Ruff Way to Go (11 page)

“It’s worth
a quick check, though.”

“Okay. I’ll
call her and ask her. If you don’t hear back from me, that means she hasn’t
seen Shogun.”

“I don’t
mind calling her myself, Trevor.”

“But... I...this
isn’t a good time. She’s very distraught at our losing the dog.”

“Distraught?
I thought you said she hasn’t stayed in touch with Shogun.”

“I...that’s...what
I meant was that Shogun hasn’t been back there. She hasn’t kept in touch in
terms of taking the dog to her place for visits. Let me get you her phone
number. Uh...just a moment.”

I pondered
the nervous vibrations I was picking up over the phone. Trevor was giving me
the distinct impression that, for some reason, he didn’t want me to contact his
sister. Maybe he hadn’t really told her that Shogun was missing and didn’t want
her to hear the news from me.

He got back
on the line a moment later. “I can’t seem to find her address or her phone
number. Tell you what, I’ll keep looking, then I’ll give her a call and tell
her you’d like to speak with her, and she’ll get back in touch with you.”

“Okay. That’d
be great. Thanks. What’s your sister’s name?”

“Luellen.
Listen, I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll have her call you.” He hung up
without as much as giving me her last name.

There was
something very weird going on. Why didn’t Trevor want me to contact his sister?

I called
information to check for a Luellen Cunningham in Campion. There was none. I
flipped through the yellow pages of my Berthoud-Loveland directory, which
included Campion, and spotted an advertisement for silky terriers. The ad
listed both the address and phone number. 1 decided to forgo the phone call and
go for the direct approach.

Campion was
farther from Boulder than Berthoud, but having hit traffic at an off time, I
was at the house that I presumed to be Luellen’s just an hour later. It was a
two-story home in a new, very suburban neighborhood, with only the mountains in
the distance making the setting at all unique.

A wooden
cutout in the shape of a silky terrier was fastened to Luellen’s door. The
cutout featured a cartoon dialogue bubble emerging from the dog’s mouth with
the words, “Luellen is OUT.” The final word was written on a sliding panel.
Just below the dog was a small hook holding a cardboard sign with the words, “I’ll
be back at:” over a clock face. The hands were set to a time five minutes in
the future.

All of this
signage could well mean that Luellen wasn’t home, I thought, but I rang the
doorbell anyway. To my mild amusement, the doorbell sang out, “Arf, arf, arf,”
in ascending tones. This set off a cacophony of live barking, but brought no
human response. I took a seat on the bench beside her front door, keeping an
eye on my watch to test the accuracy of Luellen’s door postings.

With almost
two full minutes to spare, a dark blue minivan pulled into the driveway. I half
expected to see a mural of a silky on the side paneling, but the only doggie
doodad was a little stuffed dog that swung from the rearview mirror.

The driver,
an attractive fortyish woman with shoulder-length dark hair, rolled down the
window and called pleasantly to me, “Hi. I’ll be right with you.” Then she
pulled her van into the attached garage.

Unsure of
whether or not she was going to come through her house or up the front walkway
to meet me, I stepped down off the brick porch and peered around the corner.
She trotted out of the garage toward me. She was dressed in slacks and a plaid
blouse, rolled up at the sleeves. She wore the wrist braces typically worn by
those suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome.

“Hi,” she
said to me. “Are you here to fill out an application?”

“Application?”

“Yes. For a
puppy from the next litter. I’m afraid I’m very picky about whom I sell my dogs
to. And I must warn you that I don’t have any puppies available for sale at the
moment.”

Not wanting
to broach the subject of Shogun too abruptly, I said, “Oh. That’s too bad.”

“You’re
welcome to come in, though, and see what fine animals these are.”

“Sure. I’d
like that. Can I give you a hand with your groceries?”

“That would
be nice. Thanks.”

