Ruff Way to Go (9 page)

Their
property, unlike the Cunninghams’ next door, was unfenced. That struck me as
incongruous with their unfriendly demeanor. The Haywoods had a thick row of
unkempt juniper bushes along the side of the house that faced the Cunninghams’
home. That seemed a likely place to begin my search.

This was a
matter of literally beating bushes. I had to keep parting the prickly branches,
and I was wearing a T-shirt. The skin on my arms was getting scratched, the
little wounds from the sharp needles and rough bark itchy and painful.

After
thoroughly examining the outer side of the hedges, I tried to look between the
house and the dense shrubbery. There was not much room, so I crouched down,
wondering if there was any point to this. The deputies had probably already
done this yesterday.

The soil
here was a fine sand, sheltered from the elements by the eaves on one side and
the juniper bushes on the other. I saw at once that there were no shoe prints
back here, but rather something more immediately intriguing to me: paw prints.

They were roughly
the same size as the ones I’d seen yesterday. It stood to reason that if the
dog who left me prints could be identified, that dog’s owner might be the
killer. I decided at once that I would rather keep those prints intact than
mess them up while searching.

Energized, I
raced up the front steps, intending to ask whichever Haywood answered whether
or not a small dog was on their property yesterday. Nobody answered my first
ring. I gritted my teeth and pressed me doorbell a second time.

Finally,
Betsy Haywood flung the door open. “Here.” She thrust a piece of paper into my
hand. “Our daughter’s address and phone number.”

Though the
handwriting was decidedly different, she had written the note with a black felt-tip
pen on a magenta sticky pad sheet.

The paper
and its writing implement were identical to the note I’d seen on Edith’s door.

I pondered
the notion of ringing the doorbell again to ask about the notepaper. If the
Haywoods had left that note on Edith’s door, though, this would only alert them
to the fact that they’d incriminated themselves just now.

Who else
could I ask? I had a client appointment in Boulder over the noon hour and could
visit the Haywoods’ daughter, Susan Nelson, on my way to my client’s home.
Resolved, I pocketed the note and was soon heading west toward Lyons.

This drive
used to be on a single-lane country road through sparsely populated areas
northeast of Boulder. Now urban sprawl had filled in the wide expanses of
fields on the south side of the road, though cornfields still spread to my
right, the Rocky Mountains a purplish blue in the distant background. We’d had
a particularly wet May to date, and I found myself appreciating the greenery,
almost lush for the semi-arid front range.

After
mentally replaying yesterday’s scene from the moment that I’d parked my car in
Mom’s garage until I’d entered the Cunninghams’ backyard, I realized that,
while it was true there were no unfamiliar cars parked on the road, I hadn’t
seen whether or not a car was in the Haywoods’ driveway. That meant that Susan
Nelson could have been visiting next door and I wouldn’t have noticed.

It was
possible that she had an intense problem with Cassandra, one that had developed
into a murderous rage. The teenager I recalled from my childhood struck me as
having been capable of murder. She’d certainly threatened me with death enough
times, at any rate. My memories of her were so unpleasant—a wide mouth
full of braces, framed with frizzy hair, perpetually screaming at me—that
I found myself easing the pressure on the gas pedal and had to force myself to
go the speed limit.

During the
drive, I tried to piece together the odd little snippets of information I’d
learned during my visit to Betsy and Harvey’s house. The paw prints in the dirt
alongside the Haywoods’ house could have been there for several days, if not
weeks. With no fence, any dog off the leash could have investigated that
particular area. In fact, during a visit to Mom a couple of years ago, I’d seen
Betsy Haywood swing a broom to chase off a dog who’d ventured onto their front
lawn.

And yet, now
that my course was taking me farther and farther away, it struck me that there
was something significant about those particular prints, some peculiarity,
perhaps, that proved them to be identical to the bloody ones I’d seen the day
before. I wanted to turn around and take a second look at those paw prints. At
the same time, my sudden urge to reverse directions might only be an
unconscious excuse to avoid seeing Susan again. I assured myself that mere was
no rush; the prints would still be there when I returned to Berthoud.

