by Mike Faricy
I glanced over and caught sight of Morton pacing back and forth across the back seat of my car.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was late afternoon when Maddie called.
“Let me talk to Morton, Dev,” she said, not wasting time on a greeting or asking how things were going.
Morton was in the back of my car. I’d just checked on him about fifteen minutes earlier and he was asleep, comfortably curled up in a patch of sunlight and I wasn’t about to disturb him.
“Hold on, he’s right here,” I said then proceeded to pant into my cellphone.
Maddie kicked into her Morton voice. “How’s my baby, Morton? It’s mommy. Are you being a good boy? Do you miss me? I miss you. I’ve been so busy, Buster took me out for dinner last night and this morning he made me a special omelet for breakfast. It was in the shape of a heart and we shared it and then we had champagne and I’m just having the most wonderful time.”
She went on like that for a few more minutes. I wasn’t sure if I should interrupt her and tell her Morton was throwing up or would it just be better to disconnect. I split the difference.
“Hi, Maddie, Dev. Hey, Morton just took off after the Frisbee, it’s a gorgeous day and we’re out getting some exercise. How’s your mom doing?”
“She’s doing pretty well, I might have to stay a couple more days, just to make sure she’s got her therapy routine down.”
I wasn’t all that sure her mother’s therapy routine was Maddie’s top priority.
“A couple more days?”
“Yeah, hope it’s not a problem. Morton’s doing alright, isn’t he? He sounded good on the phone. Is he eating properly?”
First of all, that was me on the phone, and second, he just finished a pulled pork sandwich for lunch. He probably hasn’t eaten this well, ever. “Yeah, he loves that healthy dog food. Not to worry, we’re getting on famously and we’re the two dullest guys in town.”
“Perfect, well I’d better ring off, lots to do,” she said and hung up.
The remainder of the afternoon was even less eventful. Natasha continued to work Princess Anastasia and just like on past days they drew the occasional passersby who momentarily stopped to watch. No one interrupted their routine.
Natasha clapped her hands a little after six and they headed back toward the camper.
Morton barked as they approached and I could see him pacing in the back seat.
“Oh, good lord, where does the time go?”
“Where to tonight?” I asked as Natasha opened the door to the camper for the princess and watched her hop inside.
“Tonight? I haven’t given it much thought other than stopping at home to reload the suitcase and toss our laundry down the chute. I’ve got someone who comes in to help.”
No doubt. “But you’re not going to stay at home are you?”
“Perhaps just for a bite to eat, but nothing more than that.”
“Maybe I should follow you and make sure no one is hanging around.”
“I can assure you that sort of babysitting will not be necessary. I’m perfectly capable of monitoring the situation.”
“You sure? It’s no trouble to follow….”
“I really think I’m more than capable of dealing with whatever sort of situation might present itself, Mr. Haskell.” Then she shot a brief smile in my direction that was meant to be anything, but pleasant.
“All right, maybe I’ll just follow you home and….”
“Please don’t. Private school for the first twelve years, not to mention the Sorbonne, four years at Radcliffe, two Masters degrees. I must have learned something, somewhere,” she said now comfortably settling into her Ivy League accent.
“Okay, just want to make sure everything goes well. You’re just a couple days away from the show.”
“Competition,” she corrected. “Believe me, no one is more aware of the timeframe than myself. On the one hand it seems to be taking forever to arrive and on the other, well just where in God’s name did the time go?”
“Alright, you’ll call me with your location for tomorrow.”
“Just as soon as I know, I’ll phone. Au revoir,” she said, then stepped into her camper and locked the door.
I noticed next to the bumper sticker that read “Uppity” someone had penned in the word “bitch” using a black marker. I thought for a moment about knocking on the door to point it out to her, but then decided I would just follow orders and drive home.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Over a beer and a couple of Bratwurst I got on the computer and looked up Alexi Tarasenko. I was bumbling my way through a program called Intelius. I bought a pirated copy from a pal down in Kansas City last year. It took a while, but I finally had a mug shot of Alexi up on the screen.
He looked different, but then again the mug shot was twenty years old. The little ‘S’ shaped scar near the left eye was apparent, he was definitely the guy I’d spoken with yesterday afternoon at the Head Case salon.
The mug shot was from the late ‘90’s. Alexi had initially faced a number of Breaking and Entering charges along with an aggravated assault charge, but he ended up only serving eighteen months in Lino Lakes. My guess was there had been some sort of plea bargain arrangement. From what I could determine looking online, he’d taken the time served to heart and been straight ever since. Other than the crime he committed with Heidi’s hair he appeared to be a solid citizen.
I turned the computer off and settled in on the couch, Morton was stretched out on the floor. We were watching another worthless movie, sharing a beer, and more Bar-B-Que potato chips. After Maddie’s phone call this afternoon I was half tempted to go out and get Morton a bag of Big Mac’s just to show her. But, that would have been unfair to Morton and the guy was growing on me.
My cellphone rang just as the Cougar mom in the lousy movie we were watching returned to college and entered the wrong locker room. I was about five minutes from falling asleep.
