he stole Bulldog’s protection money.