Terrier Transgressions

Chapter Fourteen

All eyes zoomed to Nan, even Yo-Yo’s despite the fact he still didn’t know what we were investigating, and I was pretty sure he couldn’t understand any of us humans, either.

“Well, here’s what I think…” my eccentric grandmother said, placing the Yorkie in her lap, much to Octo-Cat’s annoyance.

He skittered across the table and back to my side. “Yuck. Dog germs,” he said with an exaggerated twitch.

“I think,” Nan continued in a baby voice directed at Yo-Yo. “That nobody’s tried buttering this little guy up. You keep putting him in all these excitable situations and expecting him to be able to perform. Why not spend a little time getting to know him, making him feel comfortable, and then broaching the…?”

She hesitated before deciding on the word she needed to finish her sentence. “Um, conversation,” Nan concluded with an awkward smile.

Charles and I looked to each other and shrugged.

“I guess it’s worth a try,” I said with a quick nod. I’d hoped she would stay with me and Charles to study the photos and files some more, but once Nan had an idea, it was hard to get her to focus on anything else. Actually, she was kind of like Yo-Yo in that way.

“Great.” Nan stood, still clutching the terrier to her chest delicately. “You two get back to your work with those grisly photos, and I’ll work on plying the key witness.”

“We don’t actually know that he saw anything. It’s possible that—” Charles corrected, but stopped short when I placed a hand on his wrist and shook my head.

“Just let her do her thing, and we’ll do ours,” I said. “Now help me pull out the testimonies of all the women involved in the case—officers, witnesses, friends, neighbors, coworkers, anyone we have.”

We shuffled through the papers, having all but memorized the order of the statements and evidence. It didn’t even take five minutes to pull out the documents we needed.

“Now,” I said, appraising our work. “Are there any men that we know for sure are my height or shorter?”

Charles thought for a few moments before handing me a couple of additional files. “This one is a colleague of Bill’s from Bayside Printing Company, and that’s one of the potential buyers from the open house.”

I fanned everything out before us, attempting to group similar people together. We have one end for colleagues, one for people from the open house, one for friends and family, and one for miscellaneous folks who had somehow been called into the case, such as police officers or crime scene cleaners. Most documents weren’t official testimonies at all, but rather bio sheets Charles had made himself before I joined the case.

“Let’s go through them all one at a time,” Charles suggested, reaching for the colleagues stack. We spent the next hour talking through each person and taking notes about who had either means, motive, or opportunity. For those that had more than one of those, we added a star to their sheet and placed them in a new pile.

After all that work, we were left staring at our two most probable suspects: the daughter and the realtor, Michelle Hayes and Breanne Calhoun.

I sighed and leaned back against my chair. “I keep hoping the facts will line up differently, but it really looks like one of these two is to blame.”

Charles crossed his arms and shook his head, staring me directly in the eye as he defended our—or at least my—prime suspect. “No way. I know Breanne can be a bit brusque, but she didn’t do it.”

“Maybe so,” I said, even though I still hadn’t even come close to clearing the rude realtor in my mind. I like to think I learned my lesson from investigating Ethel Fulton’s death. I’d been so convinced of who the killer was that I wouldn’t even consider anyone else—and ended up putting myself in a very dangerous position besides.

Still, from everything I’d seen and heard so far, Breanne made sense. Maybe if I eased Charles into this realization a little more slowly, he’d put his hesitation aside and finally see things my way.

“Okay, so then let’s discuss the daughter. How do you explain the fact that Michelle has more or less disappeared into thin air?”

“She hasn’t disappeared,” Charles argued this point, too. If we kept disagreeing over every single possibility, we might as well hand over Brock’s conviction now.

“She’s just not answering our calls,” he said, tapping his pen on the table and frazzling my nerves.

“Okay, then where is she?” I demanded, grabbing the pen and moving it out of his reach.

Charles sighed and folded his hands in front of him. “At her college up state.”

“Well, given that we have no other leads to pursue, I think I know we’re headed next.”

“It will be a waste of time,” he insisted with another heady sigh.

“Charles,” I said gently. “Please. We have nothing else at this point. We at least have to try. For Brock.”

“Fine. For Brock,” he answered in defeat.

