I pulled into the bottom of Mrs.Grimshaw’s driveway, parked the car, and got out.“Hi, sweetheart.”
The dog stopped rooting through the grass to look up at me.It had round black eyes set wide apart in a broad face with a flattish snout, two big, black bat ears, and a white blaze down the middle of its nose.Some sort of small bulldog or boxer mix, maybe.Not a pug, but similar.
“What are you doing out here by yourself?”I asked.
It didn’t answer, of course.But after a second, it abandoned the ditch and trotted up the grassy yard toward the house.I watched it go.After a few seconds, it stopped to look at me over its shoulder.
Do dogs have shoulders?
I’ve never had a dog.David didn’t want anything that might ruin his expensively decorated house, and before that, it was just my mother and me, before I went off to college.We had enough trouble feeding ourselves.We couldn’t afford a dog.
Anyway, they don’t have arms, so it doesn’t make sense that they’d have shoulders.But they probably don’t have two sets of hips, either.
At any rate, the dog looked back at me, clearly expecting me to follow.
“Fine,” I said, and headed up the driveway.
Instead of going to the front door, the dog headed for the rear.I turned the back corner in time to see its hind quarters, with a tiny stub of a tail, disappear through a pet flap into the house.
So that explained how the dog had gotten out, and why Mrs.Grimshaw wasn’t watching it.For all I knew, it might be doing this every morning.
For all I knew, Mrs.Grimshaw was ninety-five, and much too decrepit to walk her dog.This trip into the front yard might be the animal’s daily constitutional.
At any rate, there was clearly no point in knocking on the door and telling her that her dog was loose.Not only was it not loose anymore, but it was obvious that she must know about the dog’s coming and going, since presumably she knew about the pet flap that was attached to her house.
I was about to turn around and go back to my car when something struck me.
There were tiny doggie footprints coming out of and going into the house.But it hadn’t rained for days.So why were the dog’s paws wet?
I moved closer, squinting in the darkness under the carport.
Only to stop short when I realized that the paw prints weren’t black, like water.They were red.
“Shit.”
I fumbled for my phone with hands that shook.And stopped with it in my hand.Talk about jumping to conclusions.
Maybe Mrs.Grimshaw was an artist and the dog had stepped in red paint.
Or maybe there was a broken can of marinara sauce on the kitchen floor and the dog had walked through it before Mrs.G could shoo it away.
Or hell, maybe it really was blood, but all that had happened was that the dog had stepped on the glass from the broken jar and cut itself.
Even if it was blood, that didn’t mean that Mrs.Grimshaw was lying inside in a pool of it, with her throat cut.
Before I caused an alarm, I should probably endeavor to find out whether there was cause for alarm.
I walked to the back door and knocked.“Mrs.Grimshaw?Can you hear me?”
There was no answer.I cupped my hands over my eyes and peered through the glass in the door.
All I could see was a washer and dryer, and an ironing board.No Mrs.Grimshaw.No blood.The door was locked.The knob rattled in my hand, but it didn’t turn and the door didn’t budge.
I made my way around the house, peering into the windows I could reach.The first room I came to was a den, paneled in mid-century knotty pine.It was empty, of people and of blood.
Beyond that were a couple of bedrooms, the beds made and pristine.Guest rooms, I assumed.A small window between them, too high for me to reach, was probably a Jack-and-Jill bathroom.
The master bedroom was on the far end of the house, and pristine, also.The bed was sort of halfway made: the pillows stacked on the floor, the comforter smooth, but folded down.Mrs.G had either started to turn it down last night, and stopped before getting into bed, or she had started to make the bed this morning, but had stopped before finishing the job.
