Death on Torrid Ave.

by Patricia McLinn

No, I shouldn’t have. Not if she was more fulsome than she had been the past month.

  “Do you — each of you — think she would have, could have, killed Bob? Because that’s what we’re talking about.”

  After a pause, Donna said, “What does Berrie care about the most? The Bostons. If anyone, even Bob, threatened their well-being in her mind oh, yes, I could see her attacking the perceived threat. Would she plan out a murder? No, but she could act in the moment, realize what she’d done and try to cover it up, try to protect herself.”

  “I absolutely agree with Donna. Especially… Well, that’s Donna’s part of the story.”

  I turned to the older woman in expectation.

  “It’s not all that thrilling, but Bob and Berrie were, indeed, once an item. A couple.”

  “But I thought…”

  “Exactly. Most people probably do think Bob’s gay — was gay. I’m not so sure. Some people simply aren’t that interested, you know, no matter what their orientation is.”

  “But didn’t he and Berrie date when they were younger? I heard they had but never the details.” I stared at Clara. She hadn’t bothered to tell me that?

  “They did. The end of high school, some in college. I suppose he could have done it because it was what was expected. Their dating certainly was what you would expect, especially in Haines Tavern all those years ago. Groups going to movies, dances, trips into Cincinnati, swimming in the summer, skating in the winter.” Donna smiled with nostalgia and sadness. “But I suppose you mean the details of their breakup. I’m telling you this because I know you’re not wanting to gossip and you won’t spread it. Under other circumstances I wouldn’t tell you at all. But… Bob is dead.” She squared her already squared shoulders. “If Berrie had nothing to do with it this can’t hurt her and if she did… Well.

  “I don’t believe Bob did break up with her. Not outright. He just stopped asking her out. It drove her wild, trying to figure out what happened. Left her thinking it was something lacking in her. That she hadn’t been attentive enough, hadn’t played the girl-boy game well enough. Maybe, with her insecurities, she would have thought that no matter what. Some women do. But with him drifting away into indifference, she kept trying harder and harder. It wasn’t pretty. She mooned after him. She derived encouragement from the fact that he didn’t have relationships. Certainly there were no apparent liaisons — not with men or women. She saw that as an opening for her, instead of the futility of trying to work an infertile field. In that way, it was very sad. All these years of her trying so hard. But she also brought it on herself. She refused to see. And she was relentless. She’d manufacture excuses to be around him, to spend time with him.

  “When his liking for dogs became an obsession, she followed right along. But, miracle of miracles, her obsession focused on Boston terriers and that superseded her obsession with Bob.”

  “How did he take that?”

  “A perceptive question, Sheila. He was relieved. Absolutely. However, at some level, I also believe, it put his nose out of joint.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “He got more and more testy with her the more independent she became. Though independent might not be the best way to describe it. She was so far the opposite of independent…” She tapped her hands on the table. “I suppose I should start at the start. Her parents died one right after the other while she and Bob were dating. Bob became the center of her universe. And that didn’t change even after he stopped asking her out. He was the center of her universe, while she was merely a small, side planet in his. But when she adjusted to orbiting around the Bostons, he discovered he missed being someone’s sun. He’d never have admitted that, but I believe it was true.”

  “I didn’t know either of them until after all that,” Clara said. “But I can see it. I wondered why she was loyal to him when he often wasn’t nice to her. He wasn’t like that to his other followers. He at least recognized their loyalty. But she was more loyal than anyone else and he showed no appreciation at all. Like being so harsh about her website.”

  “Complex relationship with all that history,” I said.

  And it made Berrie a viable suspect.

  Her alibi for the night of the murder was the Bostons.

  But who was I to talk? Mine was Gracie.

  Donna eyed me. “You’re thinking it could lead to murder? But it can also lead to the kind of love and devotion that would never consider murder, even if it some might consider it justified.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Clara came in with me. She also came upstairs to see what progress Teague had made.

  After admiring the stacks of shoe boxes outside my closet awaiting a home, she stuck her head in the closet. “Wow, Teague. You could do this for a living if you didn’t want to teach.”

  “I want to teach. Went back to school so I could teach after I retired.”

  Retired from what? He’d had the slightest hesitation before the word retired. Was there something there? Kicked out? Forced to retire? It couldn’t have been too long of a first career because he wasn’t senior citizen age. But he could have put in twenty or thirty years in the military, then—

  “That’s right. You started to tell us about that before. What was your first career?” Clara asked.

  Well, sure, if you were going to ask outright for the information instead of trying to figure it out … What was the fun of that?

  “I was a cop. Retired as detective.”

  * * * *

  Oh, c’mon. Was that fair? Sometimes the universe has a perverted sense of humor.

  A cop, okay. I’d braced for that.

  But a detective?

  Really, you’re going to make a retired cop — a detective, no less — be the owner of the dog that my dog adored?

  How was I going to explain to Gracie that we couldn’t go to the dog park anymore because her buddy’s human’s previous profession made him Haines Tavern’s Most Likely to Unmask her human’s hidden past? The dog’s smart, but that’s getting a little deep, even for her.

