I Shall Not Want (7 page)

“The only human victim who is alive,” Mark pointed out.

“Let’s hope he stays that way. If you ask me, you should have him, his house, and his dog under armed guard.”

“What about the homeless who adopted dogs that day?”

“I—I don’t know,” she admitted.

“Let me know if you figure it out,” he said.

They finished up their burritos, and Mark ran out of questions. They parted ways in the church parking lot, and Cindy walked back into the office.

The phones were ringing, and there were four parents trying to pay Geanie the deposits for the camp. Thoughts of her conversation with Mark evaporated as she threw herself back into work.

The next few hours flew by in a rush of noise and people and phones. At four-thirty things finally quieted down. She was able to get a few things done. It was almost five when her cell rang. Joseph.

“Hi. I just thought you’d like to hear the update.”

“Yes, what did you find out?”

“Unfortunately, very little,” he said, sounding discouraged. “My jeweler confirmed that Clarice is still wearing the original collar.”

“The diamond one?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Okay, so if that’s what the thieves were after, they didn’t get it.”

“Yeah, I guess. When I get home, it’s going in the safe, just to make sure, and I’m putting a plain collar on her. If they come back looking for it, they’ll at least leave her alone.”

“Sounds like a smart idea. So what did the police say?”

“That’s the really frustrating part. The lab guy said they couldn’t get any clean DNA evidence.”

“Are you kidding? There was all that blood. It wasn’t hers. It couldn’t have been—” Could it have belonged to one of the puppies? That much blood, though, would surely mean that the puppy would be dead.

“It wasn’t human blood or dog blood. It was some other kind of animal. They’re saying she must have tangled with something outside before we found her under the shed.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Neither do I, but what can you do? Blood doesn’t lie.”

“Are the two of you okay?”

“Yeah, but we’re both anxious to get home.”

“Okay, well, call me if anything else happens.”

“I will,” he promised. “I’ll just be happy when the police straighten this out and the puppies are found safe and sound.”

“Me too.”

And in the silence between them, she knew they were both wondering if that would happen. The puppies might be dead. Even if they weren’t, they might never be found. She wasn’t
sure she could live with not knowing, but she knew for certain that Joseph couldn’t. “Take care, okay?”

“You too.”

Cindy hung up. “That was Joseph. He got Clarice back,” she told Geanie. She glanced at the clock. Three minutes until five. She scooped up the papers in front of her and piled them in her inbox to deal with in the morning.

“So what do you have planned for this evening?” Geanie asked as she shut down her computer.

Cindy yawned. “I signed up to go to a timeshare presentation.”

“Ooh, one of those ones where they tempt you with prizes and trips?”

“Exactly. I think I’m going to bail.”

“Why, you’ve got something else planned?”

“Sleeping.”

“Sleep during the presentation. That’s what my cousin did last year, and she won a trip to Hawaii.”

“Hawaii is one of the prizes,” Cindy admitted.

“See! You should go.”

“You know, you’re right. It’s not like they’re going to test me at the end of the spiel.”

“Exactly. Ninety minutes of your time, and you’ll at least get some kind of prize.”

“You talked me into it,” Cindy said, shutting down her computer.
Of course it has nothing to do with the fact that I can put off being alone with my thoughts about what’s happened to those dogs.

They walked out to the parking lot together. Once in her car Cindy turned toward downtown instead of home. Twenty minutes later she was walking out of a parking garage underneath the office building where the timeshare company had space.

On the sidewalk a puppy that was tied up to a bicycle rack jumped to his feet and barked joyously upon seeing her. It wasn’t safe to pet strange dogs, but he was so cute she almost couldn’t resist.

“Sorry, little fella,” she said.

She took the elevator to the fifth floor. When she signed in at the front desk, she was directed to a large meeting room where a dozen other people already waited, clustered around a few tables. Cindy glanced around, trying to decide where to sit, when her eyes fell on a familiar figure.

“Harry?”

He looked up at her, and a smile lit up his face. “Hello. Here, have a seat at my table.”

It couldn’t do any harm to sit with him. Besides, he was the only one in the room who wasn’t a complete stranger. She sat down and smiled. “I’m surprised to see you here,” she said, trying to think of a polite way to question him. He wasn’t someone who could rent his own apartment, let alone afford a timeshare.

“I love these things,” Harry said. “Free food, free entertainment, and you always win something cool just for sitting here.”

She smiled as she realized her motives were no less mercenary. “So what are you hoping to win?”

“I’ve got my eye on the portable television,” Harry said.

“I’m hoping for the trip to Hawaii.”

“I’ve been to Hawaii three times,” he confessed.

“Wow. I’ve never been.”

“It’s nice. Lots of palm trees.”

“I would imagine.”

