4 Woof at the Door (21 page)

“You mean, the authorities will close you down?”

He nodded. “My ex-wife got on some stupid radio show in Boulder with this idiot talk-show host and accused me and my wolf of being responsible for that man’s death. If all these animals get put down because of this….” He let his voice fade.

I wondered if she had brought Atla to Ty’s home. “Does your ex-wife have a key to this building?”

“Janine? No. The only two keys are mine and Larry’s, wherever he is. I just hope he isn’t—” He broke off.

“Dead,” I completed for him. “Me, too.”

Damian nodded solemnly. “Why are you curious about the key?”

I felt awkward and out of place for saying this, but I was too curious not to give voice to my suspicions. “If your ex-wife resented your animals, could she have been behind all of this somehow? The murders, I mean?”

“No.” His voice was cross. “It’s not like that between us. We have a friendly relationship. We can’t live with each other, is all. To do something that…evil, she’d have to hate me and want to see my animals get killed. She loves animals, especially the big cats.”

“Does she still get to see them?”

“She only comes out once a month or so, usually when I’m exercising Leo, there.” He gestured with his chin at the male lion, which pawed playfully with the bars of his gate. “Not a very original name for a lion, I know. He was Janine’s favorite. Used to ride in the passenger seat with her when she was driving.”

“That must have raised some eyebrows around town. Bet nobody tried to cut off her car in traffic.”

Damian chuckled. “It did make some folks nervous. That’s why we got tinted windows on both our vans. Kaia, sit.” The wolf obeyed perfectly, and Damian headed toward the controls. “Let me show you how—”

“Did Kaia bite Janine’s arm once?”

He glanced over his shoulder at me. “You must have heard that broadcast. A friend of mine heard it, too, and told me what Janine said about Kaia.”

“By the way, that ’idiot talk-show host’ you mentioned is a friend of mine.”

“Ouch. Sorry.” He opened the gate, Kaia eying me with, I hoped, idle curiosity.

“No, it’s okay. I only like her when she’s off the air myself. So did Kaia bite her arm?”

“No. I don’t know why she said that. It never happened. Maybe she just got carried away with the sound of her own voice and started to fabricate to make herself sound more exciting.”

That was plausible. My first impression of Janine was that she was all too aware of her beauty and could easily be enamored of the limelight. I watched Damian go into Kaia’s cage, leash in hand. My heart pounded a little with the stress of being this close once again to wolves. Damian roughhoused with Kaia, then fastened the leash on his collar.

The two came strolling up to me, and Damian held out the leash for me. “Would you like to hold this?”

I chuckled. He sounded like a proud parent assuming everyone would want to hold his baby. “Sure.” I took the leash. Kaia acted attentive and anxious as Damian repeated his procedure and went in to get Silver. Watching Kaia stand at attention beside me, I realized that my agreeing to be out with Damian and his wolves was an important step in shaking my nightmarish fear of wolf-like dogs. I hadn’t even stopped to think that this might be healing for me, but I knew it was. I felt so relieved, I was tempted to give Kaia a hug. Fortunately, I’m not that stupid.

Damian returned with Silver straining to sniff at Kaia, who stayed put beside me. Damian took the leash from me and the wolves led the way out of the building.

“How did you come to own all these animals?”

“I was raised on a farm, and we inherited this lion cub from a dimwit neighbor when I was a boy. Nowadays, I’m pretty well-known. Used to be when a zoo wasn’t up to standards and there were no other zoos that could take an animal, they’d put them down. Now they know they can call me.”

“Beverly Wood had told me you travel most weekends.”

He nodded. “On weekends, I do various appearances with the animals, when I’m not bringing tour groups or photographers here. Then on weekdays, I work my regular job as an auto mechanic, just to meet expenses.”

He’d given no outward indications that he recognized Beverly Wood’s name. He probably hadn’t even heard about her death yet. I decided I wasn’t ready to talk about that.

“I’ll bet you could get a lot of money for using the animals in movies and special appearances.”

