Ruff Way to Go (5 page)

He gave me a
smile that hinted, at best, of grudging tolerance of my having voiced my opinion,
then consulted his notes. “The gate on the west side of the house was open, you
say. Did it strike you as unusual for Mrs. Cunningham to have left a gate open
like that?”

“That’s
unusual for any attentive dog owner. It rather defeats the purpose of having a
fence.”
Uh oh.
I was losing patience and getting snippy in spite of
myself. The last thing on my agenda was to make enemies in law enforcement “It’s
possible that Edith knew the dog would stick right beside her while she was in
the yard and so never paid attention to the gate, but it’s more likely that
whoever killed Cassandra left the gate open.”

Sergeant
Millay rested his elbows on the small rectangular table between us and drew his
face closer to mine. “Yet you just got through saying how Shogun wouldn’t have
run off anyway.”

“True, but
that’s not to say he wouldn’t ever run into the street, for example.”

“Thing is,
Officer Sweitzer said the gate was closed when he arrived. You must’ve closed
the gate behind you when you came into the yard. Why?”

My pulse
started to race at Sergeant Millay’s insinuation that he considered my closing
Edith’s gate suspicious. I already regretted my action. At the very least, I’d
probably overlaid any fingerprints on the gate latch with my own.

“It was
just...force of habit. I’d read the note that Edith left, telling me she and
the dog were in the back, and since I was there to observe the dog, it was only
natural for me to have shut the gate so the dog wouldn’t run off in the
process.”

“That’s
another thing.” He paused and slowly read over his notes, dropping his chin in
the process. I could see a bald spot on the top of his head. “You said before
that you left the note exactly where it was, in plain sight on the front door.
Didn’t as much as touch it.”

“That’s
right.”

He stared at
me, his expression blank. “When we arrived at the Cunningham residence, Miss
Babcock, there was no note.”

This was a
shock. “There wasn’t?” I had to stop myself from demanding whether or not he
was sure about this. “It must have ...blown off the door in a wind gust,” I
said, growing tense and detecting a desperate tone creeping into my voice.

“I
considered that possibility myself, Miss Babcock.” The gray irises beneath the
hooded eyes seemed to be looking straight through me.

He leaned
even closer, and I could smell onions on his breath. “So I called Officer
Sweitzer a couple minutes ago and had him ask Mrs. Cunningham. She says she
never wrote you a note.”

I gave
myself a moment for Sergeant Millay’s chilling words to set in, my mind reeling
at the incomprehensibility of this. The thought that the sergeant didn’t
believe me, might even suspect me of being the murderer, put me into a panic.

What could
this mean? Could Edith have killed Cassandra, then, by lying about the note,
sought to set me up somehow? No, because she arrived after the police did, so
she couldn’t have retrieved the note.

“But Edith
had
to have written the note. Unless...unless whoever killed her wrote that
note to lure me into the backyard, then took it down after I read it. Maybe to
keep you from being able to analyze the handwriting or get fingerprints off of
the notepaper.”

Sergeant
Millay said nothing, his face as motionless as the rest of him as he sat and
watched me. I, however, seemed incapable of controlling my nervous gestures as
I combed the fingers of both hands through my short hair, only succeeding in
making it stand on end with static electricity.

“Wait,’’ I said,
realizing that I might have made an incorrect assumption about the note. I
couldn’t remember the exact wording and tried to picture the note in my mind’s
eye. “The note wasn’t signed and wasn’t addressed specifically to me.” My
thoughts raced ahead of my words. The note might never have been intended for
me. Trevor could well have full access to his former residence. He might have
called Cassandra and asked her to come over. “Maybe the killer wrote that note
to Cassandra, in order to coax her into the backyard, where she was ambushed.”

“Unfortunately,
we can’t check with Cassandra to ask about that possibility.”

I gritted my
teeth to keep from objecting to this cutting remark. I was already all but
jumping out of my skin. I didn’t need him sniping at me, as well.