He fidgeted in his chair and kept glancing toward the door.

“Are you okay?”

“They made me leave Rascal outside. I don’t like leaving him alone.”

“The puppy tied up outside?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

He mumbled something under his breath. But then the speaker moved to the front of the room, the lights dimmed, and the slideshow began.

Cindy struggled to stay awake for the next ninety minutes, not because she wanted to hear what they were saying, but because she was afraid if she started to snore they would kick her out without giving her a chance to draw for a prize from the tantalizing decorated box up front. When the presentation was finally over, she was distraught to discover that she had to spend twenty minutes saying no to three different people who all tried to sell her a timeshare, failed, and sent her “up the sales chain” to the next person she had to say no to. By the end she was exhausted and pretty sure that whatever she won wasn’t going to be worth the frustration.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Harry stroke his beard and nod his head a lot. Once she distinctly heard him say, “Very interesting, but if you don’t mind I’ll need to take the materials and think it over.”

She was finally cleared to get her parting gift and leave, and she managed to drop her packet of information on an empty table as she approached the prize box.

“Feeling lucky?” the woman standing there asked.

“I hope so,” Cindy muttered as she put her hand in and fished out a paper.

“Oh, congratulations, you won a portable television!” The woman reached under the table, pulled out a box, and handed it to Cindy.

It was heavier than it looked. Cindy grasped it awkwardly and made her way back downstairs and outside. There next to the door sat Harry’s puppy.

“Hey, Rascal,” she said, putting down the box and scratching him behind the ears. At least she knew now who he belonged to and that he’d had all his shots. “Glad to see no one’s dognapped you.” She wondered if it was a coincidence that the missing puppies were all purebreds from Joseph’s prize dog, Clarice. Were they being stolen because they were valuable, or was there a rival breeder out there who would stop at nothing to get his hands on the bloodline? She shook her head. She liked dogs, but it was hard to imagine the enormous prices some people paid for them.

Besides, there was yet another missing dog, the one that had belonged to Sammy. Sure, he wasn’t a puppy, but it couldn’t be a coincidence. Maybe diamond collars and championship bloodlines were all red herrings. Maybe there was some other motivation for the killer, something else that linked all the dogs.

“He’s sweet, isn’t he?” Harry asked a minute later as he came out of the building.

“Very.”

“You won the television?”

“Yeah. What did you get?”

“The Hawaii trip. I can’t go, though. I wouldn’t want to leave Rascal. Hey, you want to trade?”

“Are you sure, Harry?” she asked. “Yours is worth a lot more than mine.”

“Not to me, it’s not. It seems we just got each other’s prizes by mistake,” he said with a smile.

She found herself grinning back. “You’ve got a deal.”

He handed her the voucher, and she slid the box toward him. “Will you be okay carrying this and walking the little guy?”

“Yup.”

Cindy started for her car. “See you around, Harry. And thanks.”

She was halfway to the car when she found herself turning around and walking back out of the parking garage. “Hey, Harry?”

“No tradebacks.”

“No, nothing like that. I was just wondering. Do you have somewhere to go for Thanksgiving dinner?”

“Well, the shelter usually puts on a nice spread,” he answered.

She bit her lip. The side of her that hated taking risks screamed at her to walk away, but watching Harry pet Rascal, she just couldn’t. “Would you like to come to my house for dinner?”

“You mean it? Can Rascal come too?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, yes! You hear that, boy? We’ve got someplace to be on Thursday.”

She pulled a pen and a piece of paper out of her purse and wrote down her address before she could change her mind. “Do you know this street?” she asked as she handed it to him.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Okay. Dinner is at three.”

“We’ll be there.”

“See you then!” She turned and headed back to her car, hoping she had done the right thing.

She couldn’t help but think about what Joseph had said, and she realized it was true. These types of events certainly did have a way of spinning out of control.

7

M
ONDAY COULD HAVE GONE A LOT BETTER AS FAR AS
J
EREMIAH WAS CON
cerned. An endless stream of people had flowed in and out of the synagogue office all day. He didn’t know how Marie juggled so many demands simultaneously. On top of that, every office machine in the place managed to break down.

At the end of the day, Robert’s Paper had called to say that a shipment of paper ordered by Marie for the youth director had finally come in. At that point Jeremiah had a throbbing headache, a runny nose, and a suspicion that he might be sick. He opted to wait until the next day to pick up the order instead of trying to race there before the store closed.

When he finally dragged himself home, all he could manage was to heat up some chicken noodle soup before falling headfirst into bed.

After the timeshare presentation, Cindy felt too keyed up to go straight home. She stopped and grabbed a burger and shake at Bob’s Giant Burgers and then decided to head to the grocery store to shop for Thanksgiving dinner.

