Play Dead (30 page)

“What now?” I asked myself aloud. Sadly, I
was getting used to the thought that all visits from my fellow humans were
going to wind up as confrontations. I parked nearby, rushed into my office, and
found Kaitlyn’s husband pacing the floor.

At the sound of the door opening, he
pivoted to face me. “You think you’re smart, don’t you?” His normally haggard
features were even more so now. He had a naturally heavy beard, which had two
days’ growth, and the dark circles around his sunken eyes were more noticeable
than ever.

“Pardon?”

“Kaitlyn called that real estate agent I’d
been working with and said that she wasn’t going to owe me a penny for the
house. That we have less equity in the house than my car is worth! I bought
that car with my own money after I left her! That car is mine!”

“Yes, and I’m sure you feel the same
ownership over your car that she feels regarding her house. She’s been paying
that mortgage by herself since you left.”

“You bitch! You’d better watch your
backside, ‘cause I’ll get you for this! That’s a promise!”

With what must have been tremendous
reluctance, Russell Greene, black eye and all, emerged from his office and
asked, “Is there a problem here?”

“Yeah, man!” Bill shouted, pointing at me.
“She’s the problem! But she won’t be for long!” Bill stormed out the door and
up the cement steps.

Moments later, we could hear him revving
his engine and trying to peel out of my parking space. Then there was an almost
instantaneous honk, the squeal of brakes, and a crash. We both raced through
the door and up the steps, just in time to see Bill emerging from his beloved
vehicle, which had smashed into a tree. Another driver in a minivan called out
his window to Bill, “I’ll call the police on my cell phone.”

“Did you see that?” Russell asked in awe.

“Just goes to show. There is a God. And He’s
got a sense of humor.”

My phone was ringing as I returned to my
office. The instant I answered, a sexy male voice said, “Allida, this is Dennis
Corning. I need to talk to you. I’m on my car phone and can be there in ten.
That all right by you?”

“Sure, why not?” I hung up.
Come on
down. Yell at me. Threaten me. Everyone else does.
I was beginning to feel
resigned to my own fate, which bothered me immensely, but I wasn’t sure I could
do much to change my mood.

“Another customer?” Russell asked
hopefully as he returned to his office.

“Another hostile man who happens to own a
dog.”

Russell stopped and glanced nervously at
our entrance. This was so demeaning. All Russell ever saw of me was men coming
into my office to shout at me. Russell said, “I have a meeting with some
prospective customers to attend. Want me to postpone it so I can stick around
and help you circle the wagons?”

“Nah. I’ll be fine. If nothing else, the
police will be outside soon to help with the accident.”

He offered again to stay, but let me
convince him I’d be fine alone. I had a feeling he was going to have a hard
enough time winning this job despite his black eye without having to reschedule
at the last minute. It finally struck me
that he’d returned my office to its former neatness while I’d been
at George’s—and I hadn’t even thanked him.

A few minutes later, Dennis arrived,
looking dapper as ever in an impeccable Italian suit. He waggled his thumb over
his shoulder as he entered my office. “Did you know there’s a grown man,
sitting on the curb and crying, just outside your door?”

“He just crashed his Mercedes.”

“Poor devil,” he said, his voice rife with
empathy.

“If you came here to berate me over my
giving Sage to someone—”

“No, no. That’s not at all why I’m here.
Quite the opposite, in fact. I had a lengthy talk with my wife. Seems I owe you
an apology. My wife thinks you’re brilliant. We’re going to refer our friends
to you. In the meantime, I wondered if we could also hire you to help us select
the right collie puppy for our family.”

“Yes, I’d be happy to.” His mention of his
wife brought to the forefront a niggling thought I’d almost forgotten—Susan
Coming’s almost desperate need to explain how Beth Gleason had known to call
them
about adopting Sage. Beth had possessed one of those long-limbed bodies
that men seem to find attractive, she’d come from a wealthy family, and she’d
had terrible taste in men.

