The Hounding

The Hounding

Sandra de Helen

Copyright © 2009–2013 Sandra de Helen. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For all permissions, please contact the author at sandra@sandradehelen.com.

www.SandradeHelen.com

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead (unless explicitly noted) is merely coincidental. While many of the places and place names, street names, building names, and so on are based on reality, the author has added additional floors to some buildings, moved them up or down the street, or whatever she needed to further the story. Please use real maps and street signs to find your way around Portland and its environs.

Print ISBN 978-0-9910792-1-6

Ebook ISBN 978-0-9910792-3-0

to Stormy,

my daughter, my hero

Character List

(in order of appearance)

Priscilla (Cilla) Vandeleur Leoni, Mother of Golden, wife of Walter, heiress to the Baskerville timber fortune.

Dr. Mary Watson, Naturopath, sidekick to the sleuth, and narrator

Shirley Combs, Sleuth who fancies herself the world’s greatest living detective

Goldenhawk Vandeleur, the client, daughter of Cilla Leoni

Walter Leoni, Cilla’s husband.

Dr. Eugene Wentworth, Medical examiner

Levy Hawthorne, Timber baron

Tony Leoni, Cilla’s stepson

Stanley Carlisle, Investigative reporter

Nancy Margaret, Cilla’s close financial advisor

Pat Riley, Opera director

Chapter One:

The Hounding

Cilla can’t seem to shake the nightmare. She almost gives up her daily run rather than face the possibility of meeting those dogs in real life. Dogs are reality for every marathon runner, and each runner finds a way to deal with them. But for Cilla, the fear of being attacked runs so deep she feels it is part of her genetic makeup.

She jerks awake at 5:37 a.m. the sky barely light as she sits up, shaking, sweating, her heart pounding as she listens for the heavy breath, the pounding footsteps that haunt her awake.

Breakfast, newspaper, even the Today Show doesn’t erase the feeling that the giant hound is waiting for her around the next corner.

Finally she dons her running gear and sets out, determined to do her eight miles anyway. The Portland Marathon is seven weeks away, and Cilla intends to achieve her personal best. She adds a light windbreaker to her outfit, tying it loosely around her waist by the sleeves, because even though the calendar says August second, the temperature at ten a.m. is only fifty-one degrees.

As she crosses Highway 43 at Glenmorrie Road and starts the three point one mile trek that becomes Old River Road, Cilla breathes one small sigh of relief. She knows this stretch of road like no other. This is the one she includes on every run, every walk, and every bicycle ride. This beautiful road along the Willamette River has more trees and fewer dogs per square foot than any other property she knows.

Oh sure, there are houses, particularly at the beginning and end of the road. And yes, homeowners have dogs, but for some reason not so many dogs, and so far, she hasn’t hurt any of them.

Cilla always carries a pocket-sized can of mace and an umbrella, for the express purpose of warding off dogs. She read somewhere that letter carriers open automatic umbrellas in the faces of their canine foes and the dogs back up or run away. She tried it a few times herself and the element of surprise gave her enough lead-time to run away.

The sky is overcast. The low clouds and tall trees seem to enforce a certain silence. Cilla’s breathing is the loudest sound she hears. Her feet hit the ground rhythmically, one two, one two. She breathes in for four counts, out for four. Her thoughts seem to float just ahead of her, pulling her onward, coaxing her step-by-step, mile after mile.

As she reaches the eight-mile marker on Old River Road, she is halfway through her training run. Tomorrow she will run thirteen. Today is an easy day. She can feel herself begin to relax. Her breath, still keeping the beat, comes into her lungs a little easier. The ground isn’t quite so hard as it was a moment ago.

In the distance she hears a car door open. There are no houses for another half mile, either the sound carried along the river, or someone is parked somewhere ahead, probably enjoying the quiet.

Now Cilla hears the pounding footsteps, the heavy slobbering breath of her nightmares. She stops for a second to hear which way the sound is coming from. At the same time, she readies both mace and umbrella. The dogs are coming toward her. She whirls and begins retracing her path.

They are coming too fast. She piles on the energy, grateful for her years of running, proud of her ability to create bursts of speed when needed.

The hounds begin to bark. They see her. She glances over her shoulder. There is a pack of them. Big ones, small ones. Mutts, hounds, she can’t tell. Adrenaline shoots through Cilla’s body like lightning. She knows she cannot outrun these dogs for any great distance. She heads for the river. She feels sure she can out swim them, and doubts their ability to attack while in the water.

Cilla slides and falls down the embankment toward the Willamette. Damn! A barbed wire fence. She stands up, desperately hanging onto her weapons, steps on the bottom wire, and prepares to step over the top one. The wire snaps and the barbs from the top wire rip through her pants, tearing her flesh and causing her to cry out. As she bends to crawl between the wires, one of the dogs leaps onto her back, bites into the back of her neck and begins to shake her head viciously from side to side.

The powerful jaws of a terrier snap into her left side with a terrible force. Cilla fights for her life. She sprays the mace as best she can, pops open the automatic umbrella, and waves them both in the direction of the canines. She knows that some dogs are rumored to fight for hours, but she has the experience of years of nightmares, of horrible fantasies and planning how she will escape should she ever actually be attacked by her greatest enemy. She can’t believe it is actually happening, yet the pain is excruciating and she feels herself fighting to stay conscious.

When the canines refuse to succumb to the mace, and merely rip the umbrella skin from its ribs, Cilla drops the weapons and tries desperately to pull herself through the fence, not aware that the barbs are by now embedded in the palms of her hands. The first dog continues to shake her by the neck, the next is barking, snapping, tearing flesh from her leg. She can’t see it, but she can smell the hot blood intermingled with the scent of the dogs’ bodies and breath, and the fresh green smell of the undergrowth only inches beneath her nose.

