Underdog

by Laurien Berenson

  “You can come?”

  “Of course I’m coming. I wouldn’t miss it.” My son was glaring daggers at me. “I may have to bring Davey, though.”

  “See what you can do. I’ll pick you up at three-thirty.”

  What I could do, as it turned out, was devote the morning and early afternoon to wearing Davey and Faith out. We had Joey Brickman over for a couple of hours in the morning, then went for a walk on the beach. By the time we returned from a game of Frisbee in Binney Park at two, I figured he was probably tired enough to insure his good behavior at Mrs. Byrd’s. Of course, then he dropped off in a nap. When Aunt Peg arrived to pick us up, Davey was awake, alert, and once more raring to go.

  Florence Byrd lived in a red brick Georgian mansion with tall, white columns, wrought-iron balconies and leaded windows. It took us a full two minutes to drive from the gate posts to the house on an elm-lined driveway that bisected several dozen acres of gently rolling meadow. Along the way, we passed two pheasants and a small herd of deer. Even Davey was impressed.

  “Does Mrs. Byrd live in the town hall?” he asked as we climbed the front steps to the door.

  “No, she just has a very nice house.” I took a firmer grip on his hand. “Remember what we discussed about being on your best behavior?”

  “Sure.”

  I’m always suspicious when capitulation comes that easily, but there was no time to dwell on the possibilities. Aunt Peg had rung the bell and the door was opened almost immediately by a maid in a starched navy uniform. She showed us into the library where Mrs. Byrd was waiting.

  The room was massive and very beautiful. French doors opening to an outside terrace ran along one wall. Two others held mahogany bookshelves extending all the way up to a ceiling so high that a ladder was needed to reach the upper tiers. The remaining wall was dominated by a gray marble fireplace. Above the mantelpiece was an oil painting of pastoral fields and Thoroughbred horses. Richard Stone Reeves, I thought.

  The room was large enough to contain several groupings of furniture. Mrs. Byrd was seated in a wing chair just in front of the fireplace, her legs covered by a plaid wool throw. Behind the brass screen, a fire burned and crackled, adding to the heat in the room. As the maid withdrew and closed the door behind her, Florence Byrd set aside the book she’d been reading and looked at her watch.

  “You’re punctual,” she said. “I like that. It’s better if I don’t get up. I imagine you can find your way over.”

  We crossed the room and introduced ourselves. Mrs. Byrd extended a hand to Aunt Peg, then gave me a narrowed look. “We’ve met.”

  “Yes, last week at the dog show.”

  “Crawford didn’t tell me he was sending me people I’d already met. I hate having to repeat myself.” She turned to Davey. “Who’s this?”

  “My son, Davey.” A sharp poke between the shoulder blades had the desired effect and he offered his hand.

  “Nobody brings children to visit me,” Florence Byrd said decisively. “I don’t like children. Never had any of my own. I always had better things to do.” Her foot tapped the floor beneath her chair and I realized she was feeling for a buzzer. “Dirk will entertain him while we talk. Is that all right with you, young man?”

  Davey looked up at me and I nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “Does Dirk know how to play games?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe you can teach him some.”

  The double doors at the other end of the room opened. Dirk stood in the doorway. “Yes, Mrs. Byrd?”

  “Young master Davey here is in need of entertainment. I thought perhaps you might know where to find a ball.” Her gaze went back to my son. “You do know how to play catch, don’t you?”

  Davey nodded.

  “Good. Run along.”

  Davey did, leaving Aunt Peg and me without even a backward glance. I was afraid he might have found Dirk’s size or his stern dark suit forbidding, but he skipped happily across the Persian carpets and out of the room. “Hey,” I heard him say as the door were closing. “Maybe we can find a bat, too.”

  Mrs. Byrd waved toward a sofa opposite her chair and Aunt Peg and I were seated. “I understand from Crawford that you want to discuss Jenny Maguire. To be perfectly direct, I don’t see the point. The girl is gone. What difference could a discussion of the circumstances possibly make?”

  “Are you aware that Jenny was murdered?” I asked.