“Good,” I said, even though his lack of enthusiasm made it an empty victory. “Let me go check with Nan and Yo-Yo. C’mon, Octo-Cat.” I roused my tabby from his nap and motioned for him to follow me.

“Are we finally getting somewhere with all of this?” my cat asked after letting out a massive yawn.

“Soon, I hope,” I said diplomatically.

Charles groaned and laid his forehead on the table as we walked away.

“Oh, hi, dears!” Nan cried as Octo-Cat and I joined her in the living room. “Yo-Yo and I are having a great time getting to know each other out here. Aren’t we, boy?”

The terrier barked, and Nan praised him profusely.

“Well, she’s lost at least ten points in my book,” Octo-Cat said drolly. “It’s always a shame when a good human falls to the dog side. I must say, I never expected this kind of betrayal from Nan. You, maybe, but definitely not her.”

“She’s not changing allegiances,” I said as he jumped to the back of the couch and settled in. “She’s just doing what she can to help out.”

“Says you,” he complained, shaking his head in disgust.

“Is everything okay?” Nan asked with a quick glance toward the perturbed kitty.

“It’s fine, or at least it will be. Hey, Octo-Cat,” I called to get his attention again.

“What?” he whined, mid-paw lick.

“You can take a bath later,” I scolded. “The whole point of us coming out here was to see if Yo-Yo has anything new to say. Could you please ask him if he remembers anything new?”

“No, not like that,” Nan interjected, continuing to pet the Yorkie enthusiastically. “Tell him his new friend Nan would like to know if anyone has hurt his family that he can remember and if he can tell us about it.”

“Barf,” Octo-Cat responded before shouting, “Hey, Dum-Dum!”

The terrier’s head immediately snapped toward him. It definitely didn’t help that Yo-Yo had started responding to the cat’s cruel nickname for him.

Octo-Cat asked his question exactly as Nan had worded it, which caused the other animal to whimper and bury his face in Nan’s lap. The fact that he wasn’t yipping in terror was definitely progress.

My bored-looking cat nodded as he listened to the little dog, who had now lifted his head to look directly at Octo-Cat as he made sad puppy noises.

When Yo-Yo grew quiet again, Octo-Cat said, “Wow. I’m actually really surprised that worked.”

I sat up straighter in my excitement. “What did he say?”

“He said it was really dark that night and he couldn’t see well, but the person who hurt his mom and dad had red hair. He also wants to know when he can go back to his family.”

The poor dog still didn’t know he wouldn’t be seeing his parents again, but he had finally given us enough to finish clicking all the pieces together. Red hair could only mean…

“So it was Breanne!” I shouted triumphantly. “I knew it!”

“Good kitty,” I called back to Octo-Cat as I marched back to Charles in the dining room.

“Do not call me kitty,” Octo-Cat growled after me, but from the note of happiness in his voice, I could tell the correction was just to remain consistent in his attempts to train me out of certain behaviors he didn’t much appreciate.

“Did you hear?” I said, placing a palm on each table and leaning toward Charles, who still looked utterly defeated.

“You think it was Breanne,” he answered. When he lifted his head, one of our case documents was stuck to his cheek. “Why?”

“Yo-Yo doesn’t know they’re dead, but he remembers them getting hurt. He said it was late at night, which matches up with what we know about the crime.”

Charles finally looked as excited as I felt. “And?”

“He said it was dark so he couldn’t see well, but that the person who hurt them had red hair. That could only be Breanne.”

“Think again,” Charles said, pulling out his phone and browsing through his email. When he handed it back to me, there was a young woman with bright red locks who looked vaguely familiar even though I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her before.

“Who’s that?” I demanded.

“That’s Michelle Hayes.”

Uh oh.

We stared at each other for a moment before I finally came up with an argument. “But wouldn’t Yo-Yo recognize his own sister?” I sputtered.

Charles frowned. “Not necessarily. Especially if it was too dark to make things out clearly.”

“So what now?” I asked, gnawing on one of my few untouched fingernails as nerves overtook me.

“Road trip!” Nan cried from the other room.

Charles nodded. “It’s our last shot at solving this in time to stop your mother’s story.”

Shoot, he was right. Even though just minutes earlier I’d been the one insisting we pay Michelle a visit, I felt much more anxious knowing that she may actually be the killer.