Changing of the Guard Dog

by Lane Stone

  “Oh, no, he’s an IT guy.” She paused and bit her lower lip. “At least that’s how he started. Now he’s a venture capitalist. A few months ago a magazine article called him a tech mogul and he loved it.” She gave a little laugh, but the way the volume of her voice had trailed down to nothingness left me wondering if she loved it. “Anyway, he says colors are equations and he has to have the very latest.”

  The front door opened and we all turned to see who would come up the stairs.

  “Roman,” Bess called out, “come meet our guests. We were just talking about you.”

  The man in the cashmere sweater and eyeglasses had already turned to escape to the home’s third floor. I felt Lady Anthea’s eyes on me. He was Bess Harper’s husband. That explained his appearance at the press conference. Seeing no way out, Roman stopped and joined us in the dining room. He plastered a smile on his face and repeated each of our names as we introduced ourselves.

  “I apologize for Charles Andrews,” I said when it was my turn to introduce myself. “He can be pretty tough. We’ve all gotten used to it.” Though he and his friend in the flannel shirt had been younger than everyone else in the driving skills class, I noticed he was about a decade older than his midforties wife.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Let me see, how can I describe him?” I asked.

  It turned out I wouldn’t have to because the front door opened again. “Anyone at home?” The voice was young and the question had been spoken word by word. Any. One. At. Home.

  Bess was on her feet. “Up here, darling.” She turned to us. “That’s our daughter, Sophie.”

  Roman smiled and reached his arm back for her. The teenager came far enough up the stairs for us to see her face before she stopped to sneeze. After that she sneezed on almost every step. When she reached the dining room her father gave her a stiff-arm hug. The young teenager wore an undercut hairstyle. The hair at the nape of her neck was supershort, almost shaved, and black. The top had been pulled into a ponytail and dyed blond. She had a cupid’s bow mouth and porcelain skin—which was perfect, even after the sneezing.

  “Is there a dog in here?” she asked as she looked around. Again, with the staccato cadence, leading us to mentally hear question marks in the middle. Is? There. A. Dog? In here?

  “Maybe she’s allergic to us,” I said, motioning to Lady Anthea.

  Bess seemed to be intently studying her offspring, but didn’t say anything.

  “We’ll go upstairs,” Roman said and led her up to the third floor. To Sophie he said, “Looks like they’ve been feeding you well at that school.”

  Bess’s face colored at her husband’s mean comment to their daughter. Albert looked from one person to another, seemingly unaware of the strain Roman had left in his wake.

  “Can we see the view from your balcony?” I asked in an attempt to rescue Bess, getting up from my chair.

  “Sure,” Bess answered, giving me a grateful smile for the distraction before she walked over to open the sliding glass door.

  “That would be lovely,” Lady Anthea said.

  The balcony was small but the view across the Bay and down the length of the beach was spectacular. I took in a long, slow breath to recalibrate my senses after the assault by the wall color. When I was ready to reenter the world, I pointed to a nearby spot to our north on the beach. “I ran into Bess right there. Literally. I was jogging and I didn’t see her.”

  “It’s true!” Bess laughed along with Lady Anthea, but it seemed forced. Perhaps she was still embarrassed by what her husband had said, and I wouldn’t have blamed her. “I was meditating and had my eyes closed.”

  “So your daughter goes to public school?” Albert asked, not twigging that we were pretending we hadn’t heard Roman Harper’s cruel comment.

  “No, she goes to a private school in Massachusetts.”

  Lady Anthea said, “Our public schools would be referred to as private schools here, though these days most people refer to them as independent schools to avoid the confusion.” She went on to describe the different types of schools in the United Kingdom.

  We stood and looked out at the view for a few minutes until Lady Anthea asked, “Shall I help you clear the dishes?”

  Her brother followed her inside and I would have gone in also, but Bess stopped me with a hand on my arm. “I’m worried,” she said.

  Good. Finally, I was going to hear something about the murder.

  “Something about Sophie has changed every month since she started going to that school. Now she’s talking like English isn’t her first language. Roman wants her to have everything he couldn’t have as a child.”

  I tried to hide my disappointment at the subject matter, but thought it was good that she was confiding in me. Even better that she wasn’t asking for my advice. “I don’t know anything about children, but maybe she’s just experimenting with who she wants to be.”

  “Maybe,” Bess said.

  She didn’t make a move to go back inside, giving me an opening to ask her about the phone call that she either did or didn’t make, instead of talking about kids or paint colors.

  Before I could get a word out she said, “There’s something I wanted to ask your help with. It’s a legal matter, you see.”

  “Yes?” I tried to keep the hopefulness out of my voice.

  “Can you take care of this speeding ticket your boyfriend gave me?”

  Chapter 15

  The walk back to the Jeep and the drive to Buckingham’s could generously be described as awkward. I tried asking Albert, now in the passenger seat so he could be comfortable, direct questions, to which he gave one-word answers without looking at me. Lady Anthea tried to make conversation from the back seat, without much better luck. We drove at the speed limit along Savannah Road in a line of cars, and what should have been a short drive seemed crazy-slow because of the tension in the car.

