In Dog We Trust (Golden Retriever Mysteries)

by Neil S. Plakcy

  Rick took more notes. “Throw in Chris McCutcheon and Karina Warr,” I added. “Maybe what I said to one or both of them on Saturday hit home.”

  “Now you see why I told you that you shouldn’t have said anything?”

  My head hurt. Being proved wrong can do that to you. So can getting knocked on your ass by a car. “Yes, and I told you that you were right. Are we over that yet?”

  “No, we’re not. Not if one of them was driving the car yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?” I struggled to sit farther up in the bed. It just made my head pound harder. “So today is Tuesday?”

  “All day.”

  “Jesus. I’ve got a class to teach at 12:30.”

  “Missed it,” Rick said. “It’s what, six now? Six p.m., that is.”

  “Shit.”

  “Don’t worry. I called over to the college this morning and let them know you were laid up. The secretary’s getting you substitutes for the rest of the week.”

  “But this is the last week of school. I have so much to do.”

  He shrugged. “Talk to the doctor.”

  He got up and started to pace around the room. “I don’t need all this shit, “ he said. “I’ve got unsolved cases all over town. The chief has been coming down hard on my ass since that article in the Boat-Gazette.”

  “But he must know what it’s like when you don’t have any clues. Can’t he cut you some slack?”

  “If I can’t solve this case, somebody’s got to take the fall,” Rick said. “You see the article in the Courier-Times?” I shook my head. The Courier-Times was a daily paper out of Levittown, much bigger than the Boat-Gazette. “Not as stupid, but it made the same points. Now the mayor’s picked up the baton. I had to spend an hour in her office this morning explaining everything I’ve done.”

  After Rick left, I tried to turn on my side, and the pain was so great that it brought tears to my eyes. I remembered once hearing a student at Eastern talk about the different names the Native Americans had for the moon at different times of the year. “There’s the harvest moon and the hunter’s moon,” she said. “And the handkerchief moon. That’s the one you cry in front of.”

  I could cry to the moon about getting run over, but it wasn’t going to do any good. The best thing I could do was go home and be with my dog. If he licked my face, I knew I’d feel better.

  The doctor agreed that I could leave the next morning, and Rick recruited Edith to pick me up at the hospital, run me home for a change of clothes, and then take me up to Eastern. I sat through the remaining presentations in the tech writing class; fortunately, Layton Zee did not show up.

  Then, after a brief break, I met with the freshman comp class and accepted the final drafts of their research papers. I announced that I would be grading them over the final exam week, and that they’d be available for pick-up in the English department when I was finished.

  Dianne or Dionne (I still couldn’t tell them apart, and it hardly mattered any more) exclaimed over how bad I looked. “What happened?” she asked.

  “I had a little accident,” I said. “Nothing serious, though. I guarantee you it looks a lot worse than it feels.”

  That wasn’t true; I felt pretty crappy. But I wanted to see if Melissa or Menno had any reaction. Either they were both very cool customers, or neither of them had been behind the wheel of the car that ran me off the road. Melissa wished me well as she walked out of the room, and Menno told me he hoped I had a good summer.

  Edith was waiting for me in the faculty lounge, and she drove me over to Annie Abogato’s house. The yard was just as cluttered with toys as it had been before, though the Big Wheel had been replaced with a pair of tricycles.

  I was just as glad to see Rochester as he was to see me. As soon as Annie opened the front door, he came bounding out, skidding to a stop just as he got to the open door of Edith’s car. He tried to jump in with me, putting his front paws on my lap and licking my face.

  I petted his head and back. “I know, puppy, I’m glad to see you, too,” I said. “Don’t you worry, I’m not leaving you.”

  Annie came to stand by the car. “You look like shit, Steve,” she said.

  “But you look lovely,” I said. “That housecoat brings out the blue in your eyes.”

