Tomes and Terriers

by Hillary Avis

  “Control your dog!” Officer Lee commanded. When Allison didn’t immediately jump into action, the officer made a noise of impatience and reached for Pogo. The little dog dodged her grasp and gave a low growl, his lip quivering above his fierce grimace. “Control your dog, ma’am! One of us is going to get hurt, and it’s not going to be me!”

  “Pogo! Time for a walk!” Allison called, waving the leash. Pogo ignored her and shifted his position, putting himself between Officer Lee and Lilian. Allison realized the little guy thought he was protecting her! Allison needed to distract him—and convince him that Officer Lee wasn’t a threat. Allison put the leash down on the nightstand and reached into her purse. “Take a step backward, now.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Officer Lee frowned, her eyes darting between Allison’s face and the purse. Her hand went to the taser on her belt. “Show me your hands!”

  Allison’s eyes went wide, and she yanked her hand out of her purse. “No! Sheesh! I was just getting out a dog treat for you to give to him! He thinks you’re trying to hurt Lilian. If you step back, he won’t feel so threatened.”

  Officer Lee dropped her hand from her holster and nodded to Allison to go ahead, finally taking a step backward. Pogo relaxed, settling on Lilian’s lap. Allison grabbed the plastic bag of salmon treats out of her purse and handed one to the cop.

  “Give it to him with an open hand, so he can see you’re not going to grab him,” Allison said. “Move slow and low. Dogs don’t like it when you reach over their heads.”

  Officer Lee nodded and followed the instructions exactly. Allison was pleased to see Pogo gingerly accept the treat. He still eyed Officer Lee warily as he held the treat between his cute front paws and began to gnaw on it, but he didn’t growl at her or show his teeth.

  Lilian stroked him absentmindedly. “Did you know my roommate was killed?” she asked Officer Lee.

  Officer Lee nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Oh, good. It’s very sad, isn’t it? She was here and then—poof. They took her away. I still don’t know what happened. They won’t tell me.” Lilian sighed, and Pogo snuggled deeper into her lap.

  “Here we go!” Myra burst back into the room with two tiny paper cups, one with a big orange pill in it and the other full of water. She handed the one with the pill to Lilian. “You better take this, hon.”

  Lilian obediently popped the pill into her mouth, and Myra handed her the other cup to wash it down.

  Officer Lee threw up her hands and plopped down on the bed opposite Lilian. “Well, great. Nothing she says now is admissible. Thanks a lot.”

  Myra put her hands on her hips and leaned toward the cop. “Don’t you get it? I’m saving your rear end. You shouldn’t have been questioning her to begin with. Why do you think the sheriff pawned it off on the new girl? He didn’t want that dirt on his uniform. He knew any judge would rip him a new one for interrogating a lady with Alzheimer’s! Isn’t that right, Allison?”

  Allison nodded. Myra was on a roll, and there was no way she was going to step out in front of her when she got going.

  “Now listen to me, I’m going to give you some free advice. You’re not from around here, right?” Myra seemed to be stating a fact more than asking.

  “Yeah. I grew up in Honolulu.” Officer Lee stuck out her chin defensively. “But I was with Portland PD for five years before I came here. I consider myself an Oregonian now.”

  “That’s fine. Honolulu and Portland are big cities, though. Real big. Let me tell you something about small towns. Here, there’s nobody to take the blame when you screw up. Look at my life, all right? If someone gets the wrong meds here, it’s on me. If someone falls down because they were unsupervised in the powder room, that’s on me. There’s no hospital or corporation standing behind me. It’s my call, and it’s my fall. I’m the only one. And guess what, Miss Lee? You’re the only one, too. So if someone tells you to do something, you better think it all the way through, because it’s coming back to you. That sheriff there? He’s not your boss. He works for the county. You work for Remembrance. You work for us.” Myra jammed her finger against her own heaving chest.

  Officer Lee blinked a few times. It was clear no one had every spoken to her like that before, in Portland or Honolulu or anywhere else. She cleared her throat awkwardly and shifted her weight between her feet. Finally, she nodded brusquely. “I’ll be outside the door if you need me,” she said, and walked swiftly out into the activity room.

