4 Woof at the Door Read online

  “Did Kaia bite Janine’s arm once?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at me. “You must have heard that broadcast. A friend of mine heard it, too, and told me what Janine said about Kaia.”

  “By the way, that ’idiot talk-show host’ you mentioned is a friend of mine.”

  “Ouch. Sorry.” He opened the gate, Kaia eying me with, I hoped, idle curiosity.

  “No, it’s okay. I only like her when she’s off the air myself. So did Kaia bite her arm?”

  “No. I don’t know why she said that. It never happened. Maybe she just got carried away with the sound of her own voice and started to fabricate to make herself sound more exciting.”

  That was plausible. My first impression of Janine was that she was all too aware of her beauty and could easily be enamored of the limelight. I watched Damian go into Kaia’s cage, leash in hand. My heart pounded a little with the stress of being this close once again to wolves. Damian roughhoused with Kaia, then fastened the leash on his collar.

  The two came strolling up to me, and Damian held out the leash for me. “Would you like to hold this?”

  I chuckled. He sounded like a proud parent assuming everyone would want to hold his baby. “Sure.” I took the leash. Kaia acted attentive and anxious as Damian repeated his procedure and went in to get Silver. Watching Kaia stand at attention beside me, I realized that my agreeing to be out with Damian and his wolves was an important step in shaking my nightmarish fear of wolf-like dogs. I hadn’t even stopped to think that this might be healing for me, but I knew it was. I felt so relieved, I was tempted to give Kaia a hug. Fortunately, I’m not that stupid.

  Damian returned with Silver straining to sniff at Kaia, who stayed put beside me. Damian took the leash from me and the wolves led the way out of the building.

  “How did you come to own all these animals?”

  “I was raised on a farm, and we inherited this lion cub from a dimwit neighbor when I was a boy. Nowadays, I’m pretty well-known. Used to be when a zoo wasn’t up to standards and there were no other zoos that could take an animal, they’d put them down. Now they know they can call me.”

  “Beverly Wood had told me you travel most weekends.”

  He nodded. “On weekends, I do various appearances with the animals, when I’m not bringing tour groups or photographers here. Then on weekdays, I work my regular job as an auto mechanic, just to meet expenses.”

  He’d given no outward indications that he recognized Beverly Wood’s name. He probably hadn’t even heard about her death yet. I decided I wasn’t ready to talk about that.

  “I’ll bet you could get a lot of money for using the animals in movies and special appearances.”

  “I’m not in this for the money. Even though it’s true that there’s a lot of ways I could make a fortune. And, apparently, my soon-to-be ex-employee was into one of those ways…studding out my wolves.” He led us all to a second gate and pulled out yet another key to open this padlock. “It’s amazing how ignorant people are. They’ll pay top-dollar for purebred or hybrid wolves when there are so many terrific dogs at animal shelters.”

  “Do your dogs get the free run of all this property?” I asked.

  “Yeah. It’s unfenced around its perimeter, as you can see, but you have to go more than twenty miles till you get to anyone else’s property. I’ve never had a problem with one of my animals running away.”

  “Not even the wolves? Can’t wolves travel something like a hundred miles a day when they’re hunting?”

  “In the wild, sure. But these wolves were raised in captivity and aren’t used to roaming the countryside for their food. Even if you opened all my animals’ doors, most of ’em would stay put. Their dens are their homes. I have to admit though, I’ve been keeping my dogs in the yard and the house ever since this weekend. I’m kind of gun shy, I guess you could say.”

  The wolves strained to run free, and once Damian had closed the gate behind us, he let them off from their leashes. They loped across the field away from us. It was such a breathtaking sight, my eyes misted watching them. It must be such an incredible thing to be that coordinated, that fast.

  The pair of wolves veered into what looked like a ravine of sorts off to our left.

  “Strange,” Damian muttered, following them up the slight incline that bordered the ravine. “They usually go right out toward the back fields, then come back around when I whistle for them. There’s a lot more room for them to—”

  He stopped, seeing the same thing I was. The wolves were sniffing at a spot thirty yards or so ahead of us. The area was swarming with flies, even at this late hour.

