“We’ll cross that bridge later.”
I breathed in a strong scent of bleach and antiseptic. Doc kept his clinic extremely clean. “Did Idella pay up?”
“Faithfully,” he said, walking slowly.
I felt Virgil lurking behind me and could only imagine how impatient he was becoming. He probably didn’t care a bit about who was blackmailing who. All he wanted to do was see his dog. “Did you know other Harpies had been getting letters as well?”
“Not until recently. Hyacinth opened up to Idella about hers and how worried she was about them.”
“What secrets did Hyacinth’s letters threaten to expose?” I probed.
Again, he shook his head. “It’s not my place to say.”
“Was it about her three dead husbands?” He kept mum, and I pushed for an answer. “Was it about her drinking?”
His head snapped up, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he picked up his pace.
I took that as a yes.
Interesting. But what was it about her drinking specifically?
“Doug Ramelle believes Haywood sent the letters. Do you?” I asked, pressing him. He might be the only one in this group that would talk openly with me about this situation. I was treading a bit on our friendship, but I was a desperate witch. Time was slipping away for Haywood.
“Haywood’s name was brought up only because the letters started arriving shortly after he joined the Harpies. The timing was too coincidental to ignore. Also once the blackmailing scheme was out in the open within the group, Hay wouldn’t tell anyone if he’d received a letter. Doug hypothesized that Hyacinth might have spilled the secrets accidentally and Hay was using them to his advantage.”
Accidentally. Doc meant while drunk but was too much of a gentleman to say so.
“Did Hay actually send the letters?” he asked. “I don’t know. Haywood was a fairly quiet guy who simply might not have wanted to share his private affairs with others.”
Doc opened another door, this one leading to an exterior kennel area shaded with a large aluminum overhang.
“I will say this,” he added. “Like clockwork for the last six months, a letter appeared in our mailbox every Monday morning. One didn’t arrive today.”
I filed that away to think about later. It made sense if Haywood had been the blackmailer, but he’d been being blackmailed like the rest of them . . . Which led me to believe that someone was framing Haywood, wanting everyone to believe he’d sent the letters.
But who?
Most of the stalls out here were empty, for which I was grateful. “Are there any other candidates who might have sent the letters? Any enemies?”
“We couldn’t think of any. None of us are perfect, not by far, but we couldn’t fathom who’d do this. Or why.”
“It has to be someone close to all of you if they know your deep dark secrets.”
His eyebrows snapped down. “Yes.”
When all else failed, follow the money trail. “Anyone you know hurting for money? Family members? Friends?”
“Not that I’m aware.” He grabbed a leash from a set of pegs hanging from a cement block wall.
“How did you get the money to the blackmailer?”
“Each week a letter arrived with a different location and time listed to drop off the money. Once, Idella and I planted a video camera at one of the drops, but the film didn’t reveal anything helpful, only a person dressed in a black trench coat who carried a large black umbrella. Couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. It’s a frustrating situation, but we couldn’t go to the sheriff without revealing something that Idella does not want known. It was easier to pay.”
In a blink, Virgil blew past us, peering in each stall as fast as he could fly. I knew immediately when he’d found Louella, as he dropped to his knees and a sudden keening split the air.
Fortunately, it wasn’t Virgil, which would raise all kinds of questions I couldn’t answer.
It was Louella.
Doc sprinted ahead, and I quickly caught up to find Louella prancing in her cage, her tail tucked as she wailed and pawed thin air.
Only it wasn’t thin air.
It was Virgil.
And he was crying.
It didn’t surprise me in the least that the dog could see him just fine. Animals were finely attuned to the spirit world.
A large lump lodged in my throat and my eyes welled at the love I was witnessing.
I kept a bit of a distance from the cage, trying to minimize the pain that came from being close to Virgil. Louella didn’t seem to mind that he couldn’t touch her. She danced all around him, still wailing happily.
Louella, I noticed, was as gnarly-looking as ever. Long and unkempt wiry brown and white hair. Protruding eyes. A tail that resembled a stringy rope. Her excited yipping hurt my ears.
Doc opened her stall door, knelt down, and tried to calm her. She wasn’t having it. Her master was here, and it was abundantly clear that she loved him as much as he loved her. She growled at the doc and kept crying for Virgil.