4 Woof at the Door

by Leslie O'Kane

  “Yes. He’s a great dog, it’s just that he won’t do a thing I say. But I figured, as long as he keeps an eye on the place, he’s worth it. So I tested him. I had a male friend of mine from work ’break in’ through my back door, and Titan didn’t do a thing. Just ran up to the guy and licked his hand.”

  “Maybe Titan recognized the man’s scent,” I said, just to be optimistic.

  “The problem with that theory is, two weeks ago, somebody actually did break in, and my neighbors told me they didn’t hear Titan bark at all. Today I had a company install a security system. I’m hoping that that helps, but I’d still like it if I could get Titan to act at least slightly protective.”

  Surely this wasn’t going to be Hank’s Security Systems. “What was the name of the security-system company?”

  “Hank’s. You know, from the ad, ’Safe and sound, thanks to Hank’s’? In fact, the owner, Hank Atkinson, is the one who recommended you.”

  “That was kind of him.” Also inexplicably odd. Hank had given me no indications that he thought any higher of me than I did of him.

  “Malamutes are such big, strong dogs, an intruder seeing one would probably be frightened and wouldn’t know he was only risking getting a little dog saliva on him.”

  “Or fur. He sheds unbelievably.”

  Twice a year, dogs like Malamutes and Samoyeds “blow” their coats. “I can train your dog to bark in certain circumstances, if that’s really what you want.”

  “Actually, I want you to train him to obey me. Can you do that?”

  “Let me at least meet with you and Titan, and we’ll go from there.” We set up an appointment.

  Russell opened his door just as I hung up the phone. Our eyes met, but he immediately looked away. “I’m just getting a cup of coffee. Didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “I thought you gave up caffeine.”

  “I’m taking it up again.”

  “At two p.m. on a summer’s day when the temperature’s in the nineties?”

  “I need some bad habits.”

  “So I’ve been replaced by a hot brown liquid that gives you a buzz, hey?”

  Something flickered across his features that may have been a smile, but that might have been wishful thinking on my part. He saw that our coffee-maker was off and, in fact, hadn’t been used for more than a week.

  “It’s not like I can avoid your office entirely, you know,” he said. “Short of turning my little window into a second entrance, that is.”

  “Your customers probably won’t approve.”

  “Not the pregnant ones. We could trade offices, if you want.”

  “And have my customers bring their dogs through your office and into mine? That won’t work.”

  “I could find another office to rent, I suppose.”

  “I hope that’s not supposed to be my cue to say, ’I’ll find another office,’ because if it is, I’m not moving out, Russell. I can’t afford to, right now.”

  “No, neither can I. That wasn’t… what I wanted you to say.”

  “Good. Then how about this. There’s no need for either of us to leave. We can work things out between us, either way.”

  “Right. We can. I wish—” He stopped, his vision shifting to the glass door behind me. “Looks like you’re about to get another visitor.”

  Beverly burst in. Her usually neat strawberry blond hair was now in a wild tangle and she was on the verge of hyperventilation. She rushed straight past Russell. “Allida, I’m so glad I found you. You’re actually here on a Sunday.”

  “Most of my hours are weekends and evenings. Whenever the dogs’ owners can be seen as a unit.”

  “Listen. I’m in big trouble.” She paused, and looked at Russell. “I’m sorry to burst in here like this, Russell.”

  “That’s okay, Beverly,” he said. “I’m heading out, anyway. I’ll be out of everybody’s way in just a moment.” He went into his office, grabbed his briefcase and struggled to lock his inner door behind him using only his left hand. “Good luck, ladies,” he said over his shoulder as he pushed out the door.

  Beverly watched this without a word, shifting her weight from foot to foot while she awaited the opportunity to speak to me in private.

  The moment the door was shut, Beverly blurted, “Allida, you’ve got to help me. I just finished talking to the police. They suspect me.”

  “Is that because Hank’s wife told them you had a key?”

  “I’m scared half to death! The police think I murdered Ty!”

