07 Uncorked - Chrissy McMullen Mystery (23 page)

Swearing and praying, I lurched up beside her. Charlie growled as I lifted his front end. A bullet zipped past my ear. The dog was slippery with blood. We almost dropped him on the pavement, but Lavonn yanked the back door open and tumbled inside with him.

“Fuck you, bitches!” Drag was almost on top of us. Light from a lone street lamp glowed in his eyes. As he pulled the trigger again, something seemed to snap loose in Lavonn. She screamed like a banshee and lurched out of the car. I don’t know how long it took me to realize her intent but the second I did, I sprang forward and grabbed her by the back of her shirt.

“Let go! I’ll kill the bastard!” she shrieked, but adrenaline had overpowered my system. I hauled her backward, pushed her in beside Charlie and slammed the door.

Drag pulled the trigger again. It snapped emptily. He glanced at the weapon, then cursed and staggered toward me. His fist hit me like a freight train, driving me back against the hood of the car. My head was reeling, but I was lucid enough to realize he was coming at me again. Gripping the edge of the Saturn in clawed fingers, I swung my legs up and kicked with all my might. I would like to say I planned to strike his leg wound.

But that was just dumb luck. Still, he stumbled backward, hissing and cursing. I reeled around, but he was already rising, supporting himself on the bumper.

I tumbled into the driver’s seat and yanked the car into gear. There was a grunt, a bang, and then silence.

My foot slammed onto the brake without my permission. Reflex. It took me a moment to realize the car had been in reverse. Longer still to comprehend that Drag was already pulling himself from beneath my bumper.

I didn’t wait around to see if he was seriously injured, didn’t have time to hope he was. Instead, I wheeled onto Wilton and got the hell out of Dodge.

Chapter 23

Some days you’re the dog. Some days you’re the hydrant.

—The Hydrant

I was shaking like a true believer, Lavonn was moaning, when suddenly the passenger seat began to sing. I shrieked and jerked the steering wheel, nearly skidding off the road before I realized the noise was nothing more terrifying than my phone. I snatched it up in trembling figures.

“Hello?” My voice shook.

“This is 911. We received a call from this number at 2:23 this—”

“Where have you been?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Where have you been? I could have—” I was breathing hard. “I ran him over with my car!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I think I misunderstood you. Repeat that, please.” Lavonn’s moaning was rising in volume. Her voice sounded past hysterical and into scary-as-hell. “He’s dying.”

“Is this an emergency, ma’am?”

“You’re 911!” My own voice didn’t sound all that calm. “Of course this is an emergency.”

“Please explain the situation clearly and slowly.”

“He shot Charlie.” Let me say at this juncture that those words may neither have been clear nor slow.

“Please calm down, ma’am.”

“I am calm!” I yelled.

“I think he’s dead,” Lavonn moaned.

I twisted toward the backseat. Her eyes were glowing in the darkness, showing the same kind of rabid fear I had felt during a dozen harried trips to the veterinarian.

“Are you currently in a safe location?” The woman’s voice was über calm. Deadpan, even. It made me want to beat her within an inch of her life. But I suspected, even then, that that might not be the correct response to the situation.

“Ma’am, are you in a safe location?”

I glanced out the window. I had no idea where I was, but just then I zipped past a billboard for Disneyland. Nothing could go wrong in Disneyland.

“Ma’am?”

“Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I think so.”

“Very well. Now, ma’am, there was a vehicular accident, is that correct?”

“It wasn’t an accident,” I said. “Aren’t you listening? He shot Charlie.”

“Where?”

“In the chest I think, but I’m not—”

“What street?” Her tone had gone from deadpan to patient. I hate patient, but I gathered my wits and rattled off Lavonn’s address.

“Can you give me a physical description of the victim?”

“I don’t know.” I felt crazy and shaky and scared shitless. “He’s black, maybe seventy pounds, small ears, short tail. He has a—”

“Ma’am!” Her voice had gone clipped and chilly. Patience had disappeared. I kind of missed her.

“Are you aware of the penalty for prank calling an emergency number?”

“This isn’t a prank call.”

“The victim has a tail?”

“Just a short…” I don’t know why I didn’t realize the problem before this. “Charlie’s a dog. A pit bull, I think.”

“So it's the dog that has been injured."

"And maybe Drag."

“Is Drag a dog?"

