Watchdog

by Laurien Berenson

  “Just one of them. And he only got mixed up in it by accident.” That was sort of true—if you considered general idiocy to be an accident of birth.

  “I guess it must have been pretty exciting.”

  “Not really. Look, it’s important that I find some of the people who were part of the protest group. I understand that you weren’t involved ...” The amount of sincerity injected into that statement would have choked a less accomplished fibber. “... but maybe you know someone who was. Seeing as it’s your neighborhood and all.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Of course she did. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to say.

  I reached out to let Kissy sniff my fingers. The Toy Poodle waited until they came within range, then lunged and snapped with surprising speed. Lucky for me, her aim wasn’t as sharp as her teeth.

  So much for buttering up the woman’s dog.

  “I’m going to be walking around talking to most of the neighbors anyway,” I mentioned persuasively. “I wouldn’t have to say where I’d gotten my information.”

  “I guess you might want to check with Mike and Dottie Daniels. They’re in the yellow house on the corner. I don’t know anything for sure, but I imagine they might have had something to do with a few protests in their day.” The woman snickered as though she’d said something funny.

  “Thanks. And if you happen to remember anything else about last Monday—”

  “I won’t.” She backed inside and pushed the door shut.

  “Goodbye to you, too,” I muttered.

  Faith jumped up, placed her front paws on my chest, and gave me a doggy smile. I reached around and ruffled my hands through her hair. No doubt she was just as pleased to be removed from Kissy’s presence as I was.

  I went back and forth across the street, trying three more houses on my way to the Danielses’. People were home at each but I gathered no new information. Nobody had noticed anything unusual at the coffeehouse on Monday. Two people admitted to seeing the petition that had circulated the neighborhood. One had signed it, but both claimed not to know any of the protesters personally.

  By the time I reached the yellow house on the corner, my enthusiasm was flagging. Frank had been sure that the protesters, though angry, were basically harmless and I was inclined to agree with him. Circulating petitions and making posters didn’t sound like the sort of group activity that was likely to escalate into murder.

  Before I was even halfway up the driveway to the Daniels house, I could hear music. Vintage rock and roll, with a thumping beat and great guitar work. By the time I reached the front door, the band was recognizable as the Rolling Stones. Inside, the music must have been deafening.

  I rang the bell, but of course nobody came; they couldn’t hear me. Faith and I waited on the step until the song ended. In the lull before the next song started, I picked up the knocker and pounded on the door. With luck, the occupants of the house would realize that the sound wasn’t a continuation of the beat.

  The music began again. This time the melody was so seductive that I was swaying in time when the door opened. Quickly I straightened and tried to look dignified. I needn’t have bothered.

  The tall, skinny man who faced me was dancing in place himself. Older than me by at least a dozen years, he had a close cropped beard and the kind of lean features that had probably labeled him as a tortured, artistic soul in the sixties. His thin dark hair was tied at the base of his neck with a leather thong, and his clothes, jeans and a T-shirt, looked as though he might have slept in them.

  “Hello,” he said, grinning. “I thought I heard something. Hey, great dog!”

  “Thanks. I was wondering—”

  “Hang on a minute, okay?” He turned away and yelled, “Dottie, turn that down, would you? I can’t hear a thing!”

  While we waited for the music to be lowered, Mike Daniels waved me inside. Most people are justifiably hesitant about inviting a strange dog into their houses, but my host didn’t seem to mind. Faith padded along behind as we headed into the living room.

  Plump, overstuffed chairs were grouped around a coffee table that appeared to be homemade. A sideboard held a collection of colorful candles. The big screen TV had a football game on, and everywhere I looked there was clutter, piles of newspapers, stacks of magazines. There was a faint, sweetish odor in the air. It took me a moment to identify it as marijuana.

  Abruptly the volume dropped. After a moment my head stopped pounding. Even Faith looked relieved.

  “Mike Daniels,” he said, still smiling. “And you are?”

  “Melanie Travis. I’ve been talking to some of your neighbors about the building conversion that’s going on down the street.”

  “I know. Mrs. Mayhew called.” He saw my blank look and added, “The woman in the house across from the store? She warned me you were on your way. Probably warned the whole block, in fact. We don’t call her the ‘Voice of America’ for nothing.”

  “Oh.” That didn’t sound promising.

  “Have a seat. Just push something on the floor and make yourself comfortable. Dottie’ll be along in a minute.”

  I’d barely sat down when Dottie appeared. She was just as tall and skinny as her husband and her clothing was virtually identical. The two of them looked more like twins than husband and wife. She was carrying a glass of iced tea which she set down on the table.

  “Let’s see the dog,” Dottie said. “Mrs. Mayhew said it looked like a circus clown. She was exaggerating, right?” Her gaze dropped to Faith. “Whoa, not by much. Does it bite? How come it has those puffs of hair all over like that?”

  I took a moment to explain that Faith’s trim was a modern descendant of a traditional German hunting clip. Standard Poodles were originally bred to retrieve birds in the cold waters of German lakes. Hunters had favored dogs with long, thick coats until they discovered that when the coats filled up with water, they became too heavy to swim with and dragged the Poodles down.

