Charity Begins at Home - Chapter 4

Excerpt from Charity Begins at Home by Pat Otterness

CHAPTER FOUR

?"I was attacked!" said the bleeding man, trembling. "I went up on the porch and I was attacked by wildcats. A pack of wildcats! They were everywhere. Look at my arms!" The pudgy little man nodded his balding head towards bloody arms still stretched to the side of the cruiser.

A smile creased the deputy's face. "Wildcats? A?whole pack?of wildcats?" He raised a doubtful eyebrow.

"Might have been a?Demon." I grinned and glanced down at a black-and-white tomcat circling my ankles and rolling cutely on his back.

The intruder saw the direction of my glance. "No pussycat did this to me! It was wildcats. I'm telling you, there was a pack of wildcats on that porch."

"Funny they didn't bother the pussycats, then, isn't it?" I didn't think this man was much of a threat. "My cats sleep on that porch. Some of them are always there. Can I have a look at your arms?" The deputy allowed his captive to turn around and hold out his arms. "Yep! I said, "It was Demon." I pointed to the cat entwined between my ankles. "See? You don't have scratches. Demon doesn't claw, he hits. Always leaves two or three deep holes that hurt like hell. Sort of like being shot with a nail gun. It's his trademark."

Both men examined the multiple sets of wide, bleeding holes, and looked doubtful. "Has he had his shots?' they asked in unison.

"Don't believe me? Go ahead, try to pet him," I said. "And yes, he's had his shots."

Macho deputy-man reached out a hand towards Demon, who was facing away at the moment. As hand touched fur, chaos ensued. “Shit!” The deputy snatched his injured hand out of reach. Demon retreated behind my legs, and several nearby cats yowled. Two wide, deep holes began to dribble blood down the back of the deputy's hand. “Man, that hurts!” he said.

"Let's go inside and clean you guys up.” I fetched soap, clean towels, and first aid supplies. Soon we were sitting around the kitchen table, trying to sort out everyone's questions as I patched their wounds.

"Were you trying to break into my house?" I asked the stranger as I poured peroxide over puncture wounds.

"Your?house? I don't even know who you are. This house belongs to my friend Chance. His name is on the doormat. I saw it!"

"Oh no it doesn't! I'm Charity Chance and this is my house. Chance Cassidy lives farther down the road, around the bend. His doormat, if he has one, which I doubt, would have Cassidy on it."

"Your name is Chance, too?"

"Yes."

"Not his ex-wife or anything?"

"God forbid!" I said.

The deputy broke in. "Tell us why you thought you could walk right into Mr. Cassidy's house without knocking? If you?really?thought this was his house. I guess I can see where the doormat might have had you confused."

“He should have knocked,” I muttered.

"Okay, wait a minute,” said the deputy. “Let’s do this thing right. I’m Deputy Alan Cook.” He turned to me.

“I’m Charity Chance,” I said. “Chat to my friends. I’m the owner of Bonne Chance Iris Garden.”?I glared at the intruder. “Who are you?”

He ran a hand over his balding head. "I'm Hiram Jones, and I've known Chance Cassidy ever since we were kids. Heck, he invited me here. Call him. He’ll tell you.”

“I didn’t see a car anywhere along the road, Mr. Jones. How did you get here?”?Deputy Cook leaned a little closer to Jones.

“I don’t have a car. I came to Charlottesville on the Greyhound, and hitched a ride out 29 South. The guy didn’t want to bring me out this road, though. Said it was out of his way.”

“You walked all the way up this road?” I said. “It must be eight miles, all uphill.”

“Well I didn’t know that?then, did I?” he growled.

“Why didn’t you call Mr. Cassidy and ask him to pick you up?” said the deputy. “Surely he has a vehicle.”

“I wanted to surprise him.”

“Well, you surprised?me,” I said with a grin. “You might have had a surprise yourself if you’d walked a little farther. Chance has this mean-ass Rottweiler patrolling. Not something I’d want to walk up on in the dark.” I shuddered.

Hiram Jones lit up like a candle at the mention of the dog. “Baby?” he chirped in delight. “Chance still has?Baby?”

“I don’t know about any Baby,” I said. “This dog looks like it chews nails for breakfast.”

“Not an?old?dog?” Jones asked.

“Not even close. This one is in his prime. He takes no prisoners.”

The deputy scowled. “So glad you mentioned that before I started searching for Chance.”

“What do you mean,?search?for Chance?” Jones demanded. “Has something happened to Chance?”

“You weren’t in my garden, were you? Maybe an hour-and-a half ago?” I asked him.

“Huh?” He looked bewildered. “Why would I be in your garden? I was still walking up the dad-blamed road about then.”

“I didn’t?think?it was you. Well – I did when you were trying to break into my house – but not after I met you.” Hiram Jones was not a man to inspire fear. I told him what I had heard in the garden, and about Chance disappearing.

