Ruff Way to Go (16 page)

As I’d
expected, John eventually brought up the subject of the Randon family and the
puppies. “I wonder why Cassandra was killed at your neighbor’s house,” he said.
“That strikes me as strange.”

“Me, too.” I
wanted to volunteer as little as possible to gauge how anxious he seemed to be
to pump
me
for information.

He held my
gaze as if waiting for me to go on, then said, “Your mom isn’t superstitious,
is she? She isn’t worried about the puppies being cursed or something, is she?”

“Of course
not. But we’ll both feel a lot better once the killer is behind bars.”

“Just assure
her that there’s no way anyone from the animal shelter will give out any info
regarding Suds and puppies’ new whereabouts. So you’ll be perfectly safe from
him.”

“I’ll tell
her that.”

He studied
my face, then asked, “Did you know Cassandra very well?”

“No, just to
say hello to.”

“You didn’t
know who she hung out with? That sort of thing?”

“No. Why?”

“Just
curious. This is the first time I’ve ever met someone who wound up being
murdered. Must make you feel real... tense. Living so close to where it
happened.”

He flashed
me what might have been intended as a casual smile, which I didn’t return. Once
again, I was getting strange vibrations from John. Now all I wanted to do was
leave. He finished the last swig from his glass, then asked if we should get a
refill. I declined and we left.

It was later
than I’d thought. By the time we arrived at home, the porch light was on but
the house lights were off.

We shared
that miserable awkward pause as John walked me up to the porch. “This was fun,”
he said. “We’ll have to do this again soon. Can I call you again?”

I studied
his handsome features and assured myself that I’d merely been hypersensitive;
he hadn’t said anything at all to justify my suspicions. “That’d be nice.”

“Do you need
me to come in and check on the dogs or anything?”

That was the
exit line I needed. “No, I’m sure they’re fine. Thanks, though. I’ll give you a
call in another day or two to let you know how they’re doing.” I let myself
into the house and gave John a goodbye wave instead of a kiss.

Doppler was
in his carrier, which doubles as his bed, but I had to shush Shogun—loose
in the kitchen—and Suds, who’d run upstairs from the basement to bark at
me through the front door. This, in turn, got Pavlov and Sage barking. If
Mom had
managed to sleep through my opening the door, she was certainly wide awake now.

Once they’d
finally quieted down and I’d closed Suds and pups downstairs, I tiptoed to Mom’s
bedroom and peeked in, glad to see that she appeared to be asleep, after all. I
settled down on the living room couch, stroking Pavlov’s head while Sage lay
down at the opposite end of the couch. Too wound up to go to bed myself, I
flipped on the TV, keeping the volume low.

I was only
half paying attention to a late-night talk show when I heard a noise in the
kitchen. It sounded like the click of metal against glass. This was where
Doppler’s kennel happened to be, so he immediately started growling.

Beside me,
Pavlov snapped to alert. I hit the mute button on the television.

There it was
again. A metallic sound, coming from the direction of the kitchen.

My pulse
started to race. I assured myself that it was probably nothing. A tree branch
scraping against the window, perhaps.

Sage, who
hadn’t been trained not to bark, let out some loud woofs and raced off in the
direction of the sound. Shogun began yipping at the top of his lungs and
galloped after Sage. Meanwhile, Pavlov stood up and looked at me.

There was
another noise, too metallic and deliberate-sounding to be a tree branch. A
neighbor recently murdered, now someone was outside our house?
Shit!

“Pavlov,
guard!”

She
instantly raced out of the room, giving her guard dog barks as she went to join
Sage and Shogun.

Doppler was
whining, while I, heart pounding, crept around the corner into the kitchen. It
was ludicrous to expect my cocker spaniel to be quiet in his kennel, and I didn’t
want to take the time to lock him in now. “Doppler, okay.” My command put him
in charge of his own behavior, and he immediately rushed out his unlocked
kennel door to join the other two.

Leaving the
lights off, I scanned the room. The dogs were barking at the window. The moment
they saw me, they rushed to the door to be let out.

Should I
release them? What if this was just a raccoon? Mom had had more than a little
trouble with raccoons over the last several years.

I stared at
the window, trying to decide why something about it struck me as wrong. I
realized with a start that the screen was now absent.

Mere inches
from mine, a man’s face popped into view from outside the kitchen window, then
dropped back down.

Startled out
of my wits, I jumped and let out a little scream. My heart thumped so hard that
I could barely breathe. The man’s face had been dimly lit and he’d ducked down
so quickly that I barely caught sight of his features, except to see that he
was bald.

The dogs
were barking at the back door, desperate to get out and at the man, Shogun
adding his high-pitched yip to my dogs’ more intimidating barks. Their noise
had roused Suds as well, who’d run up the basement stairs, her loud woofs
audible through the door. She, at least, was closed off in the basement, and I
decided to leave her there with her puppies.

Despite his
vociferous protestations, I swept Shogun up into my arms and slid open the back
door. Doppler, too, would only get in the big dogs’ way, but there was no time
to grab him.

Baying, the
dogs raced around the corner. Led by Pavlov who, though normally gentle, was a
formidable watchdog, the dogs would put fear into any trespasser’s heart.

What if this
was the killer? And what if he was armed?

Standing to
one side of the glass door, I listened fearfully for a gunshot. I’d never be
able to stop myself from rushing out there to protect my dogs if the man
actually were to open fire on them.

My hand was
frozen on the handle of the sliding glass door, my other arm clutching Shogun
tightly against me.

I heard the
soft footfalls of my mother as she padded barefoot into the kitchen. Mom was
pale, her braids undone so that her long brown hair hung loose around her
shoulders. “Allie,” she said in a half whisper, “what’s going on?”

Outside,
from the direction of the window over the sink, a male voice cried, “Hey! Get
away from me! Get back!”

