Chasing Can Be Murder (11 page)

Before following, I patted the steward gently on his good arm. “I hope you feel better when you wake up, Barney.”

His eyes opened. “Be careful, Kat,” he croaked, his voice barely loud enough for me to hear. “Whatever they ask—do it! They’re like animals. No…worse than animals.”

I felt an arctic chill slice into my heart as it pounded against my ribcage. “They?” I repeated slowly. “I thought there was only
one
psycho. Who do you mean by
they
? Barney, you’ve gotta tell me. I need to know who’s out to get me.”

As though he’d been pricked by a pin and lost all his air, Barney’s eyelids closed and he lost consciousness.

“Kat!” Tanya grabbed me by the arm and towed me to the door. “The pillow under the blanket trick didn’t work. The nurse knows you’re missing. Unless you want to sign out, we have to go.”

“But—”

“Ms. McKinley? If you are hiding in the bathroom I insist you come out now.”

Oh, hell! It was Nurse Nightingale on the warpath.

One last glance at Barney’s pasty face and I dashed from the room. After what happened to Matt, and now Barney, I figured I’d need more than Tater and Lucky to protect me from the bad guys. I’d need a brace of ferocious Dobermans, a dozen Rottweilers and a pack of poodles hyped up on Speed.

Stepping from the dehumanizing air of the hospital into the noisy but colorful street, with the roar of cars, the swish of buses and the rush of people on their way to work was like stepping from winter into spring. I drew in a lungful of lovely crisp morning air, held it until the hospital crap disappeared from my lungs and then slowly let it out again. I figured hospitals were fine for visiting—but not for staying in.

Thing is, there was someone out there, or in Barney’s case, some faceless
they,
who got their kicks from filling hospital beds—or even worse—adding to the body count at the morgue.

11

By the time Ben dropped me home, Jake was hard at work. He’d let the first six dogs into emptying yards and I could hear him singing along to something on his iPod while mopping out their kennels. What a doll. Hey, if my dreadlocked assistant was a few years older I’d ask him to marry me. That is—older—with a
real
job—the English language according to normal—and oh, yeah, a fashion sense that didn’t include beads, ear-piercing and sequined head bands.

“Hi, Jake,” I yelled, snaffling leads from their numbered hooks on the wall and looping them over my arm. I had to yell to be heard over the din. The moment I entered the kennel-house every dog wanted to tell me their life story. “Sorry you got left to do all the work last night. I suppose Ben filled you in on what happened.”

Jake’s silver rings shimmied along with his eyebrow. He grinned. “Lucky punch, eh?”

I gave him a serious
I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it-now-or-later
frown and switched on the mechanical walking-machine. It paid to warm up the motor before attaching the dogs to the equipment.

“Any problems while I was away?”

“Verity, like, came in season.”

I almost stamped my foot. “Blast. I’ll have to scratch her from Monday night’s race. And just when she finally drew box 8.” Verity was a wide runner and I’d been waiting weeks for an outside trap so the owners, a syndicate of enthusiastic young guys from the local soccer club, could have a decent bet on her. “The boys will be peed off big time,” I growled.

Exasperated, I bulldozed this last piece of crappy news to the back of my mind and buried it amongst the growing pile of angst already littering the area. No time to think about it now. Instead, while fastening collars and leads to the dogs due for a free gallop that morning, I told Jake about Barney’s
accident
.

Jake’s eyes rounded when I described the starting-box steward’s injuries. “Wow, man. That’s creepy. You’re not, like, hanging around here by yourself tonight are you?”

The word
hanging
didn’t sit well in my already troubled mind.

“Guess so.”

What was the alternative? It was fine sleeping at Tanya’s for one night but with a team of valuable racing dogs in my care, my first priority was to keep them safe. Who knew what the killer might do next? What if he broke into the kennel-house and shot the ears off some
real
dogs? I started to shiver, stroked the ears of the closest greyhound, a smiling black-and-white bitch with wickedly dancing eyes, as though by putting my mark on her ears, nothing bad could happen to them. I vowed vehemently that as well as changing the locks on my house, my kennel-house would be locked up tighter than the State Bank in future.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “Perhaps I should have something a bit larger than Tater to protect me. You know, until this all blows over. Is Lucky ready to come inside the house yet?”

