Losing Patients (Animal Instincts Book 4) (9 page)

“She said that she really wanted to hear the seminar, but she thought it her duty to tell him.” She snorted over the word “duty” as she said it.

“How did he respond? I would have left after that. I certainly wouldn’t want to hear about dogs and cats in a rescue center.”

“He laughed it off. He said that he had his own divorce funds that he’d stashed away. She didn’t even know that he’d put over $100,000 in a hiding place at his home where she’d never find it. He laughed as he said this.”

“You certainly were able to hear everything. Were they that loud?” I wanted to make sure I had a credible witness to give Detective Green. She was always skeptical of my stories, since she said that I got many of them from talking to animals. She liked her witnesses to be jury proofed.

“Well, I turned up my hearing aids that night. Between their arguments and the background noise of the pets in the clinic, I had trouble hearing what the girl from the rescue center was saying. It was very rude, and I didn’t like it at all.”

I felt my spirits drop as she said this. Her testimony would be questioned because of the mechanical help she had in hearing the conversations. I could hear what the police would say now about it.

“Was there anyone else around who would have heard what was being said? I always like to get two versions. It’s hard to remember things word for word when you’re not really expecting to have to recall it later.”

“The guy who brought the treats. He was standing right there. He had to hear what was going on. He’d have heard every word.”

Allan Hale had heard it all. I didn’t quite understand why that would be a motive for murder. Blanche Graham had heard the words, and she was alive and well. It didn’t make sense why only certain people were being singled out for murder after the event. What had made them special?

I thought about this some more and had a thought. What if Hale had heard about the $100,000 and decided to take it for himself? Then he’d not be just a witness to the scene between the two victims; he’d be someone who was trying to take that money away from them. There was an easy way for me to find out if he had come to the Givens’ home.

I picked up the phone and called Detective Green again. “I have a big favor to ask. Could you review some of the old video feeds of the last few days and tell me if Allan Hale stopped by the Givens’ home? I’m suspecting that he did.”

“Why? What would make you think that he was going to visit the widow? I thought you said she was sleeping with the Adamson man. Now you think she was involved with Hale too? What is up with this case?”

I took a deep breath and let it out. “This is only a theory so far, but I was told that the two original victims were arguing at that rescue seminar. Givens said that he’d hidden $100,000 in the house where no one would ever find it. I’m wondering if Hale didn’t decide to accept that challenge and try to find it on his own.”

“So he would have been killed to stop him from getting the money. That’s a decent motive right there. Do you think that anyone else is going to come after the money? Do you think that Harriett Marksberry went after it as well?” She paused to write something down. The scratches of her pen were audible over the phone. I thought of all the things we heard each day that we didn’t pay attention to. Someone had heard $100,000 and decided to take it for themselves after Givens turned up dead. They likely thought that it would never be found, since presumably the wife wouldn’t have known anything about it.

“If the tapes go back that far, I would suggest looking for her as well. It can’t hurt.”

“So any thoughts on where the money is? Where is it hidden?”

“It’s not hidden. Mrs. Givens found it a few days ago. She called me to ask Nelly what the dog knew about that money. Nelly said that Mr. Givens had put it in the crawl space in the attic one day after work.”  It always helped my business when I was able to tell the press that talking to an animal had helped solve a case. In this murder, Nelly would have told me what I needed to know.

“I’m not even going ask how you figured that out, but she has the money now. I’m betting that one of the victims told those two that Givens had put away money in a hiding spot. Mrs. Givens had all the time in the world after that to look for it.”

I had a sudden idea that made me think we were on the right track. “Maybe that’s why there was so little furniture around. Perhaps she’d torn it apart looking for the money. She’d have to split some cushions and things like that. So it could explain the state of the house.”

“Okay, you’ve sold me,” Sheila said. “I’m going to get someone to review the footage and see what we find.”

I cleared my throat. “Any chance of me getting to hear what happens?” I knew that I was supposed to stay out of the two open murder cases, but now they had all seemed to merge into one big mess.

