If the Coffin Fits

by Lillian Bell

  “See. I knew that would go to your head. I just knew it.” She set her fork down.

  I waved her away. “I’m not doing anything. I’m seeing if Michelle wants to take the listing. Once she takes over, the whole thing will be off our plate anyway.”

  Famous. Last. Words.

  Chapter Three

  Violet’s house was a cute little Eichler in a neighborhood full of Eichlers. I recognized the style the second I pulled up and saw that entrance atrium that blurred the distinction between what was inside and what was outside. The roof was sloped and the façade was pretty plain. I knew it would be a different story once we got inside, though. There’d be a whole lot of plateglass and open areas. I’d put money on it having radiant floor heating. It sat back from the street with a brick path winding through a yard full of lavender and sage leading to the front door, where a BENVENUTI, AMICI! sign hung at a jaunty angle.

  Michelle pulled up as I parked my car in front. “Nice neighborhood,” she said as she got out of her SUV. She still had a bit of that cheerleader bounce in her step, but there was also a purpose to her stride. She had on one of those outfits that you see on the front of style magazines that looked somehow both totally casual and totally put together. Jeans. Boots. A cream-colored top with a sweater and scarf that somehow went with the boots without being too matchy-matchy. I looked down. I also had on jeans, boots, and a sweater, but it didn’t seem to look the same way Michelle’s did.

  She’d been a huge help in solving Alan Brewer’s murder. If I could throw a cute house in a nice neighborhood her direction as my way of thanking her, I might be able to even out the scales while doing something nice for Violet’s overwhelmed cousin. Win-win, right?

  “It’s cute,” I said, looking it over. I liked the clean modern look of the Eichlers. Scads of them had gone up in Northern California in the 1950s. They were sort of a poor man’s Frank Lloyd Wright design, and by “poor” I mean middle class. Affordable housing. No discrimination. It was an Eichler thing.

  Michelle gave me an appraising look. “You in the market?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure how long I’m staying here.” It had seemed like a huge investment to make over my childhood bedroom into something that made me feel less infantilized. A house? Well, that was just crazy talk.

  Michelle rolled her eyes. “Always looking for greener pastures.”

  Before I could answer, a woman came rushing up to us from down the street. “Are you Violet’s relatives? Are you taking over?”

  “Not relatives,” I said, holding up my hands. “Just trying to help the relatives out.”

  “Well, thank goodness you’re here. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I’m at the end of my rope.” She pushed back the hair that had come out of her messy ponytail and wiped her hands on the oversized T-shirt she wore over leggings. I thought she might have wiped them there before. She really did look like she was at the end of some kind of rope. “I thought maybe the people who were driving by the other night were the relatives, but they didn’t really stop. Just sort of looked around and drove off.”

  That’s when the barking started. Michelle’s face went hard. “There’s a dog?”

  The woman nodded. “Oh, yeah. There’s a dog. Kind of a puppy really.” She marched up the brick path. When she opened the front door a very large ball of fur came bolting out, tail wagging and tongue lolling.

  “That’s a puppy?” I asked. The thing must have been fifty pounds.

  She nodded. “Malamute and German shepherd mix. His name is Orion.”

  After racing out in the yard to relieve himself, he came back and sat in front of Michelle and offered his paw to shake. “Sweet,” she said, in the same way you tell a mother that her ugly baby is darling. I didn’t think Michelle was a dog person.

  “He is sweet,” I said. He turned to me and offered his paw. I shook it.

  “I haven’t known what to do,” the neighbor said. “I heard about Violet’s accident and started looking after him. I mean, who could let a dog starve to death right down the street, right? George—that’s my husband—said I shouldn’t stick my nose in, that someone would take care of it, but you should have heard the poor little thing howl. I couldn’t do nothing, but now I’m doing everything and, well, I just can’t anymore.” She paused to take a breath, but it was a quick one. “I had her key and the code to her security system from when I watered her plants while she was on vacation. Although it’s not like she ever said thank you or would feed our cat when we were away. I figured I should still be neighborly and all, but I don’t want a dog. I can’t have a dog. My husband’s allergic. He’s been sneezing all night long from me coming over here to feed Orion and walk him a bit.”