  “Murdered? That’s not what I was told.”

  “It’s true,” said Aunt Peg. “The police are investigating the case as a homicide.”

  Mrs. Byrd looked back and forth between us. “What’s your interest in this?”

  The sofa we were seated on was plush and comfy. I had to shift my weight forward and perch on the edge of the cushions to fight being enveloped. “Jenny was a friend of mine. Aunt Peg and I both took handling classes from the Maguires. At first I thought that her death was just a senseless tragedy. But then I kept running across things that didn’t make sense. Like Jenny’s Miniature Poodle, Ziggy.”

  “What about him?”

  The doors opened again. The maid entered, bearing a wide silver tray that she set on the table between us. Aside from the tea itself, there were blueberry scones and a plate of finger sandwiches. Lunch had been a hot dog grabbed from a concession truck at the beach. Too bad this wasn’t the kind of place where you could dig in with both hands.

  I got on with the story and contented myself to wait my turn. “Jenny hid him away and told everyone he was dead. Apparently she intended to go back for him, but she never got the chance.”

  “She also wrote a suicide note,” said Aunt Peg. “Although both Melanie and I are convinced that she had no intention of killing herself.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind pouring,” said Mrs. Byrd. “My hands aren’t as steady as they used to be.” She watched with a critical eye while Aunt Peg complied. “And what conclusions have you drawn from these inconsistencies?”

  I took my tea and the napkin that came with it. Any minute now, I’d be able to go for those sandwiches. “We think that Jenny was trapped in an unhappy marriage. She was desperate to escape from Rick and had made a plan to do so by faking her own suicide.”

  “You do, do you?”

  Florence Byrd was glaring at me. I met her gaze calmly and squarely. “Yes, I do.”

  “And have you spoken about this to anyone else?”

  “Nobody who’s involved.”

  “I see.” Mrs. Byrd took a long, slow sip of her tea, then set the delicate cup aside. “Well, as it happens,” she said. “You’re right.”

  Twenty-one

  I was so surprised that for a moment I couldn’t say anything. Aunt Peg, busy pouring the last cup of tea, was similarly speechless. Florence Byrd looked rather pleased with the effect she’d had.

  “Eat,” she said, waving toward the food on the tray. “I hardly have any appetite myself and Marie always makes too much.”

  I slid two of the small sandwiches onto my plate. “Jenny actually told you she was going to leave Rick?”

  “Told me? It was my idea in the first place.”

  “Your idea?” Aunt Peg repeated.

  “Jenny felt stifled by her husband. I could see it plain as day. She used to come here quite frequently, you know. It started because I wanted someone really good doing coat care on the show dogs. But as time went on, I could also see how much she enjoyed having a place to get away to.

  “After she was finished in the kennel, Jenny would come up to the house and we’d take tea together, much as we’re doing now. And don’t you know, without fail there’d come a call from Rick, asking what was taking her so long and when she was coming home.” Mrs. Byrd sniffed indignantly. “As if she wasn’t entitled to a little free time of her own!”

  “Angie told me that Jenny had thought about divorcing Rick.”

  “She did. That was several years ago. We didn’t know each other then and she didn’t have anyone who could give her the k
ind of moral support she needed to go through with it. Rick told Jenny that no matter what happened, he would never let her go and she believed him.”

  “Why didn’t she reconsider divorce now?” asked Aunt Peg. “Why go to such extremes?”

  “That was the way Jenny wanted to play it, and if you knew her at all, you’d know that she was very strong-willed.” Mrs. Byrd reached a gnarled hand across the tray and added a dollop of cream to her tea. “I’m not without resources, if I do say so myself. I told her I’d be happy to hire a good lawyer, and we’d take out a restraining order if need be. But she said you only had to watch the tabloid shows on TV to know how ineffective those methods could be if a husband was determined to get to his wife.

  “Jenny was tired of fighting with Rick. After all those years together, I think she was just mentally worn down. She was looking for the easiest way out and she decided that disappearing would be it. She didn’t care how much she had to leave behind. The only thing that mattered to her was Ziggy. She wouldn’t go without him.”