“Shouldn’t we be looking for him?” he said, turning to the deputy.

“Let’s try calling him again first,” said Deputy Cook.

I’ll bet he’s reluctant to meet that Rottweiler in the dark, I thought. I punched the numbers into my phone and waited. When the answering machine picked up yet again, I clicked off and turned bleak eyes to my companions.

“I’ll call for backup.” Cook called his dispatcher and described the problem. “We’ll have some help soon,” he told us. “Meanwhile, can you show me where you were when you heard the cough?”

The three of us trooped up the hill and down iris rows ‘til we reached the spot where I had dug up the green iris. “I was working here,” I said. “Then I started back down the hill. That’s when I heard the cough. I couldn’t tell which direction it came from.”

“Cook shone his flashlight around the area, stopping when his light fell on a shovel. “You leave this here?” he asked.

“Yes. My hands were full at the time.”

Cook leaned closer to the shovel, then jumped back. “This looks like blood,” he said. He shone his light on the edge of the blade, and we saw not only blood, but hair as well.

“Not Chance, anyway,” said Hiram Jones dryly. “Wrong hair color.”

?

Before long, more deputies arrived. Cook left Hiram Jones in my care while he joined them in the search for my missing neighbor. I gave Jones a soda and a sandwich but kept him outside on the steps. We sat as far apart as we could, eying each other distrustfully until Deputy Cook returned.

A search of the acres of garden rows between my house and Chance's unearthed neither man nor Rottweiler. When Cook reported back to us, though, he said that Chance’s door had been left open, with only a screen keeping the bugs out, and an?aging?Rottweiler in. Hearing about this dog brought renewed cries of?"Baby!"?from Jones. According to Cook, the arthritic old dog could barely walk, and required someone on-site to attend to his needs. Jones was quick to offer himself up as the sacrificial goat, so to speak, for which I will be forever grateful. Caring for a large, incontinent dog is not high on my life list of must-do activities. It also solved the problem of what to do with Hiram Jones, at least for the night.

Cook told me that Hiram's claims seemed validated by various items he found inside Chance's house: a framed photo of the two men together, and a letter from Hiram announcing the approximate date of his arrival. Later, the delight evident in both parties when dog and man were reunited seemed to settle the matter. One of them peed all over himself with excitement. I didn't ask which.

Since there seemed to be no sign of foul play other than the small amount of blood and hair on the shovel, Deputy Cook called off the search for Chance. "We'll wait and see if he turns up on his own," he said. “Meanwhile, I’ll have the blood and hair tested. It may not be human. It sounds like Chance went off somewhere and took his other dog with him. We didn’t see a vehicle out there. If he doesn't turn up in a few days, maybe you and Mr. Jones will want to file a missing persons report."

“I think he said something about his truck needing repairs,” I said. “I haven’t seen him driving it lately." Chance's disappearance puzzled me, but at least I knew he wasn't lying hurt nearby. Odds were good that my intruder was also long gone. Deputies searching with flashlights pretty much guaranteed that. “Thanks for coming out,” I said.

"No problem,” said Cook. Call me if you see any more signs of an intruder. And be sure to let me know if Mr. Cassidy turns up." He smiled ... a nice smile that transformed his face ... and climbed into his car. I felt the corners of my own mouth lift in response.

Alone at last, I turned my attention back to my green iris. I couldn't keep all the rhizomes in the house without attracting attention to them. I needed a place where they wouldn't attract immediate notice, but would still be safe. Since only one of the rhizomes had a bloom stalk, I could put the rest outside. I had a raised bed near the house that I hadn't yet filled with plants. For now, it would be a good place to stash these special iris rhizomes. They wouldn't bloom this year, so they’d be invisible among the other rhizomes planted in the bed.

It took no time to pull the extra rhizomes away from the clump. I set them aside to be planted in the morning. The remaining plant, with buds that would open soon, I potted up in the same nursery pot I had used to rescue it from the garden. My large, frosted bathroom window faced south, and would provide enough light for blooming out the remaining buds, while preventing anyone seeing in. Afterwards, I could either stash it in the raised bed with the others, or maintain it as a pot plant indoors until fall.

Next, I examined the green bloom in the vase. It was as lovely as I remembered it to be. With tweezers, I gently removed its anthers and placed them in an envelope. I could use the pollen in crosses this season. On the envelope, I jotted down the identification number of the plant: H-331-327x219. Then, pulling out one of my large data notebooks, I searched for 327 and 219. Okay, this was good, actually. The parents were IRISH LINEAGE and TREE OF IRELAND, both whites with greenish veins. Not too surprising that a seedling from this cross could mutate to chlorophyll green. I'd need to keep an eye out for other seedlings from that cross to see if they looked this green. It was unlikely, but if so, I’d want to hide them as well.