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you hear me?”
    Butch wandered in. Navigating the stairs proved to be difficult with such short legs. He put his front paws on the window seat where the old lady sat crumpled. “Scout! Ooh, my baby. Go help Uncle Grayson.”
    So the woman had taken Zach’s puppy. She and the dead guy, Grayson, had been hiding him all along.
    “His name is Butch, and he’s my son’s dog.”
    “It is not. His name is Scout. I should know because I named him myself.” She picked up Butch and stumbled across the room to the unmade bed. “Off with you now. We don’t need the house cleaned today.” She crawled into bed, pulling the covers up over Butch. His wriggling form could be seen under the dingy white sheets. I hated to think about the mess he was making with his bloody paws and fur.
    A siren wailed outside the window, and flashing lights were blinking up against the gate. I glanced out the window as the paramedic stepped out and Maggie gestured to the second-story window.  One of the paramedics rattled the locked gate and couldn’t get into the crime scene. He shouted to me in the window.
    “Ma’am. I need to open the gate to get in and give assistance.” He stopped and repeated his question in a slower pattern. “How do I open the gate?”
    I turned back to the room’s occupant. “How do they get the gate open?”
    “Grayson will get it for them.”
    “Grayson can’t help, Ma’am. He’s the one who’s hurt. How do they open the gate?”
    The old woman turned toward me. “Grayson keeps the key to the gate. Check on his desk.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “You’ve cleaned it, you should know by now. I can’t believe he even hired you. My head is beginning to hurt.” Butch crawled out from under the sheets, landing with a plop on the floor. Her eyes fluttered closed.
    Looking around, it didn’t seem like they had hired anyone to clean the house in quite a while. Butch, now free from his captor, ran around the room with his tail wagging.
    “Okay, fella. Where’s Grayson’s office?” A man’s voice came over a speaker down the hall.
    “Hey Betsy, are you up there? This is Orley from the Pecan Bayou Emergency Unit. We need access to this gate.”
    Following the voice, I found a bedroom that had been converted into an office. More boxes were scattered everywhere, some open and some still sealed. China, vases and electronics peeked out of their bubble wrap as if the recipient took one look and shoved them back in the box. Shuffling through papers on the desk, I uncovered a little red light on a speaker box. I pushed the button underneath it.
    “Hello?”
    “Betsy, we need to get into this gate. Can you get down here and open it? “
    “Hi, Orley.” Like so many people who worked with my dad, Orley Ortiz was like one of the family. His kindness and patience with people in crisis never failed him. Getting through a locked gate was a little tougher. I continued, “I climbed over the fence. I’m looking for the key right now.”
    “Copy that. Maybe we could climb over to get to him while we wait.”
    I searched through mounds of papers, most of them sales orders, bills and payment due notices.
    “Betsy,” Aunt Maggie’s voice came through the speaker. “Be careful. Are you sure you’re alone?”
    I had forgotten about that threat. Looking behind me briefly, I returned to the phone. “I think so. Just me and the old lady, right now.”
    “I’m thinkin’ that’s got to be Charlie Loper’s daughter. Did you get her name?”
    “Not much more than crazy lady hanging out the window at this point.”
    “Oh, Betsy. They’re over the fence ... I think they just found a key in the man’s pocket.”
    “The man’s name is Grayson if you didn’t hear it being yelled out the window.”
    “Is that what she was sayin’? They’re gettin’ the fence open. Can you get out of that house?”
    “Tell Orley I think the woman up here probably needs medical assistance as well.”
    “Is she hurt