Ruff Way to Go (3 page)

“Your sister
sold him to you?”

“That’s
right. Edie only wants Shogun to keep him from me. She never showed any
interest in that dog till I left her and took Shogun with me.”

“But she has
custody of Shogun now, doesn’t she?”

“For the
time being. I swear, though, I’ll get my dog back if it’s the last thing I do.”
He paced as he spoke, wearing a path in the linoleum in front of my desk.

“She told me
that Shogun was a gift to
her.”

“From
me,
yes. But she never appreciated him. I took care of Shogun from the very
first day.”

“If that’s
true, Trevor, you have nothing to worry about. Edith has promised she’ll abide
by my decision.” That was stretching the truth a bit, but I instantly decided
that if Edith refused to give me such a promise during our appointment later
that day, I wouldn’t proceed. “If you’re the main caregiver, the dog will
likely want to stay with you, and I’ll see that in his behavior.”

He stopped
pacing and met my eyes. “I hope so. Shogun hasn’t been himself in months now.
He’s turning into the stereotypical nervous lapdog.”

I nodded, so
far finding myself empathizing with him rather than with my actual neighbor,
which spelled neighborhood discord for Mom and me. It seems to be harder for
divorcing couples to work up an amicable settlement for which one gets the dog
than which one gets custody of the children. Judges seem to treat dogs as they
would any other kind of property, and that is neither realistic nor fair.

His temper
totally evaporated now, Trevor sighed, flopped his hands at his sides, and
said, “See what you can do, Allida. I’ll go along with your decision, whatever
it is.”

“I’ll be
meeting with Edith and Shogun in a couple of hours. Can you arrange to have him
at your place for a visit tomorrow?”

He said he
thought he could, and we set a tentative appointment for the following evening.

Late that
afternoon, I arrived as scheduled at Edith Cunningham’s house, having parked in
my garage and walked over. The house was silent. I rang the doorbell, then saw
a magenta sticky pad note sheet affixed to the door. Its shaky lettering,
written with a felt-tip pen, read:

Shogun and I
are in the backyard. I won’t be able to hear the bell. Please come around the
house.

That
explained the house being so quiet. A gust of wind nearly knocked me off
balance as I left the porch.

I cast a
glance at the clouds that seemed ready to let loose a torrent any moment now.
With the weather as it was, this was not necessarily going to be a
representative meeting. Dogs are often disconcerted by thunderstorms. Some are
so fearful that they can actually endanger themselves and jump through glass
windows to escape the sound.

The
Cunninghams owned quite a large piece of property.
The family
that owned this place during my childhood had kept horses in the back pasture.
Trevor had removed the electric fence for the horses and allowed the pasture to
grow wild with native grasses and vegetation. Their remaining fence was
dog-appropriate, enclosing a moderate-sized backyard.

What was not
dog-appropriate was that the gate was wide open. I swung the cedar gate shut
behind me, the latch fastening with a noisy thud.

“Edith?
Shogun?”

No answer.

I tried to
assure myself that they must be in the old barn or shed behind the fence and couldn’t
hear me from there. It’s just that the dog
should
have heard me. Shogun
was less than five years old and shouldn’t have had any hearing problems.

A drop of
water splatted in front of me, then another hit my head. Where was the dog? Why
hadn’t he heard me or picked up on my scent by now?

I quickened
my step, trotting in my sneakers around the large Australian pines alongside
her house. “Edith? Shogun?”

Still no
answer.

I gasped at
the sight that greeted me.

Cassandra
Randon was lying motionless on her stomach on Edith’s wooden deck. Her legs
within her jeans were twisted at an awkward angle. Her wide open and unseeing
eyes were fixed in my direction, her expression permanently contorted in
horror.

There was
blood everywhere, matting and darkening Cassandra’s hair. A jagged piece of
flagstone—two inches thick and ten inches or so wide and deep—lay
near her head. The stone had once been a decorative rock in the garden beside
the redwood deck, but was now covered in blood.

“Help!
Somebody call the police!” I yelled as I rushed up to her. My words seemed to
be swallowed in the air.

She’d been
bludgeoned. I felt Cassandra’s carotid artery, having to divert my eyes from
the sight of her fractured skull. No pulse.

I needed to
contact the police. I stared in the direction of Cassandra’s house—no
puppies in the backyard, no sign of her daughter or her husband, who was
probably still at work.
Oh, my God. Poor Melanie!
A little girl, left
without a mother.

Who was
going to tell her and her father about Cassandra’s death? Suddenly I couldn’t
remember Mr. Randon’s first name, and that struck me as a horrible failing. I’d
found his wife’s body, and I couldn’t even think of the man’s name.

What was she
doing out here on Edith’s deck? Edith and Shogun were supposed to be back here,
not Cassandra. Furthermore, who was watching Melanie?

My vision
fell on an odd pattern in the blood, little markings that extended from the
deck on down the steps to the landscaping rocks.

Paw prints.

My head and
stomach spinning, I headed toward Edith’s sliding back door, intending to call
the police. As soon as my hands touched the glass, a terrifying realization hit
me. Cassandra’s killer could be inside!

Edith’s
phone was in plain sight on the kitchen counter. With my palms pressed against
the glass and my heart pounding, I tried to decide what to do. My instincts
were screaming at me to run home, to call from there.

What if
Melanie was waiting at home, right next door, for her mom to return? She could
come outside to their shared fence to check on her at any moment. I couldn’t
let the little girl find her mother this way.

“Move!” I
demanded of my recalcitrant body.

The door was
unlatched and slid open easily.

“Edith?
Shogun?” My voice was so shaky it sounded foreign to my own ear.

