Death on Torrid Ave.

by Patricia McLinn

  Clara redirected her smirk at Berrie.

  Berrie stopped protesting when she recognized the deputy was getting irked. Berrie could be annoying, but she wasn’t stupid.

  “So, if Sheila had gone past — but she didn’t — which even if Berrie and Augustine were at the farthest corner of the section — Augustine says they weren’t. They spent the whole time by the picnic table, right, Augustine?”

  “Uh-huh,” the woman said.

  I wasn’t sure how much stock the deputy put in that confirmation.

  “Thank you, ma’am. I think we’ve got it covered. Hensen, you take Ms. Mackey back behind those vehicles, out of sight.” Clara’s mouth opened to inform him that wouldn’t fool Marcus, but I caught her eye, and she fell silent, allowing the deputy to continue in peaceful ignorance. “When I signal, Ms. Mackey, I want you to walk back here, come into the main gate, then go on through the gate to the section where you found the body. But not off the concrete.”

  There was more to untangle — getting Marcus, finding the best disposition of Clara so she wouldn’t skew the test. It was decided she would go with the deputies into the closer small-dog enclosure, but she was to be strictly silent.

  Deputy Hensen and I reached a spot behind a forensics van. Its occupants were already deployed.

  A dozen yards away, I saw Teague O’Donnell watching us closely.

  Deputy Hensen spat onto the parking lot’s stony surface. “Like that ol’ dog doesn’t know pre-cise-ly where you and me are this second — and where we’ve been the past two weeks.”

  “I take it Deputy Eckles isn’t a dog person.”

  He grunted. “You could say that.”

  His radio produced the order, “Send her out. Alone.”

  Walking the narrow strip of empty parking lot toward the main gate, I felt as nervous and exposed as I had before the first interviews I did for Abandon All.

  I lifted my head … and promptly stumbled against a raised portion of the concrete outside the main gate. I might have made a small noise, but it was lost in the squawk of the gate opening.

  Immediately followed by a sound blending a bark and a banshee’s wail, outdoing any siren ever invented. Marcus charged to the gate of the other large-dog enclosure. The humans thundered after him.

  “Can you make him stop?” Deputy Eckles shouted. At least that’s what I think he said. I’m not the best lip-reader.

  “What?” Berrie shouted back. It required no lip-reading skill. She’d keep pretending she couldn’t hear the request, because as long as she couldn’t hear it, she didn’t have to issue the command Marcus wouldn’t obey, and she didn’t have to admit she didn’t have perfect control over her dog.

  As tempting as watching farce was, my adrenaline was ebbing fast. I wanted to go home and pull the covers over my head. Possibly with Gracie there, too, despite my determination to not let her become a furniture dog.

  I reached over the fence and put my hand on Marcus’ blocky head.

  “—and no way could Sheila have gone in there without Berrie and Augustine knowing,” Clara shouted into sudden silence.

  Eckles’ eyes widened, then narrowed as he turned to me.

  “All you had to do is touch him, and he quiets?”

  “I have no idea. First time I tried it.”

  I took my hand off Marcus, pivoted and walked to the other enclosure’s gate. Those four steps were accompanied by his guttural barks segueing toward banshee. With the gate closed, my back turned, and two steps in, Marcus stopped.

  “—every time,” Clara shouted. She barely dropped the volume as she added, “Until she’s a couple feet inside the other area and turns her back.”

  “He gets over-excited around Sheila, that’s all,” Berrie said.

  “Damnedest thing I ever heard,” Deputy Hensen said, coming up. “What about when your dog’s with you?”

  “Same thing.” I kept my back to Marcus.

  “He doesn’t react to me at all, with or without LuLu,” Clara volunteered.

  “Everyone says you arrived after Ms. Mackey,” Eckles said politely. As if she’d be disappointed to be left out of contention for the role of potential murder suspect. “Ms. Mackey, do it again with your dog — if you’re still willing to cooperate.”

