4 Woof at the Door

by Leslie O'Kane

  “Haven’t gotten around to sorting through all the new stuff yet.”

  “New?” Damian repeated, looking at what I recognized as a plastic bottle of bath bubbles shaped like a bear. I hadn’t seen that product in at least twenty years. “Where’d you get this stuff?”

  “We do a lot of scouting at garage sales and flea markets, when I’m not trying to sell off stuff, like today.”

  “‘We,’ meaning you and Ty?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Got to get out of the habit of saying that, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry about your loss,” Damian murmured.

  She scoffed and said, “Yeah. Some loss.”

  Damian stiffened, but said nothing.

  Chesh led us to the opposite side of the building. Though this inner wall with its cheap, shiny paneling looked identical to the other three, the flooring had some unusual-looking scuff marks. “Watch this, man,” Chesh said. She pushed against one panel, and the other side rotated out toward us. “The opening’s pretty narrow, and there are no lights on the stairs, so watch your step. I’ll go first.”

  “Isn’t it unusual to have a cellar in a warehouse?”

  “Beats me. I think this building used to be some kind of factory. Ty might’ve built the hidden entrance himself.”

  The three of us felt our way down the dark, narrow staircase. The light clicked on just as I was on my last step, and I found myself in a dank, claustrophobic space, more like an underground cave than anything else. The ceiling was only about eight feet above the cement flooring, and the walls were made of cinderblocks. Thick metal poles were present every few feet to support the weight of the warehouse above us.

  It wasn’t an arena at all. A desk and a pair of ratty-looking chairs sat on a filthy, tattered throw rug that needed to be thrown away. Beyond these rudimentary furnishings, the place was filled with merchandise, but not ‘sixties collectibles. There were stacks of audio and visual equipment: DVRs, cameras, and television sets, all out of their boxes.

  Damian crossed his arms as he surveyed our surroundings. “Chesh, it looks to me like your late husband had a side business, dealing in stolen goods.”

  I made my way through the room, trying to ascertain how recently this stuff could have been placed here. A computer in the corner caught my eye. It looked identical to mine. I examined it. There was the same smudge on the side of the display that I’d noticed the other day and hadn’t gotten around to cleaning.

  There was a sticker on one side with the face of a German shepherd. I checked the opposite side just in case, and indeed, found the sticker of the cocker spaniel.

  I turned to Damian and Chesh. “This is my computer. It was stolen from my office just yesterday.”

  “That…can’t be,” Chesh stammered, coming over to look for herself, along with Damian. “Ty told me he had the only key.”

  “Someone’s got a copy of that key,” Damian retorted.

  Chesh shook her head. “All I know is, it wasn’t me. I had no idea this stuff was down here.”

  “Do any of your employees—”

  “We only have the one. An elderly lady, who works the register part time at the store when neither Ty nor I could be there. She’s got no access to any of this. Probably doesn’t even know where this place is.”

  We returned to the carpeted area near the stairs. This felt like a set-up to me. My computer gets stolen from my office, then happens to show up in the very place I was checking out twenty-four hours later. I wanted to get out of here—escape from this claustrophobic setting and mildew-scented air.

  Chesh’s brow was furrowed. “Ty must have had a partner in this…moonlighting operation here.”

  “Hank, maybe?” I suggested, thinking out loud. “He’s got that Safe and Sound business of his. Maybe he rips people off before he installs their security units. Drums up business for himself as well as padding his accounts with proceeds from stolen property.”

  And yet, the all-too-convenient coincidence of finding my computer here sure made Chesh Bellingham open to suspicion. “Chesh, did you talk to anybody about our coming here today?”

  “Nah. It’s not like going to a warehouse makes for scintillating conversations.”

  Hmm. Could Chesh have had the opportunity to convert this room from an arena into a warehouse of stolen goods? As I looked around, I had to discount that theory. There were dust patterns on the furnishings that couldn’t be easily faked. This stuff had been right where it was now. Seemingly with the exception of my computer, most of it had been here for quite a while.