I busied myself with things around the house, as I now thought that would be a better path towards staying under the radar.I fixed a gutter and trimmed a few bushes. My neighbors probably wondered what had happened to me to get this miraculous change.

After a shower, I fed the dogs, and the cat, who seemed somewhat pleased to see me for once. I worried that she felt overwhelmed in a dog and human house, but so far she held her own. She’d just moved to a higher level like people waiting out a flood. Number 32, who still needed a real name, had begun to get used to her and now spent time that did not include worrying the cat.

The doorbell rang, and I was nearly certain it was Sheila with news of the traffic light footage. I opened the door to find Mr. Adamson standing there. He pushed past me and entered the house.

This was not a good situation. I had not shared my name, and certainly not my address, with the man, which meant he’d gone to the trouble of tracking me down. It’s never good news when people put that much effort into getting in touch with you. I took a few steps back from him into the house.

“Imagine my surprise,” he began, “when I saw the ad for the man who talks to pets and it turned out to be the guy who was looking into the house where my wife died. Especially when I learn that you’ve been over at the Givens house talking to their dog Nelly. Was I supposed to believe it was just a coincidence? Business was just so good that you went looking for a nicer house.”

I shrugged. “No more coincidental than four people who were at a pet rescue seminar who have all ended up dead.”

“Yeah, Dr. Wilson really screwed us over on that one. Why did she have to open her mouth on that?”

I looked around for something to use as a weapon, but the logic that had taken everything sharp or dangerous out of the room to accommodate a new puppy also took anything that could have been used for a weapon out of the room as well. I was going to have to hope that my martial arts training would help. My mother had insisted on years of training to ensure that I wouldn’t be snatched away by the same faceless criminals who had taken Susan. Now I had to wonder if that had all been a charade to cover the fact that she’d either been killed by a family member or had left of her own accord. The way I’d been treated by my family who either blocked my curiosity or spoke in riddles about it angered me, and I decided to channel that anger into my self-defence.

“Maybe she was concerned about the drop in business?” I asked, trying to stretch out a bit without appearing to do so. I tried to make my posture casual, as if I didn’t suspect he was going to try to kill me at any moment.

“It wasn’t like we were going after her. She could have just left us alone.” He looked at me like I wasn’t quite right, but I get that a lot. Anyone who talks to dogs can’t be all right.

“
We
?” I asked, hoping to keep him talking instead of attacking. I wanted the time. In addition to getting ready for a strike against him, I was hoping that Sheila Green might bring over the information on the two homicide victims or the phone log from my missing sister. A police officer with a loaded weapon would be appreciated right about now. The fact that she’d been unreasonably jealous might cause her to come around for an in-person apology. At least I was hoping so at the moment.

“Oh please. You think you’re going to question me into a long discussion of what happened so that you can what – develop some plan to get me out of the house? Nice try. I think you know everything you need to – and more. There was no need for you to get involved. None.”

I shuffled my feet to get into a better stance. So far he hadn’t noticed my moves, which had allowed me some time to get mentally prepared. Normally I only attacked punching bags and kick bags. I was sure that kicking a human being was going to be a very different experience. “Actually I was hired by Dr. Wilson to look into why so many people died.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m sure that Nelly told you all sorts of stories about how Givens beat his wife, right? I heard how she told you that he’d hidden the money in the garage. Nice work. I’m not sure how you pulled that off, but you did. He’d been hiding the money there so he’d have a nest egg for when she divorced him. There was the cash and some off-shore accounts.”

“You could have hired someone to go after those assets if you knew they existed. It would have been better than killing people.” I was ready now. I could visualize a kick to the head and a takedown. I wanted to do it.

“That would have run through all the money. She deserved it as much as he did. It was their money, not his.” He was trembling a little bit now.

“So what happened?”

“The idiot died on the boat. Believe it or not, his death was an accident, just like the police said. He was too stupid to wear a life jacket. He fell in and couldn’t get back to the boat. So then we had all that money, and all we wanted to do was spend it ourselves. Not share it with everyone who knew about it.”

I let my focus go a little to hear the rest of the story, but I kept my body tense and ready to fight. “So you had to kill your wife?”

