Dead Canaries Don't Sing

by Cynthia Baxter

“Excuse me?”

  “Around here, we call her Peaches. As in Peaches N. Cream. Y’know, her stage name.”

  “Is, uh, Peaches around?”

  “You’re in luck. She just came in to pick up her check.”

  He continued looking at me in a way that really gave me the creeps. I had a feeling he was trying to picture how I’d look with my legs wrapped around something long, hard, and one hundred percent synthetic.

  “Could you please tell her I’d like to talk to her?”

  “Tell her yourself. She’s in back.”

  With his thumb, he gestured inside. Peering in that direction, I saw a wooden platform shaped like a half-circle, jutting out into a small room crammed with tiny tables. On one side of the makeshift stage, there was a curtained doorway.

  “Go ahead,” he urged. “Nobody’s gonna bite you. Unless you want—”

  “Thanks,” I said hastily.

  You never know where life will take you, I reminded myself as I walked gingerly through the Silk ’N’ Satin Lounge, afraid of what I might step in. The air was thick with something I couldn’t identify. Testosterone, maybe.

  Even though I would have preferred not to touch anything, I had no choice but to push aside the curtain, which turned out to be black velvet. I found myself in a narrow hallway. Through the doorway to my left, I could see a metal desk covered with papers. The business office, no doubt, the heart and soul of the operation, if an operation like this possessed either. A second door, to my right, was decorated with a flimsy star cut out of aluminum foil.

  “Claudia?” I called. My voice sounded annoyingly high-pitched.

  “Whaddya want?” a voice even higher than mine called back.

  My heart pounded as I swung open the dressing room door. I was imagining all kinds of bizarre scenarios involving G-strings, inflatable objects, and body positions out of the Kama Sutra.

  So I was startled to find an ordinary-looking woman perched on a stool, writing in a checkbook register.

  She glanced up. “You looking for me?”

  Claudia Martin was dressed in gray sweatpants and a sweater I’d recently seen at Old Navy. Her hair, dyed the same light blond as Barbara’s, was pulled up in a haphazard knot and held in place with a plastic clip. Her face had an unexpectedly fresh look, as if she’d just washed it. But even without the Halloween makeup, I recognized her as the woman in the photograph out front, the one dressed in a python and very little else.

  “Ms. Martin, I’m Dr. Jessica Popper. I’m a veterinarian, and I’m working with Dr. Scruggs—”

  “Oh, sure. Doc Scruggs is the best. He’s cute, too. But I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  I forced a smile. “Anyway, he asked me to stop in and make sure that everything was okay. With your snake, I mean. It’s been a while since you’ve brought him in.”

  Claudia shook her head. “Isn’t he just the sweetest guy in the world? You tell him everything is just fine. Jasper and Clarence are both doing terrific. But that is so like Doc Scruggs to be concerned. One time, when I’d only had Jasper, like, a couple of weeks, his eyes got all cloudy. I totally freaked. I figured I wouldn’t even be able to go on that night, because it was making him so cranky. Pythons sure get fussy when they’re not feeling so great. Anyway, Doc Scruggs saw him right away. He explained to me that he was just shedding. I felt, like, a zillion times better. I brought Jasper on stage with me and he did just great.”

  Beaming like a proud mother, she gestured across the room. “Isn’t he the cutest little python you’ve ever seen?”

  I took in the dressing room, a cramped, windowless space with a Formica counter, a blurred mirror, and a few hooks. The counter was littered with makeup and beauty products, a can of glitter hair spray, boxes of temporary tattoos, and a huge stack of false eyelashes. Limp bits of fabric, not one of them larger than a washcloth, dangled from the hooks. Some were shiny, some decorated with sequins or feathers. Most were nearly transparent.

  Pushed into one corner was an enormous glass tank. Inside, two snakes were wrapped around each other as if they were the best of friends.

  “Jasper and Clarence,” I observed. “Are they, uh, both yours?”

  “They are now. One of them belonged to a friend of mine, but she’s out of the business.” Claudia rolled her eyes. “She’s moved on to bigger and better things.”

  Time for the $64,000 question.

