Witch One Dunnit? (Rachael Penzra mystery) (21 page)

       “That’s nice of you to say, but...”

       “Not nice of me,” I lied firmly.  “It’s the truth.”

       “Well, I’d like to think so, but those thoughts are for later.  Now we have to find her murderer.  I want him punished. 
Shelly
would want him punished.”

       I saved my breath, although I’m a firm believer that the dead move past vengeance much more quickly than the living.  We aren’t very advanced in our thinking about the continuance of life after death.  What goes around, comes around, slow but sure.  The trouble is, we usually don’t see the results in action.  Besides, I don’t like the idea of murder, if for no other reason than that those still living need protection.  Whatever the motive for Shelly’s death, someday someone else would press those same buttons in the killer.  I believe in prevention, and catching the killer would prevent him from killing anyone else.

       She continued to talk about Shelly, but now her memories were of small incidentals, not at all controversial.  Shelly, in the stories, became a lot more likable.  So did Lucinda.  I was glad they’d had those earlier, fun times.  I had grossly exaggerated my relationship with Molly during those teenage years, but it had certainly had its ugly moments.  We’d had a normal relationship.  The Dewitts, I would guess, hadn’t had many good times the past years.  Time, hopefully, would dull that stretch, and polish the earlier memories. 

       It was getting late when I escaped.  I shouldn’t think of it that way, but escape is what it felt like.  It’s difficult, emotionally, to agonize over someone else’s tragedy.  Certainly her pain far outweighed mine, but it wasn’t easy for me, either.  Cowardly, I admit, but honest to say I wanted to get away from her.  Still, I was glad I’d been there at the right time.  Lucinda looked better…exhausted but more content.  I was tired, too.  It was getting late (past ten) and I had things to do before retiring for the night.  Thinking that, I was torn by guilt again. Lucinda probably couldn’t sleep at all and I was worried about getting my eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. 

       Nevertheless, I was glad to get away.

       I’d driven over, fortunately, because she didn’t forget to send most of the leftovers along with me.  I couldn’t think of them as common leftovers, but my reverence did stop short of buckling them up in the seat belt.  Other than that, once I was away from her house, I gloated over them, picking them over in my mind – what to have first, what to leave for lunch tomorrow.  My gluttonous thoughts kept me company on the way home, and absorbed my attention when I parked in the driveway and unloaded my goodies without putting the car in the garage.  I reasoned that it wouldn’t hurt it to sit out for one mild summer night. 

       I wanted to get my treats inside.  There were two big bags full, although some of the bulk consisted of special breads.  But there were plenty of specialty goodies, too.  The thought of them had kept me listening with attention and sympathy to Lucinda for over three hours.  I’d like to think my inner decency would have made me listen politely one way or another, but the fact there was a reward at the end of the tunnel hadn’t hurt my attitude in the least.  I’ve admitted before that my response to stress is to eat for comfort.  Other people stop eating when they’re nervous or upset.  I nibble, I munch, I cram.  I never
stop
eating because of nerves.  I wish I did.  There might be a better relationship between my body and my mirror.
       Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins.  Rightly so.  It’s an insidious thing, growing from a healthy appetite to a monster in its own right.  My mind was so filled with thoughts of my food, that I was caught completely off-guard.

       Whoever attacked me had been waiting in the garage, no doubt tucked behind the stack of boxes I still hadn’t emptied after the move from Nevada to Balsam Grove.  So in a way, I guess, I can say my gluttony saved my life.  He, or she, had to maneuver around the junk to get to me.  I’d hurried out of the car, arms loaded.  If I’d been struck while in the garage, I wouldn’t have been rescued.

       As it was, it took another devoted food-fan to save me, but I didn’t figure that out until later.  At the moment, I felt a tremendous blow on the back of my head and fell forward, dropping to my hands and knees, the large bags of food dropping at my feet.  I remember trying to get away from the pain, trying to figure out what was happening to me.  It didn’t occur to me someone had hit me.  I thought the sky was falling or something equally frightening.  It wasn’t until the hands went across my nose and mouth that I began to understand what was happening.  Someone was trying to kill me.

