by Susan Conant
“And pretty soon, they were showering together,” I said.
“So to speak,” Al agreed. “And she used his computer. That’s how she knew where to find the two of you.” He nodded at Holly and me. “We’re looking at the computer now. I’ll bet we’ll find a long history about you two.”
Looking embarrassed, Zach Ho said, “She said she was escaping from an abusive relationship. From what I can tell, she was the one—”
“Not really,” Al said. “Grant had made her big promises about getting rich. And all she was getting were trips to the L.L.Bean Outlet in Ellsworth. Wal-Mart.”
Holly Winter threw me a look that said, I told you so. She hadn’t, of course. Her solution to the puzzle had been ridiculous. Still, she’d been right about some of the pieces; she’d just put them together in the wrong way.
“And meanwhile,” Al continued, “Grant had set up a little meth lab, and he was dealing, but he still was small-time. That’s when he came to our attention. Then he started using. He’d get agitated and paranoid. So Calvin says. As far as we can tell, her main objection was that he wasn’t taking care of business. And she liked Calvin better. So the plan was that the two of them would take things over. But she jumped the gun, if you ask me. This is guesswork, but Calvin has a boat, and I’d bet that their plan was to take Grant out and dump him overboard. Nobody’d have missed him.”
“But?” I asked.
“Calvin says that Grant hadn’t slept for three nights straight. Meth’ll do that. And then he got paranoid and went for his dog. The way Calvin tells it, Holly was protecting the dog. If you ask me, she tried to kill Grant. There’s no way to prove it, but that was probably the plan all along, and she jumped the gun. I think she left him for dead.”
“Exactly when was that?” I asked. “I’m still unclear about the chronology.”
“August twenty-eighth. Or thereabouts.”
Zach Ho said, “That’s when she got to Cambridge. Or that’s what she said. It’s when I met her. My house sitter had backed out the day before, and I was leaving the next day. We started talking. The problem was the dog. Well, not the dog. I like dogs. The problem was this damned asthma. I couldn’t have a dog in the house. Vacuuming and filters won’t take care of it. I couldn’t have lived here again for months. But we worked things out with Mellie. She’s only two doors away.”
Kudos to Zach! He’d managed to get through that part of the story without embarrassing himself and the rest of us.
I said, “You two know each other. You and Holly. When you heard that her name, the woman’s name, was Holly Winter, did you say something?”
“I just said that I knew someone else with the same name.”
“Any more than that?” Holly asked imperiously.
“No,” he said. “Look, I can’t say how sorry I am. There’s no excuse. Poor judgment doesn’t begin to—”
No one spoke up to claim that he’d used great judgment, but Al said that the murder victim had known about the other two Holly Winters before she’d arrived in Cambridge, and I said that since Cambridge is a city that feels like a small town, the chances were excellent that she’d have run into someone who knew one of us, anyway. “After all,” I said, “we were the reason she picked Cambridge rather than Boston or somewhere else. She came to Cambridge because of us.” Holly Winter probably wanted to say that a piece of trailer trash would’ve been unlikely to cross paths with any of her friends, but she had the sense to keep quiet, possibly because it was precisely what had happened.
Al picked up the story. “So, Zach, you left the next day.”
“August twenty-ninth. Tuesday.”
“I was still abroad,” Holly Winter said. “I didn’t get back until September fifth. A week later. So she had a whole week to—”
My strong impulse was to tell her to shut up, but I tried to imagine what Rita would say. “A great deal of what she did is infuriating.” I added, “Maybe we need to acknowledge that she betrayed Zach’s trust and that she intruded into our lives in ways we didn’t deserve.”
“Thank you, Holly,” Zach said. “Al?”
“So, it wasn’t until that Thursday, the thirty-first, that Grant got to the hospital.”
“He said that he was alone for three days before he crawled out to the road,” I explained.
Al nodded. “He had multiple injuries, including the skull fracture. The hospital kept him until Labor Day. September fourth.”
Holly reached into a leather briefcase and extracted a sheaf of papers. The one on top had a gigantic red “No” symbol, a circle with a diagonal line, boldly plastered across a picture of Winnie the Pooh. If Winnie the Pooh was a media character, then Piglet presumably was, too. And if Piglet, what of Pink Piggy? The name was one Steve and I had invented; there were no Pink Piggy movies or TV shows or computer games. Even so, were we arresting Sammy’s development and stifling his creativity by giving him a colorful pig invented by Dr. Noy instead presenting him with off-white fleece balls and other neutral lumps for his fertile mind to transform into creatures of his imagination?