“The thing
is, Miss Babcock, you told me earlier it was less than fifteen minutes from the
time you got there and read the note till we arrived. True?”

I nodded.

“So, again,
what happened to the note?”

“I don’t
know. It blew away? The killer took it?” Despite the now unbearable heat in the
stuffy room, I hugged myself, my turmoil causing my midsection to do an
internal tap dance.

This time I
was the one to lean forward and force him to meet
my
eyes. “Sergeant
Millay, all I know is, there was a note on a magenta colored sticky pad sheet
fastened to the front door when I got there. And, no matter how this might
look, I didn’t kill her.”

He met my
gaze unflinchingly and gave me no external clues as to what he was thinking. “Okay.
Well.” He rose and bitched up his pants, which had slid slightly below waist
level on his pudgy frame. “Thank you. Let us know if you think of anything more
that might help us.”

He gave me a
little smile, which I didn’t return. I had a feeling I would be seeing his
placid face in my nightmares.

When I
stepped out of the interrogation room, it felt as though I’d taken my first
breath of air since this ordeal began. Mom was already standing by the door.
She was taking great care to align her Day-Timer in her purse to her
satisfaction. Straightening whatever objects happened to be on hand was
something she habitually did when she wanted to appear busy and unconcerned.
She’d likely done nothing but worry the entire time I’d been giving my
statement.

We said
little during the drive home. It was now after seven
p.m.,
and the sky at dusk was beginning to darken. My mom,
though, seems to have an ability to emit soothing vibrations at times like
these. That’s part of what makes her
such a good
flight instructor. What hit me as most extraordinary, though, was that Mom had
to be bursting with anxious questions about what had happened right across the
street from her home, yet she managed to refrain from asking.

Finally,
once we’d pulled into the garage, she said, “I get the feeling your session
with Andy didn’t go well.”

“You mean
Sergeant Millay?” I asked, wanting to gently establish the fact that I did not
enjoy the same kinship with the man that she did.

She nodded.

“No. In
fact, it was awful.” I let out a sigh as I got out of the car and waited for
her. I held the door for her, and we went inside the house together. The garage
door opened to the kitchen, where our dogs were lined up to greet us. Pavlov,
my German shepherd, was first in line, with Doppler, my cocker spaniel, in the
middle. Mom’s collie, Sage, wagged his tail while I petted each dog in the
proper sequence according to their self-determined hierarchy. “I’ve never been
so scared in my life. I even feel
guilty,
though I did nothing wrong. It’s
as if every mean-spirited thing I’ve ever done in my life that’s gone
unpunished is now...sitting on my shoulders, mocking me.”

Mom, showing
a bit of favoritism, gave Pavlov and Doppler a quick, cursory greeting, but was
now stroking her collie, Sage. “What have you ever done that went unpunished?”

“Oh, there
was”—though a few things had immediately popped into my head, I realized that
there was no way I wanted to tell my mother, even though many years had
passed—“not a single thing, now that you mention it.”

“Thought so,”
Mom said with a smile.

Though she’d
managed to help me turn down my anxiety by a notch or two—aided greatly
by my being back home with my dogs—I now felt inordinately tired. I
dropped into one of the captain’s-style wooden chairs at the table.

Mom pulled
out a chair beside me and took a seat. “Don’t worry about Andy.” In response to
my furrowed brow at her use of his first name, she said, “Sergeant Millay,
rather. He can’t possibly suspect you. You had no reason to kill Cassandra
Randon.”

“True, but I’m
not going to sleep well till he catches whoever did this.”

“Neither
will I. Nor will anyone else in the neighborhood.”

Except,
perhaps, the killer.
“Which is what bothers me the most.”

“What’s
that?”

I met Mom’s
brown eyes, so similar in appearance to mine, though hers were now surrounded
by crow’s feet, which she preferred to call “extended laugh lines.”

