1 PAWsible Suspects (9 page)

She let out a nasty laugh. “If you’ve been to Ruby’s house, you’ve already met one of them. Melissa lives just across the street.”

I gulped, thinking of the woman I’d talked to. I had never gotten her name, but honestly Melissa Maxwell or whatever her name might be would not have rung a bell. The older woman who had flirted with me was none other than Ruby’s niece.

I headed back to Ruby’s house intent on finding out why her disinherited niece would want to live across the street from her. It seemed like an odd penance to be so close and yet so far from someone in your family. I wasn’t sure why anyone would want to do that. It would be a daily reminder of something terrible.

Even as I thought this, I knew that my mother had done the same. She had locked herself in the house where my sister, Susan, had been taken. It was her daily reminder of what had happened and what could have been. I also knew what the action, or lack of action, had done to my mother. She was not the woman she had been before.

Melissa Maxwell was the same. She’d gone from a young woman in love to an older woman who was still seeking that love, still seeking her aunt’s approval for her choice. It hadn’t happened in all those years, and now it would never happen. The body isn’t the only thing that dies. Hope dies along with it. Hope for reconciliation, hope for a new beginning, hope for a large sum of money apparently.

I parked just down the street from Ruby’s house and went to Melissa’s home. I knocked on the door, and she answered quickly, giving me a smile. “Hello, I was hoping you’d come back. I’ve been lonely.”

I gave her a wan smile and accepted her invitation to enter. “Thanks. I just had a few questions for you about Ruby Jenkins.”

She nodded and helped me with my coat. “Like I said, I didn’t know much. I just saw the door open and she was gone.”

“You left out the part where she was your aunt,” I pointed out, not waiting for pleasantries to be over. I wanted the spotlight out of my life, and I was in a hurry to get things back to the way they were before. I liked my low-key life.

“Was is the operative word,” she said, now not looking so pleased to see me. “She hadn’t been a real aunt to me in ages.”

“Why would you want to stay here? What did you hope to get out of it?” I asked, wondering about a person’s ability to continue to seek out pain and misery when new life could begin instead.

She sighed. “You know she didn’t even recognize me. Granted, it’s been close to twenty years now, and yet she didn’t even know who I was. That made it so easy to stay here.”

“But why would you do that?”

“At first, I just wanted to see if she felt any remorse for what she’d done. I wanted to see if she would feel guilty for her behavior. But all she did was stay at home and watch those dogs. It was disgusting.”

“Since she stayed at home, you couldn’t try to break in and steal her money,” I suggested, thinking that Ruby had not made it easy for a robber. She never left the dogs or her house unattended.

She laughed, but now it wasn’t the coquettish titter of before. It was harsh and cold, and I wondered if this was my mother’s future if she didn’t get out. “Not at all. You’d think that those dogs were her children the way she coddled them. If she’d been kinder, she might have been a great aunt by now, but instead she kept bringing those dogs through the house.”

“Dogs don’t disappoint you the way people do,” I said, knowing it to be true of my own life. Dogs are always glad to see you and never angry. They’d wag their tail and love you no matter what.

“It’s disgusting. And you pretending to talk to the pets. That’s even worse. You’re taking people’s money for their stupid beliefs.” The attacks had become personal now, and I decided to get to the point.

“Is that why you decided to help your brother kill your aunt?” I asked, dropping what I thought was my bombshell.

“My brother? You’re barking up the wrong tree,” she said, laughing at her own pun. “He had nothing to do with this. Nothing.”

“You mean that you didn’t see him here the night of Ruby’s disappearance?” I was puzzled. I still needed a man who could lift people and who had come to my house.

I heard a noise behind me and I spun around just in time to see a man with a cast on his arm raise a wrench over his head. That was the last thing I remembered before my world went black.

When I awoke, I was in a van. I looked around and tried to figure out exactly where I was. My head hurt like a bitch, and I had trouble concentrating. I remembered being struck. I remembered being across the street from Ruby’s house. That was good. I knew events and people. It was still hard to think, and I closed my eyes again to rest.

When I awoke again, I felt better. My head, though it still pounded in my ears, felt better and I could actually think now. I was still in the van. From the looks of the contents, it was a work van of some sort. There were tools on the wall and floor of the van, and I lay in the middle of the carpeted floor.

My arms were bound behind my back, and my feet were as well. I couldn’t move, but the van certainly was moving. I tried to lean my head up to see if I could recognize any landmarks through the windshield, but I couldn’t move enough to see anything but carpet.

I tried to go back over my deductions. I immediately saw the error of my reasoning. I assumed that the brother Gregory had to have tried to rob me, since he was the only man in the case. However, as flirtatious as Melissa was, she could easily have persuaded someone to help her. So my deductions about stealing the dogs were correct, except for my idea of which man was involved.

Melissa had apparently recruited a man who wanted her and the money. As far as relationships went, I was thinking that this one didn’t have good odds to make it for the long run. However, from the soft voices in the cab of the van, they sounded pretty romantic for a couple in the midst of committing a kidnapping.