  I’m not a tea drinker, but I took a sip anyway. It was strong and tart and tasted of citrus; not nearly as good as coffee, but at least it would wash down the sandwiches. “Where was she planning to go?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that.” Mrs. Byrd frowned. “Imagine, she wouldn’t even tell me. I told her she could come here and be my kennel manager, but that wasn’t far enough away to suit Jenny. I do know she was planning on making a clean break. She wanted to start out somewhere new and leave the dog show world behind forever.”

  I took a moment to ponder that and used the time to slather a scone with butter. “If you knew what she was planning, why didn’t Jenny leave Ziggy here?”

  “At the end, she was obsessed with keeping secrets. This is a large household, as you can see. It takes a lot of people just to keep things running smoothly. Jenny didn’t want anyone to know what she was up to, especially not someone who might have a chance to talk to Rick.”

  “Someone like Dirk maybe?”

  “Perhaps. I thought at that point that her concern bordered on paranoia. Of course, as things turned out, she was right to be afraid.”

  Aunt Peg shifted in her seat. “Do you think Jenny had any inkling she was being poisoned?”

  “I knew she hadn’t been feeling well,” said Mrs. Byrd. “But she blamed it on stress. Concocting this plan, getting ready to set it in motion and trying to keep everything a secret. She was sure once she got away, she’d be fine.”

  “And she probably would have been,” I said. “Except that before she could go, her system had already absorbed a fatal dosage of the arsenic.”

  “Rick must have guessed what she was going to do,” Aunt Peg said softly. “He said he’d never let her go, and he meant it.”

  Finally the thought that I’d been grappling with for days had been voiced aloud. Even with so many signs pointing in Rick’s direction, the notion that he might have been responsible for his wife’s death just didn’t seem possible. He was bright, energetic, filled with common sense; surely not a murderer. But then wasn’t that what people always said when the police told them they’d been living next door to a serial killer? “But he seemed like such a nice young man!”

  Obviously, he’d been obsessed with Jenny and although that idea was foreign to me as well, I’d seen enough to believe it was true. How much did it take, I wondered, to push someone over the edge from obsessive behavior to needing to take total control of another’s destiny? Even if the only way to control them was to take their life in your hands.

  “Do you know how Rick and Jenny got together in the first place?” I asked Mrs. Byrd.

  “I know they met rather soon after Jenny had left home. Rick was always interested in her, right from the start, but Jenny was young and she wasn’t in any hurry to get involved.”

  “What changed her mind?”

  “I think it was several things. One that his ardor was so steadfast. Jenny was rather naive in the ways of the world. I’m sure she found Rick’s attentions flattering. Another was that he was so different from her father. Do you know anything about her childhood?”

  “A bit,” I said and Aunt Peg nodded.

  “Then you can see why Jenny would have been attracted to Rick. He seemed faithful and stable, and everything her father was not. Unfortunately in choosing not to duplicate her parents’ own relationship, she went overboard in the other direction. And then Angie played a part, too.”

  “How?”

  Mrs. Byrd’s fingers smoothed the fine linen napkin she’d laid in her lap. “She was every bit as desperate to escape that turbulent home life as Jenny had been. And of course Jenny could understand that. She was happy to take her sister in even though I gather at the time she didn’t necessarily have the resources to support them both.”

  “By teaming up with Rick Maguire, she was able to expand the business,” said Aunt Peg.

  “That’s it exactly. It also helped that Rick and Angie got along like a house on fire. Oh, I’d imagine that what Angie really felt was a school-girl crush, but I gather she all but convinced Jenny she’d be crazy to let a man like that get away.”

  “So Rick and Jenny got married,” I said slowly. “Angie moved in with them, and they all became one big happy family.”

  “One big dysfunctional family,” said Aunt Peg.

  I nudged her with my elbow. “You’ve been watching Oprah again, haven’t you?”