“Haskell….”
“Mr. Haskell, I can hear someone prowling around outside.”
“Natasha?”
“They were at the camper a few minutes ago, then the back door. I heard them fiddling with a window just a moment ago.”
“Where are you?”
“At my home, I didn’t want to waste this shiraz I’d opened.”
“I’m on my way, hang up and call the cops.”
“I’m afraid that’s not an option at this juncture.”
“What?”
“Please hurry, Mr. Haskell I think I hear them again at that window.”
“Take the princess and get upstairs, I’m just a few minutes away.”
I sped over to Natasha’s house in less than four minutes and pulled to a quick stop in front of her driveway, blocking it. I kept a hand on the Sig Sauer tucked into my waistband and let Morton out of the back seat.
“Come on boy, let’s check it out.”
Off his leash and at Princess Anastasia’s house, Morton bounded out of the car, ignored my direction and made a dash for the front door. He barked at the door as he landed on the front porch, sounding like a canine version of “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
“Morton, come this way, Morton, come on,” I called as I headed up the driveway. The camper was parked haphazardly with two of the wheels a good foot off the concrete driveway and resting on the lawn. The grass was in desperate need of cutting, but you could still see a substantial indentation where Natasha had driven onto the grass. As I walked around the camper I noticed all four tires had been slit. The rear door was still locked.
I walked past the camper, up the driveway and into the backyard. The back of the house had a jungle of leafy vines climbing up the exterior of the house for two and a half stories. The leaves were so thick that you couldn’t see any of the buff colored stone and over the past years the vines had grown over a number of the windows. I wondered how anyone could even find a window let alone fiddle with it. The branches on the vines were thick eno
ugh that you could almost climb them, although that would be a foolhardy enterprise and no one would be that stupid.
The backyard was enclosed on all sides by a stone wall and a double garage. The wall and the garage were constructed from the same stone as the house although from this perspective you couldn’t see the stone on the house with all the vines having taken over. The roof of the garage was covered with the same red glazed tiles as the house. It looked like there were gardens along the walls and against the garage, or at least there had been at one time. Now, they were little more than patches of weeds with the occasional dead rose bush and an abandoned trellis or two scattered throughout.
A wooden deck that looked at least twenty years old ran the length of the back of the house. The wood on the deck appeared weathered, cracked and splintered. The deck itself was littered with two grills, a picnic table missing a leg, a variety of aluminum lawn chairs in various states of disrepair, the frame of an old bicycle, a large plastic trash bin, snow shovels, a half dozen paint cans and what was left of a child’s inflatable wading pool. The lawn mower that had been discarded in front of the back door entering onto the deck suggested no one had walked out from inside the house in at least five years. More paint cans were stacked beneath the deck.
I walked to the far side of the yard and looked for anything out of place. Frankly, it was hard to tell with all the junk laying around. I walked around a glass top table, minus the glass, and back toward the driveway when I heard a loud snap overhead. I crouched and pulled the Sig Sauer from my waist.
I heard a couple of grunts, another loud snap and then a voice shouted “No, no, don’t. Oh, shit,” just as large body from up around the second story dropped out of the vines covering the back wall. The body let loose with a high pitched scream on its brief descent until it struck the picnic table. The table collapsed under the impact at the same time I heard a loud “uff.” One of the grills seemed to explode in a cloud of ash and a stack of aluminum lawn chairs fell over onto the remnants of the picnic table. The body just laid there, face down and very still.
I hurried up four creaky steps to the deck with my Sig Sauer aimed at the body that had just fallen out of the vines overhead. Even in the dark it looked vaguely familiar and the moment I saw the mutton chops and the thinning ginger hair I remembered, “Denis, like penis only spelled with a D.”
Denis Malloy was lying very still. I kicked him with my foot and got no reaction so I pulled out my cell and called 911.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“And you have no idea what he was doing up there?” the officer asked, not for the first time. As he asked the question he absently scanned the upper most portion of the back of the vine covered house
“Like I told your partner,” my friend called and said she thought she heard someone trying to break into her camper.”
“That thing out front?”
“Yeah, right, the camper.”
“So, I ran over, checked it out and noticed all the tires had been slit. I know she’d driven it earlier this evening so someone had to have slit them in the past couple of hours. I didn’t see anyone out front, the camper was locked so I wandered back here to look around and then that guy just sort of fell out of the vines from up there on the house. He was up near the second floor, over by that window.” I pointed to the approximate area Denis had fallen from.
The cop shook his head and followed my hand with his eyes across the second story of the back of the house to where a bare patch of buff colored stone shown through the tangle of vines and leaves. I guessed Denis must have made a futile, last minute grab in an attempt to stay up there and tore the vines off on his way down.
“We just might win this week’s pool for the dumbest criminal,” the cop said.
Four paramedics were in the process of hoisting Denis up on a stretcher. A gurney was waiting at the base of the steps leading off of the deck, but they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to get the gurney back down the stairs with the likes of Denis strapped in. They groaned as they lifted the stretcher and one of them growled out, “Oh my God.”
