Cheated By Death (29 page)

I yanked his arm behind him, made him howl.
“You can tell me!”

“No. Only the doctor. He’s got money—doctors
always got money.”

“He won’t pay you a dime. You’re going to
spill your guts to the cops. Come on!”

He started to struggle and I slugged him, a
blow that sent him reeling. “That’s for breaking my headlight the
other night!”

I hauled him to his feet, shoved him forward
and marched him toward the house and down the driveway. The
startled rent-a-cop got out of his cruiser. “What the hell—?”

“Have you got handcuffs?”

He grabbed at his belt, unhooked the cuffs. I
took them, clamped them around Holtzinger’s wrists, then yanked
open the cruiser’s passenger side door, shoved Pony-tail in.

“The Amherst police have a warrant out for
his arrest. Call ’em—then get this piece a shit outta here.”

Winded, I started back for the house, only
then realizing that Holly hadn’t followed us down the drive.

“Holly!”

No dog.

I headed for the backyard again. My gut
tightened as I saw a light-colored mound near the bushes where I’d
fought with Holtzinger. I broke into a jog, skidded to a halt, and
found Maggie’s Golden Retriever lying on her side.

Crouching, I placed a hand on her chest, felt
the damp stickiness.

Holly whimpered.

At least she was still alive.

The knife lay in the grass, inches from her,
glinting dully in the scant light.

I lifted her—all sixty-plus pounds. She let
out a tortured wail as I staggered across the grass toward the back
door.

I must’ve been gone five or six minutes—where
the hell was Maggie?

I found the door locked, and didn’t remember
doing it. I leaned on the bell and yelled to the guard at the end
of the driveway, who seemed to have gone deaf.

I waited and waited. Holly was panting, her
head lolling. She weighed a ton. Maybe I should just put her in the
back seat of my car. Only I didn’t have my keys.

“Hang on, girl.”

I sat down on the step, my newly cleaned
jacket stained scarlet again. I reached up and kept my bloodied
hand on the bell.

The pantry light flashed on. Dressed in a
dark velour bathrobe, a sleepy-eyed Richard opened the door. “What
the hell—?”

“Lou Holtzinger stabbed the dog!”

I struggled to my feet. He held the door open
and I crashed into the house, stamped through the butler's pantry
and into the kitchen, where I dumped Holly's limp body on the
kitchen table. “Do something!” I yelled.

“I’m not a vet.”

“Then stop the bleeding ’til we can get her
to one!”

Richard grabbed clean dishtowels from a
drawer. “It’s not an artery, or it would be spurting.” He wadded
the cloth, pawed through Holly’s long hair searching for the wound.
He tossed me one of the towels. “There’re two wounds. Her chest and
her leg. Grab the phone book. Find an Emergency Vet.”

I wiped my shaking hands, and then flipped
through the yellow pages. “The guard’s calling the cops. We got
Holtzinger handcuffed in the back seat of the cruiser.”

“Jeff?” Maggie called. She entered the room
and stopped short at the sight of her bloodied dog stretched out on
the table. “Ohmigod!”

“Help me, Maggie,” Richard said, the epitome
of professional calm. “Get more dishcloths from the drawer.”

A voice came on the line. “Animal Emergency
Care.”

“My dog’s been stabbed. Can I bring her right
over?”

Maggie held the dishcloth, tears already
streaming down her pale cheeks.

“We’re making a pressure bandage,” Richard
told her, his voice calm. “It’ll slow the bleeding until we can get
her to a vet.”

The voice on the phone asked more questions,
which I answered numbly before hanging up. “They’ll be waiting for
us.”

“Maggie, go get your coat,” Richard said.

She nodded, and disappeared into the
hall.

“Will she make it to the vet?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Richard said, and Holly
whimpered softly. “I really don’t know.”

The sun was barely over the horizon, but the
crisp, clear morning was bright when I left the warm comfort of
Richard’s house and headed for the spot where I’d found Holly the
night before.

Dark patches of dried blood stained the
short-cropped grass. Holtzinger’s knife was gone, probably in
police custody.

I couldn’t shake the memories from hours
before. Of driving through darkened streets while a sobbing Maggie
sat in the back seat of my car, holding a near-lifeless Holly. The
vet techs were waiting for us, and whisked the dog into
surgery.