  At that point they’d conceived the idea of clipping off all the hair that wasn’t strictly necessary for the dog’s well-being. The long mane coat on the front of the Poodle was meant to protect the heart and lungs. The rosettes over the hips covered the kidneys. The puffs of hair at the bottom of each leg kept the joints warm so that they wouldn’t stiffen up in the cold water, and the pompon on the end of the tail served as a flag, marking the Poodle’s spot when he dove underwater after a bird.

  “Stranger than fiction,” Dottie said when I was done. By now, she was sitting on the floor with Faith draped shamelessly across her lap. In a minute they’d be sharing the tea. “Is that the truth?”

  “I believe so. My Aunt Peg’s the one who told it to me, and she knows everything about Poodles.”

  “And here I thought folks did that just to make the poor dogs look stupid.”

  “Don’t mind her,” said Mike. “I know you came to talk about the murder. Mrs. Mayhew said you have a friend who’s involved?”

  Mike Daniels listened with interest as I outlined what I knew. “I’m hoping to find someone who might have seen anything that went on over there Monday evening,” I said at the end. “Failing that, I’d like to know who was leading the group of protesters who were trying to shut the project down. Mrs. Mayhew seemed to think you might be able to help.”

  I know I’d told her I’d keep her name out of it, but that was before she broadcast a warning about me all over the neighborhood. No wonder everyone else had been so reticent. I was just about at the end of the street. Mike and Dottie Daniels were my last chance.

  Mike stood up and wandered over to the window. “When the leaves are out, you can’t really see the store from here. If some kind of funny business was going on, we wouldn’t have known about it.”

  “I understand you’re part of the protest group, though.”

  “We sure are,” Dottie spoke up. “This is a quiet, residential neighborhood. The last thing we need is some big business moving in and setting up shop.”

&n
bsp; I’d hardly have classified Frank’s coffee bar as big business, but the issue wasn’t worth debating. “So you signed the petition, and maybe nailed up a few posters?”

  “No law against that,” said Dottie. Faith was now licking her arm. “We were just exercising our right to free speech.”

  “You were the ones who spearheaded the movement?”

  Across the room Mike shook his head. “I wouldn’t mind taking credit, but to tell the truth we hadn’t even thought of trying to stop the thing until we got a flyer in our mailbox. Turned out that a man who lives around the other block was more upset by this than anyone. He’s the one who organized the protests.”

  “Could you give me his name?”

  Dottie nodded. “Sure. Like I said, we’re all well within our rights here. No reason he’s got to hide. He’s a guy by the name of John Monaghan.”

  Fifteen

  “John Monaghan?” I said, surprised. “I know him.”

  “Well, there you go,” said Mike. “You should have tried talking to him first.”

  I had. He’d admitted knowing some of the protesters, but he’d certainly never mentioned that he was the one who’d organized them into a group. Not only that, but he’d characterized Marcus Rattigan as an old and valued friend. So why had he been trying to undermine Rattigan’s newest project?

  “I guess I should have,” I said slowly. “You’re sure it was John Monaghan who started the protest?”

  “Hard to make a mistake about a thing like that. He got everyone together over at his house for a meeting about what to do next. John was the one who planned our whole offense.”

  On the big screen TV, the Jets were mounting an offense of their own. I watched as the quarterback was sacked by a player the size of a Buick and wondered how far the protesters had been willing to go in their quest to preserve their neighborhood.

  “There have been a couple of suspicious accidents at the store over the last few weeks,” I said. “A water pipe burst and a section of floor caved in. Is that the kind of thing your group had in mind?”

  “No way,” Mike said quickly, but Dottie grinned.

  “Power to the people,” she said.

  “Meaning?”

  “A little passive resistance never hurt anybody.”

  “This resistance was hardly passive. And a man was hospitalized as a result of it.”

  “We don’t know anything about that,” said Mike. “Dottie was just kidding around. If someone got hurt down there, we’re sorry to hear it.”

  Interesting, I thought. Someone had gotten murdered down there, too, but he hadn’t mentioned being sorry about that.

  I snapped my fingers and Faith got to her feet, shook out her hair, and came to my side. “Thanks for your time,” I said, rising. “You’ve been a big help.”

  “No problem,” said Mike. “Now that Marcus Rattigan is gone, does that mean the building project will be dropped?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “We’ll find out.” Dottie braced a hand on the floor and climbed to her feet. “And then maybe we’ll go back to work. To tell the truth, having the chance to make signs and petitions again after all these years was kind of exciting. There’s nothing like a good protest to keep you young.”

  On our way back to the car, I took off Faith’s leash and collar and let her run. On a Sunday afternoon, the neighborhood was so quiet that not a single car passed us during the ten minute walk. The opening of a coffee bar would certainly change that. I could understand why the neighbors would be loathe to give up even a measure of their peace and solitude.

  From where I’d parked in the store lot, John Monaghan’s house was barely a five minute drive. I called ahead from the car phone, and though he sounded surprised to hear from me, he said he could spare a few minutes to talk. When I arrived he was out front, raking the gravel in his driveway, and obviously waiting for me.

