Trouble in Tallahassee (Familiar Legacy Book 3) Page 10

  Disappointed, he finally gave up and started back toward where he’d parked. Night was coming on, and the darkness only made Victor feel more desperate. How long could Layla last without her insulin? Had she already bled out from whatever wounds she’d endured? Or, had she simply been murdered there in the library basement and her body removed?

  He was almost to his truck when he heard heavy footsteps approaching. Victor turned to the sound and saw a large man jogging toward him. Behind him, a smaller man huffed to keep up. Instinctively Victor reached down into his pocket for the switchblade, closing his fingers around the handle but keeping his hand inside the pocket. He stood still, allowing the two men to reach him.

  “What you want with Dogman?” The shorter man’s voice was demanding and hostile.

  “Praise be to the Lord,” the larger man said. “They call me Preacher.” His voice was pleasant. “Some of the brethren back at the shelter told me you were looking for an acquaintance of ours. Might we ask the nature of your concern?”

  “I owe him some money.”

  The little man pushed in front of Preacher and advanced on Victor. “You ain’t fooling me. You ain’t no homeless.”

  Victor eased his fingers out his pocket. He sensed no danger from either man. For the moment, he wondered if the truth would work best. Often, it did.

  “If Dogman is who I’m looking for, he mugged my friend the night before last, and now she’s been kidnapped. I want to ask him about the mugging. She’s got diabetes and I’ve got to find her quick or she’ll die.”

  “Dogman ain’t no mugger and he damn sure ain’t no kidnapper. Man used to be a shoes salesman till the recession and drinking done him in.” The smaller man shook his head.

  “As my friend here gave witness to, Dogman is not a bad person.” Preacher rocked back on his heels and raised his head to the night sky as if in prayer. Then he lowered his head until he stared Victor right in his eyes. “Dogman wouldn’t hurt your friend and he most assuredly wouldn’t kidnap her. His fondness for drink and street drugs was his undoing.”

  “I still need to find him.” Victor reached into his pocket intending to pull out his last two ten-dollar bills. The gesture set off the shorter of the two men, and he jumped back and pulled out his own switchblade.

  “Just wanted to offer you this for your time.” Victor pulled the bills free of his pocket with care and thrust the money at the men. “And if you’ll tell me more about Dogman. You saw scratches on his face?”

  Snatching the money with his left hand, the little man never let down his guard or the knife. “Badass scratches. Said he got ‘em fighting with an old alley cat. That was yesterday morning. He ain’t been around since then. Stays most nights on the street cause the shelter spooks him. I don’t know his real name. Call him Dogman cause he used to own him some fancy kind of big dog and he talked about that dog all the time.”

  “Do you know where he stays? I mean, on the street?”

  Preacher eased closer to Victor as if he did not wish to be overheard. “He prefers to spend his days in the park over by the library. By night, he has a spot under a low-hanging bottlebrush tree by a dumpster in the parking lot by the big Methodist Church near the library. Sometimes the good people at the church buy him food and he reads a lot of magazines at the library. But he doesn’t have your girl, I can tell you. Man doesn’t have any real meanness in him.”

  Victor figured this was all the info he was likely to get, and he thanked Preacher. For a moment he was sorry he didn’t have more money to offer, but handouts wouldn’t cure anything. Whatever had brought this man, with his obvious education, to living on the streets wouldn’t be solved by a couple of ten-dollar bills.

  Victor drove to the library in downtown Tallahassee and parked. He scrambled out of the truck and hurried uphill to the big Methodist Church, eyeing the benches and ground as he walked. The city street lights kept the area lit, if only in a kind of hazy way.

  In no time at all, he found the dumpster behind the church in a parking lot half covered by a thick, low hanging bottlebrush tree. The place smelled rank, probably from the garbage in the dumpster. But even with the offensive odor, it would be a good place for urban camping, shaded in the day with good protective cover and out of the eyesight of casual observers.

  “Dogman!” Victor kept his voice low and his fingers on his switchblade still in his pocket. “I know you’re here. I just want to talk to you.”

