Bentley Little: The Association

And there was still no sign of Barney.

His gaze alighted on the mailbox.

With a sinking feeling in his gut, he walked around the Suburban. He stepped up to the mailbox and paused, then reached out and pulled open the rounded metal door.

There was nothing inside.

He let out a sigh of relief, unaware until that second that he'd been holding his breath. He'd been almost certain that he'd find the cat mutilated, its body stuffed into the mailbox, and he had never been so thankful to be wrong. He turned back toward the house, intending to bring Maureen out here and show her the damage, when he saw a glimpse of fuzzy black amidst the light green stems and deep magenta flowers that had been tossed onto the driveway between the cars.

He knew without looking closer exactly what that fuzzy black was, but he moved forward nevertheless, bending down to examine the object more fully.

Barney.

The cat was lying atop two discarded plants, and its dead open eyes were staring upward at the bumper of the Toyota. White foam was dripping from the animal's mouth onto the asphalt, where it had already puddle into an irregular pool. He wasn't an expert on these things, but he was pretty sure that Barney had been poisoned, and he hurried into the house, dragging Maureen away from her fax to show her the damage outside.

"My God," she breathed. She looked around the property at the upturned vegetation and the dead cat. "Who do you think did this?"

Barry shook his head, completely at a loss. They didn't know anyone here other than Ray and Liz and the other people they'd met at the Dysons' party, and his gut reaction was that it was probably an act of random vandalism perpetrated by bored teenagers looking for a thrill, but whether they were teenagers from town or the kids of parents who lived in Bonita Vista he had no idea.

Pretty sick kids.

"Do you think we should ... call the police?" he asked.

"Hell yes," Maureen said angrily. "I want the assholes who did this prosecuted. We spent almost a hundred dollars on those new plants--not to mention all the work we put into clearing brush. And they can't get away with killing Barney. I mean, what kind of creep would poison a defenseless little animal like that?"

He had no idea, but it made him furious as well. They hadn't had Barney long enough to feel real sadness at his loss, but they felt rage at what had been done, and he, too, wanted justice, his indignation fueled and amplified by Maureen's righteous anger, pushing aside his earlier uneasiness.

There was no police station in Corban , but he called the sheriff's office to report the vandalism, and twenty minutes later a tan Dodge with the sheriff's insignia painted on the doors pulled into the driveway. The deputy who emerged from die vehicle was not the stereotypical redneck he'd been expecting but a skinny unassertive kid who looked as though he were still in high school.

Barry and Maureen met him in the driveway.

"I'm Wally Addison," the deputy said, nodding. He was trying to look authoritative but didn't have either the face or the years to pull it off. He withdrew a metal clipboard from the front seat of the car. "I

understand you've had some vandalism on your property. You need this reported for your insurance?"

"No," Maureen said. "We want whoever did this caught."

"Caught?"

Barry frowned. "Of course."

"I'll be honest with you," the deputy said. "There's a lot of vandalism around these parts--people shooting up stop signs, tipping over cows, batting mailboxes, what have you--and unless there's an eyewitness, we hardly ever catch the people who do it."

Maureen looked at him levelly. "What does that mean? You're not even going to try?"

"No, no," he said nervously, trying to assure her. "We'll do our best to apprehend the culprit. I just wanted you to know that the odds of doing so are not in our favor."

"Well, we don't care about your past track record," Maureen said. "We expect you to find out who killed our cat and tore up our yard, and we expect you to arrest him."

"Of course, ma'am. Of course. Now if I can just get some information from you good people, we can get started..."

Barry described how he'd looked for the cat, going through his discovery step-by-step. Maureen stated that the last time she'd seen Barney had been after dinner, when she'd fed him some leftover chicken on the top deck. Neither of them had had any run-ins with neighbors or had seen any mysterious individuals lurking about; neither was aware of any grudges held against them or any reason why they would be targeted.

The deputy dutifully took everything down, and with an uncertain glance at Maureen stated that it sounded to him as though this was a random attack, probably carried out by trouble making teenage boys. But, he added hurriedly, the sheriff's department would do everything in its power to solve this case. He gave Barry a carbon of his report and a business card with his beeper number, promising to call as soon as there was any information to report.

Ray showed up before the deputy left, and he remained silent, staying unobtrusively in the background until the tan car pulled out of the driveway and headed back down the road. Maureen headed back inside the house, and Barry walked over to where Ray stood waiting.

"I saw the hubbub from my window," Ray said. "What's going on?"

Barry gestured around. "Take a look for yourself. Someone poisoned our cat and tore up Mo's plants."

"And you called the sheriff?"

"Of course. What did you expect me to do?"

"What I mean is: are you sure this was illegal? Did the sheriff or whoever that guy was give any indication that this wasn’t a crime?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The sheriff's office has been known to... assist the homeowners'

association in disputes with individuals."

"You think someone from the homeowners' association killed our cat?"

Barry asked incredulously.

Ray shrugged. "I'm not saying anything. I'm just pointing out that, under the bylaws, pets are prohibited in any residence within Bonita Vista." He was quiet for a moment, tilting his head. "Hear that? No dogs barking. I don't know if you've noticed, but there are no domestic animals of any kind within Bonita Vista. No dogs or cats, no hamsters, no goldfish." He met Barry's eyes. "No pets."

"But--"

"It's in the C, C, and Rs ."

Barry thought of the dead cat in the mailbox and found that he could not dismiss the idea entirely.

"What about the plants, though? This is vandalism. This isn't enforcement of regulations."

"You're supposed to get approval from the architectural committee before any landscaping changes are made," Ray said quietly.

He didn't believe it, not really, but the idea sent a quiet chill down his spine. Was it possible that someone from the homeowners'

association had come to their house in the middle of the night and, while they were sleeping, poisoned their cat and dug up their garden?

He recalled Neil Campbell, the man with the clipboard, and it didn't seem all that farfetched.

"But... people wouldn't put up with this, would they? I mean..." He shook his head. "Even in someplace like Utah--especially in someplace like Utah--it seems like people would be more ... individualistic, like they wouldn't want to get involved in things like homeowners'

associations."

Ray snorted. "For people who are so antigovernment and anti regulation they're pretty well sold on this association crap. I mean, hell, most of them are NRA members who pitch a shit fit every time there's so much as a whisper of trigger-lock legislation. But they have no problem with making a homeowner come before one of their damn committees if he wants to trim a tree or plant a flower. On his own property!"

"NRA members, huh?"