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Her cell vibrated with an incoming text, and she tugged it from her bag along with the keys. Hopefully it was Detective Houser. She’d left him a voice mail earlier that afternoon. The sooner she could talk to him, the sooner she would have a clearer understanding of what was going on with the Lucy Cagle case.
Not Houser.Matt.
Be home in an hour or so.
Her smile widened, and she responded with a thumbs-up.
A high-pitched bark—more a piercing yap—had a frown tugging at Finley’s brow. The backyard, maybe? She dropped her cell back into her bag. Keys clutched in her hand, she skirted the porch and walked around to the backyard. She didn’t have a dog. She had a cat. Well, it was sort of hers. It had shown up earlier in the summer and decided to stay—at least so far.
She squinted into the darkness, spotted a little white fuzzy dog. The animal’s front paws rested against the trunk of the one decent-size treeon the property, and he yapped wildly at something in the branches above him.
Was that the neighbor’s dog? Her face scrunched in confusion. Helen Roberts had a little white fur ball that looked somewhat like this one. A Pomeranian, Matt had called it. Strange. Roberts never allowed her dog outside her fenced yard without a leash.
“Hey, doggy.” Finley had no idea what his—or her—name was.
A yowl from above had her glancing up. Cat sat on a limb, staring down at them. So, this was why the dog was back here barking. Apparently, he’d chased the cat around the house and up into the tree.
“Not very neighborly of you,” she pointed out as she walked closer to the dog and crouched down to his level. Perched on one of the lower branches, her cat stared down at the nuisance below. Finley checked the dog’s collar. The neighbor’s address was on the collar but no name for the dog.
There was something in his fur. She squinted to see better. Dirt or mulch? What in the world ...?
Then she spotted the bush he’d been digging around. He’d dug past the mulch and into the rich black bagged dirt Matt had added to each shrub he’d planted. He would not be happy about this intrusion.
Finley scowled at the animal. “Does your owner know you’re here?”
The dog stared at her, cocked his head in a way that said “What do you think?”
“Let’s get you home.” Wincing in expectation of being nipped, she reached for the dog. To her surprise he jumped into her arms. “Maybe you’re ready to go home.”
Finley stood, the dog in her arms. She glanced up at the cat. “I assume you can get yourself down.”
The cat looked away, as if the very idea that he might not be able to deal with this tree situation was ludicrous.
Finley walked around the end of the house and across the street. The neighbor’s gate was open. Concern needled at her. In all the timeshe’d lived on this street, she had never known Roberts to leave her gate open this way. Most likely she didn’t want any of the neighbors’ pets getting to her flower beds, and she certainly didn’t want her dog wandering off.
After closing the gate behind herself, Finley put the dog down, dusted off her jacket, and headed for the porch. When the dog started yapping again and darted around the corner of the house, heading for the backyard, she decided to follow. Maybe Roberts was working in her yard and hadn’t noticed the dog wandering off. Not likely, Finley decided, since she would surely have heard him barking. The woman watched that dog the way a new mother watched her child.
Thankfully, well-placed exterior lights prevented the yard from being totally dark. A step around the rear corner, and Finley spotted the trouble. Helen Roberts lay facedown in one of her many flower beds.
Oh hell. Finley’s pulse kicked into overdrive as she darted across the yard. She knelt next to the elderly woman. “Mrs.Roberts, are you okay?”
Her skin felt warm. Eyes closed. Finley chewed her lower lip. No response to word or touch. She placed two fingers against the older woman’s neck to find the carotid pulse. A little slow and certainly faint, but it was there. Relief rushed through Finley. She took a breath to calm the rapid beating in her own chest.
Afraid to move Roberts but certain she needed her face turned in such a way she could potentially breathe easier, Finley gently shifted her head so that her face was not planted in the mulch like one of her prized rosebushes.
“Mrs.Roberts, can you hear me?” Finley surveyed her body. Saw no blood or other indication of trouble. This was good, right?
“I’m calling for help,” she said as she tapped the necessary numbers into her cell.
When the dispatcher assured Finley that help was on the way, she sat down in the grass and held her neighbor’s hand. After a thoroughsniffing of his owner and Finley, the fuzzy dog collapsed onto the ground next to her as well.
“She’ll be okay,” Finley found herself saying to the animal.
She hoped so anyway.
Vanderbilt Medical Center
Medical Center Drive, Nashville, 8:50 p.m.
