Blame It on the Dog Read online

  Blame It On The Dog

  A Gabe and Tigger Mystery

  By Jim Toombs

  BLAME IT ON THE DOG

  Copyright © 2013 by Jim Toombs.

  All worldwide rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Jim Toombs.

  BLAME IT ON THE DOG is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For more information:

  [email protected]

  Cover and Interior design: Kelley Ian Toombs, ktd.com

  eBook Formatting: MrLasers.com

  Mulberry eBook logo: Kelley Ian Toombs, ktd.com

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  FOR THE BETTER part of an hour the Visitor had been inside #2 Serenity Place visiting with Harald Schmidt, which was a significant accomplishment since only one of them could speak intelligibly. All in all, the stroke had left Harald a mess and the Visitor could not understand a thing he said.

  For decades Harald had spent his entire life manipulating the world around him with his magnificent voice and his oratorical skills. While normal mortals were terrified at the prospect of speaking to even a small group of people, Harald excelled at communicating to hundreds, even thousands. In those days, he had taken great pride in his appearance: His hair was always combed, his face clean shaven, teeth clean and bright. His trousers wore razor-sharp creases and his starched shirts had no desire to wrinkle.

  But that was then. Now he struggled to wear sweat pants and sweat shirts; sloppy, floppy, ugly things. He could not comb his hair to his satisfaction. He detested days when spaghetti was served in the dining room; there was no way he could keep the sauce from staining his badly shaven face and his ugly clothes.

  The Visitor understood Harald’s predicament and exercised great care in guiding the conversation, such as it was, through the shoals and sloughs of Harald’s infarcted brain. There had been many such tragedies at Mountainview Villa, the exclusive retirement community Harald had chosen to call home. It seemed to the Visitor that Mountainview grew people like Harald like geraniums.

  Harald wrinkled the left side of his brow. The grin on the uninvited guest’s face made no sense to him. It was out of place, a non sequiter. He attempted to comment on the incongruous grin but his words came out a jumbled, incoherent mess of grunts and moans. The stroke had left him paralyzed on his strong right side and had stolen his ability to speak clearly. Now, he was the one who was tongue-tied. He was the one who felt terror when he had to speak to even one person.

  The Visitor felt Harald’s discomfort as if it were a living, breathing thing taking up physical space in the old man’s living room.

  Harald turned rheumy eyes and willed his guest to leave him in peace. He was tired. He wanted to go to bed, to go to sleep, to escape from this new hell.

  The longer the Visitor stayed, the greater Harald’s frustration and anxiety grew. He tried to speak, but even though he could still think of the words he wanted to say, or at least most of them, he could no longer orchestrate the instruments of lips, tongue, vocal chords, and muscles to say what he wanted to say. Instead of producing a symphony of sound and symbol, the instruments rebelled, each playing its own notes at its own tempo without regard for the others. The result was a disjointed moaning, grunting, coughing.

  Harald’s good left hand rose and reached for the walker he kept beside the chair. The Visitor stopped talking and watched, fascinated as the old man tried to lever his body to a standing position.

  What Harald intended to say was, I don’t mean to be rude but I really do need to go to bed. What came out was, “Ahl mei grothe bu …” He stopped and stared when the Visitor spoke.

  “How rude of me, Harald. Of course, you must be tired. You look very tired. Let me help you.”

  A small syringe materialized in the Visitor’s hand. With a thumb flick the needle cap flew to the floor and under the couch. Harald looked on, confused and fascinated, unable to take his eyes from the tiny, shiny needle. He watched as the Visitor plunged it deep into the large muscle above his left knee. Harald was surprised that he felt nothing, no prick, no pinch. He puzzled over that and then wondered why the Visitor had given him an injection at all. And why was the Visitor smiling? The smile was maddening. It only increased his confusion.

  While Harald was contemplating all these things he slowly grew aware that his hand had fallen from the walker and landed like a dead bird on the couch. He tried to put it back but he couldn’t. He could not move his good hand at all.

  In disbelief, he slowly raised his eyes to the Visitor’s broadening smile. A sudden twitch violently jerked his face transforming his appearance from wonder and lack of comprehension to panic, followed by terror.

  “You’re having trouble breathing, aren’t you? I have something for that, too.” This time the syringe was larger and contained more liquid. This time the Visitor bent over and Harald lost sight of him.

  “This will take less than a minute, Harald,” he said from somewhere near Harald’s feet. “Then you will fall asleep and your troubles will be over. I know you can hear me, but that won’t last for long. You just get ready for a long, long nap, now.”

  Sleep was the last thing on Harald Schmidt’s mind. He was aware of everything that happened to his body. He felt and heard every violation yet he was powerless to respond – in any way. Nothing worked. He screamed, but his mouth never opened, his vocal chords made no sound. He struck out with his arms but they did not move. He felt the sharp pain as the needle stabbed his ankle. He felt the cold liquid burn into his vein. He felt the panic and the fear and the anger and the sorrow and the hopelessness and the unfairness and the horror and the panic and the fear and the …

  The Visitor looked up into Harald’s flaccid face and removed the needle, amazed. “How remarkable: one moment the lights are on; the next moment they are off. It really is just like going to sleep. So, so, peaceful.”

