4 Woof at the Door (13 page)

“Quite all right.” Damian straightened his shoulders. He probably outweighed Russell and me combined, yet he was perfectly fit. He turned his gaze to me. “Anyway, Allida, I realize I was out of line yesterday. I don’t let my wolves into Boulder neighborhoods, and I’m completely opposed to suburbanites owning wolf hybrids. If I’d had any idea what my employee was doing behind my back, I’d have fired him on the spot. Maybe, if I’d caught on to him sooner, none of this would have happened.”

“What did Larry Cunriff have to say for himself?” I asked.

A flicker of anger passed across Damian’s handsome features. “Nothing. I can’t find the guy.”

“He’s missing?”

“Hasn’t been back to his apartment since yesterday, so far as I can tell.”

I had the feeling that Russell was glowering behind me, but ignored it and asked, “Is that unusual? Did you notify the police?”

“No, and yes. It’s not at all unlike Larry to disappear for a few days without telling anyone. But I did talk to the police about it, just because somebody had to have gotten Atla out of her cage last night, and if it was Larry, he’s partly responsibility for a man’s death.”

My conscience gnawed at me. Damian apparently still believed his wolf had killed Ty Bellingham, but the police had asked me not to refute that for the time being. I said nothing, merely nodded.

“I’d better be going.” He looked past my shoulder. “It was nice to meet you, Russell. And again, Allida, I truly am sorry. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to make it up to you.”

“Could you possibly give me a tour of your facilities sometime?” I blurted out.

He smiled. “Anytime.” He reached into his back pocket, grabbed his wallet, and gave me his business card. “Just call. I’ll introduce you to my dogs, too.”

“What kind of dogs do you have?” I couldn’t help but ask, though I could feel Russell grimacing behind me.

Damian grinned. “Two black labs and four mixed breeds.”

Six dogs, plus however many exotic animals. Must be quite the menagerie. Mostly in jest, I said, “If you have any trouble handling the dogs, be sure and let me know.”

He chuckled and said, “If I do, you’ll be the first person I call. Hope to see you again soon.”

Russell had returned to his office by the time I turned around. The air had a certain electric quality to it that reminded me of how things felt just before my former fiance and I were about to erupt into a big fight. I counted to ten, trying to put myself in Russell’s place. If somebody had come into his office apologizing for urging him to crawl through a small opening with a wolf on the other side, I’d probably intrude on the conversation as well.

He was sitting at his desk, but had pushed his chair back from the keyboard when I entered his office. He didn’t look up at me. “Allida, I wish you wouldn’t flirt when I’m standing right there.”

“I wasn’t flirting!”

“At least be honest about it!” His eyes met mine, now, and they showed more hurt than anger. “You have the hots for this guy, and he’s obviously everything I’m not! There’s no way I can compete with”—he gestured in the direction Damian had gone—“the Brawny Paper Towel Man, short of joining the circus as a lion tamer.”

“Well, before you do, you might want to note that all I said was that I wanted to come see his facilities. I was talking about the animal cages. I did ask him what type of dogs he had, but that just doesn’t qualify as flirting in my line of work!”

“I heard every word you two said. I’m talking about the subtext. You’re not being honest with yourself or with me if you think that’s all that was going on. Didn’t you notice the way he…?”

Russell stopped and combed his fingers through his hair. He winced as the action caused him to move his right arm. He kicked the drawer of his desk shut with a force that knocked his lamp over and rattled the picture frame above his desk. “I hate this. I hear words coming out of my mouth, and I don’t like the guy saying them.”

He paused and searched my eyes. With a sigh, he continued, “Maybe it would be best if we stopped seeing each other for a while.”

“You want us to stop seeing each other?” I felt torn halfway between despair and fury. What was the sense in all these words we have at our disposal when I was incapable of expressing my feelings? “Then why did you give me the roses? Why did you kiss me ten minutes ago?”

“Why did you give another man all those longing gazes immediately after you kissed me? You obviously want the freedom to be with other men, so I’m making it easy for you.”

“You don’t know what I want!”

“Then tell me.”

I hesitated. My throat was tightening and I doubted I could keep my voice steady if I tried to explain. The truth was, I wanted Russell, but with Damian Hesk’s appreciation for animals. That wasn’t going to happen, and it wasn’t fair to either of us for me to wish it so. Instead of being honest, I called his bluff. “If you want to take a break, that’s fine by me.”