  Allison grinned at Myra. “I can’t believe that worked.”

  Myra shrugged, smoothing the edges of her hair. “The woman has good sense, so she heard me right.”

  Behind them, Lilian began snoring softly.

  “Sounds like that sedative kicked in,” Allison said. “What did you give her? I could use some of that.”

  “Oh, that.” Myra waved her hand dismissively. “That wasn’t a sedative. It was just her multivitamin.”

  Allison giggled, and Lilian’s snoring shifted as she turned over on her side, jostling Pogo from his position on her lap. He gave a deep sigh, then jumped down and trotted over to Allison. He cocked his head to one side as if to say what now? She picked up the end of the leash that trailed after him.

  “Let’s go see Paul,” she said. Then, remembering that Golden Gardens was on lockdown, she asked Myra, “If that’s OK?”

  Myra gave a quick nod. “I’ll walk you over so they don’t give you any trouble.”

  When Allison opened the door, Officer Lee stepped quickly to the side so they could pass. But she caught Myra’s elbow as they walked by. Pogo growled softly up at her.

  Officer Lee ignored him and jerked her head toward the bedroom. “How’s she doing?”

  Myra paused and glanced back over her shoulder at Lilian’s sleeping form. “She’ll be just fine. She just needs rest, Officer Lee.”

  Officer Lee nodded, her face somber. “Call me Kara, please. I thought about what you said. I wouldn’t want anybody treating my grandparents that way. I mean, questioning them without an advocate present. I just wanted you to know that it won’t happen again on my watch.”

  “I’m glad.” Myra smiled kindly and patted her on the shoulder, and then she and Allison headed toward Paul’s room, Pogo still grumbling under his breath and keeping a watchful eye on Kara Lee.

  When they were out of earshot, Allison said, “I’m surprised she admitted she did anything wrong.”

  “I think she’s going to be good for this town if people give her a chance. Most of them are like Pogo, here, though. He’s made up his mind about her and he’s not going to change it.” Myra chuckled under her breath. They reached the door to Paul’s room and Myra clucked her tongue as she pushed it open. “Well, here you go. I’ll leave you to it.”

  Paul was looking out the window toward Timber Creek, although the creek itself was hidden behind a stand of willow shrubs. Today they were still and unruffled, watching. Waiting. Allison cleared her throat and Paul turned around. His face lit up when he saw Pogo.

  “I used to have a dog like that.” He kneeled down and snapped his fingers and Pogo launched himself across the room and into Paul’s lap. Paul ruffled the dog’s silky fur and beamed at Allison. “What’s his name?”

  “Pogo, because he bounces around all the time.” Allison tried to keep her breathing even. She wanted to ask what he remembered about Tiny, but she stopped herself. Stay in the moment. Accept what is and don’t reach too far. Let him find his way.

  “Good name,” Paul said, his crystal-blue eyes twinkling. “Mine was named...oh, it was so long ago, I can’t recall.”

  “Tiny.” The name slipped out.

  His eyes went wide with recognition. “Yes, that was it—how did you know?”

  “Oh, I think it’s a common name for small dogs. Lucky guess.” Her heart pounded. She hated lying to him—hated it. But she’d tried telling him the truth before, and it only caused them both pain.

  “I loved that old dog,” Paul
said, his eyes distant. “We used to walk by the river.” He stroked Pogo slowly and then stopped, seemingly lost in thought.

  Allison sat down on the bed and waited for him to speak again. What connections would his mind make today? Would the soft feel of Pogo’s fur trigger something, some new sense-memory of Tiny?

  Pogo butted his head against Paul’s hand, and he resumed petting. He looked up at Allison and smiled. “They get what they want, don’t they? Tiny liked it when we walked by the butcher shop. The butcher always had a scrap for him.”

  A new memory. Allison pressed her hand to her mouth. Those twenty-five years weren’t gone—they were there somewhere deep inside. She just had to figure out how to access them.

