Play Dead
Page 11
He shrugged. “I was hoping to talk to you privately, later tonight. I was going to put everything back the way I found it and then call you.”
He was a regular prince of decorum. I glanced down at my dog. Doppler had stopped his barking and was now lying on the floor before my feet. I’d like to think his intention was still to protect me, but he seemed to be nodding off.
“You got part of that right,” I said. “You need to leave my house. Now. Kaitlyn’s out, but she and her date will be here any moment.”
Bill chuckled. “I wouldn’t count on that, if I were you.”
“What do you mean?”
The sneer on his face spread wider. “Let’s just say I know all about her ‘date’ tonight.”
Surprised and disgusted, I asked, “Her date was staged? She’s going out with some friend of yours?”
“More like hired help. He’s keeping her occupied till I call her date’s cell phone and tell him the coast’s clear.” He ran his eyes the length of my body and raised an eyebrow. “Listen, you seem like a nice, sensible person. Get out while the getting’s good. Kaitlyn is nuts.”
She must have been to marry this oily creep. If he proved to be dangerous as well, now that he’d masterminded Kaitlyn’s “date,” there was little possibility of someone coming to my rescue. I clenched my jaw and stared at him. If I refused to talk to him, he might leave. Not that that meant much to me in the way of protection, since he had the key to the dead bolt.
He spread his hands in a flawed attempt to don a sincere posture. “I’m not exaggerating. Just before I left Colorado, but after we’d separated, she used to injure herself, then turn around and claim that I was beating her. She’s a desperate woman. If I were you, I’d do what I did. Pack up right now and move out.” Doppler rose and took a couple of steps toward Bill Wayne, who started to bend down to greet him.
“Doppler, come!” I called in immediate panic. He stopped instantly and circled back toward me. “Don’t touch my dog!”
“Whoa.” Bill straightened and held up his palms. “You sure are protective of your little mutt.” He turned as if to leave, then paused and said over his shoulder, “I wouldn’t trust leaving him, or any dog, alone with Kaitlyn, if I were you.”
I swept Doppler up into my arms.
Grinning, Bill Wayne watched me. I met his dark, sunken eyes. He’d just found my Achilles’ heel, and we both knew it. I decided he was the ugliest man I’d ever seen.
“Ask her about our puppy sometime, if you don’t believe me.” He gestured with his large chin at the doggie door built into the back door beside me. “I installed that for our puppy. She sure didn’t get much chance to use it, though.”
Much as I didn’t want to ask, I couldn’t stop myself. “What happened to her?”
Bill grimaced and shook his head, his eyes focused on Doppler. “Like I said, you’ll have to ask Kaitlyn. I still can’t believe she would do something like that to a puppy.”
A shudder of fear and revulsion ran up my spine. Kaitlyn had told me the former owners of the house had installed the doggie door, that she and Bill never bothered to put in a new door. His words had the disturbing ring of truth to them, but how could I tell? What if he was just trying to manipulate me and get back at his ex-ish wife? This was a man who’d just broken into my bedroom. I hugged Doppler closer to me and said as calmly as I could, “Please go.”
He opened the front door and looked back at me. “Don’t tell her I was here, okay? You won’t be accomplishing anything. You’ll only hurt her feelings when she realizes this so-called date of hers was hired help.”
He shut the door behind him. Doppler wriggled in my arms, and I set him down, my stomach churning. I couldn’t trust either of these people; not Kaitlyn, whom I’d already concluded was more than a little unstable; not her husband who seemed not only odd, but dangerous.
I marched into my room. How dare that bastard paw through my things! The thought of him violating my privacy like this both frightened and infuriated me.
One thing was certain. I was uncomfortable here and I was not staying.
The handset of my phone had been placed off its hook on the nightstand. I replaced it, then began a thorough survey to see if anything was missing or out of place. I first scanned my bed; its blue-and-white quilt cover seemed to be in the same reasonably neat condition as when I’d left. I turned my attention to the top dresser drawer, which Bill had been rifling through when I surprised him.
