"Right there, on the deck." I pointed at the spot where I"d left him. I noticed the dark stain on the wood too late.
Leaving her walker behind, Mrs. Wahlen hobbled outside and bent down. She poked at the spot with an arthritic finger. "Is that ... blood?"
"I don"t know." My heart started thumping loudly in my ears.
Mrs. Wahlen looked at the bat, which was lying next to the stain. "Did someone hurt my Skippy?"
"No."
"Where is he?" she snapped.
"I didn"t hurt him." At her glare, I amended my answer. "Well, maybe I hurt him a little. I didn"t know he was a dog."
Her face turned the shade of a tomato. "How could you not know that? The ears? The tail?"
"It was dark outside. I didn"t see a collar or leash. I thought he was a wild animal." I pulled up my pant leg. "He bit me."
"Of course he bit you," Mrs. Wahlen scoffed. "You were hurting him."
"No, he bit me first. Then I ... sort of ... accidentally ... erm ..."
"My Skippy wouldn"t attack anyone unprovoked. Now, where is he? Did you take him to a vet?"
"Um, well. I don"t know where he is. When I came inside to find a box or something to put him in-so I could take him to a vet, of course-another animal, a bigger one, grabbed him ..."
The woman"s eyes widened. Her tomato-red face went instantly white. Afraid she was about to pa.s.s out, I grabbed her arm, but she yanked it away. "Don"t touch me, you murderer!" Mrs. Wahlen stomped-as hard as a hundred-year-old woman could-back inside, reclaimed her walker, and headed out the front door. Once she was safely down the porch steps, she turned and shook an arthritic finger at me. "You"ll be hearing from my lawyer."
Nifty. I was being sued. For killing a dog that had attacked me. With any luck, the attorney would tell her to drop it and that would be the end of that. But still, even if there was no lawsuit, my conscience was going to nag me for years about this one. I donate money to the Humane Society every year. Animal cruelty is my thing. My cause.
"I"ll look for his call then," I said, thinking I might offer to pay a settlement if I was contacted by a lawyer. I didn"t have a lot of money in the bank, and I didn"t have a full-time job, but I had sold my apartment for a tidy profit. I would sleep better at night if I donated some of that cash to Mrs. Wahlen"s pet replacement fund. "One question, though. Was Skippy up-to-date on all his shots?"
The woman leered at me then stormed away.
"I"ll take that as a no?"
Someone was screaming. Outside. The sound was shrill. Eardrum-splitting. I thought someone might be dying. I pictured severed limbs, spurting blood. So, of course, I went racing outside to see.
It wasn"t what I imagined.
There were no severed limbs. No spurting blood. Just two little people-imagine Thing One and Thing Two from The Cat in the Hat, sans the red suits-racing up and down the front sidewalk, screeching at the top of their lungs like stuck pigs. Oh, and they were smiling. It would seem they were making that noise for the h.e.l.l of it.
Immediately, I unchecked the Have Kids box on my mental Ultimate Things to Do list. With my luck, my kids would possess supersized lungs like these two lovely angels. And the energy of a pack of hyenas.
As I was about to go back inside, a serene-looking Samantha strolled onto her porch. Seeing me, she smiled and waved.
Before I could ask her whom the little monsters belonged to-thank G.o.d, that could"ve been a bad thing-they started trotting toward her, yelling, "Mama!"
Poor woman.
As I watched them bounce around her like jumping beans, knocking flowerpots over and trampling the petunias, I concluded she was either an angel or on Valium. There could be no other explanation for how she maintained her cool while chaos erupted all around her.
I returned her wave when she glanced my way, and in she went, following on the heels of Things One and Two. The blissful silence returned.
There wasn"t anything interesting to watch now, so back in I went. I headed down to my girl-cave and got to work. Roughly an hour later, I heard the doorbell. Being a girl who had lived in the city for years, I was starting to have some serious people-withdrawal. All this quiet, the solitude, the peace, it was getting to me.
I opened the door. Samantha. Smiling. As usual, she was wearing pristine vintage clothing-Chanel today-and her hair and makeup were flawless. If I was going to start spending a lot of time with this woman-which was still very much in question-I was going to have to do better than sloppy sweats and a ponytail. After all, I was a clothing designer. "h.e.l.lo, are you busy?"
"Nope. Come in." I ushered her inside, to the kitchen. "Something to drink?"