  She laughed, and opened the back door of Edith’s sedan. “Go on, get in back, you big moose,” she said. “I had to feed him Maslow’s chow,” she said. “I hope it doesn’t upset his digestion.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “You’re a sweetheart.”

  “Rochester’s always welcome here.”

  Edith insisted on fussing over me and Rochester back at the house, making sure that he had food and water, that I had hot tea and something to eat for dinner. “We’ll be fine, Edith,” I said.

  “I feel so terrible, Steve. What if you were run over because of me?”

  “If I was, then you’re in just as much danger,” I said. “I don’t like the idea of you going home alone, Edith. After all, they know where you live.”

  She sat down at my kitchen table. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Can you go stay with Irene for a few days?” I asked. “Just in case.”

  “I hate to be a burden to anyone. Maybe I should go to visit my cousin.”

  “You don’t want to leave town. Suppose the police need to talk to you.” I picked up the phone. “Go on, call Irene.”

  Irene was at the café, and from what I heard of the conversation she said it would be no problem for Edith to come and stay. When Edith hung up, she said, “Irene’s going to meet me at my house so I can pick up a few things, and then we’re going to her place in Cornwell’s Heights. I’m just worried about leaving you alone.”

  “Rick’s going to come over this evening to check on me,” I said. “He said he’d take Rochester for his evening walk, too.”

  I convinced Edith to leave, and struggled upstairs to bed. Rochester took another of his flying leaps and joined me there, and we were both asleep when the guard at the gate rang to announce that Rick was there.

  The visit was a quick one; he was on his way home after a long day. “There is one thing I’m going to need from you,” he said. I’d come downstairs, and we were sitting at the kitchen table. “I need you and Edith to sit down with me and go over how much money she’s missing.”

  I nodded, and yawned. “Can we do it over the weekend?”

  “You’ll be up to it by then?”

  “I will.” I yawned again. “Hey. Did you get the fingerprint results back on Chris McCutcheon and Karina Warr?”

  “Yup. No match to the partial we found on the shell casing.”

  “Which doesn’t mean that one of them didn’t shoot Caroline,” I said. “It just means someone else loaded the gun, right?”

  “You’ve been watching too much TV,” he said. “But yes, you’re right.” Rochester came over to lay his head on Rick’s lap.

  “What am I, chopped liver?” I asked the big dog. “You traitor.”

  “He knows who’s going to walk him,” Rick said. “Leash on the counter?”

  “Yup.” I yawned again. “Man, getting run over takes it out of you.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “Come on, Rochester.”

  I struggled to stay awake until Rick returned with Rochester, who came bounding in the house and rushed toward me, as if to make sure I’d survived the few minutes he was away.

  “I’ll call Edith and get her over here on Saturday,” Rick said.

  “She’s staying at Irene’s.”

  “I’m the detective,” he said. “I know everything.”

  “Yeah, that’s what your ex-wife said,” I said, yawning once again.

  “Go back to bed, jerkoff,” he said.

  I walked him to the front door. “Yeah, your ex-wife probably said that, too.”

  Chapter 25 – Chris Returns

  I managed to get Rochester fed and walked Thursday morning, though I did have to go back to bed for a nap.
I drove to Eastern, and climbed the stairs in Blair Hall with effort. My ribs still ached and a headache still hung around the back of my brain. But I handed back the papers to my mystery fiction class, then stopped by Jackie’s office to say goodbye.

  “What happened to you?” she asked. “You look all beat up. It wasn’t that student you told me about, was it?”

  I shrugged, and my ribs reminded me that I shouldn’t. I told her about getting run over. “I doubt it was Lay Zee. I don’t think he could get up the energy.”

  “I’d report it to Lucas, though. Are you going to be here this summer?”

  “Lucas He doesn’t need me. Which is fine; I need to work on a plan for developing my tech writing business.” I didn’t mention that my parole officer would ship me back to prison in California if I didn’t.

  “You know Menno Zook, don’t you?” I asked.

  “Sure. He’s an oddball, isn’t he?”

