Wagging Through the Snow

by Laurien Berenson

  “Snowball?”

  “That’s what Pete called him. He and that little dog were just about inseparable. Where’d you find him?”

  “He was with the body, shivering and crying,” Aunt Peg said. “That’s how we came to find his owner.”

  The policeman frowned. “I suppose this means we’ll have to call animal control. Of course, nobody’s going to pick up that phone on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. And I suppose we can’t leave him here. . . .”

  “Certainly not,” Aunt Peg said sharply. With effort, she moderated her tone. “If I may offer a solution. Why don’t I take Snowball home with me until you’re able to make other arrangements for his care? I assume you’ll also be contacting Pete’s next of kin?”

  “We will do so if we’re able to,” he replied. “Right now, I wouldn’t say that’s a given. Pete’s fingerprints might or might not be in the system. And we can check with social services to see what kind of information they have on him in their records. But we may have trouble making a positive ID.”

  “Surely his family will want to know what happened to him,” I said.

  “If he has family. Or any people at all who still care about his welfare. I wouldn’t say that’s a given either. If you’ll excuse me?” The officer left us and went to join the group of men beneath the tree.

  Bob came over to stand beside us. Even though we’d been divorced for a dozen years, I could still read his moods. Now, for some reason, he looked relieved.

  “They’re saying there’s no indication of foul play,” he told us. “The guy appears to have frozen to death in the snow. Apparently he was known around here as a vagrant and an alcoholic. One of the EMTs said the body reeked of gin.”

  “What about the gash on his head?” I asked.

  “They’re guessing he was drunk, lost his balance, and grabbed the branch to steady himself. That—added to the weight of the snow on top of it—made the branch break and hit him on the head. The ME will do an autopsy, but he’s pretty sure that once the guy was unconscious he died of exposure. It looks like it was just an unfortunate accident. So that’s good news.”

  I turned and stared at him.

  Bob’s nose was already red from the cold. Now his cheeks grew red to match. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  “I should hope not,” said Aunt Peg. “But surely that can’t be the whole story.”

  “Why not?” asked Bob. “It sounded logical to me.”

  “Didn’t anybody stop to wonder why a homeless man would have been way out here in the middle of nowhere, wandering around in the snow?”

  “I didn’t hear them say anything about that.” Bob looked pained. He wanted answers, not more questions.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Aunt Peg said.

  Chapter Five

  Frank joined our small group and we withdrew to the head of the path. The authorities were wrapping things up.

  Once they’d realized who the body in the snow belonged to, it felt as though the mood in the clearing had changed. Any sense of urgency had vanished. Now the authorities’ response felt perfunctory.

  It was as if the death of a homeless man was less important than the other things I could hear them discussing: an upcoming football game, a traffic accident on Route 7, their holiday vacation schedules. Dealing with the remains of the man we knew only as Pete was just another chore they needed to finish before moving on with the rest of their day.

  “That was a good question,” Bob said to Aunt Peg. He didn’t look nearly as reassured as he had a few minutes earlier.

  “Of course it was.” She lowered her zipper a few inches, shifted the bundle beneath her parka from side to side, then looked pointedly at me. “Someone should try and figure out the answer.”

  “What question?” asked Frank.

  “Aunt Peg wanted to know why a homeless man would have been out in these woods on a snowy winter night,” I said.

  “Hmm.” Frank considered that. “I wonder if Sean Haney knows anything about him.”

  We all turned to look at him. Even Snowball popped his head out of the opening at the top of Aunt Peg’s jacket.

  “Who is Sean Haney and why might he know something?” she inquired.

  “He’s the former owner’s son. I met him the other day at the auction. At the end of the bidding, he came over and shook my hand, and wished me luck with the property. Sean gave me his card, although at the time I couldn’t imagine what I’d ever need it for. I think I tossed it in my glove compartment.”