  Aunt Peg rudely elbowed me right back. Pointedly, I ignored her. “I’ve heard that at the time Jenny and Angie left home, their father was having an affair with a woman named Crystal Mars. Was that the reason they went?”

  “It was certainly a contributing factor.” Florence Byrd took a long, slow sip of tea.

  “But Jenny has remained in touch with Crystal over the years. In fact, that’s where she left Ziggy.”

  “It was.”

  I waited a beat, hoping she’d elaborate. She didn’t. “Frankly, I found that surprising. I would think that the circumstances of their meeting would have made them enemies, not friends.”

  “On the surface of things, you’re probably correct. But if you’re hoping for further enlightenment, you’ve come to the wrong place. Jenny was a very private person. She had secrets she would not have wanted revealed when she was alive, and I feel no compunction to break her trust now that she’s gone.”

  An uncomfortable silence followed. I selected another scone and bit off a large piece, leaving it to Aunt Peg to find another topic. As usual, she coped magnificently.

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” she said. “It’s no secret Charlie was going for the Quaker Oats award. If Jenny had stayed through the end of the year, I imagine the dog would have been a shoo-in. Why would she make a plan to go when the goal was so close at hand?”

  “That was my goal, not hers,” Mrs. Byrd said firmly. “Don’t forget, she was planning to leave handling behind forever. These awards that the dog show world finds so dreadfully important had pretty much lost all meaning for her.

  “Of course, selfishly, I would have much preferred that she finish the job with Charlie. That was the way we set it up originally. But the sicker she began to feel, the more desperate Jenny became to get away, and I wasn’t about to stand in her way.”

  “Besides,” Florence Byrd added with a gleam in her eye. “Both Jenny and I doubted that her sudden disappearance at that stage of the game would harm the dog’s chances. Fame or notoriety—when it comes to influencing judges, either one will do the trick.”

  “You’ve been proven right about that.”

  “Hardly.” Mrs. Byrd’s features tightened. “In the beginning, it looked as though Angie was going to work out. Good enough to coast through the end of the year, at any rate. The sympathy vote never hurts, you know. But now I’m having second thoughts. The dog was beaten yesterday up in Boston.”

  “By whom?” asked Aunt Peg.

  “Harry Flynn, in the Variety of all thing
s. Charlie hasn’t lost a Variety since March. At this stage in his career, it’s ludicrous. You better believe I let Angie know what I thought about that! I’ve waited half a century to win that award. I’m not going to get this close only to have her let it slip through my fingers.”

  Aunt Peg and Mrs. Byrd moved on to the rest of the results from the previous day’s show, and I left them in the library and went off to find Davey. The house was so big, I took three wrong turns before I finally found the kitchen. Marie was there, shelling peas and watching a Spanish soap opera on a little TV on the counter. She led me past the pantry and into a small sitting room. Davey and Dirk were bent over a table by the window. Both were concentrating fiercely on the checkerboard between them.

  “Who’s winning?” I asked.

  Dirk gestured toward the stack of checkers piled high in front of my son. “He is.”

  Davey made his move and looked up proudly. “I’ve won every game so far. I like playing with Dirk.”

  I could see how he might. Though I was a great believer in bolstering Davey’s self-confidence, even I didn’t let him win every game.

  “It’s time to go, honey.”

  “Not yet. I’m having fun. Dirk said we could raid the refrigerator after this. Did you know this house has three whole floors?”

  “I’m sure it does.” I watched as my son jumped Dirk’s last two checkers with a flourish, then eased him up out of the upholstered chair.

  “I told him we could have cookies,” said Dirk. Even though he was sitting down, we were at eye level with each other. “He’s been real good.”

  I gave Davey’s shoulders a squeeze. “I guess we could manage a minute or two for cookies.”

  “Yea!” cried Davey. “Do you have Oreos?”

  “Let’s go see.”

  The kitchen was empty now, though the soap opera was still playing. A colander filled with freshly washed peas sat beside the sink. Dirk disappeared into the pantry and reemerged with a bright yellow package.

  “Better than Oreos,” he said to Davey, tearing at the wrapping. “Mallomars.”