Murder, She Barked

When I opened the front door, she leaped from my arms and hissed at the man sitting on the grand staircase. She danced backward like a Halloween cat, then turned and ran so fast she was gone in the blink of an eye.

“Crazy cat,” said Dave.

He looked worse than ever. He blinked at me wearily as though he could barely keep his eyes open.

“You need some sleep.”

“I’d like some sleep. If you’d come clean and give me some answers, maybe I could go home to bed.”

“Aha. So whatever brought you here is my fault?”

“Who is Ben Hathaway?”

Ben? He couldn’t have startled me more. “My boyfriend.”

“Uh-huh.” He consulted his notebook. “And he just happens to work for Mortie Foster’s law firm. Is that right?”

“Yes.” I wasn’t following him at all.

Dave rested his elbows on his knees, letting his hands hang down between his legs. He stared at me as though he was annoyed.

“Am I supposed to think it’s only coincidence that the car you pushed over the cliff belonged to one Mortie Foster?”

“Mortie? Are you kidding?” I leaned against the banister and tried to piece together any likely scenario but had no success. How could it have been Mortie’s car?

His tricky little mention of me pushing the car over the mountainside hadn’t escaped me though.

“In the first place, I didn’t push anything over the cliff. And in the second place, how would I know anything about that car at all? I never saw it. All I saw were flames.”

I glared at him, irritated by the very notion that I might have staged the car situation myself. “And what does Ben have to do with any of this?”

“Good question. Thank you. That’s what I’d like to know.” Dave snorted a derisive little laugh. “Most people drive their own cars to Wagtail, yet you are in possession of Ben Hathaway’s car. I presume you know Mortie Foster?”

“We’ve met. And you know perfectly well that I left so fast that I didn’t even bring a change of clothes with me.” I whispered so Oma wouldn’t overhear if she happened to be somewhere close by. “I thought Oma was dying.”

Dave hung on like a dog on a meaty bone. “That car was stolen a few weeks ago. So I’ve got a stolen hybrid SUV that belonged to your boyfriend’s boss and mysteriously turned up in a blaze on the very night that you arrived in your boyfriend’s car.”

I shrugged. “So?”

“So? Are you kidding me? There has to be a connection to you.”

“Oh, gosh, you’re right. You figured it out. I stole the car and hid it, then returned to push it over the cliff.”

Dave shot a look of daggers at me.

“How do you know all about Ben, anyway?”

“I’m a cop. Not that many people around here respect that. I go where leads take me, Holly. I don’t much like that they keep bringing me back to you.”

Our conversation came to an abrupt halt. Upstairs, something knocked lightly. Thud-dump. Thud-dump. It grew closer. Thud-dump. Thud-dump. Thud-dump.

Dave sprang to a standing position and rushed next to me. “What the devil is that?”

Eighteen

Thud-dump. Thud-dump.

“It’s coming from up there,” Dave said.

We craned our necks to look upward but nothing seemed amiss.

We backed away from the stairs, and Dave actually moved a shoulder in front of me as though he meant to protect me. I couldn’t help feeling a teensy bit satisfied. If he really thought I was guilty of something, he wouldn’t have tried to be protective.

And suddenly it appeared.

Twinkletoes jumped down one stair as a time. She carried a puffy cat toy in her mouth that was attached to a stick that dragged behind her. She made the thud noise on each step and the stick followed with dump as it hit the step.

“What’s she doing?” asked Dave.

“I have no idea.” She reached the main floor and walked off, her head held very high to drag the stick between her legs.

We both laughed, breaking the somber mood.

“Look, Dave, I’d be happy to help you in any way that I can. But I didn’t have anything to do with the weird stuff that’s going on. Not that it’s my place, but wouldn’t it be more important to figure out who killed Jerry and Sven anyway? Is it true that you think Sven was killed by some kids from Snowball?”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Hair of the Dog.”

“Figures. Don’t believe everything you hear.” He rubbed his head with both hands and yawned. “Mortie’s car has to be the car that killed Sven. It defies logic that it would have gone over the cliff the same night as Sven’s death by coincidence. If I can figure out who stole the car, I’ll have Sven’s killer. We’re not going to get much evidence off that car. It’s a burned-out hulk. You sure you don’t remember anything about the guy you saw?”

He believed me now? “On TV they get all kinds of evidence from burned vehicles.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“What do you call those people—crime scene investigators? Haven’t they been here?”

“I call that fiction. We don’t have CSIs. That’s only in big cities.”

“So who investigates?”

“I do.”

“Who takes the pictures?”

“Me.”

“Who secures the crime scene?”