The thought of kidnapping reminded me of what they’d done to Ruby. Those nail-less fingers still haunted my dreams. They’d done that to a relative, so I knew that they would have no issues in doing worse to a stranger, particularly one who was in the way and who had clobbered the guy hard enough to break his arm. If I’d have been free, it would have been a fair fight, but apparently they’d figured out my martial arts training, and there would be no more fair fights to be had.

Finally, the van pulled to a stop. I still couldn’t see through the windshield to know where we were, but I could hear the wind howl. I had taken my coat off at Melissa’s house and a quick scan of the van showed no signs of it. I’d be going out into this wind without layers of clothes to protect me. That was going to be the first issue at hand.

Both of them left the cab of the van. I could hear the crunch of snow and ice under their feet and then the sliding door of the van opened. Melissa and the man were standing there, looking down at me. Up close, he had buzz cut brown hair with just a little on top. He hadn’t put on a hat, which made me hope that we wouldn’t be outside long. He might have been an attractive man, if he wasn’t going to be killing me. He was wearing a ski parka over a jeans jacket. The cast was more visible now, black material peeping out of his left sleeve. He grabbed the front of my shirt with both hands and yanked me out of the van. Melissa shut the door, and I looked around.

We were on the banks of Lake Erie. I hadn’t been here in ages, but I knew the place well. The lake was frozen over completely, which was no surprise in this area in winter. The wind whipped across the lake in gusts that took my breath away. A shirt was no match for the icy air that blew across my skin. I shivered, but he just held on to me tighter and began to walk me to the edge of the lake.

Melissa walked behind him. Her head darted this way and that, looking presumably for any signs of other people out this way. Other than ice cubes, nothing would be out on the lake today. It was too cold. I remembered the old weather announcements where they’d tell you at a particular wind chill how many minutes a person could stay outside without succumbing to hypothermia.

I knew today that my time remaining on this earth would be less than an hour. Another gust of wind blew across me and screeched towards shore. It cut through my jeans like I was bare-legged. We’d made it about twenty yards by my estimate out onto the lake. I could still see the van, but it was smaller and more benign at this distance.

I figured that the plan was to break through the ice, which could be a foot thick and dump me into the icy waters of Lake Erie, where I’d be dead within seconds and not found until May. It could be labelled an accident if the tape that bound me had dissolved by then. I wasn’t sure how long tape lasted underwater.

I shook my head, trying to focus. The beating with the wrench had done a number on me. My thoughts flew through my head like the winds on the lake. I was just trying to formulate a plan to get help when the hands let go of me, and I fell to the ice on the lake. I was in a similar position to how I’d landed in the van. My face was pressed against the ice and my rump was stuck up in the air with my knees tucked under me.

“See you later,” the man said with a harsh laugh. “Though we probably won’t. We just need to pick up that collar at your house and then we’ll be gone. Oh yeah, and you’ll be dead.” Melissa laughed at the statement like it was a line from a comedic movie.

My thoughts went back to that collar. It wasn’t at my house. It was in my car, which was conveniently parked on the next block past Ruby’s house. I wondered if Melissa knew what type of car I drove or would she have to wait to find it based on sitting in one position for several days. My keys were still in my pocket, which meant that they’d have to break in to move it. As if he’d read my mind, the man fished my keys out of my pocket.

“We’ll need these to get into your place. Sure hope those dogs don’t give us any trouble.” The grin on his face told me all I needed to know. There would be no Della and Perry when he was through, and I worried that there wouldn’t be any Bruno either. That thought made my mind snap to action like concern for me had not.

My mind snapped into gear. I’d have to wait until they got a certain distance away from me before I could start. I doubted that they would stand here and watch me die. They were that blood-thirsty, but no one would want to stand here in this weather. Once they’d left, I would kick back my feet. Fortunately, martial arts kept me amazingly flexible, so the movement was well within my range.

Then I’d have to get a grip on a part of the tape and pull until my feet were loosened from the binding. After that, I could move as quickly as I could to shore and to cover. I didn’t want to be out here any longer than I had to.

The man turned and walked away with Melissa trailing him. I had to wonder what would happen to her once he got his hands on Ruby’s money. She would be as expendable as Ruby and I were. I didn’t give her much chance at life beyond the next sixty days, but I knew that my chances weren’t all that good either. However, if Bruno needed me, I would have to make it back to shore and safety.

I pulled my legs up and behind me, so that my heels touched my rump. I began picking at the tape. I twisted my head so that I could see, and it had the added benefit of changing which cheek was pressed against the freezing temperatures of the lake. I felt a piece of the tape give, and I pulled. From what I could see, only a small piece of tape came loose.

I tried again. My fingers were getting harder and harder to manipulate. They tingled and then burned as I tried to move them to the tape. I picked at the tape some more and grabbed another piece. A slightly larger piece came off in my hand this time, but still not enough.

I tried once more, putting all of my concentration and energy into my efforts. I thought of little Bruno who wouldn’t know what to do without me. I thought of my mother losing another child and what it would do to her. I grabbed another piece of tape, and this time the entire strip came up. I maneuvered slowly so that it went around my legs once and then again.