  Pausing to give the man a chance to come out—or wake up—Victor kept quiet. When no one spoke and he heard nothing, he stepped into the dark shadow of the bottlebrush branches and looked around. Scattered piles of clothes and a large cardboard box suggested someone was living here. Easing into the spot, squinting now that the tree blocked the streetlight, he spotted a pizza box half covered by a towel with a dark stain on it. Victor kicked the towel off and nudged the box open. A whole pizza was inside the box, covered with ants and roaches.

  Immediately on red alert, Victor stepped back into better light and wished for his flashlight. He edged closer to the dumpster, his eyes darting around for any danger or any sign of Dogman. Sniffing, Victor picked up the scent of far worse than spoiling garbage. “Damn it,” he whispered.

  He flung open the dumpster lid.

  Even in the shadowy light he could see the body of a man only half covered in trash. As he reached for his cell phone, concentrating on the body in the dumpster and his certainty it was Dogman, he let his caution lapse.

  Something hard whacked him on the back of his head and he collapsed to the sidewalk, his cell phone spinning out of his hand.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  What a lot of tosh this is. Victor has me shut up in his tiny house. You’d think he would understand my keen detective skills are best utilized when I’m not restrained inside locked rooms, but am left to my own considerable resources.

  He’s in the other room, dressing up in some kinky outfit, when I decide to make my break. It doesn’t take me long to find an opened transom over a side door, and, narrow as it is, out I go. Fortunately, I have a keen sense of direction and personal stamina, and I’m off at a run, heading for Abby’s house.

  No one tries to bother me as I pad along the sidewalk. For a moment, I put aside my pique at Victor for not offering to take me with him—he’s sure to botch whatever he’s doing without my help—and I think of those nice china bowls of water and nibbles that Abby keeps in the kitchen for me.

  Yet, as soon as I reach her house, my keen cat sense tells me something is amiss. Rather than parade up her walkway, I skulk along in the bushes. Nothing is obviously awry in the front of her house, but something is setting off my internal alarms.

  I sneak around the side of the house, keeping to the lush bushes, and poke my nose out to stare at her back door. It’s standing wide open. Part of me wants to think she left it open for me, but the woman is not stupid. She would not leave her back door wide open under the circumstances.

  With great care, I check things out. I sniff and catch a whiff of something faint, but familiar. For the briefest of seconds, I hope Layla has returned here. After I stand and inhale deeply trying to snag a stronger scent, I reluctantly decide this is not Layla’s smell that’s teasing me. Approaching the opened doorway, I sniff again, but still, this tantalizing trace eludes me.

  Eyeing the door, I see no evidence of a break-in and Abby has deadbolt locks. Once more, hope that Layla has returned leaps in my heart and I dash into the living room. Where I stop dead in my tracks and stare.

  Obviously the would-be burglar from last night returned—and this time he or she managed to get inside. Someone has completely trashed Abby’s living room. Her potted plants, which she clearly cherishes, are knocked down and the dirt is scattered about. Worse, the aquarium has been tilted over and someone has tossed the gravel and rocks on the bottom as if looking for something. Aquatic plants have been uprooted from the fish tank and thrown on the floor. I see a couple of small fish on the tile and ed
ge over and sniff. Dead. Abby will be so upset. However, most of the fish are still swimming around in the tank, though half the water has been sloshed out.

  As there is nothing I can do to help the surviving fish or the potted plants, my best move is to make sure no one is still lurking in Abby’s house. I pad from room to room, discovering each room has been ransacked. In the back bedroom, a window screen is punched out and the window wide open. Someone wanted something bad enough to break in through a window in daylight, and he or she was savage in the search. Layla’s room is a complete, horrible mess—even the sheets have been pulled off the bed and her pillows slashed.

  Though I neither see nor hear anything that suggests the burglar yet lurks in the house, somehow I feel that the miscreant is still here. I catch a whiff of that tantalizing scent again. This time, the fragrance is strong enough that I can place it—that same spicy fragrance I smelled my first night here when I chased a person around the corner of Abby’s house.