Nothing seemed to be missing. Partway through my mental inventory, the phone rang. I answered, and a sexy male voice said, “Hi. Is this Allida?”
“Yes.” I didn’t recognize the voice and was trying to do so.
“It’s Keith. You sound a little out-of-sorts. I’ll bet you didn’t expect to hear from me quite so soon.”
My heart was racing with my pent-up anger at Bill Wayne. “It’s not that. I just had a very unpleasant and unexpected encounter with my roommate’s ex. Or rather, her separatee.”
“Is everything all right?”
I took a deep breath in an attempt to calm myself so that I could enjoy talking to Keith, but it didn’t work. “Not really. I doubt I’ll be at this number much longer, but you can always reach me through my office phone or, for that matter, my mother’s.”
“You’re moving out?”
“Yes. And I don’t want to be here when my roommate gets back from her date...if you want to call it that. That jerk of a husband of hers set her up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, the sleazeball hired somebody to pretend to be interested in her and take her out just so he could get her out of the house.”
There was a pause, and all I could think was how bizarre all of this must sound from Keith’s perspective. He’d known me for all of three hours or so now. He must think he wound up with the all-time, loony-tune date. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t be dumping all of this on you. I barely even know you.”
“That’s all right.” He chuckled. “Here I was, afraid we wouldn’t have much to talk about.”
I smiled and held the phone tight. “That’s seldom a problem with me. It’s one of the occupational hazards of working with patients with a vocabulary of less than a hundred words. You talk your fellow humans’ ears off.”
He chuckled again, then said, “I’ll call you soon at your office. Good night.”
“Good night,” I repeated. I hung up, then stared at the phone for a moment, realizing I hadn’t learned why he’d called.
I had to pack my essentials first, which meant Doppler and everything that belonged to him. His carrier/dog bed took up most of the space behind the backseat. Then I emptied the bathroom of my stuff, followed by dumping the contents of my top dresser drawer into my suitcase. I grabbed what I could out of the remaining drawers until the suitcases were so full I had to sit on them to shut them.
I grabbed an armload of clothes on hangers, took them out to the car and dumped them on the backseat, and put Doppler and paraphernalia in the front passenger side. I hugged myself to battie the rapidly chilling night air and made a visual appraisal of my packing. My suitcases and a couple of blankets would still fit in the back. There wouldn’t be room for my full laundry basket, though. Maybe I could flip the basket upside down and tie it to the car roof. No, now that I was running my own business, I had to keep up at least the pretense of dignity.
Still making mental calculations, I went back inside. It was much too late for me to barge in on my mother. I’d spend the night on the couch in Russell’s office and drive out to Berthoud in the morning. Wouldn’t Mom be surprised? Her non-pilot daughter was about to throw up her hands and move back home. Life just didn’t seem to want to get with my program, blast it all.
The phone rang again while I was lugging my two suitcases toward the front door. I hesitated. This could be my last chance to make a clean getaway before Kaitlyn returned from her phony date. Then again, it wasn’t her fault that her “ex” had done
this. I owed it to Kaitlyn to explain my departure face-to-face. Plus, considering the circumstances of her “date,” I needed to stay and make sure she got home all right. I answered the phone.
“Allida Babcock?” said a male voice. “This is Dennis Corning. I believe you spoke to my wife yesterday about the collie, Sage, that used to belong to Hannah Jones. We were watching him after Hannah’s death.”
A little discombobulated at getting a business call at home this late, I muttered, “Oh, yes. Hello, Mr. Corning.” Could he have gotten my home number from directory assistance? I wondered. He must have.
“I hope this isn’t too late to call. We just saw a story on Beth Gleason’s murder on the ten o’clock news. She was Sage’s new owner, wasn’t she?”
There was no sense in denying what he already knew. “Yes.”
