Furbidden Fatality

by Deborah Blake

  Suddenly, Queenie sat up straight and nudged Kari’s arm so hard that the movement almost sent the tea flying. The kitten meowed loudly, green eyes wide.

  “Hey,” Kari said. “What is your problem?” She set the glass down on the table next to her just as a piercing noise shattered the night. “What the heck?” Kari put the kitten down on the floor. “Crap. That’s the security alarm!”

  She and Mickey exchanged glances and got up at the same time, running toward the door. As soon as she opened it, she could hear the dogs barking and howling, their sensitive ears no doubt even more upset by the loud siren than she was. Her ringtone rang out, adding to the noise.

  Kari grabbed the phone just in time to hear Mr. Lee ranting.

  “First the barking and now this terrible noise! You are the worst neighbor ever!”

  Kari didn’t hear the rest, since she hung up and tossed the phone back toward her brother. “Call 911 and tell them there is a problem out at the Serenity Sanctuary,” she shouted, and took off toward the shelter with Queenie and Fred racing ahead of her and Mickey on her heels. This time she was going to catch whoever it was before they got away.

  Fourteen

  Kari bolted toward the shelter, feeling a terrible sense of déjà vu. She was torn between hoping that the alarm had scared off whoever it was and praying that they were still around so she could beat them senseless with her bare hands. Although, really, she’d be better off siccing her brother on them. He might be undependable in practical matters, but he was great to have by your side in a fight. She’d known that since they were kids, when he had defended her from the bullies at school.

  When they came to a halt in front of the shelter, the security lights were blazing and the alarm was even more deafening. There was one broken window, but it looked like that was as far as the vandals had gotten this time before the new system had kicked in.

  It was hard to think with all that noise and the dogs barking. Which might have explained why the two men trying to pry the cover off the rectangular metal alarm box on the outside of the building didn’t hear Kari and her brother come up. The controls to the alarm were inside, so Kari could only assume they were just trying to find some way to smash it into silence.

  “Do you recognize them?” Mickey asked. He looked almost happy to be about to jump into trouble. He always had loved a challenge.

  “Oh, yeah,” Kari said, barely able to believe her eyes. “We’ve met.”

  Still unaware they had company, Deputy Carter and his partner had given up on trying to pull open the panel and were pounding on it with rocks. Luckily, neither of them was in uniform, or Kari suspected they would have been trying to shoot it open.

  Overton was sweating and cursing. “Man, those dogs are going to get loose any minute now. Somebody is going to hear this darned alarm. We’ve got to get out of here! I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

  “Shut up,” Carter growled. He wore a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes, but his silhouette and voice were unmistakable. Both men were dressed head to toe in black jeans and sweatshirts, like rural ninjas. “That girl is never going to be brave enough to come down on her own. She’s going to call the department and wait for them to get here, and we’ll be long gone before that happens. Just help me get this open so we can turn the freaking thing off. I swear, it feels like my ears are bleeding.”

  Fred, apparently unimpressed by the noise, demonstrated yet again his complete uselessness as a guard dog by running up to Overton and jumping up on him and trying to lick his face. Kari thought the poor deputy was going to pass out, he shrieked so loud.

  “Don’t worry,” she shouted over the alarm. “He’s just being friendly. Hello, deputies. Fancy meeting you here.”

  Carter jumped almost as high as Overton had when he realized she was there. “What are you doing here?” he asked, staring over her shoulder at Mickey. He’d clearly had no idea there was anyone else around besides Kari.

  “I live here,” she yelled. “I might ask you the same question.”

  “We were passing by and heard the alarm,” he said loudly, trying to sound innocent and failing miserably. “We came to investigate. You should get back to your house and leave this to the professionals.”

  “Professional whats?” Mickey muttered, just loud enough for her to hear. “Idiots?”

  “They’re the cops,” she told him.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Mickey gazed at Overton, who was still cringing away from Fred’s affectionate advances, and Carter, standing with his gut thrusting out from underneath a shirt that looked like it had been borrowed from a smaller man.

  Just then, a police car pulled into the driveway. Carter stared in dismay as the sheriff and another deputy, a youngish man in a neatly pressed uniform that showed off his broad shoulders, got out and came around the corner to gape at the scene.

  “What the heck is going on here?” the sheriff asked, looking around in disbelief. “Ms. Stuart, go turn off that darned alarm! Your neighbor is having a fit. He sent me out here to arrest you for disturbing the peace, violating the noise ordinance, and being a general nuisance.”

  She ran to do as he’d ordered, fumbling her key in the lock and then entering the code on the alarm box located right inside the door. Blessed silence descended on the night. She ran back outside in time to hear the sheriff ask Carter and Overton the same question she had.

  “What on earth are you two doing here?” Richardson wanted to know. “You’re not even on duty tonight. And why are you wearing those ridiculous getups?”

  Overton turned so pale, he almost blended in with the white walls of the shelter, but Carter kept his cool. “We were just passing by, Sheriff, and heard the alarms going off. We knew the place had had issues so we figured we’d better check it out.”