Whatever
physical problem caused her to wear the wrist supports didn’t seem to slow her
down when it came to carrying grocery bags. She thrust the two bags that she’d
been holding into my arms, grabbed a couple more bags, then we did an awkward
dance getting the inner door to the garage open while I introduced myself. My
name clearly meant nothing to her. If her brother had already called to tell
her about me, she must have been at the grocery store at the time.

Luellen’s
house was like entering a different world, where most of its inhabitants were
less than a foot tall and very hairy. With excited long-haired dogs swirling
around our ankles, we proceeded down a short hardwood-floored hallway and set
the bags on the counter of her kitchen. I noted that her answering machine
nearby had a flashing red light. Assuming the message would be from Trevor, I
would have loved to overhear it. With luck, she might listen to it in my
presence.

“These are
some of my favorite babies,” Luellen cooed, sweeping two nearly
identical-looking dogs into her arms. All told, there were eight silky terriers
who’d followed us into the kitchen. “This is Lucas and Candy. Silky terriers
are just the perfect dog. They’re not too yippy and not too big. At the same
time, they’re a dog’s dog. You know what I mean?”

I’d never
really heard anyone refer to a “dog’s dog,” so I merely smiled. All toy breeds
are dismissed by a certain subset of dog lovers as being for folks who really
want a housecat but, for allergies or other reasons, wind up with a dog. You
put a silky up against a Saint Bernard, and I suspect the Saint Bernard would
be considered the doggier dog.

“Do you have
any dogs, Allida, or will this one be your first?”

“I have two
dogs,” I replied, glancing again at her answering machine. I gestured at it
with my chin. “I see you have a message.”

“Yes, it’s a
regular madhouse around here.” She nuzzled the dogs in her arms, then set them
down. She grabbed a small stack of what looked like frozen vegetables and
jammed them onto an already crowded shelf in the freezer. “Were you looking to
get a puppy right away?”

“No, not
really.” There was no sense in delaying my telling her the real reason for my
visit any longer. “Actually, I’m not here to ask about purchasing one of your
puppies. I’m a neighbor of Trevor’s.”

There was a
barely perceptible hitch in her motions, then she continued to put away
groceries. “When you say you’re a neighbor of his, do you mean in Berthoud?”

“Yes, I live
across the street from the house he and Edith shared.”

Her face
grew somber. “You must have known that poor woman who was murdered, then.”

“Cassandra
Randon. Yes.”

“That’s such
a tragedy. Trevor always spoke highly of both her and her husband. Do the
police have any theories about who the murderer is?”

“Probably,
but they haven’t shared their opinions with us civilians.”

She swept
her hair behind an ear, her dark eyes focused on mine, a thoughtful expression
crossing her pleasant features. She shared Trevor’s pointy nose, but overall,
she was quite a bit more attractive than her brother. “Wait a minute. Allida. I
remember the name now. You do something with dogs, don’t you?”

“Yes, I’m a
dog behaviorist. In fact, Edith had recently hired me to help determine custody
of Shogun.”

She smiled. “That’s
right. Trevor mentioned that to me just yesterday afternoon. He said Edith had
hired you. I told him that if you knew what you were doing at all, he’d wind up
with custody.”

“Well,
Luellen, I have to say that I do think it’s quite possible that your brother
would have wound up with custody of Shogun. However, right now all I care about
is locating Shogun. I was thinking that it was possible that he came here once
he got frightened and left his home.”

“Oh. I see.
He’s not here, though.” An anxious look flitted across her features and she
jumped back a little. “Oh, shoot. I forgot to get something critical at the
store. Was there anything else you wanted to know, Allida?”

I wasn’t
certain, but I had gotten the impression that she’d seen something behind me
that frightened her. I turned and watched as a ninth dog came toward us. The
dog walked with those cute, perky little steps as he padded across the kitchen.

Could this
be Shogun? Where had he come from? I silently answered my own question: In this
strange—to him—environment, he would be lowest-ranking dog and
therefore the last to enter a room to investigate new visitors. He came up to
me as if returning to an old friend.

“Sorry to
kick you out, Allida,” Luellen went on nervously, “but I’m afraid I’ve got no
choice but to run back to the store.”

