Play Dead

by Leslie O'Kane

  Russell got me the Boulder directory, and, to my delight, I found the listing for Stuart Perlyon. An elderly sounding woman answered on the third ring.

  “Hi. My name is Allida Babcock. I’m a dog psychologist here in town. You don’t know me, but—”

  “Then why are you calling me?” she snapped.

  I winced and tried again. “I’m renting a room at the house you used to own on North Street, and I need to know if you had installed a dog door at that residence.”

  “Oh, yes. I thought when you said you were a dog psychologist, you meant there was a problem with my poodle.”

  “No, I haven’t met your poodle. Did you install a dog door at your former residence?”

  “I already told you. Yes. Heaven knows we’ve had enough of this particular conversation with the people who bought the house from us.”

  “With Kaitlyn Wayne?”

  “No, with her husband. After they bought the place, some squirrel got into their house through the door. Her husband hounded us for months, saying we owed them a new door. He said he couldn’t stand animals and didn’t want the door. Even though we legally didn’t have to, we finally got so sick of his calls, we sent him a check. You know what? Our friends that live behind the house told us he never replaced the door.”

  “Huh. That’s very helpful information. Thank you so much for your time.” I hung up, feeling greatly relieved.

  Russell had been fishing through an inch-thick stack of bank statements. “Know what?” he asked. “Bill Wayne’s lying. Looks as though he cleared out their joint accounts when he left. She did have a batch of money in a savings account under the name Kaitlyn Feroska, which she moved to another bank right around the time all of her joint accounts were being depleted.”

  “Let me guess. Three years ago?”

  “Right.”

  I scanned the documentation myself, my jaw clenched in anger at Bill’s having manipulated me. “So, he’s trying to get half of what little he left her—money she came into the marriage with. What a scumbag. And he wound up tricking me into sinking to his level.”

  We returned everything to its hiding place. “Now comes the hard part,” I said. “I need to tell her about my sneaking a look at her private papers, and warn her about what Bill’s been up to.”

  “Didn’t she throw a can at your head the last time you tried that?”

  I’d shared that story with Russell on our way over here, but ignored his warning now and dialed Kaitlyn’s work number. I told her where I was and that I had “something important to discuss” with her. She agreed to meet me at the house in half an hour, telling me to “make myself at home.” That was something I hadn’t managed even while living here, but I thanked her and hung up. She must’ve forgotten that she now had my key and should’ve wondered how I’d let myself inside.

  Russell’s stomach growled. He glanced surreptitiously at his watch, then at the refrigerator. “I’d better wait here with you.”

  “Thanks, but why don’t you go get yourself some lunch? I’d rather talk to her alone. This is going to be painful enough for her without witnesses.”

  “Don’t you think you might need some witnesses, in case she lashes out at you again?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll be fine. I’ll see you at the office later.”

  “How? We drove here together in my car.”

  “I’ll get a ride from Kaitlyn, or I’ll walk. It’s only two miles.”

  After insisting, despite my protestations, that he was going to come back in half an hour and give me a ride, Russell left. Kaitlyn arrived not five minutes later. I had already cleared any obvious hurlable objects from reach. I sat her down at the table and told her about Bill’s visit, and how I’d located her papers in reaction to his assertions. For once, she didn’t burst into tears or shout at me, but rather, listened in stunned silence.

  When I’d given her the full story, she stayed silent for a long time. Finally, she said quietly, “I can’t believe any of this.”

  “It’s the truth, Kaitlyn. I’m sorry.”

  She sunk her head in her hands and stayed motionless.

  “Kaitlyn, why are you trying to hang on to him?”

  She straightened, the flash of anger back in her eyes. “He’s my life’s partner! I need him!”

  “No, you don’t. You’ve gotten by completely on your own for three years now. You made the house payments by yourself all that time. You supported yourself completely. You made a life for yourself. You don’t need to take this abuse from him.”