Once she stepped foot inside, she instantly regretted it. More than a hundred shoppers prowled the aisles, ramming each other with carts, knocking over displays, and moaning loudly as they waited in seemingly endless lines at the checkout. She considered coming back later but realized that the closer to Thanksgiving, the worse it was going to get. She squared her shoulders, aimed her cart for the poultry section, and joined the fray.

What should have taken her fifteen minutes took three times as long, thanks to all the carts blocking the aisles. When she had finally filled her cart with everything she could think of, she headed to the front of the store.

She picked what appeared to be the shortest line, crossing her fingers that there wasn’t a reason no one else wanted to be in it. Sure enough, she soon realized that the woman at the front of the line had a coupon for almost everything she had bought. Moments later Cindy saw the small sign next to the register that announced Cashier in Training and she slumped over her cart.

Finally the coupon queen had finished and moved on. The next two people made it through in what seemed a reasonable time. Finally the man in front of Cindy stepped up to the cashier. He then pulled out a plastic bag filled with change and began counting coins into neat little stacks.

The guy behind Cindy swore and demanded, “How come you didn’t use the coin-counting machine?”

Cindy took in the man’s ragged clothing and realized he had to be very poor. He looked vaguely familiar, and she wondered if he might even be homeless. She turned to the man behind her and said softly, “The coin-counting machine charges several cents per dollar. He might not be able to afford losing that money.”

The man swore again, and Cindy turned away. Her eyes landed on the magazine rack, and her eyes widened in horror as she saw herself staring out from the cover of one of the tabloids.

It was a picture of her and Joseph holding hands outside the theater. The headline screamed
Spies Use Millionaire Couple’s Dogs to Smuggle Information.

“Oh, no,” she whispered, as she snatched a paper from the stand. She flipped it open, trying to find the article.

Suddenly, the loudmouth behind her seemed to notice something other than the guy counting change.

“Hey, that’s you! You’re the chick dating that guy with the dogs who’s killing homeless people!”

“What? No!” she gasped.

“Yeah, I seen you on the news!”

Other people turned to stare, including the man counting his coins. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” he said.

And then pandemonium broke loose. People surrounded her, asking questions, shouting, pressing close. Someone shoved a pen into her hand and begged for an autograph. An old lady hit her with an umbrella.

Cindy backed up until she ran into the man in front of her, who pushed her into the arms of the man behind her.

Someone waved a fist in her face. She screamed. A manager appeared, pushing his way through the crowd and shouting for quiet. He reached Cindy, glanced from her to the tabloid cover still clutched in her hand, grabbed her elbow, and pushed her toward the exit. “You’d better leave. This crowd’s not in a friendly mood.”

She let him walk her outside. “My groceries,” she protested.

“I’m sure you can get someone else to pick them up for you,” he said, unable to hide the sarcasm in his voice.

“I’m not his girlfriend!” she snapped.

“Whatever. I don’t really care. I just want order in my store.”

Cindy pulled free of his grasp and then saw she still held the paper.

“Keep it,” the manager said, backing away with his hands raised.

“But I didn’t pay for it.”

“Just take it and get out of here,” he insisted.

A couple of people came out of the store looking their way, and Cindy decided it was a good suggestion. She turned and ran to her car. She peeled out of the parking lot and didn’t look back.

It was still dark when Jeremiah got up. He felt much worse, and his body ached from head to toe. His stomach, which usually wasn’t affected by anything, had gone into spasms, and he felt nauseous. He threw on sweats and grabbed his keys. It was time for a trip to the drugstore.

He walked outside, locked his front door, and then turned around. He froze. Something wasn’t right. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he scanned the small yard slowly. Finally, he saw something out of place, a lump by the hedges close to the sidewalk.

He thought briefly about returning inside for a kitchen knife. Instead he crouched low and made his way toward the lump, eyes probing the darkness around him. Nothing moved in the inky blackness, and as his eyes adjusted, he realized that the lump was the body of a man.

He knew instinctively who it was before he saw the man’s face. The homeless man from the park stared back at him with eyes that had seen their last. Jeremiah glanced around, but the German shepherd was nowhere to be seen.

The man had been shot in the left side of the stomach. It looked like he had done what he could to stop the bleeding, but with the location of the wound he would have only had about fifteen minutes before the toxins from the ruptured spleen and appendix killed him. He couldn’t have traveled very far at any rate.

He knew where I lived. He was coming here.
Jeremiah realized he should have been more careful at the park, followed the man, or at least made sure he hadn’t been followed on his way home.

He only had about thirty minutes of darkness left; he would have to move fast. Jeremiah went back inside, yanked open a kitchen drawer, and pulled on a pair of disposable gloves and grabbed a penlight.

