Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Chapter 17

When Sophie came bursting through the door a little while later, Sprinkles in tow, she couldn’t have sounded more excited.

“You guys!” she announced when she came back in. “You won’t believe this!”

“Me first,” I ordered. “I want to say my thing, it’s important.”

“Not nearly as important as mine… I can prove that Kelly Dottory was not only in Willow Bay the morning Andrea was murdered, but,” she said, pausing for a minute for emphasis, “I have proof she was in Andrea’s neighbourhood at the time of the murder.”

“Ok, yeah, that’s bigger than my thing,” I replied, my mouth dropping open. “How on earth did you manage to find that out?”

Sophie sauntered into the kitchen and grabbed a fresh strawberry from the pile sitting on the counter, taking off the end and popping it into her mouth.

“Because I’m awesome, that’s how.”

“As true as that is, I think Angela was asking for a more practical explanation,” Charlotte said.

“Fine.” I was walking Sprinkles back towards his old neighbourhood, though we didn’t actually go to his place. Anyway, I ran into Elise Reeve, you know, the girl with those two little Yorkies?”

I nodded. Elise Reeve was in her late 60s, retired from her job at the post office that she’d held for years and years. She spent her days now doing yoga and taking care of her Yorkshire Terriers, sometimes combining both. Apparently ‘doga’ is a thing, now. She lived on Oak Street, the street where Andrea’s body had been found, but around two hundred yards further down the street from where the body was found.

“So,” Sophie continued, “I started talking to her while the dogs were saying hi, you know. And I mentioned casually that I didn’t trust Kelly Dottory, and Elise told me that she actually saw her when she was taking her dogs for a walk that morning. She was walking up the street towards Andrea’s house!”

“Did she tell you what time it was?”

“Yeah, that’s the thing. She said she walks her dogs like clockwork; it was eleven o’clock. Right on the dot.”

“Half an hour before the murder,” I said quietly, almost to myself.

“So you see?” Sophie said triumphantly. “It was that slimy little thing. She thinks she’s so perfect, strutting around in her expensive clothes, pretending like Seattle is the biggest city and she’s so much better than us. But she was here the morning of the murder, and she was going to her aunt’s house half an hour before she was murdered.”

“Well, I have to say,” Charlotte said, “I’m pretty convinced. I try not to be too prejudiced over the fact that she attacked Angela at the funeral, but even being as impartial as I can, I can absolutely see Kelly Dottory being responsible for the murder, and the evidence is definitely pointing that way.”

Charlotte looked at me, waiting for my thoughts.

“I have to agree,” I said, slowly. “Everything points towards her. She has the best motive out of everyone we have left, too, now that Andrew Powers is definitely innocent.”

“Wait, what?” Sophie asked. I quickly caught her up on the events of the evening.

“So that settles it. It has to be Kelly!” Sophie announced, and I couldn’t help but notice a bit of glee in her voice. Not that I could blame her; in fact it was taking everything in my being not to be secretly pleased that all the evidence was pointing that way as well.

“Maybe that’s why Sprinkles is so nervous and scared when he’s around her, too,” I added.

“Yes!” Sophie interrupted. “We always assumed that he looked sad and submissive because of how annoying and loud she was being, what if it was because he was scared of her? Because he knew that she was the one who hurt Andrea.” Sophie had lowered her voice for that last part, and she looked around, but it seemed as if Sprinkles had gone to lie down somewhere by himself.

“Now what do we do?” Charlotte asked. “We can’t exactly go up to her tomorrow and be like ‘hey we know you killed your aunt’. All that’ll do is make her leave town as quickly as possible.”

“I vote we go and tell Chief Gary tomorrow what Sophie found out. That way, it’ll also just seem like we just had a little bit of a chat with a neighbour, as opposed to actively trying to find out who killed Andrea, and we’ll look like good citizens,” I said. After all, if we had just possibly solved a murder case, at the very least we should get a couple kudos from the authorities for it. “But I was thinking,” I continued, “if Elise saw Kelly, maybe someone else did too. Maybe they’re afraid to talk about it, because they don’t want to be the next ones hit over the head. I mean, sure, it’s an isolated part of town, but it’s not completely deserted. There’s four other houses on that street. Maybe someone else saw something.”

