I looked down at the card. Her name was Sheila Green, and there were contact numbers at home, at work and a cell – along with an email address. She definitely wanted to be in touch.
She gave me an appraising glance when I looked at her again. “You would be kind of cute if you cleaned up a little, bothered to match once in a while.”
“Unlike you, I don’t have a need for matching pantsuits. I’m fine the way I am.” I did wonder what she meant. In making myself less conspicuous, I likely had not taken care of my appearance, but I didn’t want to be targeted in any way for the way I looked. Drab was the color of transparency and anonymity.
She just looked at me and then turned away. I opened the door for her to leave and locked it afterwards. No use in being unsafe.
I tried to get the Scotties into our daily rituals, but they were having none of it. Even though they would lose in a three-to-two battle in the current household, I would have laid odds on their determination. Stubborn was the nicest word to describe them.
So they practically told me what to do. Ruby must have fed them early, because they were trying to herd me into the kitchen by 5:30 in the morning. Bruno will always eat and The Countess gets dry food whenever she wants, so I was okay with feeding them. I decided that rather than trying to put them into my routine, I would see what they normally did. This would give me some insight into Ruby’s routine and maybe give me some other avenues of investigation. At 8pm, they wanted a treat of some sort. I tried three different ones but none of them satisfied the dogs. When I went to bed at eleven, they went to bed with me, sleeping on the opposite, empty side of my queen-sized bed.
It must have been close to two hours later, when I heard a strange noise. At first, I assumed that it was just the sounds of new dogs in the house, but I turned to face the other direction and saw that both dogs were still sound asleep on the other side of the bed. I saw Bruno in his bed, and The Countess never made noises like this.
I had two things going for me if this was an intruder. The first was that I kept a bat under the bed. My parents had prepped the two remaining children on preparedness and surviving an attack. The second had been my own way of coping with the loss. I’d become a black belt in tae kwon do. The surprising thing to me about martial arts was that it taught you to avoid conflict rather than seek it out. That was a message I had needed to hear. I’d gone there to kick everyone’s ass and instead came out a philosopher.
The dogs didn’t seem to mind that I got out of bed with a bat. They both rested contentedly in the bed and barely raised their heads to see me tiptoe to the door. I was glad to see that they were comfortable here, but I wanted some of that territorial instinct now.
While I had been telling myself that this was all the product of my overly active imagination, what I saw proved me wrong. The beam of a flashlight hit the doorframe and moved on down the hall. I froze. This was exactly the scenario which had been drilled into my head from the day my sister had vanished: the nighttime intruder who snatched you up. Now he was in my house. At least I assumed it was a man given the years of hearing the abductor called a man in my house.
I tried to breathe slowly, but I couldn’t. I felt like the hero of a Poe story, where all you could hear was the beating of a heart. My heart felt like it would explode. I’d built my entire life around an event like this, and it had come to pass, because I hadn’t kept my head down.
The beam of light grew closer. I could tell approximately where the intruder stood and how far he was from me. I wasn’t going to try to negotiate or ask questions. I was going to attack now and worry about the details later.
The beam grew closer, and I brought the bat up. I was ready to strike when Bruno ran across the hallway and into the spare room. The light stopped and turned in my direction. I had no choice but to attack. I wasn’t quite sure where the intruder was, but I came out swinging. I swung wildly, not hitting anything with the first three misses. The fourth swing hit something hard, and I heard a noise come out of the intruder.
Like playing a game of Battleship, I knew approximately where he was and started swinging to all sides of the first hit. I connected again and then a third time. While I was preparing to hit him again, the intruder’s flashlight swung and hit me on the side of the head.
You really do see little yellow stars when you get hit hard enough. I staggered back but kept the bat poised for another hit. I had thought that I had done some damage to the man, but if he could still hit like that, either I wasn’t hitting hard enough or he had superpowers of some sort.
“Give me the Scotties, and no one gets hurt,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. It was definitely male and had the accent of a true Toledo resident.
“Too late,” I said as I swung again. This time, I must have hit a bone because the flashlight skidded down the hall, and the house grew dark. My eyes had gotten used to the level of light from the flashlight, and now I couldn’t see a thing.
I heard more cursing, and so I figured that I’d done some damage. I was proud of myself. I had kept my head so far and hadn’t panicked or let the person do any real harm to me. I thought that my sister would be proud of me, wherever she was.
The man started shuffling down the hall. From the sound of the footsteps, he was trying to get away from me. I had the upper hand if he didn’t want to be here anymore. At least, he would think twice before trying to break into my house again.
I moved into a sparring position as I went into the hall. I kept the bat in my hands, which looked odd from a martial arts perspective, but given that I didn’t know if the intruder was armed, it was best to be prepared. I continued down the hall, though apparently at a slower pace than the intruder had. By the time I made it to the front door, he had vanished. The dogs had all decided to get into the fun of it, and I had three dogs barking at the broken window as I tried to call Detective Green. She’d said anytime, though I doubted she had really expected a 1am call the very evening that she gave me the card.
