“Finkerman,” I sneered.
Finkerman looked at Winky and nodded in my direction. “A friend of yours?”
“Yes’m,” Winky said.
“My condolences,” Finkerman said.
Winky shot me a look. “It really is condolences. Huh. Who would ’a thunk it?” He grabbed the box with his pudgy, freckled hands. “Thanky. This here looks like my stuff all right. But what’s in that there envelope?”
“I couldn’t say,” Finkerman said. “It was sealed.”
“And you’re telling us you didn’t open it?” I sneered. “Yeah, right.”
“Client attorney privilege,” Finkerman sneered back. He shrugged. “Okay. You got me. I thought at first it was just gonna be a list of the junk...uh...retail items...in the box. But it turns out that Joseph Bateman left your friend Wallace here a lot more than that.
“Who’s Joseph Bateman?” Winky asked.
Finkerman sighed. “Old Joe. He must have been short of relatives, because he signed over the deed to his bait house to one Wallace J. Winchly.”
“Which one?” Winky asked, with genuine interest.
“You,” Finkerman said. He turned to face Winky directly. He leaned over and spoke slowly, as if to a very slow-witted goat. “The...Bait...Shack...by...Caddy’s...is...yours.”
“Mine? Whoo hooo!” Winky cheered.
“I wouldn’t celebrate just yet,” Finkerman said. “Once the deed is transferred, Old Joe’s Bait House will lose its grandfathered property tax exemptions. I figure the beachfront taxes on that little patch of land will cost you around sixty-five thousand a year.”
“Holy smokes!” Winky said. “That’s more money than I’ve made in my natural born lifetime!”
“Shocking,” Finkerman deadpanned.
“What’s it worth if he sold it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’m an attorney, not a real estate agent. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m busy.”
Finkerman turned to go. “Uh...Mr. Finkerman,” I began.
He turned around. His evil smile told me he’s picked up on my gaff. I’d been polite.
“Yes?” he asked, drawing the syllable out four seconds.
“Uh...have you ever handled a dog poisoning case?” I asked.
“Sure. For a hundred-fifty an hour. Plus expenses. But for you, I’d do it for two hundred an hour.”
“Thanks,” I said sourly. “I’ll let you know.”
Finkerman turned and left the lobby. Winky had opened the envelope and was staring at the deed to the bait shop.
“What do you think it’s worth, Val?”
“I dunno. But I think I know someone who can find out.”
Winky folded the deed and tapped his forehead with it. “You know what, Val? If it’s worth enough, I’m gonna get me a doublewide!”
Chapter Thirty
It’s weird how your whole life can change in the shake of a dog’s leg. In under the space of a day, I was soon to be short one boyfriend, and Winky had inherited a place worth a half a million dollars.
“Are you sure about that?” I asked Judy Bloomers.
“Well, it depends on what someone will pay for the property, of course.”
I clicked off my cellphone and turned to Winky. “I think you can afford that doublewide.”
“Woo hoo!” Winky cheered. “And maybe a Camaro, too?”
I grinned. “Maybe.”
“Then let’s get her done, Val. Put that bad boy on the market.”
“Okay. I’ll make an appointment with Judy for when I get back.”
“Where you goin’?”
“To Sunset Sailaway. To meet Tom.”
“Oh, I get it,” Winky grinned. “A romantical getaway, huh?”
“Yeah. Something like that.” I opened the van door and climbed out. “See you soon. I’m really happy for you, Winky.”
“Thanks Val. Looks like life is lookin’ up for us all.”
“Yeah,” I repeated. “Some more than others.”
It felt as if I were wearing lead pants as I walked up my driveway toward the front door. I knew nothing else even remotely good was going to come of this day. Maybe even the rest of my life. As if to prove my point, when I closed the front door and walked into my living room, what I saw through the sliding glass doors made me drop my purse. Jake Johnson, the psycho murderer, was wandering around in my back yard!