“We’ve changed our minds. We want Sage back. We’ll give him a good home, and that poor dog has been through too much already.”
“What about your other dog...what was his name?” I remembered Shakespeare’s name, but wanted to make sure this really was the husband of the woman before I continued this conversation.
“Shakespeare. We’ll work with him.”
“What about your son?” The boy’s name I truly had forgotten.
“We’ll work through that, too.”
“I’ll have to give this some thought. I’ve placed the dog in a really good home, which could become permanent. I think for the short term he’s better off where he is.”
“And where is that?”
Surely I was being paranoid to find this whole phone call disquieting. I could see myself doing the same thing in his shoes. Even so, I decided, I would not have asked this last question. At the very least, it was presumptuous, and at the worst, it was suspicious. “With an experienced dog owner. Why do you ask?”
He said nothing for a moment. “Could you meet with us to discuss this?” he asked.
This would give me the chance to learn more about Sage’s background. “I’d be happy to.”
We made arrangements to meet tomorrow afternoon. I braced myself at the sound of Kaitlyn’s footsteps on the porch. The door flew open and Kaitlyn dashed inside. She twirled as she shut the door, a move that made me dizzy just to watch. She leaned back against the door and gave an exaggerated sigh of contentment.
“Guess what, Allida?” I didn’t hazard a guess, but she went on, “I’m in love, and I owe it all to you.”
“No, you don’t owe me anything. We’re entirely debt free.”
“If you hadn’t told me to start dating again, I would have refused to go out with Jim, and I’d have never discovered how wonderful he is.”
“So you had a nice time?”
“The best!”
There was always the possibility that this Jim truly cared about Kaitlyn. Not a very large possibility, however. Just so long as he didn’t cut things short the moment he got a call from Bill, I’d find it a little easier to believe. “I’m surprised you’re back so early.”
“Oh, somebody from Jim’s office contacted him on his cell phone and told him he was going to be making some big presentation in the morning.”
“On a Sunday?”
“Lots of people work Sundays. You do.”
I’d grown used to Kaitlyn’s self-absorption, but I was finding it a little surprising that she had managed to miss not only my packed-to-the-gills car out front, but the pair of suitcases in the center of the floor not ten feet away from her. “Yes, I do. And speaking of which, did you used to have a puppy?”
“No. I’ve never had a dog. I thought I told you that already. Why?”
“The dog door was already here when you and your husband bought this place...what? Five years ago?”
“Six. That’s right. Exterior doors cost hundreds of dollars.” She studied my face and said, “What’s wrong, Allida? Why are you suddenly asking me about dog doors?”
“I’m...going to stay at my mother’s house tonight. I can’t stay here until you change the locks, at the very least.”
Finally, she noticed the suitcases, and her face paled as she stared at them. “What are you—”
“Bill was here when I returned from my date. He was going through my dresser drawers.”
She gasped and touched her lips. “But, that’s crazy. Why would Bill come here and go through your stuff? Are you sure it was him?”
“Yes. I’ve seen your wedding album.” More than once, in fact, she had commandeered my attention to her album, not to mention the unavoidable fifteen-by-seventeen glossy of the two of them in the living room. “He said he was looking for information about me so that he could contact me privately to enlist my help in convincing you to sell. He also told me I couldn’t trust Doppler around you, because of something that happened with your puppy.”
She looked utterly confused. “But—” She stepped around the nearest suitcase and grabbed my arm. “Allida, I swear to you. I’ve never had a dog, or puppy. Neither has Bill. He’s lying to you. I don’t know why, but he is.”
She slowly released her grip on me, letting her arms drop to her sides.
“I don’t feel safe here, and neither should you, as long as Bill is willing to march in here whenever he pleases.”
“Bill would never hurt you, or me!”
I scanned her angst-ridden face and could only wonder if it were even possible for her to see how much he already had hurt her. “Kaitlyn, please listen to me. You’re crying all the time, and you’ve told me yourself that you’re depressed. Why don’t you find a therapist? Even if I’m wrong, what’s the harm in giving therapy a try?”
