Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [634]
“Okay, okay. Just wait a minute.”
She pulled a clean tissue from her pocket and tried to grab the cabinet’s door handle, leaning in from as far away as possible. Her hand was shaking so badly she dropped the tissue and had to pick it up. Harvey was getting more and more anxious and she had to tug him to the side. The more anxious he got the more her hand seemed to shake. Even after she had a good grip on the knob, she still hesitated. Her chest hurt from what felt like a constant time bomb banging against her rib cage.
She took a deep breath and yanked the door open. She jumped back from the skittering sound as something came spewing out of the cabinet, an avalanche of jelly beans, bright colors plopping to the floor, spilling out of an overturned decanter. And Harvey strained at the leash, lapping up several before Gwen’s mind and heart started working again. She pulled and tugged and escorted him away from the mess.
“Jesus, Harvey.”
She needed to sit before her knees gave way. She found the corner of the sofa. She should check the other rooms and leave. But if Harvey could smell nothing but jelly beans, then there was nothing else here. He would have sensed it by now. Wouldn’t he? She needed to think about this. Maggie had rescued Harvey from his previous owner’s bloodied bedroom where he had lost that owner to a serial killer in a battle that almost cost him his life. That’s why he was so protective of Maggie and that instinct seemed to transfer to Gwen, too. Wouldn’t it therefore be logical that he would be freaking out if there was even the scent of blood anywhere in the apartment? Wasn’t that exactly how he had reacted with the skull in the park? Maybe it was ridiculous to think she could psychoanalyze him like one of her patients. She wasn’t a dog shrink, but it did make sense. She didn’t allow herself to feel relieved. Not just yet.
She persuaded him to check the bedroom, leading him to the closet and bathroom, looking behind the shower door and under the sink. There was nothing. With each discovery, or rather non-discovery, she felt the tension and the panic slowly subside. Her heartbeat and her breathing had started to return to normal. Until they got to the kitchen. She checked the refrigerator and the oven, even the dishwasher, only to turn around and find Harvey pawing at yet another cabinet door under the sink. She told herself she would treat it like the other doors and cabinets, quick like a Band-Aid, no hesitating, no imagining, just get it over with.
Easier said than done.
The cold, clammy perspiration returned to her forehead and the back of her neck. The tremor in her hand, though not as pronounced, slowed her quick grab of the handle. And Harvey’s side-step dance made her nervous.
She yanked open the cabinet door to find a roll-out trash bin under the sink. The smell of rotting garbage pushed her back so that it took some effort to see the apple peel and coffee grounds on top.
“Harvey, next time I need to feed you first.”
She smiled down at him and patted his head, but he was still nervous, pacing, pulling against his leash. And this time she realized he no longer wanted to get at the trash bin. This time he wrenched and jerked at the leash, trying to get away from it. He twisted against his collar and his panic quickly spread to Gwen. Then there came that horrible low-pitched whine coming from the back of his throat, barely audible but hard to listen to, an uncontrollable moan that sounded as if he was in pain.
This time when she looked, Gwen saw the plastic bag. It was buried underneath the rotting fragments of vegetable peels, coffee grounds, empty boxes and cellophane—the bits and pieces of ordinary household garbage. She had been right about Harvey. He sensed blood and wanted to be as far away from it as possible. Underneath all the garbage,