“Lucky? For protection?” Jake’s rolling eyes said it all.

“A promise is a promise. She’s now a pet.” I let out a heavy sigh. “But I guess you’re right. If a black-hearted villain snuck in while I was asleep, Lucky would wash the guy’s face, offer him one of her treasured chew-bones and then lead him to the family silver—or me. Whichever the villain requested.”

Jake stopped mopping the concrete floor to scratch thoughtfully at his earlobe. His skinny dreadlocks, stiff with sweat, grazed the neckline of his scruffy T-shirt, which proclaimed in faded red letters:
Every drip counts
. “What about your Ma, dude? Could she stay with you for a couple of weeks?”

I shook my head.

Ma
had left for a trip to Hawaii twelve months earlier with her latest catch, Dwayne, a weedy little man with a huge voice and an even bigger bank account. After Hawaii, they’d decided to keep going. Probably partying somewhere in Europe as we spoke. Anyway, even if available, my mother wouldn’t come within ball chucking distance of, in her words, dirty smelly greyhounds
.
Her horrified shriek, “
Greyhound trainer!
” expressed with the same revulsion as if I’d said, “
Prostitute!
” when I told her what I intended doing with the money Dad left me in his will, still rang in my ears. As for Dwayne, her pint-sized lover, he’d be less protection than Tater. Blow on the guy and he’d drift off into space—never to be seen or heard of again.

Jake wasn’t done yet. “Any brothers or sisters you can call on?”

That question earned another negative head shake.

Elizabeth, my only sibling, had run away from home at sixteen. Couldn’t stand Mum’s constant nagging. Before Dad’s death, he had always been the one to smooth things over between Mum and Liz, but after he died, my sixteen-year-old sister refused to stick around. It was as though Mum took all her frustrations out on Liz, continually pecking away like a bird at a worm. So the day after Dad’s funeral, the worm turned. Liz packed her bags, entrusted me with her favorite ruby necklace as a keepsake and caught a northbound bus out of our lives.

Now, at twenty-one, Liz lived in a hippy commune somewhere in outback Queensland. Well that’s where her last postcard came from—almost six months ago. Liz shifted around so much I had to rely on her infrequent correspondence to keep up with her whereabouts. However, the letters I’d posted off since then had been returned with
not known at this address
scrawled across the front, so God knows where she lived now.

Jake squeezed the water out of his mop and leaned on the handle, evidently still endeavoring to come up with a suitable candidate. “What about cousins? Grandparents? Uncles?”

At each suggestion I shook my head. They were either dead, living in another state, or ostracized by
Ma
.

“No worries, man,” Jake declared, his pigeon-sized chest visibly swelling. “Just leave it to me. I’ll sort it.”

I bit my lip to stop from laughing out loud. “No offence, Jake, but you’re skinnier than I am. One half-hearted punch and you’d be out for the count.”

“I don’t mean
me
, man. You know I’m not into physical stuff. I’m a peacefulprotester.” He paused then nodded thoughtfully. “No…I have someone
else
in mind.”

My grin quickly faded. “Who?”

“As I said, leave it to me.”

Somehow that didn’t make me breathe any easier.

With six greyhounds straining on the ends of their leads, I made my way toward the 200 meter galloping runs at the rear of the property. Or should I say, flew to the back runs like a kite attached to six strings, my feet barely touching the ground. Once there, I let each bouncing, barking, let-me-at-’em canine into a separate sandy run and left them to gallop up and down in a competitive effort to outdo each other, thereby maintaining racing fitness.

Leads dangling around my neck, I hurried across to the emptying yards. The greyhounds in these much smaller yards were now due for their twenty-minute walk to nowhere on the treadmill inside the kennel-house.

There were dogs to bathe, dogs to treat with different electrical appliances, dogs to check for injuries, dogs whose toenails needed clipping, dogs to visit the vet, dogs that needed a special cuddle…

It was almost three o’clock in the afternoon before I found time to ring Ben and Tanya and arrange to meet them at Matt’s house. There were three of Matt’s dogs to pick up so I hooked the dog trailer to the station wagon and opened the car door. Before I could slither in behind the wheel, Tater, determined to accompany me, launched his peanut-sized body in the air, skidded across the leather and braced himself, ears cocked, on the passenger seat ready to go.