“I didn’t notice
any unusual cars parked on the street. And there was a note for me on Edith’s
door that disappeared by the time the police arrived. That means it had to be
somebody in the immediate vicinity.”
Somebody who was still there, watching
me, when I’d first arrived,
I silently added, giving myself the shivers.

“Who could
possibly have wanted to kill Cassandra?” I asked. “As far as I could see, she
was a stay-at-home mother, leading a quiet life out here...far from the maddening
crowd.”

“That was my
impression, too.”

Remembering
the horrific scene on Edith’s deck, a theory occurred to me that could explain
both the murder and Shogun’s disappearance. “Maybe I was way off on paw sizes,
and the prints I saw in the blood were from the husky, which could conceivably
have attacked and killed Shogun. If so, maybe Edith went nuts and killed
Cassandra accidentally. Cassandra might have bent down to grab the dog just as
Edith was in mid swing with the...rock that killed her.”

Mom
shuddered a little at the image. I hated the theory myself, mostly because it
meant an innocent dog had been killed, in addition to Cassandra. “That’s not at
all likely, Allie.”

“Did you
know Edith well? Are you sure she wouldn’t have done it?”

Mom shook
her head and fidgeted with a crumb that had wedged itself into the seam between
the main section and one flap of the table. “I’ve never felt especially
comfortable
around her. She’s always struck me as being too preoccupied with
appearances. I just meant that I couldn’t picture her going into a rage over
another dog injuring hers. Edith has never impressed me as being all that
devoted to Shogun. Besides, she’s so meticulous, I can’t imagine her doing
anything as messy as committing murder, especially not on her own property.’’

Plus there
were those perfectly clean white pants of hers, which couldn’t have stayed that
way if she was the killer. I sorted through images of Edith I’d collected
throughout the day—sitting on our couch, so prim and proper; stepping
into Cassandra’s house and calling her “Cassie,” although Cassandra had seemed
tense. “I detected some...odd undercurrent going on between Cassandra and Edith
when I was at Cassandra’s house earlier. What do you know about their
relationship?”

In a gesture
akin to a shrug, Mom tilted one hand, which now rested on the table. “They seem
to be the best of friends. They’re always dropping in on each other. The
families moved into the neighborhood within a year of each other, four or five
years ago. Even though the Cunninghams are a few years older and didn’t have
children, the couples seemed to socialize frequently.”

“That
reminds me. Did you know the Cunninghams are getting a divorce?”

“I’d heard
rumors, and it certainly doesn’t surprise me that they’re true. Trevor once
told me that Boulder was far enough out in the boonies for him, but that Edith
had insisted on moving out here to run her dress shop where there wasn’t the
stiff competition. As a matter of fact, a month or two ago, Cassandra mentioned
to me that Edith was trying to convince her to become a business partner, but
that she’d decided not to accept the offer. She was hoping to get pregnant
again soon and wanted to keep being a stay-at-home mom.”

“Was there
anyone in the neighborhood who had a big grudge against her, or anything?”

Mom tilted her
head and thought for a moment. “While you were being interviewed at the police
station, an officer
spoke with me, too, and asked me that same question. But there
really wasn’t. She was a sweet, quiet person.”

Pavlov was
standing by the sliding glass door, waiting to be let out, and Mom did the
honors. Her face looked weary, almost haggard, when she returned and faced me. “Allie,
as much as I hate to say it, this might have been some random act of violence,
right here in our quiet little neighborhood. Some maniac driving by, perhaps,
who happened to spot her.”

I shook my
head. “No, I can’t believe that, Mom. For one thing, there has to be some
explanation for that note.”

Pointless as
it was for me to try to mentally solve this murder, I couldn’t help it. I
couldn’t shake the fear that I’d stepped into the murderer’s trap somehow. In
any case, there was no way to feel the least bit in control of my own safety
and well being until I could begin to understand what was happening. And why.