Ruff Way to Go (4 page)

Through the
drumming of the rain, a pair of sirens wailed and drew louder. I told myself
that it didn’t matter that the paw prints were gone. The police wouldn’t need
this evidence. For all I knew, Edith had become so enraged at something
Cassandra had said, she had killed her and run off with Shogun. Or one of the
puppies could have been here with Cassandra, then raced off in a panic and was
now back next door with the others.

Except...where
were
the puppies? Inside the Randons’ house? They weren’t in the yard
when I arrived at Edith’s. So, if a puppy had been here with Cassandra, how
could he have gotten back inside with the others? Whoever let the puppy in
would have to have noticed either his absence or his bloody paws.

In the
rapidly darkening conditions, someone wearing a policeman’s uniform under a
black rain poncho came through the gate. Maybe this was the local sergeant. Mom
knew him fairly well, on a personal level. It wasn’t as though we had a lot of
crime in Berthoud. The town was all of five or six blocks in either direction.

“You Allida
Babcock?” the man called over the sound of the pounding rain as he approached.
His right arm was bent at the elbow, as if he were set to pull his gun on me if
I gave the wrong answer.

“Yes.” I
stood frozen in place and found myself staring at his cap, visible beneath the
poncho. He had a clear plastic cover on it that resembled the cheap shower caps
from motel room giveaways. “Cassandra Randon lives next door. I’m worried about
her five-year-old daughter. I also don’t know where the owner of this house is.”

“Come with
me, ma’am. You need to get out of the rain.” He was using condescending tones,
thinking I was too stupid to come in out of the rain on my own. It was just
that I didn’t want to leave her out here in the rain, I wanted to explain, but
suddenly couldn’t find the words.

I looked at
him in confusion, wondering why I should come back that way, around the outside
of the house, instead of inside. “But...” I waggled my thumb in the direction
of Edith’s house.

“We need to
secure the scene, miss. Let’s go to my car. You can get into some warm clothes
and give your statement at my office.”

He ushered
me back out through the gate. There were two white-with-blue-markings Colorado
police cruisers out front, which likely comprised the entire department of our
little bedroom community. Edith’s front door was now wide open, her note to me
no longer visible. Other officers must have been inside, “securing the scene.”

I yearned
for the safety and familiarity of my own home. I was shivering with the cold
rain, though its intensity was starting to abate. “Can’t we just go to my
house? I can give you my statement mere and make sure my dogs and my mom are
okay.”

Before the
officer could answer, Edith Cunningham drove up in her black Lexus. She tried
to pull into her driveway, which was blocked by one of the officers’ cruisers.

She parked
her vehicle at a cockeyed angle and got out as if propelled. “What’s going on?”
she cried to no one in particular, her face pale and her eyes wide. “This is my
house! What’s going on?” She spotted me then and ran toward me, a second
officer stepping forward to intervene.

“Ma’am,
there’s been an incident at your home,” the officer said solemnly.

“What do you
mean, ‘an incident’?” She stepped sideways to speak to me over his shoulder. “Allida.
Is it Shogun? Has something happened to him?”

“No. I
thought he was with you.”

“He isn’t.
Did somebody kidnap him? Is that why the police are here?”

I didn’t
know how to answer that, and my head was filled with my own questions. Could
someone have been so intent on stealing the dog that they killed Cassandra when
she happened onto the scene?

I noticed
then that Edith hadn’t changed clothes since I’d last seen her. Nobody would
have worn white pants while gardening. So who had worn the gardening gloves in
Edith’s kitchen?

Frustrated
with not getting an answer from me, Edith focused again on the officer. “You
need to ask Cassandra Randon, next door, if she saw Shogun. She called me at
the store an hour or two ago and asked if she could borrow some gardening
supplies. She has a copy of my house keys. I told her to help herself. Maybe
she took Shogun home with her.”

