Blame It on the Dog Read online

  “Yeah. And we saw the M.E. before that. They both came up double zero.”

  “Hmmm. That’s bad in roulette, but I don’t necessarily think it’s bad in this case.”

  Gabe found that surprising. “Oh? I thought you were convinced that Harald and the others had been murdered?”

  “Perhaps I overstated my position, then. I agree that Sophie and the Jefferson’s are grieving the loss of their friends. That’s a healthy thing to do. And sometimes, to finish grieving, one has to eliminate any possibility that the loss is not permanent. That’s one of the reasons we have open casket funerals, you know. And that’s why in some traditions the mourners gather around the lowered coffin and throw a shovelful of dirt on it. These are rituals that help bring them closure.”

  “Are you telling me you didn’t believe that Harald was killed? That you were just pretending for Sophie’s benefit?”

  “I wouldn’t say pretending, Gabe. I was playing Devil’s Advocate. And Sophie and Jefferson could have been right! They needed to express this one last objection to Harald’s passing and have it refuted so they can move on. And you have made them free to do just that. You’ve done a good service to them, Gabe.”

  “General, are you playing me?”

  Sean stiffened. “What are you talking about? How could you say such a thing?”

  “Pardon me, General, and I hope you’ll forgive my bluntness, but my BS meter works great and right now it’s stuck on ‘Extreme BS’. What you’re telling me doesn’t ring true.”

  Gabe expected the man to puff up and posture against him. Instead, he was crestfallen, forlorn.

  “I – I’m – I’m sorry, Gabe. I never intended… can you forgive me?”

  “Forgive you?”

  “Yes, forgive me. I have offended you – unintentionally, of course but I have offended you, nevertheless. I hope I haven’t damaged our… budding friendship. Will you forgive me, Gabe?” He looked like he was going to cry. “And, please, call me Sean, won’t you?”

  “Uh, sure Sean. Yeah. I… forgive… you… I… I guess.”

  Sean shocked him by embracing him. The bear-hug took his breath away. “Oh, thank you, Gabe. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. Um, would you like that cookie, now?”

  Gabe rubbed his ribs and said, “Well, sure.”

  Too surreal: snicker doodles and lemonade and a few broken ribs with a tearful two-star general!

  “Thanks, Sean. Great cookies. A good snicker doodle is a thing of beauty.”

  The General smiled broadly. “I’m glad you enjoyed them, son. Can I freshen up your drink?”

  Gabe shook his head and put his hand over his glass, his face more serious. “I was thinking about something the sheriff said.”

  “Yes?”

  The younger man cleared his throat. “He was looking at a picture of Harald’s wife and said she had a mud stain on her left knee from when she fell down.”

  The General raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “He also said there were skid marks on the bank where her feet slipped when she fell in. I’m having a hard time getting a good picture of that in my mind. Could you take me down there and show me where it happened? You know, where she fell in, where they found her? I think it would help me close the loop on this whole thing so I can tell everybody there’s nothing here and let it go.”

  The General looked at his watch, bit his lower lip and looked down at the table for a long moment. And then, shaking his head, he sighed and said, “I wish I could, Gabe. I’m expecting a call from Washington at 14:30. That’s about fifteen minutes from now, not enough time to go down there and back. I wish I could.

  “But,” he brightened, “I could show you from up here. From the deck. Come on.”

  Gabe had to double time to keep up with the man. “How old did you say you were, Sean?” he puffed.

  “I’ll be 76 next month.”

  I’m glad he’s not 66! He’d kill me, just following him to the deck.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just thinking about what great shape you’re in.”

  “You should have seen me ten years ago. Before I started slowing down. Come over here by the rail.”

  Gabe followed him and stood between the General and the railing. Standing there, with the water 40 feet below made Gabe dizzy and queasy at the same time.

  “You’re not afraid of heights are you, Gabe?”

  “Not before today,” he muttered.