  She averted her eyes and sat with her lips pursed for a minute or Two. Finally she said, “You’re right. I’ve wasted years of my life on a man that sees me as a meal ticket. That money was mine, and it was all I had left. He wiped out all of our joint accounts. Next he’s going to force me to sell, and I won’t even have a place to live.”

  As she spoke, I remembered something. “A couple of childless friends of mine got divorced last year in Colorado. She told me that the judge split all of their assets right down the middle. If he emptied out your checking account to buy himself a new car, that car counts toward his half of your mutual assets.”

  “But... he always said cars were a waste of money. He drives some beat-up old Chevy Nova.”

  “Not anymore. He’s driving a brand new Mercedes convertible.”

  Kaitlyn smiled broadly and reached over the table to squeeze my hand. “Oh, my God! That’s worth almost as much as my little house!”

  “Which would mean, depending on equity, you get the house, he gets the car.”

  “If what you’re saying is true, I might not have to sell my home!” She leapt out of her chair and punched a fist into the air. “Oh, Allida. This is the greatest news I’ve gotten since Bill moved out! Know how I’m going to celebrate?”

  So now Bill’s moving out had been good news? Quite the emotional reversal on her part, but I learned to expect as much from her. “By calling a window- repair service?”

  “No, I already did that. I’m going to buy myself a puppy! One that looks just as much like your Doppler as I can find. And guess who I’m going to hire to train it?”

  In a moment of truth, I realized that I really did believe Kaitlyn. For all of her idiosyncrasies—bizarre as they may be—I truly could not believe she would hurt a puppy. “I’d be happy to help you train your puppy, but, Kaitlyn, they take a lot of patience. You can’t just, oh, for example, hurl a can at its head when it does something wrong.”

  “I know that. I’ve done some thinking, and I realize I really do need some help getting control of my emotions. Do you have any fellow psychologists you’d like to recommend?”

  I smiled at the thought of referring her to a dog psychologist. “Not offhand, but don’t let that stop you. Also, please remember you have to wait until after the divorce is finalized. Otherwise the puppy will be half Bill’s.”

  “No way I’d let that animal hater near my puppy. I’ll tell you that much right now.”

  That evening, I drove to the senior center where the vegetarian cooking classes were held. I arrived early and got the chance to speak with Naomi Smith, who was already in the kitchen, chopping celery and some long, green vegetable I couldn’t identity. Naomi was a pretty woman with a ready smile. She was not much older than I and her hair was about my shade of light brown, but she was considerably taller. No surprise there.

  I introduced myself and explained how I’d come to meet Beth Gleason. “I’m concerned about the possible connection between Hannah Jones’s death and Beth Gleason’s, who took this class from Hannah a few months ago.”

  “Ah, yes. I remember Beth. I was saddened to learn about her senseless murder.”

  “What was Beth’s relationship with Hannah?”

  Naomi gave a small shrug. “Oh, Beth seemed to want Hannah to mentor her. Beth was a flake, but a reasonably nice one. Hannah liked her more than I did, probably because Beth was so complimentary about Hannah’s dog, which was the fast lane to Hannah’s
heart. Beth was just so spacey, I could only tolerate her in small doses.”

  That didn’t tell me much, except perhaps to verify Susan Coming’s version of Beth and Hannah’s relationship. “What about Hannah? What was she like?”

  Naomi gave me a sad smile and resumed her chopping. “She was one classy lady, believe me. Though she did have a terrible temper. You should’ve heard the way she screamed at a student for whapping her dog on the nose one time. Hannah booted her out of class and nearly slapped her.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t know if I believe she took her own life. I mean, you can’t know a person well enough to be certain about something like that. But I do know that Hannah had a lot to live for. She told me she was investing in a start-up company; her leukemia was in remission. Nothing could have surprised me more than her so-called suicide.”

  Others had begun to file in, greeting Naomi as they took places around the long kitchen counter. I thanked her and sat in the corner of the kitchen, my mind drifting as she worked with eight students of a wide variety of ages. The oldest students were in their late seventies, at least—a couple—him tall and thin, her short and not thin. They argued ceaselessly about who was to do the chopping versus the measuring and actual cooking.