She struggles beyond human strength to shake them free and at last manages to rid herself of the first one. Then, from somewhere far away, she hears a low buzzing sound. The dogs hear it too. They stop their attack and run away. Cilla disengages herself from the barbed wire, stands up and begins to survey the damage. A wave of dizziness causes her to sway, and a crushing pain hits the middle of her chest.

As she becomes aware that she is losing the battle for consciousness, Cilla thinks that in spite of the pain, in spite of the horror, the actual reality was not as bad as her fears, because she felt proud of her fight, and comforted by the approaching darkness.

The last thing Cilla ever hears is the sound of a car door slamming shut.

Chapter Two:

Morning Edition

As usual, I was searching local online data feeds—morning edition. It was a game I played with myself—trying to anticipate what would pique Shirley’s interest that day. My devised categories were: crime, of course, anything about anyone of social note, any obituary that looked remotely unusual, scientific articles, anything about any private investigator anywhere in the Northwest United States of America, and—again of course, any articles that mentioned her name. She read all the financials on her own. For myself, I filed articles about animals. Good, bad, or indifferent, I saved them all. Over the years I watched a trend emerge—an awareness forming that animals are beings too. An awakening to how related we all are. On the part of some people anyway.

Today’s online Oregonian had an article that fit several categories. Priscilla Leoni, wealthy heiress to the Vandeleur timber fortune, was found dead.

HEIRESS KILLED

Priscilla Leoni was found dead yesterday on Old River Road, Lake Oswego, by two Marylhurst nuns on their afternoon walk. The wealthy heiress appeared to have been attacked by wild animals, but Lake Oswego Police Department spokeswoman Judy Phelps refused to clarify further, saying that any speculation as to actual cause of death would be premature at this time.

An autopsy is planned for this morning. According to Walter Leoni, president and chief executive officer of Leoni Furniture, and Ms. Leoni’s husband, she left their Lake Oswego home for her daily run at approximately ten a.m. Ms. Leoni was in training for the upcoming Portland Marathon, an event she regularly competed in.

When she did not return home at the usual time, her daughter Miss Goldenhawk Vandeleur, began searching for her along Ms. Leoni’s known running route. Miss Vandeleur arrived upon the death scene just as Ms. Leoni’s body was being removed to the morgue.

LOPD promise a complete and thorough investigation into the cause of death.

Clackamas County Animal Control is currently searching the surrounding areas for wild animals and dogs not on leashes. Owners are being asked to confine their pets to their yards or homes. All unlicensed animals will be taken to the animal shelter in Oregon City. Related story click here.

Oh great. Now every dog on a leash would be suspect. I hoped they would catch the actual animals involved before the evening news so that innocent pets wouldn’t suffer at the hands of overzealous animal control agents or self-appointed vigilantes.

It was horrible to think of dogs so hungry they would attack a human being. It was ridiculous to believe the animals were anything but dogs, however. What? Raccoons? Opossums? There were no wolves, bears, or even coyotes in Lake Oswego. Maybe they were trained attack dogs? Drug dealers were known to keep them for protection. Drug dealers in Lake Oswego? They could be anywhere, though Portlanders preferred to think they’re all in Northeast Portland somehow. The truth is there were just as many addicts in the suburbs as there were in the city. And they had more money. Still, that was surely a farfetched theory.

Maybe the dogs belonged to some wealthy homeowner protecting her valuables. But if that was the case, what were the dogs doing out? And why didn’t she come forward?

It was a problem for the police. And maybe for Shirley. Ms. Leoni was almost certainly one of her clients. Shirley managed financial portfolios for nearly everyone who was anyone in the Greater Portland area.

We met in Seattle at a Landmark Forum training in 2006. The Forum was an educational experience that was supposed to transform the quality of a person’s life by creating opportunities for her to achieve her potential. Shirley was there to build her clientele. I went in search of deeper insights. I did come away with a deeper understanding of my responses to certain situations, and more important, I found a best friend.

At the time, Shirley had been in business for about eight years, and she wasn’t doing badly either. I didn’t know why she thought she needed new contacts, maybe she just left no stone unturned. Well, of course, now that I know her better, I know that is exactly right. It was no wonder she became so successful as a stockbroker, or account executive, or whatever the current nomenclature.

On the last weekend of the training, Shirley stood up to share and the leader wanted to know why Shirley really came to the training. He asked what was missing in her life, what she really wanted that she didn’t already have. It quickly came to light that she was already successful in her business. It took a little longer to uncover the fact that her deepest desire was to be the world’s greatest living detective.

For the first time in her life, no one laughed when she expressed that long hidden dream. There were 178 people in that room, and all of us had repressed longings that we seldom revealed even to our closest friends. In the two weekends of constant sixteen to eighteen hour days, we learned that nobody’s secrets were funny. In fact, they were usually painful. But this was the first time this particular item came up.

In addition to the somewhat unusual occupation Shirley wanted, she herself was a bit out of the ordinary. A bit, well that’s an understatement. She was, and is, a tall woman, lean to the point of skinny, with the thickest long brown hair a person could hope for. Even though her facial features are not that attractive (she looks a little like a greyhound, actually) her hair and height are envied by most—women and men alike.

At dinner break I made a beeline for her. I wanted to be in her group when we all sat and discussed what we got from the day’s sharing and teachings. I knew I wanted to know more about this person. She looked as if she were about my age, although it turned out she was actually a few years older, and we were both from Portland. I hoped we could get to be friends.

I was fascinated by this tall, plain-looking woman. Shirley reminded me of my sister in some way. Tommy died ten years before, but I still saw her face, her expressions, her gestures nearly everywhere I went. I missed her companionship, and