  Michelle put her hands up in front of her and said, “Do not look at me. I’ll check out the house and see if I can help you out there, but I’m not getting a dog.”

  “Do you know where to take him?” I asked, reaching down to scratch him behind the ears. He thumped his leg.

  “The shelter? I don’t know.” She stepped into the house and I followed with Orion, and the neighbor on our heels.

  “Doesn’t the shelter euthanize them after a while?” I asked, feeling a bit queasy as I looked down into Orion’s big brown eyes. There was something about his face that made it look as if he was smiling.

  Michelle sighed. “Yes. I don’t think they want to, but it sometimes comes to that. I don’t know what else to suggest. Can I look at the house now? That I can actually help with.” She took a bottle of hand sanitizer out of her purse and, pushing up her sweater sleeves, disinfected herself up to the elbows. She really, really wasn’t a dog person.

  I shut up and let her walk through the house. The house was, after all, what I’d told the cousin I’d help with. Not a dog. Hadn’t I heard a dog barking in the background at the cousin’s house? She must be a dog person. Maybe she’d like a second one.

  Inside the house was a lot more purple than I expected. Lavender walls. Paintings of lilacs. Couch cushions that could only be described as amethyst. I supposed it made sense for a person named after a color. Maybe if Mom and Dad had named me Ruby, everything in my room would be red. Michelle murmured a lot, made some approving noises in the big open space that held the kitchen, dining room, and living room, then made a few clucks in the bathroom, all the while making notes on her tablet. I went into the kitchen and saw Orion’s bowls were empty. I opened a cabinet, thinking it might be where the dog food was and found a complicated looking metal thing with a crank on the side, a tool that looked a lot like the wheel cutters quilters use, and some kind of fancy rack.

  “If you’re looking for the dog food, it’s here.” The neighbor who had followed us in pointed to a cabinet on the other side of the sink. Sure enough, it was there. I scooped some out into one bowl and filled the other with water. Orion raced over and crunched happily at the kibble. “What’s all that stuff?” I pointed to the things in the first cabinet I’d opened.

  “Violet was getting into pasta making. Something about getting in touch with her Italian heritage.” The neighbor glanced at her watch. “I need to go. Thanks for taking Orion. Be careful. He likes to dig. He dug up Lorene Quinn’s front yard right before this year’s garden tour. Destroyed it. I thought she was going to have a heart attack.”

  Before I could protest that I had absolutely no intention of taking Orion anywhere, she was gone. “Well, buddy,” I said to him. “We’ll have to find you a new home.”

  He barked twice. I turned around slowly. Everything was open. Light poured in from the windows that stretched from the tiled floor up to the peaked ceiling, glinting off the chrome legs of the coffee table. Violet’s taste in furniture had run to midcentury modern, too, with a bright boxy sofa and two armchairs in the living room. It was a little stark for my taste, but I could see its appeal.

  Michelle came back into the kitchen. “Give me the cousin’s contact info. I’ll have this thing gone in a New York minute.” She snapped
her fingers at me.

  “What about the dog?” I asked, texting her the information.

  She shrugged. “What about him?” Her phone booped and she nodded at me.

  “I mean, what should I do with him?” He wagged his tail hard enough to make a thumping noise against the hardwood floor.

  “Call the cousin. Ask her what she wants to do.” Michelle put her phone in her purse, snapped her tablet shut, and marched out the door. “See you.”

  For the moment, I supposed Orion was coming home with me.

  Once Michelle left, I nosed around a bit more looking for some kind of reason why Violet might have passed out behind the wheel. Besides a lot of pasta-related items, some very fancy olive oil, and a stovetop espresso maker, there wasn’t much in the kitchen. Very little booze, just a bottle of Frangelico. No pills beyond the normal painkillers and cold medicine in the bathroom cabinets. Maybe she overdid it on the pasta and went into some kind of carbohydrate coma. I did find a laptop and a little notebook with passwords for different websites neatly noted down. That might come in handy for the cousin so I packed that up to take with me.

