“There’s a separate page in the back for each litter,” said Kate. “And then an individual listing for each puppy down below. On the page for Winter’s litter, the names of three puppies were written in, and John had checked off the column saying he’d kept each one.”
“Then Roger Nye was wrong,” I mused aloud.
“Who’s he?”
“A man I met who thought he had one of Winter’s puppies. He’d gotten her from Marcus Rattigan, Winter’s co-owner.”
“The man who was murdered in your brother’s building.”
I looked at her sharply. “How do you know that?”
“I read about it in the paper.”
“The papers mentioned Frank’s name, but none of the articles identified him as my brother. How did you know about that?”
“Jeez.” Kate sighed loudly. “It’s not like you’re the only one who can figure things out, you know.”
Apparently not. The realization came with a bit of a jolt. It wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on this girl.
“You didn’t let me finish,” she said.
“There’s more?”
“Lots more. And it gets even stranger.”
“I’m all done.” Lucia pushed back her chair and stood up. “Do you want to look at my book report now?”
“In one minute, okay?”
Lucia cocked her hip and propped her hand on it. She was being ignored, and there was only so long she’d stand for that. “What do you want me to do in the meantime?”
“Write a short descriptive piece,” I said off the top of my head. “Use lots of adjectives and similes.”
“What do you want me to describe?”
“Anything you want.”
“Okay.” She sat back down. “I’ll do Mark.”
A detailed description of her horse. That was just what the world needed.
“Quick,” I said to Kate, feeling like a co-conspirator. “Tell me the rest.”
“Remember I said that there were two drawers with kennel records? The other one was filled with big manila envelopes, one for each dog. Mostly they held things like pedigrees, registration slips, health records. But Winter’s had some other things. There were a couple of Best in Show pictures and a certificate from when she won the Quaker Oats award. And there was something else, too—an unused blue slip with her name listed as dam.”
Blue slips are the forms that the American Kennel Club returns to a breeder after a litter is registered. The breeder reports how many puppies of each sex have been born and the AKC sends a blue slip for each one. These slips are then given to the puppies’ new owners, who fill them out and send them in to complete the individual registration process.
“When Winter’s litter was born, John must have originally told the AKC there were four puppies, so they sent him four slips,” I said, thinking aloud. “Then later, for some reason, he decided to only register three of them.”
“Pretty weird, huh?” said Kate.
“Really weird,” I agreed.
I wondered what the hell it meant.
After school I picked up Davey and Faith and we went to see Aunt Peg. I wish I could say that the visit was my idea, prompted by familial loyalty and a sense of devotion to aging relatives; but the truth of the matter was Aunt Peg had left a message on my answering machine telling me to get my butt over to her house that afternoon, or else. When we arrived, Frank was there. His car was in the driveway and I parked beside it.
“It’s about time,” said Peg, opening the door and releasing the tidal wave of black Standard Poodles. Faith was swept down the steps with them and the group raced around the yard, all flying legs and ears.
“I just got home from school.”
“That explains earlier today. What about Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday?”
“I was busy.”
“As if that’s an excuse.” She looked down at Davey. “Who’s this fine young man?”
“It’s me, Aunt Peg.” My son giggled. “Davey!”
“You’re not Davey. You’re much too tall.”
“No, really!” Davey shrieked. “It’s me.”
Aunt Peg pretended to consider. “Have you been growing? Soon you’ll be as big as I am.”
My son’s eyes opened wide. “Nobody’s as big as you—”
I jabbed him in the shoulder, but I wasn’t quick enough.
“What?” asked Davey, looking injured. “Nobody is.”
“Hey, gang.” Frank appeared in the hallway. “Why didn’t you tell me the meeting was taking place outside?”
“What meeting?” I asked as Aunt Peg called the dogs and ushered everybody in. Davey and the Poodles ran on ahead to the kitchen.
“Frank brought me a cake from the St. Moritz bakery,” she said. Sweets always distract her. Maybe she was hoping I wouldn’t notice the change in subject. “Wasn’t that nice of him?”
“That depends. What did he want in return?”
“Mel.” Frank groaned. “Don’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like a big sister—”
“Quit squabbling,” Peg said sternly. “We have bigger things to worry about than the fact you two don’t like each other.”
That brought me up short. “Who said we don’t like each other?” I demanded, glaring at my brother.
“Not me.” He held out his hands innocently. “Who just called me a user?”
“That would be me,” I informed him. “The usee.”
“Very funny,” said Frank. “Nobody asked you to get involved.”
The enormity of that lie left me gasping. Even Aunt Peg looked a bit nonplused.
“That’s quite enough from both of you,” she said. “I asked you here because I thought it was high time we got together and hashed things out.
“Now you have two choices. Either we’re going into the kitchen to have a piece of cake and discuss this problem calmly and rationally, or you can stand here and continue to argue in which case I’ll probably feel compelled to knock your two heads together. As Davey so recently pointed out, I’m big enough to do it. Which will it be?”
Well, that let us know where we stood.
“Cake for me,” said Frank, grinning devilishly. He hooked his arm through mine. “How about you, sis? It’s mocha.”