  Even if the miscreant is still in the house, I can’t just hide till Abby returns. I need to find him—or her—and get a good look at this person. Despite my misgivings, I head back toward the kitchen. The refrigerator door is standing open, and I don’t want Abby’s supply of cod and salmon to spoil. It takes me a bit of effort, but I finally get the door pushed shut by slamming my body sideways against it. Her canisters of flour, rice, and beans have all been poured out and even her sugar bowl has been dumped on her table.

  Whoever searched the house missed one thing. My dish of cat food appears untouched. I poke through the dried kibbles with my paw, making sure Abby or Layla didn’t hide something in my food. Nothing but cat food. I much prefer fresh fish, but it’s been a long and difficult day so far. I take a brief repose to drink and eat before I hurry to Abby’s bedroom.

  Abby’s jewelry is flung about on top of her dresser, and all the drawers have been rudely yanked open, their contents scattered. Just as I start to sniff around, I hear footsteps coming inside the house from the garage. I freeze. The steps are too heavy for Abby or Layla’s tread as both women are light and graceful.

  These, I decide at once, are a man’s footsteps. I back up under the bed, out of sight. Maybe it’s Victor? Or the police?

  But I hear a drawn-out cuss word in a voice I do not recognize as the footsteps come closer.

  And I smell that spicy scent—this time, strong and clear.

  Exhausted, Abby pulled into her garage, so fatigued that steering took extra concentration. She couldn’t believe it was already night and Layla was still missing. Though she’d called Lucas Kelly six times, she learned absolutely nothing. He’d assured her they were doing all that could be done and he would personally call her with any news. The last time she’d called him, he’d been downright snippy. Well, it wasn’t his insulin-dependent roommate that was missing. That’s what she’d told him in equally snippy tones.

  Earlier Abby had searched anywhere at the law firm that Layla might have stashed her collection of flash drives. The police had already been through Layla’s office, and so, no doubt, had Emmett when he moved in. Still, Abby had managed to find one, tucked away in the cubbyhole in the kitchen where Layla kept her snacks she used to keep her blood sugar from crashing too low. There in a box of Glucerna bars, a bright pink flash drive had caught Abby’s eye at once.

  A quick run-through of the materials on the flash drive didn’t seem the least bit helpful as they were all law review related. All Abby had really learned was that despite being outwardly messy—after all, she’d left a flash drive in a box of food—Layla was fiercely organized with the law review materials.

  Not surprisingly, Layla had been working on a law review article on the long history of offshore oil exploration in Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. Yet nothing in the rough and partial drafts of Layla’s article seemed to suggest a reason she should be kidnapped—or worse. Between Detective Kelly’s dismissive, snippy tone and the fact the drive contained only school work, Abby hadn’t bothered to turn it over to the police.

  Still, Abby was bringing the flash drive home with her—along with a laptop she borrowed from the law office. Since Rizzo still had her PC and laptop, she felt oddly vulnerable without an Internet connection, and Delphine had given her the okay to use one of the firm’s. She planned to take another, closer look at Layla’s pink flash drive on the borrowed laptop. If she found anything of interest, then she’d call Lucas Kelly—again.

  Abby pulled into her garage with a sense of profound relief, turned off her car’s engine, and got out, cradling her purse and the borrowed laptop. When she opened the garage door and stepped inside her house, she was surprised when Trouble rushed up to her.

  “How’d you get back in?” Victor had assured her that he would keep Trouble at his house until Abby was home. And Victor did not have a key to her house.

  Trouble battered her leg with his head, bellowing a distressed sound.

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?” Abby tried to soothe Trouble, but the cat spun away from her and stared scratching at the door to the garage. He practically yowled.

  He wanted out, that was clear enough.

  But when Trouble darted back to her, wrapped his paws around her leg, and pulled—yes, pulled—she realized he was trying to make her leave too.

  Warily, Abby looked around. The entrance from the garage led through the laundry room and nothing amiss jumped out at her. With Trouble yowling and pawing at her legs, she stepped into the kitchen, flipped on the light, and cried out. The place was a total wreck.

