Sleeping Dogs
Animal Instincts, Book 5
Chloe Kendrick
Copyright © 2014
Published by: Rascal Hearts
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Book Cover By: Rosy E. Fisher
Sleeping Dogs
“Hello, Susan?” I ask timidly. Although I had heard what I thought was her voice on the other end of the phone, realistically it had been over 10 years since I’d heard her speak a word. My memory could easily be clouded.
“Griff?” the voice asked, though she didn’t sound enthusiastic to hear from me. I honestly had expected more from Susan, but apparently this was not going to be a welcome reunion. My spirits fell. I had hoped that after all this time, she’d be happy to hear from me. However, given that she had left of her own free will, perhaps not.
“Susan, it’s really you.” Despite my powers of observation, sometimes I had a way of stating the obvious that sounded clueless even to me. However, I’d been wondering about her fate for so many years that words failed me at this point. What was I supposed to say? There wasn’t a Hallmark card for this type of event.
“You shouldn’t have called. You don’t know what you’re doing here.” Her words were clipped and harsh. It took me back to the time when I’d gone through her closet, looking for notebook paper. I’d found notes on paper, but most of them were to an unnamed boy. She’d been livid, and her voice sounded much like it did now.
“I know that I just found my sister. That’s what I’m doing here.” Sheila Green, the Toledo Police detective who had helped me in my search, stood by while the conversation went downhill. At one point, she put a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged it off. She had her own boundaries, so she wasn’t annoyed that I was not in a mood for sympathy or comfort at what should have been a moment of triumph and resolution.
“Does Mom know that you’ve called?” She sounded petulant, like the teenager she’d been when she’d left home.
“No, she doesn’t. At last check, I was an adult, and I didn’t need to get Mom’s approval to call my sister.” I was holding the phone so tight at this point that I thought I might break the plastic. I could tell that I was upset.
“Well, there are some things that you don’t know – and that you don’t need to know.”
That was the last straw. I had been dealing with this issue for the last dozen years of my life, and while I hadn’t been sure what type of reception I would get, it certainly wasn’t this one. “Here’s what I do know,” I started. “Our father drank himself into an early grave because he didn’t know what had happened to his only daughter. Our mother became a recluse and only comes out of the house on dire emergencies. Our brother moved to Colorado, just so he wouldn’t be known as the brother of the girl who was kidnapped. Maybe you should know those things, too.”
“You’re still fine and in Toledo,” she shot back.
I started to retort, but I was struck by what she’d said. She knew where I lived and how I was. That meant that she’d somehow kept up with me over the years. My first thought was my mother, but not too long ago, I had scanned through her iPhone call log and I had learned some interesting things about her social life. However, my mother had made no calls to Seattle, and none had been received. So my mother either had another phone she used for calls to Susan, or she wasn’t the source of information. I made a note to myself to look into this. Any information on the situation as it stood now might help me to determine what had happened the night she disappeared.
“I’m not fine,” I said, finally, coming out of my musings. And I wasn’t. I functioned on the edge of society, living a life to keep myself out of any kind of spotlight for fear of being snatched up. My thoughts had decided that since Susan was happy and vivacious, I should be the opposite to stay safe. I shopped at thrift stores for clothes. I had let my hair grow out, and I kept my property maintained just above the regulations for condemnation. The eaves sagged, and the grass came up to my calves at times.
Just the thought that Susan had left voluntarily had rocked my world. My perspective was entirely wrong. She had not been kidnapped. She’d not run away with someone. She’d left by herself for reasons unknown.
I didn’t know how to behave now. Susan was alive. Nothing had happened to her. She was not kidnapped. My rationales that she’d been too spirited were wrong. I felt the world shift under my feet like an earthquake and tsunami combined. I had shaved my head and mowed my grass when I discovered that she hadn’t been kidnapped. Who would Griff Fitzgerald be if he wasn’t the sibling of a kidnapped child? I had long been defined as such by society, and I would have to spend some time thinking about this.
“You’re alive. You’re healthy and you’re dating some lady cop. That’s pretty close to fine if it’s not there.”
“Could we meet and talk? I don’t like doing this over the phone,” I asked, feeling at a loss since I hadn’t dealt with her in years. I didn’t know how to read her, like I did with my pets and some of the suspects in murder cases I’d been involved with.
“I went to the trouble of hiding myself for years, and you just want to come hang out on a vacation? I don’t think you understand the situation at all.” Her words were harsher still. I had apparently destroyed some plan that she’d made for herself.
“I hate to break your bubble, but once I started looking, I found you in less than 24 hours. You’re not exactly the invisible man here. Anyone else could find you too.”
She huffed into the phone. “Griff, just go back and talk to your animals and leave the humans alone, okay?”