Kaitlyn was staring at me with a wide-open jaw and now started to sputter, “Why...you...you’re a monster! I was so wrong about you! I thought you were a nice person! How can you be so cruel?” She started to cry.
I felt sorry for her, but her reaction was too extreme to feel much more. I’d lived here for less than a month. She was acting as though I were her best friend—and judging from what I’d seen of her social life, that could be the case. “I’m not trying to be cruel, Kaitlyn. I’m truly not. I’m just telling you the truth.”
“So that’s it?” she shrieked. “You’re all packed and you’re leaving?”
“I’m taking what I can for now, and I’ll be back for the rest before the end of the month.”
“You’re acting just like Bill did! I should do the same thing I did then and just...burn all of your stuff!”
I picked up my suitcases and shuffled toward the door. “Well, we all gotta do what we gotta do. It’s mostly just laundry I’ve got left here anyway.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!”
I sighed and said, “Kaitlyn, all I know is that I have to take care of me and mine. Look at it this way. Our deal was that I’d be here on a month-to-month basis until your husband returned, right? Well, Bill’s back. So, good luck to both of you. I hope you can work something out.”
She sobbed noisily, but said nothing and I made it to the car without her grabbing hold of one of my legs. My head and back muscles were aching as I drove to my office and pulled into my space.
Doppler trotted inside my office amicably, then I made a couple of trips to the car, collecting one suitcase, a blanket, and my dog’s things. I put his carrier in the corner, along with his water and food dish. He lapped up some water, then curled into his bed and promptly fell asleep. Oh, to have one’s needs so easily met. As for me, I used the bathroom’s limited facilities—dripping sink and all—then draped a blanket on the couch. I could already tell that sleep was going to be a struggle. Though this was essentially a basement with small, below-ground-level windows, a streetlight outside poured light on the couch, and there were no curtains.
The phone rang, and I answered without thinking, anxious to stop the shrill noise. There was such a long pause that I was about to hang up, when a woman said, “My gosh. Is this Allida Babcock?”
“Yes, it is. Who’s this?”
“This is my office number.”
“My gosh, do you ever keep long hours!”
I said nothing.
“This is Sarah Adams. Remember me?”
“Yes, and Mugsy as well.” This must be an emergency for her to be calling at this hour. Mugsy must have bitten someone. “How’s she doing?”
“Fine, actually. That’s why I’m calling.” I breathed a sigh of relief while she continued, “You know, ever since your visit, I’ve been seeing her in a new light. She really is just trying to find her role within the family. I was watching the news tonight and John had to go out, and you know what Mugsy did? She lay down on my feet, just like she always does with John when he’s here. I spoke to John just now, and we’ve decided we want to keep her. Can you help us work it out?”
I smiled and felt a surge of gratitude at this well-timed reminder that my work had meaning. “I’d be delighted to. When do you want me to start?”
“Would tomorrow work?”
We set a time, then I set about trying to force myself to sleep. Every now and then, I’d glance at the illuminated clock just to verify that, yes, time was passing and, no, I was still not asleep. Finally, I shut my eyes and counted English sheepdogs.
Somebody was pounding on the door to my office. I sat up a little on the couch, considering what to do, too groggy to be quick about it. I blinked at the clock. A few minutes after one A.M. The pounding stopped. Suddenly, a pair of bare ankles appeared in the tiny semicircular window at ground level. Startled, I strained to get a better look. Those ankles seemed to be attached to feet wearing fuzzy pink slippers. But the only full-sized person I knew who wore fuzzy pink slippers was...
I jumped and stifled a scream as a face appeared in the window. No! Please tell me this is just a nightmare! But it wasn’t. Kaitlyn Wayne was outside my office. Even in the muted external lighting I could see how puffy and tearstained her features were. She must have seen me, for she clutched her hands together in mock prayer and pointed in the direction of the door.