  Pulling away from Trouble’s paws, she dropped the laptop and her purse on the kitchen table and ran into the living room. “Oh, no, oh, no,” she cried out and fell to her knees in front of the two black mollies on the floor. She picked them up and dashed to the aquarium, tilted as it was on its side and half-emptied of its waters. She dipped the two mollies gently in the remaining waters, but they did not revive.

  “My mollies, oh no.” She felt a tear, then another roll down her cheeks.

  Trouble head butted her with some vengeance. He meowed and pawed her, then ran to the front door. As she watched him, she saw with horror that all of her plants had been dumped too. Dirt and exposed roots were everywhere. Still on her knees, Abby looked around at all the damage, anxiety and anger rising in her simultaneously.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Trouble dragging something from the kitchen and turned to see what he was doing. Trouble maneuvered her purse toward her. When he had it near her, he pawed it open and kicked out her cell phone.

  As upset as she was, Abby could not help but be amazed. Trouble was telling her in no uncertain terms to call 9-1-1. She picked up the cell phone just as Trouble let out a pronounced yowl.

  Before she could hit the nine, someone put a big hand on her shoulder.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  With his eyes shut tight, Victor rubbed his head and moaned.

  “Hangover’s the least of your troubles,” someone said. The voice seemed to hover high over Victor’s head, vaguely threatening and yet diffused somehow.

  Somebody nudged him in the side with the point of a shoe. “Open your eyes and get up. Now,” another voice said. No mistaking the order and tone of voice.

  Victor fluttered opened his eyes despite the fact his lids seemed glued together. Two uniformed police were standing over him. He pulled himself up, conscious of the rollicking pain inside his skull, which was compounded by the flashlight one of the cops pointed at his eyes.

  “Been drinking, I see. Got into a fight with your buddy, cut him up and dumped him and passed out. That’s how I read it,” Cop One said to Cop Two.

  In a nauseating rush, it all came back to Victor—the ratty clothes, the beer he’d splashed on himself, and, worst of all, the dead man in the dumpster. “It’s not what you think.” Victor shifted his right hand toward his pocket to reach for his billfold and ID, smelling as he did the robust aroma of beer and the stink of the man in the dumpster. Even over the po
werful scent of death, the smell of the extra beer someone had poured over him was strong.

  “Get your hands up and away from your pocket and put ‘em where I can see them.” The police officer without the flashlight rested his hand on his Taser.

  “I just want to get my ID.”

  “We looked already. You don’t have any ID. But you did have a real fine switchblade, right there by your hand. Had a bit of blood on it too. Want to tell us how that happened?”

  Victor inhaled, forcing himself to focus. He didn’t panic. He knew he’d eventually establish his identity and that anyone—especially these street cops—could tell the body in the dumpster was not fresh. He’d been set up. That was easy to see. Maybe harder to explain.

  “While we’re waiting for the detectives and the coroner, you want to tell us about your buddy in the dumpster?” The cop with the flashlight kept it on Victor’s face while he spoke.

  “No, sir. I don’t want to tell you anything except that my name is Victor Rutledge, I’m a third-year law student, and I was a Master of Arms in the Navy. If you call Joe Rizzo or Lucas Kelly, they’ll identify me.” Victor rubbed his head, feeling a distinct and painful lump. When he brought his hand forward and looked at it in the glare of the officer’s flashlight, he saw blood. “I’ve been injured, hit on the head from behind.” Victor held his hand up so the police officer could see the blood.

  “We’ll see a paramedic looks you over,” one of the cops said, his voice a little less guarded.

  “For sure, this body’s been dead a while,” the other office said to his partner.

  Ignoring the golden rule of keeping your mouth shut when facing arrest, Victor couldn’t help himself. “I’ve been set up. Bet you got an anonymous phone call directing you here. Right after someone knocked me out.”

  “How come you’re dressed like that? And smell like beer?”

  “I was trying to locate that man in the dumpster and—”