Nothing To Sniff At (Animal Instincts Book 5) (10 page)

On the other hand, I would have my sister back and be able to find out the truth of what had happened all those years ago. I would stop battling through everyone else and be able to get to the source to talk things through.

Sheila yawned. I checked the clock and it was nearly 3am. I was shocked at the time. The dogs would want to be let out at 6am, which meant I only would get a bit of sleep before the grind started again. “Want to spend the night?” I asked.

Sheila’s eyes grew wide, and she looked like she might spit out her tongue. “What?”

My face grew red, and I could feel my ears burn. “I just meant, you have to get up soon. You could stay over – clothes on and everything. But there’s no reason to drive all the way home to get some sleep.”

She grinned. “That’s more like you. I was shocked for a second, because I thought we’d agreed to take this slow. You’ve still got the training wheels on.”

I nodded, not sure of how I would deal with a mature sexual relationship while I was still in a fight with my mommy. I needed to resolve some issues before I could tackle a family of my own.

We went upstairs and crashed on top of the bed, each of us too tired to undress. The dogs, shocked to see another body in the bed, climbed in between us and promptly fell asleep.

When I awoke the next morning, Sheila was gone. There was a note telling me that she’d made coffee and taken the dogs on a short walk. I glanced up to see it was nearly 9am. Though I was not an expert in relationships, I had always thought that the other person leaving without waking you in the morning was a bad sign. However, Sheila had made coffee which for me, was nearly a proclamation of love.

She was back before I got through my second cup. She was carrying an album of photos, and for a moment, I wondered if we were sharing pasts now. She knew all about mine – thanks to the daily newspapers and police files, but I knew next to nothing about hers.

I settled in to look at photos of her past. Yet when she opened the book, it contained photos of men with police records. I looked to her for an explanation.

“Last night, something you said sparked an idea with me. I wanted to know how both departments knew about the drug smuggling on the day when Barkley couldn’t smell. We knew that Brate had called McNabb and told him. But who told Brate? And almost as importantly, could the man who told Brate be the guy in the back of the Corolla?”

“Wouldn’t he have recognized him and mentioned it? Don’t you meet with CIs on a regular basis and know them?”

“For the most part, but this didn’t have to be a regular CI. This could have just been a tip from someone.”

I took a long sip of coffee and tried to collect my thoughts. “So how do we figure this out? Brate isn’t talking and I don’t know who else would know who the man is?”

Sheila patted the photo album. “That’s why I brought these. First there are a groups of photos of some of the known CIs for Port Clinton. Then I gathered up as many photos as I could of people associated with the drug dealers busted by McNabb when there was a fake Barkley. I’m not going to get an answer out of Brate, and the Ottawa County coroner is backed up. It could be days before he gets to this case. So I thought we’d get a lead on things if you could identify someone from the book. You did get a good look at the corpse.”

I nodded. I remembered it like it had been burned on my retinas. The pale white skin and the bugs that had crawled out of his mouth. They were all reminders to me of what I’d seen. I’ve only ever seen a few bodies in my lifetime, mostly at funerals, though in the past few months, I’d seen more than my share of dead bodies during my business. It was not a positive for my line of work.

Sheila rested the book on the coffee table and flipped it open. The first pages were easy to eliminate. The men were of different races or ages. I was able to quickly skip the young, the old, and anyone who was not white. I’d made it through about 25 pages before I stopped. The man’s eyes stared at me, almost telegraphing to me that he was the one.

I read the bio on him. He was 40 and worked nominally as a bookkeeper for a company that was suspected of being a front for drug operations. That would explain the pasty complexion and the seeming uniqueness of his appearance in this book of photos. He’d never been arrested, but he’d been watched for years. The lack of arrests could explain why his fingerprints hadn’t been of any help to the police in identifying him.

Sheila picked up on my reticence to turn the page. She spent her time taking a few notes on the man while I looked at him. She wrote down his name, which was Harold Berkemeyer, and his address which was in Ottawa Hills. I wondered if Harold had been friends with the Weinburgs who had rented the house to Troxel. It certainly was a small world, after all.

“This him?” she asked.

I nodded. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Let’s go then.” She stood up and brought her coffee mug with her.