I’m so in tune with Maggie I don’t even need
to touch her to be sucked into what she feels. ‘Shattered’ seemed
an apt description. She wanted to be held during the hours we
waited at the animal hospital. It was impossible to appear strong
and supportive when I was sentenced to experience every emotion
right along with her. God knows what the staff thought. Prolonged
exposure to such raw emotion sets my head pounding, an added
complication.

Afterwards, I pulled out my Visa card,
authorizing the more than six hundred dollars the emergency surgery
had cost. I would’ve paid a million to save Maggie’s dog.

Richard had waited up for us. He hugged
Maggie, and kept apologizing to her. He wanted to know all the
details about Holly's surgery and her expected recovery. After
that, he told us that the Amherst cops had taken Holtzinger into
custody. He felt better knowing the creep was in jail.

I didn’t.

I laid in the dark, thinking about Brenda
while holding Maggie as she cried herself to sleep. What was it I
felt for Brenda? Gratitude. Friendship. But most of all guilt. For
not mentioning my premonition about the baby. For knowing she’d be
hurt and being unable to prevent it.

What did I feel for Maggie? Tenderness, for
sure. Love? I still wasn't sure about that, but I felt a strong
sexual attraction to her. I didn’t feel that way about Brenda. I
couldn’t allow myself to ever feel that for my brother’s wife. And
that’s all she would ever—could ever—be to me. There was no way I’d
ever betray Richard’s trust.

Eventually I dozed off, but too soon I was
awake again—feeling like I’d gotten no rest at all.

I brushed my fingers over the leaves that
still clung to the shrubs. Holtzinger had waited, hidden there. An
empty pint bottle of whiskey was still caught in the branches. He’d
caressed it, almost sensually, while formulating his plan. I picked
up anger and avarice—but nothing like the impressions I’d received
from the rifle casings. There was no doubt in my mind: Holtzinger
had not killed Dr. Newcomb.

Sophie had been right about danger still
being close at hand. I could feel it, but couldn’t identify its
source.

I straightened, and headed for the garage and
the trashcans, where I tossed the empty bottle. That’s when I
remembered the cat upstairs. I wasn’t used to pulling pet duty and
reconsidered keeping my father's pet. Herschel was used to a
full-time companion. I’d hardly been home since he came to stay
with me. But I liked the little guy. He was a bundle of happiness,
needing little more than a scratch behind the ear to trigger a
burst of kitty joy. It felt good to have him around. And I didn’t
like to think of his chances of finding a new home if I dumped him
at the local humane society.

Herschel was waiting behind the door, purring
like a buzz saw, reinforcing my guilt. I gave him some food and
noticed the light blinking on my answering machine. I hit the play
button.

“Jeffrey, it’s Patty.”

Was she being theatrical or did she really
sound frightened?

“It’s eight o’clock. You’ve got to come to
the house. Now. You and Richard. It’s a matter of life and death!”
The call ended.

“Yeah, right,” I muttered, and rewound the
tape.

An emergency, huh? Then why did she only call
once? Hadn’t she ever heard of crying wolf? She just wanted to get
at Richard. In his wallet, if not his pants.

Still . . . .

I dialed the number and let it ring eight
times before hanging up. Whatever the emergency was, she must’ve
handled it. Probably just a spider in the bathroom.

A red-eyed Maggie was making coffee when I
got back to Richard’s place. “Are you okay?” I asked.

She shook her head, but her expression wasn’t
hopeless. “I called the vet. They told me Holly’s sitting up in her
cage, waiting to be fed.”

I put my arm around her shoulder, gave her a
smile. “See, she’ll be just fine.”

Richard’s pressure bandage had saved the
dog’s life, the young vet on duty had told us. Because of ligament
damage, Holly would probably always limp, but he was pretty sure
she’d make a full recovery.

Maggie kept staring at Holly’s empty food
bowl on the floor. “It wasn’t real to me. Brenda’s friend was
killed—but it wasn’t real to me until—”

“Until some creep hurt you, too.”

Maggie sniffled. “I’m scared.”

“You don’t have to stay,” I told her. “I’m
sure Brenda and Rich would—”

“What kind of a friend would I be if I just
abandoned them?”