There were
no sounds, no vibrations through the floorboards that might indicate someone
was here and coming toward me.

A second
frightening realization hit me: Could Edith be here inside the house, a second
victim? My stomach lurched at the thought. I didn’t want to search for her,
didn’t want to acknowledge this possibility.

My vision
fell on Shogun’s combination food-and-water dish on a plastic placemat in the
kitchen corner. That was bad planning. The food dish should always be separate.
The owner needs to leave the water dish out, but have total control over the
food dish, which maintains owner authority. Part of me was horrified at myself
for thinking such mundane, irrelevant thoughts at such a time, but another part
recognized that my struggle to grasp at the familiar was the one source of
comfort I could find.

I scanned my
surroundings for any signs of Edith’s still being inside her house, perhaps
even struggling with the killer. Or could a crazed Edith herself be waiting in
the next room to bludgeon a second victim?

A pair of
gardening gloves were beside the phone. Otherwise, everything was neat and
nothing looked amiss. No disconcerting odors.

It was as if
Edith had received a phone call and then left home, taking Shogun with her, but
leaving her houseguest outside on the deck. Had Cassandra been visiting and
then remained alone, perhaps to give me a message on Edith’s behalf?

That
scenario left me with the chilling possibility that Cassandra might not have
been here when the killer arrived had it not been for me and my appointment
with Edith.

The phone
was a portable. I snatched it out of its base. My hands were shaking horribly.
I felt so disoriented I couldn’t get the dial tone, couldn’t figure out I
needed to press the talk button first. I dialed 911. When the dispatcher
answered, I cried, “There’s been a murder. Cassandra Randon.”

“Are you
Cassandra?”

“No! She’s
dead! She’s the victim.” I took a breath to calm myself, but it did nothing for
me. I stared out the glass door. The rain had started to come down for real
now. “My name is Allida Babcock. I live across the street. I’m at her next-door
neighbor’s house, where it happened.”

“Are you
alone on the premises, ma’am?”

“God, I hope
so.” Surely the violence right outside could not have touched the inside of the
house. But what if Cassandra had brought Melanie with her? Could she be hiding
inside? Mostly out of concern for Melanie, I decided to make a quick check of
the house.

Like so many
other houses in Berthoud, it was a quaint two story home. Phone in hand, I
stepped out of the kitchen and onto the soft wall-to-wall carpet of the front
rooms. In the immediately visible rooms, everything was neat, no signs of a
struggle. All inner doors were closed.

“What’s the
address there, ma’am?”

Distracted
by my fears about my youngest neighbor’s safety, I stammered, “I...don’t
remember the address. It’s just across the street from—”

There was a
flash of lightning, followed all but immediately by a terrific crack of
thunder. The line went dead.

“Shit!” I
hadn’t given the address! “It’s okay,” I assured myself aloud. Our emergency
dispatch undoubtedly had caller-identification capability. The dispatcher must
have simply asked me the address for verification. The police would arrive
shortly.

Even so, I
had to make a quick check of the house; I couldn’t simply wait for the police
while a terrorized five-year-old child might be in some other room.

I hung up
the phone and grabbed one of Edith’s gardening gloves. Holding the glove like a
pot holder to prevent my leaving fingerprints, I opened the first door off of
the kitchen, which had a locking knob. This was the garage. No cars. “Melanie?
Are you in here?” I cried, though I doubted she could easily hide from view.
The area was neat, remarkably so for a garage. I listened for a moment, but
heard and saw nothing to indicate a child’s hiding place.

I went back
inside and raced from room to room, upstairs and down, trying not to leave
fingerprints but throwing each door open and leaving it that way, calling, “Melanie?”
I checked the closets as well, which were neat but full of Edith’s things, no
space left vacant by Trevor’s having cleared out his own possessions. If the
little girl was here, she was well hidden and wasn’t coming out for me.

Meanwhile,
the rainstorm hit full force. The drops were hitting on the roof so hard, it
sounded as though I were inside a kettledrum.

The paw
prints! They could be an important clue, but the rain would wash them away!

I dashed
back through the kitchen and out onto the deck. The rain was falling in
torrents. Cassandra’s body was getting drenched, and my inability to do
anything preventative struck me as obscene. I took off my jacket and draped it
over her, thinking as I did so how similar she looked from this back view to
Edith. Their hairstyles were nearly identical, though under normal conditions,
Cassandra’s hair was a lighter shade.

The dim
realization hit me that I was crying. This all seemed so senseless. The cruel
and ultimate violation of the way things should be. The taking of a life. A
young girl suddenly motherless. I prayed for Melanie’s safety and well being,
that she was alive and physically untouched by the horror here.

Cassandra
and I might well have become friends someday, brought together by her puppies.
Now I regretted not having made more of an effort.

The prints
were already gone, the blood mixing with the water. Had the paw prints been
Shogun’s? Another dog’s? Either way, the dog would have to have been here after
or during Cassandra’s murder.

Trying to
visualize the paw prints, I knelt, chilly rain running off of my hair and down
my back. The prints had been roughly the size of the circle I could make with
the tip of my thumb against the tip of my index finger. They might have been
too big for Shogun’s paws, but it was impossible to say for certain. My proof
had washed away like so much water.

Maybe they’d
come from one of the puppies next door, or even from a medium-sized dog, such
as a cocker spaniel. Cassandra could have brought one or more of the puppies
over here with her. A loose or stray dog could have come through the open gate
as I did when I’d first arrived, Shogun being small enough that another dog
might not hesitate to violate his territorial boundaries.

Shielding my
eyes from the rain, I looked in the direction of Cassandra’s property, still
deathly afraid that I might spot a petrified Melanie standing there. The length
of fence was deserted.