The phone went dead before I could answer. I stood there for a minute before doing anything. Sheila put her hand on my back as if to steady me, and this time I made no move to brush it away. In fact, passing out was one of the options available to me.
“She hung up,” I said at last, still stating the obvious.
“I know. I was here.” Sheila guided me to the overstuffed chair in my living room, shooed Bruno from his favorite perch, and helped me sit down. If she was being this nice to me, I knew I had to look terrible. The shock of finding her combined with the destruction of my worldview was more than I could take. I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes.
After about 20 minutes, I opened my eyeswhen I smelled fresh coffee. Sheila had apparently found her way around my kitchen enough to make coffee and find something to put it in. She held it out to me and gave me a weak smile. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Better, but not satisfied by any means. I still don’t have any idea of why she left and why she doesn’t want to have a relationship with me. I’m certain that my mother talks to her, and I’m fairly sure that my brother does too. He was pretty cryptic when her name came up in our last conversation. He encouraged me not to take things at face value.” I remembered him telling me that I didn’t know everything that went on in our family. Then I had assumed that he meant the domestic violence reports against my father I’d discovered when first looking at the disappearance. However, now it was open to interpretation.
“Are you still thinking it’s related to the Frias case?” Sheila asked. She took the cup from me, like I was an invalid, and set it down on the end table. “You always have a plan. So let’s hear it.”
“Not ye
t.” I took a deep breath. “There’s a lot going on in my mind right now. Sorry.”
Sheila laughed. “So when are we hitting the department stores to get you some new clothes?” She knew my aversions to getting any clothing that was nice enough to make me stand out. With that preconceived notion splintered in my mind, she was right that likely my attire would change in the near future. However, I hadn’t been thinking about shopping at the moment.
I gave her a smile. “Soon, but that’s not what I’m thinking about.”
She nodded. “I know, which is why I asked what the plan was?”
“I picked up three things that I need to investigate here. The first is that she has some sort of connection to Toledo still. She knew things that she couldn’t read about on-line. She knew about you. She knew about my business. She knew it was a scam. So where is she getting her information from?”
“You don’t think it’s your mother?” she asked.
I explained how I knew who my mother had called. She remembered the incident since it had ultimately involved the police department.
“Okay, so mom’s out. What about Mom’s boyfriend, the former Sergeant Siever? Then you’ll need to figure out how she’s getting information. Is that important?”
I looked at the ceiling and then down at the Corgis at my feet. “I’m really not sure. It might be, but I don’t know. It just depends on who is giving her information. If it’s Sergeant Siever, then it’s quite possibly important. If it’s my brother, then likely not.”
Sheila nodded. “So what else is in this plan?”
“I still need to know why Susan ran away. It had to be big for her to leave and never look back.”
Sheila offered me the cup again. “Kids run away all the time without having a big reason for doing so. Why does it have to be big?”
“Because it’s still an open police investigation. The FBI still has it marked active. If I found her in hours, then the police could have too. So that means someone, likely a law enforcement person, is thwarting others from finding her. I got her Social Security number from the paper file. What if someone else had entered it into the computer system wrong so that others wouldn’t be able to find her so easily?”
Sheila paused for a second before nodding. “That could happen. I mean, if the officer really thought that there was an error, they could contact Social Security again and get the correct number, but more likely they wouldn’t get a hit and would not think to check the input’s validity. It would be a great way to cover their tracks and keep the police from finding her.”
“I think that role falls to Siever, but I need more information. And that’s going to come from my mother. She’s involved with him somehow. She’s either in league with him to hide Susan’s whereabouts or she’s romantically involved with him – or both. I don’t know, but I need to find out.”
Sheila shook her head. “Don’t get me involved in that one. He still has some pull down there at headquarters, and I don’t want to get in the middle of a battle over this. He can play nasty. I’ve heard about him from others.”
I nodded, contemplating the warning. “The last thing is to investigate the Frias case. Susan could have seen something regarding the homicide, and she could have run away rather than deal with the consequences. So I need to find out exactly what happened. If we find out who killed Belinda Frias then we could clear up the reasons why Susan has stayed away.”
Sheila frowned. “You do know that even if the case is cleared up that she likely won’t move home.”
“I know,” I sighed, “but I could go visit her. I could fly to Seattle and see my sister, which is not something I could have said – or even have thought a year ago. I’d be happy with that set of circumstances.”
“Does she have a family? Do they know about all this back in Toledo?”
“I didn’t get that far. It’s mid-day there, so any kids and spouse would likely be at work. I didn’t hear any babies, but it’s been long enough that she could have school-age children by now.”
Sheila stood up and looked for her coat. I was surprised that she would be leaving at a time like this.
“Where are you going?” I asked. There was so many things buzzing through my mind at the moment that I didn’t know where to start. Being with her made some of the thought calm down enough to deal with. I wasn’t sure how I would react alone.