Our first scheme—tempt Peter Manning with the offer of undetectable drugs—had ended badly. We’d pissed off Peter and I’d spent the night in hospital. Hopefully, our next initiative—search for clues in Matt’s house—would end on a more productive note. Like a signed confession from the murderer tucked inside one of Matt’s racing form guides.

Okay, I’m the first to admit, the role of amateur sleuth was a lot trickier in real life than it appeared in books. However, if I didn’t want the police to roll up, red and blue lights flashing, handcuffs at the ready, I needed to soak up the entire condensed version of
How to Catch the Bad Guys 101
in the time it takes for Ben to eat a family-sized pizza.

On arriving at Matt’s semi-detached, red brick, housing-trust home, I dragged the heavy galvanized iron side gate open and let Tater trot through in front of me. Tail arched over his back, ears on red alert, the little dog strutted along as though rescuing orphan greyhounds and hunting for clues were all in a day’s work. Frenetic bouncing, barking, and tail-wagging from the three kennels along the fence line greeted us. Although a friend of Matt’s had promised to feed the dogs, they were bored, lonely and craving attention.

I called Tater to my side and strolled toward the back door, to all casual appearances as though I had nothing on my mind except watering Matt’s flowers, collecting his post, being a good friend. That is, until I found myself surrounded by a satiated swarm of buzzing blowflies. What the heck? I stopped. And that’s when I noticed the source of their unflagging interest. Shoved hard against the back door of Matt’s house was a large, green, graffiti-covered wheelie bin. It was emanating a stench so gross, so vile, it made raw sewerage smell like desert.

One hand completely covering my nose I approached the wheelie bin with caution. Did I
really
want to know the cause of that horrible stink? What if there was a severed head inside the bin? Mutilated fingers? Or even an entire body bent double, limbs broken? Heart careering like a motorboat at full throttle, I lifted the lid with the end of the garden rake and flipped it wide open.

Eeeuw
!

Rotting kidneys, liver, chicken legs and some furry thing I couldn’t recognize with a family of fat, wriggly, white worms picnicking on the entrails, greeted me. Tater indicated he wouldn’t mind checking the contents of the bin more closely if I’d just be good enough to give him a bit of a hoist. I told him, no way, and with fingers still clutching my nose leaned across the bin and tested the knob on the back door.

Locked.

Cautiously, I slid my eyes over my shoulder. One never knew when a nosy neighbor might peer over the fence. If they noticed Tater and me investigating they might decide to be a model citizen and ring 000. No neighbors in sight, nosy or otherwise, so I made my way around the side of the house and checked the catches on the windows. Tater, after another sniff of the wheelie bin, wandered off to water a couple of sickly looking rose bushes growing beside the fence. Probably thought the acidity might revitalize them.

No window catches undone. The blinds on the windows were all drawn. And the only open window led into the laundry. However, being no bigger than a cereal box, the window was way too small for me to squeeze through.

What now?

In the past, whenever Matt entered dogs at a country race-meeting, like Port Pirie, Barmera or Port Augusta, he’d arrange for me to feed those dogs left behind. Could the spare key to his front door still be under the doormat? Hey, it was worth a try.

I whistled Tater, who’d gone on to test his acidity theory on the carnations, the geraniums, a rusty watering can without a spout and a three-legged deck chair and marched around to the front of the house. The heavy rope doormat was in its usual place beside a potted Winter’s Joy. Scenting success, I bent forward and hefted the mat away from the front door. Half an inch of dirt...but no key.

Plan B already formulating in my mind, I peered at the keyhole to ascertain what size wire I’d require to pick the lock—and did a double take.

Matt’s front door had been jimmied
.

Stomach twisted in a knot, I touched the door with the palm of my hand, watched it swing open and stood staring at the empty landing. Beside me, Tater growled. The tiny hairs along his back stood up. As though challenging an invisible foe, he cocked his head to one side, blinked his little black button eyes and swaggered in through the open doorway.

“Tater! Don’t go in there!” I yelled to the tip of his tail as it disappeared into the nearest room.