Another Three Dogs in a Row

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “Don’t get me started on parents and the cost of college,” Lili said. “My father went ballistic when I dropped out to marry Adriano. After he and I divorced and I went back to school for photography, my father insisted that studying how to take pictures was only one step up from basket-weaving.”

  “Did any college ever offer classes in that?” I asked. “Because that was one of my father’s tics, too.”

  “I’m sure some college did.”

  Rochester started whimpering and sniffing and I realized it was time for his last walk before bed. It was a hot night, with heat lightning streaking the sky, and I felt unsettled, despite my dog’s comforting presence.

  Our community, River Bend, had been built when the Soviet bloc was breaking up, so each model was named for a country and each street for a city. My two-bedroom townhouse, with an attached garage, was the Latvia. My next-door neighbor’s, which had no garage, was the Estonia.

  I slept restlessly, weird dreams about Peggy and France and women’s prisons. It was a relief when Rochester woke me as soon as the sun was up for his morning walk. While he danced around my feet, and Lili buried her head in the pillow, I pulled on my regular dog walk attire: a tank top, shorts and sneakers.

  The sun had just risen, and all around us, I heard River Bend awakening—courtyard gates opening and closing, mothers calling kids, car doors slamming and engines starting up. It was shaping up to be a hot, cloudless day; a bluebird swooped into an oak tree ahead of us, and a squirrel chattered as he jumped from tree to tree.

  Rochester was a very inquisitive dog, and he often tugged me forward in search of new and exciting smells. Every now and then I’d have to assert control, though. “No, Rochester. We’re not going backwards. Come on, you’ve sniffed that enough. If you’re not going to pee on it then keep moving.”

  My neighbor Bob Freehl was on his knees in his driveway, weeding the floral border alongside it. He was a retired Stewart’s Crossing cop, with a burly build and thinning gray hair. “You talk to that dog like he understands you,” he said.

  “He does,” I said. “Hey, Bob, you know anything about the Black Widow of Birch Valley case?”

  “Just what I read in the papers. She’s got to be guilty as sin.”

  “You can’t know that,” I said.

  “I spent enough time on the force to get a nose for this kind of thing,” he said. “Exotic dancer, drug addict. If she didn’t do it herself, she got someone to do it for her.”

  “I hope they don’t put you on her jury,” I said.

  “No worry about that. Soon as a defense attorney finds out I was a cop, I get excused. Happened three times so far. You’d think they’d just put something in their system and not bother me. You ever get called for jury duty?”

  “Once, when I was living in California.” I neglected to mention that I’d also been on the other side of the courtroom, as the defendant in a criminal case – the hacking one Hunter was so eager to remind me of.

  My wife at the time had suffered a miscarriage and comforted herself with extreme retail therapy, putting us deeply in debt. I’d worked overtime and freelance gigs to pay off those bills, and when she got pregnant again I thought all was right in the world.

  When she miscarried a second time, I was determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past, so I hacked into the three major credit bureaus and put flags on her accounts. I did it because I could, because I had an outsized level of hubris about my computer skills and because it seemed easier than confronting the real problem with her.

  I got caught, of course, and served my time. Spent endless hours in group meetings to control my addiction to hacking, joined an online support group. But somewhere in the back of my mind I hadn’t quite reformed, though I had promised Lili and Rick that I would only snoop into places online that wouldn’t get me sent back to prison. I guess Rochester and I were a good match, both of us very nosey.

  Rochester pulled forward, and I said goodbye to Bob and tried to focus on the present, on the blessings of my life instead of on my past. I had adopted Rochester after the death of his previous owner, my next-door neighbor, and his unconditional love had gone a long way toward healing me.

  By the time we returned to the house, I was drenched in sweat and Rochester was panting madly. I gave him a few minutes to cool down, then poured some kibble into his bowl. He looked up at me with a mournful expression. “I know, same shit, different day,” I said. “That’s all you’re getting so you might as well enjoy it.”

