Unleashed - The Gordonston Ladies Dog Walking Club Part 2 Read online

  THE GORDONSTON LADIES

  DOG WALKING CLUB UNLEASHED

  (THE GORDONSTON LADIES DOG WALKING CLUB PART II)

  By

  DUNCAN WHITEHEAD

  Copyright © Statement

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including recording, photocopying, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  Fiction Statement

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  As always, for Keira

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Back to Top

  CHAPTER ONE

  His body was much heavier than she had anticipated. It had taken her twenty minutes to remove the sheet-wrapped corpse from the trunk of her car and drag it from the street, through the gate that led to the rear of her house and then along the path leading to her back yard. She wiped her brow as trickles of sweat began to pour from her forehead.

  She checked the time once more on her watch; it was 4 am. It appeared that no one had seen her, but she had remained vigilant, checking for the twitching of curtains, passing vehicles and any early morning dog walkers or returning late night revelers – she was satisfied that her nocturnal activities were not being watched. The last thing she needed was a curious neighbor or passerby witnessing her dragging a sheet-wrapped body from the rear of her new SUV. She paused for breath, sweat now pouring from her brow, which she again wiped away, leaving a trail of dirt across her forehead, dirt from the hole she had dug the previous evening in her back yard. A hole that had taken her hours to dig and a hole that was soon to become a grave.

  It had taken her over three hours to dig the grave, again while ensuring she was not seen, and she had had to destroy many of the plants and flowers it had taken her years to grow, but it was a necessary consequence of burying a body, and there was simply nowhere else viable for such an endeavor. She sighed as she stared at the pile of disrupted flowers and plants. Her butterfly weeds and the hibiscus they’d planted when they had first moved into their home had been totally destroyed.

  She smiled to herself. He had hated gardening. Detested it. She had lost count of the times they had argued and fought over her flower garden and plants. He had wanted to grow vegetables, to save money for one thing, but she saw no beauty in onions and potatoes. She had allowed him to plant a tomato bush, which remained intact and undamaged by the digging. Wherever he was, he would probably be laughing that her gardening labor of love had had to make way for a grave. Ironic, she thought, replacing the living for the dead.

  Eventually, after what had seemed an eternity, she stood over the hole; it looked deep enough; four feet deep had been her aim. Though she wasn’t an expert, she estimated that her digging had been sufficient. She stood about five feet and four inches tall, so she guessed if she stood in the grave then she could estimate the depth. The last thing she needed were wild animals digging up the body; the thought of a neighborhood dog, or even cat, running around with bones in their mouths sent shivers down her spine. She jumped into the hole and her head peered over the top. Yes, she was confident it was deep enough.

  The corpse, which was securely wrapped in the bed sheet, lay at her feet. For a minute she just stared at it. She had expected to feel more than she did, more grief, more sorrow, but the truth was that she felt relieved more than anything. She was glad it was eventually over. The hard part was done, mentally and emotionally anyway; the physical hardships, compared to what she had done earlier that day, were easy. She bent over, and placed a hand on the body. Despite her indifferent feelings of grief, a solitary tear fell from her eye. Intermingled with her sweat and the soil on her face, it formed a dark stain on the once pristine clean white sheet.

  She looked backwards, towards her home. It was dark and silent, and the building’s sole occupant had been sleeping for hours. She thought about praying but dismissed the idea as pointless and hypocritical. She wasn’t even religious, and he certainly hadn’t been. There was, though, one more thing she had to do. She entered the shed that sat to the right of the destroyed plant bed and the freshly dug grave, and retrieved the bag of lime salts that had sat there for weeks. She understood that these lime salts would assist with the decomposition of the corpse and help mask any smell produced as a result of the decomposition. He had told her that.

  “I guess I will miss you,” she whispered. “I know she will miss you,” she added. She placed her hand on the sheet, one final gesture of affection, though even that seemed forced and contrived. Would she really miss him? She wasn’t even sure. One thing was sure, her life would be easier without him.

  With all the strength she could muster she rolled the body into the hole and watched as it tumbled into its final resting place. She sighed and took a deep breath. It was done. She lifted the half full bag of lime salts and scattered the contents into the grave, covering the sheeted corpse. Glancing to her left she picked up the same shovel she had used earlier that evening to dig the grave and began filling in the hole; shoveling the earth back to where it had come from. It was far easier, she thought, filling a grave than digging one, something else he had been right about. She paused for a moment. How many times had he done this? How many graves had he dug? How many families grieved and mourned for loved ones, with no knowledge where their bodies lay?