I knelt and
let Shogun climb into my lap. “Shogun! Hi!” In my intense relief, I realized
how frightened I’d been that Shogun had gotten killed in yesterday’s tragedy. “What
a good boy Shogun is. Thank goodness you’re all right!”

Luellen was
staring in unabashed horror at us, her face pale. “That is not Shogun, Allida.
That’s his brother, Krumpet.”

I studied
her features. “Then why does Krumpet know me and respond to the name Shogun?”

“He’s just a
friendly dog, that’s all. Krumpet, come.” She slapped her thigh as she called
him. After a moment’s hesitation, the terrier headed toward her.

“I stand
corrected. What an embarrassing mistake. I guess I was just so relieved to
think that I’d found him that my imagination got the best of me.”

“No harm
done. I’m just going to put all the dogs...outside now. They need their
exercise.” She gave me a pained expression, then carried “Krumpet” out of the
room, patting her thigh to signal all of the dogs to come. The remaining eight
dogs trotted obediently after her.

What a
perfect place to hide a silky terrier. Not unlike hiding one particular needle
in a packet of needles. But why would someone hide Shogun here? Or anyplace
else, for that matter?

Luellen
returned empty-handed. Her cheeks were crimson by now, and she averted her
eyes. She knew I was on to her.

There had to
be an explanation for her trying to hide Shogun, and if it had anything to do
with Cassandra’s murder, I wasn’t about to force her hand.

At least,
not until I was relatively certain it wasn’t holding a dagger.

I said goodbye,
got into my car at what I hoped was a casual enough pace, drove a few blocks,
then pulled over to consider my options. My hunch was that Trevor was trying to
pull one over on Edith by helping to hide the dog at his sister’s. And yet I’d
told Trevor that, if he was Shogun’s main caregiver, he was likely going to
retain custody.

So why would
either Luellen or Trevor hide Shogun, unless their doing so was related to
Cassandra’s murder? The dog was almost certainly at the murder scene, at least
until the killer opened the gate, likely during the murder itself. How, then,
could the dog have wound up at Luellen’s, if not on his own four feet or having
been brought here by the killer?

I needed to
cross my name off the police’s list of suspects. Maybe the best way to go about
doing so was to enlist their help now. I could tell Sergeant Millay that Shogun
was in the home of the sister of the man who owned the property where Cassandra
Randon was killed. Getting the officer to believe that this was
Shogun—and, therefore, could have been brought here by the
killer—was going to be a challenge. Despite my best efforts, the sergeant
had remained convinced that Shogun was likely to have simply run off, never to
return, the moment the gate was left open.

I could
picture Sergeant Millay, his hooded, emotionless gray eyes staring at me as I
explained that, yes, this really was Shogun, in spite of what Luellen might say
to the contrary. It would be more effective to have him witness Shogun running
up to Edith or Trevor, but that meant convincing the sergeant to insist that
they accompany us to Luellen’s home. Plus I wasn’t sure that either Edith or
Trevor should be entrusted with the dog until all of this could be sorted out.

I drove to
the nearest public phone, outside of a gas station on Highway 287, and called
the Berthoud police, asking for the sergeant. He was out, and the dispatcher
asked if I wished to speak to another officer instead. Not really. Hard as it
was to imagine Sergeant Millay believing me—or caring about the
dog—it was even less likely that some policeman I’d barely met would act
on such an odd request. I gave my name and said I’d call back.

Time was of
the essence. Luellen had not bought my act of pretending to realize that my
identification of Shogun had been a mistake. She would call her brother and
have him hide the dog someplace else.

How could I
prevent Luellen from secreting the dog away a second time? I could stand guard
at her house, but then what? Follow her if she left with a dog under her arm?
Even at that, she was likely to spot me following her and could simply outwait
me. And there was no chance of enlisting immediate help from the police. Even
if I could prove that
she was harboring Shogun, that wasn’t a crime. Especially not when
Trevor, Shogun’s owner, knew that Luellen had the dog and that he was safe.