  If dogs could shrug, then that’s what he did. He stuck his big snout into the bowl and started scarfing up the pellets. While he ate I showered and dressed, thinking about my meeting with Hunter that morning. Since Rochester went to work with me every day, he’d either come in to the office with Hunter or wait outside for me.

  We navigated the back roads outside Stewart’s Crossing to Hunter’s office, in a co-working space out by the highway. It was a new-looking two-story building meant to evoke the barns in the area, with big windows, a peaked roof and red shiplap siding. From the parking lot I called him. “I have my dog with me. Okay if I bring him in?”

  “Sure, we have dogs in here all the time,” he said, so I hooked up Rochester’s leash and kept him on a tight rein as we walked into the lobby, where a receptionist directed us down the hall to Hunter’s office. We passed several empty conference rooms, and a big open space where a couple of young guys lounged on sofas, holding coffee and talking. A big white board hung on one wall with the saying, “Today I’m going to change the world by…” at the top.

  The writing beneath it was too small to catch as I passed, but I wondered what I’d write there. Teaching a student? Solving a crime? Or just being kind to someone?

  When I first met Hunter, he was a portly guy, but he seemed to have expanded greatly since then. The buttons on his shirt threatened to pop as he lounged back in his chair. He was about five years younger than I was, but all that weight made him seem older. We shook hands, and he petted Rochester, and then I sat across from his desk, with Rochester collapsed on the floor beside me.

  “What do you know about Peggy?” Hunter asked.

  I went through how Peggy and I met on the trip to France, became friends, then lost touch. “I know a lot about her childhood, but anything after I left for college I only know from what I read in the papers.”

  “And they only print what they think will get a rise out of people,” Hunter said. “I’m glad you knew her back then, because you won’t believe all the bad stuff.”

  “People change,” I said. “I sure have since the last time I saw Peggy. But I’m keeping an open mind. What can you tell me that I wouldn’t have read in the papers?”

  “Let’s start with her first husband, the trustafarian.”

  “He was a Rastafarian?” I’d seen a photo of him and he didn’t look black, or have dreadlocks.

  Hunter laughed. “No, it’s a slang term for a kid who lives off a family trust fund. Bobby Stanwood was a sad case, from all I’ve heard. His parents were killed in a car crash when he was about twelve, and the resulting lawsuit left him with a big trust fund. But no amount of money matters when you suffer a loss that big, and despite his aunt and uncle taking him in and caring for him, he started medicating his pain with illicit drugs as soon as he could get access to them.”

  I nodded. I’d seen some of that in my fellow prisoners in California.

  “He and Peggy had a good time for a couple of years. She struggled to keep him going in college, but eventually he was mainlining heroin on a regular basis. Two years into their marriage he overdosed. No suspicion of Peggy at the time. She inherited what was left of his trust fund, but she had a habit of her own by then, and she ran through it quickly. She’s a smart gal, too smart for her own good sometimes, and she hid her habit from everybody who cared about her.”

  Too smart for her own good. The same phrase had been applied to me when I was in prison, and again by my parole officer. Another thing Pe
ggy and I had in common.

  Rochester stood up and nuzzled my leg, and I petted him as Hunter continued with Peggy’s story.

  “She needed more and more money for her habit, so she started trading sex for drugs, and eventually she got arrested about two years after Bobby died. Charges were dropped on condition that she enter a detox program, and she did. She moved back home with her mom—the step-dad had died by that point.”

  I realized that about that time, I had gotten my MA in English from Columbia and begun dating Mary, the woman I’d marry soon after. How different our lives had been at that point.

  “She got a secretarial job, and then entered a part-time course to become certified as a legal secretary,” Hunter continued. “But then her mom got sick, and Peggy dropped out to take care of her. Despite all the pain pills her mom had, Peggy stayed clean.”