  “That friend wasn’t Barbara Delmonico, was it?”

  “Sure was,” Claudia replied matter-of-factly. “She was good, too. You can’t imagine what that girl could do with a boa constrictor.”

  I was certain I couldn’t, and frankly, I preferred it that way. But what was more exciting was the fact that my suspicions were correct: Tommee Frack’s fiancée wasn’t even close to what she claimed to be.

  “So I guess she’s not really an ex-stockbroker whose parents are both doctors.”

  “Hah! You actually believed that? Well, don’t feel bad. So did just about everybody else she fed that line of crap to—pardon my French.” Claudia shrugged. “But I don’t hold it against her. I mean, it’s not as if Bubbles and me are exactly in a line of work you go around bragging about.”

  “Bubbles?”

  “That was Barb’s name around here. Bubbles La Rue, the way I’m Peaches N. Cream. You know, it’s like we all gotta pretend we’re these sex queens or something. Paul’s really into that. You met Paul coming in, probably. He guards the door like a Doberman.”

  I nodded. “Paul and I met. So when, exactly, was Barbara—Bubbles—uh, an exotic dancer?”

  “She did it for a couple years. Started around the same time I did. I guess that’s why we became such pals. Both the new kids on the block, you know? That’s how we got stuck with snake duty. Nobody else wanted it.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “Oh, it isn’t dancing with them that’s the problem. The snakes are really kind of nice, once you get to know them. They have their quirks, of course, but if you treat them good, they generally treat you good right back. No, what I’m talking about is the expense. El Cheapo out there makes us take care of our own props. That means we get stuck taking them to the vet and even feeding them. And you don’t want to know what they eat.”

  I happened to know quite well. I’d fed quite a few living, breathing dinners to reptiles in my day. It was not my favorite part of the job.

  Still, at the moment, my job was looking pretty darned good.

  “It’s worth it, though,” Claudia continued cheerfully. “I mean, even though I got seniority now, I stuck with snake dancing. The guys go absolutely nuts over my act, especially when I do this thing where . . . Well, it’s kind of hard to explain, without actually showing you. But believe me, the tips I get are incredible.” She grinned. “Sure beats working at Starbucks.”

  “Did Barbara specialize in snake dancing, too?”

  “At first, yeah. But then she got creative, experimenting with a lot of different animals. I guess she liked the challenge. When you work with something alive, you never really know how it’s gonna go. It gives you lots of room to improvise, so it keeps the job interesting. She tried all kinds of animals: lizards, birds, you name it.”

  Birds. “Did she ever work with . . . oh, I don’t know, canaries?”

  “Yeah, she gave it a try. It didn’t work out real well, though. Birds kept flying off in the middle of her act. It got real expensive, ’cuz she kept having to replace them. And Paul got pissed about the mess they made, if you know what I mean.” She grimaced.

  “If Barbara was so good, why did she give it up?”

  “Let’s just say a great opportunity came along. Meaning she finally snagged herself a rich guy.” Claudia brightened. “Y’know, now that I’m thinking back, it was the canaries that first brought them together.”

  I had to struggle to maintain a neutral expression. “Really?”

  “One night, Barb was doing her thing with the canaries, and one of those birds just flew rig
ht at this guy who was sitting way in back. I guess he was trying to keep a low profile. A lot of our customers do. Anyway, the stupid bird flew by, and the guy actually grabbed it! At the end of the show, he brought it backstage. Y’know, to return it to Barb? And they ended up going out that night.”

  She shrugged. “That was the beginning. The story they would’ve told their grandchildren, I guess. Of course, everything’s changed, now that Barb’s Mr. Right is six feet under. She’s right back where she started.”

  “Have you and Barbara lost touch?”

  “More like she decided to lose touch with me. I haven’t seen her since the day she showed up here with a rock the size of a golf ball on her finger. Going on and on about the caviar and champagne they were serving at the wedding, and how these celebrities and political hotshots were coming . . . The way she carried on, you would’ve thought she won the lottery.