  I scrounged around the house and found some dog toys, a leash, and a dog bed. It took a few trips, but I managed to shove it all into the car. “Come on, Orion,” I called. “Let’s go, buddy.”

  He trotted down the path and jumped into the passenger side of my Element as if we’d been going on road trips together forever.

  A woman came out of the house next door as I went around to get into my side of the car. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared. I waved. She spun on her heel and went back in her house. Her garden was a magnificent riot of lamb’s ear, sage, and big poofs of native grasses under a miniature windmill. There were rock formations dotted around in ways that looked natural, but somehow really tended. Probably Lorene Quinn of the apoplectic fit during the garden tour. I could see why. That thing must have taken a ton of work. No wonder she didn’t want a dog digging it up.

  “I’m afraid you didn’t make a lot of friends in the hood here, buddy.” I started the car.

  He nosed the window and whined. I rolled it down and he hung his head out. As I pulled out of the neighborhood, he barked twice.

  *

  Sneaking a fifty-pound puppy into a house is not as easy as you might think. Orion and I barely made it up the back stairs to our living quarters on the third floor before Donna blocked our path, and she could do a lot of blocking these days. “What is that?” she asked, pointing at Orion.

  He sat and put his paw out to shake. “Look how adorable!” I said. “I think he does that whenever he meets a new person.”

  “Who is he?” Donna asked, still standing in the door in a power position with her pregnant belly making her extra intimidating.

  “His name is Orion. He was Violet’s dog. The neighbor had been taking care of him, but was freaking out because her husband’s allergic and Michelle wouldn’t take him so … well, here we are.” I sidled past her into the kitchen. “I’m going to call Violet’s cousin and see what she wants us to do with him.”

  Uncle Joey was sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch. When he saw Orion, his eyes lit up. In a second, all two hundred and twenty pounds of him were down on the floor. “Puppy!” he yelled.

  Orion went over to him, tail wagging so hard his back end waggled. Orion licked Uncle Joey’s nose. Uncle Joey tussled with him, laughing the whole time.

  I took Orion’s bowls over to the sink and filled one with water. “Don’t give me the stink eye like that, Donna. We’re not going to keep him.”

  Uncle Joey peeked out from under all that fur and said, “We’re not?”

  “I don’t have the time. Plus, Dad always said this wasn’t the right place for a dog. That a dog might bark during a service or get out and jump on people when they were coming in or out.” We had a lot of old people coming in and out of Turner’s. Old people with balance problems. Old people who’d been whittled down to next to nothing. A dog Orion’s size could probably take out two or three of them with one jump. More if he could set up some kind of domino effect. I set the bowl down in the corner and filled up the food bowl.

  “Dad was right. Dogs don’t belong at funeral homes,” Donna said. “Do you have a plan?”

  “No. Not yet. I have to see what Violet’s cousin wants us to do with him. I’m sure someone will want him. He’s super cute.” I got a little pang in my chest. I rubbed at my sternum with my thumb.

  “Fine. I guess he can stay if it’s not for too long.” She waddled out of the kitchen.

  I opted not to ask for a precise definition of what “too long” might mean. I took Orion down to the basement office and called Violet’s cousin. “Hi, Lizette. It’s Desiree.”

  “Who?” I could hear banging noises in the background.

  “Desiree Turner. From the funeral home.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Desiree, what’s up?” she asked.

  “So I checked out your cousin’s house. I showed it to a realtor friend of mine. She’d be happy to help you with it.” I gave her Michelle’s phone number and e-mail address. “She said she’d be contacting you, though.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  “Uh, one more thing,” I said fast to catch her before she hung up again.

  The banging had gotten louder. “What?”

  “Violet had a dog. A puppy really. He’s really cute. A malamute-shepherd mix.” Orion rested his chin on my leg. I scratched his ears.

  “Oh, my God. He must be enormous.”

