if the Buick is still parked out there.” Mary looked at Ron. For a moment, they were silent. “Let’s go talk to Mr. Brill,” she said. “And then we can go see if it’s still out there. Let’s have a talk with whoever’s driving it.”
Ron thought for a moment, considering the danger of messing around with someone who’d cut up a dog on site. But then he thought of Mary’s considerable physical strength and her reputation as a scrapper. “Let’s do it,” he agreed. They went back into Brill’s woodworking shop.
“Can I take this back with me to the lab?” Ron asked, pointing to the grisly bits in the plastic bag.
“Sure. You can wrap it back up in the towel and take it all away.” Brill shrugged. “And what did that, anyway? What bites clean through a dog’s leg like that?”
“Not an animal, Mr. Brill. Probably some kind of knife.” Ron stood back where the paw and chain were, and he gingerly rolled the bagged mess up in the towel.
“A knife? You’re saying a man did this? Why? How?” Brill’s face was growing crimson, even in the cool workroom.
“Your guess is as good as mine, sir. I’m going to report this back to Bill Tatum in security. After that, it’s his project. He’ll probably want to talk to you about it all.”
Brill stood there, his hands clenched into fists, his face practically glowing blood red. “Damn. Beth and I moved down here to get away from this kind of thing. Damn.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Brill. I really am. But I can’t see how anything other than a knife or a saw did this to your dog.” Ron blinked, thinking of something else. “This is your dog’s paw, isn’t it?”
Brill looked up, distracted from his rage. “Yes,” he said. “It’s her, all right. That’s her color. We paid extra. She was the only black and gray in the litter.”
“Well.” Ron was silent. Mary fidgeted. Ron headed toward the door. “We’ll be leaving now. I think this clears up a lot for us. Not an animal, I don’t think.”
This time, it was Brill who followed the other two. They went through the yard, under the breezeway, down the drive to Ron’s truck. Riggs stored the towel/bundle in a toolbox in the bed of the pickup. They shook Mr. Brill’s hand and climbed into the cab, feeling the blast of heat as they opened their doors.
As the two looked back down the block, they saw that the Buick was still there, its motor running, parked at the verge of an unsold lot, cabbage palms shading the car.
“Goodbye,” Brill said to them. “Thank you for stopping by. I assume I’ll be hearing from Tatum?”
“I’m sure you will, Mr. Brill. Goodbye.” Ron started the truck as Brill retreated and pulled out of the drive as the gentleman vanished into the house.
Ron backed out, pausing in the street when he confirmed that no car was coming from either direction. Just a quiet suburban street in a well-to-do Florida neighborhood. “What’s our next move?”
“You just pull up next to that Buick and let me out. I’ll knock on the door and see who comes out.”
“Just like that?”
Mary shrugged. “What’s he gonna do? Plug us in broad daylight with a hundred potential witnesses waiting to come out of their houses? Just drop me off,” she reiterated.
“You da wo-man,” Ron said, driving toward the car.
Chapter Seventeen
The Buick was parked at the front of one of the few vacant lots remaining in Salutations. Like most of the others in Phase Three, it was roughly half an acre in size, new growths of wildflowers and young saplings trying to reclaim the cleared patch of land for Mother Nature. They wouldn’t survive long before someone bought the plot and commenced to ’dozing it and plowing the green under. But, for now, the empty lot was a waist-high mass of shrubs and sedges. Insects buzzed and fluttered at the tops of the grasses, while in the thick mat against the ground, who knew what existed.
Ron drove right up to the Buick and parked in front of it, leaving his truck at an angle, so that the car would have to back away to return to the street. He put the truck in park and stopped the engine. Mary was out before he could even get his key from the ignition. And by the time he was climbing out of the cab, Niccols was already rapping a hard knuckle against the driver’s side window. “Balls,”