I gathered them up and hurried after her. Aunt Peg in high gear was a sight to behold. She had us out the door and back on the road without a single wasted motion.
“Do I dare ask where we’re going?”
“Melanie,” she sniffed. “Don’t be dense.”
Lydia’s house. That’s what I thought.
Lydia Applebaum’s house was only a ten minute drive from the Freedmans’; but it was light years away in terms of location, style, and money spent. Like Aunt Peg, she lived in Greenwich, but Lydia’s house was closer to town, located on a small, curving private road that looked as though it might once have been the driveway of a great estate.
Aunt Peg pulled in the circular driveway of the large white colonial and stopped before the front door. “Let me do the talking,” she said.
As if I had a choice.
Ignoring the doorbell, Aunt Peg lifted a large brass knocker and let it drop. There was a flurry of high-pitched barking from within. A moment later, Lydia opened the door. A small herd of Miniature Dachshunds eddied around her feet. Yapping happily, they spilled out down the wide steps.
“Hello Peg, Melanie,” she said, smiling uncertainly. “Was I expecting you?”
I could understand her confusion. Greenwich was not the sort of town where neighbors tended to drop by uninvited.
“No. I’m sorry there wasn’t time to call.” Stepping carefully around dozens of little paws, Aunt Peg led the way inside. “Something came up while we were at Monica’s retrieving up the club records and I thought we should talk about it right away.”
“Of course.” Lydia counted noses—the Dachshunds, not ours—then closed the door behind us. “Come right in.”
Lydia’s living room was furnished in muted shades of cream and gray, which set off the Dachshunds’ red coats beautifully. As I sank deep into a plushly pillowed couch, the dogs draped themselves over the furniture around us. I wondered how she managed to keep everything so clean.
“We brought your newsletter.” Peg dug the envelope out of her purse and handed it over. “Monica had them in her desk, all ready to be mailed out.”
“Thank you.” Lydia took the envelope and put it on the table without looking at it.
“I think you’d better open it. Monica put something extra inside that apparently she wanted you to see.”
“I don’t understand.” Lydia’s smile faltered. She opened the envelope, looked at the newsletter and set it aside, then read the note. “What is this about?”
“We were hoping you would tell us.”
The note fell from her fingers and landed in her lap. One of the Mini Dachshunds reached out and batted the paper with its paw. “You know Monica,” Lydia said, looking back and forth between us. “She was always joking around.”
“Really?” Peg’s brow rose. “I never noticed that.”
“Surely you don’t think ... ?”
“That the note gives you a motive for murder?” I asked. “It did cross our minds.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Lydia snapped. “It does nothing of the sort.”
“How would you know? You just said you had no idea what it was about.”
The club president reached down and retrieved the paper. The dog in her lap had chewed off one of the corners.
“We didn’t come here to accuse you of anything,” Peg said gently, looking at her friend. “We’re just trying to understand what was going on.”
“There was nothing going on.” Lydia’s voice held just the slightest hint of a tremor. “Monica and I were acquaintances, at best. She knew nothing about me.”
“Monica and I were acquaintances too,” said Peg. “But she thought she knew something about me.”
“She did?” Lydia and I both stared.
Aunt Peg nodded. “You know what Monica was like. She loved having information. She gathered other people’s secrets. I think she felt it gave her some sort of power.”
Lydia nodded. She looked as though she was beginning to relax. “What could Monica have known about you?”
“Do you remember when my dog, Beau, came down with SA last year?”
“Certainly,” said Lydia. “You were very upset about it. ”
I remembered it, too. Beau was Champion Cedar Crest Chantain; and he had been Aunt Peg’s prize stud dog. He’d been stolen the summer before and I’d spent three months looking for him.
“I made the announcement in the fall after I got him back,” said Peg. “But a few weeks earlier I’d been talking to Monica. The subject of genetic diseases came up and we were commiserating about how hard it is to control them.
“I imagine I must have mentioned something about Beau and SA. I certainly didn’t come right out and say he had the disease. How could I? I’d only just found out myself and I hadn’t yet had a chance to inform the breeders who had bred bitches to him. But somehow Monica put two and two together.
“She called a few days later and said what a shame it was that such an important dog had to be removed from the gene pool. Then she left this great dramatic pause, so that I had to pay attention to what was coming next.”
“Which was?” I prompted.
“Monica said that since nobody else knew about Beau’s disease, maybe it should just be our little secret.”
“Not likely,” Lydia said scornfully. It sounded as if she spoke from experience.
“I gather she knew one of your secrets, too?”
I had to give Aunt Peg credit. Her own confession had gone a long way toward softening Lydia’s defenses.
“It really wasn’t a big deal,” the club president said.
Peg and I both remained silent.
“I bred a litter of puppies last fall. After they were born, the owner of the stud dog and I got into an argument. Of course, you know both parties have to sign an application for litter registration or the A.K.C. won’t accept it. The stud dog owner threatened to withhold his signature.”
“So you signed it for him,” Aunt Peg guessed.
Lydia nodded.
Forgery. It sounded like a big deal to me. But then these were puppies we were talking about, not counterfeit currency.