  Afterwards, while we all shared a small portion of the output of the class—ratatouille—I chose to sit at the elderly couple’s table, largely because I noticed several long, dark hairs on their pant legs that looked suspiciously like dog hair.

  I introduced myself, and the woman gave me a big smile. “I’m Eudora Finch, and this is my husband, Harry Finch.”

  “You don’t need to give both full names like that, Dora,” Harry growled over his plate. “You could’ve just said, ‘We’re Eudora and Harry Finch.’ She’d ‘ve figured out which of us was which.”

  Eudora sat with pursed lips till he finished, then said pleasantly, “My husband, Harry, is the grouchy old man sitting across from us. What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a dog behaviorist.”

  Her eyes widened, and she glanced at her husband, who had stopped eating to stare at me. “Did you hear that, Harry?”

  “‘Course I heard that! I’m two feet away, for cryin’ out loud!”

  Undaunted, she beamed at me with slightly yellow but perfectly straight teeth. “You are a godsend!” She wrapped both of her dry hands around my forearm. “We need you to help us. Our dog has stopped eating.”

  Chapter 18

  Every nerve ending in my body snapped to attention. “Your dog stopped eating? Entirely?”

  “Oh, well, no,” Eudora said. “Not entirely. She just stopped eating her dog food. She’ll eat hamburger and the scrapings off our plates.”

  “When did this start?”

  “Last month,” Harry said, shoveling the last of his food into his mouth.

  “We weren’t worried about it at first,” Eudora said. “We just assumed she liked her other dog food so much better that she was holding out for that.”

  “You mean, you’d purchased another brand of food that your dog liked better?”

  “Yes, precisely. But the salesman disappeared on us, and there’s none of his product in the pet stores yet, though we keep looking and hoping.”

  Harry growled at his wife, “Told you now that Hannah was dead, we’d never find that brand in a store, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  “What did Hannah have to do with the dog food?” I asked him.

  “Clean up time,” Naomi Smith called. All of the students dutifully got up—not counting me. “Who’s on broom duty?” Naomi asked.

  Since nobody leapt to the forefront, I decided that “broom duty” was the very least I should do for auditing a class and eating their food. I raised my hand.

  Harry took the opportunity of my having my hand in the air to whisk my plate off the table, though I wasn’t done. Everyone cleaned remarkably fast, and by the time I’d swept the floor, only the Finches and I remained. Harry was standing in the doorway by then, urging us to hurry.

  “How did you meet this salesman, Eudora?” I asked as Harry turned out the light just before we could reach the door.

  “Right here. In class. Oh, he seemed like such a nice young man. And it was all natural, fresh ingredients. High on protein, and yet meat-free. He called it Dog TOFUd. Get it? He spelled it ‘tofu,’ in capital letters, then with a small d.”

  Eudora and I walked slowly down the hall, side by side, while Harry strode in front of us, occasionally glancing back with his face set in a scowl, shaking his head. We soon passed the exit where my car was parked and continued down the long corridor.

  “He was all set to have his Dog TOFUd company backed by Hannah Jones,” she went on. “It’s a vegetarian dog food that’s so good, he said our dog would choose it over her regular brand in a taste test. ‘Course, we’re no fools. We checked it out with Hannah, and she said she was feeding it to her own dog. She owned an adorable collie named Sage. She was going to invest millions for him to produce it, and Harry and I were to buy a lifetime supply, plus get stock options on the ground floor for a mere ten thousand dollars. Guaranteed to triple their worth in two years.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Misty. Only she’s a female.”

  I looked at her in confusion, then realized she thought I was asking for her dog’s name. “No, I mean what was the salesman’s name?”

  She let out a puff of air. “Heavens. I can’t remember. I’m not even sure he ever told us.” She cleared her throat, then called to her husband, already half the length of the hallway ahead of us, “Harry? What was the salesman’s name?”

