Read Online The Dog Collar Murders by Barbara Wilson - Free Book Online Page A

shock,” said Ray. “Have you tried to call her, Penny?”
    Penny rolled her head on the desk: No.
    “We could go over there later,” Ray suggested. “She might like some support.”
    I was thinking aloud: “But why then? Why was Loie killed then , between her closing speech and the evening panel? And why was she strangled with a dog collar? Of all the offensive weapons to use, that had to be the absolute most offensive to someone like Loie.”
    “I don’t understand,” said Ray.
    Moe and I looked at each other. “You tell him, dear,” I said.
    “The dog collar wasn’t made for a dog , Ray,” Moe explained. “I mean, it wasn’t just someone who was out walking their dog and decided to put Loie on a leash instead. Dog collars are used by sadists on masochists to denote ownership and dominance in the S/M ritual. And since Loie was one of the most prominent opponents of S/M, it seems like it may have been an attempt to discredit her.”
    “Poor Loie,” Penny said, “to have fought so hard against pornography, and then to die like that.”
    “Unless,” I said slowly. “You don’t think… No, not Loie… But wouldn’t that be a scandal!”
    Penny called up Hanna eventually and, over her protestations, went to see her with Ray and Antonia that afternoon. She came back alone; Ray had taken Antonia to the doctor for a check-up.
    “The cops had just left when I got there. They’d been asking Hanna questions all morning and then they’d gone through Loie’s things. It’s all been really terrible for Hanna. I mean, she hadn’t seen Loie since Loie went off to Boston, not for years , then a couple of weeks ago Loie calls up and says she’s coming to Seattle. She’s broken up with her girlfriend and needs to get away and a quiet place to work on her book—what could Hanna say? They’re cousins after all, they were practically brought up together. So Loie turns up with all this stuff, boxes of notes and newspaper clippings, and just moves in. It’s all been really upsetting for Hanna, and I’m sure it’s going to be upsetting for everyone. How are they going to find the person who killed Loie? What do the police know about the anti-porn movement or about lesbian sadomasochists?”
    “Well, we don’t know for sure it was anyone from the S/M community,” I said. “It could just as easily have been someone who didn’t like Loie personally and just decided to play a very cruel joke on her.”
    Penny looked at me with some interest. “Are you going to follow this up, Pam?”
    “Me?”
    “Why not? We know for sure the police are going to make a botch-up of the whole thing. Think about Hanna. They’ll probably suspect her— in fact, I’m sure they suspect her already.”
    “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
    “Start with the dog collar.”
    After work I went up to Capitol Hill to meet Hadley. The Espressomat, quite naturally, was fizzing with the murder, and gossip being the expansive gas that it is, all sorts of details had been added and elaborated on. Some people were saying that Loie had been found handcuffed, bound and gagged; others said that she was a hypocrite, that “everyone knew” she was into S/M.
    It was all pretty revolting. It wasn’t that I’d been particularly drawn to Loie, but I’d believed—and I still believed—that she had a lot of integrity. She might have had secrets, even sexual secrets, but I didn’t think the practice of sadomasochism was one of them.
    Start with the dog collar, Penny had said. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to do a little checking around. Where did you buy those things, anyway? Since it appeared that Hadley was going to be here for a while longer, I decided to go down the street to the alternative General Store.
    I couldn’t bring myself to ask for what I wanted at the main counter, so I went back to the hardware section and cornered Abby, a friend of mine who worked there.
    “Abby, hi,” I whispered. “Do you have any dog