“Didn’t the owner of the stud dog protest?” asked Peg.
“No, you see by the time the papers were returned, we’d kissed and made up. So there was no reason that the A.K.C. ever had to be the wiser. Unless Monica wrote and told them what had happened.”
“They would have suspended your privileges,” said Aunt Peg. “Probably for years.”
“So Monica was blackmailing you,” I said.
“Oh, no,” Lydia said quickly. “It was nothing like that. She never asked for money. It was more that she just wanted me to be aware that she knew.”
Of course Lydia would say that, I thought. Nobody but a fool would admit to being blackmailed by somebody who’d recently turned up murdered. And the president of the Belle Haven Kennel Club, didn’t strike me as any sort of a fool.
“I think we should have the note back,” I said.
“Oh dear!” Lydia held up her hand and several small scraps of paper fluttered to the floor. “Zipper seems to have destroyed it while we were talking.”
Zipper, I took it, was the happy looking Dachshund in her lap. The one with bits of paper sticking to his jowls. Until that moment, I’d been inclined to believe Lydia. She didn’t look like a murderer to me, and I wasn’t at all certain that the information Monica knew about her was worth killing over. But now I had to wonder. I’d seen her retrieve the note from Zipper several minutes earlier. When had she fed it back to him?
Looking none too happy about the situation, Aunt Peg stood. “Did you tell the police about any of this?”
“Of course not. There was no reason to.” Lydia set aside the Dachshund in her lap and rose as well. “We’ve known each other a long time, Peg. You must know I’m not capable of killing anyone, much less someone so unimportant as Monica Freedman.”
“I must admit it would come as a bit of a shock,
” Peg said grimly. “But then yours is the only motive, isn’t it?”
“Hardly.” Walking us to the door, Lydia was once more very much in control. “You just told me Monica had something on you as well.”
“Except that I went ahead and made it known that Beau had SA. I doubt you plan a similar announcement.”
Lydia sighed. “Do you honestly believe you and I are the only ones Monica played her little games with?”
I stopped. “There were others?”
“Of course there were others.” Lydia grasped the knob and drew the front door open. “If I were you, I’d talk to Cy Rubicov. He didn’t think any more highly of Monica than the rest of us did.”
“Monica had something on Cy?”
“That’s for him to tell you, if he so chooses. All I’m saying is that Monica got around, and her position as club secretary gave her quite a lot of access. Where there’s one secret, there are bound to be more. This month, the note was in my newsletter. Whose do you suppose it would have been in next?”
Leaving the question hanging in the air, Lydia Applebaum closed the door firmly behind us.
“I don’t know,” I said when we were back in the car. “It’s hard to believe anyone would commit murder over a litter of puppies.”
“It wasn’t the puppies that were important, it was the document Lydia falsified. If the A.K.C. had known, they wouldn’t have dealt with it lightly, I can assure you of that.” Aunt Peg frowned, looking distracted. She never pays attention when she’s driving, so I knew that wasn’t what was on her mind.
“What?” I asked finally.
“I was thinking about what Lydia said about Cy Rubicov. Of all the members of the Belle Haven Club he’s the one with the biggest financial stake in the dog game. If any one really had something to lose, it would be him.”
It wasn’t hard to see where she was going with this. “Next on the list?”
Aunt Peg nodded.
I ran all that past Sam the next evening when he came by to see how Davey and I were doing. Monica’s murder interested him peripherally, but it was Bob he really wanted to talk about.
I know he meant well. I know he was trying to help. But I had no desire to talk about Bob. Zero. None. He was a problem I currently had no way of solving, so why make myself feel worse by dwelling on it endlessly?
I wouldn’t exactly say Sam and I argued all evening, but there were more long gaps in the conversation than we’re used to having. Bob was off visiting other friends in the area, so at least I was spared the necessity of introducing the two of them. My ex-husband and my current lover. I could see how that would have gone over well.
Of course it was difficult to keep from talking about Bob when Davey kept bringing him up. After four days’ acquaintance, he was sure that his father walked on water. By the end of the evening, I think even Sam was ready for a change of topic.
Sam stayed for dinner, but left soon after Davey went to bed. Worse still, I wasn’t entirely sorry to see him leave. I sat down at my desk, pulled out my briefcase, and got down to writing pupil evaluations with a vengeance.
This was all Bob’s fault. He wasn’t even here and my life was still turned upside down. It was too bad there wasn’t some way I could pin Monica’s murder on him.
Seventeen
Frank called early the following morning to invite Davey and me to dinner. When my brother offers to cook, I start looking for ulterior motives. Usually he’s hoping to borrow money. This time, however, he pleaded innocence.
“Aunt Rose and Peter are coming,” he said. “We haven’t seen them in a while so I thought it would be nice.”
Rose was our father’s sister. For the last three decades, she’d also been known as Sister Anne Marie. To everyone’s surprise, she’d left the convent the summer before to marry Peter Donovan, who’d put aside the priesthood at the same time. Peter was teaching college in New London now and by all accounts, they were very content.
Of course it would be nice to see them. Then again, if we were a nice family, we’d do things like this regularly.