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. But like a moth to a flame, I found myself inexplicably drawn across the living room to the sliding glass doors. This was supposed to be my home. My sanctuary. My port in a storm! My safe place! Anger mowed over my fear like a runaway John Deere. I grabbed the empty gin bottle from the counter and slid open the door.
“What are you doing out there?” I shouted.
“Oh! Hi,” he said. “Sorry to barge in on you. I lost something. Ah. Just found it!” He bent over and picked up something from my lawn.
How convenient that you just found it. “I would prefer you ask next time, before you come into my yard,” I said indignantly.
“I’d like to make the same request of you,” he replied.
My face grew hot. “Look, I don’t need –” My eyes fell on the object in his hand. It looked like some kind of...restraint collar! “What have you got there? In your hand?” I gulped, and took a step back.
“It’s a...training device,” he said as he walked toward me. “See?”
“Training?”
“Listen, we got off on the wrong foot. I’m barbequing for lunch. You hungry?”
“Is it gonna be another wrong foot?” I hissed.
“Huh?” he asked, and cocked his hairy face sideways.
“I’m not hungry,” I replied, and tested my grip on the gin bottle I was packing, concealed behind the door frame.
“Come on,” Jake insisted, and took another step forward. “You haven’t tasted real meat until you’ve tried my barbecue.”
I turned and glanced around inside the house for my cellphone. I needed to call Laverne. Or 911. Where was that blasted phone?
I felt a hand wrap around my left wrist. I turned my head slowly back to face my neighbor. The convicted murderer was smiling at me, but not like any smiley face I’d ever seen.
“I’m from New Jersey,” Jake said, and tugged on my arm. “We don’t take no for an answer.”
I tried to jerk my arm away, but that horrific paralysis had returned. I no longer had any will of my own. “I’m in a hurry,” I whispered with my last bit of strength.
He eyed me playfully, like a cat with a mouse. “Just a quick bite then. It won’t take long.”
As he pulled me out of my house and tugged me toward his backyard, I only hoped Jake Johnson would be true to his word...that he would be merciful, and make it quick.
Chapter Thirty-One
I was sitting, half-paralyzed, in a lawn chair by a huge fire pit. A round grille was suspended over the flames from a rusty tripod of metal. A beverage was in my right hand, but I was afraid to drink it. I was pretty sure it was how Jake had drugged all his other murder victims.
He ambled up beside me and set a box on the ground by my feet. He smiled and my blood ran cold. It was the same box he’d gotten out of his SUV and had carried toward Winky, Goober and me yesterday, when we’d escaped in Goober’s rusty old Chevette.
Oh dear lord! What has he got inside that thing? A knife? Zip ties? A rope to throttle me with?
I heard the lock click. I gulped and dared a downward glance. Jake took out a huge screwdriver and pointed it at me. “You’re in a lot of danger, you know,” he said. He bent over me, his hot, horrid breath in my face. “The arm on this chair’s a little loose.” He leaned over and tightened a screw on the chair.
He’s taunting me. What’s he going to tighten next? A noose around my neck?
I let out a weak, pathetic scream. “Aaaahhhgh!”
Jake looked at me and shook his head. “Intimacy issues, too,” he muttered. “Boy, are you ever wound up
tight.”
“Of course I am!” I panted breathlessly. My lungs were so tight I could barely draw enough air to speak. “You’re a mur...uh....” Oh no! Shut up, Val! If you say it, he’ll know you know. Then you’ll be doomed for sure!
Jake dropped the wrench back in the box and scowled. “Go ahead and say it. Murderer. I’m a murderer.”
I started whimpering.
“You’re not the only one I’ve had to deal with,” he said. “Everyone thinks I am.”
“Is that why you killed them?” I whined.
“What?”
“All the graves. Behind your shed. I saw them!”
Jake’s black eyes narrowed to slits. “You did?”
“Yes,” I huffed. “And so did my friends. If you kill me, they’ll know it was you!”
A grimace nearly swallowed Jake’s hairy face. “Kill you? I was just hoping to eat lunch with you! If that’s how you feel, forget it. Just go.”
