by Don Weston
Death Fits Like A Glove
A Short Story
By Don Weston
© 2012 by Donald G. Weston
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First Electronic Printing, December 2012
First Print Publishing, July 2017
Turpin Publishing Company
Portland, Oregon
Thanks goes to:
I would offer my gratitude to my critique group friends,
second readers, writing teachers and peers and friends who
encouraged and supported me.
Death Fits Like a Glove
By Don Weston
Most of my neighbors know me and not
because of the sign hanging from my porch featuring
the portrait of a woman in an overcoat and the
inscription, Billie Bly, Private Investigator. I’m the
only person on the block whose garage has exploded.
So when Louise Parker paused on the sidewalk
recently after a curt good morning as I sipped coffee
while sitting on my front porch’s wooden steps, I
naturally assumed she wanted something. Otherwise
she would have continued her brisk walk and not
looked back.
Likely, she was still peeved about my garage
going up in flames. I don’t understand why. She lived
safely two houses away and the firefighters kept the
wind-whipped flames from reaching her house.
I returned to my Sunday newspaper and a news
item about another missing woman, this one from
Forest Park, a 5,000 acre recreational area near our
neighborhood, stretching along most of the West Hills
of Portland. She was the fourth woman to go missing
from a Portland hiking trail in the past year.
I snuck a peek over the top of my paper and
Louise stood in the same spot, talking to herself. In
her hands was a sheaf of colored flyers. She wore a
loosely buttoned green raincoat, although at the
moment the May sun shone through charcoal clouds.
A typical spring day in Portland, Oregon.
Don Weston
She walked deliberately to my stoop and
managed a grim smile as if the sun was in her eyes.
She wore her blonde hair in a tight bun, and I noticed
her green eyes were red and puffy. She sorted through
the handful of papers, trying to tidy them by squaring
the corners.
“Did you want something?” I asked.
“I . . . I’m sorry for the way I’ve been acting,”
she said. “I guess I thought you were a menace to our
neighborhood. I never thought much about how you
must help people.”
I sipped my coffee. Most of the houses on my
street start at a million dollars. An uncle left me my
home in his will and not much else, and I’ve
struggled each year to pay the property taxes. I
always felt my neighbors looked down their noses at
me because I didn’t have money.
“It’s just ever since you’ve moved in some
strange things have happened,” she said. “Drive-by
shootings, your car blowing up in your garage, police
stakeouts, and seedy people wandering through.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Well, I guess I never thought about the people
you help,” Louise said. “I’m sure you don’t go out
and intentionally antagonize people into trying to kill
you . . . do you?”
I had to think about it. “Yes and no. You see, I
start out trying to help clients, as you said. But
sometimes it means pissing people off. And pissed off
people tend to react poorly. Especially the guilty
ones.”
“I guess I can understand that,” Louise said.
“You don’t intentionally piss—uh, upset them.”
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Death Fits Like A Glove
“Sometimes I do. To get respect. Some people
think because I’m blonde, I’m ditzy. Men think
because I’m a woman, they can walk all over me.
Now and then they will even make passes at me.”
“Really?” she said. “I don’t mean you aren’t
pretty, but you have a demeanor which I would think
puts men off.”
“Did you want something, Louise?”
“I’m sorry.” She winced. “I guess I have a way
of putting people off too. It’s about Georgie.” She
took one of the flyers from her sheaf and offered it.
“Your dog is missing?” I looked at the poster .
Georgie, three years old, Scottish Terrier, Very
Friendly. Missing Near Food Front Grocery, May 3rd
at 3 p.m. The picture showed a black Scottie, posing
with alert ears and tail. I wondered why he wasn’t
with her. They were inseparable.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “If I can be of any help. . .”
“You can.” There was a bit of sparkle in her red
eyes. “You can help me find him.”
I frowned. “I’m sorry. I don’t do missing pets.”
“I’ll pay you. I was thinking of offering a reward,
but maybe it would be better to hire a professional.”
She peered around the neighborhood in a surreptitious
manner. “I think there’s a dognapper at large.”
“Well, maybe,” I said. “There are some people
who will kidnap dogs, especially if they’re registered
with papers as Georgie must be.”