  Damian shielded his eyes as best he could from the sun, low in the sky. “Cripes,” he muttered. “I’ve got to get down there.” He dashed a few strides further up the incline, then paused to look a second time. “What the…” Damian’s voice trailed off. I trotted alongside him. He held out his arm to block me. “Allida, you stay here. I’ll go get the wolves on lead.”

  I had already seen enough, even from this distance, to know exactly what was happening. I took a step back down the hill so that only Damian and the wolves were in view.

  The wolves had found what appeared to be a prone, fully dressed male body.

  Damian’s face was white as he returned with both wolves on lead, wanting to return to their discovery, but too obedient to protest more than by baying and tugging half-heartedly against the leash.

  Damian couldn’t meet my gaze. From the glassy look of his eyes and the perspiration on his brow, it was clear he was fighting the urge to be physically sick.

  He walked right past me and said, “We have to call the police. Kaia and Silver just found Larry Cunriff.”

  Chapter 15

  I couldn’t get a signal on my cellphone. We went back into the shelter. The animal odor seemed more pungent than it had just minutes before. Damian got the wolves back into their cages, then rejoined me in the center portion. There was a phone on the wall.

  He spoke in hushed tones. A chilling fear enveloped me like a rain-soaked sweater. Three people were dead. Why? What had I gotten myself into?

  The only possibility that still made any sense to me was that these deaths were the result of the hideous blood sport run amok; that Ty had gotten himself involved with disgusting people who got off on watching others suffer. They might have started with dogs and now moved on to humans. Ty and Larry could have simply been dispensable members of their group.

  But what about Beverly? Despite what Rebecca had told me, I could not believe Beverly had been a willing party to dog fights. She might have witnessed something, perhaps even unknowingly, that posed a threat to Ty’s murderer. Was it the severed phone cord? If so, was Rebecca in danger? Was I?

  Damian hung up. He turned, but still couldn’t bring himself to meet my gaze. His face was a portrait of barely restrained emotion—anger and sorrow. He gestured at the door. “County sheriffs are going to meet us in the driveway. May as well go out and wait for them.”

  He and I sat down together on the scrubby grass near the head of the driveway, neither of us speaking.

  Damian fidgeted with a reed of grass, shredding its seeds one by one. “Larry’s body could’ve been out there since Saturday. I didn’t let any of my animals out the gate between then and now. Maybe Larry gave Atla to the killer, who turned around and killed him.”

  “Could you tell how Larry was killed?”

  He shook his head, which seemed partly an attempt to cover for a shudder. “His body wasn’t…in the best of shape.”

  At length, he looked at me and said, “I want to figure out what’s going on here. Tell me everything you can about Ty Bellingham’s murder.”

  I gave him as complete a rundown on the events of the past weekend as I could, including my friend’s death, and related this morning’s confusing meeting with Rebecca, as well as her accusation about Beverly’s involvement in the dog-fighting ring.

  “You don’t believe her?” he asked
.

  I shook my head. “You know how intuitive dogs are. I just can’t believe she could have loved dogs so clearly, yet been aiding and abetting Ty.”

  “And this warehouse you were telling me about. The one with the secret room. Have you gotten the chance to check that out?”

  “Not yet, but I will tomorrow. I was going to ask if you’d come with me. I’m meeting Chesh Bellingham around five o’clock at the flea market, then she’s—”

  “The flea market? My ex-wife will be there. She makes carvings that she tries to sell every so often. Maybe I’ll go and see what she’s up to. I’ll meet you there.” He furrowed his brow. “Are you going to tell the police about this hidden room? Have them take a look first?”