  “Maybe more than that.” I told her how I suspected that Menno and Melissa had been involved with Edith’s identity theft. “I’d just be careful around them both, if I were you,” I said. “And you might want to check your credit report, just in case they got hold of any of your information.”

  “Wow. Thanks. I’ll do that.”

  I left her office a few minutes later, and felt sad leaving Eastern that Thursday; I knew I’d have to go back up to hand in my grades and leave the graded papers at the English department, but it was the last time I’d be teaching for a while, and I’d enjoyed the work. I hoped that Lucas Roosevelt would hire me as an adjunct again in the fall, but you never knew with that sort of job; if enrollment was down and he needed fewer instructors, I was low on the totem pole. I had a feeling that the administration didn’t know about my felony conviction. If they did, I might not be welcome back there. And if my tech writing business didn’t take off, I’d have to take a full-time job somewhere, and I wouldn’t have the time to spare for teaching.

  When I got home from Eastern, I had to take a nap. When I woke, I was feeling almost myself again; the headache was gone, and my ribs only ached when I breathed. I went downstairs to make myself some tea, and while I was waiting for the water to boil, I saw Rochester put his front paws up on my dining room table. “Rochester! No! Bad dog!” I said.

  He dropped his paws back to the floor, scattering the pile of Caroline’s mail that his paws had landed on. “You are not a good dog,” I said, leaning over to pick up the scattered mail. My eyes landed on Caroline’s cell phone bill.

  I suppose I shouldn’t have opened her mail. But I just couldn’t resist. I know, it’s the story of me and the computer all over again. But thus far, curiosity hadn’t killed this cat, just incarcerated him.

  The last call Caroline made had been on the day she died, to what I thought was probably her office voice mail. I took the bill upstairs with my tea and sat down with her laptop, Rochester curled around the back of my chair as if he was keeping me there until I found something useful.

  I went back, day by day, Googling every number and trying to identify it. I was pretty successful, except for a handful of numbers, which were probably the cell phones of friends or colleagues. I saw that she’d called Karina Warr’s cell a couple of times, and Chris McCutcheon’s home number.

  Nothing else jumped out at me. I copied the three numbers I’d been unable to trace and then put the bill back in the envelope. Too many dead ends; it was getting frustrating.

  Just then the phone rang. “Listen, I need to talk to you,” a man’s voice said.

  I knew the voice was familiar, but I just couldn’t place it. Layton Zee? Some other student? “Who is this?”

  “Chris McCutcheon.”

  “Oh. Chris.”

  I flashed on Chris and Karina arriving the previous Saturday in Chris’s big black SUV, and the way Rochester had gone nuts. Had Chris run me off the road on Monday night?

  “I want to come down and talk to you,” he said. “Finish up what we were talking about on Saturday. Without Karina in the way.”

  “I don’t think you have to say anything to me. Tell it to the police.”

  “I want to talk. Can I drive down tomorrow? I need to get this resolved.”

  This kind of thing always happens towards the end of the episode—the killer comes after the detective. Only I would make sure that Rick Stemper was around to protect me. “OK,” I said. “You know where I live. When can you get here?”

  “I’ll be there at one.” He hung up.

  I called Rick. “I told you to stop messing around in this case,” he said.

  “And I told him to talk to the police. He said he had to talk to me.”

  “What time is he showing up?”

  I told him. “I’ll be there.” I thanked Rick and hung up. I felt pretty smug about pulling Rick in as my witness and backup. Despite the fact that his prints didn’t match the one on the shell casing, Chris McCutcheon was still high on my list of suspects and I was worried what he might do—especially since I was still feeling crappy after the hit-and-run accident.

  Rick was at my house the next morning, Friday, at 7:30, wearing a t-shirt, shorts and running shoes. “I came to borrow your dog,” he said. Rochester went into spasms of joy upon seeing Rick, jumping up and down and doing the deranged kangaroo routine he’d once saved for me.