  “Deputy, I’m eager to cooperate, to remove this red herring.” Although I doubted anyone heard me, because with my return to the vestibule, Marcus launched into full volume again.

  We repeated the exercise with Gracie on the leash by my side. Deputy Hensen showed his good sense by praising Gracie. She fluttered her tail, but was mostly focused on the strange happenings.

  Eckles gestured to start and it was a repeat, with the addition of Gracie barking sharply at Marcus before I put a hand over the fence to turn off his canine blast.

  This time Eckles was satisfied enough to order Berrie and me to put our dogs in our vehicles.

  “Okay. Now, we’re taking you all to the sheriff’s department.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “They won’t let me call Ned.” Clara’s voice wavered.

  The dogs moved restively, looking toward her from where they were lying under the sheriff’s department conference table.

  “Your husband?” Teague asked. She nodded. “They want to make sure they hear your freshest recollections. Once they get our statements, they’ll either let us go, or make other arrangements.”

  At the calm in his voice, the dogs settled again. I didn’t. I didn’t like the sound of “make other arrangements.”

  After the announcement that we’d be coming to the sheriff’s department, we’d asked to go home to leave our dogs and change.

  Deputy Eckles wouldn’t consider it.

  His first choice was for deputies to drive us here in official cars, leaving our vehicles and dogs at the dog park.

  We strenuously objected because of the cold, the upset to the dogs, and our lack of access to them. Especially since he couldn’t or wouldn’t tell us how long it would be before we could get back to them.

  Then he agreed deputies would drive each of our vehicles with owners and dogs as passengers the short distance to the sheriff’s department. But, appearing more disturbed by the idea of our dogs inside than he had by violent death, he wanted us to leave the dogs in the vehicles.

  Starting with a dismissive, “I don’t know about these other animals, but…” Berrie delivered a protracted lecture on Bostons’ susceptibility to the cold because of their short, thin coats, and pug-like faces. She didn’t say pug-like. I was sparing you the full explanation, which included words like brachycephalic.

  Eckles was not spared. Yet, when I pointed out it wasn’t any warmer in the sheriff’s department parking lot than the dog park parking lot, I swear he liked that less than Berrie’s lecture.

  Some people don’t appreciate logic.

  In the end, our loud and long objections reached somebody higher up the command chain than Eckles. Somebody who liked dogs.

  Berrie and the Bostons went into one room, while Clara, Teague, I, and our dogs were assigned to a conference room we were told was sometimes used by K-9 units and told to wait.

  From the sniff-fest by the dogs, I believed the part about the K-9 units, especially when a deputy with “K-9” on his sleeve came in with a large bowl of water and petting and attention for each dog.

  He left, but a silent deputy remained in the corner by the door. Watching and listening. Our guard lost a lot of imposing points when he clucked at and petted each of the dogs in turn.

  “I don’t understand why they’re talking to Augustine first,” Clara complained.

  “She came after Berrie did and was with Berrie the whole time. They both say that,” I said.

  Clara snorted. “Berrie’s so biased, she’s not a good witness.”

  “They don’t know that.” Although they’d now heard it, thanks to our deputy in the corner.

  “Oh, I suppose you’re right.” She chuckled slightly, with the tiniest undercurre
nt of hysteria. “It’ll serve Deputy Eckles right, making Berrie wait.”

  Teague and I looked at her. I supposed the deputy in the corner did, too, but I wasn’t watching him.

  She continued, “Gracie, LuLu, and Murphy might leave some fur—”

  No might about it. Tufts already decorated the industrial carpet.

  “—but wait until Deputy Eckles tries to use whatever room they have Berrie’s Boston terrier mob in.”

  I asked, “Why? They seem like good dogs.”

  “It’s not that. Boston’s fart a lot. They’re notorious for it. You would not believe something that small could clear a room the way they can.” Clara’s chuckled again.

  The deputy in the corner made a slight sound, but when we all turned toward him, he had his expression under control, showing nothing.