But Holly replaced the media-free material in her briefcase and read from a single sheet of paper. “‘Delayed presentation of a massive sub-capsular haematoma of the spleen,’” she intoned as if the medical report were sacred text. “This is a case report about a man who fell down a manhole. His chest X-ray was normal. He was sent home. Then he developed a painful lump, and three weeks later he was diagnosed with an occult rupture of the spleen.”
Zach Ho, who was, after all, a doctor, looked a little perplexed, but I understood. I use the Web to look up diseases and ailments, too. I do it even after Steve has told me what’s wrong with the animal I’m worried about or after he’s told me that there’s nothing wrong except my hypochondria by proxy.
“Thank you, Holly,” Al said. “It looks like that’s what happened. So, Grant was discharged on Labor Day. Meanwhile, Holly was staying here, and to be on the safe side, she was calling Calvin strictly from pay phones. She was careful. So, Calvin filled her in on Grant, and they were both worried that he’d rat on them or go after her. But she wasn’t so careful about the truck.”
“I warned her,” Zach said.
Al said, “Street cleaning was on August thirty-first. Thursday. On the even side of the street. She couldn’t have bailed out the truck without ID. It wasn’t her truck. Grant was still in the hospital. He got out the next Monday, Labor Day, and he went home, and the day after that, he got the impound notice.”
“With an address,” I said. “On this street. Right near here.”
“And he went apeshit,” Al resumed. “He must’ve. He was supposed to take it easy, and what he did was jump on his old Harley and beat it to the address on the notice. We don’t know exactly what happened then. He found this house. Maybe he looked through windows. When he got in, we don’t know what he did first. Tried to get her to tell him where his money was? And the meth she’d taken?”
“And his dog,” I said.
“That, too. He tore up the place. And he shot her. In what order, we don’t know. Everything was down the street at Mellie’s, of course. Cash, meth, all of it packed in those dog toys.”
“Shooting her might’ve been what scared him away,” Zach said. “He sounds like a guy who wasn’t used to near neighbors. No one heard the shots, but someone could’ve. That might’ve occurred to him and sent him running. And there’s the ruptured spleen. He must’ve been in pain. Feeling weak.”
“Well, he made it back home,” Al said. “Checked himself into the hospital the next day. Had his spleen out. He was there until this past Monday.”
“And we know what he did after that,” I said. “And Calvin. Holly had been calling him. She must’ve told him where she was. Then she stopped calling. He was worried.”
“Calvin’s not a guy who does a lot of reading,” Al said. “Basically, none. And a low-profile murder in Massachusetts doesn’t make the TV news in Washington County, Maine.”
> I asked, “But why did they show up at almost the same time?”
“They didn’t,” Al said. “Calvin had been hanging around since Sunday, staying at a motel out on Soldiers Field Road. He thought she might’ve gone somewhere, and he kept checking to see if she’d come back. He must’ve heard Grant’s voice. Grant was shouting at Mellie just before Calvin came in.”
“Mellie,” Zach said. “The worst thing I’ve done is to get her involved in this mess.”
I feel compelled to leap beyond the narrative moment to comment that one of the things I liked about Zach Ho was his guilt, which was somewhat justified. Despite his peculiar attachment patterns or sexual oddities or whatever you want to call them, I liked and admired him and wanted him for a friend. As it turns out, Steve and I have had dinner with him a few times, not at our dog-saturated, asthma-triggering house, but once at his place and once in a restaurant. Holly Winter has not accompanied us; Zach has no interest in her. I have been thinking about introducing Zach and Rita to each other, but I haven’t done it yet, mainly because I can’t decide whether to try fixing them up or whether to send him to her for therapy.
“Zach, please stop blaming yourself,” I said and added somewhat mendaciously, “If you think about it, it’s really the city that’s responsible. If it weren’t for this draconian policy about towing and impounding cars, Grant wouldn’t have known where Holly was. And Mellie is doing okay. If she’d told the full truth to begin with, we’d all have known what was going on. Not that that’s a reasonable expectation. She did what she thought was right. She sees things in black and white. She promised Holly not to tell anything to anyone, and she kept her promise. Yes, she was terrified, but we all were.”
“You less than others,” Holly Winter said.