“To get you a copy of the Frias reports. After last time, I want to make sure that Siever can’t tie the files to me. If he was watching the report on your sister’s disappearance, then he’s damned sure watching this file as well. I need a way to get access without him learning about it. I’m going to go talk to a few friends on the force.”
I nodded. She made perfect sense, and the part of me that wanted answers was fine with that. However, I still knew that I didn’t yet have full control over my thoughts still. Best she should leave before I said something stupid about us that could come back to haunt me.
She left, and I decided that the first line of business was to nap. I wasn’t sure how long I slept but when I woke, the skies had darkened, and the room was in semi-gray. I felt better about life after the nap. Nothing was resolved, and I still intended to look into these matters, but I felt calmer.
The two Corgis were still sleeping at the end of the ottoman. I willed myself to move, and I took them for a long walk. My thoughts had settled somewhat. I felt a gnawing urge to redo myself now that I was not going to be the victim of a kidnapping. Gone were the fears that someone would take me if I made myself noticed in any way. I whistled as I walked the dogs through the neighborhood, thinking about what I’d told Sheila. I was still going to look into this matter. I still wanted answers.
I came home and scrounged for something to eat. I’d checked my phone repeatedly, but no word from Sheila. I wasn’t sure what that meant. It could be that she’d been pulled in on a case, or perhaps getting the file was not as easy as she thought it would be.
To pass the time, I decided to look up the case on the Internet. I could take some notes and refresh my overworked mind on the details of the case. I started with Frias’ name and came up with millions of hits. Considering that the case was recent enough to have been reported on new sites, I figured that most of the articles would be cut and paste versions of each other. I tried to narrow the sources some to get an idea of the case.
In a nutshell, Belinda Frias had been murdered while cleaning the home of the Edmund Gillespie family. Frias had been knifed repeatedly with her throat slit nearly to the neck bone. The family had been excused from consideration for the crime, because they had all been at Cedar Point, an amusement park a few hours from Toledo.
The family consisted of the mother and father along with a boy and a girl. The girl looked like she was nearly Susan’s age, but I didn’t remember any Gillespies in her class at school. The boy was older than her, which meant I would not have known him at all. None of them had motives so even the chance of hiring a killer were slim.
Frias had apparently been working at the time of the killing. There was no sign of forced entry, which meant either that the killer had a key or more likely, the killer had been admitted by Frias. That meant someone with either a connection to the family or to the maid, which left a fairly wide playfield of suspects to consider.
The police seemingly tracked down the suspects as best they could. Many of them were ruled out for alibis. I printed out the articles that detailed the actions of several family friends and acquaintances of Frias. Given that more than a decade had passed, I doubted that some of these people would be able to recall what they’d been doing at the time of the murder. Unless I would be able to break these alibis, I would end up in exactly the same place as the police.
The major sticking point had been motive. Frias was middle-aged, attractive, but not stunning, and married. She had no children and few close relatives. There had been an uncle, who received money under the terms of her will. There was a cousin who had been given some cash und
er an insurance policy. However, nothing indicated that either of these people needed the money enough to kill a family member for it. The husband had received the little that was remaining. I wondered why.
The police went farther afield, but even in tracing her movements for several days, Frias had gone to church, cleaned the homes of seven different families and gone home to eat and sleep. There were no signs that she was involved in anything illegal, no blackmail and no illicit affairs. Her life was dull, the way many people’s are. However, most people do not end up dead.
Frias had no police records and from one reporter’s article had never even had a traffic ticket. There were no known beefs with neighbors or friends. She was described as amiable and moral. I know from talking to Sheila that prosecutors are not required to show motive, but that it always makes the case more solid when they do. This case would have had to go to court without a motive.
However, the case had never gone to court. The police investigation had not turned up sufficient evidence to charge anyone. The investigation had petered out several months after the crime. The newspapers went on to other crimes and killers, including my sister’s disappearance two weeks after the Frias murder. The uproar toned down after a while, and later still people forgot about the case. By five years ago, it had been relegated to the “once-a-year on the anniversary of the crime” reporting beat.
So why had I settled on the Frias case as a possible situation involving my sister, Susan? First, the crime had taken place two weeks before she left, and the day before she’d begun making phone calls to the bus station to learn about fares to other cities and the schedules. The time proximity was telling. It wasn’t proof, but it was certainly a major coincidence in the cosmos if the two were not related. The two biggest crimes in the last 20 years in Toledo had happened less than two weeks apart.
I’d originally forgotten how close the two events had been in time. When Susan left, I’d become so engrossed in her life and my life that I’d forgotten about the Frias case. It was only when I started looking at events around the time of Susan’s disappearance that I rediscovered how close the events had occurred.
SLEEPING DOGS (Animal Instincts Book 6) Page 1
