Cue the Dead Guy by H. Mel Malton

Author:H. Mel Malton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: 1999-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Two

KEVIN: It may be safe to stand aside and let the tough ones take the ride / but if you watch and don’t join in, how can you ever hope to win?

-The Glass Flute, Scene v

Just because a guy has been accused of putting dog collars on his grandchildren and chaining them to the ground, it doesn’t mean that he goes directly to jail without passing Go. Yes, the kids were “taken into care,” as they say, that night, after the CAS worker got a look at the living conditions in Home Sweet Hell. They found the kids sleeping in cardboard boxes upstairs in the attic room, and Grandpa had of course denied everything. In spite of what Morrison had told me, no CAS worker had had a chance to visit the home since the “kidnapping” incident. The duty worker was swamped that day, Morrison told me later.

After George had made his statement, the police had picked up the social worker and taken her with them, out to the shack. The dwelling did not, apparently, score very high on the grading system provided in the new government book on Things You Can’t Do To Your Kids. The children, Tyler and Wade, were removed and placed somewhere safe, where presumably a qualified person would try to get a statement from them about the dog collar incident and anything else that might be relevant.

Grandpa, on the other hand, was not apprehended. The cops told us that we should get in touch with them the moment we heard the parents had returned. So now we had a solitary, very annoyed, evil neighbour living close by, probably carrying a pretty hefty grudge. I just hoped that the charges looming over his head would be enough to keep him from sneaking up on George and trying to exact some sort of revenge.

“I am not worried,” George said, but I don’t think he was telling the truth. He had aged drastically in the last couple of days and moved like an old man.

Grandpa next door was down to one dog. The Humane Society had been called in after they found the bodies of three dogs on a midden heap next to the outhouse. They had all been shot. For some reason, they had only taken three of the remaining four away. It seemed like a pretty miserable sentence for the one that was left, but the Humane Society works in mysterious ways. Anyway, that cut down on the noise considerably.

“I shall sleep well tonight, anyway,” George said. “Do you want to stay here? The bed in the little room has clean sheets.” I had gone up to the cabin earlier to get Luggy. I’d left him chained that morning, which I absolutely hate to do, but the dog situation next door made it the only option other than leaving him indoors. I planned on taking him to rehearsal with me from then on. George’s casual offer of a bed for the night was unusual. The only

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