He made a whining noise as he bounced off, and as Mindy and I rushed to him, he wobbled a bit and then fell over.
The daft mutt had knocked himself out.
‘Perfect,’ I muttered, unable to believe how far I had fallen in the space of a day. Not only was I a fugitive on the run from the police, I was also breaking into yet another house and doing it with a mentally deranged dog.
His tongue was lolling from the side of his mouth. A beetle walked over it.
Scratching my head in disbelief, I said, ‘We’d better get him inside. I need to check if he is really hurt.’
Mindy helped me over the fence, then hefted Buster, struggling under his weight, and passed him to me.
I almost collapsed when I got the full weight of him in my arms. Remember I said he was like lifting a dead weight earlier? Well, I was wrong. Now that he was unconscious, he was like a dead weight.
Mercifully, Mindy jumped over the fence like it was nothing and helped me to take his weight before I fell over or dropped him. Just like in John’s house, I had the front end, and she had the back as we shuffled through the Bleakwiths’ garden to get to their house.
We were quiet about it, sticking to the trees and in the shadows as much as we could. The sun was already beginning to dip. It was coming up on four o’clock and would be dark within the hour. That made it easier to assess that there really was no one home. Had they been, they would have wanted a light on.
‘Let’s put him down over there,’ I suggested, nodding to the patio behind their back doors. It was right next to the spot where Derek had fallen, and I could still see the scuff marks in the grass where he landed.
That was how this all started. Fate had put me in their house at precisely the wrong time. Change my visit by an hour or by a day and I wouldn’t be involved on any level.
Buster started to come around as we put him down. ‘Whassa? Wass happn?’ he mumbled.
I was relieved to hear him. He sounded a little dazed, but he was all right.
Mindy said, ‘I’ll look for a key,’ and darted away.
Holding Buster’s head and stroking his fur, I asked, ‘Does your head hurt?’
He squinted at me. ‘Little bit. Did I break the fence?’
‘Not even nearly.’
‘Really?’ He was both disappointed and surprised by the news. ‘I felt sure that was going to work. I bet it would have worked if I had a cape.’
I continued to stroke his fur absentmindedly and looked about for somewhere Joanne or Derek might have hidden a key. There were no obvious flowerpots or rocks in sight. I didn’t get to look any further because Mindy appeared at the patio door.
She took a second to work out how to open it, but it swung wide when she did, and we were in business.
‘You found a key then,’ I said, getting up from the grass.
Mindy shook her head. ‘There was a bedroom window open.’
Curiosity demanded I ask how she got up to the bedroom window – I hadn’t heard her moving a ladder about, but I parked it for now – we had evidence to find.
‘How’s my Devil Dog?’ asked Mindy.
‘I’m not sure Devil Dog is such a great name,’ Buster admitted. ‘I might need to rethink it.’
‘He’s fine,’ I told her. ‘Come along, Buster. Stop hamming it up and find the cream.’
Obediently, Buster the bulldog rolled back onto his feet, gave his head a shake, and trundled into the house. Once in the kitchen he paused to sniff the air.
‘Can you smell it?’ I asked him. ‘Can you smell the cream?’
He sniffed again. ‘I can smell biscuits,’ he replied. Putting the task I needed him to perform to one side, he trotted forward until his face was up against a cupboard. ‘They’re in here.’
‘He’s found biscuits,’ I explained to Mindy.
‘I need sustenance,’ Buster told me, making his voice sound wobbly and weak as if it had been days since he ate. ‘I feel like I might waste away and my nose doesn’t work properly when I am hungry.’
‘We did skip lunch,’ Mindy added her vote.
I threw my hands in the air. ‘Oh, for goodness sake. Mindy, get the biscuits. Give Greedy Guts a couple, but this really is stealing now. We are bad people.’ Buster was already slobbering in excitement and Mindy had to shove him back a foot just to get the cupboard open.
‘Ooh, Hobnobs,’ she declared, popping one in her mouth. I chose to abstain and noted that Buster scoffed three biscuits and licked all the crumbs (evidence) from the floor.
‘Better?’ I asked.
‘Much,’ said Buster.
‘Yes, Auntie,’ replied Mindy.
Rolling my eyes again, I left the kitchen. ‘Buster take Mindy and find the cream. There might be more than one jar, but we can probably ignore any that are still sealed. I’m going to search this place and see what else I can find.’
Niece and dog departed, the sound of them going up the stairs echoed through the house. Confident they would return soon, I started to poke around in the Bleakwiths’ living space. I told myself I was justified to do so. Derek had been a friend for almost as long as I could remember, and his wife was not only cheating on him but trying to kill him too.
He had no idea, but if I didn’t expose the truth, he would regain consciousness only for Joanne and her lover to find a new way to bump him off. I was going to have to save his life. Little old me.
Now,
