by Sam Cheever
“Please, call me Scott. Would you like to come inside?”
Hal must have seen me stiffen with dread. I hadn’t come out there anticipating dredging up my parents’ death with a man who wanted to turn it into a sensational account for one of his books.
“No, thank you, Mr. Abels,” Hal said. “We have another appointment. We just wanted to find out if you had any idea who might have killed Ms. Sellers.”
“Anybody who’d spent five minutes with her,” the man ground out through a clenched jaw. “She was horrible. And I’m pretty sure she had illegal intentions.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Because after she left, she tried to find out about my finances. Fortunately, since I’m trying to refinance right now, I happened to be speaking with Doris at the bank and she told me the woman had been sniffing around. Apparently, she’d also run a credit check on me. Needless to say my antennas were engaged. If that horrible woman hadn’t been killed, I’d have been confronting her about it in the near future.”
“How did she do that?” Hal asked. “She would have needed your permission unless you initiated business with her.”
“I understand she represented herself as my realtor. I have no idea how she did it. Only that she did.”
“She must have forged your signature,” Hal said.
Abels shrugged. “I wouldn’t have put it past her.”
“I have to ask, sir. Where were you yesterday between four and six PM?”
Abels stared at Hal for a long moment and then shook his head. “I was here. As I always am, working.”
“Can anyone verify that, sir?”
“No. And let me save you the speculation. I know a hundred ways to kill somebody. I’ve crafted a thousand alibis and definitely had reason to murder that horrible woman. But hurt feelings aren’t a strong motive for killing someone. Despite the fact that it would have been a pleasure to remove her from existence.”
“So you’re telling us you could have killed her?” Hal asked carefully.
“I could have, sure. But I didn’t. And if you want to pin it on me, you’re going to have to get really creative to place me at the scene. Your minute’s up, Mr. Amity.” He started to close the door and then stopped, glancing at me. “I look forward to talking to you about your parents, Miss Fulle.”
“Yeah, when pigs fly,” I murmured to the closed door.
Chapter Nine
“What did you think of that?” Hal asked me.
“I think Abels would have to be pretty stupid to tout his qualifications for murder if he did it.”
Hal nodded. “My thoughts exactly. But Arno’s not going to take him off the list of suspects unless he can prove he wasn’t there when she was killed.”
I shivered, rubbing my arms. “This is all so sad. That woman hurt everyone she touched. How terrible it must be to live your life that way.”
Hal turned down my driveway. “She certainly paid a price for it.” He stopped the SUV in front of my house. “Why don’t you let me stay with you. I’d feel better if you weren’t alone.” When I hesitated, he pressed his case. “I need to call Cal and work some more on that case. I’ll stay out of your way. You won’t even know I’m here.”
He’d been looking at me as if I were a delicate piece of china ever since I’d told him I wanted to come home. I couldn’t explain my need to be home with Caphy and to check on my new tenant. Talking to Scott Abels had depressed me. And I was having trouble shaking it off.
I suspected it had something to do with his cavalier treatment of my parents’ death, but I didn’t want to tell Hal that. I wasn’t up to having that conversation again.
I shook my head. I wasn’t even sure why I was digging my heels in, but deep down I knew it probably still had something to do with the cabin thing.
I’d pretty much forgiven him for not telling me he was buying the place. But that didn’t mean I was going to go right back to normal with him. I needed time to soothe my hurt feelings and come to an acceptance of our new normal. “I’ll be fine. I have Caphy and the attack cat. Nobody’s going to come near me with LaLee here.”
“Including me,” he grumbled. He probably didn’t even realize he was rubbing his furrowed chin. Feeling a quick jolt of tenderness for him, I leaned in and pressed my lips against his. Heat flared between us immediately, and I nearly forgot why it wasn’t a good idea for him to come inside. I reluctantly broke the kiss a minute later, and climbed out of his car. “Thanks for going with me today.”
He nodded. “If you hear or see anything tonight that makes you uncomfortable, call me. I don’t care what time it is. I’ll be up late anyway doing some research for a case.”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“Girl Scout’s honor and all that.”
“I’m pretty sure you were never a girl scout.”
I grinned. “You don’t know that.”
He shook his head and, with a final heated look in my direction, pulled away and headed out to Goat’s Hollow Road. I watched him turn left, so I was pretty sure he was heading for the cabin, and then went to let my wildly barking dog out to pee.
I left Caphy outside while I went into the kitchen and filled a bowl with unappetizing-looking dry cat food for my foster fur baby. After a second’s thought, I dug a can of tuna out of the cabinet and added some of that to the dry food in the bowl.
I blenched at the fishy smell of the concoction but figured the cat would probably love it.
Caphy was whining at the door by the time I started upstairs. I briefly considered leaving her out there until I’d fed the cat, but decided that wouldn’t be fair. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t let having LaLee in the house totally disrupt Caphy’s life. A little disruption was bound to happen, but I needed to keep it to a minimum.
With that resolution firmly in mind, I let Caphy in and took her into the kitchen, pulling one of her favorite green chews out of the cabinet and giving it to her before heading upstairs.