She answered in a monotone voice on the third ring. I explained my situation, and the voice went into professional mode. She said that a car would be right out, and she’d be there within 25 minutes.
True to her word, the car was there in minutes. Two uniformed officers walked around the perimeter of the house, took a few notes, and came inside to escape the cold. I had brewed a pot of coffee and played hostess to them.
The older one spoke. “Definitely a break-in. We can track the footprints from the sidewalk to the window. Having a foot of snow on the ground makes it easy to follow the footprints. The panes are broken near the latch, so the window could be raised. Was anything taken?”
I shook my head. Even though I hadn’t done an inventory of what little I owned, I knew that he hadn’t come for my meager possessions. He had wanted the dogs and hadn’t worried about being explicit in that demand. I couldn’t imagine what was so urgent about the dogs that someone would break into the house for them. I decided to look into their pedigree. Maybe they were champion show dogs, hiding undercover, the way I did. It was possible. Ruby had said that she had a fortune invested in those dogs. I wondered if that was really true.
The two officers didn’t have much to say after that. I gave them a short run down of what had happened while they took notes and filled out forms. I’d almost given up hope that Sheila would be coming out that night when there was a knock at the door. I perked up as I saw her in the doorway.
“So what have you been up to?” she eyed the two officers who looked pretty comfortable at this point. “What’s the story?”
The older one spoke again, and only checking his notes once, gave her an accurate recount of what they’d seen and what I’d said. I had to admit that I was impressed. He’d succinctly summarized what I’d said.
She nodded. “Anything else you want to add to that?”
My mind was racing from the attack still, and I let my mouth take control. “Just that it’s becoming very clear that this isn’t a case of Ruby just g
oing off and leaving her dogs. The person here tonight came for the dogs. He said so. I’m guessing that means that he’s the same one who went to Ruby’s house. There’s either an incredible number of criminal men in this case, or one man is doing all of this. I lean towards the one man theory.”
She gave me a wan smile. Perhaps that was the best she could do at 3am. My mind was still racing, but she hadn’t taken a baseball bat to someone who broke into the house in the middle of the night. Whoever it was hadn’t counted on my particular set of issues.
“What will you do?” I asked, hoping for action, but not knowing specifically what that would be.
“We’ll talk to the family again. We’ll talk to the vet. We’ll try to see if we can establish a motive for wanting the dogs. And of course, we’ll continue to look for Ruby Jenkins.” She looked at the two officers and shrugged. I wasn’t pleased by their shared amusement over a civilian wanting justice to be served.
I gave her my best smile. “Well, I’ll be sure to let you know when I find out something else. If enough things happen to me, maybe you’ll actually solve the case.” I didn’t bother to see them out. I just left the room, which was becoming a habit with me.
Soon enough I heard the door shut, and the cars drive off. I was pissed at me for losing my temper. I was pissed at me for freaking out. The intruder had wanted the dogs, not me, but my first thoughts had just been of me and my past. I wanted to be able to move beyond that. I had two dogs who were very much in trouble and needed my help. I was emotionally stuck in the past and couldn’t allow myself to move on from what happened twenty years ago.
Going back to sleep wasn’t an option, so I spent the hours just staring at the walls and occasionally petting one of the dogs, whichever one woke up and wanted a cuddle. There are worse ways to spend a sleepless night. It gave me plenty of time to think about what my next steps were in this case.
To find out who was behind this, I had to know why the dogs were so valuable. This was going to be a case where motive drove the actions. Could they be pedigree animals? I wondered, but it didn’t seem particularly likely. Ruby had spayed and neutered them early, so there was no chance of extending the bloodline through them. Perhaps a test could tell that they weren’t of a superior bloodline, but Ruby had purchased them, thinking that they were. It made more sense, except that at worst the dogs could be refunded for the money she paid to the breeder.
If they hadn’t been valuable from birth, I wondered what else could have made them worth breaking into someone’s house for. In order to find that out, I planned to talk to the son of Ruby’s friend who had watched the dogs when she had to go out. I wanted to know where she had gone and why she couldn’t leave the dogs by themselves. I tried not to make a habit of leaving Bruno and The Countess at the house for too long, but there were times when I needed to leave the house.
I couldn’t discount the idea that the intruder was concerned that I would talk to the animals and learn their secret. If the person was gullible enough – or guilty enough, then they might want to keep the dogs away from me. However, I had no idea what crimes the dogs might have seen. Obviously, they’d been there when Ruby disappeared. Could it be that they recognized the person who had taken her? I was more convinced now that she hadn’t left of her own volition. She’d been taken. And if the culprit was concerned about the dogs mentioning who had come to the house, then it had to be a person who had been there before.
Other than that, the dogs rarely left the house. So the chances of Perry and Della seeing something in the neighborhood were extremely slim. They might have seen something at their vet or at their groomers, but I didn’t know the names of these businesses. Maybe Ida would know where the dogs had gone, but I doubted it. More than likely, I’d have to spend more time on the phone, trying to locate these people.
I must have drifted off at some point, because I started when the phone rang. I mumbled when I picked it up, but it was the veterinarian from the emergency clinic. “Hello, Mr. Jenkins.”