  “I see,” the sheriff said. Kari couldn’t tell if he was buying Carter’s story or not.

  “He’s lying, Sheriff,” she said. “My brother and I came running up here as soon as the alarms were tripped, and caught these two trying to smash open the box from the outside. There’s already one broken window up front. That must have been what set the system off.”

  “She probably did it herself,” Carter blustered. “For all we know, she is responsible for the other vandalism too. Probably trying to look like a victim so we don’t blame her for Bill Myers’s death.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Kari said. “For one thing, I didn’t have anything to do with Myers’s death, and I certainly wouldn’t vandalize my own building and create a giant mess I’d then have to clean up. For another thing, I actually know how to spell whore.”

  Her brother snickered, and the other deputy had to lift his hand to cover a smile.

  “What?” Carter said.

  Kari rolled her eyes. “You know, in the time you spent trying to silence the alarm, you could have broken all the other windows and gotten away. But it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “What the heck are you talking about?” Carter glared at her and then caught himself and added, “Not that we were trying to do that. We were checking to see if someone had damaged the alarm, that’s all. Right, Overton?”

  Overton nodded up and down like a deranged bobblehead doll.

  Kari raised one finger and pointed overhead. “There’s something you might be interested to know, Deputy Carter.” She looked the sheriff in the eyes. “I got the top-of-the-line system. It has cameras. Lots and lots of cameras.” Not having to worry about getting the cheapest model for once had actually paid off.

  “Crap,” Overton said, turning to Carter. “You didn’t tell me there were cameras.” He was clearly so terrified of his boss, he’d forgotten all about the dogs and was absent-mindedly petting Fred, who was leaning against the young man’s shaking legs. “I didn’t want to do it, Sheriff. Carter made me. Aw, jeez, I’m gonna get fired, aren’t I?”

/>   “You think?” Richardson said. He turned to Carter, anger and sorrow warring on his face, and formally read him his rights. He clearly didn’t intend the bit about the right to keep silent, though. “Tell me, Deputy, does this mean you killed Bill Myers too?”

  “What? No! I, no!” Carter sputtered. “I never! I was at a poker game with my buddies until right before I went on duty. You ask them, they’ll tell you. And Overton was with me when we got the call about the body.”

  “As if I’d take his word for anything involving you,” the sheriff said, shaking his head. “I just don’t believe this. What the heck is going on in my department?” He glared at Carter. “If you didn’t kill Myers, why on earth are you out here vandalizing the shelter?”

  “I swear, Sheriff. It wasn’t me. I had nothing to do with his death. It had to have been Marge Farrow.”

  “Marge Farrow? The court clerk? That Marge Farrow? Mousy middle-aged woman who never raises her voice?” The sheriff’s jaw dropped. “Why in the name of heaven would Marge Farrow kill the dog warden? Have you lost your mind?”

  “Because of the money, sir,” Overton put in helpfully.

  “What. Money?” Richardson said through gritted teeth. The deputy he’d brought with him was standing there with his head turning from person to person, as if he was watching the best live performance he’d ever seen. Kari was pretty sure he was trying to memorize the entire thing so he could recite it word for word down at the diner in the morning.

  As for her, she just couldn’t believe the two cops were still talking. But then, they’d already proven they weren’t exactly criminal masterminds. And maybe Carter thought if he came clean now, the sheriff would go easier on him. Either that, or the deputy was just an idiot who didn’t think what he’d done was all that bad. Or the alarms had rattled his brains.

  “The embezzling,” Carter explained. “Marge has been embezzling from the town for years, and Myers found out. He tried to blackmail her, and she must have killed him to shut him up.”

  The sheriff looked like his head was going to explode. Kari couldn’t blame him.

  “And how, exactly, did you know about this supposed embezzling, Deputy?” Richardson asked. “Since I never heard a word about it.”

  Carter had the grace to stare at his boots for a minute before answering. “We were kind of working with her,” he admitted. “Not on the embezzling! I had nothing to do with that. Myers only found out right before he died, and we got into a big fight because I wanted a cut of whatever he got from Marge. But he said he was on to something else big and he’d changed his mind about blackmailing her, since she’d earned us so much money over the years.”

  Aha, Kari thought. Now they were getting to it. She gave her brother a subtle nudge with her hip and he raised one eyebrow in question. She just nodded in the direction of the drama playing out in front of them.

  “Earned you money how?” the sheriff asked. He turned to the deputy next to him. “Don’t just stand there gawping, Nelson. Take out your darned notebook and write this all down.” He muttered a few profanities under his breath before turning back to Carter. “You were saying?”

  “Me and Myers, well, we had this scheme going. It was his idea, not mine,” Carter added quickly, as though he thought that would somehow make a difference. “Anyway, we’d cook up all these bogus tickets. Myers would go around letting people’s dogs out—he always said that if they didn’t want their dogs getting loose, they should be more careful anyway.”

  “Be more careful,” Kari said indignantly. “Some of those dogs were in fenced-in yards on chains.”

