Death on Torrid Ave.

by Patricia McLinn

  Also, no Bob, no Dwight, not even Teague O’Donnell.

  I was right. The mud was much worse from the overnight precipitation, which had shifted from sleet to snow sometime after Gracie went out for the last time, based on the patches in my back yard this morning.

  “Look at them go — joy in motion.” Clara yanked her hood back into place, and shifted back to Topic A. “After yesterday, something has to be done about Dwight and Bob. Something has to change.”

  She was still rehashing it when we reached the picnic table. It was too wet to sit on today, but the wooden roof over it protected us some from the icy rain.

  “And Berrie… Okay, okay, I know I shouldn’t let her get to me. It’s just hypocritical to critique other people’s dogs when hers … And to yell at us on top of it.” She waved a hand in front of her face as if to cool off, when the weather was doing it already.

  “Uh-huh,” I contributed.

  “She’s not really that bad. I mean, I know she’s annoying, and I don’t blame anyone else for feeling she’s, well, pushy, or even — I don’t want to say strident, because it’s not like she’s horribly loud, but so, uh, forceful in her opinions — not that she expresses them as opinions because she makes it sound like the great dog in the sky has filled her in on every secret of every canine that ever, well… And I will admit I was annoyed when she said LuLu would be better behaved if I improved my posture, but at her core she does love dogs.”

  I said nothing. Of course, I hadn’t had much opportunity.

  “Right?” Clara prompted.

  “Sure.”

  She released a breath in a sigh. “I shouldn’t be so hard on her. I get wound up. Like when people don’t pick up their dog’s poop or — well…”

  “Or when they don’t call it poop?”

  Clara zeroed in on where LuLu was circling, mentally marking the location. “I see no need for coarseness,” she said, reminding me she actually was a Southern lady.

  She left the roof’s protection on poop patrol.

  I called after her, “Are you saying Donna telling me you went toe-to-toe with a guy last fall, accusing him of being a serial poop avoider, wasn’t true?”

  She stifled a chuckle and aimed for high dignity — as high as dignity could get when bending to pick up poop in a handy biodegradable bag currently over one hand like a very unappetizing oven mitt. When she finished picking up, she’d roll the bag down her hand, tie the ends, and drop it in the trash.

  “I simply pointed out the error of his ways.”

  I laughed.

  Then — and I can’t tell you why — I turned my head toward the right.

  The dogs had gone to that side of the enclosure, along the rise before the dip known as Las Vegas. Their movements suddenly became staccato, like they were walking on their toes. Gracie’s ears pricked up, almost seeming to quiver with intense interest. They picked up their pace.

  Then stopped abruptly.

  Standing stock still at the highest spot in the park, just short of where the ground slid down toward out-of-sight Las Vegas.

  Was that where they were looking? Or a bit farther to the fence? Or the trees on the other side? Even, mostly obscured even with the trees bare, to the sheriff’s department and jail?

  Gracie turned her head, looking around toward me and — I could swear — making eye contact despite the distance. She gave a single bark, turned back toward the outside fence, and trotted on, dropping out of sight.

  “Clara,” I called. “I think. … I think something’s wrong.”

  She turned, following the direction of my gaze, just before LuLu, too, disappeared from sight.

  “What—?”

  A piercing, lamenting siren of a sound came that I had never heard before, yet knew it came from Gracie. A solo for the first long drawn-out note, before it was punctuated by LuLu’s barks.

  I was right. Something was wrong.

  Clara was right, too. Something was going to have to be done. And something had changed.

  Everything had changed.

  The Dwights and Bobs war had a casualty.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Clara, several yards closer than I was, reached the ridge and stared down in the direction the dogs had gone.

  Her jaw slackened, her eyes popped wide and staring.

  “Oh, my God,” she cried. “Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God.”

  She started down toward the dogs, as they switched roles, with Gracie setting up a frenzy of barking, and LuLu emitting a chilling howl.