  So what could this mean? If Chesh hadn’t told anyone we’d be here, could she have stolen the computer out of my office and put it here? Could she have known about Hank and Ty’s illegal side business, and stashed my computer here to implicate Hank in Ty’s murder? Or was Ty’s partner just stupid? Did he think I had some clues in my data base that he needed to look at?

  “Let’s call the police and—”

  “Wait a minute,” Damian interrupted. While Chesh and I had been talking, he’d squatted down to rifle through a stack of video tapes on the floor. He studied one particular CD and pulled it out of its container. “The label on this is ‘Ty Bellingham: Pit Bull.’ Maybe we should take a look at one of these now. Might give us some answers.”

  I looked at Chesh, who plopped down in her late-husband’s chair, the color drained from her face. “We may as well. If Ty was running some sort of… What do they call this? Fencing operation? That might be on the disk. Maybe it’s a video inventory or something.”

  “Are you sure?” Damian asked.

  She nodded. “I never knew about any of this. But if my store and my home were purchased with proceeds from stolen property, I’m right back where I started. On the streets.” She paused and searched my eyes. “How could he do this to me? I just don’t understand how anyone can be this slimy.”

  One of the television sets and DVRs were plugged in and aimed at the desk, as if Ty had been in the habit of coming down here to watch tapes, perhaps the one we were about to watch ourselves.

  I turned on the set and DVR on, loaded the tape, and pressed the play button.

  A moment later, we were looking at an extreme close up of Ty Bellingham’s face as he adjusted the camera. He was wearing that same war-paint makeup I’d seen when I’d discovered his body. He stepped back to look at the camera. He wore a black wig with a headband, no shirt. He grinned at the camera and said, “It’s show time!” Then he let out a young-boy’s interpretation of an Indian war cry, complete with the woo-woos and patting of his lips. He chuckled and mugged for the camera.

  I looked glanced at Chesh, who appeared stricken. She was having a hard time keeping her eyes on the screen, as if repulsed by her late husband’s behavior.

  As Ty stepped out of the picture, the setting for his makeshift film was revealed. It was this room. The camera had been placed where the stolen goods were now, so that the backdrop was the barren wall beside me and this desk.

  “Come on, King,” Ty was saying, still out of the picture. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  He led a pit bull on a leash into a spot just in front of the desk, then unbuckled the dog’s collar. My pulse quickened and my throat went dry. Wrapping my arms around my chest, I vowed that I’d leave the room the instant it looked as though Ty were bringing Doobie or some other dog in to operate a videotaped dog fight.

  “Come and get it,” Ty said, holding something pink on his fingers. As King gobbled it down, I realized Ty was feeding the dog some sort of meat. But then Ty started to feed King another bite, but then snatched the meat away with his free hand and all but jammed his fingers into the dog’s mouth. King backed away and cocked his head to look at Ty in puzzlement.

  “Come on, you can do better than that!” Ty said to King.

  My jaw fell. I mentally replayed my hour-long visit with Ty and Doobie, recasting them in a different light. Was it possible that Ty had not been involved in dog fighting after all? Could h
e have had some sort of masochistic perversion involving dogs? I’d never heard of such a thing, but that’s what Ty seemed to have been encouraging. Unless, for some strange reason, Ty thought the taste of human blood would somehow turn this sweet dog into a fighter.

  Damian muttered, “What is this guy doing?” He pressed the pause button, then glanced over at Chesh. “This was your husband, right?”

  “Technically,” she answered, her face still pale. She held up her palms. “I didn’t know about any of this. Believe me.”

  “Did he ever…” Damian cleared his throat, then continued, “ask for you to bite him, during intimate moments?”

  She shook her head. “No. But it’s not like we ever had sex or anything, so I’m not the person to ask. A couple months ago, he told me he was sleeping with someone, but I have no idea who.”

  Wearing an expression of disgust, Damian restarted the tape and turned his eyes back on the screen, as did I.