At Edith’s
mention of Cassandra, it now hit me that Cassandra had changed into jeans and a
sweatshirt. Earlier she’d been wearing a skirt and blouse.

“I’m afraid
Ms. Randon had an accident, ma’am,” the officer said.

“Accident?”

More worried
about the welfare of Cassandra’s daughter than anything else, I asked Edith, “Do
you know where Melanie is?”

“No. I’ve
been away at my shop. She must be home. With her dad. Someplace.” She was
totally flustered and gesturing wildly as she spoke. Her face was starting to
turn as red as her hair. “I don’t understand anything you people are telling
me! What kind of an accident are you talking about? Why aren’t you letting me
into my own house?”

The officer
put a hand on her elbow and tried to lead her toward his cruiser. “Come with
me, ma’am, and I’ll—”

She whipped
her arm free and her eyes flew wide. “Trevor! That bastard! I’ll bet he stole
my dog,” she muttered incongruously.

The officer
with me gestured at the second officer, who ushered Edith back into the
passenger seat of her own car. He sat behind the wheel and talked with her.
Edith started crying almost immediately and tried to use a cellular phone,
which the officer pulled from her grasp.

Yet another
officer was on the front porch of the ranch style brick home on the other side
of Edith’s. This housed a couple in their late fifties or early sixties who
were the only remaining people from my childhood in the neighborhood. Harvey
and Betsy Haywood. They had always been so grumpy toward me and my family that
I’d called them Mr. and Mrs. Hatesdogs. Not exactly the crudest of names, but
it had struck me as such at age six. Their two daughters had been teenagers
then. My mom had hired the eldest as a babysitter, and the four of us minors had
a mutual lack-of-admiration society going. The Haywoods’ daughters should be in
their early forties now. I wondered if we’d all still dislike one another.

Harvey and
Betsy had stepped out onto the sheltered area of their porch to speak to the officer.
Harvey, wearing the old man uniform of knee-length shorts, black socks, and a
sleeveless undershirt, rocked on his heels. Betsy was wearing what looked to be
the same housecoat she’d worn virtually
every day twenty years earlier. In a
gesture that seemed uncharacteristic of the garrulous woman I remembered, she
brought her hands to her lips as the officer spoke.

Wait a
minute!
They lived right next to Edith’s property, on the opposite side
of the Cunninghams’.
Why hadn’t they heard me calling for help?

My mother
approached in her white and blue King Cab pickup truck. No one could ever
mistake us for anything other than mother and daughter, though at five-six she’s
considerably taller than I am. She often wore her long brown hair—which
she’d only recently begun to dye—in a braid. I watched her expression
change in an instant from curiosity to concern to fear as she spotted me with
the officers. Just as her face registered panic, she threw open the car door
and was out of her car running toward me.

“Allida! Are
you all right?”

“I’m fine,”
I said as calmly as I could, though the sight of my mother when I was already
this traumatized made me have to battle tears. “It’s Cassandra Randon. She was
killed.”

“Oh, my God.
Where’s Melanie?”

“Nobody
seems to know.”

The officer
beside me cleared his throat and stepped between us. “Ma’am? Why don’t you get
some dry clothes for your daughter? She has to come with us.”

Mom gasped
and looked at me.

“I have to
go make a statement, Mom. I found Cassandra when I went over to see Edith
Cunningham.”

The rain was
starting to pick up again, but Mom turned and stood glaring at the policeman as
if she intended to pick a fight on my behalf. Never one to back away from a
confrontation, Mom would not have surprised me if she clobbered him.

Just then, a
middle-aged man in uniform left Edith’s house, walking with a confidence in his
step that gave off the aura of authority. “Andy,” Mom called to him. She
gestured at me. “This is my daughter.”

“I know,
Marilyn. But right now she’s also the primary witness in a suspicious death. ‘Fraid
we’ve got to take her in for questioning.”

“Then I’m
coming with you.”