  In the morning she would plant more flowers and maybe even vegetables; to cover the grave and to help disguise the unevenness of her disturbed garden. In a few weeks no one would ever even guess her flowerbed had been disrupted and hidden below it, a dead body. Not that she had many visitors anyway, and those she did
have she doubted paid much attention to her gardening efforts. He certainly hadn’t.

  So it was done. He was gone. Their lives would be so different now and she knew that she would miss him, and the truth was, sadly, that she would be the only one to miss him, and maybe even the only person to notice he was no longer around. Briefly, that thought filled her with fleeting sadness, not for him, but for her, but, as time would pass, he would become just a memory, and then she would move on. Kids were like that. They had no real concept of death, not at her age at least, there were more important things to think about, such as toys and games.

  Thirty minutes later the hole was covered and filled. It had been a long and tiring night; in fact the whole day had been tiring. She was exhausted. She could not recall the last time she had felt so tired, so drained. She yearned for her bed, the bed she no longer shared, and the sleep she so desperately needed.

  Suddenly she heard a sound behind her. She turned her head quickly and instinctively dropped the shovel. It was the sliding door opening, the sliding door leading from the den to her back yard.

  “Honey, get back to bed. You shouldn’t be wandering around,” said Veronica Partridge as she abandoned her task, though sufficiently completed in any case.

  “Mommy, I was having a bad dream,” explained Katie Partridge turning back to enter the house as her mother followed behind her.

  “Well, mommy is here now, so we can forget all about bad dreams. Where is bunny?”

  Katie raised her left hand and produced a small stuffed rabbit. “Here he is, mommy, I have him,” she replied.

  “Well,” said Veronica Partridge, as she collected her daughter in her arms, not caring about the dirt and sweat that covered her body, “that’s all that matters.”

  Katie Partridge giggled and lifted her stuffed toy into the air, showing her mother that bunny was indeed safe in her custody, then her face took a more serious look. “Mommy, I have a question,” she said.

  “Sure, honey, what is it?” replied Veronica Partridge as she slid the back door shut, taking one last glance at the recently dug grave.

  “Where’s Daddy?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Poor Kelly. You know she has been staying with her parents for the past few months, and did you know that her garden is looking simply awful? I dread to think what the inside of the house is like. Filthy no doubt, probably full of roaches. I can only imagine the smell, totally abandoned. It’s so very sad. ”

  “I heard she was going to sell the house, or at least was trying to, but can’t until she gets a signature from Tom. I still can’t get over the fact that he left her like that. In fact, I heard the house was already in foreclosure. She simply isn’t paying the mortgage, probably can’t afford it. The poor girl. I seriously doubt she will ever return. And who can blame her? I believe she left everything. All the furniture is still in the house, all their possessions still in the closets, her beautiful clothes, those fancy shoes she used to wear and no doubt a ton of makeup. I would suppose his things are still there, too. He didn’t take a thing. Yes, I heard it was just abandoned as well, a bit like her, the poor dear.”

  “Some men are like that. Simply never satisfied with what they have, always wanting more, always on the lookout for someone ‘better’,” said Carla Zipp, just before she took a mouthful of her gin and tonic, disguised, as always, in a red disposable plastic cup. “Such a shame for the poor girl. And to think we all thought Tom was such a saint. It just shows that we really have no idea what people are really like, neighbors, friends – present company excepted – mainly men though, you just can’t rely on them.”

  Her two companions nodded their agreement and also proceeded to take a sip of their preferred alcoholic beverages from their respective plastic cups.

  The Gordonston Ladies Dog Walking Club, as they had done for the last four months, devoted much of their conversation to the topic of Kelly and Tom Hudd. As far as they had concluded, Tom had left his beautiful wife Kelly four months previously; just got up one morning and vanished. No note, no explanation, just disappeared off the face of the earth. Initially he had been reported as a missing person by Kelly, but after a few weeks the police stopped searching for Tom. Kelly, it was rumored, was convinced Tom had left her, for what reason no one knew, and subsequently the police had taken the same view. There had never been a real search for him; he was just one of the countless thousands of people who go missing every year, leaving no trace as to their whereabouts nor reason for their running away. The only mystery had been poor Shmitty, the Hudd’s Labrador, who Tom had been supposedly walking that morning in the very park where the women now sat. The poor dog had been sitting on his owner’s porch, just waiting for someone to open the front door to let him in, his leash still attached to his collar, and, according to rumors, crying and yelping, until Kelly had opened the door, disheveled and obviously confused. Cindy, the Hudd’s neighbor, had pointed out that Kelly had been sick the week Tom had gone missing, some virus or bug she had picked up in France, during the vacation she had won.