  I realized I was running. I’d closed the gap some, but Clara had stopped well before I came up panting next to her.

  Together, we looked down at the tumbled form clad in a cap, a jacket with hunters’ shoulder blocks, and knee-high boots, all dusted by snow. What was not part of that signature look was the dog leash digging into the flesh of his neck.

  Bob Coble.

  Gracie circled the body, as if intent on herding the departed back into the land of the living. She barked in bursts of three, sharp and piercing sounds that communicated distress and alerted alarm, LuLu’s deep woofing gave the staccato bursts of a bass line. She made dashes toward the corpse, peeling away well before reaching it, in order to retreat behind the perimeter circle Gracie had created, then building her courage and dashing in again.

  There was a poop off to the side. Someone had stepped in it. Not the dogs. The smooshing was too complete.

  “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

  I reached Clara as she would have stepped closer, one arm extended toward what had once been Bob Coble. I grasped her other arm and held on.

  “Don’t. Clara, don’t. We can’t — we shouldn’t touch anything.”

  I waited a moment, partly to let the words sink in, partly to steady my breathing coming in gasps hard enough to shake my ribcage.

  “This is … This is so — It’s—”

  “Murder. He’s been murdered.”

  Clara let out a sound that stopped and quieted both dogs.

  I called Gracie to me, knowing LuLu would follow. Gracie paused, appearing to assess where her loyalties lay.

  She opted for the living, and came to me.

  Holding on to Clara’s arm, I backed us both up several yards. As I’d hoped, Gracie followed, leading LuLu, too.

  I leashed Gracie, then, taking the leash from Clara’s limp hand, secured LuLu. I started our group toward the entrance.

  Turning our backs to the body seemed to break the spell for Clara.

  “We have to do something. Oh, Sheila, we have to do something.”

  “We have to call the police. That’s what we have to do. Do you have your phone on you?”

  “No.”

  “Me, either. We have to go back to the cars.”

  “But, he might still be—”

  “No.” Not with that face. Not with the way the dogs reacted.

  I tucked a hand under Clara’s elbow and hurried her out of the enclosure, past Marcus’ ruckus, and Berrie’s glower at us, though she never stopped talking at the German shepherd owner.

  We all got into Clara’s SUV, with both dogs in back, lying up against each other and watching us. I sat in the passenger seat and called 911.

  I had to repeat what I said a couple times.

  Then we waited.

  It wouldn’t take long, considering how close the sheriff’s department was. But they had to come by road, which added distance.

  Clara, clearly shaken, sputtered in half sentences and questions.

  I listened, but had no answers.

  What kept running through my head was Clara no longer had to worry about a petition. One of her bad influences wasn’t ever coming back to the Torrid Avenue Dog Park.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I felt sorry for Berrie.

  She was our proof we’d just arrived at the dog park. With virtually no opportunity to slip the snap end of a leash through the loop handle and pull and pull and pull until it stopped Bob Coble’s life.r />
  She, however, had no witness that the huddled, mottle-faced body had been there, hidden from her sight by the drop down to the creek, when she’d arrived.

  No one had been there when she arrived, she’d said, though Augustine Lorenson and her dog, Dieter, arrived only a few minutes after her.

  Why did she use the enclosure furthest from the crime scene instead of her usual one?

  Nobody asked her, though, amid questions about the sequence of arrivals.

  Berrie and the Bostons.

  Augustine and the German shepherd, Dieter.

  Me and Gracie.

  Clara and LuLu.

  I couldn’t even begin to imagine how many times Berrie said it, considering how many times I’d repeated my account to a rotating cast of deputies.

  When did I move here? From where? I gave my parents’ address, which had been my official address for a few months. If they dug deeper, though, that would open the proverbial can of worms.

  Apparently I’d finally repeated it enough. Because they told me to stay by Deputy Eckles, who was questioning Berrie — again — not far from the PortaPotty and faucet.