Jake hung his head and shuffled back to toward his house. I tried to get up and flee, but something inside me wouldn’t let me.
“Then you’re not...a...murderer?” I gasped.
“No!” he shouted back.
“You promise?” I asked.
Jake stopped and turned around. “Yes, I promise, for what that’s worth.”
“I...It’s just that...how the hell do you explain all those graves, then?”
“They’re my childhood pets,” he said, and took a step back toward me. “After I hit puberty and this hair showed up, they were my only friends.”
“Oh,” I said sheepishly.
“After twenty years, the wooden markers had rotted away. I wanted them to have new tombstones. I’m almost done, too. All I’ve got left to finish is Buskers, my turtle, and I’m done.” Jake sat down on a chair next to me. “I know it may sound weird, but it’s not against the law to bury your pets in your yard. Believe me, I’ve had plenty of time to research the laws.”
“Twenty years, I’m guessing.”
“Bingo.”
“So you didn’t...I mean...your mom really...exploded?”
Jake sighed. “Spontaneously combusted. Yes, it’s a real thing. Look it up on the internet.”
“Actually, I already did,” I confessed. “Lots of people agree with you. That it’s a real thing, I mean.”
“Do you?” he asked. His beady eyes looked almost pleading.
“I’m getting there.”
“Thanks.”
“But tell me, what about the missing dogs? You had that hound, and now you don’t. Then a Doberman. Where is it? What happened to them?”
“You really are nosy,” Jake said. “And paranoid, too.”
“I like to think I’m cautious,” I argued.
“Right,” he said sarcastically. “Have it your way. If you must know, they were clients.”
“Clients?”
“While I was...away...I took a correspondence course in psychology. I’m a certified animal counselor. A dog psychologist, if you will.”
“That’s a real thing?”
“Yes, it’s a real thing.”
“Wow. So, why did you choose that?”
Jake sighed. “When you look more like a beast than a human being, it’s easier to sympathize with the animals.”
I looked down at my feet. “I get that. Sorry I misjudged you.” I looked up to see Jake shrug. “So, how does it work?”
“The therapy?” Jake asked. “I introduce patients to their triggers – their antagonists.”
“What do you mean?”
Jake stood up and used his hands as he spoke like the world’s hairiest Italian. “Take the hound and the Dobie. Both were terrified of thunderstorms. So I did a group session the other night. Remember when we had those storms?”
“Uh...yeah,” I said and coughed. “I vaguely recall them.”
“The Dobie was a hard case. Poor thing. His owner was ready to put him down. Can you believe it? They’d had to keep him locked in their garage during storms. He’d go bananas. Well, the last straw came when he actually busted out a tiny garage window in a panic to escape the storm. His owners found him cowering under the neighbor’s pool cabana the next morning. The garage window frame was still stuck around his middle.”
“That’s horrible!” I said.
“Psychological trauma can break anybody. Believe me. But it doesn’t mean you have to stay broken. Thanks to my therapy, Gus the Dobie is back home now, weathering the storm, so to speak.”
“Wow. I’m sorry...and impressed. I had no idea.”
Jake nodded. “Not too many people do.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Why were you banging on my door the other night in the middle of a storm?”
“I’d tried your doorbell. It didn’t work.”
“It got fried the night before,” I explained. “During the first storm, when the lights went out. But why in the world were you out in a storm in the first place?”
“I needed to borrow a cup of milk,” Jake said. “I was in the middle of making a batch of doggy biscuits and knocked over my carton.”
“Oh. Those would be the same...biscuits...you gave me for Buster.”
“Right. Did they do the trick? How is he?”
I slumped in my chair. “To be honest, Jake, he’s not sick. At least, I don’t think so. He’s missing. He disappeared the night of the second storm. Goober had him on a leash.... We heard this horrible howling, then a cracking sound...like bones crunching. The leash went slack...and he was gone.”
Jake studied my guilty face. “And you thought what? That I ate him alive?”