I started to correct him, but remembered at the last second that I’d given him a false name when I stopped by to pick up Perry. “Hi, what’s up? Did I leave something there for Perry?”
“No, but I thought you would be interested. The man who dropped the Scottie off came back this morning to inquire about the dog. He was rather flustered to find that a family member had claimed the dog and returned it home. He was rather puzzled by the whole matter.”
“Did he leave a name for you?” I hoped that a name would help me to solve this case once and for all.
“No, but after our last conversation, I switched on the security cameras. I do have footage of him, even if I don’t have a name. If you give me an email address, I’ll be happy to send you the file. You can look and see for yourself.”
Fortunately, my email isn’t my name, so I gave him [email protected] and made some coffee while I waited for the file. I hummed to myself, thinking that this might all be over in a matter of a few minutes. I’d get the footage, recognize the man who dropped off Perry, and be able to wrap this up in a nice package for the police. I’d be vindicated and the dogs would be safe.
However, even in the midst of these thoughts, I knew something was wrong. If the man had come by this morning to check on Perry, that meant he hadn’t known of someone else’s involvement until 8am. That still meant that the intruder was unlikely to be the man who dropped off Perry. I wasn’t quick to give others special talents, and seeing the future wasn’t a skill belonging to anyone I knew.
I cursed a little as I drank the coffee. I was still stuck with a mystery, even if I recognized the man who dropped off Perry. There was no evidence that the man with the dog was the same person who had taken Ruby – except for proximity of the woman to the dog.
Finally, the email appeared and I downloaded it and began to play it. I recognized the man in the video. It was Ruby Jenkins’ next door neighbor.
Chapter Five
So now I had a plan of attack. I was going to find the vet and the breeder for more information on the dogs, and then I’d go back to the Jenkins’ house and question the neighbor about Perry. How had he gotten the dog? What did he know?
I called my mother first, since she was the one who knew Ruby best out of the people I’d met so far. She answered on the first ring. I knew she would. Mom rarely goes out these days. She has groceries and medicines delivered. Anything else she needs, she orders through Amazon. There were publicity stunts a few years back where people planned to live in a house for a year without leaving. My mother had decided to do that as well, except she didn’t make a fuss about it. She just stayed inside indefinitely. On rare occasions, she would go out to the doctor or for an emergency, but they were rare events and getting rarer all the time.
“Griff, how are you? Have you found the person who took Ruby?” The words seemed casual, but to anyone in our family, the thought of someone being taken was synonymous with fear.
“Not yet, but I’m getting closer,” I lied. I deliberately did not tell her about the intruder. I didn’t want a situation where my mother didn’t feel safe, even in her own room. Then she’d have no refuge at all. Plus the thought of another child being attacked would be too much for her. She wouldn’t be able to handle the loss of another child. I knew that as sure as I knew Susan was dead.
“So what do you need?” she asked.
“Did Ruby ever mention the breeder who sold her the Scotties or her vet’s name? I was hoping to talk to them about the dogs. They seem to be at the center of this mystery.”
“Hold on a second. I might have the groomer’s name. Ruby always thought that I should have a dog for protection. If that was the case, I’d want something big and scary. Scotties are adorable, but I don’t see them as a threat.”
I remembered last night and thought she might be wrong. I waited while she put the phone down and went to look up the information. She came back in a minute, out of breath. “I have the breeder’s name. It’s Harrie
tt Anderson.” She read off a phone number to me that I duly copied down. She quickly hung up, and I got ready to visit the neighbor. I threw on the first things I could find, which were jeans and a bright green pullover. It was warm, but I hoped that I wouldn’t run into Detective Green in the outfit.
I thought about taking the Scotties with me to interrogate the neighbor, but I didn’t want to disturb Perry. He seemed pretty laid back at the moment, and I didn’t want to put him under any undue stress. After all, he’d had stitches and pain pills in the last day.
If he’d been hurt at the Jenkins’ house, it would be better if he visited the house again with Ruby, so she could comfort him. Dogs have good memories when it comes to people or places and the memories associated with them. Perry had plenty of good memories at Ruby’s house, but his most recent memory would have been the attack.
So I went by myself to the Jenkins’ house. The snow still covered the street and made an icy fence against the chain link. I didn’t bother with the Jenkins’ house. No one was there. I walked to the house with the two Beagles, but apparently everyone was inside, a good idea since the high was only supposed to be ten degrees today. The old man answered on the third knock and looked a bit startled to see me. “What can I do for you?” he asked. Now that I knew to look for it, he did have a scar on his eyebrow. It was just confirmation of what I already knew.
“Perry had a very interesting story to tell me after I picked him up at the animal hospital. He told me that his neighbor had dropped him off there. Care to comment on that?” I skipped the whole part about how I had evidence to prove it from the hospital’s video. I would save that for if we needed to go to court. Otherwise, I’d leave it.
The man took a look at me. I could tell he was puzzling over whether or not to tell me the story. I’d learned in life that sometimes it’s better to the let the other person talk first. So I waited.
1 PAWsible Suspects Page 4