  Clara was on the far side of the parking lot, with the German shepherd’s owner a short distance away, along with more deputies. All the dogs had been secured in vehicles, with Gracie and LuLu still together in the back of Clara’s SUV.

  After the first round of official vehicles arrived, I saw Teague and Murphy pulled in. As a couple more dog park people arrived, I saw him keep them a good distance away. Then, as more official vehicles came, his vehicle was hemmed in. I’d seen him questioned by a deputy taking notes, then a second deputy, checking something on his car’s computer. Who knew how many others in between.

  Beyond the outer ring of official vehicles, I spotted Ronald, Donna, and a few other dog park regulars. I was most surprised to see Ruby from the post office and Amy from the library. Ruby had said she didn’t have a dog, since her aged Yorkie died in the fall. Amy didn’t have her English setter mix with her, which made sense since it was the middle of her work day.

  The one person I didn’t see I might have expected was Dwight Yagos. At one point, I thought I caught a flash of UK blue, but that could have been anybody.

  “Did you see anyone go into that enclosure before the other two ladies arrived?” Deputy Eckles asked Berrie.

  Her eyes darted to me, then away.

  “They didn’t arrive together.”

  “Oh?”

  I sure hoped the deputy was acting uninformed in an effort to elicit more information, and not because he’d forgotten I’d told him at least twenty-seven times that I’d arrived before Clara.

  Hoped, but didn’t count on it.

  “I was aware of a car arriving first. A sedan,” she added as if not owning a SUV, van, or station wagon constituted dog abuse.

  “Uh-huh.” He added a squiggle to his notebook. “Did you notice a time?”

  “No, but it was several minutes before the other vehicle arrived.”

  C’mon, Berrie, come out and say it was plenty of time for me to go in, kill Bob Coble and return to the parking lot to be there when Clara showed up.

  It hadn’t been. But she could pretend.

  Plus, there was a major flaw with her making that accusation — and it wasn’t that I would have needed to break land speed records to accomplish the task.

  “How much time.”

  “I can’t say. I wasn’t paying attention to that. I was concentrating on working with Dieter.”

  “Dieter?”

  “The shepherd.”

  The deputy glanced around and frowned. I feared he was looking for a guy in a robe with a crooked stick.

  “The German shepherd,” Berrie said with sharp impatience. She pointed to a van. “I was working with the shepherd and his owner, Augustine Lorenson.”

  “Yeah, okay. But you had a good view of the parking lot and the gates.”

  “I. Was. Working. The. Dog.” She stretched the gaps between words so you could hear the subtext of You blithering, idiot.

  “But you could see the gates.”

  “I could, but I wasn’t looking at them. When I’m working a dog, a marching band could go by and I wouldn’t notice.”

  “Ms. Mackey could have gone into that enclosure and you wouldn’t have known?”

  “I would say—”

  She broke off before the yes already visible in her face became a spoken word.

  Not from an attack of conscience, but because Clara had broken free of her deputy handler across the parking lot, and was charging toward us, with her hold on the German shepherd’s owner’s arm overcoming the woman’s clear reluctance.

  “Berrie, you stop being spiteful because Sheila told you no thank you to all that unwanted advice you’re forever handing out. I heard you from over there and you tell this deputy the truth—”

  Berrie gasped in outrage, which left her at a disadvantage when she tried to shout, “How dare you” because she didn’t have enough breath, having gasped it away.

  Clara steamed on. “There is no way on this earth Sheila could have gone into that gate without Marcus raising a fuss—”

  “I was focused on the shepherd. I wouldn’t have heard anyth—”

  “Baloney. And besides—” She spun around to the other woman, Augustine Lorenson. “—did you hear Marcus carrying on? Barking and barking and running around in circles and usually the other Bostons join in.”

  “No, but—” started the shepherd’s hapless owner.

  “See!” Clara declared triumphantly to both Deputy Eckles and Deputy Hensen, who’d followed Clara over. He’d been one of my earlier questioners.