“I’m not in this for the money. Even though it’s true that there’s a lot of ways I could make a fortune. And, apparently, my soon-to-be ex-employee was into one of those ways…studding out my wolves.” He led us all to a second gate and pulled out yet another key to open this padlock. “It’s amazing how ignorant people are. They’ll pay top-dollar for purebred or hybrid wolves when there are so many terrific dogs at animal shelters.”

“Do your dogs get the free run of all this property?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s unfenced around its perimeter, as you can see, but you have to go more than twenty miles till you get to anyone else’s property. I’ve never had a problem with one of my animals running away.”

“Not even the wolves? Can’t wolves travel something like a hundred miles a day when they’re hunting?”

“In the wild, sure. But these wolves were raised in captivity and aren’t used to roaming the countryside for their food. Even if you opened all my animals’ doors, most of ’em would stay put. Their dens are their homes. I have to admit though, I’ve been keeping my dogs in the yard and the house ever since this weekend. I’m kind of gun shy, I guess you could say.”

The wolves strained to run free, and once Damian had closed the gate behind us, he let them off from their leashes. They loped across the field away from us. It was such a breathtaking sight, my eyes misted watching them. It must be such an incredible thing to be that coordinated, that fast.

The pair of wolves veered into what looked like a ravine of sorts off to our left.

“Strange,” Damian muttered, following them up the slight incline that bordered the ravine. “They usually go right out toward the back fields, then come back around when I whistle for them. There’s a lot more room for them to—”

He stopped, seeing the same thing I was. The wolves were sniffing at a spot thirty yards or so ahead of us. The area was swarming with flies, even at this late hour.

Damian shielded his eyes as best he could from the sun, low in the sky. “Cripes,” he muttered. “I’ve got to get down there.” He dashed a few strides further up the incline, then paused to look a second time. “What the…” Damian’s voice trailed off. I trotted alongside him. He held out his arm to block me. “Allida, you stay here. I’ll go get the wolves on lead.”

I had already seen enough, even from this distance, to know exactly what was happening. I took a step back down the hill so that only Damian and the wolves were in view.

The wolves had found what appeared to be a prone, fully dressed male body.

Damian’s face was white as he returned with both wolves on lead, wanting to return to their discovery, but too obedient to protest more than by baying and tugging half-heartedly against the leash.

Damian couldn’t meet my gaze. From the glassy look of his eyes and the perspiration on his brow, it was clear he was fighting the urge to be physically sick.

He walked right past me and said, “We have to call the police. Kaia and Silver just found Larry Cunriff.”

Chapter 15

I couldn’t get a signal on my cellphone. We went back into the shelter. The animal odor seemed more pungent than it had just minutes before. Damian got the wolves back into their cages, then rejoined me in the center portion. There was a phone on the wall.

He spoke in hushed tones. A chilling fear enveloped me like a rain-soaked sweater. Three people were dead. Why? What had I gotten myself into?

The only possibility that still made any sense to me was that these deaths were the result of the hideous blood sport run amok; that Ty had gotten himself involved with disgusting people who got off on watching others suffer. They might have started with dogs and now moved on to humans. Ty and Larry could have simply been dispensable members of their group.

But what about Beverly? Despite what Rebecca had told me, I could not believe Beverly had been a willing party to dog fights. She might have witnessed something, perhaps even unknowingly, that posed a threat to Ty’s murderer. Was it the severed phone cord? If so, was Rebecca in danger? Was I?

Damian hung up. He turned, but still couldn’t bring himself to meet my gaze. His face was a portrait of barely restrained emotion—anger and sorrow. He gestured at the door. “County sheriffs are going to meet us in the driveway. May as well go out and wait for them.”

He and I sat down together on the scrubby grass near the head of the driveway, neither of us speaking.

Damian fidgeted with a reed of grass, shredding its seeds one by one. “Larry’s body could’ve been out there since Saturday. I didn’t let any of my animals out the gate between then and now. Maybe Larry gave Atla to the killer, who turned around and killed him.”

“Could you tell how Larry was killed?”

He shook his head, which seemed partly an attempt to cover for a shudder. “His body wasn’t…in the best of shape.”

At length, he looked at me and said, “I want to figure out what’s going on here. Tell me everything you can about Ty Bellingham’s murder.”

