Chapter Sixteen
Okay, her tongue didn’t need loosening.
“What murder?” Clara asked.
“Damon Swindell. You know him? He and his wife live in that swanky area out of town.”
“Oh, my goodness. We know him from dog training at Zepke’s. Saw him last night,” Clara said. “He’s dead?”
“Murdered,” Ruby confirmed. “He was found early this morning on Gallows Path.”
“Gallows Path?” I repeated. Who on earth would want that address? “Where’s that?”
Clara dismissed my question with a quick, “Road southwest of here,” before pelting Ruby with, “Who found him? How was he killed? What’s being said?” then, belatedly, adding, “Poor Pammy Swindell. She must be devastated.”
“All I’ve heard about Pammy is that Zoley Georger is with her. And Donna has the dogs.”
Clara’s eyes hadn’t deceived her about Donna’s passengers.
“How about the other questions?” I asked. “Who found him? What’s being said? And—” I’d lost at least one question from the pelting. “—something else.”
“How was he killed?” Clara supplied.
“Shot. In his head.” Ruby nodded her own head for emphasis. “Twice.”
“Well, that argues against suicide,” Clara murmured.
Ruby’s short nod hadn’t finished before she said, “How he was found, a call to the sheriff’s department about a truck parked with its lights on and door open took them out to Gallows Path real early this morning. He was on the ground nearby.”
It had to have been early to be dark enough to see the truck’s lights. I don’t claim first-person experience, because I don’t see sunrise if I can avoid it, but I know the theory about sunrise coming earlier this time of year.
“As for what’s being said . . . Not a lot. Folks shocked, for sure.”
“His friends must be, especially. Who are his close friends?” Clara asked.
“Oh, well, close . . . He and his wife do a lot with Bryon and Zoley Georger. Live near each other. They’re in that training class, right?”
“They are. His other friends?” Clara nudged. “He grew up in the county, didn’t he? Went to UK?”
“Uh-huh.” The older woman stopped.
Clara pressed. “He doesn’t have friends from growing up or school or now?”
Ruby lifted her left shoulder. “Not that I know of.”
I asked, “Could it have been a robbery gone bad? Or . . . drugs?”
“Never heard about him and drugs,” she said.
“Are there houses or other buildings around where he was found?” I asked.
Kit emphasized that the location of a murder was often a vital element.
Ruby and Clara shook their heads.
No drugs, no buildings . . . What had taken him to where he was killed?
“What does Gallows Path lead to?” I asked.
“Doesn’t lead much of anywhere,” Ruby said. “Led to the gallows, way back. Now it’s kept as a back way into a park near the river, because the main road in floods sometimes. Needed that second way to get people out one year when the river rose fast.”
“I remember that—”
The door opening cut short Clara’s remembering.
A young woman with an open box filled with envelopes walked in.
Ruby brightened. “Kacey, you have all the wedding invitations ready to go?”
A wedding put talk of murder in the back seat.
With quick thanks and goodbyes to Ruby and Ike, Clara and I retreated and stepped outside.
“Where to next?” she asked me.
“The café.”
“Oh, good thought. We can pick up gossip there.”
That, too. But first, pastries.
* * * *
“Go straight,” Clara ordered at the intersection where I needed to turn right for the café.
“The café—”
“Go straight. I promise we’ll get to the café. We’re going to the dog park first.”
“Why?” It did not compute to go there without the dogs. Not to mention— “Donna won’t be there. She’d already been and gone when we were there.”
“Then we’ll get to the café sooner.”
* * * *
Donna was there, with Hattie. Again.
That was unusual on top of unusual, with a side order of unusual.
Not her being with Hattie, of course, but that they were back at the dog park and this late in the day — by her standards — since it was now closer to noon than dawn, which as far as I could tell was Donna’s preferred time.
Adding icing on the unusual cake, she was in a separate large-dog enclosure, while other dogs and owners occupied the main enclosure.
Sometimes volunteers from the dog shelter used this second large-dog area to isolate a dog they didn’t yet have a gauge of.
That sure didn’t apply to dignified Hattie.
“How did you know she’d be here?” I asked Clara.
“Thought she might want to run out some of Lucifer’s and Izolde’s energy.”
I didn’t see either dog, but considering how right Clara had been about the rest, I didn’t question her.
Donna was with a young woman with wind-blown blonde, wavy hair who rubbed Hattie’s ears. The gray-muzzled dog leaned against her hip, head raised in bliss.
Threatening to break the unusual-o-meter, Donna headed toward us as we entered, gesturing for the young woman to stay put.
In Normal World, Donna required that we went to her, physically and in the sense of asking her for information.
“You heard about Damon Swindell?” She wasted no time.
“Yes, from Ruby,” Clara said.
“You have Lucifer and Izolde?” I asked.
Donna tipped her head toward a downward slope that hid a corner of this enclosure. In the other large-dog enclosure, the slope was much more extensive. Still, this one was big enough to hide two dogs.
Izolde’s head popped into sight, then Lucifer’s tail, held high.
For the first time, I wondered why Donna had them.
As if she’d heard me, she said, “Zoley Georger called and said Pammy Swindell was too upset to care for Lucifer, that Lucifer was such a strong reminder of Damon that his presence made everything worse. With the authorities at the Swindells’ house, the dogs were at Georgers’. The two women, too.”
The humans were such an obvious afterthought for Donna, I sucked the inside of my cheeks to keep from grinning.
“When I got there, both dogs were wound up like tops, in the backyard run and barking their heads off. Zoley Georger said to take Izolde, too. Said she had her hands full with Pammy. Along with complaining Bryon wasn’t around, so she had to do it all herself.”
Not around?
At work? Or . . . could deputies be questioning him? He was a friend— Or was he?
Law enforcement might not know about the tensions we’d seen.
Besides, wouldn’t they question Damon Swindell’s wife first?
Clara’s thoughts clearly remained on the dogs. “Having Izolde around, might help calm Lucifer down.”
Donna snorted. “Biggest help to calm him down was getting him away from those two women. The screeching. You would not believe it. Mostly Zoley,” she added judiciously. “The second biggest help was getting Willow over to see Lucifer and Izolde.”
A backward tip of her head indicated Willow was the young woman she’d left with Hattie.
“Willow Yost has been walking Lucifer and Izolde from the start. When they saw her, they took a deep breath, felt safe enough to play. You need to talk to her.”
The abrupt switch from the dogs wasn’t as disorienting as the idea of Donna inviting us to ask questions.
Her standard behavior provided tacit approval of our investigations, with an insight here and there, but never anything this overt.
Our duet of surprised silence drew another impatient snort. “Don’t tell me you two aren’t looking into the murder of Damon Swindell, because I wouldn’t believe it. You’d put your noses in the murder of someone who came within ten miles of you, much less anyone from our training class.”
“We’re . . . interested, of course,” Clara started. “But—”
“No buts. Go talk to her. I told her who you are. No time to waste. Lucifer and Izolde aren’t bad dogs, but with them and Bernie .
. . I’m too old for that much puppy energy.
” She finished with a firm, “Hattie, here,” then walked to another area of this enclosure, declaring she wasn’t getting more involved, while not looking back because she fully expected the dog and all three humans to obey.
We did.