  “I once went to a meeting about the dog park at Berrie’s, back when we had flooding from the creek, and it was the most efficient meeting I have ever been to. Nobody wanted to stay a minute longer than necessary.”

  We all chuckled slightly, but it didn’t completely remove the tension from the room.

  “You’ll probably be the next to leave,” I said to Teague. “In fact, I don’t understand why you’re here at all.”

  The deputy in the corner scratched his nose.

  Teague shrugged. “Guess it was the timing of my arrival.”

  I opened my mouth to say he’d arrived not only after we’d found the body, but after the first deputies, so that didn’t explain their interest in him.

  Then closed it. And said instead, “Clara, if they give us a choice, you go before me. I don’t have any place to be. But Ned will worry if you’re not home when he gets there.”

  “They probably won’t give us a choice,” Teague said.

  That seemed rather pessimistic. Though I understood his mood, because I shared it.

  “But you do have somewhere to be, Sheila,” Clara said. “You have bunco tonight.”

  “I totally forgot.” My neighbor, the librarian Amy, invited me as a substitute and I’d hoped it would be a good way to get to know more people.

  Mind you, I’ve never played the game.

  The only thing I knew was the phrase Bunco Squad, which made me a bit uneasy. After all, police departments don’t have a Jigsaw Puzzle Squad or a Scrabble Unit.

  Wanting to know what I was getting into. I looked it up.

  It started in England as a gambling game similar to three-card Monte, traveled to San Francisco in the 1850s for the post-Gold Rush. Turned respectable for several decades, then resurfaced for gambling in the Roaring Twenties, giving its name to law enforcement fighting fraud as the Bunco Squad, before a dose of obscurity … until the past few decades.

  Reassurance came when I read that most people play now for a fun and easy excuse to get together with friends to eat and drink a little, while talking a lot.

  The talk tonight would surely center on the murder of Bob Coble. Instead of my getting to know neighbors, they’d try to get all the details of the scene at the dog park out of me.

  “Maybe I should cancel…”

  “Unless you’re in handcuffs, you better plan on going. I’m not even sure Amy would forgive you if you are in handcuffs.” Clara tipped her head, considering. “She might claim the best bunco night ever if you arrived in cuffs.”

  She chuckled alone.

  “What?” she demanded. “You’re completely in the clear and everybody there will know it. They can’t possibly think you could have gotten past Marcus, not after how he reacted. Twice.”

  Silence.

  My heart dropped.

  Teague O’Donnell had also recognized the demonstration didn’t truly clear me.

  “Marcus already knew Sheila was there at the dog park. You could say he was primed.” He turned to me. “On a different day, if the wind were blowing the opposite way, could you get past without Marcus knowing?”

  “I never have. I’ve also never taken meteorological measurements.”

  Irate, Clara said, “That’s ridiculous.”

  He faced her. “In what way, Clara? Marcus had already greeted her today, before the test. He was primed.”

  “But … But you’re making it sound like Sheila actually sneaked in there. Like she actually — when you know she couldn’t have!”

  He didn’t relent. “The point is she could have. Quite easily, actually. Also, she could have come in from the other side.”

  I shot him a glance. Found him watching me, and looked away.

  “What other side?” Clara demanded. “What do you mean?”

  “He means I could have come from the woods and climbed the fence.”

  He shrugged. “It would’ve been easy. And I’ve heard you’ve talked about it.”

  “Maybe to avoid the mud at the entry,” protested Clara, as if my reasoning made any difference.

  “Both true. I have talked about climbing the fence and — as Clara says — it was in connection with trying to avoid the mud. You’re missing several points, however. I was joking, but, okay, no way to prove that. Also, how would I have gotten Gracie over the fence? No way could I get over carrying a sixty-five-pound dog.” Who would have been squirming and struggling to get free. But that wouldn’t be as compelling an argument to skeptics who might hear of this discussion. Like, oh, say, Deputy Eckles via our corner deputy.

  “You left her at home,” Teague said instantly.