  “Not till I’ve seen it myself. The police haven’t shown much interest in my theory about dog fighting being connected to Ty’s death. Taking any part in or even knowing about a dog fight without reporting to the authorities is now considered a felony, not just a misdemeanor. Maybe that’s why…”

  I was about to say that maybe someone killed Beverly rather than let her turn them in to the authorities for soliciting dog fights, but I didn’t want to give voice to that theory. My quest to put a stop dog fighting could be making me a bigger target.

  The sheriffs arrived and separated us to get our statements. I was glad to see that there were no detectives from either Ty’s or Beverly’s murders on hand to say, “You again?” But that was short-lived. An unmarked sedan pulled up, and out stepped Detective Rodriguez. His first words to me were, “Allida Babcock. Hello. Again.”

  The message light was flashing on my machine when I arrived in my office the next morning. I pressed the “play” button and immediately recognized Chesh Bellingham’s voice. She asked me to return her call as soon as possible and that if I was hearing the message after nine a.m. to call at her store. It was well after nine, so I called her at the second number.

  “I finally got back into the house,” Cheshire told me when I had her on the line. “It’s weird though. I found something at the house that just…totally floors me.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I’ll show it to you. I’d like to get someone else’s opinion.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ve got customers.”

  I rolled my eyes. This struck me as gamesmanship on her part. “Before I let you go, how’s Doobie doing?”

  “Now that he’s in his own element, he’s a little better.”

  “Good.” I glanced at my watch. “Our next appointment is for six p.m. this evening. Can this…mysterious thing you want to show me wait that long, or can I meet you over at your house a lunchtime?”

  “Hey, yeah. Cool. Meet me at my house around one. That’ll give me a chance to check on the Doobster.”

  “The Doobster?” I repeated sourly to myself after hanging up. I hadn’t heard the “-ster” suffix added to names until the ’eighties or so. Chesh was mixing her decades’ lingo.

  After an uneventful morning, I found myself once again ringing the Bellinghams’ doorbell. Despite the beautiful dry weather, a feeling of deja vu crept up my spine.

  Doobie started barking, and I was soon looking at his big face pressed against the front window. Chesh opened the door for me, and I barely had time to grab my noisemaker and activate it before the time Doobie jumped up on me, flattening me against the wall.

  It took me two shrill blasts of the noisemaker before he put all four paws on the ground, which was a slower reaction time than yesterday. I tried to silently assure myself that his behavior represented job security, rather than failure.

  Unfazed, Chesh said to me, “Come take a look at what I found hidden in the back of the dresser drawers in Ty’s bedroom.”

  “You had separate bedrooms?”

  She ignored the question and crooked her finger over her shoulder as she led the way through the living room, which—I noted—had been fully restored with all of its former troll-like furniture. She continued down the hall and into the part of the house where I’d never ventured.

  She opened the first door, and, to my surprise, it was a bedroom furnished in classy—meaning non-sixties-style—antiques: a four-poster bed, a very attractive oak dresser with a mirror, a hand-stitched quilt on the bed. What was not surprising was that Doobie nearly bowled us both over in his rush to enter the room first.

  “Is this your bedroom?” I asked.

  “No, Ty’s.” She hopped up on the bed, which squeaked with her weight, and grabbed what looked like the basic size and shape of a yearbook that had been on the nightstand. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

  “Someone’s high school yearbook?”

  “Not high school. College. Arizona.”

  “I didn’t even know universities produced yearbooks.” I glanced at the date on the spine. “Apparently Arizona did, twenty-five years ago.”

  Chesh patted the mattress, indicating for me to have a seat, which I did, after we got Doobie, who’d assumed Chesh’s gesture was meant for him, to lay down on the floor by our feet. She had bookmarked a particular page and flipped it open. She handed me the book and tapped her black-painted fingernail on the specific photo she wanted me to see.

  It was a picture of a young Ty Bellingham. Though the photo was not taken in the sixties, he wore bellbottoms and a shirt with big cuffs and poofy sleeves. The stocky young man beside him was a shocker.

  Chesh scotted closer to me to peer over my shoulder and, again, indicated what she wanted me to see by tapping with her nail. “Recognize this dude?”