  Chapter 11

  Beverly paced in my small office, too distraught to follow my suggestion that she take a seat. My heart, too, was in my throat. Paige must have told the police about seeing Beverly leave Ty’s house. The police might not yet be aware of how Paige’s bitter outlook colored her perceptions.

  “How do you know that the police suspect you? Did an officer flat out tell you that?”

  She shook her head, her hands in perpetual nervous motion as she combed back her wavy strawberry blond tresses. “No, but they grilled me for a good two hours today. They found my fingerprints on the inside of the dog door. That must have happened when I reached in to try and see if I could fit through the opening.”

  “Why was the dog door open in the first place? Ty had locked it when I left, which was just a couple of hours earlier.”

  “I don’t know, Allida.” Her voice had an irritable edge to it. “All I know is, it was unlocked by the time I got there.”

  For the second time since she’d arrived, she came over to my chair and grabbed me by both shoulders. “Allida, I swear to you. I didn’t kill him. I could never kill anybody.”

  “I believe you.” That was the truth, but I had many issues surrounding how and why she got me involved with the Bellinghams. Before I could offer her my support or assistance, I needed to get those resolved.

  “I’m glad somebody does,” she replied. “The police don’t seem to believe a thing I say. They think I killed him out of revenge or because he was suing my partner. But that’s ridiculous. Rebecca’s an equal partner, and he was suing her personally, not me. Rebecca’s got—” She broke off abruptly then said, “More importantly, Hank hated him, and so did Paige. And then there’s Chesh. I think she married him just to get his money. She might have killed him so she could inherit. Compared to everyone else Ty knew, I had the least reason to kill him.”

  The police would be basing their suspicions on evidence, not playing a guessing game of who had the strongest motive. She’d mentioned “revenge.” “Paige seems to think you and Ty were having an affair. That isn’t true, is it?”

  “No, not really.” She didn’t act even slightly surprised by my question. She’d probably heard Paige’s accusations straight from the horse’s mouth more than once.

  “Not really?” I repeated. When she didn’t respond, I asked, “What does that mean?”

  She grimaced and leaned back against my file cabinet. She still fidgeted with her hair, and her nervous motions revealed the small gold amulet around her neck. It was a peace symbol.

  “Did he give you that necklace?”

  Her eyes flew wide and she touched the pendant, then stashed it underneath the collar of her light green blouse. “No, he didn’t give it to me. I just forgot to take it off. No wonder the police….” She let her voice fade.

  She punched her thigh and started to pace again. “What an idiot I am! The police probably saw this thing and knew it came from Ty’s inventory.” She clenched her hands and brought them to her lips, meeting my gaze. “I bought it at his store, months ago. I was just trying to mend fences by buying some of his overpriced merchandise, but I wound up really liking the thing. It’s light weight, and I hardly ever take it off.” She stared at me, as if daring me to doubt her. “Ty and I weren’t lovers, Allida. I didn’t even like the guy.”

  Which was roughly what Paige had said in regards to Ty’s relationship with his current wife. Ty had certainly been a strange person, sporting the accout
rements and slogans of the peace-love generation, all the while raising a fighter dog. It was hard to imagine that Beverly would find any attraction there.

  “Beverly, there’s something that I just don’t understand in all of this. If you’re really my friend, how could you knowingly get me mixed up with these people? All you ever said beforehand was that you needed my help with a neighbor’s barking dog.”

  She winced and shifted her gaze. “I’m sorry, Allida. My lawyer had advised me not to say anything to anyone about Ty Bellingham. He wanted me to avoid the possibility of libel charges getting added on to the charges.” She searched my eyes again, her angular, attractive face distraught. “The trouble with that advice was: I needed somebody I could trust to do a good job with Doobie. The whole situation had gotten so dangerous. I think Ty Bellingham chose such a big, aggressive dog specifically to terrorize me and my little beagle. Ty hated Beagle Boy for digging under his fence and pooping in his yard. His getting Doobie put a stop to that, but then Doobie nearly killed Beagle Boy in his own yard.”

  “You never told me that!”