  We made our way back down the now well-trampled trail. The small parking area was crowded with official vehicles. Frank skirted around them and went to his Jeep. He searched around the car for at least five minutes, but finally emerged holding a lavender-tinted business card.

  “What does Sean Haney do?” Bob gazed at the card with a slight smile on his face as Frank tapped out the number on his phone.

  “According to this, he’s the owner of Sean’s Spa and Salon in Weston.” My brother glanced up. “That family loves their alliteration, don’t they?”

  Frank put the phone to his ear, then walked several feet away so he could conduct the call in private. I wasn’t having any of that. Bob and Aunt Peg hung back, but I shadowed his steps across the parking lot. I listened as my brother identified himself to Sean and explained what had happened.

  Then there was a long period of silence, while Frank listened and frowned. “I see,” he said.

  “See what?” I mouthed impatiently.

  Frank glared at me and angled his body away.

  The evasive move annoyed me every bit as much as he’d known it would. Given the slightest opportunity, my brother and I snap right back into the fractious relationship we’d had as children.

  “I see,” Frank said again.

  I walked around and planted myself in front of him. Would it kill him to ask a pertinent question or two?

  “Uh-huh.” Frank nodded. “I get that.” He looked at me and stuck out his tongue.

  And there it was. The last straw.

  “Give me that.” I reached over and snatched the phone out of Frank’s hand. “Hello, Sean, this is Melanie Travis. I’m Frank’s sister and I’m delighted that you have some information for us.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Sean replied. “But I’m happy to try to help if I can. I was just telling Frank a little bit about my day spa over here in Weston.”

  Seriously? They’d been talking for several minutes. Thank goodness I had appropriated the phone when I did.

  “We offer the best massage therapy in all of Fairfield County,” Sean continued happily. “And our mud and avocado wrap is second to none.”

  Clearly he was a guy who liked to talk. I hoped Sean would feel the same way after a change of subject.

  “That sounds wonderful,” I said. “But about the man whose body was found here this morning . . . the police told us his name was Pete.”

  “Yeah, Pete—that’s it. I remember him.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Truthfully, not a whole lot. The tree farm was my dad’s thing, not mine. I haven’t spent much time there in years. But Dad used to talk about some spacey dude who hung around the property in the winter. He was always trying to get the guy to stay out of sight during the holidays. Dad didn’t want him interfering with customers who were in the woods chopping down Christmas trees.”

  “If Pete was a problem, why didn’t your father tell him to leave?” I asked.

  “Dad would never have done that. Pete was okay, just a little too into the sauce, if you know what I mean. Dad believed in paying things forward. He thought Pete was the kind of guy who could use a helping hand.”

  “Your father sounds like a lovely man,” I said.

  “He was,” Sean agreed. “He was a practical man too. After the holiday season ended the farm just sat empty for the rest of the winter. Come spring, Dad could book events there, or sometimes commercial shoots
. But January through March, the place was just a bunch of trees growing. So if Pete wanted to make his home in the woods for the winter, Dad wasn’t about to object.”

  I tried unsuccessfully to picture how that would work. “Was Pete camping out there?”

  “Oh, heck no.” Sean laughed. “He’d have frozen if he did that. In the back of the property there’s an old tumbledown shack. Been there for years. It’s hardly much more than a roof, four walls, and a floor, but with a little stove I guess it stays warm enough.”

  “That sounds pretty Spartan.”

  “Tell me about it. I’m much too sociable to live like that, but Pete did okay. Dad always said it suited Pete, because the only thing he wanted was for the world to go away and leave him alone.”

  I exhaled slowly. “What a sad way to live. Did your father know why Pete felt that way?”

  “If he did, he never told me. Tell the truth, I don’t think Dad spent any time worrying about it. He just accepted Pete for who he was. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the drinking had something to do with it. And now your brother told me the police think that’s what caused his death?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Did your father know Pete’s last name? Or where he’d lived before he came to Wilton?”

