I made a mental note to check that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Clara’s husband’s cousin’s ex was Molly Brackenhurst. She and her new husband had lived near Bob for a decade.
She’d gathered eight other neighbors. Most were in their forties or fifties. Except a couple who sat at the back and were younger than me.
The woman seemed familiar, yet I couldn’t place her. Maybe she had that kind of face. She had chin-length brown streaked hair and was dressed half a level less casually than the rest — her top appeared to be silk, rather than polyester. Her apparent significant other had a shaved head, fashionably darkened chin, and wore a cashmere V-neck over a t-shirt.
They did nothing to draw attention to themselves, including speaking.
Molly did enough of that for everybody.
She and her neighbors had plenty of complaints about Bob. From the mundane of his yelling at her kids if their ball or other toy inadvertently crossed into his property, to his lodging complaints with the homeowners association about their garage being disorganized.
“Really? He complained about that?” I asked.
“He said that when our garage door was open, he had a view of it from his front window and that it was disreputable and unpleasant and ruined the prospect.”
That sounded like Bob Coble.
“What happened?”
“We agreed to try to keep our garage door closed.” She chuckled. “But we knew we wouldn’t be perfect, so my husband also gave him a controller to close the door if it ever bothered him.”
“You didn’t worry about him closing it at an inauspicious time?”
“You mean like on one of our kids? We weren’t too worried about that. It has one of those seeing eyes so it won’t close when there’s something in the way. Like a kid when his brother tries to squash him under the door. Besides, as weird and picky and cantankerous as Bob could be, he was never cruel to kids and certainly not to dogs. We had an old lab up until four months ago.” Tears glazed her eyes. “Bart had a much harder time getting around those last few years, but he loved being with the kids, he would try no matter what. A year-and-a-half ago Bob showed up at our door with one of those wheeled contraptions that helps a dog whose rear legs have weakened. He wouldn’t let us pay him back. He didn’t say much. Except about the right way to use the wheels, of course. But I would see him in his window watching Bart and the kids.
“Nobody can tell me Bob Coble was all bad. A pain in the ass, yes, but not all bad. Whoever killed him, they could have left Trevalyn to die, too.”
“Oh, my gosh.” Clara half stood. “How long was he alone?”
Molly waved her back reassuringly. “He’s fine. From what the deputy said, he was alone all night and most of the day.”
“Where is Trevalyn now, Molly?” Clara asked.
“Animal Control.”
“No,” Clara and I chorused.
“If no one else takes him, I will,” Clara said.
“And break LuLu’s heart? She’s the princess and she does not want competition.” Molly patted Clara’s arm. “We’re already seeing if we can adopt him. I wouldn’t be surprised if other people on the street might be interested, too. No matter what people thought about Bob, they love Trevalyn.” Her eyes flickered. “Most of them.”
The woman in the back shifted in her seat.
That movement shifted the lighting on her face. I recognized her.
She was the woman in the cloche hat from the post office.
I had a hunch.
* * * *
“But there was an incident with Trevalyn that led to a lawsuit, wasn’t there?” I looked directly at the couple.
The woman flinched. The man spoke. “Wasn’t the dog. It was him — Bob. He got all wound up about dandelions in our yard blowing seeds into his. We’ve got kids, we don’t want chemicals, so sue us.”
“He did,” muttered one of the men. That drew a few chuckles, apparently emboldening him. “And your dandelions do blow seeds all over. I’ve had to double treatments to get rid of them.”
Molly held up a hand. “Let’s not get into that again.”
“Bob sued you?” I asked the couple. Molly frowned at me, but I ignored it.
The man looked angry. The woman looked … guilty? That seemed weird.
“He could file as many lawsuits as he wanted, that didn’t mean he’d win.”
“Bob complained about the dandelions. You told him to get lost. He complained to the homeowners association. You reported Trevalyn for something. He piled dog poop near your entry walk. You—”
“How do you know all that?” the bald man demanded.
“She’s got the pattern,” the man who also didn’t appreciate dandelions said. “And then Bob would sue.”
The man stood. “C’mon, we’re going,” he ordered the woman with a head jerk.
They left.
But the floor had opened to complaints about Bob. It seemed Molly and her family got along with him the best. Most of the other neighbors were somewhere between them and Rosie from bunco who’d been glad to leave him behind as a neighbor.
* * * *
“You got quiet there at the end, Sheila,” Teague said to me.
“You were quiet the whole time.”
“True. So that could be seen as my natural state. But for you, it was a sudden change. What caused that change?”
“I was shocked I hadn’t factored the dogs into all of this, Trevalyn and Skeeter.”
“You mean Dwight wouldn’t waltz off for vacation and leave Skeeter, which he wouldn’t,” Clara said. “For that matter, neither would Bob. With Trevalyn, I mean.”
“Somebody running after, say, committing a murder, wouldn’t be thinking clearly. They do things you wouldn’t expect. Things they wouldn’t do otherwise,” Teague said.
