Support Your Local Pug

by Lane Stone

  “Rick, how does that sound to you?” John asked.

  Rick nodded. I doubted he wanted to babysit his father, but it was probably the best offer he was going to get. He stood and as I watched, his father beat him through the door. “Dayle and I’ll see you later, Sue,” Rick called over his shoulder, with a weak smile. Then he stopped. “Now do you see why I need Dayle?” I smiled and he walked out to catch up with Martin.

  I knew a few texts had come in while I’d been sitting there and since murder or no murder I still had a business to run, I pulled my phone out of my hoodie pocket. The latest one was from Lady Anthea. Mason and Joey had picked her up and they were waiting for me at Lewes Beach. I put the phone away and looked over at Chief Turner, who had resumed his sage-like position. He had pushed his chair back and his legs were stretched out about a mile and a half.

  “Thank you for not locking Martin Ziegler up,” I said.

  He shook his head like what he had done was nothing. “He’s not going anywhere with Rick and his restaurant here.”

  “Lewes is lucky to have you,” I said.

  He jerked up straight. “Is that how you feel?”

  “Yeah. Wouldn’t most police officers have locked him up after the way he made himself look guilty?”

  John gave a little laugh. “He did tell some whoppers, didn’t he?” Then he stared at the door through which the others had left, and said, “About Rick and Dayle, when you see that kind of love, how can you still be a cynic?”

  “Is it love or need?” I asked. Rick had said need.

  “Who cares? I don’t,” he said.

  That was a conversation I wasn’t ready for, so instead I used my standby—humor. “You’re going to have to stop suspecting my friends of murder before I’ll go out with you.”

  “Martin Ziegler’s a friend of yours?” he asked, smiling.

  “Well, stop suspecting family members of my friends. I’ll admit Martin’s an acquired taste, but there’s something about him I understand.” I hoped he wouldn’t ask for me to elaborate, because I wasn’t sure I could. Instead he sat there looking at me. Finally, I stood to leave and said, “A few of us are meeting at Lewes Beach—sort of a welcome-back party for Lady Anthea. Want to come?”

  He hesitated, then said, “I’d like to but I need to stay here in case there’s any problem getting that car impounded.”

  “Sure, I understand.” I walked behind him on my way out.

  Suddenly, I felt his hand wrap around my wrist and I stopped. “I’ll try to stop by,” he said.

  * * * *

  I parked the Jeep and got out. Although it wasn’t quite six-thirty, it was dark on the beach. Even at night it wasn’t hard to find my group of friends, which included staff, customers, surfers, and other people from around Lewes who had met Lady Anthea during her first trip to Lewes and to Buckingham’s. I just followed the sound of laughing and loud talking. They were standing in a group where the parking lot ended and the sandy beach began.

  “Sue! Hi!” yelled Betsy Rivard, who was a pet parent and Lewes’s new mayor.

  The group gathered around me and I saw several of them were holding two-liter soda bottles.

  “Where’s the beer? Were you afraid Chief Turner would be here?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” Mason said. “Lady Anthea, you stand over there.” He pointed to a spot next to me.

  As soon as she complied, a number of people in the group, those holding a soda bottle or two, ran down toward the ocean. I looked around to see who was left.

  “What are they about?” Lady Anthea asked those that were still standing with us.

  Several people chuckled but no one answered her.

  “It’s a surprise,” I said, crossing my fingers this would work.

  “Now I’m really curious,” Lady Anthea said.

  Rick and Dayle came to stand behind us. Dottie, her Dalmatian, was with them. “Sue, thanks for suggesting Turner let Pop go,” Rick said.

  I nodded. “I don’t think I get any credit. That was all him.”

  “What are you saying?!” Dayle hissed, after a quick look around. “I remember how he was last year. Suspecting Henry’s fiancée one minute, then the girlfriend the next. I was scared to death I was going to be hauled in.”

  From the ocean where waves were lapping up onto the beach we heard Mason yell, “One! Two! Three!”

  They began shaking the soda bottles. As we watched they lit up fluorescent green. Then they held them out, some connecting end to end.