“I’ll keep the door shut between our offices whenever possible.”

“Good idea.”

“Good. See ya.” He shut the door.

I dropped down into my chair at my desk. The fragrant roses were making a mockery of me. In the short time since I’d left my desk, they seemed to have spread out to take every available inch of space. There was no sense in pretending to work, and I had over an hour till my first customer call was due at my office.

I decided to go to visit Cheshire Bellingham and ask about their missing pit bull. I stormed to my car, positively fuming. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, it occurred to me that none of this was the way I’d wanted or expected for the conversation with Russell to turn out.

Or was it?

Part of me wanted to know more about Damian. Was I going to deny to myself that I was both attracted to and intrigued by the man? Maybe he was every bit as decent, gentle, and loving as Russell. Or maybe he was just a handsome, shallow guy who happened to love animals. Russell was right. It wasn’t fair for me to be supposedly in an exclusive relationship with him, while secretly enticed by another man. I couldn’t be truly in love with Russell and still have all of these doubts. That didn’t mean I never
would
be in love with him, but I had a wandering eye that he’d picked up on. However lousy that might make me feel about myself, it was there and was undeniable.

While driving across town to Way Cool Collectibles, my spirits were sagging. I couldn’t seem to shut out my thoughts about Russell. I decided to drown them out instead and tuned in my radio to Tracy’s station.

“…that we’re devoting this show to discussing wolves…”

“Damn it, Tracy! You drive me nuts!” I hollered and banged my steering wheel. This was so typical of her. There were a lot of things I truly liked about Tracy Truett, but her tendency to exploit local news for the benefit of her ratings was definitely not one of them.

“…have any right to own wolf hybrids. This comes on the heels of all the news about a wolf mauling a Boulder man, Tyler Bellingham. I understand our next caller has quite a personal connection to the story. Hello, Janine. You’re on the air.”

“Yeah, hello, Tracy.” The woman’s voice had a deep, almost reedy quality to it. “My ex-husband, Damian, is the owner of the wolf that killed that man. I just want to say that it wasn’t the wolf’s fault, it was Damian’s.”

“You blame your ex-husband for the man’s death?” Tracy asked in incredulous tones.

“This whole thing was bound to happen, sooner or later. He never should have kept such a vicious animal alive in the first place.”

Chapter 10

I turned up the volume of my radio so that I wouldn’t miss a word.

“So let me get this straight, Janine,” Tracy said. “You both knew that this wolf was dangerous, yet your ex-husband insisted on keeping him?”

“That’s right. The wolf that did this, Kaia, was a vicious animal, yet Damian insisted on treating him like a poodle. He’d bring him practically everywhere he went. That’s what busted up our marriage. The wolf bit my arm one day for no reason and should have been put to sleep. Damian refused to do it.”

This had me so puzzled I pulled over rather than try to concentrate on both the conversation plus my driving. What I knew, but Janine apparently didn’t, was that Ty Bellingham’s throat had been cut with a knife, and that the wolf in question was a female named Atla, not the male named Kaia. And Kaia hadn’t struck me as “vicious.” Certainly not when compared to Doobie after Ty whipped him into attack mode.

“How did Kaia get into the victim’s house?” Tracy asked next.

“You’d have to ask Damian that question. All I know is that the man is irresponsible. Now his inactions have led to somebody’s death. My break’s over. I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Can I just—” Tracy paused. I got the feeling she was listening to a dial tone, which we in the radio audience couldn’t hear. “We’ve got to take a commercial break now. My last question to Janine would have been ’Where is the wolf that did this right now?’ For all we know, that wolf could be running around loose in Boulder. Perhaps that’s a question we will all have to worry about, next time we’re out walking the dog.”

“Jeez, Tracy!” What a load of crap! Talk about playing up to people’s fears and emotions. In a foul mood, I clicked off the radio, signaled, and pulled back into the traffic that snaked around the 29th Street Mall. I wondered idly where Janine Hesk worked, but reminded myself that locating her wasn’t my concern.