Upon further
reflection, I wasn’t sure about the significance of the notepaper. While it
would be a huge coincidence if the notes had come from separate pads, it was
also a stretch to think that the Haywoods would be so careless as to use the
same paper twice. Or could the killer have first lured Cassandra, or me as a
scapegoat, into the backyard with the note, then planted the notepad in the
Haywoods’ house to frame the Haywoods? It seemed strange that the grouchy
Haywoods would have a bright magenta-colored notepad. But then, trying to match
people’s stationery to their personality was probably every bit as foolish as
matching styles of collars to dogs.

Even so, the
address on its familiar sheet of paper was all but burning a hole in my pocket.
At a wide shoulder of hard-packed dirt and gravel, I pulled over and did a
pencil rubbing of the paper, tilting the pencil to give light, wide strokes
from the side of the lead so that the impression from the note that had been
atop this one could be seen. This was a trick that any self-respecting, budding
secret agent learns as a child. Unfortunately, Susan’s address obscured the
faint markings from the preceding sheet.

Fifteen
minutes later, I reached the outskirts of town. Lyons is a nice little place,
not unlike Berthoud. It’s something of a bedroom community for Boulder and is a
convenient stopping place for those traveling to or from Estes Park—a
tourist town just southwest of Rocky Mountain National Park. I wasn’t
especially familiar with the streets, but reasoned that the town was small
enough for me to find Susan Nelson’s street without too much trouble.

Eventually I
found the address her parents had given me and parked on the street. Although
the yard and gardens were lovely, the house itself was unimpressive, to put it
kindly. Its white paint was peeling, and the screens on the two front windows
hung in tatters from their misshapen frames. I rang the doorbell and was glad
to hear someone working the latch after just one ring, unlike my experience
with Susan’s parents.

As a
teenager, Susan had been rail-thin with frizzy brown hair. The woman who opened
the door was considerably heavier, stood at least five-foot-nine, and was quite
attractive. She wore a red tank top and a denim skirt. As usual, though, my
eyes were drawn away from the person and to the little dog barking by her
sandaled feet.

The
dog—a toy breed just a bit taller and bulkier than a silky
terrier—had a thick coal-black coat, with a foxy face and upright ears.
As he circled his owner’s ankles, I saw that he had no tail. A schipperke! That’s
a Belgian dog, originally bred to chase rats and guard canal barges. The
schipperke wasn’t a rare breed of dog, yet I had never met or worked with one.
For all of the dog training I’d done in Chicago, I’d never happened to run
across one.

“Can I help
you? Or are you just here to stare at my dog?” the woman asked in a voice
dripping with sarcasm.

Reluctantly,
I returned my gaze to the woman before me. “Are you Susan Nelson?”

“Yeah. What’s
it to you?”

How
nostalgic. Though her looks had improved considerably, her grating voice hadn’t,
which sounded to me like a car engine cranking over. Plus there were those
unforgettable— and loathsome—ice-cold mannerisms of hers. “I’m
Allida Babcock. We used to live in the same neighborhood.”

“Allida
Babcock?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ll
be.” She gave me a sly smile. “Come on in here and let me take a look at you.”

I had an
involuntary shudder at her odd phrasing, which sounded to me like something out
of
The Beverly Hillbillies,
but I stepped inside. The air reeked of
cigarette smoke. We occupied the small square of warped green linoleum that
served as the entranceway to the living room, where everything was as unkempt
and shoddy as the outside of her house.

“You’re the
scrawny little kid I used to babysit for?” She eyed me at length, then laughed
heartily and said, “You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Nor have
you.”

The smile
faded. “So, what all brings you to my humble abode?”