  “Know what this is, boy?” Ty was asking the dog. “It’s hamburger. Doesn’t that look good?” He smeared hamburger on his left forearm. The dog tried to lick the meat off Ty’s arm. As he did so, Ty rammed his arm against King’s mouth.

  King yelped and wrenched himself free from Ty’s grasp. The dog dodged out of the picture. Ty glanced at the camera and shook his head in exasperation, then followed the dog.

  “What’s the matter with you, King? You’re a pit bull! You’re supposed to kill small children. You’re supposed to be vicious and have jaws like a vice!”

  The dog ran across the screen again, followed by an annoyed Ty Bellingham. “Stupid mutt. Stupid purebred, I mean. Doobie’s got twice your smarts!”

  Chapter 18

  Ty led the dog back into the center of the TV screen. He had replaced the dog’s collar and leash and stepped on the leash, keeping a taut grip on him. Then he knelt and started shoving his forehand repeatedly at King’s face, so that he was pounding on the poor dog’s lips. In an amazing show of restraint and good personality, King just kept backing away.

  “You stupid animal,” Ty cried in exasperation. “You’re going to find yourself right back at the pound!”

  “I can’t take any more of this. Sorry.” I felt sick to my stomach, grabbed the remote control, and scanned the rest of the tape in fast-forward, just to see if the subject matter ever changed. There were no appearances by wolves or of would-be murderers, just one additional scene with Ty and Doobie, during which Ty was much more successful at getting himself badly injured. Even at fast-forward viewing, I had to turn my eyes.

  Afterward, I stopped the DVR and unloaded it, then looked over at Damian and Chesh. They appeared to be equally as appalled by what we’d witnessed.

  “Is this for real?” Damian asked Chesh quietly.

  She stared at the desk top, running her fingertip through the slight dust that had settled there. “Ty was…a strange man. I guess he got off on having dogs bite him. That explains all the bills to emergency rooms of various hospitals in the Denver area.”

  “It also explains why he didn’t want me to train Doobie.” Could Ty’s perversion somehow led to his own and two others’ deaths? Paige had been married to Ty for several years. She must have known about his peculiarity and probably told Hank about it. One of them could have used that knowledge to stage his murder, but it was highly unlikely that anyone wouldn’t realize how easy it is to distinguish a knife wound from an animal-inflicted wound.

  I grabbed my cellphone. “The Boulder Police Department needs to know about this room and dust my computer for fingerprints. I’d better call them now.”

  By now I had committed Detective Rodriguez’s direct line to memory. He answered on the second ring. He sounded tired and his voice was rough.

  “This is Allida Babcock again. I’m at Ty Bellingham’s warehouse in Broomfield. I found my computer here.”

  There was a pause. “You mean, some friend brought it there for you?”

  “No, I mean whoever stole it stashed it here.”

  “Where you happened to be, the very next day.”

  “That’s right. I know it’s odd. Also, there’s a videotape here of Ty Bellingham and his dog that I think you’re going to want to see. It seems as though Ty hadn’t been into abusing dogs, but rather, forcing them to abuse him.”

  The detective sounded as if he were trying to stifle a sigh of weariness or frustration. “Miss Babcock, stay put. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  I hung up, wondering how many officers “we” meant.

  Damian was pacing by the stairway, his brow furrowed. “Listen, Allida, Chesh, I’m sorry, but I really can’t stay. I’m not sure what the police would do if they arrived here and found out I had a lion in my car.”

  “True.”

  “I should really boogie myself,” Chesh said. “You didn’t mention that either of us was here, so you can just tell ‘em I got so upset after watching the tape that I took off. Is that cool with you?”

  I resisted the urge to reply: It’s so cool I can see my breath. “No worries,” I replied instead, in a deliberate attempt to remind her of the current century, although I had no intention of lying to the police on her behalf. The three of us left the building. Once outside, Damian immediately checked on Leo.

  “Still fine,” he said in answer to my questioning facial expression. “Sound asleep.”

