Muzzled (22 page)

And all conversation promptly stopped.

23

I sat straight up in bed. Instantly awake.

What—or who—had set every one of the sixteen dogs outside in the kennel house barking?

I tried to take a deep breath—but between my heart hammering high in my throat, and the room, blacker than the inside of a killer’s mind—breathing didn’t come easily.

I turned my head toward the night-stand beside my bed. The numbers, glowing red on the digital alarm clock, told me it was 1am. Three hours since Tanya had gone home.

Why were the dogs barking?

I shivered and resisted the urge to pull the duvet over my head and pretend deafness. Perhaps if I let the dogs bark long enough someone would come over from next door and investigate the noise—and find my mutilated body cut up in a hundred bloody pieces and spoiling the sheets—all because I’d been too chicken to get out of bed?

Oh, God, don’t go there
…

Stretched out across my feet, Lucky emitted a sleepy snuffle and turned over on her other side. Some guard dog. Not so Tater—hackles bristling, a warning growl deep in his tiny throat, he was on full alert and waiting for my order to:
Attack! Kill! Destroy!

My hand resting on his head, I felt warmth creep into my chilled bones and spread into my chicken heart. If a dog weighing no more than half pound of butter could be fearless under fire—so could I.

“It’s probably only that ugly feral cat again,” I told my miniature stegosaurus, who agreed and promised to eat the cat in the morning—after he’d licked up his corn flakes.

Feeling braver, I tumbled out of bed, switched on the light and reached for my dressing gown.

Not that I planned to personally investigate whatever had set the dogs off. Oh no, no, no. I’d been cured of doing idiotic things in the middle of the night after being hit on the head by a man who I thought was my friend. My erstwhile client, Peter Manning, who thankfully was now spending the next twenty or thirty years at his Majesty’s pleasure.

With Tater hot on my heels, I pattered barefoot down the stairs to the landing and pressed a specially installed dog-switch, high on the wall. Although I couldn’t hear the result from inside the house, I knew a soothing classical CD would now be working its magic in the dog kennels. This week’s musical selection was Brahms. Hungarian dance music followed by the hauntingly beautiful ‘Wiegenlied, Op. 49, No 4’—better known to us mere mortals as ‘Brahms’s Lullaby’
. S
o I knew it wouldn’t be long before the barking subsided to an occasional sleepy yap.

Tater and I were now wide awake and heading for the kitchen. “Yep! Definitely that feral cat,” I said, more to reassure myself than the dog. “Now, how about a hot chocolate for me and a bowl of warm milk for you?”

My trusty sidekick thought that would go down nicely, thank you very much.

Ten minutes later, with Tater snuggled up on my lap and fingers wrapped around a half-empty mug of hot chocolate topped with marshmallows, I lay my head back on the lounge chair and puffed out a sigh. Stanley’s altered ear brand niggled at me. He must have been the fast dog in his litter selected as a
ring-in
for a slower litter mate. But where was Stanley and his slower brother now? Were they even still alive? And what about the dog who raced and won at huge odds at Port Augusta yesterday? It wasn’t
Go Rambo
—it was one of his faster litter mates. The real Rambo couldn’t beat a two-legged centipede to the water bucket and back—even on a 40 degree day. No wonder the fake Rambo didn’t know me. And on reflection, there’d been something different about the dog’s ears. The genuine Rambo’s ears were longer, pointier, whereas his substitute’s ears were smaller and flatter.

If only I knew what the perpetrators of the scam did with the greyhounds after they’d raced? And then another thought crossed my mind. Maybe if I found the dogs’ secret hiding place—I’d find Liz and her team of protesters looking after them.

Craaaaaaash!

I froze. My heart, threatening cardiac arrest, stopped beating for at least 30 seconds before it burst into wild erratic flight again.

“Holy crap!” I lurched from the chair. Hot chocolate spewed in an arc. Tater erupted off my lap, his high pitched bark threatening to tear apart whoever or whatever lay on the other side of the front door.