  He wasn’t enormous yet, but his paws looked like dinner plates on the end of his legs. He had some growing yet to do. “Well, he’s not small. Anyway, what would you like me to do with him?”

  “Do?”

  “Yes. With the dog. He can’t stay at the house. There’s not really anyone to take care of him.” Orion rolled over on his back and I rubbed his belly with my foot. He wiggled. It was seriously the cutest thing ever.

  Now there was a crash to go with the banging on the other end of the phone. “Well, I can’t take him. I don’t even know how I’d get him here.”

  I thought for a second. “I could maybe take some photos of him, put them up on the Internet and see if anyone here wants to adopt him.”

  “Oh, would you? That would be so great. Thank you.” She hung up before I could say another word. I took a deep breath. That weird burning sensation I’d had in my chest had gone away.

  Orion whined and pawed at the door.

  “Do you need to go out?” I asked.

  His ears perked up.

  “Do you need to go for a walk?” That was a thing you did with dogs, right? Lola and Kyle were always walking their dogs, Maurice and Barry. Being a regular dog-walker had been part of how someone had almost framed Kyle for murder. Murder accusations aside, if Lola and Kyle did it, it must be the right thing to do. I pulled out my phone and called Jasmine, my sister from another mister, my BFF since preschool, my bridge over troubled water. “Do you want to walk a dog with me?”

  There was a pause. “Is that a euphemism or something?”

  “What on earth would it be a euphemism for?”

  “I don’t know, but you don’t have a dog so it was the only thing that made sense to me.”

  I laughed. “I have a loaner dog. Come walk with me and I’ll fill you in.”

  “I need to get out of here anyway. I’ll be there in ten.”

  *

  Jasmine made it in five. She pulled her Subaru into the driveway and got out. “Who is this cute fellow?” she asked coming up the steps where we’d been waiting. Jasmine’s mom was African-American and her dad was white. She had beautiful golden brown skin, cascading curls, and a body full of curves. She’d left Verbena when I had, but was also back, opening a therapy practice just outside of downtown.

  The day had been bright and sunny and warm, but as the sun started to go down, the chill had come up. I’d thrown a fleece on over my regular clothes, but the breeze seemed to cut r
ight through it. The light had gone from golden and warm to having a bluish tint and a definite bite to it.

  Orion greeted Jasmine with his handshake routine.

  She clasped her hands to her chest. “Oh, my God. He is charming!”

  “I know. Let’s take him for a walk and then take some pictures of him to put up on the Internet. I know someone will snap him up.” That weird pain in my chest thing happened again. I frowned.

  “You okay?” Jasmine asked, looking up from petting Orion.

  “Yeah. Just indigestion from something.” What else could it be?

  “Where did he come from?” Jasmine twisted her curls into a makeshift bun to keep her hair from blowing across her face. She had on what I thought of as her shrinking clothes. Not that they were getting smaller. They were the clothes she wore when she saw patients for therapy. Soft fabrics. Muted colors. Nothing that would show off her curves.

  As I snapped on Orion’s leash and we stepped down onto the driveway, I explained about finding Orion at Violet Daugherty’s house after the cousin asked me to look into it.

  “So you’re helping the cousin deal with Violet’s estate? Not exactly your job, is it?” Jasmine lifted her face to the afternoon sun.

  “No, but it needed to be done and look at him. How could I leave him or take him to the shelter?” We stopped by a pile of leaves. “Oh, let’s take his picture here. It’ll be great with the leaves and stuff.” I led Orion to the pile of leaves and told him to stay. Then I started snapping photos with my phone.

  Jasmine looked over my shoulder. Orion crossed one paw over the other and cocked his head. “Oh, look. He’s posing.”

  I also told her about Nate’s suspicions about Violet and how I’d messed up big time with Iris Fiore.

  “Ouch. Sounds like she was pretty upset.” Jasmine made a face.

  “She was. And all for nothing. Nate says there was nothing hinky about her father’s death. He thinks I have Daddy issues.” I made it clear how ridiculous I thought that was with my tone.