  She stayed with Paul for another hour, hoping that he’d drop another scrap of memory for her, some shred of their old life, but they only chatted about the weather, Pogo’s cute antics, and objects in the room.

  Oh, well. He had the memory of Tiny getting a treat from the butcher, and that was her dose of hope for the day. Maybe she’d get another one tomorrow.

  Chapter 6

  Friday

  The sun was low in the sky, sending golden beams glittering through the bigleaf maple trees. The scent of other people’s Friday night dinners wafted out of kitchens as Allison pushed through the gate of the house on Rosemary Street, the handle of the last suitcase in one hand and Pogo’s leash in the other.

  She’d spent the morning moving boxes and signing paperwork and the afternoon helping the new owner learn the Ryes & Shine baking equipment, and she was ready to collapse. Pogo, on the other hand, had spent all day cooped up in his crate and was full of energy, practically running in circles around her ankles while he waited for her to unlock the front door.

  The door to their new home.

  Emily hadn’t been able to hide the relief in her voice when Allison told her she was staying in Remembrance after all, although her words said something different.

  “At some point, you’re going to have to get out of there,” she chattered. “Dad doesn’t remember us and he probably never will. Anyway, he’d want you to have a life. You’re not even fifty! Dad would kill you if you threw away another twenty or thirty years on him when you could have a whole career and maybe even find somebody new. You’re still hot, Mom! Don’t waste it.”

  Emily’s “hot” comment made Allison crack up. It was a nice way to leave the otherwise painful conversation, sharing that laugh.

  Allison left her suitcase by the coat closet and let Pogo out in the backyard to run off his steam. Then she sat on the nearest chair in the dining room and pressed her cheek against the unfamiliar table, surrounded by the shelves of unfamiliar books. Everything here was strange. The library didn’t feel like home yet, but maybe with her clothes in the closet and Pogo’s leash hanging by the door, it would be more comfortable. She just needed to unpack and settle in.

  Tomorrow. Unpacking could wait a little longer.

  From the back yard, Pogo’s shrill bark echoed. He must be making a great impression on the new neighbors. Allison lifted her head. Through the French doors, she saw his hind end poking up, a shower of dirt cascading behind him as he dug furiously in a flowerbed. She’d better go retrieve him before someone came to investigate the noise—and get him cleaned up before he got dirt all over the library.

  She went to the back door and called Pogo, swooping him up before he got muddy paw prints on the dining room floor. She whisked him up the narrow creaky stairs to the second floor. The second floor was even smaller than the first floor. A cramped landing connected two bedrooms, one in the front of the house and one in the back. An old-fashioned bathroom with a huge clawfoot tub separated the two.

  “Time for your bath, Mister,” Allison said sternly to Pogo. She plopped him into the tub. While he slid and scrabbled around, trying to escape, she opened the medicine cabinet, hoping to find some shampoo or soap. Of course, the medicine cabinet was full of oddly shaped books, two of which tumbled out of the cabinet and fell onto the tile floor. She stooped to pick them up and read the titles. Songs of the Sea was the name of the taller, narrower one, and the smaller one was titled simply Splashes.

  She reached to put them back on their shallow shelf and then paused, her hand on the cabinet knob. There seemed to be some logic to the books’ locations in the library, after all. The food-related books had been in the kitchen, and the water-related books were here in the bathroom. She wasn’t sure what the dining room books had in common yet, but there must be some overarching reason they were shelved there.

  She closed the cabinet and checked under the sink. Under the pipes, between a huge book titled Seasickness and a smaller one called Beach Vacations, she found a half-used bottle of hand soap.

  “This will have to do. The groomer is going to kill me, but it’s the best we’ve got,” Allison said aloud.

  Pogo yipped as he stood with his front legs up on the edge of the tub, peering out the large window behind the bathtub. It looked out on the side of the neighbors’ yellow clapboard house.

  “You’re right, we’re going to have to get some curtains in here,” she said, ruffling his silky fur. She turned on the bathtub faucet and adjusted the water to a perfect temperature. “We don’t want them looking out the window one evening and seeing more than they bargained for. Of course, our view might be a little too good, too.” She glanced back outside and was surprised to see one of the second-floor windows slide open.