  “Hold up there. Before we get into that—” I had the impression Deputy Eckles wanted to get away from the subject of dogs. “—let me ask you all together now, did Bob Coble have any enemies?”

  That stopped the conversation.

  It wasn’t the old Don’t speak ill of the dead shutting us up.

  Berrie was probably trying to grapple with the concept anyone could not adore Bob.

  I suspected Clara, like me, was doing the math.

  If you figured half the people coming to the dog park were neutral, then the other half divided into Dwights and Bobs, that left a quarter of the people who came here who actively loathed Bob. All the Dwights.

  Augustine Lorenson was probably trying to figure out how she’d been lucky enough to pick today to get “instruction” from Berrie Vittlow.

  “Well?” Eckles prodded.

  The other deputy, I noticed, was watching all of us carefully. I tried to make my face as devoid of thought — or math — as possible.

  Berrie broke the silence with a single, screeched word. “Dwight!”

  “Dwight?” Eckles repeated without comprehension.

  “Dwight killed him! Bob, oh, Bob. My God, I knew Dwight was a spiteful, jealous low-life, of course, but never, ever, ever did I think he’d actually—”

  “Dwight who? Why would he kill, uh…”

  “Bob Coble,” the other deputy supplied.

  “Why this Dwight?” Eckles pretended he hadn’t heard Hensen, which also allowed him to pretend he hadn’t needed the insert.

  “Because he hated him. Because Bob was magnificent with dogs. Knew them inside and out, knew how to communicate with them, firm and in charge, but so kind because everything he did was for their own good. But Dwight was a pretender. A nobody who bumbled around claiming he knew something when he knew nothing and he couldn’t bear that. So he killed — Killed. Oh my God, he murdered Bob.” She wailed.

  Deputy Eckles shouted over her, wisely addressing Clara and me. “Dwight, was he here today?”

  “We didn’t see him.” Clara gestured to include me and our dogs.

  The other deputy gave me a questioning look. “Didn’t see him or anyone except the people you’ve seen,” I confirmed.

  I didn’t think that helped one iota to clear Dwight, however.

  Becau
se Bob’s body had been there for a while.

  That conclusion was not based on any observation of rigor mortis — my research with Kit had never been that technical — but on the crust of undisturbed snow on Bob’s distinctive jacket. That snow fell during the night.

  I had no idea when Berrie arrived. Or her client. Only Berrie’s word for it.

  How long had she really been here?

  The sheriff’s department’s experts would surely pin down how long Bob had been there far more firmly than my observations of snow did. Besides, I did not want to get into a discussion of how I might know about or happen to observe such things.

  That connected too closely to Kit, Abandon All, and my past identity.

  While I thought, Deputy Eckles asked Clara questions about Bob and Dwight. He wrapped up with, “So this Dwight Yagos and the victim were major rivals. But Dwight hasn’t been seen at the dog park today by any of you folks who were here when the victim was found.”

  Berrie’s voice vibrated in a mini-wail. “The victim … Of murder…”

  Perhaps Eckles was simply trying to avoid eye contact with Berrie when he slid a glance toward me, but it was a tactical error.

  Clara pounced.

  “See? There? I knew you were falling for Berrie’s baloney. You’re thinking Sheila could have gone in and been back in time to be in her vehicle when I arrived without Berrie and Augustine noticing, but you’re wrong. And I can prove it.”

  “Because of a dog barking?” Skepticism oozed into the deputy’s placating. “Out here a dog barking is nothing unusual, and if these two ladies wouldn’t have noticed, not to mention the dog might not have barked at all…”

  Clara smirked at him. “Let’s run an experiment. Put Berrie and Augustine in that enclosure, just like they were, with Marcus and Dieter and the other Bostons, and then we’ll have Sheila go by, and we’ll see what happens.”

  “That’s absurd. There’s no reason for me to do that,” Berrie declared.

  The deputy rubbed his chin. “No reason not to, either. It might not settle this one way or the other, but it could add more information.”

  My estimation of him jumped several levels.