  It took longer to retrieve the cap from the floor beneath the couch, to recap both syringes, and to return them to the valise than it took for the drugs to turn off the flow of Harald’s life. “Sleep tight, Harald. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

  The front door of #2 Serenity Place locked with a click and watched the Visitor disappear into the night.

  CHAPTER 1

  A RIOT OF white hair plopped into the middle of the long front seat of Sophie’s yellow ’63 Studebaker and pushed as close to the air conditioning vent as it could get without sliding off onto the floorboard. Not all the ragged white hairs were disciplined enough to stay where they belonged: a cloud of feral filaments fluttered into the cooled air like a flock of crazed sea gulls scrambling for
one, loan scrap of bread.

  “That’s what I was talking about, Sophie! He does that all the time! It’s unnatural. He drives me nuts.”

  “Now, Gabriel, you settle down, dear. He probably snuck in while we were talking at my house. He’s very stealthy, you know.”

  The pink tip of the dog’s tongue was barely visible between thin, black lips. He looked like he was smiling. Sophie thought he smiled a lot for a dog.

  She had gone to Austin with Gabe’s mother, Lucille, two years ago on the day Lucille got Tigger from the Jack Russell Abused Terrier Society in Austin. Sophie thought the acronym was a hoot: JRATS. Lucille did too and they joked about it all they way there. When they got to JRATS, and when Lucille Chance first saw the little dog, it was love at first sight. She was nuts about him the moment they locked eyes. She was crazy about most animals, but Tigger was something different. Sophie felt it too, but neither one of them could ever nail it down. They chalked it up to “ineffable charisma” and laughed. On the way back, Tigger, that’s what Lucille decided to name him, parked himself in front of the air conditioning vent and fell asleep, smiling. Lucille took that as a sign.

  Sophie hadn’t gotten used to the death of her friend just a few short months ago. They had been best friends since before Gabriel was born. Lucille had never wanted anything more than she wanted that little curly-haired boy. Sophie loved him, too, right alongside her and her husband, Burton. And now Lucille was gone. Her death was so sudden that it caught everyone by surprise.

  Her Will contained several surprises for her son. First was the estate, totally out of keeping with Lucille and Burton’s middle-class lifestyle. It was large by anyone’s calculations and Gabriel had suddenly become a wealthy young man. However, before Lucille would allow him to have access to it, the will required that he take his mother’s place as the dog’s caretaker and live in her home a few houses from Sophie’s. It seemed to Sophie that Lucille had constructed the plot of a bad eighteenth century novel with Gabriel as the reluctant hero.

  Sophie had expected him to rebel against those constraints – who wouldn’t, especially with Cornelius Peabody as the will’s executor. Mr. Peabody was a respected attorney who had served the Chance family for many years. He was also an unrepentant prig. The man reveled in pointing out others’ violations of the rules and took great pleasure if he were to be the one to mete out their punishment. Sophie had cautioned Lucille against giving Peabody such power over Gabriel but Lucille was not to be deterred. Peabody performed as expected and so did Gabriel. It grieved her to see them locked in their uneven dance.

  She was also aggrieved at Gabriel’s hostility toward Tigger. At 87, there wasn’t very much that surprised her anymore, but Gabriel’s antipathy toward the dog shocked her. It was totally unexpected and so out of character for a man who had always loved animals. She wasn’t at all sure how to deal with the situation.

  “Now, dear, it is not at all unnatural for Jack Russell’s to get out of places we want to keep them. They want to do their own thing. You should understand that as much as anyone I know.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You do have a tendency to rebel against authority, you know. We’ve talked about it before. It’s not a bad thing, Gabriel, necessarily. But it can cause you difficulty with others.”

  “Do you have anything specific in mind, Sophie? Any instance where I don’t play well with others?” The sarcasm was obvious.

  “Well, yes there is. Cornelius Peabody comes to mind.”

  “The only reason I have difficulty with Peabody is because he’s a certified jerk. He digs at me every time I’m around him. And now that he’s Mother’s executor I have to be around him way too much and for way too long. I can’t believe she did this to me!”

  “You’re not happy with Lucille’s decision, are you, dear? I told her you wouldn’t be.” She measured her next words carefully. “Her concern was for the man who returned from the war. You were more reckless. She was afraid for you. I know she was afraid that you were running away from something, especially after you moved to California; that you no longer took your life seriously.”

  “Yeah? Well sometimes that happens after you have to kill people up close and personal. When everyone around you is either dead or wounded, when life is cheap, Sophie…” His face was grim and locked and he could only look out his side window.

  “It must have been horrible for you.”