“I’m not the only one who has lost her pet,” she
said. “Mary, two houses over, lost her Pomeranian
last week. Have you been down to the telephone pole
at the corner and seen all the Lost Pet Posters?”
“Not lately,” I said.
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Don Weston
“Come with me.” She grabbed my hand and
pulled me off the stoop, spilling my coffee.
“I can’t. I’m in my pajamas.”
“Nobody will notice,” she said. “It’s only a block
down the street.”
“To Northwest Twenty-Third? It’s the breakfast
hour on Sunday. There are three cafes and two
bakeries on that corner. Everybody will notice.”
She tugged again, so I set down my newspaper
and padded down the street in my Dearfoams slippers
and pink-flannel pajamas. When we arrived, Louise
pointed to a pole and on it I counted seven posters of
small breed dogs and three of cute cats.
“See,” she said. “It’s a conspiracy.
“It does look fishy,” I admitted, sipping my cold
coffee.
“So you’ll look into it?”
I was about to say no, when she hit me with the
closer.
“Three of these missing pets are on our street,”
she said. “If you can find out who is behind this, you
would be a hero.”
I was thinking how it would be nice to be thought
of as a hero instead of a leper in my neighborhood,
when Louise moved in for the kill. “I’ll pay your
daily wages for two weeks and a thousand dollar
bonus if you return Georgie alive.”
I needed the money to pay my property taxes, not
to mention Angel’s salary. Angel is my secretary, and
I was a couple weeks behind with her check. Luckily,
she’s also my best friend, but money can put undue
stress on friendships.
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Death Fits Like A Glove
I sighed. “Okay. I’ll start on it first thing
tomorrow.”
“You’ll start today,” she said. “The first forty-
eight hours are crucial in an abduction.”
“That’s for people,” I said. “When did Georgie
go missing?”
“Yesterday afternoon. I took him with me to
Food Front and tied his leash to a pole. I was only
inside for ten minutes and when I came out he was
gone, leash and all.”
“You left him outside alone?”
“It was only for five minutes.”
“I thought it was ten.”
“Apples, oranges,” she said.
“Maybe you didn’t tie the leash tight enough.”
“I don’t know. All I know is he’s gone, and I
want him back,” she sobbed.
I left her to begin her task of stapling posters
around Stumptown and went home to change. I
returned to the street thirty minutes later dressed in
blue jeans and a long sleeve velour sweatshirt. In my
pockets I stuffed a small notepad and pen, a mini
flashlight, and some kibble Louise gave me, in a
plastic bag.
My plan was to do a grid search six-blocks in
each direction from Food Front. I started on our
block, knocking on doors, showing Georgie’s poster,
and asking permission to search around yards. Two
people, who also lost dogs, chatted me up and made
me promise to keep an eye open for their pets.
One owner told me her mini poodle was taken
from a plastic crate tied down to the back of her
Vespa scooter. The dog sat helplessly as this
5
Don Weston
demented girl drove through the streets of Portland
without regard to what would happen to the poor
poodle if she hit a bump, stopped too fast or, heaven
forbid, got into an accident. The dog was taken from
the scooter while she stepped into a coffee shop. I
hoped someone had rescued it and gave it a better
home.
The other person lost her dog in a New Seasons
grocery store as she culled through the cucumbers.
Her black Pug jettisoned its leash as she sorted. New
Season’s employees searched the store and came up
empty. I wondered if a shopper stepped in doggy doo
and purloined the culprit for revenge.
When people didn’t answer their doors during
my search or wouldn’t give me permission, I took to
spying into their backyards and shining my flashlight
under their wooden porches anyway.
After an hour and a half, I traversed one-third of
my objective and came up with nothing. I thought
about finding some coffee and possibly planning a
new strategy, when I saw it.
Freshly unearthed dirt heaped into a tidy mound
in an empty lot. Two branches tied with string marked
the grave with a cross. It didn’t look like much, but to
somebody searching for a lost pet the little grave
stuck out like a Great Dane among a pack of
Chihuahuas.