The cat didn’t attack when I cracked the bedroom door. I’ll admit I was braced for it and ready to slam the door closed if a cat-shaped projectile flew at my face when I opened it.
I stood just inside the closed door and looked around, calling LaLee in a voice that was hopefully soft enough not to startle.
Nothing.
“I brought you food, girl.” I walked over to the kennel, realizing halfway there that I was walking on my tiptoes, and forced myself to stop. “This is silly. Come out now and get this food I so thoughtfully provided you.”
Nothing.
I set the food down on the floor next to the water dish and then took the water bowl into the bathroom to refresh it. While waiting for the bowl to fill, I saw a tiny movement out of the corner of my eye. Turning toward the movement, I found LaLee sitting upright, like something from an Egyptian tomb, in the center of the shower. Her distrustful blue gaze locked on me, and her slender form went very still. “Hey, girl.”
The gaze didn’t soften or waver. I got the impression she was poised to attack if she deemed it necessary. It was my goal to not make her feel like it was necessary. I slowly reached out and turned off the water. “I’ll just leave this food and water out here. You can have some when you’re ready. Okay?” I felt kind of silly talking to the cat, especially since she was regarding me with such disdain.
Clearly, she thought I was an idiot, displaying disgust in every line of her perfect feline form.
“Cats,” I murmured. “So judgmental.”
I eased slowly back out of the bathroom and left the water next to the food. After checking the litter box to make sure it was clean, I left the room and the cat, hoping she’d begin to realize I meant her no harm.
I went downstairs and felt myself at a loss. Glancing around my kitchen, I thought about fixing something to eat. But my lunch still sat heavy on my belly. I’d be eating just because I was bored.
Never a good thing.
I thought about the murd
er mystery waiting for me on my bedside table, but the idea of settling in to read, just didn’t appeal.
Then I thought about the other names my friend Sally Winthrop had given me and wondered if I should talk to the Johnstons. I was saved from making a decision by the ringing of my phone.
It was Arno. “Saved by the bell,” I told him when I answered.
“What bell?”
I smiled. He was so literal. “Nothing. What’s up? Do you have cause of death?”
“I do. I shouldn’t be sharing it with you, but I thought you had a right to know, given that Ms. Sellers was killed on your property.”
“Okay,” I said in an impatient voice. “I’m waiting.”
He hesitated another beat. I couldn’t help feeling like he was doing it just to tweak me. Then he said something that turned my belly to ice. “Penney Sellers was strangled and drowned.”
“Strangled and drowned? How’s that possible?”
“My guess is whoever strangled her held her underwater while they did it.”
I shuddered. “Horrible.”
“Yeah. It speaks of real rage.”
“From what I’ve learned talking to people, Penney Sellers inspired a lot of that.”
His silence was sufficient warning of my faux pas.
“I mean, you know, just talking to people randomly on the street.”
“You’ve been investigating this?”
“Only a little. Besides, Hal said you asked him to help.”
“I asked for him to do some legwork, yes. But I didn’t ask him to invite you along. You realize you’re sniffing out a killer, right?”
“Of course. I’m not in any danger…”
“Yes. You are. And you need to stop. I asked Amity for help because he’s a professional. He can take care of himself.”
Anger caused my pulse to spike. “Because he’s a big strong man and I’m just a puny, helpless woman?”
“Something like that.”
I made a sound of outrage and I could almost hear him smiling. “Look, Joey. I know you’re anything but helpless, but whoever killed this woman wasn’t just going after her. They might have been sending you a message too.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We found the murder weapon. It was lying in some tall grass alongside the pond.”
“Great. Can you get DNA from it?”
His bristling came across the line like an electric shock. “I am trained for this, you know.”
I bit back a sigh. “Sorry. I just got excited.”
“Well, don’t be. Because I think the weapon was left there on purpose. To implicate you.”
The ice ball in my belly grew from golf ball sized to softball-sized. “Why do you say that?”
“Because Penney Sellers was strangled with Caphy’s leash.”
All thoughts of hunkering down at home were blown away by Arno’s revelation. I suddenly had an all-consuming need to take action. It had just turned personal, and I knew I had to find out who was trying to set me up for Penney Seller’s murder.
I disconnected with Arno and dialed Hal.
It rang several times before I gave up. It wasn’t unusual, when Hal was elbows deep in a case, for him to miss a call or take a while to get back to me. I figured he and his brother were probably on the phone together working on that case he’d mentioned earlier.
I paced my kitchen, feeling antsy. Caphy lay on the floor in front of the door and rolled her eyes back and forth, watching me pace.
Every once in a while, her muscular tail snapped once against the floor in solidarity. I considered stopping by Hal’s cabin to see if he wanted to go with me. But I didn’t want to interrupt his work.
Besides, Arno’s comments about me being unsuited for sniffing out a killer had stung.
Sure, he was right. I wasn’t trained for taking down bad guys like he and Hal were. But I wasn’t planning on going anywhere near a killer.
I just wanted to talk to a couple of octogenarians about a pushy realtor.
And I would have backup. I planned on taking Caphy with me.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Come on, girl.”