“In a sense, I told her that I had access to that money and I’d use every cent of it to take everything we had away from her. She killed herself two nights later.” He smiled as he told this story, and I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. The case had devolved into everyone doing themselves in and no one being killed. I doubted his words. Perhaps he thought if I did get out of this that I wouldn’t have anything to pin on him.

“Convenient. So you just killed the other two?” I thought I saw something out the window but I wasn’t sure. I truly hoped that Detective Green was nearby. I was confident in my skills at martial arts, but I was less confident of my ability to avoid being knifed or shot.

“Three,” he said with that same smile on his face. He pulled a gun out from behind his back. I’d suspected something was on him, but he hadn’t turned around. “They both wanted the money. They’d heard all about it from my stupid wife and her stupid husband. Marksberry was more direct. She just came to the door and told us that she wanted the cash. Hale went looking for it while we weren’t home one day. He didn’t find it, but we found him.”

“So now you’re going to shoot me too? The police aren’t going to be pleased with this. You do know that I’ve shared all of what I know with TPD. You won’t be getting away with much here.” I forced my knees to bend slightly and I forced my spine to stay straight. This was the exact type of attack my mother wanted me to be prepared against, and I’d practiced these moves until I knew them by heart.

From out of the corner of my eye, I heard a strange growl. It wasn’t something that I’d heard before, but Number 32 was most obviously pissed. She lunged at Adamson, growling all the way and taking a bite out of his pants. He tried to wave the gun at her, but she let go and ran back to the sofa. He took a wide shot at her, but from the continued growls, I knew she hadn’t been hit.

While he was aiming for the dog, I round-kicked him to the head. He went down, hitting the floor hard. I was furious, and I kicked him again in the ribs for trying to hurt me and trying to hurt my dog. I kicked him twice more before he lifted his gun arm to point the weapon at my chest. Damn, I guess that part of weapons training would have told me to knock the gun away when I was on the offense.

I stood there for a second, hoping for another distraction. Number 32 was still behind the sofa, growling. Bruno was too smart to attack someone with a weapon, and The Countess was somewhere bathing herself.

His arm wavered as he held it, which only served to make it more nerve-wracking. I would rather have a steady hand pointed in my direction than a shaking arm that wasn’t quite in control of a deadly weapon.

He started to sit up. At the same moment, the door opened and Detective Green shouted at me, “How many times have I told you to keep this thing locked?”

Adamson started to turn, but he only got halfway before Sheila had drawn and hit him with a shot between the eyes and then one in the chest. I felt the spray hit me on the face and neck. I knew that I was going to be sick, and had nearly made it out of the room when I started throwing up.

Sheila had apparently called for back-up, because when I returned from the bathroom, other officers had arrived. Judging from her face, I was a mess. I hadn’t been shot, but I felt like I had. My legs were weak. My head throbbed. My stomach was still in turmoil.

“They want to take a few photos of you before you go change. It’s mostly for me, since it shows how close you were to Adamson when I fired. Okay?” She was soft and almost delicate with me as she positioned me against a wall. She nodded for the photographer to come over and take an album of photos while my eyes went wild from the flash.

I was allowed to clean up after that. I showered and dressed and came back downstairs where the police were starting to wind up the physical investigation. Sheila was turning over her weapon to some man who was talking to her. I waited until she was done to ask what was next.

“You’ll have a short interview with one of the officers here. They’re trying to determine what happened. Just tell the truth, and you’ll be fine.” She tried to give me a smile, but she looked scared herself. It made me feel slightly better that my reaction was not totally unusual.

I told the investigator what had happened, explained my attack on him, and then his waving the weapon at me, and then at Sheila before she stopped him. He looked satisfied with my answers and left me at the dining room table, watching the rest of the men walk around my house.

Both Corgis came to find me and licked my hands like they were treats. I got down on the floor and stroked Number 32. She’d saved my life, probably in part, because I’d saved her from a life of popping out puppies and living in a cage barely large enough to hold her. I determined that I needed to find her a name soon, because she deserved something of her very own.

