The Purrfect Murder

go up the walk, because Susan had told him where the shed was.
    Tucker barked,
“Fair! It’s Fair.”
    Dogs and cats can identify footfalls and tire sounds, but humans can’t.
    Hearing the corgi, Fair ran. The door was locked. He slammed his shoulder against it and broke it down.
    Mike heard the dog, then saw Fair. Noddy ran to the back kitchen window, too.
    “What is Fair Haristeen doing?” She put her hand on the doorknob.
    He covered her hand. “You stay here.”
    He ran outside just as Fair, who now could hear his wife and the cats, reached the desk. Frantically, Fair kicked the chair back, pulled the mat off, and flipped up the trapdoor as Mike barreled through the shed door.
    Tucker cunningly hid behind the office door. As Mike opened the door, ready to brain Fair with a crowbar he’d snatched off his workroom wall, the corgi sank his fangs all the way into Mike’s calf.
    Fair spun on his heels and hit Mike with a right cross, using all his weight and six feet five inches. Mike’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell clean backward, half out the door.
    The crowbar hit the floor with a heavy clunk.
    Noddy ran in after him, shocked at what she saw.
    “Noddy, stay right there.” Fair scared her. “The police will be here in a minute. Don’t try to run.”
    “Why?” She hadn’t a clue.
    Fair slid down the ladder like a fireman and quickly undid the belt, which the cats had worked on.
    “He was going to kill me,” Harry, shaken, gasped, but she kept possession of herself.
    Fair spied the handkerchief on the floor and knew what Mike had done. “How’d you get the handkerchief out of your mouth?”
    “The cats pulled it out, or I’d be dead. It was slipping back in my throat.”
    Fair picked up Mrs. Murphy in one arm, Pewter in the other, and kissed their heads, then kissed his wife. Noddy had crept to the opened trapdoor and knelt down.
    “Don’t shut that, Noddy.”
    “I didn’t even know it was here,” she, bug-eyed, answered Fair.
    “Help her out, will you?” Fair boosted Harry up.
    Noddy gently lifted her out.
    Mike rolled over, shook his head, spit out some teeth, just as Fair came up behind Harry.
    Lightning-fast, Fair put his knee on Mike’s back, yanked his arms behind him, and used his own belt to tie him up. Then he kicked him over, as Noddy grimaced.
    “You killed Carla, and Penny, too, didn’t you?”
    “They found Penny?” Noddy slumped in the office chair.
    “No,” Fair told her. “Not yet.”
    Even though her head was splitting, Harry thought she had never heard a sound so sweet as Cooper’s squad-car siren, followed by another.
    Within minutes Cooper and Rick hurried into the shed.
    “Down there.” Harry pointed to the opened trapdoor.
    “Penny?” Noddy feared the worst.
    “No. No bodies, Noddy, but enough to send your husband down the river for a long, long time.”
    She put her head in her hands and wept.
    “Did you know?” Fair asked.
    She shook her head no, as Rick bent over and dropped down into the space.
    Cooper read Mike his rights.
    Another squad car arrived, and the officer stood patiently in the office doorway.
    Rick’s head popped up, his hands on the floor. “Doak, cordon the place off. I want everything photographed, cataloged, tabulated. There’s enough here to convict him.”
    “For murder?” Dooley hoped.
    “For theft, extortion, and maybe even rape. With luck, murder will follow.”
    “Rape,” Noddy wailed.
    “I didn’t kill anybody!” Mike’s broken teeth made him suck in air. He shut his mouth in a hurry after he spoke.
    “That’s what they all say.” Cooper wanted to kick the rest of his teeth in.
    After Harry provided what information she could, she and Fair left. “Ride with me. We can come back for your truck tomorrow.”
    A grateful and chastened Harry cuddled the cats and dog. As Fair drove them home, she said in a small voice, “I’m sorry. If you hadn’t saved me he would have killed me tonight.”
    “Susan told me about your drive by. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where you were. She called Coop.”
    “I’m sure he’s Bechtal’s outside man. I just know. Crazy ass, to do what he did to those women. He had money, he had jewels, you wouldn’t believe what he had down there.”
    “He almost had you.”
    “I thought about that, too.” She rubbed her temple, then winced. “You know, these cats and dog would have died to save me.”
    “I know.” Tears came into Fair’s