  “Yeah, well, Myers was kind of a jerk sometimes,” Carter admitted.

  “Ya think?” Mickey murmured into her ear.

  “So where does Marge Farrow come into this?” Richardson asked, crossing his arms over his chest. Kari had a feeling he was making an effort not to reach out and strangle his deputy. “Are you trying to tell me she ran around town letting dogs loose too?”

  Deputy Nelson guffawed, probably at the image of the prim and proper court clerk climbing over fences, earning him a glare from his boss. He bent his head and scribbled in his notebook, but Kari could see the grin on his face in the lights from the security system. She’d only disabled the alarm, and left all the outside lights on.

  “Of course not,” Carter said. “She’d skim money off the fines from the animals’ owners and split it with us. Sometimes she didn’t register the fines at all, or she’d put down that it was a first offense instead of a third, and take the difference. I mean, nobody ever looks at that boring paperwork.”

  “Nelson, make a note to have my secretary schedule me an appointment with the mayor and the town council,” Richardson said in a grim tone. “Apparently I have to speak to them about ordering an audit of the town’s books.”

  Nelson gulped and wrote it down.

  “I’m confused, Carter,” the sheriff went on. “If the three of you—” He glanced over at Overton, who was still trying to be as invisible as possible, and the young deputy shook his head in frantic denial. “If the three of you were working together all this time, why would Marge Farrow suddenly decide to kill Myers?”

  “Well, you see, Sheriff, we knew she was embezzling money from our cases. But then Myers found out she had been doing it to all of them, all the court cases she worked on, and he wanted a bigger cut to keep his mouth shut. He told her that what we were doing was small potatoes compared to her, and that we’d get a slap on the wrist if anyone discovered it, but she’d go to jail for years and lose all that money she had squirreled away.”

  “Oh, you’re going to get more than a slap,” the sheriff said, clenching his fists. “So you think she killed him to shut him up?”

  Carter nodded eagerly, happy to point the sheriff at anyone who wasn’t him. “She denied it when I asked her, but right after that, she sent me to harass Miz Stuart here, so she and her friends would stop looking into the murder. Why would Marge do that if she wasn’t guilty?”

  “Why indeed?” Richardson said, sounding thoughtful.

  Kari had a moment’s hope that maybe she and Daisy were off the hook. After all, this was why they had all been looking into things in the first place, to clear their names and find the real killer. Now they’d found out who vandalized the shelter—although frankly, the two deputies were the last people she would have suspected—and probably Myers’s killer too. Maybe this whole nightmare was finally over and she could get on with reopening the shelter and Daisy could go and live with her sister and get on with her life.

  “Are you done with us, Sheriff?” she asked. “I need to take care of that broken window and call the glaziers. Again.” She glared at Carter.

  “The sheriff’s department will take care of the window,” Richardson said, adding his icy stare to hers. “I’ll need you and this gentleman”—he nodded at Mickey—“who is—?”

  “This is my brother, Mickey. Michael Stuart Junior,” she said. “He’s in town for a few days. He happened to be at my house when the alarm went off.”

  “Fine,” Richardson said. “I’ll need you and your brother to come down tomorrow and file a formal complaint against my former officers. You can bring me the video surveillance recording at the same time. We have plenty to hold them on in the meanwhile.”

  “Does this mean I can call the workmen and get the fence started finally?” she asked.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Ms. Stuart,” he said. “Just because Deputy Carter has made some accusations doesn’t mean we’ve proven anything. I still have to look into this matter further.”

  Darn.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. After all, she wouldn’t have taken Carter’s word for anything either.

  Squealing tires and screeching brakes alerted them all to a new arrival. A car door slammed and a diminutive Korean man in striped pajamas and loafers came stomping
around the corner of the building. He came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the four lawmen, Kari, and her brother.

  “Sheriff Richardson, it’s about time someone with authority showed up,” Kari’s neighbor said. “I demand to know what is going on out here.”

  The sheriff sighed. “I don’t blame you, Mr. Lee. I’d like to know that too.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Kari went in to the sheriff’s department first thing in the morning, bearing coffee from the local coffee shop and three different kinds of muffins she’d made herself. She was something of a stress baker, and she hadn’t been able to get to sleep after the police had left and her brother had returned to his bed-and-breakfast. He’d come back again this morning in time to eat three muffins and follow her over to the sheriff’s department on his shiny red motorcycle, which he’d reclaimed from the parking lot of the Last Stop.

  The officer at the front desk took her back to Richardson’s office. They went past a locked chest-high gate and through a large room full of industrious-looking men and women in uniform, mostly sitting at metal desks and working diligently at computers. A couple of the cops had people seated by them, probably either witnesses being interviewed or criminals being questioned. Kari wished she had a better idea of which one she was. Mickey was dropped off with a cute female officer in the main room, which made him look a lot more cheerful.

  The desk sergeant who escorted her through the room stopped at an open door and rapped on it briefly before poking his head through and saying, “Ms. Stuart is here, sir. She brought muffins.” He gave her a pitiful look and she handed over a couple before walking into the lion’s den.