Me? I couldn’t stop shaking. Where the hell was my alter-ego,
Bombshell Chick,
when I needed her? Evidently out getting her hair frosted. Finger nails half way down my throat, legs weaker than Grandma McKinley’s morning cup of tea, I inched across the room into the passageway and stood, holding my breath, ears on stalks, listening. Was someone on the other side of the front door waiting to do me in, or had they merely tried to scare me to death, and then left? I tiptoed toward the door—not to open it—hell, no—but to switch on the outside light and peer through the eye-hole.

By this time the greyhounds in the kennel house were barking again and Lucky had trotted down the stairs, a purple dinosaur dangling from her mouth. Not sure whether to growl or wag her tail in case we had a visitor, Lucky stood staring at the front door, pieces of purple felt peeping from around her teeth. Not so Tater. Tiny feet dancing on the spot, hair on the back of his neck standing up like pins on a pin cushion, he was geared up ready to chew on whoever’s ankles happened to walk through that door.

Eyes squinting, I leant against the door and scanned the limited view through the security hole. The light from the outside globe shone on the front verandah and then spread out like hot butter onto the driveway. But no-one was there. No alien monsters. No killers. Not even a noisy ghost. And the only movement I could see came from the wind bending a group of rose bushes at the top of the driveway.

I had to see more…

Hands inexplicably growing an extra set of thumbs, I fumbled to unlock the door, left the chain on the hook, and stuck my nose through the three inch opening. From the bottom of the door—a muddy red brick stared up at me. Okay. I could deal with that. I grabbed a quick breath and let it out slowly. One Oodnadatta. Two Oodnadatta. Three Oodnadatta…

Okay, I now had the solution to
what
had caused the crash—but not the
who
.

Did I really want to know the answer to that question?

Hell, no—but if I was going to get any more sleep tonight—

Ordering Tater to stay, I unhooked the latch, sent a message to the Universe to help find my elusive
Bombshell Chick,
and stepped outside the door.

And that’s when my poor battered heart went crashing downhill tumbling over and over until it splattered against the rocks.

For across my front door—in splashes of red—wet paint still dribbling from the letters, like blood—were the words that caused my heart’s demise.

YOU’RE NEXT!

24

This had to be a bad dream. Perhaps if I closed my eyes and counted to ten, it would go away. I opened my eyes. The nightmare was still there—in words a foot high—in words spray painted on the thick wooden varnish that sent fear, like a terminal disease, racing insidiously through my intestines.

Who’d left that message? Was it a threat or a promise? Was the spray-painter still lurking in the darkness, watching me, feeding off my fear?

It took me three goes before I finally convinced my feet to move. For me to spill inside the house, close the door and fumble the lock into place.

There’d be no more sleep for me tonight—in fact, I’d be lucky to ever sleep again. Words from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy danced in my head.

‘to die, to sleep no more’.

Fear clutched at my gut, twisted its grip a little tighter. I tried to clear the knot in my throat as I keyed in DI Adam’s phone number but when he answered, the only word I could get out was…

Help!

* * *

Detective Inspector Garry Adams, his five o’clock shadow more like a ten o’clock forest, sprawled on one of my kitchen chairs, legs stretched out in front of him. The wall clock, hands shaped like racing greyhounds, ticked off a minute’s silence before revealing the time: 1.45 am. During the silence, the DI’s dark eyes teased at me like a persistent fly. He then bent over his notebook and scribbled on the half-filled page before looking up with a pronounced sigh. “You ignored my advice, didn’t you?”

“Advice?” I echoed, not sure which of the many lectures he’d given me he was referring to this time.

“I distinctly told you to leave catching criminals to the police.”

“Oh. That advice.”

“Let me put this another way, Ms. McKinley. Do you have any idea who would have reason to deface your front door?”

“Deface? Funny term for a death threat.”

“It’s not necessarily a death threat. ‘You’re next’ could mean…many things.”