  “They’ve written something!” Lady Anthea cried. “L. A. D. Y. A. Lady A?”

  “Lady A!” they yelled.

  We clapped and cheered for them. I looked over at my business partner and she was wiping her eyes. “That is the loveliest gesture,” she said. “How in the world did they do that?”

  I hugged her. “You mean a lot to all of us.”

  “These last few months have been extremely difficult. Thank heavens for the training classes,” she whispered.

  I knew she was referring to her brother, the duke. Privately Shelby and I called him the idiot duke. He was such a bad manager of Frithsden that Lady Anthea had to be twice as good at bringing in funds. She told me last year how much her percentage of the profits from Buckingham’s had helped out. Now it looked like the money from the trick and agility classes was just in time.

  I thought we would all be more comfortable if I changed the subject. “First, you leave about a fourth of some lemon lime soda in the bottle, then you add baking soda and three caps of peroxide to it. Then when you shake it you get a homemade glow stick. It was Mason’s idea to hold them together to spell out Lady A.”

  I yelled down to the group on the beach midway between the ocean and where we stood, “We’ll be right there.” Then I turned so that we could huddle and Rick and I told Lady Anthea and Dayle what we’d learned in Martin’s interview.

  “I still have a few questions,” I said.

  “I can’t wait to hear them,” a sarcastic, baritone voice said in the dark.

  I looked at Rick, but it wasn’t him. He stared at Dayle, who had turned to Lady Anthea, who in turn gave me a quizzical look. Then we reversed again looking at one another. In the seconds that maneuver took us we realized exactly whose loaded-with-attitude voice was addressing us.

  “Good evening, Chief Turner,” I said with an eye roll.

  Someone was playing the Elvis satellite station on their phone. The song was “Suspicious Minds” and I was surprised at how I could hear the music over the sound of the waves. Out there with my friends was where I wanted to be, but instead I moved to the side to let Chief Turner in to our group.

  “First, what does he want with Wags?” I asked.

  Rick shook his head. “No idea. He’s not responsible enough to take care of a dog.”

  “Maybe he’s lonely. You said he and Billy B. were close,” Dayle offered.

  “Baby, Pop cares about Pop and nobody else,” Rick said with a sigh.

  “Next, if Billy B. wasn’t his employee, what was he?” I asked.

  “I can answer that,” Chief Turner said. “It’s a matter of public record. He was a co-owner. They were equal partners, fifty-fifty.”

  “I never knew what their exact arrangement was, but I knew Billy B. had some skin in the game,” Rick said.

  “Now that Billy B. is dead, does your father own Mozart’s solely or do Billy B.’s heirs own his half?” Lady Anthea asked.

  “That’s the question of the day,” Chief Turner said to her.

  You don’t have to read as many mysteries as I do—just last week I read The Motive for the Mister—to know he was thinking about a motive for Billy B.’s murder, or more specifically for a good reason to charge Rick’s dad.

  “I don’t know yet,” Chief Turner continued. “We have his address. He has a con
do in Plantations—”

  “In Plantations or Plantations East?” I interrupted.

  He shook his head, and then answered a completely different question. “No, you cannot go with us.”

  “If I didn’t know you better, I’d think that was a hard no,” I said.

  “Anyway, I’m going over there in the morning to look through his papers to see if I can find out.” He hesitated. Moonlight reflected off the sand and I saw he was looking out at the ocean.

  “When did you start doing that?” I asked.

  “Doing what?”

  “Looking out at the ocean for its opinion,” I teased.

  “You think you’re the only one the ocean talks to?” he teased back.

  Then he turned to Rick. “Uh, Rick, do you think you could do the same at your Dad’s place? The investigation would speed up if I knew what was going to happen to Billy B.’s half of the business.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “Is that cricket?” Here I stopped to look at Lady Anthea. She didn’t move a muscle. “Do they still use that term?”

  Lady Anthea shook her head. “Haven’t in an age.”