  “Stuff like that, Pete didn’t talk about it and Dad didn’t ask. That’s probably why the guy kept coming back. Every year when the weather got warm again he’d disappear for a while. Probably found somewhere to hang out that better suited his needs. But he always seemed to find his way back to the farm in the fall.”

  “What about Pete’s dog?” I asked.

  “That little rug rat that followed him around? What about it?”

  “Apparently it’s a purebred Maltese. Do you know where it came from?”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Sean snorted. “I don’t even know what a purebred Maltese is, much less where you’d find one.”

  Okay, I’d been grasping at straws with that last question. But Aunt Peg would have been disappointed if I hadn’t at least tried.

  “Thank you for taking the time to talk to us,” I said. “You’ve given us more information than we had.”

  “So?” Aunt Peg demanded as I handed the phone back to Frank. While I’d been busy talking to Sean, she’d sidled over to stand beside me. “What does the younger Haney have to say for himself?”

  Aunt Peg would want hard facts. Unfortunately, I had none to offer.

  “That his day spa offers the best mud and avocado wrap around?”

  “Mud and avocado,” she sniffed. “That sounds disgusting. What else?”

  “He didn’t have much information about Pete,” I admitted. “But he did point us in the right direction.”

  “Excellent,” said Aunt Peg. “Which way?”

  “North.” I pointed. “Into the woods.”

  * * *

  Frank and Bob both declined to participate in an excursion back into the forest to look for Pete’s cabin. Aunt Peg and I were fine with that. Those two would only slow us down anyway.

  We deliberately skirted around the clearing where Pete’s body had recently lain. While we were in the parking lot, the authorities had transported the corpse out of the woods and placed it in the medical examiner’s van. Shortly thereafter, the EMTs had been the first to depart. The police officers had paused to have a few words with Bob, then their cruiser and the ME’s van had driven away as well. They were followed by Frank and Bob.

  Now Aunt Peg and I were on our own, which was just the way we liked it.

  “Ten acres is a lot of land to search,” I said. My house was on a two-acre lot and I thought that was spacious. “Especially since these woods are so dense we can’t see very far ahead of us. The shack Sean told me about could be anywhere.”

  “Which is why we’re going to let someone who knows where it is lend us a hand. Or a paw, as the case may be.”

  She unzipped her parka, lifted Snowball out of his snug shelter, and set him gently down on the ground. The Maltese celebrated his freedom by giving a mighty shake that started at his head and ended at the tip of his matted tail. That done, he walked over to the nearest bush and lifted his leg. Then he sniffed the yellow snow and peed again.

  “That’s our guide?” I said with a smirk.

  “Give him a minute. He’s just getting his bearings. After the night he’s had, I’d be very surprised if Snowball doesn’t want to return to familiar surroundings. The only home he knows out here is the shack he and Pete have been living in.”

  Of course Aunt Peg was right. Two minutes later, Snowball was scampering along the top of the crusted snow, moving with a sense of purpose as though he had a specific goal in mind.

  Aunt Peg and I slogged along behind him. In the deep woods, some of the drifts were higher than my boots. Dealing with the footing and dodging between tightly packed trees, we struggled to keep the little dog in sight.

  Thank goodness for Snowball’s unerring sense of direction. Even when he stopped and began to bark, it still took me a moment to pick out the cabin from the low-hanging branches that surrounded it. On my own, I might have walked right by without stopping.

  As shelters went, it wasn’t much. The shack was barely more than a lean-to with slatted wood sides and a tar-paper roof. I didn’t see a single window and the entire structure couldn’t have been more than eight feet long. It was hard to imagine that someone had actually been living there in this weather. And that he had chosen to do so. Despite its lack out outward appeal, presumably the shack was snug enough to keep its occupants warm and dry.

  Aunt Peg leaned down and scooped Snowball up in her arms. “Poor pup. He probably thinks Pete is waiting for him inside.”

  “Have you thought about what you’re going to do with him?” I asked.

