My lungs were already aching from sucking in lungfuls of the frigid air, but I knew I had one chance here. I opened my mouth and shouted as loud as I could, “Help!” I couldn’t tell if the words got lost in the wind or if they’d made it to shore. It didn’t seem to have an immediate reaction from the few people on shore. I coughed now, knowing that I’d taken in too much of the glacial air for my own good.
I felt my body start to fall, and I turned enough to see the man’s arms around my waist. I fell, hitting my head again on the ice and snow. He kicked me three times in the ribs for good measure. I guess he was pissed at me for making him work.
He stood up slowly. I was surprised that the weather must be affecting him as well. I hoped that the weather would at least leave him with frostbite as a consolation for killing me. He reached his full height, and he pulled out a tire iron. It seemed bold to attack someone when there were spectators on shore, but they weren’t clearly visible to me. I figured that he was taking the chance that they wouldn’t see him clearly enough to make an identification.
He brought the iron up for the first blow when I heard a loud explosion. My frosty brain looked around for another transformer or perhaps a backfire, but there was nothing in the scene to create such a noise. However, the man began to fall. He crumpled, holding his middle. His eyes glazed over, and he hit the ice.
I would have been glad to see the end of this man, but I passed out.
When I woke up, I was in the hospital. I was under so many blankets and heating pads that I couldn’t move. It looked like I was the pea under the mattress, which was probably a good analogy since I had been irritating people throughout this entire investigation.
I looked around slowly, but no one else was in the room. I wondered about a number of different things, but my questions wandered out of my mind as I snuggled back in my bed and drifted off again. I managed to slide one cold arm out from under the blankets and dial the phone. Jimmy answered and I made quick arrangements for him to watch my pets until I could be home. He told me that he’d seen me on TV, and he wanted to talk more. I pleaded exhaustion which was true and hung up after agreeing on a price.
I couldn’t tell how long it had been since I’d been out. The sky outside was dark and the lights were low in the room. There was still no one in my room, which made me feel a bit unwanted. I was awake enough now to punch the button and a nurse bustled into the room a few minutes later.
“What time is it? Where exactly am I?”
She gave me the time, which apparently was the evening of the day I’d run along lake Erie. The hospital wasn’t far from the lake itself. She told me that I’d suffered from acute hypothermia, and that I needed to stay under the blankets for a while longer. In the midst of a Toledo winter, I had no trouble in following those directions. Besides, after my run, I wanted nothing more than to stay warm for as long as possible.
When I awoke again, it was morning. There was still no sign of my mother. I guessed that her own phobias had taken over and left her unable to leave the house. I didn’t have any other family in town, so unless Bruno came to the hospital, I was on my own.
About 10 o’clock, Detective Green came into the room followed by an officer. She came up next to the bed and said, “You certainly have an interesting way of flying under the radar. At least ten people on shore called and reported a man being chased on the lake. You were a news story yesterday.”
I tried to give her a smile, but my face still felt odd despite the warmth. I thought it might be a while before I was back to normal. “Thanks. Did you come for an autograph?”
She smiled at me. “Nope, just for a statement. I like the new hairstyle,” she said, touching my hair.
No one here had mentioned my hair, but then again, I hadn’t asked anyone about it.. I was guessing that someone here had cut it to make it easier to deal with my head injuries. I hoped it wasn’t shaved, but I was too comfortable to pull an arm out to check on it.
“It doesn’t look bad, I promise,” she said. “I want to know exactly what happened.”
The uniformed officer opened a notebook and began taking notes before I’d even started speaking. I knew it was notations on the date and time and case, but for a moment, it made me snicker to think that he was putting words in my mouth.
“Well, I knew that it had to be one of Ruby’s family members. It was the only thing that made sense. It had to be someone who knew Ruby’s penchant for storing away cash and valuables, because those were the only people who had received old bills as cash and a few expensive coins. No one else had seen those items.”
“So what were they hoping to find?” she asked. The officer behind her nodded and wrote more on the page.
