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waited, but after twenty seconds or so heard nothing. If someone was in there, they were choosing not to come to the door.
    “No answer,” I called as I turned back to Aunt Maggie still waiting at the fence. My eyes shifted from her to a crumpled form on the other side of the fountain. On the ground lay a man with silver hair matted with blood and whose right cheek was now mashed into the pavement. His black velvet bathrobe was partly saturated with blood that had run down to a pair of well-soled black house slippers, and there was a wide circle of blood plastering his white-and-gray striped pajamas to his chest. The heat of the Texas summer was beating down on him as the familiar buzz of flies reached my ears.

Chapter Seven
     
    “Aunt Maggie, call an ambulance!” I yelled around the fountain. “There’s an injured man back here.”
    “Oh Lord,” I heard her say on the other side of the fence.
    I looked back up at the ancient home looming behind me. Was the killer still inside? Where there more bodies? I turned back to Maggie. “I should probably check the house.”
    “I don’t know, Betsy. It might not be safe. Why don’t you try to get the fence open from that side?”
    “Okay. I started toward the gate, putting the wiggly Butch back down on the blood-stained ground.”
    “You there!” A voice from up on high shouted out to me. “You there, girl!” An old woman teetered out of a window on the top floor of the house. Strands of her white hair fluttered in the wind. Her scrawny body, clothed in a faded pink negligee, was balanced on the windowsill. If she leaned just a little further out, she would be joining the robed man by the fountain.
    “Ma’am, get back inside. I’ll come up.”
    “Well, I should certainly hope so, and watch your tone with me, girl,” she slurred.
    When I tried the doorknob, the door opened easily, and thoughts of a crazy bloodthirsty intruder re-entered my mind. What if someone was hiding in the house getting ready to do in the old lady? Would they find my body alongside hers? Butch scampered behind me, my able-bodied ten-pound canine protection against a killer. Hopefully he had all of his puppy teeth. I could already see my next Happy Hinter column: Bloody paws in the carpet? Try putting your dog out BEFORE you commit murder next time.
    As I made my way through the downstairs, I had to maneuver around cardboard cartons scattered about. Were they moving? Was the British guy the crazy lady’s husband? I weaved my way through boxes stacked upon boxes and finally found a stairway.
    “Grayson! Get up here. I need you,” the old lady shouted on the next level. She strung out the last sentence in an almost playful way. She repeated the sentence again, and as I entered the room, she was crawling up on a window seat. As she was about to put a leg out the open window, I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her back inside the bedroom. The smell of the room hit me first. It was a mixture of stale perfume and unwashed linens. The old woman pulled away from me and headed back to the window.
    “What?” She had spotted the man by the fountain. “Grayson, what are you doing sleeping down there? I don’t pay you to sleep on the job. Get up here, Grayson.”
    “Ma’am. You need to come away from the window.”
    “Says who?”
    “Says me, um, Betsy.” I stood and squared my shoulders, aware that my clothes were now stained with blood.  I pulled her back again.
    “I’m not going to fall out any damn window. I have to wake Grayson. Didn’t you see him? And what’s that all over your uniform? Where is your standard of cleanliness, girl? I’m going to have to call the agency.”
    I sighed, reaching for patience within me. “It’s blood and yes, I saw Grayson. He’s ... hurt. We’ve called an ambulance.”
    “Hurt?” She bolted from me again and ran back to the window seat she had been perching on. She sobbed through the billowing curtains. “Grayson, darling! Grayson, can