  He snapped his head back to her. “You know what was horrible? It wasn’t the killing, it was watching my guys die, my guys, guys I was supposed to save. I still see their faces sometimes when I close my eyes. And this place, this land…”

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw his clenched fist waving in the air.

  “…this land is so like it, it reminds me, all the time it reminds me. That’s why I left, Sophie. The Pacific Ocean is different, you know?”

  Sophie shook her head. “I never realized what it must have been like for you. I don’t think Lucille did either. She was so proud of you, of your Silver Star, but we never really knew what it must have cost. Not really. I’m so sorry, Gabriel.”

  “It’s okay, Sophie. That was then and this is now. I’m stuck here for the next three years with old rat-breath, so I’ll make the most of it. Now let’s change the subject.”

  “Whatever you say, dear.” They drove for a couple of miles without speaking. Finally she said, “It’s his nature, you know.”

  “Who’s nature?” he asked.

  “Tigger. It’s his nature to creep up on things. He was bred to be a hunter and he would not be a very good one if he could not sneak up on prey. Rats and mice, he’s just doing his job.”

  “And lizards. Don’t forget lizards. He’s a real gunslinger when it comes to lizards.” Gabe harrumphed.

  His sarcasm was lost on neither Sophie nor the dog. She let it slide but the dog shot him a sharp look before he turned his head back to the vents.

  “Look at him, Sophie. He knows his little Star Trek trick is weird. Don’t deny it, dogface. Muttnose. Bone-breath.”

  “Stop it, right now, Gabriel Burton Chance! His name is Tigger and you are making him anxious with your bullying. He’s trembling.”

  The dog didn’t seem anxious to Gabe. He’s still the same obnoxious beast. Man, three years is gonna be an eternity. Although, now that she had mentioned it, the dog was trembling.

  “Maybe he has to p… uh, urinate,” he said. When Sophie had been his high school English teacher she was insistent that her students – especially him – use proper vocabulary instead of vulgarities to describe bodily functions.

  “There is no place to pull over, Gabriel.” To the dog she said, “You will just have to wait, Tigger. We’re almost there. Right around the next bend, and then you can hop out and take care of business.”

  “There” was Mountainview Villa, a ritzy retirement community in the Teapot Mountains a few miles outside of Brandt. It was an imaginative explorer who named the wrinkled landscape around Crocket Pass, “mountains”. The highest peak was a little over 1200 feet above sea level, a far cry from the Rockies, or the Davis Mountains in west Texas, or even the anemic Poconos.

  She stopped speaking and her mouth formed an almost perfect letter “O” before she said, “Gabriel, I don’t have a leash.”

  “Wouldn’t matter. He’d just get out of it.”

  Silence reigned in the yellow car as it passed through an elegant but rustic entryway more suited to an alpine ski village than a retirement community where well-heeled senior citizens could wile away their twilight years in peace and serenity. But even those people came for the sizzle more than the actual steak. Mountainview was jam-packed with sizzle. The landscape underwent an instant transition from Hill Country scrub to opulent grass, trees and architecturally-designed plantings. The sales office and accompanying clubhouse were housed in an imposing log and limestone structure surrounded by a shaded croquet court on the vast lawn east of the entrance and a commandin
g view of Lake LBJ on the west. Lots of sizzle there, too.

  Then there was steak, steak you could sink your teeth into. All of the buildings came from the mind of the same master architect. And just as the clubhouse was sturdily rendered, so was each of the villas that ringed the high cliff overlooking the spring-fed brook and the lake – actually a long pond – into which it flowed. 12-inch thick quarried limestone supported roofs of imported red clay tiles, pleasing to the eye as well as being infinitely functional. Inside, high-ceilinged rooms flowed into one another through large, columned openings, giving each house a feeling of openness, and a sense of size larger than it actually was.

  The landscape architect had created inviting open spaces, visible through insulated, double-paned windows, designed to make the residents feel a oneness with the outdoors without ever leaving the comfort of their temperature-controlled homes.

  Sophie piloted the Studebaker along the length of Serenity Place and nosed into the guest spot outside #2 which belonged to her friend, Harald Schmidt. It was as apectacular and as inviting as all the others.

  “All right, mister, you will have to wait until I get out,” she said and opened the door.

  When pigs fly, thought Gabe.

  The dog vaulted over her lap to the pavement below, pivoted on landing, and ran to Harald’s front door. His scratching and whining was laced with frantic barks.

  “What’s wrong, boy? I thought you had to go to the bathroom,” said Sophie.

  “Tigger, knock it off,” said Gabe. “You’ll wake the dead.”

  Sophie knit both brows together in a jagged line. “Gabriel, don’t make jokes like that. Old people live here, many of them not far from the Grim Reaper’s hand.”

  She hurried to the dog while digging in her purse. “Hush, now. Harald is coming as quickly as he can.”

  At the door, she shushed the dog again and pressed her ear against the heavy wood. The dog cooperated. But she didn’t hear a thing. She rang the bell. A muffled bing-bong-bing resonated through the wood. Tigger barked again.