  I stared, trying to verify the face beneath the phony afro. “Is that…Hank Atkinson?”

  “Yep. It was from Ty’s college days at Arizona.”

  “That’s where Hank went to college,” I murmured. “I remember him saying he used to be on their football team.”

  Chesh said, “Thing is, though, Ty told me he never went to college. Why would he lie? And it seems he and Hank were the best of friends back in college.” She grabbed the book back from me, and flipped it open to a second bookmarked page. Look at how Hank signed Ty’s yearbook.”

  I read: To the best friend a guy could have. Go 4 it, Monster Man! Hank.

  “Did Ty ever mention his past relationship with Hank to you?” I asked.

  “No, never.”

  “This makes no sense.”

  I sat on the bed and carefully scanned the yearbook, looking for a picture of someone else I might be able to recognize. Sure enough, I found a very young-looking woman with a distinctive, beaker-shaped nose. Paige Gunders, the former Mrs. Bellingham and current Mrs. Atkinson.

  I showed my discovery to Chesh, still seated beside me on Ty’s four-poster bed. “This explains the sudden marriage to Hank Atkinson,” I said. “They’ve known each other for years. In fact, there’s an inscription here.” I read aloud, “‘To Ty, the best third wheel a couple could hope to have. Love, Paige (and Hank!)’” She’d dotted the “i” in Paige with a heart.

  Chesh grabbed the yearbook from me and read it again herself. “This is, like, Beyond Bizarre. In the, um, nine months I’ve known Paige, she never once said anything about her and Hank and Ty all having gone to college together. And like I said, Ty used to tell everyone how he was living proof that college was a waste of time and money. That he’d never gone to college and here he was a successful, self-made business owner.”

  She looked at me, waiting for my reply. Every time something surfaced that looked as though it should be a clue, it only confused matters all the more. “You’d better turn this over to the police. Maybe it’ll prove useful to their investigation.”

  “I will, but I thought, you know, you’re a psychologist. I mean, I know your work is with dogs and all, but you still seem to know a lot about human behavior. Can you explain this to me? Why wouldn’t the three of them have admitted to knowing one another?”

  This was a first—nobody had ever made the leap that my work with dog behavior could make me in
cisive with human behavior. I decided to take her remarks as a compliment and leave it at that.

  “Maybe they wanted to forget,” I answered. “Something had to have happened after this yearbook was signed that led to Paige leaving Hank and choosing Ty.” Which begged the question: Why, if you wanted to forget about your college experiences, would you live next door to a former college buddy—or lover—more than a quarter-century later?

  Chesh latched onto my unspoken question and said, “Yeah, but I mean…whenever I’ve broken up with a boyfriend, I’d just as soon never see him again. You know? But Ty marries his best friend’s ol’ lady, his best friend marries somebody else, and they get houses next door to one another. And then they swap who gets the girl, detest each other, yet they still live in the same houses. It’s like a really bad soap opera.”

  “You’re right,” I said, thinking that the relationship among Ty and the Atkinsons did bear some resemblance to dog behavior after all, but this wasn’t a train of thought I wished to dwell on. Instead, I continued to flip through the yearbook, looking for Hank on the football team. He wasn’t listed. That was interesting; both Paige and Hank had mentioned his having been on the team. In fact, Paige had said how “he never lets anyone forget” about his football prowess in college. I checked his list of achievements to see if he’d been on the team in previous years. No listing. He hadn’t been involved in any sports activities, but rather, was captain of the chess club.

  Doobie suddenly shot up on all fours and galloped out of Ty’s bedroom. He was now barking from what sounded like the living room.

  I ignored the dog and asked, “Chesh, did Hank ever happen to say anything to you about being on his football team in college?”

  “Yeah.” She rolled her eyes as she hooked her long blond hair behind her ears. “I remember one morning he was limping a little when we both happened to be going out to get our papers at the same time. Just to be friendly, I said something to him like, ’Hurt your foot?’ and he told me that it was a football injury from his college days that flared up from time to time.”