  “Good for you.” He clasped Gabe’s far shoulder with an iron grip and shoved him forward, pointing. “See that narrow place in the channel where the stream feeds the lake? Look down there, and look back this way about ten feet on the cliff side of the lake. That’s where they found her body. I think that’s where she must have fallen in.”

  Gabe wriggled free and pointed, “There? Beneath that shear? What was she doing over there? That’s the wrong side of the lake.”

  “It’s a narrow lake, Gabe, just a dammed up stream, really. It’s only five or six feet deep at the deepest part. Not much of a lake at all.”

  “But that’s the wrong side of the lake. She had to cross the stream to get there. And where was she standing? The woman was deathly afraid of the water, for crying out loud.”

  “I really don’t know, Gabe, but I do have to go, now. The Pentagon doesn’t like to be kept waiting. If you want to check it out, follow the trail on the other side of the croquet court over there. It’s a shortcut through that stand of trees and connects to the road leading down to the bottom of the valley. We’ll talk later. I really must go, now.”

  Gabe turned, rubbing his shoulder, and headed for the trees. He almost tripped over the dog stepping off the deck.

  “Hey! You trying to kill me? Where’ve you been anyway? Never mind, I forgot I’m talking to the Great White Sphinx. Come on. We’re going for a hike. Do a little detecting.”

  CHAPTER 14

  THE FIRST FEW minutes through the trees took him along a broad and pleasant track that wound across the gentle slope. The farther he walked, the steeper the slope became. At the same time the track narrowed. The shrinking path squeezed the dense vegetation steadily closer. Like a funnel it fed him along until it became little more than a rabbit run. That was no problem for the dog: he negotiated it with ease and disappeared into the thick brush without a trace. Not Gabe.

  When he was a child and, later, a teenager, he had snaked and busted his way through countless threads like this, but that was a long time ago when he was much younger and smaller and more lithe. He was also in much better shape then. Now, even though he could still read the ebb and flow of the undergrowth, his older, adult body was less compliant. The mesh of brush and bramble plucked his clothes and tore his skin.

  He calculated he had hiked a hard hundred yards, more or less, when he broke through into a small clearing. The hard, packed floor of the clearing and the dome of brush reminded him of the interior of an Indian wikiup he had seen at the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio. Except the central feature of the wikiup had been a fire pit. The central feature of the clearing was a large and smooth brown boulder imbedded in the packed earth. The dog lay sprawled before it.

  “Don’t look so smug, mutt. If I was the size of a gerbil I could have gotten here as fast as you did.”

  He thought the dog looked confused.

  Can dogs look confused?

  “Gerbil. You know, rat-like critter? Good for nothing? Like some dogs?”

  The dog stood up and turned completely around. In a perfectly catlike manner he aimed his business end at Gabe’s face and raised his tail higher. The insult was not lost on him.

  “Yeah? Well if you were worth anything you’d be carrying a cask of ice cold Dr. Pepper around that scrawny neck of yours.”

  Head high, Tigger scratched both hind feet on the ground. Then he vanished into the thicket.

  Grumbling about rat-like small dogs deserting ships, Gabe followed. It took him another 15 minutes to get through to
the paved road. He emerged, disheveled, twigs and leaves trapped in his black curls. Thorny briars had snagged his shirt and torn a triangular hole in it.

  “Are we having fun yet?” he panted at the dog. “I thought this was supposed to be a shortcut, not the Bataan Death March. Do they teach that in school any more? What was the man thinking?”

  Good question. What was he thinking?

  The two of them stepped onto the blacktop together and headed downhill toward the water. The grade was so steep Gabe had to lean his whole body backwards at the ankles to keep from tumbling head over heels to the low water bridge that spanned the dam.

  The low water crossing was Hill Country typical: poured concrete demarked by squat, square, ten- to twelve-inch posts of concrete on either side. They were spaced at intervals that allowed the water to flow through but kept the cars from falling into the shallow lake on one side or the ravine on the other. Thin, silvery sheets shimmered over the dam and cascaded to the ravine floor. From there it coursed its way around the hill where it joined a tributary of a larger stream.