  A tousled strawberry blond head popped out, looked down at the ground in either direction, and then disappeared back inside. Moments later, the kid reappeared—it was a child, the half-grown kind, not the little kind—and swung a leg out the window. Balancing on the sill, the kid reached for a branch in the spreading oak that grew on the property line between the two houses, and easily swung up into the tree and disappeared into the leaves.

  Allison chuckled as she rinsed the dirt from Pogo’s tiny paws. “I guess there’s more than one way in and out of a—”

  She froze, the end of the sentence dangling there in front of her. There’s more than one way in and out of a house, she was going to say. Just like there was more than one way in and out of a bedroom at Golden Gardens Memory Care. Usually the door was the only way into Gertrude and Lilian’s room, but Monday, the day Gertrude was killed, their window had been open. Allison knew it was open because she’d been the one who opened it.

  That was it. That was how Gertrude’s murderer got into the room.

  “I’m just going to get you soaped up and rinsed, and then I’ll call the police,” she said to Pogo, dumping a few tablespoons of soap onto his little back. She worked the soap into a lather as she babbled to herself. “I’ll tell them Lilian isn’t the only one who could have stabbed Gertrude. With the window open, anyone could have grabbed those knitting needles! If they just dusted the needles for fingerprints, they might find...”

  She trailed off as she realized what they’d find. Her fingerprints were on the knitting needles. She had picked them up off the floor and put them back into Lilian’s knitting basket. And she’d been the one to open the window, too. She rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand, careful not to get muddy water and soap bubbles on her face.

  She couldn’t tell the police about the window being open, or she’d be suspect number one. But if she didn’t tell them, what would happen to Lilian? She couldn’t let Lilian be blamed and maybe even jailed for something she didn’t do! The woman deserved as much dignity as possible given all that Alzheimer’s would steal from her—and how much it had stolen from her already.

  Allison sighed as she gave Pogo a final rinse and shut off the faucet. She looked around for a towel and was grateful to see that Myra had left a hand towel by the sink. Though small, it was plenty big for a little dog like Pogo. She rubbed his fur gently and blotted up as much water as she could before she put him down on the floor. Immediately, he shook, sending more than a few drops flying her way.

  She sat back o
n her heels there on the bathroom floor as she considered what to do about the murder investigation. She could do nothing. Nobody else knew or remembered that the window had been open. Of course, it was recorded there in the books in the library, but even if a future guardian saw the memory, he or she wouldn’t be able to tell anyone about it. It could stay a secret forever.

  But that meant Lilian would likely go to jail—or wherever they’d send someone with dementia who committed a crime. The police couldn’t leave a killer in Golden Gardens, could they? They’d be afraid Lilian would hurt another resident, so she’d be sent away. Allison couldn’t let that happen, not when she had evidence that might point to someone else.

  But the problem was, the “someone else” it pointed to was her. And if Allison went to jail, Pogo would be homeless, the library would be without a guardian, and Paul’s memories would slip further and further away. Not to mention, Emily would be mortified, and Allison would miss her med school graduation.

  She had to tell the police, though. There was no way around it. She had to expose herself as a suspect because it was the right thing to do. She stood up and headed downstairs to get her phone. She’d tell Leroy that she opened the window and picked up the knitting. That way, he’d have advance notice that her fingerprints were on the needles, and that had to count for something. The knitting needles had to have the real killer’s prints on them, too. The sheriff wouldn’t be quick to pin the murder on her, especially since she was being helpful to the investigation.

  She was just about to dial the county sheriff’s office when she realized something. There was a chance the killer’s prints weren’t on the needles. The killer could have worn gloves or gripped the needles in a way that didn’t leave prints.

  What if her prints were the only ones on the needles—hers and Lilian’s? In the absence of anyone else’s, one of them would go to jail. Without an alibi except Pogo, Allison had no way to prove she hadn’t climbed through the window—and she was the one who had opened it to begin with! All the evidence pointed to Allison as the killer. Except motive, of course; she didn’t want Gertrude dead. That was something they couldn’t prove.