"No, he's a man." I remembered what he had done to Lavonn. "Kind of."

"And where is Mr. Drag at this time?"

“Probably on 6th Street.” I didn’t repeat that that was where I had run him down with my car. But I wasn’t ashamed of the fact.

“I’ll need a physical description of Mr. Drag.”

“He’s the asshole with the gun that shot the dog and was chasing Lavonn down the

—”

“Is there someone else there who might be able to give me a concise report?” I glanced over my shoulder. Lavonn was on her knees in the backseat, singing lullabies to the dog. “I don’t think so.”

“Very well. We’ll send an officer to the scene of the crime. You will be required to come in to the station to speak to an officer and fill out a report. Can you get to—”

“I don’t think he’s breathing.” Lavonn’s voice was little more than a hiss. “’Cause of me, he ain’t breathing.”

“Ma’am,” the woman said. “I need you to go to-” she began again, but my attention had been snagged by the tragedy in the backseat.

“It ain’t fair,” Lavonn moaned.

“Ma’am? Can you do that, ma’am?”

“No,” I said, and wheeling onto Vineland Avenue, snapped my phone shut.

In less than seven minutes, I had slammed the Saturn to a halt in front of the veterinary emergency hospital. I was out of the car and racing through the front door in a heartbeat.

“I need help,” I gasped.

Jenny was behind the front desk. She looked up, startled, blond pony tail swinging as she jumped to her feet. “Ms. McMullen.”

“Outside.” My voice was raspy, my pulse jittery.

She pressed a button on her phone. “Dr. Kemah, Christina McMullen is here. Yes, ma’am. Yes. I think we’ll need all hands.

“What happened?” Jenny was already hurrying out from behind the reception desk into the waiting area. “Chocolate chip cookies again?”

“Gunshot.”

“Gunshot?” She drew back in surprise just as Dr. Kemah strode around the corner.

Dark skinned and serious as an aneurysm, she was already pulling on a pair of latex gloves.

Our gazes met as they had during a dozen other canine emergencies.

“Harry!” she yelled, not bothering with the intercom. “We need you now!” Harry appeared like an oversized angel as we rushed outside.

Lavonn was still moaning when we opened the Saturn’s back door.

“This isn’t Harlequin,” Kemah said, and shot her gaze to Lavonn.

“He was just trying to save me.” Her voice was velvet soft, her hands bloody as she cradled the dog’s head.

The doctor stared at her for a full three seconds, then yanked her attention back to the dog. “Bring him in, Harry,” she said.

In a half a second he had Charlie cradled in his arms. Cujo didn’t bother to try to bite him. I thought it was a bad sign. Even on the stainless steel exam table, the dog lay perfectly still. His ribs were rising and falling, but the rhythm was slow and I could see no other signs of life.

Kemah shoved a needle beneath his glossy hide and cranked open an intravenous drip. Pulling up one lip, she checked the dog’s gums. They were as white as a KKK hood.

Whipping on her stethoscope, she checked his pulse, his breathing, the seeping entrance wound near his flank. “When did this happen?”

I glanced at Lavonn. She looked defensive and shocky. “He was just trying to protect me,” she said again.

The vet turned toward me.

“Half an hour ago, maybe,” I said. I wasn’t sure when my hands had begun to shake.

She nodded. “He’s lost a lot of blood.” She probed the wound with a latex finger.

The dog growled.

I winced, maybe because of the dog’s pain, but maybe because the animal scared the bejeezus out of me. “Can you save him?”

“Maybe, but it won’t be cheap. We’ll need x-rays, possible surgery, antibiotics, pain killers. The bullet may have hit the spleen.” She tapped a finger to the corner of the dog’s eye. Its blink reflex seemed slow. “But he looks like a fighter.” Lavonn was rocking back and forth. “He wasn’t five weeks old when I got him. He was the runt baby. Skinny as a string bean. I fed him from an eyedropper.” The corner of her mouth twitched.

It was that twitch that sent me soaring over the edge of sanity and into the abyss of financial distress. “Do what you need to,” I said.

Kemah nodded briskly, then started snapping off orders. We were banned to the waiting room.

Fifteen minutes later, Jenny reappeared. She was the approximate age of my freshest produce, but much cuter. “I have a preliminary bill for you,” she said. I bobbled to my feet and went to the desk, where she spread out an itemized invoice the length of my femur. She explained it in detail, but I didn’t hear a word. Not until she got to the price.