He nodded. “Well, I left my engine running
and I’d better get out of there. I don’t want anyone to swipe my Beamer.” He
pivoted and reached for the door handle.

“Were you and Beth Gleason lovers?” I
asked, in a rare show of bluntness that froze him where he stood.

He turned toward me. His face gave me my
answer. It bore the look of a dog, caught in a major act of disobedience. “What
makes you ask that?”

“Just some things Beth said to me before
she died.”

He jammed his hands in his pockets and rocked
on his heels for a long moment. Finally, he shrugged and said,
“It was just an innocent fling. A one night
stand. Don’t tell my wife, okay? That’d break her heart.”

“I won’t say a word, provided you can
convince me you didn’t kill Beth.”

“I
didn’t
kill her! What possible
motive would I have had? Jeez, if I killed every woman I slept with, I’d be
right up there with Son of Sam.”

My phone rang, and I picked up the handset
instead of responding to Dennis. Before I could get as much as a hello out, my
mother shouted at me, “Allida! Sage is gone! He got out of the yard somehow.
Maybe he jumped the fence. I just don’t know. I’m locking Doppler inside the
house and heading out now with Pavlov to try to track him down. Come home right
away!”

This was my personal version of hell:
driving a long distance through slow traffic to be able to join the useless
search for my missing dog. I tried to tell myself that Sage had simply leapt
the fence. If so, we would find him. A collie was an unusual and unmistakable
sight. We would be able to talk to neighbors and trace his route. To keep my
maniacal driving to a minimum, I mollified myself over and over again with the
image of Sage leaping the six foot wire-mesh fence surrounding our yard. It was
possible. Just extremely unlikely.

I reached the Boulder-Longmont Diagonal,
where traffic normally averaged ten miles above the speed limit but now seemed
slow. If the killer had Sage, what would his next move be? The answer to that
question was painfully obvious. My eyes filled with tears. I swiped them away
impatiently and shouted at myself, “Think! Use your brain!”

How long would he keep Sage alive? He’d
killed Hannah Jones with her own gun, but since that was ruled a suicide, he
couldn’t have possession of the gun now. He’d stabbed Beth Gleason, and as far
as I knew, he’d used her weapon—her switchblade. This weapon he’d kept.

The cars ahead of me were braking for the
red light at the intersection in front of the IBM plant. I smacked the heel of
my hand against the steering wheel in frustration, but stopped the car, my
heart pounding.

“He probably doesn’t have a gun,” I told
myself aloud. Grisly as the thought was, it would be difficult to kill a collie
with a knife. He’d tried to poison Sage yesterday, but Pavlov had foiled him.
He might try that again now. If so, we might have some time. Sage would be too
distressed to eat for quite a while.

“Oh, God,” I murmured. Here I was,
clinging to the hope that Sage was suitably upset not to eat—which would
make him bark and call more attention to himself and possibly force the killer’s
hand.

I was driving way too fast now. Damn! The
one time when I’d welcome getting pulled over so that I could try and enlist
the police’s help, and there were no patrol cars to be seen.

Traffic on the streets surrounding
Longmont was bumper-to-bumper, and once again I lost precious minutes. My mom
was as much of an expert in retrieving lost dogs as anyone could be. She would
be out canvassing the neighborhood—talking to the postman, neighbors, people
in parks. Pavlov was a good tracker, but I’d only trained her for the basics.
She wouldn’t be able to follow Sage’s scent if the killer put Sage in that
damned white car and drove off with him.

What about that car? Chet Adler, Dennis
Corning, Keith/ Alex, Bill Wayne, Joel Meyer, George Haggerty, John O’Farrell.
None of them drove a white sedan. Yet I could not believe that there was
somebody behind all of this who’d never come into contact with me. Ever since
my spot on Tracy’s radio show, the evil acts had seemed to be choreographed
around me. The killer had been keeping a careful watch, to learn what I knew or
didn’t know.