  The dog didn’t care about geography. He just splashed through the shallow water to the other side of the dam.

  Gabe applauded. “Nicely done, dogface. Now it’s my turn.” He gauged whether it made more sense for him to splash across as the dog had done or attempt to jump from concrete post to concrete post.

  With a sigh he bent over and rolled up his pants legs. Then he lifted his right foot and slipped off his shoe. Balanced on his left foot, he stripped the sock from his foot and then switched feet to repeat the process. Finally, shoes and socks in hand he stepped into the water.

  This wasn’t the first time he had waded across a low water crossing, but it was the first time he could remember doing it in 50 degree weather. The water was surprisingly warm, though, contrasting sharply with the brisk air. He leaned over and retrieved a round, flat stone, stood and sent it skipping across the lake.

  “Pretty good, dontcha think?” he said to the dog. For his part the dog was intently studying the space between two medium sized rocks, both of which were partially buried in the moist ground on the other side of the crossing.

  Gabe breathed in deeply and then laughed. He was having a good time. This was fun. And all-in-all he was having a blast: scrambling through the woods; walking with the dog; fording the creek barefooted; skipping stones.

  “Ya know, dogface, it’s bee…” he looked over at the dog but there was no dog. He quickly scanned the area and came up empty. “Have fun, muttski. Don’t get lost,” he called out.

  Ahead of him the bottom land was dotted with the remnants of a mature pecan orchard. The tall trees were laid out on a grid, their broad canopies overlapping one another.

  The Drakes – or whoever owned Mountainview Villa – had interspersed picnic tables here and there in a seemingly random fashion that was well- designed to provide separation without isolation. Residents and their guests could enjoy their privacy and still feel connected to their neighbors. Circumnavigating the orchard on both sides of the road and winding through the picnic tables in a couple of places was a walking path that looked to him to be surfaced with a rubbery material that probably minimized the shock on old joints. The entire area was beautifully idyllic, perfect for inclusion in a glossy sales brochure. And, Gabe noted, barely used by the residents.

  A great place for a murder.

  Now that he was out of the water his feet were getting cold. He walked across the still green carpet grass to the nearest table and slipped his shoes and socks back on.

  From this vantage point he could see the entire lake nestled against the cliff face. He guessed that the lake was a hair over four hundred feet long and only a few times wider than the original creek channel. He could easily throw a stone to the other side. To his left the dog was little more than a speck of white standing on the dam.

  He walked the path to the point that was closest to the lake, and then paced off the distance across the dense grass to the water’s edge.

  “Twenty-five feet,” he said aloud. Gazing up at the cliff he focused on the sharp demarcation between the surface above and the shear cliff face. The drop looked to be at least twice as far as the height of the clubhouse, but he knew distances could be deceiving.

  Forty feet? Sixty? Whatever, it’s a long way down. But it’s not the fall that kills you; it’s the abrupt stop.

  Following the cliff face with his eyes led him to piles of white limestone. The newer sharp-edged slabs of white were taller than he was and outweighed him by at least half a ton. The older rock had been worn to rounder, blunter forms by the wind and the rain. Farther upstream, planted in the lake bed just below the rapids where the creek entered the lake, a large boulder from a long ago fall jutted into the air near the far side.

  “I’d hate to fall off that cliff, dogface,” he said. Then he remembered that the dog was on the other end of the lake. He turned his gaze in that direction and, sure enough, the dog was trotting from the dam along the narrow strip of ground on the other side.

  “Hey, mutt! If you fall in, you’re on your own. I’m not coming in after you,” he called through cupped hands. “I’m not getting wet again.”

  Only inches from his feet the crystal clear lake water lapped the bank. It was covered with a layer of carpet grass over mud that squished beneath his feet.

  Oh yeah, this is a perfect place for an old woman terrified of water. She wouldn’t drown; she’d have a heart attack before she ever got to the water.