  “Just like that, I wasn’t good enough for her. Not when she started planning her wedding at Hallsworth Hall and her honeymoon in Cancún and her life as a trophy wife. I even made a joke—well, kind of a joke—about me being her maid of honor. You should have seen the look on her face. It was like I’d just said something so awful it made her gag.” She sighed. “Maybe if I was a better friend, I’d have been happy for her. But Barb really changed after she started hanging out with that guy. It was like she decided that her goal in life was to become an entirely different person. She started reading magazines like Vogue, always carrying one around like it was the Bible or something. She studied it, you know? Like she was trying to educate herself about what real class was.”

  With only minimal results, I was sorely tempted to comment.

  “Next thing you know, she stopped getting her hair cut around here. Instead, she went into Manhattan, even though it cost tons more. And she had her makeup done at one of those places models go so she could learn how the pros do it.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with trying to look good,” I pointed out.

  “But that was just the beginning. She did things like . . . like going to the opera. Guess she figured it’d impress Tommee and all his high-fallutin’ business pals. Can you imagine? Bubbles at the opera ?”

  Claudia sighed again. “Of course, in the end, it didn’t work out at all the way she expected. With him being murdered and all.”

  “Tough break,” I commiserated. “Losing your fiancé like that.”

  “More like losing your meal ticket.” Claudia laughed coldly. “Barb thought she had it made. If they’d had the ceremony a little sooner, she’d have inherited every dime that guy had.”

  “That is bad timing,” I agreed, thinking, So much for my theory about Barbara Delmonico killing him for his money.

  “Well, it was real nice talking to you.” Claudia hopped off her stool. “If you don’t mind, I gotta get to the bank before it closes. I got a two-year-old son, and you wouldn’t believe how much having a kid costs. Between the diapers and the baby food and the toys . . . Hey, give Doc Scruggs a kiss for me, will ya? The guy is such a sweetie.”

  I was still haunted by the idea of carrying out Claudia’s request as I groped my way out of the Silk ’N’ Satin Lounge. I’d almost made it to the door when I heard Paul, the Doberman owner of the lounge, somewhere behind me in the shadows.

  “Hey, I wasn’t kidding before,” he called. “You ever need a job, you come back and see me. I’m sure we could work something out.”

  Barbara Delmonico had turned out to be a dead end. True, she wasn’t at all what she was trying to convince the rest of the world she was. But her buddy Claudia was right. Without a marriage certificate that awarded her the official title of Wife, Barbara had nothing to gain from Tommee Frack’s death. But was the dead canary buried next to Tommee’s body nevertheless a reference to the act that had brought them together?

  Still, between Barbara’s lack of a motive and Nick’s insistence that Merrilee Frack didn’t have what it took to be a cold-blooded killer, Tommee’s personal life wasn’t yielding many clues as to what got him killed and buried beneath dead leaves. I decided it was time to really concentrate on Tommee’s business life.

  Before I left the Silk ’N’ Satin parking lot, I pulled out my notebook. I picked out my next victim by checking the list of former employees I’d put together from the Long Island Business Beat website, then cross-referenced with Vanda’s list of registered dog owners.

  Wade Moscowitz was interesting for two reasons. One was that he’d only worked for Tommee Frack for four months. The other was that when he left Tommee’s firm, Wade appeared to have left public relations completely. And the entire business world, too, from what I could tell. The fact that he was never again mentioned in Long Island Business Beat, not in the “People On The Move” section or anywhere else, left me wondering what might have happened to him.

  Wade lived in Hawkins, a beachy North Shore town that had first been developed as a summer community during the 1920s. As I pulled up in front of his house, I saw that it was like most of the others in that it looked as if it had started out as a vacation bungalow but over the generations evolved into a nicely kept home.

  Max and Lou scampered in the grass as I rang the bell twice, then knocked. Nothing. Together, the three of us circled the house. I found a back door and knocked again, but there was still no response.

  I was trying to drag the dogs back away from examining every inch of Wade Moscowitz’s yard with their noses when I heard somebody call.

  “Hey, are you really a vet?”