  “Was she in Narcotics Anonymous or one of those other twelve-step programs?” I asked. “Because I find that hard to believe. People with addictive personalities go back to whatever helps them when things get tough.”

  “That’s what she told me, and I believe her,” Hunter said. “And when her mother died a year and a half later, she went back to school and got her certificate as a legal secretary. She couldn’t have done that if she was hooked on pills.”

  Was Hunter naïve? Or just determined to believe the best of his client? I didn’t challenge him on it, though, because Rochester distracted me by walking around the chair where I sat, then slumping to the floor halfway between me and Hunter.

  “With her credentials, Peggy eventually got a job as a legal secretary for a jerk in Levittown,” Hunter continued.

  “I assume you know the jerk.”

  “Only professionally, if you can call him a professional. An ambulance chaser with the morals of a snake. He forgot to file some paperwork on a case, but blamed her for it when he lost. He kicked Peggy to the curb and refused to give her a reference.”

  He shook his head. “By this time she was in her late thirties and she couldn’t cope anymore. That’s when she went back to drugs, met this loser Colombian guy who went by the name Juan Perez. Though eventually it turns out that was just one of many aliases.”

  “That’s the guy who married her and turned her into a drug mule?” I asked.

  Rochester stood up again, and moved restlessly around Hunter’s small office, sniffing at the law books on the shelves behind me.

  “Yeah, a real prince among men,” Hunter said. “Peggy pled down to a felony in exchange for testimony against him, but he died before he could go to trial.”

  “Was there any suspicion then that Peggy was involved in his death?”

  “Apparently the DA at the time had a lot of questions for her about how Perez got his fixes, did Peggy ever help him, that kind of thing. Eventually, though, the coroner ruled it death by misadventure, which means that she attributed the death to an accident that occurred due to a dangerous risk that was taken voluntarily.”

  “So Peggy’s a widow for the second time,” I said. “How did she end up at Club Hott?”

  “There aren’t many options available to a pretty woman with a felony conviction and a spotty work record,” Hunter said, and I resisted the urge to interrupt with possible choices. “She started stripping, trying to make some money and turn her life around.”

  “That’s where you come in.”

  Rochester had moved over to a pile of papers on a low credenza beside the door, but I was too interested in what Hunter was saying to worry about reining him in.

  “I won’t apologize for hanging out at a titty bar,” Hunter said. “I was divorced and lonely and Peggy and I clicked. Just a professional relationship, though. I found out she had been a legal secretary and I tried to get her a job. But nobody was willing to take a chance on her, and I’ve had the same gal since I opened this office so I couldn’t take her on myself.”

  It was a shame. I’d been very lucky that people had taken a chance on me when I returned to Stewart’s Crossing from my stint in prison.

  “Around the same time I was trying to help her, she met Carl Landsea at the club, and he promised her the moon and stars if she’d marry him,” Hunter said. “What choice did she have?”

  “Did you know him?”

  Hunter shrugged. “As much as you know any of the other regulars. I could tell he was an asshole, and I tried to steer Peggy away from him, but she shut me down. Then one day she wasn’t there anymore, and one of the other girls told me she’d run off to Vegas with Landsea. That was the last I heard of her until she hit the news.”

  Rochester suddenly put his paws up on the credenza and started knocking papers around. “Rochester!” I said. “Stop that!”

  A manila folder fell to the floor and popped open, and Rochester began sniffing it. “I’m sorry, Hunter,” I said. “He’s usually better behaved than this.”

  Rochester looked up at me with one of his doggy grins, then settled down beside me. I picked up the folder, which contained website printouts about a local motorcycle club called Levitt’s Angels. Hunter had highlighted Carl Landsea’s name on the first page.

  I closed the folder but left it on my lap, and turned back to Hunter. “Did she contact you to represent her?”

  He shook his head. “She had a court-appointed public defender, a kid with less than a year under his belt. He was encouraging her to take a plea deal that would have sent her to prison for a decade until I read about the case in the paper and intervened.”