       My karate lessons paid off, neglectful as I’d been about practicing.  I was always going to start lessons again soon. I did manage to collect my wits and use my elbow and my forearm well enough to break the first assault.  I still wasn’t thinking clearly, though, and I didn’t follow up on my momentary advantage.  My ears were ringing and I was hearing secondary sounds that were disturbing what little concentration I had.  Strange, slurping, shuffling noises. 

       I whimpered loudly, trying to escape.  The noise slid out of my throat without my having any control over it, just a small animal sound of fear and pain.  The results were extraordinary.

       The disconnected snuffling noises ceased and a deep rumble replaced them, followed by a frenzy of deep barking that almost gave me a heart attack.  One part of my mind told me it was a dog.  Another part, more primitive, screamed “wolf!”  Again, I knew the animal was not my
attacker
, but I still wanted to get away from it.  I heard scrambling sounds.  Apparently my attacker wanted to get away from the creature as badly as I did. 

       The dog (I realized by then that it actually
was
one) chased the intruder a short distance, barking all the way, and then headed back to me as my would-be-killer fled into the darkness.  I was following all this action almost entirely by sound.  With the first confusion from the head blow, my blindness seemed natural enough to my spinning mind.  But then I understood that it wasn’t my eyesight that was gone.  Someone had broken the outdoor light that automatically turned on when someone approached.  I’d had enough moonlight not to notice the lack of light until I got under the arbor that led from garage to house…

       Okay, so I’d been too absorbed in my goodies to notice.  I wasn’t used to an outside light, had never had one at my old apartment, and since moving I had hardly been out at night.  The attack had happened just as I noticed it was darker than it should have been.

       My canine-rescuer, I found, was not returning to harm me.  Its target was the food I’d brought home.  I staggered to my feet as the creature started in where it had left off in order to respond to my whimpers of pain and fear.  I thought of chasing it off, my scattered mind still obsessed with those treats, and rewarding the brave animal with something it would like just as well, and which, I piously told myself, would be better for it.  I admit to vast relief when I realized all the dog had gotten into was a long, redolent loaf of bread.  Only later did I realize I should have picked up the plastic bag that had been torn open.  Turned out it was eaten, too.  It showed up in his poop after an apparently uneventful trip through his innards.

       It hurt to bend back down and pick up the bags, but I managed.  Considering that I’d apparently managed to set them down fairly carefully as I collapsed, I felt I’d earned it all.  It also made it clear exactly how greedy I can be.  Nevertheless, it was mine, all mine.  I got inside somehow and put the bags up on the counter, before returning to the doorway and calling the dog in.  It checked to see it hadn’t missed anything from the treasure trove of gourmet-crumbs and then trotted happily into the house with me.  Not a discriminating dog, apparently, nor one who was afraid of humans.  I locked the door behind it, took two steps away, and turned back to double check I’d locked it correctly.

       I stopped short of shoving the refrigerator in front of it, but I did consider the idea.  The attacker was probably long gone, and wouldn’t be back tonight, but I wasn’t in the mood to take foolish chances.

Looking back, I’m glad it had been dark outside, and I hadn’t gotten a good close look at the dog before inviting it into the house.  I’d been able to tell from its silhouette that it was a large animal, but what I hadn’t been able to tell in the dark was that it was also an
ugly
dog.  And I mean
really
ugly. 
Scare-the-pants-off-you
ugly.  Fortunately, by the time I figured that out, I also realized he was wagging his tail so hard I thought he might dislocate a hip. And besides, he was grinning. 

I opened the refrigerator to dig out anything appealing I could find.  The starving creature ended up eating a leftover hamburger, two raw eggs, a dab of potato salad, and two slices of bread, and then sat down and watched me while I belatedly called the police.