  The two of them took off, and about forty-five minutes later they were back. Sweat was streaming off Rick’s face and soaking his t-shirt; his short brown hair was plastered to his head. Rochester was panting, his long tongue lolling out of his mouth like the red carpet at some fancy event. He went straight for his water bowl, and after slurping up the contents, spilling half of it on the floor, he flopped on the tile with a happy grin on his face.

  “You’re coming back at one, right?” I asked.

  Rick shook his head.

  “No? But I don’t want to meet with Chris McCutcheon alone.” I felt my voice getting higher by at least an octave.

  “Good. Maybe I’m knocking some sense into your head after all. I’m not coming back at one because I’m not leaving. I’ve got clean clothes in the car. I’m going to take a shower and hang out until McCutcheon arrives. He may be planning to show up earlier to sabotage you.”

  “Wow. Good thinking.”

  “That’s why I’m the detective.”

  While Rick showered and dressed, I made chocolate chip pancakes for us and gave Rochester his chow. Then Rick settled down with my laptop and his cell phone at the dining room table. I didn’t tell him that I had Caroline’s laptop upstairs; it wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted him to mention to Santiago Santos.

  I went upstairs and started going through the list Santos had given me, looking for anything I could do. I didn’t have the mechanical aptitude for construction, and I had the feeling I’d probably slice my hand off if I tried to become a meat cutter. I called the social service agencies on the list and got the dates for workshops and training sessions, enduring a humiliating litany of questions. No, I didn’t have substance abuse problems. No, I was not a registered sexual offender. I did not need debt counseling or a psychological evaluation. I just needed a job.

  Just before one, the guard called to announce Chris McCutcheon. I told him to have Chris park in the guest parking lot—I wanted to see if Rochester would go nuts again if he didn’t see the car.

  “You going to hide somewhere?” I asked Rick.

  He gave me a look. “No. I’m going to sit right here.”

  Chris was surprised to see Rick, who was wearing a tan polo shirt with the Stewart’s Crossing Police emblem embroidered on the breast. But he was happy enough to see Rochester, who did his gleeful visitor dance for Chris—unlike the mad, wild beast he had become the previous Saturday. Maybe it was the car, after all.

  “I wanted to clear some stuff up with you,” Chris said, as the three of us sat in the living room. Since we didn’t need his fingerprints any more I didn’t bother to offer him anything to drink.

  “Lik
e what?” Rick asked.

  “Like what happened to Caroline’s dog, for starters.” He looked down at his knees, then back up at us. “I’d only had my license for like a week,” he said. “And it wasn’t even my fault. I wasn’t speeding, just driving along this road that ran along the perimeter of the base. And I felt the wheel bounce, like I’d run over something.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Caroline’s dog?”

  He nodded. “He must have gotten out of the house and run away. There was a lot of underbrush out there; I didn’t even see him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anybody?” I asked.

  “My father was a real hard-ass. He’d have taken the keys away from me for a year. And for something that wasn’t even my fault. ‘We all have to accept responsibility for our actions, Christian,’ he used to say. I wanted to ask him if he took responsibility for moving us around every two years.”

  “What about Caroline?” Rick asked. “Didn’t you want to at least tell her?”

  “She had this huge crush on me,” Chris said. “I knew it, and I was kind of flattered. If she’d found out, she’d have hated me.”

  “And you never told her, even after all these years?”

  “I wanted to. You know, just to clear the air? But then we hooked up for a while, and I didn’t want to mess that up. Especially after she moved down here and got Rochester, I knew that she would hate me and never want to talk to me again.”

  “And why tell us now?” Rick asked.

  “I’ve got this deal about to go through,” he said. “In Brooklyn. I’m buying this old warehouse, going to convert it to condos. I need city approval for the deal, and if you guys keep nosing around, asking questions, they might get cold feet. I’ve leveraged everything I own on this deal—if it goes south I’m in receivership.”

  “Talk to me about malicious mischief,” Rick said.