The white sedan must be a rental. The
police could probably trace all of the white rental cars currently on loan
throughout the area, which could take several hours, if not days. There had to
be a faster way. At last, I reached the perimeter of Berthoud and slowed down.
If Sage were—pray to God—left to his own devices, he would head
toward Boulder, probably toward Hannah Jones’s house. Each time I spotted
pedestrians, I pulled over and asked if they’d seen a collie within the last
hour. No luck.

I reached the house. I pulled up in front,
shut off the engine, snatched the keys out of the ignition, and raced up the
brick walkway. I unlocked the door and threw it open, yelling, “Mom? Pavlov?”
No answer. Doppler rushed up to greet me, his tail wagging madly, but I dashed
to the kitchen, slid open the back door and again called, “Mom?”

The yard was empty. Doppler followed my
every step, and as I locked the back door again, he lay down on his back,
desperate for a show of affection. I knelt and patted him. “Good dog, Doppler.
I’ll get Sage back.”

Yet how? I wanted to call in the blasted
cavalry.

I headed through the front door to try to
find Mom and Pavlov. Apparently having spotted my car, they were coming up the
walkway as I locked the door behind me. Pavlov’s ears were pricked up and she
moved with noticeable tense energy.

“This is all my fault,” Mom said without
preamble. I hadn’t seen her this crestfallen since her beloved golden retriever
had died. “Pavlov and Doppler wanted to be inside and Sage wanted to stay out
back. I didn’t have Pavlov out there with him.”

I shook my head and met her at the porch
steps. “We can assess blame later. But how did this happen, Mom? You had the
two dogs inside with you, right? But Sage never barked? And next thing you
knew, he was gone?”

“Yes. I heard the sound of the pump going
like a faucet had been turned on, full blast. I discovered it was the tap in front
of the house. I went to shut it off and saw that someone had run a hose into
the basement window well. I assumed it was some kids playing a prank, and I ran
down into the basement to check for flooding. Pavlov and Doppler followed me. I
got preoccupied cleaning up the water, and I forgot about Sage, alone in the
backyard.”

“Jeez,” I murmured. The kidnapping had
been carefully orchestrated. There went the slim hope that Sage had merely
leapt the fence. I felt I had to say something encouraging. “Maybe Sage managed
to run away from the guy.”

Just then, the neighbors across the street
gave a little wave as they started to pull into their driveway. We gestured at
them to wait and, Pavlov in tow, jogged over to them. They both rolled down
their windows. I was too upset to remember their names.

“Have you seen our collie?” Mom asked,
leaning to look in the window on the driver’s side. In the meantime, I rounded
the car to the passenger side where Mrs. Neighbor sat.

“That man took him,” their daughter piped
up from the backseat. She was in kindergarten, I knew, so she must have been
about five.

Her parents turned around and looked at
her. “What do you mean?”

“I was playing. I saw him. He was a big
man. He had the Lassie’s mouth in a cage.”

“You mean the dog was in a muzzle?” I
asked her.

“Uh huh.” She nodded at me. “The Lassie
didn’t want to go, but the man was dragging him. Then he picked him up and
pushed him in the backseat.”

“Did this man see you, Melanie?” her
mother asked.

“No. I was playing. With stick boats. In
the ditch.”

“Oh, Melanie! How many times do I have to
tell you—”

“What did this man look like?” I asked,
cutting off the woman and her ill-timed lecture.

“He was big. He had brown hair.”

“What color was his car?”

“It was white.”

I straightened. Mom thanked the neighbors
while they chattered away with apologies about not having known anything about
this till just now. Mom said that, yes, it would be helpful if they contacted
Sheriff Millay on our behalf. Then they pulled into their garage, leaving Mom and
me standing there in disbelief.

“What have I done?” Mom said in a
frightened whisper. She whirled on a heel and headed back toward the house. She
still had a grip on Pavlov’s leash, and the dog obediently trotted off after
her. Mom sank down to sit on the top step of the front porch. I caught up to
her, wishing I had something encouraging to offer.