  “Didn’t I?” She twisted at one lock of her hair, practically knotting it in the process. “Doobie jumped our fence one day. Beagle Boy managed to crawl under the deck where Doobie couldn’t reach him. Fortunately, I was home at the time and called Ty at the store. He came and grabbed Doobie before he managed to get at B.B.”

  “When did this happen?” My agitation was rising, which I didn’t bother to hide.

  She finally took the seat that was stationed a short distance from my chair. “Two months ago. Just before softball season started, and I found out you were back in the area. Jeez, Allida. This is such a mess.” Her eyes filled with tears, but at the moment, I was too annoyed at her bouts of selective memory to muster sympathy for her.

  “That much I realize. But in order for me to try and help you out of it, I have to be able to understand you. There’s a wide gulf between not slandering somebody and soliciting a friend to work for that person. You could—and should—have clued me in. It seems to me that you were so concerned about yourself and Beagle Boy, you gave no thought to the possible consequences I might suffer.”

  Her lip quivered, and her voice was choked with emotion. “I’m sorry, Allida.” She got up, stuffed her hands in the pockets of her khaki shorts, and resumed her pacing. “A couple of years ago, I threw a neighborhood get-together. The night before, I’d had a fight with the man I’d been seeing and wound up having to host the party alone. I threw myself at Ty Bellingham. I never cared for Paige in the first place, and Ty was just…convenient and willing.”

  She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m not proud of what I did, but we didn’t even have sex. He’d had too much to drink, so technically it wasn’t even an affair. I thought we’d put it behind us. Last year, he hired me to remodel his kitchen. In retrospect, I think he did that just to hurt Paige by throwing me in her face. By then she was having a none-too-secret affair with Hank. But, back then, I just figured he wanted to fix things between us.”

  Beverly’s mannerisms while she was speaking were animated. She kept walking back and forth between the walls to either side of my desk. It reminded me of the behavior of a caged coyote I’d once seen at a zoo.

  “Has it occurred to you that he might have hired you solely to set you up to get sued?” I asked.

  “No, I’d like to think the whole law suit was valid initially. When he told me his fiance wrecked her back due to Rebecca’s incompetence, my reaction was ’that’s why we have liability insurance,’ and I saw to it to fix his kitchen to his satisfaction.”

  Something was out of whack. Mentally, I tried to establish a time-line. It occurred to me that the impression that Paige had given me about the time of her pet’s death wasn’t in keeping with this story. “He called Chesh his ’fiance’? So Ty and Cheshire were already engaged, even though Paige’s belongings were still there?”

  She gave me a sly smile. “You heard about the Bluey Incident, I take it.”

  It was not really a question, but I nodded.

  She rolled her eyes. “That was the world’s most obnoxious bird.” She started to chuckle. “Bluey went kerplooie.”

  The death of a pet is something I won’t joke about. “Paige was obviously attached to him, and she thinks you let her out of his cage.”

  “She never accepted the truth about that being an accident. All I know is, I never touched the cage myself. I think Ty left it open before he went to work hoping it would fly off with Rebecca and me going in and out of the house all the time. Anyway, after the…bird hit the fan, Paige moved in with Hank before the kitchen remodeling was even complete, and Cheshire moved in with Ty. Musical chairs with your spouses, I guess.”

  “Did Rebecca approve of your handling of the disagreement with Ty?”

  She shook her head. “Rebecca thinks I should have fought him tooth and nail, that she’d rather risk losing the business on legal proceedings than let someone get away with scamming us. But you have to know Rebecca as well as I do to understand how she thinks.”

  “Not to be overly self-centered here, but I still don’t get why you got me involved. If you believed there was a possibility that Ty might have scammed you, why didn’t you just tell me that your lawyer advised you not to mention your own troubles with the dog’s owner? That would have been enough to forewarn me.”

  She spread her hands and gave me an expression of complete exasperation. “No offense, Allida, but it was just…a dog. It’s not like I recommended you to do construction work on his place.”