       While I waited for them to arrive, I had time to recover slightly.  I held a home-made ice-pack to the back of my head (a bag of frozen peas) and tried to think.  The head blow had been more incapacitating than fatal.  I guessed it had been a sandbag, or something large and not completely solid.  It didn’t take much to decide I was meant to be knocked out just enough to destroy my ability to fight, then suffocated, at least enough to render me helpless.  Then what?  Did whoever it was really think he or she could stuff me into the car in the garage and pretend I’d asphyxiated myself?  Something like that?  Pretend I’d taken a midnight swim and drowned?  Whoever it was needed to read more mystery novels.  Modern forensics wouldn’t let him get away with anything that simple.  Would it?  How thoroughly would they check into it if I died?

       Or, horrifying thought, had he planned to stab my body thirteen times and leave it for Patsy to find?

       The dog reclaimed my attention, wanting to be petted.  I patted him gingerly.  As I’ve said, he was huge.  And less than attractive.  He looked like a cross between a bulldog and some
really
ugly breed.  Truth be told, I couldn’t think of a breed that was ugly enough to have created such an ...
interesting
looking animal.

I called it a “he” simply because of the size.  My head still throbbed too much to bend over and verify my guess. 

       “Good dog,” I told him.  He looked at the bag on the counter.  “Not that good,” I informed him, placing the full bags into my now almost empty refrigerator. 

       Closer inspection showed him (her?) to be collarless, too thin, and probably quite young.  Big, half-grown dogs are all too often dropped off in the boondocks.  Their owners, finding themselves with a bigger responsibility than they realized, had a tendency to kid themselves into thinking
someone
would give the animal a home.  Occasionally someone did.  Too often the dog ended up dying miserably from malnutrition and bad weather, or being hit by a car.  They might even be killed by wild animals.  Their owners would be far kinder to pay the extra fee and have the animal put permanently to sleep if they couldn’t find him a home.  It’s animal abuse and lack of a sense of responsibility…and yes, I do tend to preach on the subject. 

       Sheriff Alberts finally arrived.  The dog raised a huge rumpus when the squad car pulled into the driveway.  He was definitely a bass.  Nothing of the tenor about him.  I swear the house vibrated.  The tiny part of me picturing myself with a new pet faded rapidly.  I lived in a store.  Customers would be in and out all day.  People came and went steadily in this town.  I couldn’t have the hound of the Baskervilles letting loose at every unusual sound in the neighborhood.

       And if that face of his took one of my customers by surprise, well frankly, I wasn’t that well insured.

       “I took the call myself,” Sheriff Alberts told me, his gentle voice and large size completely dominating the dog.  My hero groveled at the feet of the Law.  He obviously liked men.  Maybe he was a she after all. “What happened?  Just got a call saying you’d been attacked here.”

       “Actually it was right outside,” I explained the situation to him, omitting only the unnecessary details of my food fetish.  I did concede I wasn’t paying attention because my arms were full and it was so dark. 

       “It didn’t strike you as odd your light was out?”

       “Well, just at the last second, once I’d stepped under the grape arbor.  I’m not used to having a light outside the door.  And I’ve hardly been out after dark since I’ve been here.  There was plenty of light from the moon at first.”  I hung my head in shame, figuratively.  Literally I was being cautious about how I moved it.  I was beginning to think whiplash was a distinct possibility.

       He called in another squad car and suggested I go to the hospital to get checked out at the emergency room.  I whined about how I was much better now, no problem.  I hate doctors and hospitals.  I was sore, but didn’t honestly feel I’d have more than a sore neck and tender scalp to show for my experience.  When he continued to insist on a trip to the emergency room, I realized he wanted to be sure I had actually
been
attacked.  Despite the fact that the implication was both infuriating and humiliating, it got me to agree to go, although when he offered me a driver, I refused.  I hadn’t much pride left, so I was salvaging all I could.  “I’ll take the dog,” I told him.