  He turned, hitched his brown pants higher on his waist to reveal more of his white socks, and said, “Damned if I know.” He turned the corner. “You two coming?”

  Eudora gave him a wave to indicate that, yes, we were coming—had he been able to see the gesture, that is. We turned the corner of the sprawling, one-story senior center. “I was pretty skeptical at first. Then he demonstrated it right in our own apartment, and sure enough, Misty chose Dog TOFUd over her own brand.”

  And, I thought sourly, I’ll bet the salesman managed to make their own dog food repugnant during the process of this taste test.

  “We gave him a check, made out to his company name, and he gave us a four-week supply. Then he suddenly stopped coming to class, and we still can’t find him.”

  “Did you report this to the police?”

  She sighed. “No. Not yet. We were...starting to think he scammed us, and we didn’t want to admit to being the typical, foolish old folks. Kept thinking he’d come back. Will you help us train Misty to eat regular dog food again?”

  “Yes.” And my treatment program was going to be pro bono to make up, in a small measure, for the con man. We were dealing with a scam artist here, preying on the elderly dog owners of the community. He had some routine going where he surreptitiously poured a repellent on the owner’s dog food and brought in his own vegetarian brand.

  If he’d mistaken Hannah Jones as being gullible or feebleminded enough to fall for this ruse and she’d later caught on, perhaps this explained both the tainted dog food and her violent death. Hannah could have been on to his ploy. Perhaps the concept of his having done something so harmful as ruining her beloved dog’s food made her so irate she grabbed her gun to threaten him, and things escalated from there.

  Furthermore, perhaps Beth, as a former member of the vegetarian cooking class, happened to spot him while she was walking her dog. When Sage started barking at him, she put two and two together, and he killed her to keep her from revealing his identity.

  We rounded a second corner and started down yet another long hallway. I’d realized from having seen the outside that this building was large, but this was beginning to feel as though we were traversing the Pentagon. Up ahead of us, Harry now fumbled with the lock to an apartment. A black toy poodle zipped out the door before it was fully opened and slid across the newly waxed
floor, paws spread wide, but came to a skittering stop in front of Eudora.

  “How is my little girl?” she cooed as she ran her fingers through the tight curls on the dog’s head. She turned to me and said, “Misty, this is...oh, dear, I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Babcock,” her husband called out from inside the apartment. “Allida Babcock.”

  “Yes, and this is Misty.” Eudora held the little dog, who started sniffing, up to me.

  “Don’t just stand there blocking the door,” came Harry’s voice. “Let her inside before the flies escape.”

  I raised my eyebrows at this last phrase, but Eudora clicked her tongue and gave her husband a dismissive gesture. She murmured to me, “That’s Harry’s idea of a joke. We don’t have flies.”

  “No, but we will have if you stand there with the door open all the time.”

  Eudora marched inside to bicker with her husband, to wit, that he was “an impatient old grouch” and she was “a glue-footed slowpoke.” I observed Misty in the meantime. She didn’t look undernourished, though she would be eventually if all she ate were the Finches’ leftovers. The air inside their small apartment had a certain unpleasant scent to it that I didn’t want to mentally analyze, but otherwise the atmosphere was quite pleasant. The furnishings were sturdy and yet nice, augmented with personal bric-a-brac and pictures.

  Eudora showed me to Misty’s food dish, full of kibble. I scratched the kibble with a nail and then tasted. My mouth was filled with a bitter taste. I explained about the dog repellent to the Finches, then asked if they could please describe the salesman.

  They exchanged glances. “Well, let’s see,” Eudora began. “He was tall, thin, and had a heavy beard. Brown. He had brown hair.”

  He had a beard a month ago? Joel Meyer! “And how old would you say he was?”

  “Oh, twenties. Thirties.”

  I glanced at Harry, who was shaking his head. “I’d call him chunky. Almost fat. No way was he thin. Really wasn’t that tall, either. And he wasn’t a day younger than forty. Plus, he was clean-shaven. But she was right about the hair.”