“What’s going on?” I was surprised that she had extended an invitation to me. Either she was offering to buy me breakfast or she was about to break protocol here.

“I want you to come to this house with me. I’m just going to ask if Harold’s home. If he is, then you’re wrong. If he’s been missing a few days, then I think we have our vic. It’s nearly impossible to tell why someone was killed if you don’t know who they are. Once you have a name, you can get the motive in no time. In this case, it is drug related. So now we just need to find out about the drugs.”

I nodded and stood up to follow her. Sheila drove. It was a new experience for me. She’d never let me in the car with her, even though she was driving her personal car this morning. She was a good driver, and I got lost in the nuances of her driving skills. We were there in twenty minutes. She pulled into the driveway of the home, announcing her appearance here. I would have parked on the street to look around more. She got out and was knocking on the door by the time that I made it to the porch.

A woman answered the door and looked from one to the other of us. “What do you want?” she asked.

“We’re from the police,” Sheila started, but that was as far as she got. The woman broke down and started to cry. Not silent tears that ran down her face, but gasping wails that could have been heard down the street. We were both surprised by the reaction, but it certainly answered our questions. She knew why we were here and what we wanted to tell her.

“It’s my husband, isn’t it? He’s dead?” she said finally, practically gasping out the words. The wails began again after the question, and it was several minutes before we could get them down to a sob. She had a handful of tissues in her hand, and she dabbed at her eyes and nose.

She made a motion to invite us in. As soon as I stepped in the door, I knew why Berkemeyer had called the police. The home was filled with four Westies, who ran around the place and jumped on my legs, wagging their long white tails. I sat down on the floor and played with the two younger ones, who just wanted to roll over and present their bellies for rubs. Their big black noses sniffed at my hands as I scratched one and then the other.

No one who would have four of these adorable pets could have stood by and let someone harm an animal. From my assumptions, Berkemeyer must have suspected that his compatriots planned to harm Barkley, which is why he’d called in the police on the operation. If Brate hadn’t been on the ball, the shipment would have gone right past the police and into Ohio where it would be distributed to the small towns of northern Ohio. There was enough heroin in the area without adding to the problem.

So we had the motive, the victim, and the killers. I wasn’t sure what was left to do on this case. I started to stand up when I heard the screech of tires. I don’t know if it was instinctive or merely a Pavlovian response at this time, but I hit the floor as fast as I could. This time, I didn’t lose the air out of my lungs and I screamed as loud as I could. “Get down now!”

I gathered up the dogs, who were scared and unsure. I huddled them under me, knowing that my coat and hat would help protect us all. One whimpered and I bent down and whispered softly to it, “You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.” I wasn’t sure if that was as much for the dog as for me, but I kept repeating it until the dog settled.

A spray of bullets shot through the house. The windows shattered into a rainbow of diamonds in the morning light. I could feel the glass rain down upon my back, but since I hadn’t taken off my coat, the harm would be minimal. I watched as the door splintered from automatic fire so fast that the bullet holes nearly touched each other on the door.

Sheila turned, un-holstered her gun, and dropped, but not fast enough. The arm of her pants suit turned crimson, and her silver eyes grew wide with surprise. She hit the ground, grabbing at her arm and dropping the gun. I made sure the safety was on, and turned my attention to her.

Without thinking, I pulled off my coat and threw it over the dogs, who thought it was a game of some sort. Their pulling and tugging kept it over them as another spray of bullets came through the windows.  With Sheila hurt and me without a coat, there was nothing beautiful about this round of glass. It cut me in a few places where it landed on bare skin.

Sheila’s arm was still bleeding, so I ripped off my t-shirt, thanking myself for not changing enough in my life to dress up, and wrapped it around her arm as a tourniquet. The bleeding immediately slowed.

I heard the car’s tires squeal again, and I wondered what was happening.

“They’re coming back for another run – or they’re coming in. 911 now,” she said through clenched teeth.

I dialed and waited. I spoke about ten words to explain the situation and put the phone down as I heard more gunfire. The door broke off its hinges at the top, and the curtains in the front window danced like kids at a club. There was less glass this time, simply because much of the glass had been shattered earlier.