  Heidi Launer shook her head. “What with Tom leaving Kelly and that scruffy lazy Englishman abandoning his wife and child, poor Veronica, let’s not forget her, this neighborhood has had its fair share of nasty characters, in my opinion, present company, of course, excepted.”

  Heidi’s companions nodded their agreement.

  “How could anyone abandon a child? asked Cindy Mopper. “She is such a cutie. Thank the Lord she looks more like her mother than him. I can’t say I will miss him, never liked him in the first place. I am sure he was another one who never scooped up his dog’s poop. Good riddance to bad rubbish, that’s what I say.”

  Both Heidi and Carla agreed with their fellow dog walker. Both Veronica and Kelly were very attractive women, and they were all positive that sooner or later they would meet decent men, men who wouldn’t simply leave them, for whatever the reason. The general consensus around the picnic table where the women sat and drank their cocktails was that most men were inherently evil, not all men though.

  “Thank heavens for decent men, hardworking honest men, who would never dream of hurting anyone, let alone children and women. Thank the Lord for the few who make up for the bad ones, like Elliott for example,” said Cindy Mopper as she took another swig of booze, the ice clinking as she raised her plastic cup to her lips, “and of course my Billy. Did I mention Billy is coming back to Gordonston tomorrow?” she asked her friends. She had, of course, many times, but her two friends smiled and nodded politely as if this was fresh and new news.

  “You are lucky to have Billy,” said Carla as she gently touched her friend’s hand. “The things you tell me about him do go to prove that there is some goodness out there. All he does for those poor children, all he does for charity, you must be so proud of him.”

  Cindy indicated that she was indeed extremely proud of him, and the fact that he was positively the exact opposite of most men. He was honest, kind, selfless and, as she often said, a true saint.

  As the women sat at their usual spot, the picnic table adjacent to the Scout Hut in Gordonston park, their three dogs, Fuchsl, Paddy and Walter played together as they had done for the past five years. Though not as sprightly as they once were, the dogs still made the most of the wooded area and spacious outdoor park which they frequented. It was their domain. As the park was strictly reserved for residents, it was very rare that any outsider would ever venture into the park; the signs displayed on both gates to the park, warning that it was indeed for the residents of Gordonston only, a facility just for them, and that violators would be reported to the police. Each one of the three women, who sat drinking their cocktails and gossiping, had at least on four occasions called 911 after spotting non-authorized persons either walking their dogs in their park, or children from outside the neighborhood playing on the wooden swings, slide and climbing frame.

  “Elliott is certainly going to win,” said Cindy with a smile, changing the subject, as she glanced o
ver towards the large white house that overlooked the east side of Gordonston Park. “The election is just a week away and apparently he is well ahead in the polls. He is going to make such a fantastic Mayor. I just know it.”

  Carla nodded her agreement, while Heidi, unnoticed by her companions, took an extra-large swallow of her gin and tonic.

  “He has my vote, that’s for sure,” said Carla. “I hear that you have been doing a bit of canvassing for the good cause?” Her question directed at Cindy.

  “Yes, I have. I have delivered flyers, attended functions and offered him my full assistance. It is, I am sure, what Thelma would have wanted. If only she were alive today, she would be so proud of him. Like we all are,” replied Cindy.

  Once again Heidi did not comment, instead she took an even larger swig of her cocktail.

  “Well, good for you,” smiled Carla. “You know, I really do think you two would make a great couple. I think Thelma would have loved that, for you and Elliott to maybe ‘hook up’. I really wish you would. I think a powerful man like Elliott Miller needs a strong woman behind him. You could be the ‘First Lady’ of Savannah.”

  A few months ago, a comment like that from Carla would have had Cindy seething, but now, things had changed. Carla had made it perfectly clear to Cindy, and anyone else who cared to listen, that she preferred her men younger. And why not? The woman was spectacular; she looked half her age, and of course, she knew it.

  Cindy waved away her friend’s last statement. “I am sure he is just far too busy right now to even consider any sort of relationship. Even though I do agree. I am sure that is what Thelma would have wanted, but, well, one can only hope!”

  Carla and Cindy both laughed. However, once again, Heidi remained stern and passed no comment while she took her third rather large swig of gin and tonic.

  “So what did happen to Veronica’s husband?” asked Carla. “I don’t think I ever spoke to him, always thought he was strange. Did he go back to Australia?”

  “I thought he was English?” interrupted Heidi.