I walked into the vacant lot to examine the
marker. The grave was the size of a breadbox. I
picked up a nearby branch and dug into the freshly
turned dirt. It took a few seconds to unearth a
cardboard shoe box. Too small to be a dog or cat, I
thought. I looked around the lot, ostensibly to see if
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Death Fits Like A Glove
there might be anyone nearby I could con into
opening the tiny coffin.
Seeing no one, I pried at the shoebox with the
branch. The lid flipped off and I was rewarded with a
not so pristine view of a flattened brown squirrel. Its
beady yellow eyes stared vacantly. I sighed, put the
lid back on the box, and pushed dirt away to rebury
the rodent.
Another crude stick-built cross sprung from the
ground about twenty feet away. I walked over to it
and kicked at the dirt. This burial appeared older, the
dirt dry and tamped soil solid. I glanced around the
grounds and spotted a third marker near blackberry
bushes. I walked the entire lot and spotted four more
crude gravesites. It was too much work to accomplish
digging with a branch. I walked home and found a
shovel and gloves inside my rebuilt garage. I could
still smell the smoke a year later.
It took forty minutes to break into six little
coffins and discover two birds, a rabbit, a mouse, an
opossum and something too decomposed to identify.
The birds’ and the rabbit’s necks lay twisted and
broken. Surgical cuts amputated the mouse’s tiny
legs and the opossum, too, suffered surgically sliced
body parts. I grimaced at each malevolent act.
My first thoughts conjured images of a future
serial killer, possibly a neighborhood boy, sharpening
his skills. I shuddered. So far no dogs, thank God.
After unearthing each victim, I returned it to its
makeshift grave. I wanted to quit and go home and
take a shower to wash the death from my hands, and
yet, something pulled me toward one last grave near
the blackberry bushes.
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Don Weston
This last one, like the first tomb I dug into,
looked to be a couple of days old. A chill crawled up
my arms and caused the hair on the back of my neck
to bristle. I scrutinized the lot for a watcher because
the emoted fear came either from a human source
somewhere nearby or the dirt at the end of my shovel.
I stepped on the spade and scooped a mound
of dirt. This body rested deeper than the rest. I kept
digging. I’d gone more than eighteen inches, before
my shovel stalled. I scooped carefully around a black
plastic trash bag. This body was larger than the
squirrel and birds, about the size of the opossum. I
pulled some gloves from my back pocket and
fingered the dirt away.
The bag didn’t come out easy. It tore it as I
wrestled it from the ground. The carcass slipped
through the hole revealing fir, orange with bits of
white and black, and a bloated cat slid out against me
and onto the ground. I dropped the bag and brushed
th
e cooties from my legs.
The little calico face mirrored one from a flyer
on a telephone pole on Northwest Twenty-Third. Its
name was Marmalade. I poked at the cat with a stick
to turn it over and get a better look. No obvious signs
of mutilation. I decided to rebury the animal and
notify its owner. I wasn’t about to deliver Marmalade
home. Her owner could come and get him.
“What are you doing?” a high pitched voice
wailed behind me. “What are you doing to Spunky?”
I turned to face a red-mopped boy about eight-
years-old, holding a handful of yellow dandelions in
his fist.
“I’m burying him,” I said.
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Death Fits Like A Glove
“You dug him up? You dug him up!” The
freckle-faced boy came at me swinging a hand-
gardening shovel and connected with my knee. I
grabbed it and wrestled it from him. He kicked me in
the shin.
“Stop it,” I said, holding my tender shin. “Let me
explain.”
He tore into me swinging his little fists into my
stomach. I fell backward holding my leg and
clutching my stomach. Before I could breathe enough
to speak, he attacked me again with the branch I’d
used earlier. He wound it up like a batter going for a
home run, but before he connected an umpire stepped
in.
It was an older boy, same red hair, trimmed
shorter, same freckles, maybe thirteen. He took the
stick from the younger boy and pushed him to the
ground.
“You shouldn’t go digging up Randy’s burials,”
he said. “He’s very sensitive.”
“Thanks,” I said, trying to get up off the ground.
“I tried to explain.”
“You stay out of this,” Randy said. “It’s between
me and her.”
“I’m Ray,” the older boy said. “This here’s my
little brother.”
“She dug up Spunky,” Randy said. He started
crying.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “There have been a lot of
dogs and cats gone missing in the neighborhood, and