Clara was having none of it. “Dwight would not have left Skeeter even if he had killed Bob. Even if he were running for his life, he would not leave Skeeter. I don’t think he would have left Trevalyn to suffer that way, either, without food and water and someone to rescue him.”
“For what it’s worth, based on the short time I knew him, I agree with Clara.”
“Is that all you were thinking about?” Teague asked me.
“I said it was.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
We dropped Teague at my house to work on the closet shelves.
I’d intended to get out of Clara’s SUV there, too. But Donna called as we reached my street. She invited Clara and me to join her at Historic Haines Tavern for tea.
Having missed lunch, I wasn’t passing up a meal.
Who am I kidding? I wasn’t passing up a chance to hear whatever Donna had to say.
* * * *
The wreath on the front door of the Historic Haines Tavern offered a lot more hope for spring than the temperature did with the sun dropping fast.
Inside, the main dining area opened to the left, with more up the stairs that shared the center hall with a passage to the rear. To our right was the tap room.
Clara headed through the tap room, I followed. Between the fireplace topped by a large oil painting of a glorious horse and the polished wooden bar backed by a period mirror and array of bottles, she entered a doorway that led to a hall.
An employee greeted her by name, knocked on a door, then gestured us in. The room held four wing chairs, a round pedestal table given over to tea, tiny sandwiches, pastries, and Donna and Amy.
Donna welcomed us warmly. Amy’s face remained tight.
With the door closed and each of us occupying one of the comfortable chairs, Donna poured cups of tea and passed them around.
“I thought we might have a meeting of minds in this convivial setting,” she said.
As the newcomer, I kept my mouth shut by occupying it with a raspberry pastry.
“This is very convivial,” Clara said, “but what do our minds need to meet over?”
“All this poking around you’re do
ing,” Amy snapped. “It’s the sheriff’s department’s job.”
“We’re trying to fill in answers that aren’t part of their investigation. They don’t know everything that we do.”
“Then tell them.” Still snappish, Amy had backed off a few notches.
“They haven’t listened. They didn’t even check on Dwight until last night. Now they can’t find him anywhere.”
Donna and Amy stared at her, then looked at each other.
“Dwight’s missing,” she emphasized. “And Skeeter was left alone in the house.”
Amy sucked in a breath.
“Have you heard from Dwight, Amy?”
“No. Left a message but—”
“I know. His mailbox was full.”
Clara recapped what we’d learned, but only about the dogs. Ending, “See, there are lots of things the sheriff’s department doesn’t know about, doesn’t care about.”
“To them, the Torrid Avenue Dog Park is a crime scene. To us it’s so much more,” I said.
Amy stiffened again. Maybe I should have stuck to the pastry.
Donna gave me a sideways look. “Why do you always say the whole name? Most of us just call it the dog park.”
“I love the name. So many possibilities. Scandalous possibilities.”
Amy gave a tight smile. “Pretty boring, actually. I looked up the history when we put together a display at the library on the town being on the national register of historic places. Torrid is the southern boundary of the original town as the founders laid it out. Temperate is the northern boundary, Sunrise the eastern boundary, and Sunset the western boundary. Pretty simple, really.”
“Rather poetic,” Clara said.
“Totally disappointing. I’m holding out for a scandalous explanation,” I said. “They made up a respectable reason to tell the historical people.”
“Well, there were a number of bars and taverns on Torrid Avenue,” Amy said. “I found letters by one of the founders who said Hezekiah Haines used all his influence to have Haines Tavern be the only one right at the center of town. By the late 1800s, when they decided they needed to build a new and bigger jail, there were comments in the newspaper that building it out there would be convenient, because most of the jail’s occupants came from those taverns.”
Donna sniffed. “Apparently forgetting about the trip to the courthouse for their legal rights in between.”
Amy met my gaze for an instant at the mention of the courthouse, with its connections to Bob’s lawsuits.
“Different times,” she said. “They forgot all about that, too, when they used the Hanging Tree. There are pictures of it in the archives. Including a couple with someone hanging there.”
Clara gasped. “That’s awful.”
“People took things into their own hands,” Amy said with significance. “Sometimes you might be able to say it was people thinking they were doing right, but far too often you can see in the records that people knew it was wrong. Jumping to hang someone as the person they labeled the obvious culprit to short-circuit the legal system.”
I bit my tongue to keep from defensively saying that wasn’t what we were doing.
“There were two famous instances. “They hanged a young black boy, not even fifteen years old, for robbing a store when some of those who participated admitted later they suspected the ringleader of the hanging was really the one who committed the crime. That ringleader took off right after. Word was, he went to St. Louis and died there in a bar fight. His widow — well, his wife when he deserted her and their children — did so much better with the farm than he’d ever done and she employed most of that young boy’s family members, making one a manager at a time that was unheard of.”
“Small compensation,” Donna muttered.
“All that the woman could give them,” Amy said.
Donna nodded acceptance.
As interesting as that bit of history was, I couldn’t see how it possibly helped us, but wasn’t about to say that. Amy was visibly relaxing as she talked.