I grabbed Caphy’s leash off the hook on the wall and started to walk out of the kitchen. A disturbing thought popped into my head as Arno’s words finally sank all the way in. I skidded to a stop, my gaze sliding toward the hooks. The ball of ice in my belly grew another inch.
Panic set in. Followed immediately by a deep sense of violation.
Someone had to have been inside my house to get hold of one of the leashes.
I tried to remember where my other leash had been the last time I’d seen it. I usually took one of them with us when Caphy and I took our walks in the woods, just in case I needed to keep her from chasing squirrels or, more recently, from disrupting the occasional dead body.
We’d walked the morning before. In my mind’s eye, I remembered sliding the leash over its customary hook before slipping off my sneakers. I couldn’t remember if the second leash had been hanging there. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it.
My gaze slid to the dingy old pair of sneaks I sometimes wore when we walked in the woods and found them sitting in the rubber tray that I used to keep the floor clean.
I frowned.
One sneaker was cattywampus, its scuffed and dirty toe resting on the other shoe. Had I thrown them into the tray that way? I generally placed them carefully, allowing a smidge of self-diagnosed OCD to guide my movements.
With a horrified start, I realized someone had been inside my house.
My first thought was Uncle Devon. Maybe he had returned. Despite the fact that I’d taken his key away from him, he always seemed able to get inside the house.
But I dismissed the thought as quickly as it came.
For all his faults, Max had been right on with her assessment of what motivated him. He was just about as far from a saint as anyone could be, but he’d never deliberately harm me.
I believed that with all my heart.
And he certainly wouldn’t try to point suspicion for a murder in my direction.
Rubbing my arms as gooseflesh popped along my skin, I reached down and scratched the wide spot between my Pitbull’s ears. “Come on, girl. We need to find out who’s targeting us before this turns ugly.”
She whined softly as if my words bothered her, but she was more likely reading my nervousness. She was exceptionally good at that. And when I pulled the front door open, Caphy bounced happily outside, bounding toward my little car as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
Chapter Ten
The Johnstons lived five minutes farther from town than I did, on Baileyville Road. Baileyville was a heavily wooded road that wound around Deer County State Park and dead-ended right after their rustic home. The house reminded me of an upscale cabin, with wrap-around porches and, at the center of the sprawling ranch, an enormous peak filled with glass that looked out over the stunning vista of rocky ridges, a rich umbrella of trees, and, in the distance, the sparkling ribbon of the river winding through the deep cut of the rocky landscape.
I debated leaving Caphy in the car, afraid she’d jump up on the couple, who were in their late seventies, early eighties, and might not have the strength to fend her off. But in the end, I opted for keeping her on a short leash and bringing her with.
Arno’s words, however they might have annoyed me, still rang in my ears. Realizing the killer might very well have been inside my home didn’t make me feel any safer.
Caphy peed several times on the short walk toward the glossy wood door made of rustic pine. When I tugged on her leash to get her going, she happily bounded forward, a big smile on her wide face. She loved nothing more than an adventure, and I could only guess that the woods where the Johnstons lived was rife with the scents of a variety of wild critters.
The pibl was in canine heaven.
The doorbell rang out in bell-like tones through the big house. Caphy bounced
excitedly around the porch as footsteps started toward us, and I gave her leash a tug to settle her.
My pitty dutifully stilled, standing next to me with her gaze locked on the door, vibrating. She tilted her head when the lock was turned, and the door started to open.
I found myself looking into the softly pretty face of Belle Johnston. She looked much the way I remembered her, but younger than I’d thought. I wondered how much of my perception of the couple was colored by the fact that I’d been so young at the time.
Belle skimmed my dog a quick look and then glanced my way, her eyes lighting with pleasure. “Joey Fulle. How are you?”
I returned the smile she gave me. “I’m just wonderful, Mrs. Johnston. How about yourself?”
She nodded briskly. “Life is beautiful. Come inside, dear. I think I’ve got some freshly baked cookies left.”
My mouth watered at the suggestion. So much for still being full from lunch.
“Would you like coffee? Tea? Or maybe a big glass of milk?” Her expression was friendly and somehow familiar. I had a feeling she was remembering me as I’d been when I was eight years old, and she used to bring platters of homemade peanut butter cookies to the Auction house when Mr. Johnston came to buy equipment.
She led me through the open, brightly rustic great room. I marveled at the floor-to-ceiling fireplace of rock, enjoying the homey crackle of a vibrant fire.
The room was cheerful under the effects of the sunlight pouring through the wall of glass, and filled with the slightly smoky scent of the burning wood. An elegant baby grand piano claimed a spot in front of the impressive window.
“I’d love some milk. I don’t dare drink anything with caffeine in it this late in the day.” I glanced around the big, warm room. “Is Mr. Johnston around?”
“I’m afraid not. He had some errands to run in town. He’ll be so sorry he missed you.
I followed her into a well-lit, oversized kitchen, and she motioned toward the table. “Have a seat, dear.”
Caphy danced impatiently as I sat, and Belle bent to scratch her beneath her fleshy chin. “Hello, there beautiful. How are you today?”