  “That’s a shame,” I said. “Anyway, you’re asking him to get you incriminating evidence on his own father.”

  “Ah, that’s okay,” Rick said, “but I can’t do it. Wouldn’t be safe.” Then he glanced at Dayle, like he really wished she didn’t have to hear any of this.

  Chief Turner’s eyebrows lowered about a foot and when he spoke it was with gravity. “Does your father have weapons in his apartment?”

  “No!” Rick said. “Nothing like that. It’s just, well, as much as I’d like to just go in when he’s not around, he has every kind of crazy security system he can find on the internet.”

  “So?” Lady Anthea asked. “If an alarm sounds, he’ll be the one to respond.” Since upper-class people don’t point, she nodded at Chief Turner.

  “He doesn’t have that kind of security system.” Rick let go of Dayle’s hand so he could tell his story properly. “Once I went in to try to clean up and a canister of tear gas went off.”

  “Damn!” I said.

  “I better plan on getting a search warrant,” Chief Turner said. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and find out what I need to know at Billy B.’s in the morning.” He sighed and ran his hand over his head. “We still haven’t located his next of kin. Rick, do you know his hometown?”

  Dayle interrupted, “We didn’t even know his real name until, until, uh, now.”

  We nodded, like it was time to join the others dancing on the beach. I wanted to change the subject since she had almost said “until Sue told us,” after I’d been explicitly instructed not to tell anyone the victim’s identity.

  “I don’t know where he lived before Lewes,” Rick said. “Sorry.”

  “My next question is why did he pretend he didn’t know the dog’s name,” I said.

  “That has me stumped, too,” Rick said. “He was trying to make a case to get the dog, and knowing his name would have been a point in his favor.”

  “It was like he didn’t want us to know the dog’s name. Does your father think Wags might be Billy B.’s beneficiary?” I asked.

  They all turned to stare at me, mouths hanging open.

  Finally, Rick spoke up, “That’s the kind of thing Pop would do, so yeah, he might think Billy B. had left all his worldly goods to a dog.”

  “I’ll see if I can get any information on the dog’s background,” I said. “I can do that tomorrow.”

  “Background?” Chief Turner said, with a raised eyebrow that meant he was laughing at me. “Like if he’s been in trouble with the law?”

  “Yes, that’s something I’ll check. The Office of Animal Welfare has records of problem dogs,” I said. I didn’t for a second think Wags had a rap sheet, but after Chief Turner’s patronizing remark, I didn’t want to tell him what I really planned to check on, since it was just an alley to explore. What reason could there be to keep a dog’s identity secret? I wanted to know Wags’s pedigree to see if money could be made with the little guy.

  Chief Turner turned to Rick. “I need to finish interviewing your father. Would tomorrow afternoon give you enough time to hire an attorney?”

  Rick nodded. “Fair.”

  “If you’ll excuse us now, we have some dancing to do,” I said.

  I turned to go, but his hand on my elbow stopped me. “Are you sure you can’t have dinner with me tomorrow night?” he whispered.

  “I’m sure.”

  Dayle, Rick, and Lady Anthea passed us on their way out to the group on the beach.

  “Are you coming?” I asked John.

  He chuckled. “I’d better not. I’m waiting to have a look inside Martin Ziegler’s car.”

  “Oh, about that car. It might smell like it has a dead body in it.”

  “Excuse me?” he said with, as some of my favorite books refer to, “more than a little heat.”

  “Easy now. I just meant that some of Rick’s raw dog food is in it.”

  He laughed. “I better go,” he said, staying. It was nice. “You know, I just realized what you and Rick Ziegler have in common.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You both exude leisure.”

  “I work very hard,” I said in my defense. “So does Rick.”

  “I know and that’s why it’s such a mystery.”

  We stood there not speaking. Not needing to talk. After a few minutes he took a deep breath and said, “Now I am going. They don’t have a permit and it wouldn’t look good.”