"No thanks." She settled on a bar stool and watched as I poured myself a diet cola. She waved away a second offer at a gla.s.s.
I sat beside her. "Your children are very ... energetic. Very cute." I wondered where they were now.
"Thank you. They"re napping."
"Ah." I sipped my cola, wondering if Samantha had come over for some adult time or if she wanted to talk about something specific.
"Have you had any luck with your little investigation?" she asked.
Aha, so there was an ulterior motive. "I have. I learned Jon has an airtight alibi. But that"s as far as I"ve gotten. I don"t even know what sort of evidence was found when the police arrived."
"I do," she said. "I came to return Mich.e.l.le"s Cuisinart. She"d loaned it to me a few days before. I was the one who found her."
Hadn"t Jon said he was the one who discovered her? Had he lied? Or forgotten?
"Okay, so tell me. What did you see? Blood? Signs of a struggle?"
"No, none of those." Samantha spun the swiveling stool around, so her back was facing the counter. "She was right there, lying on the floor, a wire dog cable hanging around her neck."
"And ... ?" When Samantha didn"t add any more details, I asked, looking up, at the ceiling, wondering how the former Mrs. Stewart had hung herself. "Is that all?"
"Yes, that"s all."
"Am I missing something? A broken window? Signs of a struggle?"
"No. There was none of that."
"Then what makes you think it wasn"t suicide?"
"First, the cable wasn"t attached to anything. It was just looped around her neck. Did she strangle herself by holding it there? Can you do that? Second, can you think of anyone who has killed herself in the middle of her kitchen? It"s such an odd place to pick. Could you imagine her strolling around her house, that cable knotted around her neck, and her stopping right there saying, "I think I"ll die right here," and pulling the chain? And third, Mich.e.l.le would never do anything so ... dirty ... in her kitchen. She was a germ-aphobe, especially when it came to Joshua. He"d been sick a lot that summer. She was bleaching and Lysoling everything. If she ever thought to kill herself, she"d do it someplace safe, somewhere easy to clean, like her bathroom. And I told the detective that."
"Strangled?" I stared at the floor, almost able to picture Mich.e.l.le Stewart lying there, her sightless eyes staring back at me. I shivered.
"Yes." Samantha spun back around. "Wouldn"t you think that the instant she pa.s.sed out, the cable would loosen and she"d start breathing again?"
"I would." My throat was dry. I gulped half my gla.s.s of cola.
"But you said Jon has an alibi?"
"He does." I emptied the gla.s.s. "Why do you suspect him?"
"Well, everyone knows that the spouse is usually the killer. Plus, I"d heard them arguing that week. More than once."
"That doesn"t necessarily mean anything. Married people fight," I pointed out. "It doesn"t always lead to someone dying."
"True." She crossed her arms over her chest. "But I"ve watched enough episodes of CSI to know that a strangling is a more intimate way of killing someone. The killer has to get close to the victim, within reach."
"Stands to reason."
"Which is generally why they"re someone the victim knows." Little did Samantha realize, that statement put her, and her friends, on my short list of suspects.
"It was in her house. The kitchen. There was no sign of a break-in," Samantha continued. "Yet another reason to believe it was someone she knew well. Like Jon."
"So tell me, who else would Mich.e.l.le let into the house?"
"Besides her husband? And me, of course ..." Samantha"s eyes widened. "You don"t think ... Do the police suspect me?"
I shrugged, doing my best to hide the truth. "I wouldn"t know."
"But you said you talked to the detective."
"I didn"t tell you that. How did you know?"
She blanched. "Lindsay told me. Was she lying?"
"Hmmm. I see good news travels fast around here," I said to n.o.body in particular. "I did talk to the detective. But he wouldn"t even tell me as much as you did."
Samantha shifted in her seat, checked her watch. "Oh darn. I need to get back. Need to take the bread out of the oven." She slid from the stool. "Do you believe what the detective said about Jon?"
"I do. It sounded like there was absolutely no question of his innocence."
"Well, I guess that"s good news for you? I imagine you weren"t too thrilled to learn you"d just moved in with a suspected murderer."
"I imagine n.o.body would be thrilled to learn that."
"True." Samantha strolled to the front door, seeming to be in no hurry to get to her baking bread. "I guess I must believe it, too, then."