“I honestly don’t think that they knew what they were going to find. Ruby had talked about having a fortune. She’d told a few people that her dogs were worth a fortune, which was telling. She thought it was a joke and laughed. So whoever it was had to find the items and determine their worth.”
She cleared her throat. “Yeah, we got that, but what was the fortune and where is it now? I’m guessing that the killer hadn’t figured that out, or you wouldn’t have been a target.”
“I hadn’t figured it out for a while. After the man broke into my place, I was looking for a male relative who wanted the money. Ida didn’t tell me about Phyllis having a son. I only knew of the daughters who were Ruby’s nieces. Then when I did find out that there was a son, it turned out that he was the beneficiary of the estate since he’d be caring for the Scotties. So then it was the women who would have had the most to gain from finding the fortune, but women hadn’t attacked me in my house. It wasn’t until I talked to Melissa again that I discovered she’d found a man to help her out. That was when he attacked me.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “You’re going to tell this in your own order, aren’t you?”
I shrugged a little and said, “I want it to make sense. So that’s how I found out about the man in the case. I should have figured that out from Melissa’s attitude about men, but I didn’t. Who was that guy anyway? He didn’t introduce himself to me before he tried to kill me.”
“James Howard. He was a city employee, worked for the electric company. He’d lost a lot of his pension in a divorce and wanted to make some cash by any means possible. Melissa had promised him cash to help her.”
“I got the impression that he wouldn’t have shared. Once they’d gotten their hands on the money, he would have killed her too.”
Green shrugged. “It would have saved the state the trouble of executing her later. Now she’ll have a trial and twenty years on death row.”
“So anyway, I realized too late that I’d believed the things that Melissa had told me. I doubted the story of the gunshot, which was probably a transformer blowing. I think James must have done something to it to turn off the lights that night. It made a shot-like sound that scared Della under the bed. They couldn’t get to her and didn’t know where she was.”
“Why is that little dog important to the story?”
“Della had the fortune. On her collar in between all of the rabies tags and other knickknacks on her collar, Ruby had put a gold coin in a wrapper. It made it look cheap, but Della was carrying around a coin that would probably bring a few hundred thousand at auction. She was a very expensive little dog, and Ruby’s joke made sense about the fortune on the dogs.”
Green’s eyes bulged. “Ruby Jenkins let a dog carry around a coin worth that much? Jesus, where is the collar now? Does she have it on?”
“I took it. It’s in my car on the front seat. I was curious about the collar, because it was the only collar that hadn’t disappeared the night of Ruby’s disappearance. There were none in the house and Perry didn’t have one either. So they’d suspected something about the collars from the first.”
“Ruby was tortured, so she might have told them.”
I nodded, flashing back to those pictures in my mind. It would still be a while before I could get
rid of those. I had a small shiver up my spine as I thought of them. “Anyway, that’s what they were looking for.”
She nodded. “Well, if you were hoping to grow your business, you did it with a bang. The press was all over us asking about the detective who talks to animals again. They’ve been wanting an interview, but you’ve been out of it.”
I shook my head. “I doubt that I am going to do any interviews. I just want my privacy back. I want things to go back to the way that they used to be.”
“Before your sister?”
I started to get angry, but let the emotion go. It was no good getting mad at Detective Green. She’d been doing her job. Whoever had taken Susan all those years ago was the person I should be mad at. Green was just doing her job, looking into suspects – the same way that I had.
“Yeah, before my sister.”
She nodded again. “Well, as sort of a congratulations present, I got you this. I imagine we’ll be seeing you around the station again. People are going to be coming out of the woodwork after this to hire you.”
She slid a folder onto the metal table that hung over my bed. It was a folder, not a traditional get-well present, but she still had those silver eyes that captivated me. I took the folder in my hands and looked at it. Across the tab, it read “Susan Fitzpatrick.” My sister’s case.
I put it down on the table, unsure if I wanted to read what was in it.
###
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
1 PAWsible Suspects Page 9