  “I was at the post office and library just before getting to the dog park, with Gracie in my car. People must have seen her.”

  “You did it earlier — we don’t know time of death — or you left her in your vehicle, parked somewhere nearby—”

  “The sheriff’s department parking lot no doubt,” I inserted sarcastically.

  “—walked in the back way, climbed the fence, killed him, went back the way you came, and—”

  “If I could climb that fence, so could anyone else. Almost anyone else,” I added, thinking of some of the dog park visitors.

  He nodded, suddenly looking oddly cheerfully. “True. Doesn’t rule anybody out. In fact, it widens the pool of suspects.”

  “Suspects,” repeated Clara. “You make it sound like Sheila is a — Like she…”

  “Murdered Bob,” I filled in.

  “Sheila,” she protested in an agonized whisper.

  “Better to say it out loud than to let it fester.”

  “I wasn’t saying that at all.” His cheer remained. “Far too few facts in hand to say anything. I was simply pointing out the deputy’s test was inadequate to clear Sheila.”

  Especially if I was right about the snow and Bob being killed much earlier.

  The door opened and a deputy even younger than our corner-sitter said, “You next, Mr. O’Donnell.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Either Deputy Eckles wasn’t interviewing each of us or O’Donnell wasn’t in there long, because Clara was called after only twenty minutes.

  It was three times that before I was called.

  At one point, I fished out paper and pen to make notes. Our friend in the corner said not to. He said it could alter my memory of events.

  As if sitting in a stupor wouldn’t.

  Finally, I was called in. Gracie stayed with the observer deputy.

  As the door closed, I’d swear I heard him say, “Okay, now we can play.”

  Deputy Eckles was in no mood for play.

  Unless he considered going over the same material time after time a game.

  I didn’t.

  “You’re certain the dogs didn’t disturb the body?”

  “Not in my sight,” I replied. Not for the first time.

  I hadn’t mentioned that I noticed their paws had made a mess of the ground around the body. If there’d been footprints there… But it was unlikely.

  There’d certainly been no sign of footprints to or from the body except the dogs’ and Clara’s and mine. Not even Bob’s.

  That, added to the sn
ow on Bob’s jacket, said there’d been enough snow after he was killed to mask prints or marks of arrivals, as well as the murderer’s departure.

  I’d included the snow in my description of what I’d seen, but none of my thoughts about implications.

  “But you couldn’t see the dogs when they first encountered the body — isn’t that your statement?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, that’s your statement?”

  I cocked my head.

  “Yes, Deputy Eckles, that is my statement.” His lips parted. I straightened my head because he was just as annoying at an angle, and I spoke again before he could. “And, yes, that is what happened. There was also the flattened poop, as I said before.”

  “How long would you estimate the dogs were out of your sight?”

  “They didn’t step on it.”

  He grimaced. “How long were the dogs out of your sight?”

  “That, too, is both my statement and what happened — I can’t tell you precisely. Erring on the high side, certainly not more than three or four minutes.”

  “Mrs. Woodrow says the dogs did not disturb the body.”

  “She was in a better position to see what the dogs were doing before I was.”

  “Better — but that doesn’t necessarily mean a good position, does it? It could be she was closer to the body, standing on the little rise, yet didn’t see the body.”

  Was he trying to work out if Berrie might have gone into her usual small-dog enclosure, seen the body from there, and — A good question, actually. Could Las Vegas be seen from that small dog enclosure? I suspected it could. But I’d have to check.

  When they re-opened the dog park. It was closed indefinitely, with police tape around the whole thing and down to the creek.

  Surely, they’d check if Bob had been visible from the small dog enclosure…

  But there I ground to a halt, trying to imagine why Berrie, his number one follower, wouldn’t have immediately called 911.

  Could she possibly have seen his body, then gone to the other enclosure, and proceeded with a session with the German shepherd and his owner?

  “Deputy,” I said with greater patience and calm than I’d known I possessed. “If Clara didn’t see the body, we wouldn’t be here.”