  “Isn’t this traffic a little heavy for the off-season?” Lady Anthea asked, gamely.

  “Yes, it is!” I said, my enthusiasm for the topic over-the-top. “These are cars that just disembarked from the ferry.”

  “The ferry!” she said, like we were discussing a promising cure for cancer. She told her brother about the ferry connecting Lewes, Delaware to Cape May, New Jersey. Somewhere in between the factoids of the trip taking eighty minutes and transporting both cars and foot passengers, I stopped listening. She had taken to our little beach town right away. What was with this guy?

  I felt Albert’s eyes on me. He stared at me from the passenger seat like he had something to ask or tell me, but then his expression morphed into that of a sneaky kid with something up his sleeve. I focused on the road ahead and felt sad. Lady Anthea did not deserve this, but you can’t choose your family. Her sense of duty meant she would carry him for as long as they lived.

  We stopped at a red light on the bridge over the canal and I checked my phone for texts or messages. Shelby and Mason had tried to reach me. It seemed they wanted to talk to me, ALONE, both had written, in shouting, capital letters.

  I had planned to ask Albert if he wanted to go to Buckingham’s with Lady Anthea and me, or back to my neighbor’s house. After that text I made the decision for him. I turned right into Villages of Five Points, but passed the Pet Palace and kept driving.

  “Uh, uh,” he sputtered.

  I accelerated and within minutes we were pulling into my neighbor’s driveway.

  I smiled and said, “We’ll pick you up for dinner after we close at seven.”

  He looked back at Lady Anthea, but she twirled her fingers in a wave. “Toodle-oo,” she said.

  He climbed out of the car, and before closing the door begrudgingly grumbled to Lady Anthea, “Toodle-oo.”

  She exhaled a sigh of relief as he walked to the front door and let himself in. “Did you know that’s slang for à tout à l’
heure, which means “see you soon” in French?”

  “Nope, I didn’t,” I said with a laugh. Now that her brother was out of the car I should tell her about the texts from Shelby and Mason, but I didn’t. Instead I asked, “How do you think Georg Nielsen got to Lewes from New York City?”

  “Could he have driven?” she offered.

  I nodded. “Depending on the route, it would take about four hours to get here. So, yeah.”

  “In that case, his car would be here. Maybe Chief Turner could check the streets around where he was found.”

  My phone rang and I could see on the dash screen that it was John. “Hi,” I said. “Lady Anthea and I are headed back to Buckingham’s.”

  He hesitated, then returned my greeting, but his “Hi” seemed off. Like it was a question. One he didn’t want to ask. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up that I’ll be bringing Cordy Galligan in to talk.”

  I rolled my eyes and mouthed to Lady Anthea, “Here we go again.”

  “I know you’re thinking I’m jumping to conclusions,” he said.

  “That’s exactly what I’m thinking. Cordy ended up in DC and Georg Nielsen ended up here.”

  “How do you know she went back to DC?”

  This time Lady Anthea spoke up, since John was about to question one of her music heroines. “She came in today on the bus with the rest of the orchestra.”

  “And her dog,” I added, like this proved anything. “We were wondering how Mr. Nielsen got to Lewes. Did he drive?”

  “He doesn’t have a driver’s license. I’m assuming someone brought him and that’s why I’m bringing Cordy in for a talk.”

  “Nielsen could have taken the ferry.” We were at Buckingham’s and I parked. Lady Anthea opened her door, then saw I hadn’t made a move to get out, and waited. I was stalling for time, using the phone call as my excuse. If what Shelby and Mason wanted to tell me had to be kept from her, I wanted to postpone hearing it.

  “I can go over the ferry passenger list for Saturday night,” John said, “but I’ll still need to talk to Ms. Galligan to piece together his movements.”

  Lady Anthea told him about tea at Bess Harper’s house.

  “Did you find out anything, or were you planning on holding out on me?” he asked.

  “Fair,” I said. “That was the old me.”

  “I know,” he allowed.

  “I can vouch for there being nothing to withhold,” Lady Anthea said. “We learned nothing.”

  “I’m not so sure. It seemed to me that house held a lot of secrets.” I told him about learning that Bess’s husband was the man involved in the near-altercation with Charles Andrews. “I’m not sure what to make of Bess.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Her husband makes the decisions on everything from paint colors to their child’s school. She disagrees but it seems like she doesn’t have a say in any of it. Lady Anthea, did you get the same impression?”

  “Not really,” she said. “They seemed like a normal family.” I looked at her, wondering how our take on the Harper family dynamics could be so far apart. I wondered if she had noticed it, too. “Sue, what you saw was compromise,” she said as soon as we said our goodbyes and hung up with John.

  “I think both Bess and Roman Harper are under that general anesthesia known as money.”

  “Are you sure this doesn’t have anything to do with how you feel about marriage?” she asked.

  Chapter 16

  Lady Anthea had a routine of walking in the afternoon in England, and most days she did the same in Lewes. Shelby, Mason, Joey and I huddled around the reception desk to talk.

  Shelby began. “Duke called here and said he wanted copies of our profit and loss sheet. We think that’s the same as a profit and loss statement.”

  “He told me the same on the ride back from BWI,” Mason said apologetically.