  “Why’d you leave law enforcement?” Clara asked.

  “Pursuing other interests.”

  He was hiding something. Maybe it takes one to know one, but I was sure. “Such as?” I asked with tea party politeness.

  “Dog training.” And he said it with a straight face.

  Clara groaned. “Like the dog park needs another one.”

  “True, so what did you learn at tea? Solve the whole case?”

  “I wish. We should all sit down and strategize—”

  He interrupted Clara. “Sorry, I’m tutoring. Gotta get going. Mind if I leave my equipment in the closet?”

  “No problem.”

  I needed to consider the implications of his detective-ness.

  I also wanted to have a private word with Clara.

  Turned out, that was mutual.

  * * * *

  She sat at my dining room table, rubbing Gracie’s ears.

  “Sheila, I know Christy from collie rescue talked to you. Told you I … Well, I was watching you.” She brought her head up, met my eyes, then dropped hers. “Spying.”

  “That’s why you introduced yourself.”

  “Yes. I probably would have anyway because I’m a friendly person, but, yes. I went to the dog park on purpose for three days in a row to meet you before you brought Gracie the first time. After that it was … easy.”

  I said nothing.

  After a long silence, she went on, “I know you probably can’t forgive me for how we met and I don’t blame you. I did it only to make sure a dog was okay. Gracie.” She bent over and put her face in the generous fur at the back of Gracie’s neck. “I’d do it a hundred times over now that I know how wonderful she is, to make sure she was okay. But I am sorry if it means we can’t be friends.”

  Before I could say anything, she spoke again.

  “But I don’t think you should let this stop us from trying to find out what happened with
the murder. It’s too important. And I think we’re making progress. Really, making progress.”

  I didn’t answer directly.

  “Clara, if you and I talk about Bob’s murder and potential suspects, that’s one thing. But I don’t think you — we — should talk about it with other people. Especially strangers.”

  “Strangers? I haven’t talked to any strangers.”

  “Teague.”

  “He’s not a stranger.”

  “You’ve only talked to him a few times. First met him, what? Three or four days ago?”

  “So? You’re probably at about the same number of times talking to him.” She said that as if it proved her point that we did know him, instead of mine that we didn’t. Then her expression turned expectant. “Unless you’ve talked to him more times I don’t know about?”

  “No. No, I haven’t.” Ignoring that moment in the grocery store and his hand so close to touching my hair. “Neither one of us has talked to him hardly at all when it comes right down to it. So, I wish you wouldn’t be so open with Teague. We don’t know him. He showed up at the dog park a few days ago and we don’t know anything about him except what he’s said.”

  Like me.

  I better get her past these points before she applied them to what I’d told her about my background.

  Secrets, truths, and lies. With my own still intact, how could I not forgive her for hers?

  “But he’s a cop — law enforcement.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He said he is.”

  “Exactly. He said. That’s no proof. Anybody can say anything.”

  Again, just like me.

  I had to stop thinking that.

  “We need proof. Evidence. Look at the timing,” I said. “Teague shows up at the dog park and — boom — Bob is dead.”

  “No, no, you’re wrong about that, Sheila. He showed up after we found Bob dead.”

  “I didn’t mean the day we found Bob. I meant overall. Teague arrives at the dog park the first time, what? Three days before Bob was killed? Did anything else change in Bob’s life before he was killed? That would be a very interesting thing to know. But even if you’re only talking about the day Bob was killed, Teague could have killed him the night before, then come back after he saw us arrive and knew someone was likely to find Bob. So, he could see what was happening, but wouldn’t be the one who found the body.”

  Clara turned to me with admiration in her face. “That’s really good.”

  Did I believe it? Let’s say it was a possibility. Slim, but a possibility.

  If it kept him at more of a distance because Clara didn’t trust him, that was all to the good.

  “So, you’ll be careful around Teague now? Not include him in our conversations?”

  “I think we should check him out. I’ll get right on that.”

  Why did I feel I had not come out ahead in this conversation?

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “When are you coming home to see us?” My mother employed her favorite conversation starter the next morning, Sunday.

  “When are you and the rest of them coming down to see me?”

  “There are three families of us up here, getting everyone organized…”

  “First, even with three households up there, it would be fair to gather at my place every fourth time. Second, there’s no need to get everyone organized. Whoever can come down, comes down. Of course, if somebody doesn’t come down for a long, long time, they’re going to be in big trouble, and you can tell Robbie that.”

  “Now, Sheila—” Though she didn’t call me, Sheila. I’m using that to not make your head explode the way mine sometimes wanted to do, because she used the name I’d gone by in childhood, which was also different from my Abandon All name. “—don’t be hard on your brother. They have young children and that’s a very demanding time—”

  I snorted. “What’s been his excuse the rest of his life?”

  “I know you’re testy only because of that horrible situation down there.”

  “I’m not testy. And I told you, the sheriff’s department is handling it.” Possibly handling badly, but handling it.

  “I know. That’s what Kit said when we talked yesterday. She says I’m worrying unnecessarily.”

  “You are.”

  “But she’s not a mother.”