I was still in that position with the dogs when Sheila came around again. She sat down on the floor with me, and Bruno decided to take pity on her. She patted him behind the ears, which made him a lifetime fan. She stayed seated the rest of the evening, talking to me about small things and ignoring what had just happened.

With the death of Mr. Adamson, the four cases were officially closed. Sheila had heard enough of the discussion with Adamson that she was forced to include his statements about me talking to Nelly in the police report. It didn’t do much for her attitude that Adamson had feared what Nelly had told me, but it certainly made the news again, which brought me in a wealth of new business.

While Adamson claimed that the first two deaths were exactly what the coroner had pronounced them to be, the police were more skeptical and labeled both of them homicides in the final investigation. It was all a moot point since he was dead. He’d said nothing that implicated Mrs. Givens, and the police found that the gun he’d used at my house ballistically matched the gun used to kill Marksberry and Hale. So he was on the hook for all of the crimes.

The police had never discovered how Mr. Givens had come across enough money to buy a boat and stash $100,000 in the garage. They’d looked through all of the more obvious illegal methods, but they didn’t turn up anything. Since they couldn’t prove that Givens made it outside of the law, the money all went to his widow. Mrs. Givens had packed up her house and Nelly and left Toledo as soon as the police report was released. I’m hoping she stays single for a long time.

Dr. Wilson had been relieved by the results. While her name had come out in coverage of the crimes, it had only been in the aspect of the original meeting taking place during a seminar at the clinic. There was no speculation over the mortality rate of her patients or any talk of her closing down the clinic. I’d been concerned about the coverage, because I’d had to break her confidence to solve the case.

As for Number 32, she was officially dubbed Bess, short for Elizabeth, the current Queen of England who adores Corgis. If I had The Countess in the house, then I only thought it fair that we should have a monarch as well. She responded quickly to the new name, even though she was still struggling a bit with the house training. She’d become used to her go-where-she-may behavior. However, overall her performance with Adamson had earned her some respect with Bruno and The Countess who tolerated her far better than they had.

For saving my life, Sheila had asked for a second date. I was still leery after the nature of our first date, but I agreed. She made it a much more low-key event than our first date. No fancy restaurant this time around. We went to Shorty’s Roadhouse, which is known for their barbecue. So we were in jeans and casual.

There’s not really a way to eat barbecue in front of a date, so I fiddled with it using a fork and finally cut it into pieces that I could eat without spilling it all over me. I was actually taking enough pride in my appearance to not want sauce all over my shirt, which I’d actually purchased at a department store.

Sheila looked more relaxed than I’d seen her lately, possibly because her department had just closed four cases off the year’s caseload. She had a beer when we got there, and she was working on a second as our food arrived.

After I’d about finished trying to eat my food delicately, she cleared her throat. “I know I’m risking a repeat of our last time by doing this, but I got the phone dump you asked for. It was much easier than I expected. The carrier gave it to me again, citing the original warrant. So I printed it off. That was one of the things I was bringing to you the day Adamson showed up at your house. For some reason, I didn’t think that was a good time to show it to you.”

I laughed nervously. “Yeah, the timing was a bit off on that matter, but you were spot on in saving my life.”

She smiled. “All in a day’s work. So I’m not going to go for a repeat of last time. The phone log is pretty indicative. You’re probably going to understand some more things when you see it. Are you up for that?”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure what she meant by all that, but I wasn’t in the same place as I was before. The last time I’d had a revelation, it had changed my entire paradigm about what I knew about the disappearance. This time, I was trying to uncover more about what had happened using the possibilities that seemed obvious after what I’d learned.

She slid the paper across the table to me, face down. She kept her eyes on my face, as if she was gauging my reaction to what I would see.

I tried to give her a grin to show her that I was okay, but it made me more nervous.

I picked up the paper and turned it over. I ran my eyes down the list of phone numbers that Susan had called in the days before she went missing. Most of them, probably 90 percent of them, were all to the same number and I recognized it. No wonder my mother had not wanted me to see this.

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