“I was petrified,” I said. “But Mellie is recovering. She has wonderful friends, and she has her religion. And I’m helping her to look for a new dog.”
“The husky?” Zach Ho asked.
“Malamute,” I said reflexively. “No, it’s the wrong breed for Mellie.”
Maybe another Boston terrier, like Lily. Or a pug. A Border terrier? A mini poodle was an excellent possibility. Or a bichon, like Gabrielle’s Molly. Gabrielle might know a good breeder with a retired show dog in need of a pet home. Or possibly a mixed-breed dog, a medium-sized terrier cross? Or a sheltie! Yes, a sheltie or a sheltie mix with bright eyes and a lively personality. Mellie would enjoy the ritual of daily brushing, and she’d have fun with a dog who’d like learning tricks. My spirits rose. Until then, I’d found the debriefing informative but depressing. In particular, it was sad to realize that Zach was barred by asthma from the life-affirming experience of owning a dog and had to settle for tropical fish. As to his “eye for the ladies,” to use Francie’s phrase, I thought that his habit of picking up strange women in a health-food market placed him more in Rita’s territory than in mine; in other words, I thought he was crazy. Here he was, a gorgeous, intelligent doctor who devoted himself to helping desperately needy people in third world countries. And his sex life consisted of one-night stands with sushi eaters? And then there was Holly Winter, whose efforts to attract him consisted of softening her appearance without…well, I’m doomed to sound like Rita, here: Holly had softened her appearance while leaving the inner person frozen and sharp. But the prospect of finding just the right dog for Mellie? I was elated. Francie had told me that Mellie had special needs. Francie had been right. Mellie’s special needs included the best special need of all: the urgent need for the right dog. For someone else with that need, Streak was waiting. Interested? Visit www.malamuterescue.org. That’s the Web site of the Alaskan Malamute Assistance League. It has links to our affiliates all over the United States. Maybe one of them has a dog who is waiting for you.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I said, “I’d better be going. There are some phone calls I have to make. Things I have to do. Zach, thank you for having us here. This actually has been a healing experience.”
CHAPTER 36
On Saturday afternoon at three thirty, Steve called me on his cell phone. This time, he had no trouble reaching me. He was on the Mass. Pike, only a half hour from home. I felt like a teenager waiting for a boy she has a crush on. I’d cleaned the house, filled the cupboards and refrigerator with food, moved the van so that the ruined window faced away from our house, brushed the dogs, taken a shower, dried my hair, applied a little makeup, and put on good clothes—not a dress and certainly not high heels, but clean jeans that fit well and a heavy cotton sweater with happy colors and a pattern that suited me. As a matter of fact, it had come from L.L.Bean. Actually, from the Bean’s outlet in Ellsworth, Maine. So, I did have a few things in common with the Holly who’d been murdered. L.L.Bean. The love of dogs. She had not been an admirable person, but she had loved a dog, a malamute, a member of my own breed. Therefore, she had redeemed herself.
And the living Holly? The other? Eager to welcome Steve home, I took Rowdy, Kimi, and Sammy out to the yard. I’d intended to spend the time planning how to tell Steve about everything that had happened in his absence. I’d thought about telling him on the phone, but I’d decided to wait for his return. As it was, as Rowdy, Kimi, Sammy, and I awaited the man we loved, I found myself diverted by the sudden recollection of my image of Holly Winter as a person trapped on a narrow rock ledge, a person inaccessible and paralyzed by fear. And I finally understood who she was and, in a new way, who I am. She was who I might have become if it weren’t for my special need. Yes, there but for the grace of dogs was this Holly Winter.
The dogs recognized the sound of the car before I even heard the engine, and by the time I was unlocking the gate to the driveway, the air was ringing with Rowdy’s basso profundo, Sammy’s alto, and Kimi’s spine-tingling contralto. I slipped out, closed the gate, and heard Lady’s excited whines and India’s big-girl woofs. Steve was tan and bug-bitten and infinitely desirable. He was wonderfully mine. He surrounded me with his arms and his warmth, and I buried my head in his chest.
Over the caroling of the dogs, he said, “You look beautiful. I’ve missed you so much. Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine. Except…there was a slight, uh, accident involving your van.”
He laughed. “How slight?”
“Not very. Rowdy went through that rear window that’s been rattling.”
“What was he doing loose in the van?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it.”
And now I have.
