Let Loose (26 page)

Considering Craig was locked up in a cozy
little cell, that made sense. I started to explain as much to
Ethel, but the sound of something grinding stopped me.

I glanced at Kiska, who seemed as confused as
I was. “Ethel? Where are you?”

“Nowhere you need to worry about, but I need
to get ahold of Craig. When you stop by, tell him I have a pick-up
for him.”

“A pick-up?”

“Yes. Tell him I’ll call Carol and leave the
address with her.”

More grinding and Ethel’s volume dropped.
“I’m afraid I have to go. I do hope you are staying warm.”

She hung up.

“What the hell?”

Kiska cocked an eyebrow, obviously sharing my
sentiment.

Ethel hadn’t sounded in danger. Maybe I was
worrying about nothing. I tapped my finger against the steering
wheel.

Don’t go looking for trouble. That’s what my
mother would have said, to me at least. In my opinion, she seemed
to constantly be looking for trouble.

But Ethel didn’t know Craig had been arrested
either. That seemed like a pretty important piece of information.
One I should probably share.

I pulled my phone out and went to the
incoming calls section. My thumb hovering over “dial number,” I
frowned.

The number looked familiar, not pizza
delivery familiar, but still familiar.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the
card I’d gotten from the garbage man.

The numbers matched.

Scenes flitted past, settling into slots in
my brain like plastic chips in a Plinko game.

Crap. Ethel was off doing good again. Or at
least trying to cover for someone else’s doing bad.

And she was going to get herself killed in
the process.

o0o

It was a fifteen-minute drive to the garbage
company.

I parked on a side street, snapped Kiska’s
leash on him and led him toward the parking lot.

A car, a small truck and the garbage truck
were in the lot.

I walked to the front door and rapped
firmly.

No answer.

I rose onto my toes, cupped my hands around
my face, and peered into the tiny green glass window that sat just
above my natural eye level.

I wasn’t sure what the purpose of the glass
inset was, but it wasn’t to let passersby see inside.

I settled back onto my heels and twisted my
lips.

Ethel was here, or had been when she called.
And the vehicles in the lot said there were other people here
too.

I walked around the building to the back and
the over-sized garage door.

The grinding noise. It had come from the
door. So Ethel was in the back. Unfortunately, this door was going
to be no easier to open than the human-sized one in the front.

Unless someone opened it for me. I knocked
and called out, “Hello? I was here the other day. I wanted to talk
to someone about signing up for service. I have a check to drop
off.”

I leaned into the door and waited.

No response.

Thinking maybe they had moved to the front, I
walked around the building again. When there was still no answer to
my knocks, I pulled out my phone and considered my options.

I could leave. Ethel hadn’t sounded
distressed in the slightest.

I could call Carol and see if she’d heard
from Ethel too and if she was worried.

I could call the police and potentially set
myself up for the humiliation of yet another false alarm. I had a
bit of a history for those.

But that also meant I was used to it.

I dialed 9-1-1.

“What is your emergency?”

“Ethel Monroe called me and now no one comes
to the door.”

“Do you have reason to believe she is in
distress?”

“She sounded fine, but I think...” What did I
think? I had no evidence of anything. I sighed. “Yes, I think she’s
in distress.”

“Address, please?”

I glanced around, looking for a street
address. I had it in my rig scribbled on a piece of paper, but– the
card– I pulled it from my pocket. There was no address on it.

“Ma’am?”

I started walking, searching the outside of
the building for numbers. Six feet from the back corner of the
building, the grinding noise started. I jogged forward just as the
garage door went up and Ethel stepped into view.

Relief washed over me. “She’s here!” I
yelled.

“So, she’s—”

That’s all I heard before my phone was
knocked from my hand and a brown work boot smashed it into nothing
but resistors, diodes, bits, and bytes.

“Allen! Stop that!” Ethel barked out.

I looked up from the smashed mess that had
been my phone.

Allen Kelly stood beside me, his boot inches
from what remained of my phone.