Back outside he knelt beside the body and committed it to memory, the way the limbs were angled, the drape of the material, everything, so that he could put it back the way he had found it.

He started with the obvious, pulling the contents out of front and back slacks pockets and the single shirt pocket. A piece of paper with the address of Pine Springs Veterinary Clinic scribbled on it, a fistful of dog treats, and a wallet came under his scrutiny. He shone the light through the piece of paper with the address of the veterinary clinic but couldn’t detect anything else.
Was the dog there? Was he sick?
Jeremiah sniffed the dog bones, which appeared to be exactly what they seemed to be. He slid one back into the man’s pocket, and then broke it open, careful to snap it off-center so it looked like an accident and not a deliberate break. Breaking it in the pocket ensured that crumbs were there, where they would be expected, and not on the lawn where they wouldn’t be. Jeremiah shone his penlight into the pocket and examined the center of the broken bone, but it seemed ordinary.

Next he moved on to the wallet. There was a driver’s license, expired by two years, bearing the name Peter Wallace. There was also a Pine Springs library card, the address of the local homeless shelter scribbled on a piece of paper, and a grocery store club card.

He put everything back and then checked for a locket, ring, or watch. The man didn’t have any jewelry on him. He slid his hands along the clothes, squeezing, to see if anything was hidden in the linings. Finally he removed the shoes and examined them thoroughly. He even checked to see if the heels had false compartments. He couldn’t help but smile to himself.
How very Maxwell Smart, but hey, it’s a good hiding place for a reason.

Satisfied at last that there was nothing on the body that could link the man to him, Jeremiah slipped the shoes back on and then took a couple of minutes to rearrange the body and the clothing until it was exactly as he remembered it.

He made it back inside just as the sky began to lighten. He coughed hard and his stomach twisted more. He had to get the flu medication soon.

He removed the gloves, returned the penlight to its location, and grabbed a pair of scissors. He walked into the bathroom and cut the gloves into tiny pieces into the toilet, flushing at intervals. Finally the gloves were gone.

He returned the scissors to the kitchen drawer, looked himself over, and took a deep breath. It was time to make a decision. Sooner or later neighbors would be leaving their houses and one of them was bound to spot the body and raise the alarm. As sick as he was, he could just go back to bed and wait for the police to come to him, where they would discover him bewildered and feverish.

He shook his head. That would only delay his trip to the drugstore. Better to take charge of the situation. He slipped
his cell phone into his sweats’ pocket, grabbed his keys, and headed out the door, exactly as he had earlier that morning.

He locked the door, turned, glanced toward the body, and yelled, “Hello?”

He walked slowly toward the body. “Excuse me, are you okay?”

He picked up his pace until he stood over the body. “Are you—”

The nausea he had been fighting for the last hour finally overcame him. He spun aside and fell to his knees, vomiting in the bushes.

When he was able to straighten up, he pulled out his cell phone and called Mark. The detective answered on the second ring.

“It’s Jeremiah. I just found a body. Outside my house, 31 Oak Street.”

“I’ll be there in ten. Don’t touch anything.”

“Okay.” Jeremiah stayed on his knees for a few more minutes before stumbling to the porch to sit down, shoving keys and cell phone into his pockets.

True to his word, the detective pulled up quickly, beating the squad cars by a good thirty seconds. He parked in the driveway, blocking in Jeremiah’s car. Seconds later he crouched next to the body in nearly the identical posture that Jeremiah had taken.

Jeremiah watched as officers cordoned off his yard.
So much for keeping a low profile in the neighborhood.

Finally Mark crossed the lawn to sit beside Jeremiah on the porch. “Heck of a lawn ornament you got for yourself. Did you know him?”

Jeremiah turned and looked the detective straight in the eyes and lied. “No. He does look a little like a guy I saw in the park Saturday playing with a German shepherd.”

Mark sighed. “A dog? Are you sure?”

“I remember the dog, but I couldn’t swear that this was the same man.” Jeremiah said, keeping his voice even.

“There weren’t any German shepherds at the charity event,” Mark said.

Jeremiah shrugged. “I don’t remember seeing any there. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Any idea how he might have ended up in front of your house?”

“I wish I knew.”

The detective looked at him shrewdly. “You seem to be pretty calm for a guy who just found a body in his yard.”

Jeremiah shrugged. “Thanks to Cindy I had to get used to bodies popping up in strange places.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“But it was a shock.” He jerked his head toward the bushes. “I vomited.”

The detective grunted. “Happens to the best of us.”

Jeremiah noted the unconscious grouping of himself with the detective and his colleagues in the simple word
us
. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t draw attention to it.

“He was shot,” Mark said.

Jeremiah frowned. “I didn’t hear anything like a shot.”