“Seven hundred now and the balance when you pick him up will be fine,” she said.

I looked at Lavonn. She looked at me. Shame and worry flared in her eyes.

“I was lucky to get out of there with my damn life,” she said.

I swallowed. “Can you bill me?”

“Well…” Jenny scowled, trouble-free brow furrowing in concern. “We usually require payment at the time service is rendered, but…“ She glanced toward the back, then shook her adorable head. “For Harley’s mom we’ll make an exception.” Thirty seconds later, Charley was being prepped for surgery while Lavonn and I sat in my car like war victims. I was staring out the windshield. Lavonn was looking out the passenger window. “I suppose you think I should be grateful.” Her voice was low, steady, and absolutely devoid of gratitude. I kind of wanted to hit her on the back of the head with the steering wheel.

I think it’s a testimony to my self-restraint that I did not.

“Is there someone who can take you in for the night?” I asked.

“Take me in!” She scoffed. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d be in my own house right now.

I’d be there with my kids and my rosewood banisters and—”

“Are you nuts?” I asked, voice rising. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d be stoned out of your mind and living with a kidnapping drug dealer.” She stared at me a second as if trying to decipher my words then shook her head. “I wouldn’t be stoned. I don’t do that no more. You’re the one that—” I held up my hand. But not to slap her, I swear. I just wanted to make her stop talking.

“Where should I take you?” I asked.

She stared at me a moment. “I wanna see my babies.” I nodded and started the car. It rattled a little more than usual. Apparently running men over in the street isn’t very good for the…something or other. “Where are they?” She swiped her knuckles beneath her nose. “With my aunt.”

“In…” I gritted my teeth, patience ebbing.

“Cleveland,” she said.

I killed the engine and turned to her. “Cleveland.”

“I miss ‘em something terrible,” she said, and started to cry.

By the time I pulled up to my curb, Lavonn had fallen asleep. I glanced toward my little house. Every light was blazing and that was all right by me.

I woke her up none too gently. She sat up like an inebriated rock star, swaying a little.

“Where are we?”

“My place.”

She scowled at my humble edifice. “You live here alone?”

“Yes. I mean…” I’m not sure why I hedged. “I have a boyfriend, of course. He’s big.

He’s very big.”

She stared at me as if I’d lost my last marble, but I couldn’t stop my ramblings.

Sometimes when folks try to kill me I get kind of freaky.

“And a doctor. A psychiatrist. He wrote a book. It’s going to be a best-seller.” She shook her head and got out of the car. Her steps were kind of unsteady as she wobbled toward my stoop.

It took me a little while to hustle up the wherewithal to beat her to the front door.

When I did, I pushed my key into the lock only to learn it wasn’t locked at all. My breath caught in my throat.

“What?” Lavonn sounded as if she had had about all the bad news she could handle.

“The door’s not locked.”

“Maybe your big doctor boyfriend is inside.”

“He’s in Pinsk.”

“Do you mean Minsk?”

“Hell if I know.”

“You sure you locked it?”

I thought back, retracing my steps, but my mind was a jumble and in that moment Harley whimpered. He was inside, and suddenly it didn’t matter if the Bloods had taken residence in my kitchen and were duking it out with the Crips. The memory of a dog bleeding to death on the asphalt made me yank out Shirley’s Glock and push open the door like Dirty Harry on an estrogen high.

Lavonn remained exactly where she was. “You had a piece?” she asked, but I barely heard a word she said because in that moment I saw Harlequin.

He was standing in the foyer, boxy head canted to the side. His eyes lit up with love when he recognized me. My heart lurched back into action. “Hey, handsome,” I said, and sinking to my knees, wrapped my arms around his neck. He licked my ear, sighed, and rested his muzzle on my left shoulder. For several seconds all the world was right.

And then Lavonn spoke.

“You had a damn gun the whole time and you didn’t shoot his ass? Why the hell didn’t you shoot his ass?”

I gave Harley a kiss on the snout and rose reluctantly to my feet. “I ran him over with my car,” I said, and dropped the Glock back into my purse. “Isn’t that good—”

“What’s going on?” a voice asked.

I squawked like a distressed chicken and swung toward the intruder, hands raised like machetes.