"I think you"ll believe whatever you want," I said as she stepped outside. As soon as I closed the door, I went down to the girl-cave to take some notes. What Samantha said made a lot of sense. At least, the part about the untied cable and the notion that Mich.e.l.le might have known her killer.
At this point, I was ninety-nine percent sure Mich.e.l.le Stewart had been murdered. I made a list of suspects. It was short. Very short. And I had serious doubts about all of the people on it. There was Jon, whom I couldn"t remove yet because of that inconsistency in his story versus Samantha"s. But I was pretty sure it wasn"t him. Samantha was on there, too. And Lindsay. Erica was the last name on the list. Because Lindsay, Erica, and Samantha were pushing me so hard to investigate, I was having a difficult time believing any of them were the killer. Jon had an alibi.
That left ... who else?
I needed to find out who else might have been close enough to Mich.e.l.le to be invited inside the house. I was missing something. Something big. The puzzle pieces just weren"t fitting. Who would kill Mich.e.l.le Stewart? And why?
The more I learned, the more I needed to know.
CHAPTER 7.
There was a dead cat on the front porch. Make that, a mangled dead cat. Creepy eyes wide open. Mouth agape in an eternal hiss, teeth bared. It was dead for sure. I"d nudged it with a toe. It was stiff.
I slammed the door and locked it.
Jon, why aren"t you home yet?
I checked the clock. It was after midnight. I"d been so sure the sound I"d heard outside was him, I hadn"t thought twice about throwing the door open to greet him. But instead of getting a nice, warm hug, I"d received the shock of the night.
This whole dead animal thing was getting much too common.
Inching open the door, I checked to see if it was still there.
Yep.
d.a.m.n.
I went to the girl-cave and retrieved the shoe box that had originally been intended for Skippy. Then I collected a pair of thick rubber gloves and a set of salad tongs. There was no way in h.e.l.l I was touching that ... thing. Out I went, back onto the porch, yellow gloves gleaming, metal tongs reflecting the overhead porch light. I gingerly grabbed a leg with the tongs, lifted. The foot slipped loose, and the animal hit the porch with a stomach-turning smack. Swallowing bile, I made a second attempt, this time grabbing the base of the tail.
Success. I slammed the box top on and, leaving my tool on the porch, hurried the makeshift coffin into the attached garage, trying hard not to inhale through my nose. As disgusting as the animal had looked, I was sure it smelled even worse. Into a black trash bag it went. And the bag-tied, knotted, triple-knotted-went into a trash can. Lid on. Hopefully the garage wouldn"t stink like dead cat by tomorrow.
That unpleasant task completed, I spun around.
"Gak!" I screamed as I smacked right into a man"s wide chest. I jerked my head back and let out an audible exhale. "OhmyG.o.d, you scared me. I didn"t hear you."
Jon was holding the tongs. He gave my rubber-covered hands a pointed look. "What are you doing?"
"Um." I s.n.a.t.c.hed the tongs out of his hand and threw them into the nearest garbage can. "We can"t use those anymore. They"re dirty."
"We can wash them."
A very reasonable suggestion. Unfortunately, in this case, it wouldn"t work. Those tongs could be sterilized, sanitized, boiled in bleach, and I wasn"t going to touch them. "Sure. But they have dead cat germs on them."
His eyebrows scrunched together. "Huh?"
"There was a dead cat on our porch. I didn"t want to touch it."
"I see. Where"d you put the cat?"
I pointed at the can. "It"s boxed, bagged, and tied." I snapped off the rubber gloves and they joined the tongs. "It"s not going anywhere."
"Hmmm. I guess I"ll dispose of it tomorrow." He looped an arm around my waist, leading me back into the house. "Anything else exciting happen today?"
"Well, let"s see," I said, walking arm-in-arm with Jon up the stairs. "This morning, Lindsay forced me to take her ex-boyfriend"s stuff because she"s mad at him. And Mrs. Wahlen is suing me for killing her dog, Skippy. By the way, I"m still unclear whether I need to go get a rabies shot since she wouldn"t tell me if Skippy was up-to-date on his shots. Oh, and Skippy was eaten by some big animal last night. At least, I think he was. I saw something. Some eyes. Big, glowing eyes. And then Samantha came over to talk about ... to visit. And Josh had a half day at school. He took off with his friends for a few hours then came home and went straight to his room. Didn"t say a word to me. And finally, well, I already told you about the dead cat."