What was my concern, due to my sense of professional duty, was to check into the missing pit bull’s whereabouts. That discovery could verify my theory that Ty Bellingham had been staging some sort of wolf-versus-dog fight when he died. The police had acted noncommittal about that theory when I expressed it to them yesterday afternoon.

Suddenly, the image of Ty’s living room returned to me with almost as much clarity as the physical view through my windshield. The furniture had been moved and the curtains drawn so that Ty could stage the fight, perhaps take photographs or video in progress. That would explain much of Ty’s strange attitudes about dog ownership. He’d been building a champion dog fighter in Doobie and didn’t want me to train the dog, for fear that it would curb Doobie’s dominance instincts.

Then, yesterday, Ty or someone else could have nabbed the one wolf of Damian’s that wasn’t used to being around people. If my theory was correct, the killer could be a partner in the dog-fighting ring.

I had a little bit of trouble locating “Way Cool Collectibles,” but finally did. It was at the tail end of a mall-ette, otherwise known as a “strip mall,” but my coined term was nicer sounding. A little brass bell jingled as I opened the door and then stepped into a room so overloaded with cloying incense that it would immediately fell a canary.

The store had no shortage of customers—five, not counting me. I wondered if this was why Chesh Bellingham had rushed to open up the store despite her husband’s death; her merchandise was collectibles, and few things made collectibles more valuable than the untimely and dramatic death of their previous owner.

Four of the customers were teenagers and seemed to be two couples who knew one another. They were giggling amongst themselves as they checked out the strobe light and the black light in one corner of the store. That corner was partitioned off with black velvet curtains, and it made me nervous when they shut the curtains behind them. There was also a very obvious wide-angle mirror on a stand in the corner above it, making it immediately apparent that the person behind the counter could see what was going on inside. Not that that would discourage anyone who wanted to “make out” in a store in the first place.

Cheshire was involved in a spirited conversation with an elderly man. If she recognized me, she gave no outward sign. I walked up to speak to her. Though the man was doing his best to keep his voice down, his face was red with anger.

“You listen to me! I know what you two did, and I want my money back! You hear me?”

“Mr. Melhuniak, I’ve had about enough of this! My husband died less than twenty-four hours ago, and all you can do is accuse him of ripping you off! Where is your compassion?”

“Where was yours when you two stole from me? Besides, you’re the one who chose to open for business before his body was even cold! I’ve been patient enough! You know just as well as I do that Ty got exactly what he deserved.”

“How dare you say—”

“Your husband has pulled these kinds of shenanigans in our neighborhood for the last ten years. It’s high time somebody—”

She held up both palms and alerted him to my presence with her eyes. “If you’ll excuse me, I have customers.”

Drat! I was dying to know what kind of “shenanigans” Ty had pulled in the neighborhood.

The irate man gestured with his chin at the wide-angle mirror. “Yeah? And some of them are having quite the time of it in your spit-swappin’ booth.”

“Hey!” Chesh yelled in the direction of the booth. “You cut that out in there! Get out of here, now, or I’m calling your parents!”

“As if you’re someone to talk,” Mr. Melhuniak grumbled. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyers! Count on it!”

The man flashed an indignant what-are-you-looking-at glare my way, then left, throwing the door open so hard the bell nearly came off its mounting. I recognized him. He was the old man I’d nearly collided with outside Ty Bellingham’s house yesterday. The two couples emerged from the tiny corner, wearing I’m-so-cool smirks on their faces. They sauntered out of the store.

Cheshire cleared her throat, but otherwise seemed unfazed by what I’d witnessed. Today her long blond hair was in braids, and she wore a black armband over her loose fitting off-white blouse, and denim bellbottoms. “Allida. Hello. Welcome to our…my store.”

“Thanks. I, uh, couldn’t help overhearing your conversation.” Nor could I help but notice that she was in one of her clear-headed moods. Was this because her husband was no longer around to insist upon her acting like a druggie? “Is everything all right?”

She gave a wave at the door where the angry man had just left. “Oh, you mean him? Sure. He’s got this ridiculous notion that I”—she held up her hands and lowered her voice—“owe him something because Ty had cashed in on a valuable collector’s set of Beatle statuettes that he was foolish enough to sell us at his garage sale. Like, what are we supposed to have done, warn him to get an appraisal before we buy stuff? It’s both buyer- and seller-beware when it comes to garage sales.”