  He stepped back to drier ground and continued upstream about forty feet to where the General had indicated Nellie Schmidt’s body was recovered. The bank gradually transitioned to pebbles and smooth, water-worn stones level with the creek surface. Here was where the shallow, faster water formed rapids that rushed into the placid waters of the lake. There was enough water flow to wash any mud from the rocks but not enough to be dangerous. There was also a gentle back flow that eddied on the other side of the big boulder.

  “How could she slip in here and get mud on her knee? Bloody scrapes and bruises, yeah, but not mud. For mud, she had to slip back down there. So how did her body float this far upstream? The backflow around that boulder doesn’t reach that far downstream.” He shook his head, “This whole thing doesn’t make any sense.”

  While he was pondering the inconsistencies in the story of Nellie’s death the dog had made his way across the stream hopping from rock to rock and was now standing at his feet.

  “Whaddaya think, mutt? Can I get a better read from over there?” The dog, with his nose intently focused on the ground, gave no indication he had heard a word Gabe had spoken. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Why don’t you stay over here and hunt pill bugs or something while I continue detecting?”

  If she really did cross over, this is where she would do it. And then she’d have to fall in over there. And if frogs could fly they wouldn’t bump their butts when they hopped.

  He took a step back and leaped across the small stream to a large, flat rock, then stepped off onto a narrow strip of green grass. The grass ended about ten feet downstream and so did the stretch of flat riverbank. Gabe’s left foot suddenly slipped and he had to step into the water to recover his balance. He stood there, right foot on the narrow bank, left foot in six inches of water, considering how he might turn around without having to wade out in both of his nice, new shoes.

  The dog’s frantic barking from across the lake caught his attention. He was barking for all he was worth, peering high up on the cliff. Gabe twisted his neck to see what he was looking at, and stopped breathing.

  Right above him, a whole section of shear separated from the rock behind it. When it fell, Gabe would be crushed. Frantic, he turned, both feet in the water, stepping as fast as he could downstream, striving for deeper water; somewhere he wouldn’t be crushed; anywhere but here.

  Small rocks splashed around him, bounced off his head and back. The water was to his knees and he poised for a surface dive
. With a loud crash a larger chunk of stone bounced off the rocks behind him, clipping his right shoulder, knocking him off balance. Gabe felt a sudden sharp blow to his right thigh. The force of it carried him forward to deeper water, and forced his whole body down. He barely had time to take a breath before he was completely submerged. He struggled to get his feet under him, to find the bottom, but his right leg wouldn’t respond.

  A huge concussion rattled his head and shook his body. He looked up just in time to see a slab of rippling white replace the cobalt shimmer of water and sky. Intense pain stabbed his back and then his head, and then there was no pain at all.

  CHAPTER 15

  “CHANCE WON’T BE snooping around here any more.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Mr. Chance has had an unfortunate accident.”

  “What kind of ‘unfortunate accident’ did Mr. Chance have?”

  “The fatal kind.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s right – ’Oh’. And they won’t be finding his body anytime soon, either.”

  “Tell me all the gory details!”

  “Let’s just say he was in the wrong place at just the right time.”

  “And where was that?”

  “You know where the lake begins? The jagged cliff?”

  “Did he fall?”

  “Nope. He was fallen upon. The cliff gave way quite suddenly. There was a landslide and Mr. Chance was buried under several tons of virgin limestone.”

  “Delicious! Fabulous! … But I don’t believe it. Are you certain he’s dead?”

  “Of course I am. No one could live through that. Mr. Chance has had his last chance and now he’s been squashed like the bug he was. I would love to have seen his smug face when it hit him.”

  “What a marvelous stroke of luck! The gods have been kind to us.”

  “Gods had nothing to do with it. And you make your own luck in this world. You can’t rely on superstitious nonsense. I’ve always told you that.”

  "Yes, you have. So, you've made your own luck?"