  They waited for me to say something. “You mean Albert?”

  Three heads nodded. “Does he know what that is?” I asked.

  They shrugged.

  “We have a profit and loss statement?” I asked.

  “We have bank statements,” Shelby said.

  “And tax records,” I added.

  “Maybe the accountant has it?” Joey asked.

  “Beats me,” I said. “Lady Anthea hasn’t said anything about this.” I remembered how I’d found her on Sunday, looking preoccupied and a little anxious. Was this why? Wouldn’t she have given me a warning? “Did he say why he wanted it?”

  “I asked him and he said he wanted to conduct an accounting, which I think is the same as an audit,” Mason answered. “I told him you were probably the best business person I’ve ever known.”

  “I appreciate that. What did he say?”

  “Nothing,” Mason answered.

  “I think that’s why he asked me next,” Shelby said. “Lady Anthea hasn’t said anything about that?”

  I shook my head. “We’re a small business, growing every year, and in the black every year. It’ll be fine.”

  “I’m afraid for my beloved filing system,” Shelby said.

  “Let’s kill two dukes with one stone,” I said. “Tell him he can have a meeting with our accountant. That’ll keep him busy and out of our hair until the case is solved.”

  “Whew,” Joey said, relieved. “He would make a mess and I doubt he would know what he was looking at.” He, Shelby and Dana had set up and refined a system for computer records and hard copies so that any employee could step in and work at reception when needed for check-in or checkout. Everyone did his or her part to keep order.

  “We have a lot of dogs coming through here every day and errors are almost nonexistent, thanks to our system. We’ve got to keep him— Shhh, here comes Lady Anthea,” Shelby said.

  Mason turned to go back to the grooming suite and motioned for Joey to go with him.

  “Wait!” I said. “Nothing’s changed in our relationship with Lady Anthea. She’s our friend. And she’s my business partner, not him. We can’t let Albert come in between us and we certainly won’t let him alter the way we run Buckingham’s. If he brings it up again, tell him to see me.”

  My cell phone rang as she came in.

  John launched into the reason for his call. “Nielsen wasn’t listed as buying a ticket for the ferry on Saturday night. I’ve been looking at the onboard security camera footage in case he was a passenger in someone else’s car.”

  I interrupted him. “You sound so stressed.” The silence on the line lasted long enough for me to suspect he’d hung up. I looked at my phone and the timer clicked off seconds. “Are you there?”

  “Uh, yeah. I can’t seem to catch a break on this case. Every case has an entry point. There’s always something the perpetrator did wrong that becomes a piece of evidence that leads to another, then another, but not this case. Usually there’s some loose thread to pull on.”

  “You have two loose threads. You know that Bess Harper called Nick Knightley on Saturday night. And you know that Cordy Galligan saw Georg Nielsen on the day he was murdered,” I reminded him. Or was I trying to reassure myself? I couldn’t tell him how badly I needed him to solve the murders, because I’d gone from seeing the hand with the gun next to my face when I closed my eyes to feeling the pressure of his hand holding my head underwater and his knee on my back.

  “Neither one is enough to make an arrest,” he said. “Anyway, I found him on the video footage, and at one point it appears a woman is talking to him but it’s hard to tell, and even if he is, I have no way to ID her. See what I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No Elvis wisdom for me this time?”

  “No-o-o,” I said.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

  “Everything has led back to the Potomac Symphony Orchestra. Everything. I
was thinking that Lady Anthea might have some insight if she saw the footage of Georg Nielsen on the ferry.”

  “There’s not much to go on, I warn you, but do you two want to come in and look at the video? I mean, unless you’re going to be with Lady Anthea’s brother?”

  “What time should we be there?” I asked.

  Chapter 17

  I told Lady Anthea about John’s request and she readily agreed to come with me to the station. I was hoping she would bring up the subject of her brother’s request to go over our books and maybe even open up about what was behind it, but we both were quiet for the drive to downtown Lewes. That wasn’t like us. Could she have questions about how her share of the profits was calculated? If yes, why hadn’t she said so?

  “I hope you’ll try to get to know my brother this week,” she said, finally.

  The comment surprised me. Surely, she’d noticed how arctic he’d been. I mumbled a meaningless, “Mmm,” before shifting the subject a little. “How did Bess know where to find Albert to bring him to the press conference?”

  “I have no idea. Did I mention where I was taking him when I extracted him from Buckingham’s?” she asked. She turned in her seat to face me.

  “No, you said you had dropped off the luggage and that you’d walk. That would have told her the general location, but it’s a big subdivision.”

  I parked and as we walked to the door she said, “Let’s ask him at dinner tonight.”

  John walked across the lobby and ushered us to a nondescript meeting room. His touch was so light I could have imagined his fingertips on my back, if it hadn’t been for the way his eyes lingered on mine. We sat at a round wooden table and Lady Anthea and I swiveled our chairs to face the laptop computer, situated to give all three of us a good angle for viewing. He dropped his cell phone on the table and pulled the keyboard and mouse closer. The movement woke the screen and he clicked to play the video.

  “Did you just keep looking until you found a guy wearing a tuxedo?” I asked.