“Lucy, I am sorry about that. You know how
hot-headed teenagers can be.” Ethel patted Allen’s arm in a
motherly way that made me wonder if senility had somehow taken hold
of her since I’d last seen her.

Leaning heavily on her cane, she took a step
forward. “Let’s see, we were going for a ride. Weren’t we?” She
glanced back at Allen and behind him, Larry the garbage man. “Lucy,
I’m afraid you’ll have to conduct whatever garbage business you
have another time. We do need to be off.” She wobbled forward a bit
more.

I’d never seen her this weak.

The men glanced at each other and moved
forward too. Larry touched the back of my arm. “I think maybe your
friend should come with us too.”

I shivered.

Ethel straightened. “No. Allen knows how I
feel about keeping business within the group. He brought you in,
but that is the end of it.” Then, as if she’d over-exerted herself,
she gasped and bowed down over her cane.

I placed my hand on the middle of her back.
“My Jeep’s just over there. I can take you home.” We both shuffled
forward, Ethel’s feet moving faster than I would have imagined she
could, based on how she’d been bent over her cane.

We weren’t fast enough though. Larry easily
moved in front of us. “Like I said, I think we should all go for
that ride. What do you think, Allen?”

Allen, his eyes big, nodded. I followed his
gaze back to Larry. It was then I saw the gun in his hand, pointed
at us.

“I see you got a replacement,” I said.

Larry didn’t seem to enjoy my small talk. He
made a growling noise. He wasn’t my target though. Allen was. I
sensed a weakness in him. Or a strength. He had, after all, helped
Carol clip her dog’s toenails.

We shuffled forward, Ethel and me in front
with Kiska and Larry and Allen behind us. When we reached the
vehicles, I glanced at the men. Allen stared at the ground. His
arms hung at his sides and his fingers opened and closed into fists
over and over.

Larry made a noise and Allen walked toward
the garbage truck. Larry stopped him. “No, we’ll take the car. Less
noticeable.”

Less noticeable. I didn’t like the sound of
that.

“Except the dog. I don’t want him in my
car.”

I curled my lip. Anyone who chose their
upholstery over a dog had issues. Not that this was news with this
man. Still, it ratcheted my dislike of him up even more.

Allen nodded and reached for Kiska’s leash.
My grip tightened. It wasn’t a thought-out reaction, just instinct.
Allen looked at me, an apology in his eyes.

He was ready to let the other man kill me,
but he felt bad that my dog was about to be left behind?

Okay. I kind of got that. I still didn’t want
to let go though. I tried stalling. “Did you break into my
house?”

He cringed. “Had to. You took the box.”

“With the gun it,” I stated. “How’d it get
there?”

Allen glanced at Larry. The garbage man
frowned. “How do you think?” he asked.

“One of you put it there, after you killed
Red.”

Larry laughed. “She’s a smart one, isn’t
she?” He shook his head.

I knew when I was being mocked, but being
mocked was a lot better than being shoved into a car with death as
a final destination.

I smiled or tried to. I think it wavered a
bit. “Why take it to Craig’s?”

“We were coming back to get it,” Allen said,
as if my question had been an accusation of some sort.

Larry grunted. “Shouldn’t have left it there
to start with. If you’d kept it with you, we could have stashed it
back in your old man’s nightstand and been done with all of this
right then.”

A look washed over Allen’s face that told me
Larry’s intention might have been exactly why he’d left the gun at
Craig’s.

“I panicked, okay? I’d never seen someone
shot. And I went to get it back the next day, but there were police
everywhere. So it was safer to leave it where it was.

“I told you I know Craig. He gets stuff and
leaves it where it falls. That box was nothing to him and it was
the perfect place to hide the gun until everything cooled down and
we could come back to get it.”

“Except...” Larry motioned at me. “...this
one stole it out from under us.”

I straightened. “I didn’t steal—” The look on
Larry’s face suggested that my objection might fall on deaf ears. I
swallowed, and tried a different tack. “So you broke in and took
the gun to Ethel’s?”

Allen’s gaze shifted to his feet.

Ethel placed a hand on my arm. “Now, Lucy,
there’s no reason to argue over the past.”