I was too
scared about the possibility of the dogs getting hurt to pay attention to my
mother. Still carrying Shogun, I raced back to the window over the sink and
caught sight of a man running awkwardly toward the front gate. He was thrashing
wildly at the air with some object.

“Oh, God,” I
said in a half whisper. “Please, don’t let that be a knife.”

“Who’s out
there?” Mom asked, now at my side.

Fortunately,
the dogs were keeping a few feet back from the man, pursuing him and barking in
wild excitement, but not preventing his progress as he made his way toward the
gate in the front.

“I don’t
know. Some man. He was at the window just a moment ago.”

The man
slammed the gate shut. “Thank God. They chased him off. But maybe we should
call nine-one-one anyway.”

Mom rushed
to the phone. “I’ll call.”

Just as she
picked up the handset, someone started pounding on the door.

We exchanged
glances, utterly confused. “Hold off on your call. I’ll see who it is.” I
wondered if the trespasser could have run from the yard, only to knock on the
front door. That was beyond bizarre, but the timing left few other
possibilities.

Shogun was
still agitated and struggling to get free. I didn’t want to risk his darting
out the door, and kept a tight grip on him as I looked out the peephole. Betsy
Haywood was knocking on the door. She wore her standard housecoat and the scowl
that made the deep lines on her face look all the harsher.

“It’s Mrs.
Haywood,” I told my mom, who was waiting in the kitchen entranceway, receiver
in her hand, for word regarding who’d been knocking. “Maybe she knows what’s
going on.” Mom dropped the phone back into its cradle. I released Shogun and
swung open the door, with Shogun keeping up a rat-a-tat bark at Betsy Haywood,
who ignored him completely.

Betsy
pointed a bony finger in my face. “What the hell did you think you were doing?
You had no right!”

“What are
you talking about?”

“Siccing
your dogs on my poor Harvey, that’s what! He just got confused. I was on my way
over here to fetch him and saw him running for his very life! If you’d given me
just one more lousy minute, I’d have had him back home with me.”

“You’re
yelling at me because I sent the dogs into my own
fenced
backyard? Give
me a break! Someone was trying to pry open our kitchen window. I let the dogs
out into the yard to protect us. If that was your husband, he’s the one who
should be explaining himself to
us.”

“Why, you
little ingrate! You young people have got no respect for your elders!”

“Not when
they’re committing criminal offenses, I sure don’t!”

Putting a
hand on my shoulder to calm me, Mom said in placating tones, “Betsy, there’s no
need to get upset at my daughter. It sounded as though someone were trying to
break into our house.”

“It was just
Harvey. He...sleepwalks.”

“He pries
people’s windows open in his sleep?” I asked incredulously.

She
continued as if she hadn’t heard, “But you didn’t have to go and have those
monster dogs of yours try n’ eat him alive!”

“Betsy?”
came a raspy voice from behind her. Harvey appeared on the porch next to his
wife, which caused Shogun to turn up his relentless high-pitched bark by
another notch or two. Harvey’s face was damp with perspiration and his cheeks
were flushed. I noticed immediately that he was fully dressed, including shoes.
If he was sleepwalking, he had to have been a sleep “dresser” as well, or have
fallen asleep fully clothed. “What are you doing over here at this hour?”

Betsy didn’t
answer. Harvey turned his gaze on me and shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry to
tell you this, Marilyn, but you’ve simply got to control those kids of yours!”

“Harvey!
This is Allida.” Betsy’s voice was rife with exasperation and her cheeks
colored. “Marilyn is standing right behind her.”

Though Betsy
pointed at my mother, Harvey continued speaking to me. “If you can’t control
that son of yours, we’re going to have to call the police. He put Super Glue
all over my daughter’s shoes. Did he tell you that? Did he?”

My mother
looked at me in confusion, which I could only mirror. “I’m sorry about my son’s
behavior,” my mother said kindly to Mrs. Haywood. “I’ll make sure he never does
it again.”

“See? That’s
all we needed to do, Betsy! I told you. Even the Babcocks can be reasonable if
you try to communicate with them.”

Betsy turned
in a huff and said under her breath, “Keep your mouth shut, Harvey! They’ll have
you thrown in the loony bin, if you don’t watch it. Which is where you deserve
to be.”

We shut the
door behind them, the Haywoods hissing at each other, but walking arm in arm
back to their home. I turned and looked at Mom, who was staring after our neighbors
with a grim expression.

His
all-around bizarre behavior and his having mistaken me for my mother left me
feeling slightly sick to my stomach. I retrieved the dogs and let Suds come
upstairs. She’d been barking periodically throughout our dealings with the
Haywoods. Once the dogs had quieted, I asked my mother, still standing in the
living room, “Do you think Harvey could have Alzheimer’s?”

“Maybe so,
though that would have to be in addition to the alcohol. Harvey drank himself
out of that store of his.”

“He did?”
Now that I thought about it, the concept of his having been a heavy drinker
didn’t surprise me in the least. “I always found it odd that he, of all people,
ran a hobby shop. He didn’t seem to have any hobbies of his own, plus he hates
people, especially children.”

“It is
ironic.”

“So you
think he might just have been drinking too much tonight?”

“Maybe.”

“Has he ever
done anything like this before?”

“Not for
years.” Mom sank into the couch, and I leaned back against the arm of the
upholstered chair near her. “When you and your brother were just young kids,
you slept through a couple of incidents ...times when he’d wander over here. I’d
see him pacing around in the backyard. Stumbling around was more like it,
really. It would upset the dogs, of course, and scare the dickens out of me.
That was before the days of nine-one-one, but I told Andy Millay about it. He
talked to Harvey on my behalf, and Harvey’s nocturnal wanderings stopped.”