Luckily, we’re not the kind of siblings that hold grudges. Tempers fade as quickly as they tend to flare. Besides, Frank knew darn well that mocha cake was my favorite.
“Cake, it is,” I agreed.
With cake and milk on a tray in front of him, Davey was happy to be banished to the family room. We adults sat at the kitchen table. With a thick wedge of St. Moritz’s wonderful mocha cake in front of me, I brought Frank and Aunt Peg up to date about what was going on.
“I can’t believe it,” said Frank. “Marcus was really planning to cut out and leave me holding the bag?”
“It looks that way. And I doubt if Ben Welch is any more trustworthy. Or Gloria Rattigan, for that matter. If I were you, I’d watch my step with those two.”
“I sure don’t see them as a couple.” Frank was skeptical. “She’s got to be ten years older than he is. If you ask me, Ben and Liz make more sense.”
“They did for a little while. At least until Liz found out what Ben was up to.” I smiled innocently. “From what I’ve been able to find out about Ben, he’s looking for two things in a woman: money and power. And thanks to Rattigan’s murder, Gloria now has both.”
“Do you think she wanted them badly enough to commit murder?” said Aunt Peg.
“You could ask the same about Ben.” I glanced at my brother. “By the way, Liz has admitted she lied when she told the police you’d left a message. Rattigan didn’t have an appointment to meet you at the coffee bar that evening.”
“So why was he there?” asked Frank.
“When we figure that out, we’ll probably know who killed him.” I cut off a large bite of cake and slipped it into my mouth. “Here’s something else that’s s
trange,” I said to Peg. “Dog stuff.”
Frank rolled his eyes.
“Remember Asta, Roger Nye’s Fox Terrier? The one he said he got from Rattigan? In all likelihood, she was one of Winter’s offspring. There were four puppies in that litter, although for some reason, John Monaghan decided to register only three.”
“I wonder why.” Peg frowned. “You saw the bitch. She didn’t have any visible deformity, did she?”
“No, I thought she was cute. And Roger was obviously besotted with her.”
“So thanks to Marcus Rattigan, she got a good home. But what reason could John have had for not keeping her? Did you ask him?”
“A friend of his asked him for me. John got angry and refused to discuss it.”
“Maybe you should try asking Gloria Rattigan. She might know something.”
“I did ask her. The only thing she knows is that she doesn’t like dogs and won’t allow them in her house.”
“Oh.” Peg’s tone was disparaging. Clearly Gloria had just dropped another notch in her estimation.
“So what?” Frank said impatiently. “Dogs in the house. Dogs out of the house. Who cares? It doesn’t matter a fig as far as Marcus’s murder is concerned. Let’s all try and focus for a minute, okay?
“My life is in chaos. I can’t even go back into the coffee bar because the police have wrapped the whole place up in yellow tape. How can the two of you possibly think this is a good time to sit around and talk about dogs?”
“We’re predictable that way,” said Aunt Peg, her voice deceptively mild. “What would you have us talk about?”
With a show of great patience, as if he were addressing second graders, my brother said, “You have to look for a motive.”
“Motive?” she repeated. “Like anger? Or money? Or maybe potential humiliation?”
“All of those.”
Peg and I looked at each other. Frank had never been included before when we’d sat down and discussed a murder. Now we both knew why.
“We’ve already found the person who has those motives,” I told my brother. “That part was easy.”
“Easy?” Frank yelped. “Who is it?”
I shook my head and told him. “You.”
Idiot.
Twenty
Later that night after Davey was asleep, I gave Roger Nye a call.
I’ve poked around in murder investigations before, and I’ve found that what works for me is to start by asking lots of questions and then look for the bits and pieces of information that don’t fit in. I think of the process as a giant jigsaw puzzle. Some of the pieces fall into place naturally. Others have to be twisted and turned to make them work.
Then there are those few that simply refuse to be part of my big picture in any logical way. As far as I could figure out, everything I knew about Champion Wirerock Winter Fantasy and her only litter of puppies fit into that category. There was definitely a discrepancy between what John Monaghan professed publicly about his bitch and what had to be true.
Not knowing why was like having an itch I couldn’t scratch. John wasn’t talking. Gloria didn’t have the information I needed. It was too late for Rattigan to be any use at all. That left me with Roger Nye. I hoped he had something interesting to say because I was fast running out of options.
He picked up the phone on the fourth ring, and sounded impatient before I even said a word. It took me a minute to convince him that I was neither offering free credit nor soliciting funds for charity, but when I reminded him about Davey playing with the trains and asked after Asta, he grew less wary.
“I just have a few questions,” I said quickly. “I hope that’s okay.”
“We still talking about Marcus Rattigan?”
“Kind of. More about Asta actually.”
“Asta?” He lowered his voice to a croon. “Good girl. You’re a good girl. Can you believe that?” he asked me. “She looked up when I said her name. What’s my dog got to do with anything?”
“I’m not actually sure. You said that Marcus Rattigan gave her to you when she was a puppy?”
“That’s right. She was just a tiny thing, all hair and eyes. I wasn’t sure I wanted a puppy, but Millie fell for her like a ton of bricks, so that was that.”