“The other case was brother against brother over a woman. Both wanted to marry her. Her father said no to both. The father’s murdered, and a man’s seen fleeing the scene who resembled the brothers. One declares the other did it. Swears up and down he’s heartbroken over it, but can’t bear to hide the murderer of his true love’s father. And he turns his brother over to a mob of the murdered man’s relatives, who hang the accused brother.”
“Good heavens, I’ve lived here all my life and never heard these stories,” Clara said.
“This is the history that doesn’t get told.”
“Kids would probably like school better if they were,” I said.
“I hope that surviving brother got killed in a bar fight or worse,” Donna said.
“No. He married the girl. They still have descendants in the county.” A sly glint sparked her eyes. “By the name of Coble.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
She got all the reaction she could have wanted. Though it turned out Bob was descended from a cousin of the two brothers.
Amid the dwindling exclamations, Amy looked at her watch, folded her napkin on the table, and stood. “I have to get back to the library. I’m working until closing.”
The door closed behind her after our good-byes.
“You did well.” Donna looked from Clara to me and stuck there. “You gave her a chance to decompress. She won’t go to the sheriff’s department now and tell them you’re interfering with their investigation.”
“Was she going to?” Clara demanded.
“Oh, yes. I hadn’t persuaded her otherwise and she was braced for you to argue against her. By not arguing, she had time to consider the point on its own merits, not only in opposition. Not opposition to you, but to what’s happened. She feels Bob did great injustices, particularly to Ruby. She also has little sympathy for Berrie.”
“The woman scorned,” I murmured. I added for clarity. “Someone at bunco referred to Berrie as the woman scorned in connection with Bob.”
“Her business—” Clara said.
At that same time, Donna said, “Oh, that. Ancient history.”
Both stopped and looked at each other. Then both exhaled a huh that acknowledged the legitimacy of the other’s comment.
“You go first,” Donna invited.
“Okay, but only because I think that will save the best for last,” Clara said. “Berrie’s trying to start that dog training business. She said she’d learned so much from Bob that she was sure she could help other people as he helped her. Bob wasn’t as enthusiastic. In fact, he was downright nasty.”
Donna nodded at Clara’s assessment.
“He said she could barely tell a dog from a rat, which was mean, taking a side swipe like that at her beloved Boston terriers. He also said her people skills were even worse than her dog skills, which were non-existent. And then, there was…”.
Clara and Donna exchanged a significant look. “Don’t leave me in suspense,” I begged.
“That happened at the end of summer,” Clara picked up. “Then, in the fall, Berrie had that website designed to promote her business. Cost her a fair amount. Bob heard about it, he made a lot of harsh comments. First, to her in person at the dog park and then on the website. After a few days, she disabled the comment feature and deleted everything he’d written. They had a screaming match at the park a couple weeks before Christmas. He said he would sue her if she didn’t remove every mention of him. She’d had sections where she talked about what she’d learned from Bob and how much she admired him. It was all very complimentary, but he didn’t want to have any association with it.
“That was his right, but he was so snotty to her. He didn’t need to be. She’s been his most loyal follower and he acted as if she’d dirtied his name by saying nice things about him. He could have handled the whole thing quietly, without embarrassing her to the point of tears.”
“Tears of hurt? Or embarrassment? Or rage?”
&n
bsp; Clara looked toward Donna, then shifted in her chair. “All three, I suppose. She told me she put quite a bit of money into that website. Then she had to spend more to remove the references to Bob as well as his comments. And she can’t afford it. She hoped dog training would rescue her finances, instead of costing her even more.”
“She’s spending a lot more money than she has on those Bostons.” Donna clicked her tongue. “She takes in any rescue they can’t find a spot for. Which does her credit. But she also needs to be practical and reasonable. She’s got to stop taking in more dogs. Without training credentials I don’t see how she expects to earn much — or anything — from that website or training in person.”
“She thought she could earn off the website?” I asked.
“Yes, she was offering training tips remotely. Troubleshooting dog behavior with advice for a price from people emailing her. Don’t look at me that way, Sheila. It’s not my idea. I’m reporting what Berrie planned.” Clara finished her tea.
“Has she had customers?”
“Not off the website. And I can’t imagine what happened is going to help her efforts to find local customers. Augustine, the woman with the German shepherd, was freaked out.”
Weren’t we all? “How bad is her financial situation?”
Clara looked toward Donna, clearly inviting her to answer.
She flipped her hand, palm up, indicating uncertainty. “All I can say is I’ve heard she keeps her house cold and lights on in only one room to save on utilities.”
The dog park offered inexpensive entertainment, but the dogs required food and healthcare, not to mention treats and toys. Her Bostons clearly had all of those.
Could Berrie have felt threatened enough by the obstacles Bob presented to her business hopes to have wanted to remove him?
“But she’s been loyal to him, one of his true followers.”
“They made up over Christmas, at least to some extent. What you’ve seen with Berrie’s attitude toward Bob has actually been quite subdued. Really. You should have heard her before their falling out.”
Death on Torrid Ave. Page 13