The past that had gotten her arrested and was
now going to get us killed? I thought there was plenty of reason to
argue over that.

Larry, however, didn’t agree. He barked out
an impatient order to Allen to get us moving and lifted his
gun.

Allen jumped and gave the leash a jerk my
cold fingers and distracted mind couldn’t resist.

With obvious relief, he looked at the other
man. “I’ll just put him in the garage.”

The man grimaced. “No you won’t. What if he
howls? You refusing to shoot those other dogs caused all of this.
It would have been the perfect thing to point at that snowmobile
club of your dad’s and not brought her...” He pointed at me.
“...into this.” He eyed Kiska and moved the revolver up and down a
bit, like he was weighing it... or his options. “We should bring
him with us. We got nothing else to do with him and she...” He
nodded toward me. “...obviously has him with her a lot. It would
make sense for them to be found together.”

Found was good. Unfortunately, I didn’t think
he planned on Kiska, Ethel or me to be in any shape to celebrate
when we were reunited with the others in our lives.

My hands fisted and my body tensed. I glanced
at Ethel, but she seemed to be somewhere else. She swayed back and
forth as if listening to some silent tune.

Allen, however, was very much with us. He
frowned. “We don’t need to shoot him. We can just let him go. That
would still work. They could be out looking for him or something
and get lost.”

He was still all on board with killing Ethel
and me, but he was fighting for my dog. That counted for
something...

As I was pondering just how much this counted
for, Ethel fell to the ground. Not a quiet slip or ladylike faint,
but a big, dramatic face-forward flop.

I gasped and completely forgetting the gun
pointed at my head, sprang forward, kneeled by her side and dropped
my ear to her back.

“Whack ‘em.”

Startled, I jerked. Then Ethel’s cane hit the
side of my boot.

Whack ‘em
.

She meant me... and the two men, one of whom
was holding a revolver.

There are times when weighing your odds of
success is not the best option.

This was one of them.

I wrapped my fingers around her cane, twisted
on my feet and sprang upright. I didn’t have to think to aim. My
body automatically spun toward the man who had so callously ordered
Ethel’s, my, and my dog’s deaths.

Ethel’s ruse had worked. Larry had lowered
the gun and was busy frowning at what I guessed he saw as the
inconvenience of the older woman’s fall.

I swung, hitting him hard and sure on the
temple.

He blinked and I struck again, this time
charging forward with my body like an angry child, intent on taking
down a tormenting bully.

The size comparison was apt, but I let myself
snap, let all the pent up anger at his words, past actions and
future intentions flood through me until I’d plowed my head into
his gut and knocked him off of his feet.

He lay on his back staring up at me, stunned.
I smiled. I’d done it. I’d saved us.

Then he raised the gun again.

Crap.

My outrage was spent. There was nothing I
could do. Ethel had given me an opening and I’d failed.

He shook his head and laughed.

All I could do was raise my hands and blink
back tears.

Allen looked at me, then Ethel and finally
Kiska. His face hardened and his hands fisted again. I couldn’t
read what was going on in his mind and I didn’t think I wanted to.
I was done playing with killers. Done with everything it
seemed.

There was movement beside me, so quick I
missed everything except the rise of Allen’s foot and the sound of
Larry’s revolver skittering across the parking lot.

“Get the gun!” Ethel yelled, rolling to her
knees.

I scrambled behind Allen and over Larry’s
legs. Then I ran as fast as I could to the gun.

With it held tight in my shaking hands, I
turned back to the now wrestling men.

Sirens sounded and lights flashed. Police
cars and Peter’s truck pulled into the lot. He jumped out of his
truck.

My knees bent and I lowered myself to the
ground.

The Calvary had arrived again, and this time,
they were on my side.

o0o

Monday morning, I dragged myself into work,
mainly to find out what had happened since Peter cuffed Allen and
Larry and hauled them off to jail.

Kiska and I entered to a full house.

Ethel and her friends occupied the loveseat
and various chairs. Betty and Phyllis stood nearby, and as I walked
past my office, Rhonda popped out the open door.