“I was wondering whether you know how Rattigan came to have her in the first place. And why he wanted to give her away?”
“After all this time, who remembers a thing like that? Why don’t you check with Gloria? She might know.”
Damn. Another dead end. “I did ask Gloria. She didn’t know anything about Asta. She told me they’d never had any dogs in the house because she wouldn’t allow it.”
“That sounds about right,” said Roger. “Not that I want to say anything against Gloria. She’s a fine woman, and God only knows how she put up with a man like Marcus all those years, but she is particular about that house.”
“You said that your wife was the one who was really taken with the puppy. Is there a possibility she might remember?”
Roger took so long to reply that I knew I’d said something wrong.
“Millie passed away two years ago,” he said finally.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.” Roger sighed. “Finding Millie was the best thing that ever happened to me. We had nearly thirty years together, so I guess I was pretty lucky. I still think about her every day. Do you know how I remember her best?”
I’d intruded on his memories; the least I could do was let him talk about it. “How?”
“She used to carry her needlepoint outside and sit under the dogwoods to work on it. Warm weather, cool weather, she never seemed to mind. Spring was her favorite, though, when the dogwoods were in bloom and everything smelled so nice. Millie said just being there made her feel closer to the kids when they were so far away. After she was gone . . .”
Roger’s voice broke. He cleared his throat and, after a moment, started again. “After she was gone, when spring came around again, I thought I might try sitting out there myself. See if she was right, see if it made me feel closer to her.”
Roger paused again. I heard him blow his nose. “When I went out there, that’s when I realized that the trees were dying. I’ll tell you, that just hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d have given anything to bring them back. But I couldn’t save them any more than I could save my Millie. Losing them was like losing her all over again.”
“I’m very sorry,” I said once more.
“Now maybe you understand. Marcus Rattigan was a terrible man. I’m glad he’s dead and I hope he rots in hell.”
I hung up the phone and went upstairs to check on Davey. The moon outside threw a shaft of light across his bedroom and I could see that he was sleeping peacefully, one arm curled around Faith, who was lying by his side. Their two heads shared the pillow. Faith thumped her tail up and down in greeting but didn’t stir otherwise.
I hadn’t planted any trees when my son was born. At the time I was struggling to come to grips with the deaths of my parents, killed together in a car wreck several months earlier. Davey’s birth had helped me to deal with the sense of loss; he had filled in the empty places in my heart and made me feel whole again.
Would I kill to defend him? I was quite certain I would. Could someone, fueled by anger and grief, commit murder over the loss of a loved one’s memories? I hoped I’d never have to find out.
Occasionally when I sleep on a problem, the answer presents itself in the morning. It isn’t a foolproof system, unfortunately; but when it works it’s a veritable epiphany. I went to bed that night thinking I’d never find out why John had lied about Winter’s litter and when I woke up Friday morning, I realized that I’d been looking at things all wrong.
I’d asked Gloria about the puppy because she’d been living with Rattigan at the time. Why on earth was I assuming that the wife would know? Men don’t talk to their wives. My own marriage had been living proof of that. Men talk to their secretaries and their mistresses.
Applying that theory, the answer should have been obvious. The person I needed to see was Liz Barnum.
After my run-in with the headmaster on Wednesday, I didn’t dare sneak out of class for so much as a phone call. And due to the early dismissal, the lunch period was shortened, as well. After school I was supposed to be bathing Faith in anticipation of Saturday’s dog show. Washing and blowing dry a Standard Poodle coat—and doing the job right—takes three or four hours. I’d planned to get started before Davey came home so that I could finish by dinnertime.
I knew all that, but it didn’t seem to matter. Promptly at two o’clock, I found myself racing out to the parking lot, hopping in the Volvo, and speeding to downtown Stamford. When my son’s in the car I try to set a good example. When he isn’t, I’m not above cranking up the radio and breaking a few rules.
When I got to the offices of Anaconda Properties, the door was standing open and Liz wasn’t behind her desk. Though I could hear the hum of various machines working in other parts of the office suite, the reception area was empty. As I was debating what to do next, the door to the ladies’ room down the hall swung open and Liz came hurrying out.
She was rubbing her lips together to smooth her lipstick and as she strode past me, I caught a whiff of smoke that clung to her clothing and hair. She yanked open the top drawer to her desk, palmed a pack of cigarettes inside, then slammed it shut.
“Bathroom break,” Liz said as she sat down.
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
“I don’t.” She stared up at me defiantly. “The whole building’s smoke free.”
“Even the ladies’ room?”
“Damn. Does it smell that much?”
“Enough,” I said. “New habit?”
“Old habit.” She grimaced. “I gave it up years ago.”
“What made you start again?”
“Stress. Smoking’s a great pacifier. Don’t ever let anyone tell you it isn’t.”
Three chrome-and-canvas chairs were grouped around a glass topped table. I pulled one over beside the desk and sat down. “Stress over Rattigan’s murder?”
Liz shrugged. “I was handling that. Hell, I thought I was handling everything. Then Ben told me it wouldn’t be a bad idea to update my resume.”
Watchdog Page 19