  John lifted a hand in greeting as I stopped the car and got out. “Lawn service is supposed to take care of this, but they never seem to get it just right,” he said, setting his rake aside. “Is that your Standard? Hop her out. Let’s have a look.”

  Faith was only too pleased to come bounding out of the car and be admired. “That’s a pretty bitch. You say you got her from your aunt?”

  “Margaret Tumbull,” I confirmed, nodding. “Cedar Crest Standard Poodles. She lives in Greenwich.”

  “The name sounds familiar. I’m sure we must have been at plenty of shows together. Poodles are pretty much out of my sphere, though. I’m much more familiar with the terrier people.”

  That made sense. At the shows people with a common interest tended to hang out together. They see each other at the ring during judging and group together in the grooming area so that they can chat before and after, too.

  “Aunt Peg’s a member of the Belle Haven Kennel Club. Maybe that’s where you heard of her.”

  “Maybe,” said John. “I haven’t joined an all breed club myself. All I see is too much infighting among the members and not enough useful stuff getting accomplished.”

  Since Belle Haven not only ran a dog show but also sponsored eye and tattoo clinics, donated money to genetic research in dogs, and made monthly visits to local nursing homes, I was sure Aunt Peg would have disputed that characterization. My only exposure to the club had taken place around the time that one of the members had been murdered, however, so I wasn’t about to leap to Belle Haven’s defense.

  “I’ve been talking to some people in the neighborhood about the group that was protesting the coffee bar conversion,” I said. “Last time we spoke, you said you probably knew most of the participants.”

  “That’s right.”

  “However you neglected to mention that you were the person who had organized the protest group. Instead, you told me you and Marcus Rattigan were friends.”

  “We were.”

  “And yet you passed out flyers and petitions aimed at getting his latest building project shut down? I’m afraid that doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “I can see how it might not,” John admitted.

  I waited for him to elaborate, watching as Faith spied a squirrel and chased it across the lawn and up a tree. Sitting back on her haunches, she looked up and followed its progress through the branches. A minute later when the squirrel disappeared into its hole, John was still silent.

  “You should know that I will be giving this information to the police,” I said finally.

  “I’d rather you didn’t do that.”

  “Then you’d better explain to me what’s going on.” I could see by his expression that John didn’t like my tone.

  “It’s really not your concern.”

  “It is my concern. The fact that my brother’s a suspect means that I’m involved, too. And if indeed you were Rattigan’s friend, I would think you’d be just as eager as I am to see his murderer brought to justice.”

  John reached in the pocket of his baggy khakis and pulled out a pipe. He took a few minutes to tamp down the tobacco and locate a lighter, then lit the flame and drew down deeply. A curl of smoke eddied up into the air.

  “What I am about to tell you doesn’t present Marcus in the best light. Now that he’s gone, perhaps it’s unfair of me to reveal such things about his business dealings. On the other hand, maybe it doesn’t matter as much as it once might have.”

  “Go on.”

  “As I’m sure you know, Marcus was an entrepreneur. At any given time he usually had a number of projects at various stages of completion, all of them considerably larger than the conversion he contracted to do with your brother.”

  I nodded. “I wondered about that. From what I’d read about Marcus Rattigan, this coffee bar idea of Frank’s seemed much too small for him to have bothered with.”

  “Under normal circumstances it would have been. But if you’ve read about Marcus in the newspapers, then you also probably know that some of his projects have had an alienating effect on certain communities.�
��

  Some? I thought. Make that nearly all. “Like the high density apartment complex he built in Wilton? And the low-income housing he tried to get state approval to force into New Canaan?”

  “Precisely. Marcus was rather driven when it came to his work. He built his buildings to make a profit and that was pretty much all that mattered. Let’s just say that if along the way, certain legalities had to be manipulated to suit his needs, he wasn’t above getting his hands dirty.”

  For all his apparent reticence, so far John hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know. Uncertain where he was heading, I said, “Frank told me that everything about the coffee bar conversion was on the up and up. But I know he’d gotten that idea from Rattigan. Are you trying to tell me that the permits weren’t in order?”

  “No.” Smoke puffed from the side of John’s mouth as he spoke. “The coffee bar wasn’t the problem. If anything, it was a diversion. Marcus was concerned about another tract of land he’d just purchased up in north Stamford, along the New York border. Forty acres that had recently become available from a single estate. Some of it runs along the reservoir, and all of it is pristine, untouched.”

  “And Marcus wanted to develop that land?”

  “Of course. That’s what he did. Unfortunately, there’s an environmental group that’s convinced the land should be maintained just as it is. They feel it should be turned into a park, or perhaps a nature preserve.”

  Faith, who’d been exploring a row of rhododendron bushes along the front of the house, came trotting back to see what I was up to. I reached down and scratched beneath her chin. “Then, why didn’t they buy the estate when it became available?”

  “They didn’t have the money. A tract like that costs millions. Marcus had the cash and he made the deal. He was all set to start building new homes over the summer. Then the environmentalists got involved and the next thing he knew there was an injunction preventing him from going forward until the case could be heard in court. All of which was costing Marcus a good deal of unnecessary money and aggravation.”