Page 66 of A Matter of Pedigree
“You could just loop it around her neck,” suggested Carole, keeping her eyes on Mitch and ignoring the other guy. She didn’t want him to get the idea that she recognized him.
The good part about all this was that Poopsie was really cornered. Carole and Mitch were both standing at the back of the truck, and she was watching them warily.
“You sure start work early,” said Carole, keeping up the fiction that Mitch wasn’t doing anything wrong in the hope of reassuring him that she was so dumb she hadn’t realized that he was up to no good.
“Yeah, early bird and all that,” said Mitch, hoisting himself up onto the truck with a grunt, leash in hand.
Seeing him coming, Poopsie began digging frantically under a tarp.
“What the hell!” he muttered, as she produced a rusty old rag, then nimbly dashed through his legs and leaped off the back of the truck. Tail wagging, she dropped her prize at Carole’s feet and sat, giving Carole a big, doggy grin. Carole picked up the rag, intending to give it to Mitch. It was stiff, like a cleaning rag that was soaked in liquid and then left to dry, and she realized with horror that the reddish-brown stains she had assumed were rust weren’t rust at all, but dried blood.
Next thing she knew, Mitch and the other guy had grabbed her by the elbows and were dragging her back to the shed. She was screaming as loud as she could and trying to dig her heels into the ground. Poopsie was barking frantically, circling around them, and Carole was twisting this way and that, trying to break free. She managed to get one arm free and was pulling away, but Mitch yanked her back, catching her around her neck and clamping his hand over her mouth. Poopsie didn’t like this; she decided she’d played nice long enough and lunged at his heel, biting down on his Achilles tendon.
Mitch screamed with pain and released his hold on Carole, trying to kick the dog away, but Poopsie hung on, just like her wild canine cousins did when they brought down a deer. The other guy still had Carole and was dragging her toward the shed, using a move similar to the cross-chest carry Carole had learned in a Red Cross lifesaving class, which she was pretty sure was not his goal. She was kicking and screaming her head off; she was trying to bite his arm or claw his eyes, and she finally managed to grab his hair and was yanking it as hard as she could. “You’re not getting away this time,” he growled, and next thing she knew, they were hit by an enormous force that threw them both to the ground. Stunned, Carole shook her head and made out a huge, enormous animal that had attached itself to her attacker’s arm. He was writhing and screaming in pain as she got to her feet, staring in disbelief to find he was struggling with a massive pit bull.
Carole was scrambling about, looking for a weapon she could use to protect herself, when a voice yelled, “Hold!”
The pit bull obeyed, keeping his victim’s arm firmly clenched in his powerful jaws and planting his enormous paws on his chest. That guy wasn’t going anywhere.
Poopsie, on the other hand, had let go of Mitch’s leg but was keeping him at bay, prancing around him and growling, lunging at his ankles whenever he tried to move. Carole reached again for her cell phone, but she could already hear sirens in the distance.
“I called the cops,” said the pit bull’s owner, and Carole turned to face him, recognizing the kid who worked at the Esplanade.
“Joao!” she exclaimed, as a couple of cruisers screamed through the gate, blue lights flashing. “I think you saved my life. I owe you big-time.”
He gave the dog a look, checking that it was maintaining its hold on the guy, then smiled at Carole. “You got any more of that lasagna?”
This time, it was different in the courtroom. The prosecutor, the judge, even the reporters and photographers were all smiles. All charges were dropped against Frank, and he left a hero, a shining example of how the justice system worked to spare the innocent and convict the guilty. Carole didn’t quite buy it, and she doubted the others did, either, but maybe that’s why they were all so happy. It didn’t happen often, but for one shining moment, truth and justice had really triumphed.
Poopsie wasn’t there, of course, but Carole considered her the real hero. Of course, she had to share some credit with Joao and his pit bull, Murphy, but Poopsie was the one who found the blood-soaked rag that linked Mitch Chase to Hosea’s murder. The prosecutor had outlined the case against him at the arraignment, alleging that Mitch became angry when Hosea demanded that he replace some substandard ductwork at the Factory. Fueled by rage, he’d grabbed a pipe and bludgeoned Hosea to death.
“But what I don’t understand,” said Polly, when the whole family—even Connie, who’d managed to get away from the law office and Joao from the Esplanade—gathered for a celebratory lunch at Café Nuovo, “is why they thought Frank did it.”
“It was Mitch,” said Connie. “Mitch threw a whole lot of suspicion on Pop when the police interviewed him. He claimed that Pop really had it out for Hosea; he said the two of them were always at odds. He basically substituted Pop’s name for his own, recounting various arguments he himself had had with Hosea. My friend who’s in the prosecutor’s office told me all about it.”
“Who is this friend?” asked Polly, curious. Was this a possible lover?
“Jenny Fornisanti.”
“Christina’s daughter?” asked Mom.
“Yeah. She’s a secretary there.”
“Didn’t I tell you? Talk to the secretaries?” said Carole.
“Right, Ma. And it was good advice.” Connie took a sip of water. “But to get back to what Jenny told me, the case against Pop got stronger when they interviewed Hosea’s neighbors at Prospect Place. They all remembered how angry Pop had been when Hosea rejected his offer and how Pop said he wanted to kill him.”
“People say that all the time,” said Frank-O, adding a shrug.
“It was just an expression,” said Frank, consulting the wine list.
“They now think that Mitch was hoping that, by setting up Pop, he’d not only get away with murder, but he’d pick up the plumbing contract, too,” continued Connie.
“Fat chance of that,” said Paulie. “He’s got a lousy reputation.”
“Yeah, it was thanks to Frank that he got the HVAC, and then he couldn’t even get that right,” added Big Frank.
“But then the whole job was put on hold,” said Frank. “I guess that’s when he got the not-so-bright idea of stealing our pipe.”