  Aunt Peg cast me a glance. “What’s to think about?”

  That was pretty much what I’d figured.

  The door consisted of a single sheet of plywood. Instead of a knob, a simple latch held it closed. Aunt Peg reached for the latch, then withdrew her gloved hand. Snowball whimpered under his breath.

  “This feels like an invasion of privacy,” she said.

  “Unfortunately for Pete, he no longer cares.”

  “It’s still his cabin.”

  “Technically, it’s not.” I reached around her and opened the door. “Frank bought the property in its entirety. As is. So we have just as much right to be here as anyone.”

  The interior of the cabin looked scarcely better than the outside. There was no furniture to be seen. The cramped space held only a tiny woodstove that looked as though it served as both a source of heat and a cooktop, a sleeping bag with a moth-eaten blanket on top of it, some canned goods stacked in a corner, and a pile of assorted junk that was probably the remainder of Pete’s worldly goods. It was every bit as cold inside the shack as it was without.

  “Now I’m even sadder than I was before,” I said.

  Aunt Peg, who’d already moved through the doorway, offered not a shred of sympathy. “Buck up, Melanie. We’ve got work to do.”

  She started by sifting through the cans until she found one that held dog food. Snowball followed her every movement as she opened it up, found a bowl, and dumped it in. When she placed the bowl on the floor, the Maltese dug in eagerly.

  “I suspect he’s missed a meal or two,” she said. “That should hold him for now. What else is there to see?”

  Between us, we dug gingerly through the pile of stuff. Two shirts lay on top. Next we came to a coil of rope and a piece of tarp. Under that was a stack of old newspapers, several paperback books with broken spines, and a baggie filled with rubber bands. When we went to lift the tattered blanket beneath those finds, there was a thump, followed by a clinking noise, and then several empty bottles rolled across the floor.

  Aunt Peg prodded one with her foot. “Gin. Probably Pete’s last meal.”

  “I wonder why he went to the trouble of hiding the bottles,” I said.
<
br />   “If I was a psychologist I might posit that he was attempting to hide the evidence of his addiction.”

  “From who? Snowball?”

  Mention of his name made us both look to see how the Maltese was doing. The little dog had finished his meal and disappeared.

  “There.” I pointed toward the other end of the room. “He’s burrowed inside the sleeping bag.”

  Aunt Peg sighed. “That poor dog knows something is very wrong. He just can’t figure out what he needs to do to fix it.” She leaned down and slipped her hand into the bedding. “Come out here, you little scamp.”

  The lump at the foot of the bedroll didn’t move. Abruptly, Aunt Peg frowned and withdrew her hand. Her fingers were clenched around a small, rectangular object.

  “What do you suppose this is?” she asked.

  We walked to the doorway and examined it in the light.

  “It looks like an old wooden matchbox.”

  “Indeed. I think you’re right.” Aunt Peg gave the box a small shake. “And there’s something inside.”

  She used her thumb to slide the inner compartment open. We both leaned in for a closer look. The box held just two things: a tiny tooth and a ring.

  “That’s a puppy canine,” Aunt Peg said. “Probably one of Snowball’s.”

  I was more interested in the ring. I reached inside with my fingertips and fished it out. The bauble felt heavy in my hand. It was thick and made of silver, with a flat, deep-set reddish stone and engraving around the crown.

  “This looks like a high school ring.” I examined the initials that circled the gemstone. “What school is SCHS?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Aunt Peg. “But I suppose we should take it along and give it to the police. If they locate Pete’s family, his relatives might want the ring back.”

  “I’m not sure the police will even bother to look for Pete’s family,” I said. “They didn’t sound particularly interested.”

  As I slipped the ring in my pocket, Snowball emerged from the sleeping bag. When he saw us standing in the doorway, his tail began to wag. He scampered across the floor to join us. Even filthy and matted, the Maltese was pretty cute. He certainly deserved better than this.