  Always her trump card. But bringing up the sheriff’s department had given me another idea. “There’s also an ex-cop — a detective, actually — who’s one of the regulars at the dog park. So, he’ll certainly keep an eye on the investigation. In fact, he’s doing carpentry work for me. Building shelves.”

  “Oh?” That’s all it took to know Mom’s focus had shifted.

  For once, I didn’t try to shift her away. I let her ask, “Ex-cop? Where is he from? Is he married?”

  “He’s from the Chicago area. Doesn’t seem to be married. He’s retired—”

  “Oh. Retired.”

  In my mother’s mind, Teague had gone from a dashing possibility to a gray bearded old fogey. If I wanted to maintain his status in her mind as a viable protector, I needed to do repair work.

  “I guess he put in his twenty years then retired.”

  I should have asked him yesterday why he’d retired. Had substitute teaching been such a dream for him? Was that what was behind his pause before retired? Or was there another story there?

  “Twenty years?” Mom was doing the math.

  “He’s substitute teaching. High school history.”

  “Isn’t that what you decided to tell people…?”

  “High school English.”

  She sighed. “I do wish you didn’t have to lie.”

  “I know. But it’s part of the package that has given me a very good life for the past fifteen years and set me up for the rest of it.”

  “That’s what Kit keeps saying.”

  “And she’s right. Do you want to see my investment account statements?”

  She responded to my teasing with a chuckle. “No. I know you and Kit would not kid about something like that. I also know that while you talk about it giving you a good life, you have also given Kit a good life. She is now taken care of in ways we never could have dreamed of. The whole family is grateful for that, even though most of them don’t know the ins and outs.”

  She, Dad, and my brothers knew I hadn’t written Abandon All and its followers. No one else. Not even my sisters-in-law, who’d come along after Abandon All’s publication. Though they did know I had now dropped that life for a new one.

  Sometimes things got very complicated.

  * * * *

  Clara was calling me.

  The instant I answered the phone, and with no hello, she said, “Word is the dog park opens at one. If I don’t get LuLu out there she’s going to explode and take my house with her. My sanity, too.”

  I hesitated for a beat. “Gracie, too. How soon can you get there?”

  “On the dot at one.”

  * * * *

  The first time I took Gracie to the park, she was somewhere between wary and aloof. Until she and LuLu did the butt-sniffing dance and came out of it besties forever. If one of the dogs wasn’t there, the one at the park moped so much Clara and I had been forced — really, forced — to arrange playdates.

  We usually went earlier in the day when there were fewer people there.

  That sounds more antisocial than we are. Well, Clara’s not antisocial at all. I’m the one hanging back.

  The more time that passed since my disappearance from the public stage as the author of Abandon All, the lower the chances of someone making that connection. In the meantime, no sense taking chances.

  The upshot was I didn’t know most of the people congregated at the Torrid Avenue Dog Park.

  And Clara — drat the woman — was late.

  It was jammed. Because of the murder or because of pent-up dog energy that could power the county?

  Probably both.

  It didn�
�t help that only one enclosure was open. Both large-dog areas and the small-dog one Berrie favored were all still taped off.

  Marcus rumbled some bass register Rs when Gracie and I entered the enclosure, but that was on his way to greet us. Once he reached us, he quieted. That was a shock. Had he been saying all along that he wanted us to join him in their enclosure?

  He and Gracie congenially schnuffled each other before she flitted away to find a more active companion. I’d track her more carefully than usual in this crowd.

  Berrie was only a few feet away. I could ignore her, but…

  “Hi, Berrie.”

  “Sheila.” She hadn’t looked up since we’d entered the enclosure, so that meant she’d spotted me earlier.

  Gracie found Murphy, not far from where Teague talked with Donna.

  “Berrie, why didn’t you use your regular enclosure?”

  “It’s not open.”

  “Not today. The day we found Bob.”

  Despite still facing her boots, her voice strengthened nearly to usual Berrie throttle. “I was working a large dog. And it wasn’t as muddy.”

  “Ah. Makes sense.” I cast around for something else to say. “These have been difficult days.”

  “That cretin deputy thinks I’m a suspect — me. You have no idea what that’s like.”

  Oh, I had some idea, thanks to her.

  “Did you see it?” No pause allowed — or forced — me to ask Berrie what. “That article was simply riddled with errors. Describing Bob as a top trainer in the tri-county area? Unbelievable. He was the top trainer. And as his closest ally and student, now I am. They didn’t even include that or my name.”

  “It was Bob’s obituary, Berrie.”

  “That’s an excuse. Like the reporter saying they wouldn’t run a retraction because it quoted some idiot at the humane society. I called his editor and demanded a retraction.”

  I pressed my lips together to keep from saying that no doubt Bob would be the first to wish for a retraction of his obituary.

  I saw a flash of Gracie, turned to follow it and received the gift of LuLu face to face.

  She achieved this position by planting her front paws on my chest. Her wet, muddy paws. Leaving imprints that resembled — I recognized as I looked down at myself after LuLu dropped to the ground then trotted off to join Gracie and Murphy — paw-print pasties on my light gray jacket.