I didn’t hear them slow down, and I prayed that they would keep going. They had to know that their time was limited, since someone in this area of town would clearly call the police. The air grew quiet, and I waited for any sounds of their return or the police. I heard nothing for a few minutes but the quiet breath of my companions.

Sheila was still gritting her teeth, but the blood flow had stopped and she was out of immediate danger. “You’re pretty good in an emergency,” she managed to say. “I think I might keep you around.”

I nodded. “Years of emergency practice at home. What to do in case of any situation? We covered armed intruders, so I was ready for this.”

I checked the dogs. They were a bit nervous and upset, but other than that they were unscathed. I gave another couple of belly rubs before I went looking for Mrs. Berkemeyer. She wasn’t in any of the downstairs rooms. For a few minutes, I thought that maybe she had skipped out in the aftermath of the shooting. However, for whatever her husband had done, I didn’t see her leaving the Westies behind. Her love for her pets was obvious, and if what I suspected was true, so was her husband’s love for pets.

I went upstairs, still looking for her. She was in a bedroom which had been converted to an office. She pulled an external hard drive free of its cords and thrust it at me. “Take this. Take this and damn those people. Harold said I should get rid of this if anything ever happened to him. He didn’t say how, and so I’m giving it to the police.”

I nodded. I knew how she felt. Sometimes the truth has to come out. I carried the hard drive out of the room and went downstairs to wait with Sheila.

The police and EMT were only a few minutes away and made it to the house quickly. They had no trouble in finding it since it looked like a set from
Scarface
. The police swept Sheila away before I could find out where she was being taken. I hadn’t said goodbye to her, and the loss of her presence at this scene shocked me with its intensity. I wasn’t used to missing someone these days. I had kept people at a distance for just this reason.

With her gone, the police settled on me to explain the situation. I did as best as I could, trying not to forget any details about the drugs, Barkley or Brate. Of course, since it was my business, I told the police that the dogs had told me the motive for their owner’s murder. It was close enough to being true.

I gave them the hard drive and an explanation. Having the evidence, they opted to take Mrs. Berkemeyer to the station with them. I told her that I would clean the floors and feed the dogs. I spent the better part of two hours cleaning and playing with the little white bundles of fun. They took my mind off my worries about Sheila. I wanted to give her some time to get through with any procedures and get the police out of the way before I went to see her. I wasn’t sure if she wanted to take our relationship that public or not. She’d already met my family.

Getting anywhere proved to be a problem. I’d ridden to the house in Sheila’s car, which meant I was stranded. I was bloodied and shirtless, so I wasn’t sure how well a taxi driver would appreciate me as a fare. I cleaned up as I could.

My phone had been put down after calling 911, and it took me about 15 minutes to find it. The battery was low, but I was able to manage to get a taxi. I pulled my jacket tight around me, even though it was the worse for wear after the Westie play. I made it home in one piece.

There at home, I hugged my pets more than they wanted. The Countess made her displeasure known by leaving the room. The dogs stayed around, hoping that my attitude would mean a supply of treats, which it did. They can read me sometimes as well as I read them.

I called the hospital, but they wouldn’t give me any information. I could understand, since I was sure that the news media was already on the story. I got dressed again and drove to the hospital.

She was in a private room. There were a couple of men there, who I assumed were cops. She smiled when I entered the room and introduced me all around.

So much for my worries. After about ten minutes, the men left us. Sheila had a somewhat crooked smile, which suggested to me that she’d been given some drugs for the pain. “How are you doing?” she asked. “I’m feeling good.” She stretched the word out into multiple syllables.

“I’m here,” I said with a smile. “I got the hard drive from Mrs. Berkemeyer, or rather her dogs,  so there’s enough evidence there to put these guys away.”

“Great. Case closed, just a little worse for wear, eh?” She looked at her arm and made a face.

“Yeah. I’m glad you’re alright.”

I leaned in for a small kiss, but she grabbed me around the neck. We kissed for a long time. I wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline or the pain medication or just the way she felt. We’d discuss that at another time. When we pulled apart, she gave me a smile. “I want to be there for you like you’ve been for me.”