***

“Did your
mom see you earlier this afternoon? Or was anyone with you at your office?”
Sergeant Millay asked me. We were seated in a tiny room within the small brick
building in downtown Berthoud that housed the police department. The walls were
plain white, a fluorescent ceiling fixture the only light source, a table and
four chairs the only furnishings. My mother, I knew, was seated on the bench
just outside this room, when she wasn’t pacing in front of the door and its
little window.

This line of
questioning instantly got my heart going. I tried to reassure myself that,
because I’d found the body, I had to account for my whereabouts during Cassandra’s
death. But the concept of the police acting as though I were a possible suspect
in a murder case frightened me to the bone.

“Yes, there
was my client, as I already described, followed by Trevor Cunningham, Edith’s...”—I
hesitated at adding the word “estranged,” knowing the police would already
suspect him and not wanting to make it obvious that I did as well—“husband.
He left at about three-thirty.”

“How long
did it take you to drive between your office and the house?”

“Forty
minutes.”

I could see
by his expression that he was doing the mental calculations.

“Did you see
or speak to anyone else in between those times?”

“No.”

“And you say
you went to the Cunninghams’ residence to interview Mrs. Cunningham’s dog?”

I opened my
mouth to make a snide remark about how difficult it was for dogs to fill out my
questionnaire, but decided that was the wrong tack. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Could these
paw prints you say you saw have been from a cat?”

“No, there
are very noticeable differences between the two types of prints. A dog’s digit
pads are much bigger than a cat’s. Plus cats have retractable claws, yet I
remember seeing some toenail prints.”

“And you
also don’t think the prints were from Shogun?”

“Right,
although I can’t say for sure. With a silky terrier, we’re talking about a very
small dog. My impression, though, was that the paw prints were left by a
somewhat larger dog.”

Sergeant
Millay held my gaze with his hooded eyes for a long moment, as if appraising my
credibility. He finally looked down at his notes. “Okay. You last spoke to
Cassandra Randon at...what time did you say?”

“Roughly
quarter after twelve, when I left her place and went home.”

“And you
found her body at what time?”

“Five-thirty.
I got to Edith’s house right on time for my appointment.” I didn’t know why he
was asking me about the times again; Edith had to have spoken to Cassandra
hours after I had. Why wasn’t he asking
her
about the times?

“Do you have
a lot of stray dogs in the neighborhood? Or folks that don’t keep their dogs on
a leash or in their yards?”

“Not that I’ve
noticed, but I’m not really familiar with the neighborhood anymore. I’ve been
living in a different state for about a dozen years, and I’ve only been living
in my mom’s house for a couple of weeks now. You’d have to talk to my mother.”

“Sounds as
though we got us a stray dog
now,
though, with Mrs. Cunningham’s dog
being missing.”

“It looks
that way, yet if that’s the case, it really surprises me. This happened in
Shogun’s yard, his territory, which dogs typically try to defend from
intruders. It would be far more typical for Shogun to stay and bark
incessantly. He wouldn’t have understood what was going on with Cassandra’s
struggle, but it would have upset him. For Shogun to run away and leave his
territory unprotected, he’d almost
have
to have been chased off. And in
that case, typical canine behavior would have been for him to not go far, then
return
after the intruder had left the property and start barking...at
Cassandra’s body.”

“I see,” he
answered, though I got the distinct impression that he was mentally lumping me
into the same category as psychics and tarot card readers.

“You’re not
a dog owner, are you, Sergeant?”

“Me? No. Got
a couple of cats, though.”

“Cats are
independent, territorial animals. Dogs are pack animals. Very different
personalities. Dogs see no reason to ever separate from the pack, and they
consider their owners their pack. As puppies or young dogs, they like to go out
and explore. But by the time
most
dogs are Shogun’s age, they’ve lost their
wanderlust. They tend to consider their role to be to guard the pack’s
territory while they wait for their pack to return, no matter what happens in
the interim.”