I shriveled. “No. Not alive. Well, yes, maybe alive.”
Jake rolled his eyes. “And people think I’ve got mental problems. Let me give you a recommendation, Ms. Fremden. Never have a mother who spontaneously combusts. It’s a real lifestyle cramper.”
I shrunk in my chair. “Sorry.”
“You know, that cracking noise was probably the limbs that broke on that tree over there.” Jake nodded toward a small tree that was missing a few limbs about as thick as my wrist. “Wind damage.”
“Oh.”
“Now, as to what happened to Buster, I couldn’t tell you. He might suffer from astraphobia, too. A lot of dogs do.”
“Astraphobia?”
“Fear of thunder and lightning. If so, he probably freaked out and ran off. If a dog can bust out a window, a dog can slip off a leash.”
I sat up in my chair. “That’s true. Tom found him wandering around. It could be –”
Jakes doorbell rang. “Excuse me for a moment. That may be my next client. She’s a little early.”
After Jake left, I took a tentative sip of my drink. It didn’t taste like arsenic. It tasted like a gin and tonic. I gulped half of it down. I heard the back door open again. A moment later, a little white poodle skipped down the path, put its paws on my shins and wiggled its bob-tailed rear excitedly.
“Hey! Get down, you dirty little rat!” I said, and scrambled to my feet.
“Oh my word,” Jake said. “I get it now. You hate dogs.”
“No I don’t,” I said, and pursed my lips. “I mean, not really. Not all dogs.”
“Admitting a problem is halfway to solving it,” Jake said.
“I don’t hate dogs!” I insisted.
“Come on, Val. Why don’t you want to admit it?”
“Because dog haters are right up there with serial killers!” I blurted.
Jake shot me a wry look. “Tell me about it,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“You are without a doubt the most insecure, distrustful, jealous and paranoid piece of work I’ve seen in a while,” Jake said.
“I hope you’re talking to the dog,” I sneered, and sat back down in the lawn chair by Jake’s fire pit grille.
Jake hugged his latest client, the little white poodle, and whispered in its ear. “Don’t listen to her.”
“All I said was the dog stinks,” I re
peated.
“Well, for your information, to a dog, you’re a walking stink bomb.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Jake let go of the dog and used a pair of tongs to turn the meat on the grill. It smelled so good my stomach growled.
“You can wear as much deodorant or perfume as you want,” he said, waving the tongs for emphasis. “A dog can smell right through it. In fact, the human armpit is the smelliest thing in the animal kingdom. Our breath? Woo boy. And don’t even get me started on the genital region.”
I grimaced. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”
Jake laughed. “But the biggest source of smell, believe it or not, is our skin. We’re literally churning out a boatload of sweat and oils. It’s our signature scent. That’s what a dog picks up on when it’s sniffing you out.”
“I thought it was our scurf.”
Jake stopped dead and smiled. “You know about scurf?”
“Yeah. It’s a real thing.”
Jake grinned. “You know, I’ve got an idea, if you’re game. Here. Take Trixie.”
He shoved the little poodle into my arms. I held it like it was wearing a poo-poo diaper.
“Just as I thought,” he said. “You’re stiff. A dog can sense that.”
“How? Are they psychic?”
“No. They can smell fear. And anxiety. Some say they even know when you’re sad.”
I looked at Trixie. She tried to lick my face. Gross. “How is that possible?”
“Hormones, mostly,” Jake explained. “Adrenaline especially. It’s the fight-or-flight hormone. We can’t smell it, but dogs can. And when you’re agitated, you’re heart rate goes up. That shoots smelly chemical messages coursing through your skin.”
“Sounds nasty,” I said.
“Maybe. But it’s honest. You might be able to smile and fool your friends, but you can’t fool man’s best friend.”
“A dog’s never been my best friend.”
“That’s too bad,” Jake said.
“Can I put her down now?” I asked.
“Wait a minute. Just look at Trixie. You don’t like her. She knows it. But still, she keeps on trying.”
Doggone Disaster Page 18