  She paused and held my gaze as if she expected her pronouncement that “it was just a dog” was cause for instant empathy on my part. When I said nothing, she went on, “All that happened is, a couple of weeks ago, I went over to Ty’s, knocked on his door, said, ’Ty, you’ve got to do something about this noise.’ He says there’s nothing he can do to get a dog not to bark. So I said, ’Here’s someone top-notch for you to call who can help you,’ and I gave him your card. In retrospect, sure, it was a mistake. But how could I possibly have known all this would happen?”

  Her explanation seemed reasonable enough. “Have you talked to your lawyer about your fears that the police suspect you?”

  “Sure, but the guy charges something like five-hundred-dollars an hour. That tends to make me want to keep my conversations with him as brief as possible. He referred me to a criminal lawyer, but I haven’t talked to him yet. I got out of the interview session with the police and came straight here.”

  That struck me as odd, but I couldn’t think of a kind way of asking why she preferred my counseling to that of a closer friend.

  “What can I do, Allida? I’ve never been in any kind of legal trouble my whole life. Not counting Ty and Rebecca’s lawsuit, that is.”

  “Really, there isn’t anything you can do, except talk to this criminal attorney. He’ll probably just tell you to sit tight and hope the police discover the real killer.”

  She nodded, her shoulders sagging as she massaged her neck. I remembered another possible suspect then, and said, “There was an elderly man at Ty and Chesh’s store who says those two ripped him off. He was fit to be tied. I think he’s even a neighbor of yours.”

  She perked up a little. “Seth Melhuniak? He lives in that yellow house with the white trim across the street, a couple of houses down. I didn’t even know they were feuding. Seems as if everybody had some ax to grind with Ty Bellingham. I’m so sorry I got you into this mess.”

  That was at least the third time she’d apologized for the same error in judgment. “That’s okay. In retrospect, I would rather be involved than see you go through all of this alone.” At least, I think I would.

  She gave me a hug, saying, “Thanks, Allida. You’re a true friend.”

  I flashed on a time in a high school basketball game when her temper had led to technical fouls that cost us a close game. She’d worn me down then, too, with her incessant apologie
s.

  Beverly noticed my roses and leaned past me to run a fingertip along the red petals. “These are beautiful. Who gave them to you?”

  “Russell. Beverly, do you think it’s possible that Ty was running some sort of a dog-fighting ring with Doobie as his…champion?”

  She dropped back down into the chair. “That occurred to me, months ago, just because of the way Doobie chased Beagle Boy and was so scarred up. I never saw any proof of it, though.”

  “Did you ever see Ty with an American Stafford…with a pit bull?”

  “No, I….” She paused and swept back her blonde hair from her face. “Wait. Several months ago I saw him getting a pit bull into his car. I happened to be outside, walking Beagle Boy, and I nearly panicked when I saw what type of dog Ty had. I think I said something to Ty like ’Getting a guard dog for your store?’ And he said that it belonged to a friend of his and he was just dog sitting.”

  “Did he own Doobie, too, at the time?”

  “Yes. But the two dogs weren’t together. The pit bull seemed really mellow. Didn’t even bark back at Beagle Boy. Ty drove off with the dog, and I never saw him again.”

  “I’m thinking that there was a dog-fighting ring set up in Ty’s warehouse, but that he couldn’t use the facilities last night for some reason, and so he moved the operation to his house. You said you were at Damian’s property to visit the animals last month. Did you meet an employee there by the name of Larry Cunriff?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you ever see Larry and Ty talking privately?”

  She gave a slight nod. “Toward the end of our tour. Ty had kind of pulled Larry off to one side and they exchanged business cards.”

  Aha! I could see no way that Ty reasonably could have gotten the wolf except through Larry Cunriff. Which, since Larry was now missing, might mean something terrible had happened to him.

  “Allida, all I can say is, I’d give anything to go back and keep you from getting involved with this sorry mess. You always handled everything so easily, back when we knew each other in high school. You were always the one who took charge when things were falling apart in our basketball games. Truth is, I hoped you could come in and pull out another victory, you know? It seemed like a sign from above when I was being tormented by my neighbor’s dog, and then, here you are, suddenly back in town and working as a dog psychologist.”