ransom for Abra.
“He only meant to scare you,” Tina said. “Shooting from a moving truck is a lot harder than you might think.”
I pictured the silver pickup with the splintering windshield. MacArthur had said he couldn’t identify the driver. Was that true or false? How much did he know about what Tim was up to?
“Since when does Tim have a truck?” I said.
“He doesn’t. He ‘borrowed’ it from our neighbor who’s on vacation.”
My head spun faster than a yoyo. If I hadn’t already been sitting, I would have immediately sought a chair. As it was, I wanted to slide all the way to the floor.
“Are you saying… Tim shot everybody?”
Tina arched her back. “Not everybody! Just four people involved in that dog show.”
“Two of them died,” I said.
“By accident,” my office manager declared. “Tim had instructions to hurt those two. But… they moved.” She shrugged. “Mitchell Slater wasn’t supposed to take that last step. As for Matt Koniger, well, you know what they say about a shot in the dark? Poor Tim. It’s really hard in a blackout to hit the target but not kill him.”
“How about Ramona Bowden?” I said. “Was Tim supposed to hit her or miss her?”
At that instant my front door clicked open again. Seeing our chief of police, Tina let out a cry of either surprise or relief; I couldn’t tell which.
To me Jenx said, “That’s where it gets interesting. Ramona Bowden was Tim’s boss.”
“No way!” I said.
“Way,” sighed Tina. Then she took a deep breath, stood up, and extended fisted hands, palms down, toward Jenx.
“What are ya doing?” the chief said.
“Go ahead and cuff me. I’m an accessory.”
“Shut up and sit down,” Jenx said. Tina obeyed.
I waited for Jenx to make the next move, but all she did was stare at Tina.
“Isn’t this the part where you read her her rights?” I said.
“If I was planning to bust her, yeah,” Jenx said. “But I think there’s a chance we can keep Tina out of this.”
“Her husband killed two people!” I exclaimed. “And shot two more, including me!”
Jenx nodded. “He also kidnapped a valuable show dog. And your dog, assuming Abra didn’t go willingly.”
“Abra always goes willingly.”
Tina raised her hand like she was in school. “I threatened Whiskey with a toy gun and told her I was going to rob her safe. Does that count?”
“Did you rob her safe?” Jenx asked.
Tina shook her head.
“Then let’s all play Whiskey’s game,” Jenx said.
“What’s that?” I said.
“Denial. We’ll all three pretend nothing weird happened here.”
Jenx pointed Tina toward the door and told her not to do anything stupid. I considered those instructions much too vague.
It turned out that Jenx hadn’t known about the Tim-and-Ramona connection 'til she followed up on the pickup truck reported by MacArthur. When she drove to the house where the truck was registered, she found Tim in the garage, cleaning broken glass from the dashboard.
“The son of a bitch ran when I pulled in the driveway,” she said. “I got so pissed off my magnetic compass went out of whack! Everything electrical on the block started arcing.”
Jenx wasn’t a superhero although her geomagnetic powers were the stuff of local lore. Magnet Springs happened to be built on a highly charged electrical field. Spikes and surges have always been commonplace here. Records dating back to 1820 note that the occasional grazing cow keeled over when it wandered into the wrong part of a wet pasture. A few farmers did, too. But fertile soil and sweeping views of Lake Michigan kept most settlers from moving on. Then along came the Jenkins clan with a genetic predisposition for channeling energy, especially when riled. Don’t piss off the chief. She’s got a weapon nobody can make her register or put down.
Jenx continued, “A power line snapped loose and fell next to Tim, spraying sparks! I swear, he jumped a foot in the air. Stood there bawling like a two-hundred-pound baby. So I marched him to my cruiser. He spilled everything before we got to the station.”
“Everything” turned out to be this: After Ramona’s second husband died, and she inherited yet another small fortune, she decided the time had come to pursue personal satisfaction regardless of cost. Personal satisfaction in the form of revenge, that is. Ramona kept score. She wanted payback for Mitchell and Matt having publicly rejected her in front of her dog-show cronies. She wanted to spite Susan, too, for carrying on high-profile affairs with the same two men. Ramona intensely resented Susan’s easy egotism, her conviction that-and I’m paraphrasing-her own shit didn’t stink. Her dogs’ shit, either.
Ramona told Tim that Susan had schmoozed her for one reason only: to access her excellent breeding stock. Susan’s kennel would have been unremarkable without it.
Why did Ramona do business with Susan? Probably to be able to say that she did. If there’s guilt by association, the same holds true for glamour. That was Jenx’s theory, anyhow. Susan and her dogs got national attention because she was rich, beautiful, and sexual. On that scorecard Ramona was one for three. And resentful as hell about it. Through a paramilitary listserv she placed a discreet ad seeking a “personal assistant capable of confidentiality and excellent marksmanship.”
“We know this much,” I said. “Tim padded his resume.”
“We also know he bought supplies through that listserv,” Jenx said. “Including night-vision goggles and a chemical designed to disguise his scent. Ramona didn’t want anybody killed. Her goal was to scare the crap out of ‘em. But her marksman screwed up.”
“He shot his own boss!” I exclaimed.
“By accident. Tim was supposed to shoot at her in order to draw suspicion away from her. But he got nervous because she kept yelling at him. It was Tim who Ramona phoned just before she got shot. He was on a cell phone that Ramona had ‘lifted’ from Kori, just to confuse things.”
Although I didn’t know Tim well, I knew now that he was the man I’d seen in silhouette leaving the exhibit hall after the lights went out. And his was the voice I’d heard shouting at people to stay still.
“Was Brenda in on this, too?” I said. “She drives a big black car. The hood was hot when MacArthur talked to her!”
“She’d just come back from the carryout down the road,” Jenx said. “I interviewed Brenda by phone-after her attorney sprang her from the local slammer. She got busted for driving drunk. But she had nothing to do with Ramona. In fact, Brenda was the victim of another crime.”
“Let me guess. Sandy Slater accused Brenda of wanting Matt dead because he was blackmailing her!”
“Matt and his mama were squeezing money out of Brenda,” the chief said, “in exchange for not telling her snooty friends and fellow breeders about her sexual preferences. Brenda also had the hots for the Two L’s.”
“We still don’t know whose Cadillac picked up the dogs,” I sighed. “If it was a Cadillac.”
“It’s a Cadillac, all right,” Jenx said. “A Seville, not a DTS. Your Amish teen was full of crap, like teens everywhere.”
“How did Ramona learn to drive so aggressively?”
“Practice. She’s had a slew of citations for speeding and driving without due regard.”
“Where is she now?” I said. “And where’s Silverado?”
“We assume they’re together. There’s an APB out for her and her car. It’s just a matter of time 'til somebody sees her.”
I comforted myself with the knowledge that Ramona raised dogs, so she wouldn’t hurt this one. Tim Breen had told Jenx that Ramona paid off one of the Two L’s to get her other dogs safely back to Grand Rapids. She’d also hired Kori to make sure Silverado ended up in her motel room when he took off after Abra. And to “pull the plug” during the final round of judging.
I said, “So Kori was involved! I knew it!”
