Murder, She Barked

“I doubt we’ll ever know for sure. Brewster knew the socks were disappearing. Apparently, he saw Murphy dig up a couple of socks in Jerry’s back yard. Brewster jumped to the erroneous conclusion that Jerry had buried them there to hide them. After Jerry ate breakfast with us, he returned home where Brewster confronted him. According to Brewster, they got into a fight upstairs, and Jerry managed to snatch Brewster’s toupee. Brewster slammed a golf club on Jerry’s head, causing Jerry to fall, which gave Brewster the opportunity to slide the choke collar and leash on him. Jerry tried to get away but fell again when he was running down the stairs, and the collar choked him.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Hair of the Dog seems like a thriving business. Why would he throw all that away and get involved with a ring of thieves?”

Dave met my eyes. “Greed. Plain old greed.”

“What a twisted mind! It was okay for him to steal from other people, but he killed Jerry for stealing those same ill-gotten gains from him. And the saddest thing of all is that it wasn’t Jerry who took them—it was Murphy, Brewster’s own dog, who was taking his treasures.”

Ben shook his head. “I can’t believe that Kim went to a scumbag like Brewster for money. She’s lucky he didn’t try to kill her, too.”

“Hey,” said Dave, “even I thought he was a nice guy! I went to Hair of the Dog all the time.”

I whispered to Ben, “What’s going to happen to Kim?”

“Grand larceny carries a penalty up to twenty years.” Ben sighed. “All I can say is she’ll have the best legal representation possible. It’s her first offense, but it’s a whopper, even if she does claim she meant to return the car eventually.”

“Can’t Mortie drop the charges?” I asked.

Ben’s lips puckered. “If the state brings charges, only the prosecutor can drop them or reduce them. Who knows? Maybe Kim will get lucky this time.”

I looked at Dave for his opinion. He held up his hands. “That’s in another jurisdiction, up where the car was stolen. I have to get going.” He leaned forward to hug me. “Thanks for your help. I hope I wasn’t too hard on you.”

“You were just doing your job.”

Dave waved to us, and left at a fast clip.

“Did you know Kim had stolen the car?” I asked Ben.

“Nope. Mortie didn’t know a thing about it, either. Remember how Kim slipped away from me that first day? She was off having a little meeting with Brewster. He threatened to expose her as the car thief if she didn’t do what he asked. Kim didn’t tell me until yesterday morning that she had taken her father’s car and handed it over to Brewster.”

Kim ambled over with an Appletini in her hand.

“Did Brewster offer to expunge your debt if you brought him Trixie?” I asked.

“Close. He wanted me to kill her. I didn’t know why, of course.”

I stared at her in horror.

“Oh, don’t look like that. I could never hurt a dog. I love dogs.” She reached down to pet Trixie. “I planned to drive her out in the country, far enough away that she wouldn’t find her way back.”

“That’s horrible!”

“Hey! I was under a lot of pressure,” she whined. “Besides, Trixie got away from me, and everything turned out fine.”

“Holly!” called Zelda.

Good timing. I was ready to let Kim have it.

I joined Zelda, who stood in the center of a cluster of people.

“I had to hand Philip’s phone over to Dave,” said Zelda, “but in anticipation of that, your grandmother and I taped this from Philip’s voice mail.” She hit a button on a small device.

It wasn’t very loud. We all craned our necks to listen as Brewster instructed Tiny on the details of the hit-and-run murder plot.

“On Friday night, you’ll be sitting in the SUV at the end of the street with the lights off. Wear gloves so you don’t leave fingerprints anywhere. Got it? Jerry arrives at his mother’s house for dinner at 7:15 sharp. They’re calling for rain, so that will give you extra cover. You hit Jerry. Take him out. Then drive to the highway and hide the car in the trees. Go back around midnight or one in the morning when there’s no traffic and nobody there to see you, and roll it over the cliff. You understand? Don’t mess up.”

“When do I get my money?” Tiny spoke softly. I felt as though I could hear the doubt in his voice.

It clicked off. The recording ran for less than a minute, very short, but certainly enough to land Brewster in the slammer for a long time.

Mr. Luciano scowled. “Why would this be on Philip’s phone?”

“We wondered about that,” said Zelda. “It’s on Philip’s voice mail. We think it was an accidental pocket dial. You know—when the buttons on your phone are accidentally pushed, and you can hear a conversation going on but they don’t hear you. Except Philip’s voice mail answered the call and taped it.”