  Chapter 15

  Lady Anthea’s Novice Trick Dog class had a maximum class size of ten dogs but had twelve students, since we’d included Wags and Howard Fourie’s Ariadne. At ten o’clock sharp a pet parent stood by each dog, holding a leash in one hand and in the other the easy-to-open treat holders we’d provided. Joey accompanied Wags and Howard Fourie was with his dog, and he was sporting an ingratiating smile for Lady Anthea.

  I waited at the back of the room in case Lady Anthea needed support, or say, in the unlikely event any of her pupils had an accident I could go for cleaning supplies.

  She introduced herself for the benefit of anyone who hadn’t met her during last year’s visit or at the Pet Parent Appreciation Gala and then scanned the room. “Wow! This is—”

  Wags interrupted her with a quick, medium-volume bark. It sounded playful, and we’d seen no evidence that he was a “yapper.”

  Ariadne did the same. Was she imitating Wags?

  Lady Anthea ignored the dogs, not wanting to encourage talking in class and glanced back at me. For some reason her look was quizzical, which made me curious.

  She cleared her throat. “The class will meet today, Thursday, and Friday. If you’re waiting for me to speak like Maggie Smith and ask ‘what is a weekend,’ I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint.” Everyone laughed. “We will not meet over the weekend.” This time she did a spot-on impersonation of the Downton Abbey actress, and the pet parents laughed again. “You’ll reinforce what your dog has learned. Then we will reconvene for Monday and Tuesday of next week.”

  Next she listed the tricks the dogs would learn during the five sessions. “We’ll start with High Five, then move on to Jump, Kiss, and Shake Hands. We’ll finish class each day at noon, but we request that you stay an additional half-hour. Recent studies have shown that a play session with the animal’s favorite person, you,” she said, moving her eyes to each person in the room, “helps your dog remember what he’s learned. Sue will have a play area open for them. We ask that you walk your dog for ten minutes, then allow ten minutes of off-lead, or as you say off-leash, playtime, followed by another walk. Now let’s begin.”

  The pet parents all nodded and smiled, but I knew her better than they did. I’d heard a bit of distraction in her voice; she was think
ing about something other than dog tricks.

  She approached the first dog in the first row, a Shih Tzu, and reached for the leash. “Who is this?” she asked the petite woman.

  “This is Smoochie,” she said, nervously, handing over the leash. “I’m Valerie Westlake.”

  Lady Anthea gave her a gracious smile, and led the tiny dog to the front of the room.

  Oooohhh, I thought. That’s Captain Westlake’s wife. He’d described her as his “soon-to-be ex.”

  Lady Anthea was saying, “Since there are numerous ways to teach any trick, we’ll begin with the most straightforward. Then if there’s a problem, we’ll add steps. Now, take two treats from your bags.” She took treats out of the treat holder she wore on a belt around her waist. “Have your dog sit and reward him.” Next she gave instructions on holding the other treat in front of the dog with fingers closed around it. Some of the dogs pawed at the closed hands and were rewarded. They were on their way to High Five-ing their pet parent.

  As the lesson continued, I let my mind wander to how Wags had reacted to Captain Westlake. Thankfully, there had been no further cases of growling or snarling from the dog. Lady Anthea was trying to catch my eye.

  “Wow,” she said again. An unusual word choice for her, and she’d used it twice. “Good dogs.”

  Again, Wags and then Ariadne barked. Lady Anthea smiled.

  She progressed from one trick to another, with some dogs catching on with the first attempt and others needing reinforcement. By the end of the two hours the dogs were getting tired and the pet parents were happy. I led four dogs and four people to the elevator and out to the play area. Shelby met us there and took over, while I went back upstairs for the next group. After another two trips everyone was outside, except Lady Anthea, Joey, and Wags. From the hallway I could see Mason was with them. When Joey saw me he waved frantically, and I joined them.

  Mason pointed at Lady Anthea for her to say something important, or perhaps break some news to me gently.

  “Wags and Ariadne speak German,” she announced.

  I stared waiting for more, but it didn’t come. “Wags is a Pug and that’s not a German breed. It’s Chinese. Ariadne is an Airedale, a breed that originated in Yorkshire, England. Again, not German.”