I kicked my feet free, and then I attempted to stand. It’s not easy to stand upright when your hands are not free. You have to get to a crouched position and then use only your legs to stand. I looked across the lake from my new vantage point. The van was still in sight, and the man was walking around the outside of the van. Now that I saw it, I realized that it was a city electric van.

For someone who had been hit in the head, I was able to figure out another piece of the puzzle. Mr. Lindauer had heard a gunshot or something resembling it. My mind brought back a time in my past where I’d heard a transformer blow. I wondered if a worker for the electric company could make that happen or could make something that sounded like a shot happen. It seemed reasonable.

Also turning out the lights in the neighborhood would have given them cover of darkness in which to complete their scheme. Mr. Lindauer had talked about how dark it was at the house and on the street. The scene of all the lights on in Ruby’s house could be like when we lose the power and it comes back on with a bang where everything is lit up. All of these pieces started to fall into place.

While I was apparently standing in place getting my thoughts together, the man spotted me and headed back out towards the lake. He wasn’t running, but it was a deliberate pace that told me that I wouldn’t be left to die again. My death would be a much more active event than before.

While that might help the police in trying to find out who killed me, that thought was of little consolation to me, since I would still be dead. I wanted to live, seeing both my mother and Bruno in my thoughts. I would live so that they would not suffer.

I watched as he made a straight line to where I was. Since he was coming that way, I decided to run to the East. I kept about the same distance from the shore, knowing that I had to stay visible to anyone who might see me and call for help. The further out from shore that I was there was a smaller chance that I’d be spotted.

The man seemed to understand what I was doing and started moving at an angle to his original path so that he could stay the same distance out from shore as I was, but make time towards gaining on me. I wasn’t overly confident in my abilities to avoid him. My head hurt from the previous injury and my feet and hands had begun to feel numb and dead at the ends of my limbs.

I could only go so far before I’d fall down and then this game would be over. I just had to keep going though until someone saw me. Another gust of wind cut through my coat and I clenched my teeth tight to keep them from chattering. There was snow on top of the icy lake surface, so I kept moving as fast as I could.

One of the things I didn’t do was continue to look back every few steps. I always thought in those action movies that if the hero didn’t keep stopping and looking back that he might actually have outrun the bad guy. So I didn’t fall victim to that. He was still a certain distance behind me though he had come out on the lake to the same distance I was. I tried to run faster, but my legs didn’t want to move. The jeans that I wore felt like steel and each step was an extra motion to make the jeans move. It was agony on my legs, but I kept on going.

The wind picked up again. It whipped across the lake, and I could feel the shivers of the people from Michigan and Canada in each blast. It hurt me. I had generated a little heat from my run, but the heat from my body didn’t help when the sweat on my brow started to freeze as well. I’d be an icicle before the man ever caught up with me.

In the distance, I could see a few people on shore now. I stopped for a few seconds and waved my arms as best as I could. The mere fact that I didn’t wear a coat on a frozen Lake Erie probably garnered some attention. I started running again, but any movement was now more difficult, and I could hear the man coming up from behind me. I only had a few minutes at most to run.

My lungs were already aching from sucking in lungfuls of the frigid air, but I knew I had one chance here. I opened my mouth and shouted as loud as I could, “Help!” I couldn’t tell if the words got lost in the wind or if they’d made it to shore. It didn’t seem to have an immediate reaction from the few people on shore. I coughed now, knowing that I’d taken in too much of the glacial air for my own good.

I felt my body start to fall, and I turned enough to see the man’s arms around my waist. I fell, hitting my head again on the ice and snow. He kicked me three times in the ribs for good measure. I guess he was pissed at me for making him work.

He stood up slowly. I was surprised that the weather must be affecting him as well. I hoped that the weather would at least leave him with frostbite as a consolation for killing me. He reached his full height, and he pulled out a tire iron. It seemed bold to attack someone when there were spectators on shore, but they weren’t clearly visible to me. I figured that he was taking the chance that they wouldn’t see him clearly enough to make an identification.

He brought the iron up for the first blow when I heard a loud explosion. My frosty brain looked around for another transformer or perhaps a backfire, but there was nothing in the scene to create such a noise. However, the man began to fall. He crumpled, holding his middle. His eyes glazed over, and he hit the ice.

I would have been glad to see the end of this man, but I passed out.

When I woke up, I was in the hospital. I was under so many blankets and heating pads that I couldn’t move. It looked like I was the pea under the mattress, which was probably a good analogy since I had been irritating people throughout this entire investigation.

I looked around slowly, but no one else was in the room. I wondered about a number of different things, but my questions wandered out of my mind as I snuggled back in my bed and drifted off again. I managed to slide one cold arm out from under the blankets and dial the phone. Jimmy answered and I made quick arrangements for him to watch my pets until I could be home. He told me that he’d seen me on TV, and he wanted to talk more. I pleaded exhaustion which was true and hung up after agreeing on a price.