  “You think she’s innocent.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I do. Landsea was lower than pond scum, and he must have known something was going wrong or he wouldn’t have erased all his emails just before he died.”

  “Unless Peggy erased them herself, after she killed him.”

  “Whose side are you on, Steve?”

  “I’m on my own side, Hunter. I knew Peggy twenty years ago and she was a good kid, but she’s had a lot of bad stuff go down since then. I know what that can do to you. So I’m not ready to blindly say she’s innocent.” I took a deep breath. “But I am willing to do what I can to help her out. You have the email account and password information?”

  Hunter shook his head. “Can’t you figure stuff like that out?” I could see the desperation in his face.

  “I’d have to talk to Peggy,” I said. “Most of the time, people use passwords they create from things in their background, like birthdays and phone numbers. Peggy could give me a lot of that information.”

  “Peggy is Carl’s heir, and she has the authority to let you see anything he left behind. But you’ll have to be very careful. If you find anything I need to be able to use it for her defense.”

  While Hunter picked up his phone to call Peggy, I sat back and thought about what I was getting myself into. Peggy Landsea could be nothing like the girl I remembered, and I knew well that I had the same kind of addictive personality – I had to be sure I didn’t launch myself down a slippery slope into illegal activity on behalf of someone I didn’t even recognize.

  Rochester sniffed my hand, then licked it. I had a lot to lose if things went wrong. My job, my relationship with Lili, my freedom. My dog.

  But something told me I had to see this through. I had to help Peggy the way she, and so many others, had helped me.

  3 – Choosing Partners

  Hunter turned away from me so that I couldn’t hear his conversation. When he ended the call he looked back at me. “She remembers you. But she’s embarrassed at the way her life has turned out and doesn’t want your help.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Tell me where I can find her. I’ll convince her.”

  “I don’t know, Steve. She’s a pretty determined gal. And after all she’s been through, I don’t want to push her too much.”

  “Hunter. You need my help. Peggy needs my help. At least let me give it a try.”

  He blew a big breath out through pursed lips. “Fine. I’ll write down her address for you, but I can’t guara
ntee she’ll answer the door. She was able to make bail by putting up her interest in Landsea’s house in Birch Valley, and she has an ankle monitor to make sure she stays put.”

  While he wrote, I opened the Levitt’s Angels folder on my lap. I figured the name was a play on words—a combination of Hell’s Angels and William Levitt. He was the real estate developer who had built Levittown in the 1950s to house returning war vets and employees at the Fairless Works, at the time the largest open-pit steel mill in the country.

  “Can I get a copy of this material?” I asked. “There might be some clues in it that would help me figure out Landsea’s password.”

  “Take it. I have all the stuff bookmarked online. You’ll see, Landsea was a real loser. If you can get into his email account and retrieve the messages he deleted, I’m sure there’s going to be a message or a reference to some kind of crime that will point a finger at another suspect and raise some reasonable doubt that Peggy had anything to do with his death.”

  I took the address he had for Peggy, on Bark Drive in Birch Valley, and thought that was a good omen for involving Rochester. I put the paper into the folder, stood up and shook Hunter’s hand. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ll try and get over there then,” I said. “Any suggestions on a good time to find her?”

  “She’s almost always there,” Hunter said. “She’s embarrassed to go out with that ankle bracelet, and she says it’s too hot to wear long pants that would cover it up.”

  “Do you think either she or Carl were using drugs around the time he died?”

  “I don’t think so. The tox screens on Carl were negative for any drugs, and when they arrested Peggy they tested her, too, and she came up clean. I’ve seen her pretty frequently since then, and I don’t see any evidence that she started using.”

  Hunter thanked me for my help, and I promised to get back to him. Then Rochester followed me out to the car, and we cut through a back exit to a farm road that would take us down to the Delaware, where I’d pick up the River Road that would take me to work.