Рита Браун - The Purrfect Murder

She rolled the chair away and pulled back the heavy rubber mat. The trapdoor ring, black, caught her eye. Eagerly, she pulled it upright, tugged, and the door swung up, a musty smell rising with it.

“Aha.” She climbed down, the cats readily following her, since they climbed the wall ladder at the barn daily. Harry pulled the string on the overhead light, which revealed rows of boxes. She began opening them.

She found the jewelry, the money, and the panties. “I’ve got him! I’ve got him!”

As she put the lids back on, closed up the metal box, too, they heard Tucker barking in the toolshed.

“Dumb dog.” Pewter’s eyes widened.

Mrs. Murphy quickly said, “Pewter, jump on a shelf.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

“Mike!” Tucker warned.

“Shut up, Tucker.” Mrs. Murphy commanded, but it was too late.

As Mike ran toward his shed, Harry climbed up the ladder. But before she could reach the window, Mike blasted into the room.

Without a word, he hit her hard across the face.

Tucker jumped out from behind the door and bit his leg. He shook the dog off, grabbed a heavy coffee mug, and slammed Harry on the side of the head.

It didn’t knock her out, but it made her woozy. He quickly kicked her down the hole, climbing down after her. Even the cats jumping on his back didn’t stop him. He stuffed his handkerchief in her mouth, whipped off his belt, and wrapped it around her hands behind her back.

He climbed back up, slammed the door down, pulled the rubber mat over it, and rolled the chair back on the mat. He had forgotten to switch off the light, although no one would see it.

He tried to catch Tucker, but those long fangs and her quick maneuvers prevented that. Instead, he shut the door behind him, leaving the dog inside.

He hurried back to the house. He didn’t know what he was going to do; Noddy would be home soon. She left work at four every day because she went into the office at seven-thirty in the morning.

“Lick her face,” Mrs. Murphy ordered Pewter.

The two cats licked, their rough tongues providing what a facialist would term “exfoliation.”

Harry’s eyes fluttered. She grunted a little. “Damn, my head hurts.”

“Tucker,” Mrs. Murphy meowed as loudly as she could. “Only bark if someone comes back.”

They heard the claws click across the boards then soften as the dog walked on the heavy mat.

“I drew blood.” Tucker wished she could have reached his throat.

“So did he,” Pewter called up.

“Is she all right?”

“Cut on her forehead and temple. A lump is coming up, but she’s all right. We have to get the handkerchief out of her mouth so she doesn’t choke on it.”

“I will, Murphy, I will,” Pewter said.

The mighty little dog sat down, deeply worried. Their only prayer was that Mike wouldn’t shoot. Too many people in the neighborhood would hear him, even if he closed the trapdoor. A gun makes a smart report. He probably wouldn’t slash her throat in his shed, because of the mess. He would have to get Harry out after Noddy was asleep.

All three of the animals figured that out, and so did Harry.

She struggled to free her hands from the belt. The cats bit on it. They might be able to bite through enough of it to weaken it, but it would take maybe a half hour, maybe an hour.

Fair called her cell. She didn’t answer. He called home. He called the barn. Finally, he called Susan.

“Susan, is Harry with you?”

“No.”

“It’s four-thirty. She’s a creature of habit, and on Mondays she’d be putting back bedding in the stalls she stripped and aired out yesterday. I think she’s done what you predicted. She’s not answering her cell. Something’s wrong.”

“I’ll call Coop.”

“Good. I’m going to Mike’s.”

Susan gave him directions, and it took him until five-thirty to get there, because of rush-hour traffic. Fortunately, most of it was heading west, but there was enough to make him truly worry.

Fair saw Harry’s truck parked on the street, and he hoped he was in time. He was so scared he wasn’t even mad at her.

He parked, hurried out, but didn’t go up the walk, because Susan had told him where the shed was.

Tucker barked, “Fair! It’s Fair.”

Dogs and cats can identify footfalls and tire sounds, but humans can’t.

Hearing the corgi, Fair ran. The door was locked. He slammed his shoulder against it and broke it down.

Mike heard the dog, then saw Fair. Noddy ran to the back kitchen window, too.

“What is Fair Haristeen doing?” She put her hand on the doorknob.

He covered her hand. “You stay here.”

He ran outside just as Fair, who now could hear his wife and the cats, reached the desk. Frantically, Fair kicked the chair back, pulled the mat off, and flipped up the trapdoor as Mike barreled through the shed door.

Tucker cunningly hid behind the office door. As Mike opened the door, ready to brain Fair with a crowbar he’d snatched off his workroom wall, the corgi sank his fangs all the way into Mike’s calf.

Fair spun on his heels and hit Mike with a right cross, using all his weight and six feet five inches. Mike’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell clean backward, half out the door.

The crowbar hit the floor with a heavy clunk.

Noddy ran in after him, shocked at what she saw.

“Noddy, stay right there.” Fair scared her. “The police will be here in a minute. Don’t try to run.”

“Why?” She hadn’t a clue.

Fair slid down the ladder like a fireman and quickly undid the belt, which the cats had worked on.

“He was going to kill me,” Harry, shaken, gasped, but she kept possession of herself.

Fair spied the handkerchief on the floor and knew what Mike had done. “How’d you get the handkerchief out of your mouth?”

“The cats pulled it out, or I’d be dead. It was slipping back in my throat.”

Fair picked up Mrs. Murphy in one arm, Pewter in the other, and kissed their heads, then kissed his wife. Noddy had crept to the opened trapdoor and knelt down.

“Don’t shut that, Noddy.”

“I didn’t even know it was here,” she, bug-eyed, answered Fair.

“Help her out, will you?” Fair boosted Harry up.

Noddy gently lifted her out.

Mike rolled over, shook his head, spit out some teeth, just as Fair came up behind Harry.

Lightning-fast, Fair put his knee on Mike’s back, yanked his arms behind him, and used his own belt to tie him up. Then he kicked him over, as Noddy grimaced.

“You killed Carla, and Penny, too, didn’t you?”

“They found Penny?” Noddy slumped in the office chair.

“No,” Fair told her. “Not yet.”

Even though her head was splitting, Harry thought she had never heard a sound so sweet as Cooper’s squad-car siren, followed by another.

Within minutes Cooper and Rick hurried into the shed.

“Down there.” Harry pointed to the opened trapdoor.

“Penny?” Noddy feared the worst.

“No. No bodies, Noddy, but enough to send your husband down the river for a long, long time.”

She put her head in her hands and wept.

“Did you know?” Fair asked.

She shook her head no, as Rick bent over and dropped down into the space.

Cooper read Mike his rights.

Another squad car arrived, and the officer stood patiently in the office doorway.

Rick’s head popped up, his hands on the floor. “Doak, cordon the place off. I want everything photographed, cataloged, tabulated. There’s enough here to convict him.”

“For murder?” Dooley hoped.

“For theft, extortion, and maybe even rape. With luck, murder will follow.”

“Rape,” Noddy wailed.

“I didn’t kill anybody!” Mike’s broken teeth made him suck in air. He shut his mouth in a hurry after he spoke.