I glanced
again at the schipperke. Her dog’s paws would be just about the right size for
the prints at Edith’s. The schipperke had become distracted by a prism’s
rainbow on the wall, which came from a crystal hung from the window. The dog
was leaping at the rainbow, trying to catch it. There were scratch marks on the
wall, so this wasn’t a new activity.

I decided to
work my way gradually up to a discussion of paw prints at the murder scene and
said the first thing that popped into my head. “My mother mentioned you were
still in the area, and I thought I’d come by and say hello and apologize for
that time I Super-Glued your shoes to the porch.”

“That was
you? Damn. I always blamed your brother for that one.”

“I figured
you would. That was the major reason I did it.”

“Yeah, well,
I know what it’s like to grow up with a sibling, believe you me. Mom and Dad
are still pretty ticked, though. You’d be surprised how much work that all took
to scrape the chunks of glue and repaint the floor.”

Half
kidding, I said, “I guess I should tell them how sorry I am. I’m somewhat
overdue for giving them an apology.”

She
shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt. I’m telling you, they remember it well.” She held my
gaze as if completely serious. That was what came from her parents’ leading too
sheltered an existence—still being bent out of shape twenty years later
over a childish prank.

“We had a
major upheaval yesterday in the neighborhood. Did your parents tell you about
it?”

She nodded. “Yeah.
Mom called me and filled me in on all the sordid details. Was that you who
found the body?” She acted mildly curious, nothing more. Perhaps she’d never
even met Cassandra.

“I’m afraid
so. Did you know Cassandra Randon?”

She
shrugged. “No. Only in passing.” She gestured at the couch, which ran the
length of one wall. Its once-purple velvet fabric was soiled, and a missing leg
had been replaced by a cinder block. “You want to have a seat?”

“No, thanks.
I can only stay a minute.” All I wanted to do, really, was glean information
about her parents’ relationship with Cassandra without tipping my hand.

Feigning a
casual attitude, I said, “I thought I saw your car in your parents’ driveway
yesterday.” I was lying through my teeth, of course, and it would have taken no
effort for Susan to stop and wonder how I could possibly know what type of car
she drove. If she asked, I’d be in hot water, as I had no idea. But I had
nothing invested in this relationship, anyway.

“Yeah, I was
there. Visiting. I come over and mow the lawn, water the flowers, drop off
groceries. That sort of thing.”

“I thought
so,” I bluffed. “You
were
there when I was calling for help next door.”

“I...” For
the first time, she conveyed some emotional reaction, her round cheeks
reddening. “I never heard you call for help, or I’d’ve done something. I must
have been gone by the time you got there. Nothing much was happening when I
left my parents’ place. But they told me the police arrived five minutes after
I’d gone.”

A two-or
three-year-old had galloped into the room and was now playing “catch the
rainbow” along with the dog. She was angling the light into one palm and trying
to cup the other hand over the top as if the colors were a butterfly. The dog’s
snaps at the colored light were barely missing the little girl’s fingers. Their
actions made me too nervous to concentrate on Susan’s words.

“Susan, I
don’t mean to butt in, but if your daughter ‘catches’ that rainbow on her hand,
your schipperke might bite her hand.”

Susan gasped
and grabbed the child’s hand, leading her out of the room. “Chelsea! Let’s go
back to our coloring books, shall we?”

I glanced
over at the crystal to see if I could take it down. It was fastened to the top
of the window frame, too high for me to reach without standing on a chair.

While Susan
got her daughter resituated, I took the opportunity to coax her dog over to me.
“What a good dog you are,” I said, crouching down. The small black dog took a
wide stance, held his—as best I could tell from my angle— ground,
and started barking at me. This was classic behavior for the
loyal-to-owners-but-wary-around-strangers personality traits I’d heard were so
indigenous to the breed. Although I personally don’t put quite as much weight
on breed personality profiling as some other canine experts do, it was useful
in predicting behaviors, to a point.