Free Ruff Way to Go by Leslie O'Kane

work for appointments with a dog behaviorist, my work schedule
generally began when theirs ended. I decided to pay a visit to the Haywoods,
the grouchy couple who lived on the other side of Edith’s house. I rang the
doorbell three times before anyone responded, although I’d seen a curtain
flutter while I was walking up their steps.
    Mrs. Haywood
opened the door, but left the chain in place. She peered around the edge of the
door and said in a voice gravelly from years of smoking, “What do you want,
Allida?”
    “Good
morning. I came to ask you if I could check your bushes. You see, there was
this note on—”
    She shut the
door. I waited a moment to see if she was simply removing the chain, but when
she didn’t open it, I rang again. This time she flung the door fully open,
looked me up and down, and, before I could say anything, called over her
shoulder, “Harvey, it’s the Babcock girl! She says she wants to take a look at
our bushes!”
    “What’s she
want to do that for?” Harvey’s deep but phlegmy voice rumbled from some
interior room.
    Betsy threw
up her hands and shuffled away from the door. “Beats me. Should I tell her she
can go ahead?”
    A minute
later, I was still standing on the porch, listening to them bicker about which
of them should deal with “that Babcock girl.” It was Harvey who finally drew
the short straw. He was wearing slippers, dark pants, and a sleeveless
undershirt.
    I forced a
smile, which was greeted with, “Did you go ‘n’ lose a baseball in our yard
again?”
    “Uh, no, Mr.
Haywood. I haven’t played baseball in this neighborhood for almost twenty years
now. I wanted to check your property to see if a note had blown over here in
yesterday’s storm.”
    “Didn’t you
get the chance to read it?”
    “No, I...I
mean, yes, I read it, but I need to find it to prove my story. This is about
Cassandra Randon’s murder yesterday.”
    “Oh yeah.
Yeah. Terrible thing.” He crossed his thin arms, the flesh of his former biceps
sagging.
    “See,
someone left me a note that may have been blown onto your property yesterday.” In
spite of myself, I could hear my voice rising and my enunciation becoming more
careful, as if Mr. Haywood were hard of hearing, though he’d given me no
indication of that. “Did you find any pieces of paper on your property last
night or earlier this morning?”
    “No. We don’t
take care of the outsides of the place. Susan does that.”
    “Susan?”
    “Yeah. Susan.
My eldest daughter. Your babysitter. She comes over here three, four times a
week.”
    “Was she
here yesterday afternoon? Or anytime after the storm?”
    “Beats me.
Betsy!” he called without bothering to turn. “Was Susan here yesterday? The
Babcock girl wants to know when she was here last!”
    “I don’t
know, Harvey! Tell her to ask Susan!”
    Betsy’s
words were accentuated by the clanging of pots. By the sound of things, she was
dropping pots on top of one another from a considerable height.
    “You’ll have
to ask Susan,” Harvey said to me. “Lives over in Lyons. Last name is Nelson
now.”
    “Could you
give me her phone number? Or her address?”
    “Yeah, yeah,
well, all right. I’ll do that.” He started to shut the door.
    “So, is it
okay with you if I look around outside for the note?”
    He gave me a
dismissive wave. “Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. You should be more careful with your
things, Allida. I know it’s hard on your mama, raisin’ you two all by herself
like she is. You should watch yourself. Make it easier on her.” He shut the
door.
    At least he
didn’t call me a “young’n,” I thought as I headed down the steps. It was
strange to think that the Haywoods were probably only ten years older than my
mother, if that. They seemed to have come from a different world. One in which
couples shut out the outside world and yelled at it when it intruded.
    Their
property, unlike the Cunninghams’ next door, was unfenced. That struck me as
incongruous