“A safe friend,” Brenda said from the
doorway. Dressed in robe and slippers, she looked just as exhausted
as Maggie. “I’m so sorry this happened, Maggie. We wanted Holly
here for our own safety. It never occurred to us someone might hurt
her.” Her voice broke. “Can you ever forgive us?”

Maggie hurried to Brenda and hugged her.
“There’s nothing to forgive. She’s going to be fine.” She looked at
me over her shoulder, forcing a brave smile. “Right, Jeff?”

“That’s right.”

The tension was electric. Time to defuse it.
“Anybody hungry? I’ve decided to make my world-famous waffles.”

“Oh, no,” Brenda groaned in mock despair,
giving us all a much-needed laugh.

The phone rang and I grabbed it. “Mr.
Resnick? This is Bonnie Wilder. We’re going to be talking to Lou
Holtzinger this morning. Are you interested in listening in?”

“You better believe it. When?”

We took
Richard’s car, and his cell
phone, not wanting to be out of touch. Maggie and Brenda assured us
they felt safe enough with a guard planted at the end of the drive.
Brenda even joked that she didn’t expect the house to be attacked
in broad daylight. Still, I would’ve felt better if Holly was
there. She’d been a better—more alert—guard than the one we’d
hired. And it hadn’t escaped my thoughts that she’d probably saved
me from Lou Holtzinger’s knife the night before.

Bonnie Wilder met us in the station’s
reception area. Her eyes were bloodshot—probably from lack of
sleep. She clutched a cup of coffee in one hand, with file folders
in the other.

“Us being here isn’t standard operating
procedure,” I said.

“This
is
an unusual situation,” she
admitted.

“Did Reverend Linden ever surface?” I asked,
as we headed down the empty corridor.

“About noon, yesterday. He’d been counseling
his secretary. She swore on a stack of Bibles that he was with her
at the time of the shooting.”

“Had he been there all night?” Richard
asked.

“Yes. Apparently she leads a very sinful
life,” Wilder said straight-faced.

She showed us to a small, stark, gray room.
Two-way glass let us watch as Agent Segovia conducted the
interrogation. The two Washington stiffs stood against the wall,
nearly hidden in the shadows.

“Let’s go over it again, Lou,” Segovia
said

“Don’t you guys ever give up?” Holtzinger
asked, stubbing out a cigarette. He lit another and leaned back in
his chair. “I left the car in the alley a couple blocks from the
health center because that bitch of a hairdresser at the strip mall
threatened to have me towed the last time I parked there. I was
just getting out of my truck when I heard the shots.”

“How did you know they were gunshots?”

Holtzinger scowled. “I watch a lot of
TV.”

“What did you see?”

“At first, nothing. I started walking down
the alley, then I seen this guy running away, carrying a
rifle.”

“Give me a description.”

Holtzinger sighed, bored. “White guy, six
foot—more or less. He had on a hooded sweatshirt.”

“The color?”

“Black, navy—I don’t know.”

“Did he see you?”

He shook his head. “I ducked in a
doorway.”

“Then what?”

“He jumped into a silver pick-up.”

“License?”

Holtzinger shook his head again. “No
plates.”

“The make?”

“Do I look like a fucking brochure? How the
hell do I know?”

“And?” Segovia prompted.

“He took off—headed east, turned onto Main
Street.”

“Why didn’t you stick around? Why didn't you
tell the officers on the scene what you saw?”

“Get real. I’m on parole. I wasn’t about to
talk to the cops. Besides, you already thought I shot the baby
butcher.”

Segovia glared at the slimy little bastard.
“Did it ever occur to you they might’ve believed you?”

Holtzinger stared right back. “No.”

“What were you doing at Dr. Alpert’s house
last night?”

“I figured he could pay me for what I
seen.”

“Why him?”

“His wife works at the health center. She
just missed getting shot.”

“How did you know that?”

“I saw it on TV.”

“How did you know where she lived?”

“The church has addresses on all the clinic’s
employees. They were gonna picket some of the doctors.”

“Why didn’t they?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Ask Reverend
Linden.”

“Why did you stab the dog?”

“You think I’da been hiding in the yard if I
know’d they had a dog? That damn thing was vicious. It went for my
throat.”

Bonnie Wilder looked at me and raised an
eyebrow.