“Yeah but one of those houses is abandoned,” Charlotte chimed in. “Remember? The one across the street?”

The house across the street from Andrea’s had been abandoned since before I was born. I had never remembered anyone living there before. There were all kinds of stories about the house that I heard growing up, and why it was abandoned. One rumour was that a man lived there with his girlfriend in the early 80s, and when he proposed to her and she said no, he killed himself, and no one wanted to live in that house since. We’d also heard it had been a crack den, where the local addicts went to shoot up, until the state took over the property and had it boarded up, but didn’t do anything with it afterwards. I’d also heard that ghosts live there, that everyone who had lived at that property was cursed, that it belonged to a soldier who was killed in World War 2, and basically every single other story you could possibly imagine.

“Fine. So three houses then. Still, that’s three neighbors.”

“What about the cops? Don’t you think they would have done that like, first thing? If there was anything important there we would have seen it when we were in the police station.”

“Yeah,” I argued, “but what if someone was too scared to talk to the cops? What if they were afraid they’d be next? You know there’s things we tell each other that we would never, ever tell the cops.”

“Like how you used to smoke weed in high school?” Sophie asked with a grin.

“You say that like you totally didn’t join me,” I replied, rolling my eyes. Sophie and I actually had a secret spot in the woods behind our property back in high school that only we knew about. It was just a couple plants, enough to supply the two of us and no one else. It had always been far enough away from the house that we could plausibly deny it was ours, especially since at that point we lived with Lisa, and not in the bungalow.

“You guys never told me that!” Charlotte said, her eyes wide and her mouth stern with the disapproval only a 4.0 GPA student can give.

“That’s because we knew you both wouldn’t approve and wouldn’t want to join in,” Sophie replied.

“Plus we knew you would so tell Lisa if you knew,” I added.

“I would not,” Charlotte said, jutting out her chin.

“In fact, I wouldn’t put it past you to still tell her now,” Sophie continued, and I laughed.

“Oh you guys are ridiculous.

“We are not, but we are getting off topic,” I replied. “I think we should go talk to the other people on that street. If someone else saw Kelly near Andrea’s place, or better yet, go inside it, then we’d have even stronger evidence against Kelly.”

“But if she went inside her house, wouldn’t it be easier to kill her there than wait for her to go out in broad daylight?” Charlotte asked.

“Well, yeah, but Andrea used to walk Sprinkles at the exact same time every single day. Seriously, those old ladies had a more precise schedule than we do, and they were all retired. If Kelly was at her place when it was time to walk Sprinkles, then she would have had to go with her aunt.”

I could see Sophie and Charlotte thinking.

“Fine,” Charlotte finally said. “There’s nothing to lose by doing it, anyway.”

“For sure.”

“Good. Because I want to go out tonight.”

“Really? But it’s almost nine,” Charlotte said.

“Yeah, but it’s summer, so it’s still pretty much light out. And I want to settle this. I’m sure Kelly did it, I want us to have as much proof as possible when we go see Chief Gary. Who’s coming with me? Sprinkles, do you want to go for a walk?” I called out, and the dog came bounding out like he was fresh as a daisy.

“I can’t,” Sophie said. “Taylor’s coming to pick me up in about half an hour, we’re going to go catch a late movie at the theatre.”

“And I have to be up at 5 tomorrow, since I have my stupid early class,” Charlotte said. “So I’m pretty much going to go to bed now, like an old person.”

“Fine. You guys suck, I guess it’s just Sprinkles and me,” I said.

“Yes! I am totally up for another walk,” Sprinkles announced. “You’re so nice! I love walking!”

“Awesome. It’s just you and me, little guy. Are you ok if we go see Andrea’s neighbors? I need to ask them important things.”

“Yes, that’s fine. I’m getting better at going to where she lived. It’s not as sad anymore. It’s still sad though.”

“I know, little buddy. I’m sorry,” I told him, giving him a scratch behind the ears. “But it’s important, to help find the person who hurt Andrea. If we go out tonight, we might just be able to solve this case.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help,” Sprinkles said. “I just can’t remember. I just remember being scared.”

“It’s ok,” I told him. He’d still repressed the memory. Poor Sprinkles.

I grabbed his leash and he jumped at the door as we went out into the evening.