“What’s the catch?” I asked.
“What catch?”
“You’re cooking? Rose and Peter are coming? And I’m getting less than a day’s notice? What are you hoping I won’t find out about until it’s too late?”
“Why are you always so suspicious?” asked Frank.
Many years of experience. Anyone could have told him that.
“Is Aunt Peg coming?”
“I’m feeling sociable, Mel, not crazy.”
He had a point. Anyone sitting down at the same table with Rose and Peg was more likely to feel like a referee than a dinner guest.
“So you just decided it would be fun to get Rose and Peter, and you and me and Davey together?”
“Sure,” said Frank. “Why not?”
Right.
He told me that Davey and I were expected at six, and that we’d been volunteered to bring dessert. I guessed I’d find out what else he had in store for me when we got there.
Frank lives in Cos Cob, a quiet section of Greenwich not too far from the water. His three room apartment takes up the top floor of an old Victorian house, and he does upkeep and maintenance in return for a reduced rent. Frank’s furniture, such as it is, would look right at home in a college dorm. He hadn’t owned a dining table the last time we visited, and when Davey and I arrived I saw that nothing had changed.
“I’m doing the whole thing buffet style,” Frank explained. He took the key lime pie I’d brought and stowed it in the refrigerator. Following him into the kitchen, I pretended not to notice the boxes from Hay Day Market, a local gourmet take-out, piled on the counter. “I don’t think anyone will mind eating on their laps, do you?”
Certainly not my son. But an ex-nun and a former priest? That might be a different matter.
“We’ll do fine,” I said.
“Good.” Frank looked me over carefully. So carefully, in fact, that I began to wonder what he was looking for. “You seem to be holding up pretty well.”
Holding up from what? I wondered. Plague? Fire? Pestilence? Was there something going around I hadn’t heard about?
“I called the other day. You and Peg were off somewhere, but I had a chance to talk to Bob.”
Aha. Finally the light dawned.
“It was an interesting conversation. Of course, I felt a little stupid since I had no idea he was back.”
“He’s not back,” I said carefully. “He’s visiting. He and Davey are getting to know one another.”
“So I heard.”
The doorbell rang in the other room.
“I’ll get it!” yelled Davey.
I heard him squeal with delight and Frank and I entered the living room to find Peter swinging him in a wide circle. I guessed that was one of the benefits of not owning much furniture.
“Again!” cried Davey, when Peter set him down.
“I don’t think so,” said Peter, sounding winded. He smoothed back his thinning gray-brown hair and unbuttoned his top coat. He was a pleasant looking man, medium height, with a waistline that had expanded several inches in the last year. “I’m much too old for that kind of behavior.”
Rose was tall and slender, with impeccable posture. Her strong features softened when she looked at her husband. “You’re not old. Otherwise, what would that make me?”
“Well seasoned?” Peter teased.
Lord, they looked happy together. I knew they deserved it, these two people who had devoted the major portion of their lives to serving God, but still I couldn’t help but feel a small twinge of jealousy. What would it be like to have a partner you could count on completely, a person you planned to spend the rest of your life with? At the rate I was going, it didn’t look as though I’d ever find out.
“Let me take your coats,” said Frank, stepping into the role of host with more aplomb than I’d have given him credit for. “What can I get everyone to drink?”
In no time at al
l we were settled around the living room. Rose and Peter were seated side by side on the couch; I had the only chair. Davey and Frank were on the floor. Davey had brought a supply of matchbox cars with him and he ran them up and down the legs of the coffee table. Every so often, I gave him a nudge and told him to pipe down on the sound effects.
“I’m so glad Frank was able to get us all together,” said Rose. “I know you didn’t get much notice, but I was so hoping he’d be able to pull it off.”
“You were hoping ... ?” I looked at my brother, then back to Rose.
“He didn’t tell you this was my idea?”
“Actually, no.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Aunt Rose smiled serenely. Turnbull women are strong—some might even say bossy—and three decades in the convent hadn’t dulled Rose’s ability to manipulate events to her own satisfaction. “I thought we should talk.”
“Sure,” I said. “About what?”
Her gaze flickered in Davey’s direction. On the floor beside my son, Frank took his cue. “Come on, sport. Let’s go out to the kitchen and see about dinner.”
“No,” Davey said firmly, cars all lined up in a row. “I want to stay here.”
“There might be some ice cream in the freezer ...”
That got my son’s attention. “Before dinner?”
“Shhh,” whispered Frank. “Don’t tell your Mom.”
Giggling together, they disappeared into the kitchen. I could just see it now. Another nutritionally balanced meal shot to hell.
Once Davey was gone, Aunt Rose didn’t waste any time getting down to business. “Frank tells me your ex-husband has returned.”
I nodded. “Bob’s visiting from Texas. He’s never really had a chance to get to know Davey—”
“Oh for Pete’s sake, Melanie! We can all stop pretending. The way I understand it, Bob’s had plenty of chances. He’s just never availed himself of the opportunity.”
“You could put it that way.”
“I could and I have. I heard this Bob of yours told Frank he’s getting married.”
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