Free Ruff Way to Go by Leslie O'Kane Page A

with their unfriendly demeanor. The Haywoods had a thick row of
unkempt juniper bushes along the side of the house that faced the Cunninghams’
home. That seemed a likely place to begin my search.
    This was a
matter of literally beating bushes. I had to keep parting the prickly branches,
and I was wearing a T-shirt. The skin on my arms was getting scratched, the
little wounds from the sharp needles and rough bark itchy and painful.
    After
thoroughly examining the outer side of the hedges, I tried to look between the
house and the dense shrubbery. There was not much room, so I crouched down,
wondering if there was any point to this. The deputies had probably already
done this yesterday.
    The soil
here was a fine sand, sheltered from the elements by the eaves on one side and
the juniper bushes on the other. I saw at once that there were no shoe prints
back here, but rather something more immediately intriguing to me: paw prints.
    They were roughly
the same size as the ones I’d seen yesterday. It stood to reason that if the
dog who left me prints could be identified, that dog’s owner might be the
killer. I decided at once that I would rather keep those prints intact than
mess them up while searching.
    Energized, I
raced up the front steps, intending to ask whichever Haywood answered whether
or not a small dog was on their property yesterday. Nobody answered my first
ring. I gritted my teeth and pressed me doorbell a second time.
    Finally,
Betsy Haywood flung the door open. “Here.” She thrust a piece of paper into my
hand. “Our daughter’s address and phone number.”
    Though the
handwriting was decidedly different, she had written the note with a black felt-tip
pen on a magenta sticky pad sheet.
    The paper
and its writing implement were identical to the note I’d seen on Edith’s door.

Chapter 5
    I pondered
the notion of ringing the doorbell again to ask about the notepaper. If the
Haywoods had left that note on Edith’s door, though, this would only alert them
to the fact that they’d incriminated themselves just now.
    Who else
could I ask? I had a client appointment in Boulder over the noon hour and could
visit the Haywoods’ daughter, Susan Nelson, on my way to my client’s home.
Resolved, I pocketed the note and was soon heading west toward Lyons.
    This drive
used to be on a single-lane country road through sparsely populated areas
northeast of Boulder. Now urban sprawl had filled in the wide expanses of
fields on the south side of the road, though cornfields still spread to my
right, the Rocky Mountains a purplish blue in the distant background. We’d had
a particularly wet May to date, and I found myself appreciating the greenery,
almost lush for the semi-arid front range.
    After
mentally replaying yesterday’s scene from the moment that I’d parked my car in
Mom’s garage until I’d entered the Cunninghams’ backyard, I realized that,
while it was true there were no unfamiliar cars parked on the road, I hadn’t
seen whether or not a car was in the Haywoods’ driveway. That meant that Susan
Nelson could have been visiting next door and I wouldn’t have noticed.
    It was
possible that she had an intense problem with Cassandra, one that had developed
into a murderous rage. The teenager I recalled from my childhood struck me as
having been capable of murder. She’d certainly threatened me with death enough
times, at any rate. My memories of her were so unpleasant—a wide mouth
full of braces, framed with frizzy hair, perpetually screaming at me—that
I found myself easing the pressure on the gas pedal and had to force myself to
go the speed limit.
    During the
drive, I tried to piece together the odd little snippets of information I’d
learned during my visit to Betsy and Harvey’s house. The paw prints in the dirt
alongside the Haywoods’ house could have been there for several days, if not
weeks. With no fence, any dog off the leash could have investigated that
particular area. In fact, during