I gave him as complete a rundown on the events of the past weekend as I could, including my friend’s death, and related this morning’s confusing meeting with Rebecca, as well as her accusation about Beverly’s involvement in the dog-fighting ring.

“You don’t believe her?” he asked.

I shook my head. “You know how intuitive dogs are. I just can’t believe she could have loved dogs so clearly, yet been aiding and abetting Ty.”

“And this warehouse you were telling me about. The one with the secret room. Have you gotten the chance to check that out?”

“Not yet, but I will tomorrow. I was going to ask if you’d come with me. I’m meeting Chesh Bellingham around five o’clock at the flea market, then she’s—”

“The flea market? My ex-wife will be there. She makes carvings that she tries to sell every so often. Maybe I’ll go and see what she’s up to. I’ll meet you there.” He furrowed his brow. “Are you going to tell the police about this hidden room? Have them take a look first?”

“Not till I’ve seen it myself. The police haven’t shown much interest in my theory about dog fighting being connected to Ty’s death. Taking any part in or even knowing about a dog fight without reporting to the authorities is now considered a felony, not just a misdemeanor. Maybe that’s why…”

I was about to say that maybe someone killed Beverly rather than let her turn them in to the authorities for soliciting dog fights, but I didn’t want to give voice to that theory. My quest to put a stop dog fighting could be making me a bigger target.

The sheriffs arrived and separated us to get our statements. I was glad to see that there were no detectives from either Ty’s or Beverly’s murders on hand to say, “You again?” But that was short-lived. An unmarked sedan pulled up, and out stepped Detective Rodriguez. His first words to me were, “Allida Babcock. Hello. Again.”

The message light was flashing on my machine when I arrived in my office the next morning. I pressed the “play” button and immediately recognized Chesh Bellingham’s voice. She asked me to return her call as soon as possible and that if I was hearing the message after nine a.m. to call at her store. It was well after nine, so I called her at the second number.

“I finally got back into the house,” Cheshire told me when I had her on the line. “It’s weird though. I found something at the house that just…totally floors me.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I’ll show it to you. I’d like to get someone else’s opinion.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a long story. I’ve got customers.”

I rolled my eyes. This struck me as gamesmanship on her part. “Before I let you go, how’s Doobie doing?”

“Now that he’s in his own element, he’s a little better.”

“Good.” I glanced at my watch. “Our next appointment is for six p.m. this evening. Can this…mysterious thing you want to show me wait that long, or can I meet you over at your house a lunchtime?”

“Hey, yeah. Cool. Meet me at my house around one. That’ll give me a chance to check on the Doobster.”

“The Doobster?” I repeated sourly to myself after hanging up. I hadn’t heard the “-ster” suffix added to names until the ’eighties or so. Chesh was mixing her decades’ lingo.

After an uneventful morning, I found myself once again ringing the Bellinghams’ doorbell. Despite the beautiful dry weather, a feeling of deja vu crept up my spine.

Doobie started barking, and I was soon looking at his big face pressed against the front window. Chesh opened the door for me, and I barely had time to grab my noisemaker and activate it before the time Doobie jumped up on me, flattening me against the wall.

It took me two shrill blasts of the noisemaker before he put all four paws on the ground, which was a slower reaction time than yesterday. I tried to silently assure myself that his behavior represented job security, rather than failure.

Unfazed, Chesh said to me, “Come take a look at what I found hidden in the back of the dresser drawers in Ty’s bedroom.”

“You had separate bedrooms?”

She ignored the question and crooked her finger over her shoulder as she led the way through the living room, which—I noted—had been fully restored with all of its former troll-like furniture. She continued down the hall and into the part of the house where I’d never ventured.

She opened the first door, and, to my surprise, it was a bedroom furnished in classy—meaning non-sixties-style—antiques: a four-poster bed, a very attractive oak dresser with a mirror, a hand-stitched quilt on the bed. What was not surprising was that Doobie nearly bowled us both over in his rush to enter the room first.

“Is this your bedroom?” I asked.

“No, Ty’s.” She hopped up on the bed, which squeaked with her weight, and grabbed what looked like the basic size and shape of a yearbook that had been on the nightstand. “This is what I wanted to show you.”