“Like what?” I growled. “Like someone snuck onto my property in the dead of night to paint a message on my door in blood red paint—and throw a brick for good measure—just to remind me I’m next in line to see the doctor?” I yanked the thick plaid blanket the Inspector had taken off my sofa more firmly around my shoulders. “Not likely.”

The familiar smell of dog clung to the rough blanket, comforting me. But the warmth couldn’t stop me shivering. Someone out there was determined to scare me—or worse.

Adams swiveled his head in the direction of his assistant, the vinegary Constable Belinda Chalmers, who stood smirking in the background. I could almost read the thought bubble hovering over the woman’s head: ‘
stupid ditz deserves everything she gets’.
“Ms. McKinley is suffering from shock,” the Inspector informed her. “So stir yourself, Constable, and make a nice hot cup of coffee.”

Chalmers’ mouth gaped. Lucky for her, I’d doused the kitchen with fly spray the night before. “
Me
?” she squeaked. “You want
me
to make that woman coffee?” If looks were finely honed axes, I figured DI Adams’s would now be trolling on the ground, hunting for his decapitated head.

However, Adams didn’t appear to notice the incredulous snort or the tight lips or the rest of her pissed off body language. Instead, his hand moved to pat Lucky the greyhound, who was leaning up against his leg, adoring eyes smiling up at him. Tater, due to the fact that he was obsessed with raping Chalmers’ ankles whenever he saw her, was locked in my bedroom.

When her superior didn’t respond, the policewoman snatched the electric jug from the kitchen bench, filled it with water from the Pura tap over the sink and stabbed the three pronged plug in the direction of an electrical socket on the wall.

“Milk and two sugars for me, thanks,” I said, enjoying the entertainment.

Her reply was a snort and I winced when another cupboard door slammed shut. At this rate I’d be renewing the hinges on all my kitchen cupboards before the end of the day.

“You know,” DI Adams said flipping over a page of his dog-eared notebook while chewing on the end of his biro. “Over the past three months, we’ve had a gang of graffiti artists leaving their tags all over the neighborhood. They’ve been driving the residents insane with their spray paint. I wouldn’t be surprised if—”

“If that’s a graffiti tag on my front door, I’m the Queen of the Undead.”

“Uh…huh,” he muttered and I was left wondering whether he thought the royal title suited me or not. Then, with a determined shove upwards, he lumbered to his feet and approached the coffee making constable who was still banging cupboard doors. If she ground her teeth any harder we’d be whisking her off to an all-night dental clinic.

The DI stretched up and lifted an unopened jar of Nescafe down from a top shelf in my cupboard. “This what you’re looking for Constable Chalmers?”

“Mmmgh.”

The corners of his lips twitched as he added another Simpsons’ mug to the one already on the bench. “Make that coffee for two, Constable.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “You don’t mind if I join you, do you, Ms. McKinley?”

I shrugged. “Be my guest.” And then I smiled up at Constable Chalmers. “You’ll find chocolate biscuits in the larder, Constable. Bottom shelf. Behind the Coco-Pops.”

DI Adams selected a teaspoon from the cutlery drawer and placed it in one of the mugs before making his way back to the table. For a man who’d only been in my kitchen a handful of times the Inspector seemed rather at home. Although, on reflection, I realized this gnarly policeman had been inside my house more times than my own mother…which was scary.

Before continuing our conversation, he carefully re-arranged his serge covered backside on the seat of the chair and encouraged Lucky to resume her leaning position against his leg. “Although I’m not saying you shouldn’t be careful,” he warned. “I don’t want you jumping to conclusions and fearing the worst, either. This could merely be the act of a couple of half-witted kids playing out some crime show they’ve viewed on the idiot box.”

“Or not.” I added and then decided to change the subject. “By the way, did your policeman mates up North fill you in on what happened to Scott Brady? How he was the victim of an attempted murder?”

“You mean, suicide attempt. Yes, Senior Constable Mark Kelly contacted me yesterday. An interesting case. He also told me about your brave—or maybe some people would call foolhardy—reaction to the event.”