  “Well, this has been real,” Chesh said, getting into her van. She got behind the wheel, but didn’t start the engine. “I can’t believe I married that weirdo, just for a few bucks and a nice place to crash. It wasn’t worth it, man.” Still shaking her head as if to rid her brain of the images, she drove off.

  “There goes my theory that Ty was killed by a partner in a dog-fighting ring,” I muttered to Damian. “Maybe there’s something on one of the other DVDs that identifies the killer.”

  “Maybe.” He smoothed back his blond hair.

  When his eyes met mine, I felt more of an attraction to him than I wished I did. I wasn’t quite ready for him to leave me here alone; I needed a sounding board. “Whoever had access to the cellar and put my computer here might be the killer. Maybe this solo act of Ty’s turned into some sadomasochistic game that led to Ty’s death.”

  “Or maybe it’s all unrelated,” Damian said. “Maybe Ty was a sick puppy, who got killed for completely different reasons. Such as by his partner in the burglaries.”

  “None of this makes any sense. Maybe the whole murder sequence is backward. What if Beverly was the intended victim all along?”

  He furrowed his brow. “I don’t follow.”

  “Maybe the killer concocted this elaborate murder scheme involving your wolves just to disguise who the real victim was.”

  He shook his head. “If I were intent on killing your friend Beverly, I’d set it up to look like a random act of violence. I wouldn’t kill two other people just to hide my tracks. Otherwise, she might have packed up and left town the moment she heard about Ty’s death next door.”

  “True.”

  Our eyes met and there was an awkward pause. “I’m sorry about the trouble you’re in. Wish we’d met under better circumstances. Are…you and that guy in the office next to yours dating?”

  “Yes, though we’re currently on break.”

  “So there’s hope for me.” He put his hand lightly on my shoulder. “We have so much in common. We might make a great couple.”

  This was my chance to say something wildly romantic, such as: You might be my missing half, or you’re the yin to my yang, but both lines sounded stupid. “Maybe.”

  He waggled his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of his van. “I’d better get Leo home. See you soon, I hope.”

  I smiled. “Bye. Thanks for your help.” Wow. I sure knew how to lead a guy on.

  “You sure you’re going to be okay here by yourself till the police arrive? I mean, what if the guy who stole your computer comes back?”

  “I’ll wait in my car, just in case, and run the cr
eep over if he tries anything.”

  “Good plan.”

  “Thanks again. Drive carefully.”

  “You, too.” He gave me a sexy smile that came all too close to melting my heart.

  The next morning brought the realization that I had to start my day with a rabies vaccination. I went down to Boulder Community Hospital and took my shot in my posterior, resenting Atla, as well as Ty, Paige, and Hank, for that matter. I really, really hate shots. They checked my hand and redressed the wound, which the doctor assured me was “healing fine.” It looked pretty grim from my vantage point, but I didn’t want to argue with a positive prognosis.

  Afterwards, I went to my office and was disappointed to see Russell’s parking space was vacant. Just in from the door, I checked my messages. The first one was from Russell, saying he would be at an on-site meeting all day and hoped that everything was going well for me.

  A new customer had called, the owner of a golden retriever. What caught my attention was she said her dog was “having trouble because of the new security system.”

  I pressed “stop” on my answering machine and dialed the woman’s number immediately.

  The man that answered had such a reedy voice, I almost couldn’t tell for sure whether he was a man or a woman, but with the name “Richard,” I was assuming this was a male.

  When I said that I was returning his call, he said to me, “Oh, yes. I have a problem, or rather, my golden retriever has a problem with the new alarm system I had installed a few days ago. And this guy I work with, Brad Rodgers, said you did wonders with his dog who was having separation anxiety.”

  He’d named a recent client of mine. “Oh, yes. I remember Brad and his black lab. Why is your dog having trouble with your alarm system?”

  “Well, see, it triggers when there are strong vibrations in one of the windows or exits. She’s tripped it by accident a couple of times by scratching at the door to get out. Now she’s petrified of passing through that back door, or even the front door. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but all I can do when I’m home is open a window wide enough for her to jump through so she can get outside to do her business.”