Jennie Bentley - Spackled and Spooked

Heart sinking-Gacy, here we come!-I kept watching. I expected the dog to sit down, like an X marking the spot, or maybe start clawing the turf, to show where something was buried, but it didn’t. Instead it strained forward, like a pointer after a fallen duck. Ears flat against its head, it pulled its handler forward-across the invisible property line, across Venetia ’s yard, directly to my neighbor’s house.

I stood up and started forward, too, in time to see the small wave of humanity gathered at the front of the property turn as one. Tony and his cameraman forgot all about Derek as they focused in on the excitement. I hurried across the lawn, my aching body protesting every step, and slipped my hand into Derek’s. “What’s happening?”

“Looks like the dog’s scented something on Venetia ’s property,” Derek said. “Maybe this joker has been burying bodies all up and down Becklea.”

A couple of the neighbors looked appalled at this idea, and who could blame them?

The camera tracked the K-9 team, but the rest of us managed to stay at a respectful distance as the dog made its way toward Venetia ’s house, stopping every so often to sniff the air and get its bearings. I expected at any moment to see it stop, sit, scratch the ground; mark somehow where the body was buried. It didn’t. It just kept going, across the yard, up the stairs to the deck, over to the back door. Daphne peered in, knocked, then wrapped-of all things-the end of her navy tie around the doorknob to try the door. When it didn’t open, she turned and raised her voice. “Chief Rasmussen? I think we may need a lock-smith here.”

Wayne separated himself from the crowd and walked up onto the deck, camera tracking his every move. The two of them put their heads together in low-voiced conversation. Derek and I exchanged a look as whispers broke out all around us.

“Something buried in the basement?” Derek muttered.

“ Venetia as Gacy?” I murmured. His lips compressed, but he didn’t answer. On the deck, Wayne was knocking on the door and calling Venetia ’s name, peering through the window between knocks. He put his hand to his mouth-had he seen something inside? He took a step back. The camera zoomed in as he lifted a booted foot and put it to the lock. The door crashed open with a splintering sound, and an impressed, “Ooooh!” spread through the crowd.

Wayne disappeared inside. After a few seconds, he came back and beckoned. “Derek?”

The dog settled on its haunches, quivering. Derek squeezed my hand reassuringly.

“Looks like maybe you’d better go get Brandon,” he said, before walking away. For once I didn’t take the time to enjoy the view as he walked off; I swung on my heel and headed for the back door to our house instead, aches and pains momentarily forgotten.

By the time I got back outside, Brandon Thomas in tow, speculation was rampant among the gathering throng. As Brandon hotfooted it toward Venetia ’s house, I joined the neighbors. Linda had appeared now, in a flowered housecoat and the same fuzzy slippers as yesterday, and was clustered with Arthur Mattson, Irina, and Denise. Trevor was in a baby carriage today, sound asleep, while Stella was nosing the ground between the wheels.

“… kept to herself,” Arthur was saying when I arrived. “Never associated with anyone, never invited anyone in.”

Denise and Linda nodded; Irina looked less sure.

“She invited me in yesterday,” I said, assuming that “she” was Venetia Rudolph. They all turned to me.

“What was it like in there?” Denise asked avidly, while Arthur Mattson wondered if I’d noticed anything. He didn’t qualify what that something might be, but I guessed he meant anything suspicious or out of the ordinary. I shook my head.

“It looked just like anyplace else. Probably just like any of your houses.” If any of the others were rabid Gone with the Wind fans, at least. “I just saw the living room and dining room, although if the rest of the house looked like those two, it was just an average, normal house.”

I’d seen no strange torture devices and smelled no scent of decomposing flesh. The only shrine I’d noticed had been to Scarlett and Rhett, and Venetia couldn’t have struck me any less like a person who murders other people and buries them in her neighbor’s crawlspace. She did, however, strike me as too intelligent to stash a body on her own property. If the cadaver dog had scented another corpse, I didn’t think Venetia would turn out to be its killer.

Arthur Mattson looked disappointed, but before he had a chance to speak, Tony the TV guy came over. “Whose house?” he asked, gesturing with a manicured thumb.

I hesitated, but the camera was still pointed the other way, and besides, all he’d have to do was read the name on the mailbox. “It belongs to a lady named Venetia Rudolph. Single, lives alone.”

“Thanks.” He turned away and pulled out his cell phone. He was probably calling someone at the television station to ask them to do some digging into Venetia ’s background, just in case he got the chance to ask questions later.

No one else seemed to have anything to say, so we just stood there in a small, huddled group and waited. Nothing too exciting seemed to be happening inside the house. There were no screams, no loud explosions, no aging woman bursting through the door screaming, “You’ll never take me alive!” Brandon had long-since disappeared inside. Daphne the trooper led her canine companion past us toward their state police vehicle. The dog was just walking now, scenting neither ground nor air. “Great job, Hans,” I heard Daphne say as they walked by. “Good boy.”

Stella the shih tzu looked longingly at the regal Hans, but he didn’t dignify her presence with as much as a flick of his tail. In the baby carriage, Trevor whimpered, made a quarter turn, and slept on.

After a few minutes, the back door opened again, and Derek came out. He stood for a second on the deck, looking out at us all, before he crossed the deck and started down the stairs. His steps were heavy, and my heart sank. What had they found inside? More bones? Body parts?

Excusing myself to the neighbors, I hurried forward and caught up with him at the foot of Venetia ’s stairs. “What is it? What did you find?”

He shook his head, lips tightly pressed together. “She’s dead.”

“ Venetia? But…” It took a second for the news to sink in, and then I felt the color leach out of my face. I must have wobbled, because Derek’s arm shot out and caught my elbow. “How?” I managed. “What happened?”

“Wayne and Brandon will figure that out,” Derek said, keeping his voice low. “They just wanted me to make absolutely sure that she was beyond any lifesaving measures, and they did the rest. I couldn’t even pronounce, since I’m not actually an MD anymore. They’ll have to get dad to do that, or the ME from Portland.” He looked upset.

“But you could tell what happened?”

He nodded, lowering his voice. “She was hit over the head with something. Last night.”

“Hit? With what? Why?”

He shrugged. “Flower arrangement in a vase. It was on the floor next to her. In a couple of pieces.”

I did my best to think straight. “The one from the dining room table? With the magnolias and leaves? I saw it yesterday, when she invited me in.”

“You were inside her house yesterday? You should talk to Wayne, see if he’ll let you look around. Just in case you notice something.” He turned me around and escorted me up the stairs to the back door again, an arm around my shoulders hustling me along. I turned my face away from the TV camera.

Yesterday, I’d come through the front door, and all I’d seen of the house was the L-shaped living room-dining room combination. As in our house, Venetia ’s back door led into the den. Hers was paneled in a greenish color, with the same brick fireplace on the back wall. It had a swag of magnolias draped over the mantel and a picture of Tara hanging above. (That would be Scarlett’s Tara, not my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend, twenty-two-year-old Tara Hamilton.) The carpet was green and the furniture upholstered in floral chintz.