They grunted and groaned their way across the deck, stepping over paint cans, lawn chairs, paper bags filled with bottles and cans and last, but not least the formerly inflatable wading pool. The stairs creaked loudly as they cautiously stepped down, taking one step at a time. Another paramedic wheeled the gurney alongside and they set the stretcher down on the gurney.
“Jesus Christ,” one of the paramedics exclaimed and shook his wrists to get some of the feeling back in his hands. Someone was cinching belts across Denis lying on the gurney just as another cop slapped a handcuff around Denis’s wrist then secured the other end to the rail of the gurney.
“Good to go?” a paramedic asked.
“Get him out of here,” another responded.
“And you don’t reside here?” the cop I was talking to asked.
“No, like I said she just called and I came over. Natasha Kominski. I think she’s inside, giving a statement to either your partner or some other officer.”
He nodded then said, “Given everything piled up back here I’m guessing we’ll have to have the city inspectors over to check things out. I’m afraid we don’t have a choice, its routine. Amazing how folks can get behind so quickly,” he said scanning all the junk piled up around the yard.
Just giving a quick glance in the dark I had the feeling all the junk had been accumulating for quite a while.
“Looks like it was a pretty fancy place at one time, what’s it like inside?” he asked.
“Never been in there. I’ve only seen the interior of one room and that was from the front porch. It looked pretty nice, but, well who knows.”
“Come on, what do you say we go check it out?”
With all the excitement I had completely forgotten about Morton. Fortunately he was still on the front porch gazing longingly through the window of the front door.
“That her dog?” the cop asked as we climbed the steps to the porch.
“No, actually he’s with me. Come here, Morton. Thanks for waiting for me,” I said and scratched him behind the ears.
The officer held the door open for me, and Morton quickly walked inside as if he belonged.
“I think everyone is back in the kitchen,” the cop said as Morton wandered off in another direction.
“I should probably grab him,” I said and started to follow Morton.
“This’ll just take a minute, come on,” he smiled, but it was one of those things cops say that’s more like an order instead of a suggestion. I watched for a brief moment as Morton disappeared around a corner. The cop eyed me, waiting. I smiled and then followed him into the kitchen. I glanced over my shoulder one final time for Morton, but he was no where to be seen.
Natasha was talking at the kitchen table while one cop took notes and another one pushed a recording device toward the center of the table. She was using her Ivy League accent again and had a look on her face like she couldn’t believe she had to deal with the lower classes here, in the very sanctity of her inherited home.
“It’s been going on for the better part of a week. The most recent incident was yesterday, at Lake Phalen. That maniac attempted to run down Princess Anastasia and myself while we were going through our obedience drills. Did I mention we’re competing in less than three days in The Blessington?”
“Yes, I’ve got that in my notes,” one of the cops said.
“And you’ve known this individual for how long?”
“Denis? Oh since we were children. Well, here’s my friend, Mr. Haskell, I didn’t know who else to call so I phoned him and he graciously came right over, thank God. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen you, sorry to drag you into this mess,” Natasha said then sort of flared her eyes in the hopes I got the message.”
We chatted on for another twenty minutes or so before the cops left. Natasha stood out on the front porch waving goodbye. I was standing behind her in the entryway.
“
Oh my, a rather busy night. I don’t know about you, but I could use a glass of wine. Pardon me for just a moment while I run to the loo,” she said then headed toward a door on the far side of the darkened dining room.
Once she closed the bathroom door behind her I immediately set off in search of Morton. He wasn’t in the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, a library or the front parlor. I headed up the elaborate staircase calling his name softly. I checked what looked like an office, a TV room, a couple of bedrooms and a bathroom before I found him.
He was in a small bedroom, sort of standing just below an open window. “Morton, what the hell have you been do….” I suddenly saw her beneath him, Princess Anastasia. They were locked in romantic embrace, or coitus as Natasha had referred to it the other day.
“Morton, stop it, no bad dog, bad dog,” I whispered, Morton looked like he had a different thought. Princess Anastasia let out a long low groan. I heard a creak on the staircase as Natasha began to make her way upstairs,
“Mr. Haskell, Mr. Haskell, where did you run off to? Are you up here?” Natasha called.
“Morton, come on, man, stop it, the two of you, stop it, now.”
“Mr. Haskell, are you up here, answer me.” I heard her reach the top of the staircase, mumble some sort of invective as she headed down the darkened hallway in the direction of the three of us.
I made a move toward Morton just as he climbed off the princess and she let off another deep, throaty, satisfied growl.
“Oh, well I see you found them,” Natasha said from the doorway behind me.
“I’m sure I can explain. I didn’t think that….”
“No need to explain, I won’t deny it,” she said walking past me toward the small single bed pushed up against the wall.
“I watched you arrive, and then, as you walked up the driveway I heard a noise from the back of the house. I followed it with my eyes as it seemed to rise up the wall. That damned fool, Denis attempting to climb those vines and get in via this window I’d neglected to close.”