  As the dogs evaded my grasp, I turned and saw a teenaged boy, probably fourteen or fifteen, hugging a skateboard and watching me. His faded Ozzy Osbourne T-shirt was about two sizes too big, his khaki cargo pants at least four. He made up for all that extra fabric by wearing his dark blond hair in a buzz cut.

  “I really am.” I was glad to have some company on this quiet road that ran to the beach. Not another soul was around.

  “Cool. So you, like, take care of cats and dogs in there?”

  “Yup. And sometimes rabbits and hamsters and even horses.”

  His eyes widened. “You can fit a horse in there?”

  “Actually, I usually treat the horses right in their barns. But I can bring everything I need along with me.” I’d forgotten how badly teenagers needed to be treated like human beings, instead of incompetent children. “What about you? Do you have any pets?”

  “Naw. My mom’s allergic to, like, everything.”

  Max and Lou came bounding over, clearly excited over the prospect of someone new to sniff. Once they reached us, Lou held back. But Max, as usual, was Mr. Personality. He jumped up on the boy’s leg, assuming that love and affection were on the schedule. But the boy clearly wasn’t used to animals, and Max must have startled him with his rambunctiousness. He instinctively reached for the dog’s head, trying to push him away.

  Max reacted instinctively, too—by opening his jaws.

  To me, the scene practically unfolded in slow-motion. I grabbed Max just in time, pulling him away before he had a chance to bite.

  “Hey, what was that about?” the boy cried.

  “Sorry. My Westie has a bad habit of biting when he feels threatened. You okay?”

  “Yeah.” The boy eyed Max warily.

  I got the feeling he was about to hightail it out of there. “By the way,” I asked quickly, “I’m looking for the guy who lives here, Wade Moscowitz. I don’t suppose you know him?”

  “You should try the place where he works.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Dream Catcher.”

  I shrugged. “Don’t know it.”

  “It’s right in Port Townsend. You know, that hippie store that sells New Age stuff?”

  I wasn’t sure we were talking about the same Mr. Moscowitz.

  “He’s there, like, all the time.”

  “Thanks. I’ll check it out.”

  “Good luck. Later.”

  As I watched him skate off, I found myself
wishing for the simpler days of youth. Then remembered, with a pang, that, romanticizing aside, the simpler days of youth hadn’t been that much simpler. At least, not for me.

  I appreciated my young friend’s helpfulness, especially since we hadn’t all been on our best behavior, but I was sure we’d somehow gotten our wires crossed. Although my Mr. Moscowitz had only been part of Tommee’s public relations world for a few months, I couldn’t envision selling Birkenstocks and frangipani incense as the next rung on anyone’s career ladder.

  An entire orchestra of wind chimes jingled and jangled as I pushed open the door of Dream Catcher, a tiny shop on one of the back streets of downtown Port Townsend. I was immediately assaulted by the scent of sandalwood and the hypnotic sounds of Enya.

  I suddenly found myself in the mood for a massage. But I had more stressful business to attend to.

  I picked my way through the displays of candles, inspirational books, and, yes, Birkenstocks, glad that my destructive pets were safely resting in the van. I passed a young woman in an Indian print skirt, with long wisps of golden hair falling around the shoulders of her peasant blouse. She looked up from the hemp shirts she was folding and offered me a vapid grin.

  As I neared the counter, the fiftyish man standing behind it, sporting a colorful tie-dyed T-shirt and a silver ponytail, smiled soothingly. “How are you today?”

  “Fine, thanks. I’m looking for Wade Moscowitz.”

  “That’s me.”

  I studied his tall lean frame, gaunt face, and intense hazel eyes, trying to picture him in a suit and tie. I still wasn’t convinced I had the right person. But I geared up to deliver the same line I’d fed Brad O’Reilly. Maybe it would be easier the second time around.

  “My name is Dr. Popper. I’m a veterinarian, and I’m working with the State of New York. We’re surveying dog owners to see if they’ve been following up with inoculations for their pets.”

  “You’re referring to Sugar?”

  I set my manila folder on the counter, next to a display of herb-scented massage oils, and opened it. “That’s right. Sugar. A boxer born on February 12, 1989, and registered on July 28 that same year—”