Raining Cats & Dogs (A Melanie Travis Mystery)

by Laurien Berenson

  His explanation sounded okay. But I wasn’t sure I was buying it. Not yet anyway.

  “Brittany’s very pretty,” I said.

  Ed gave up toying with his plate. Now his eyes met mine, and his gaze was smoldering. “What are you suggesting?”

  “She’s also very young.”

  “I know exactly how old Brittany Baxter is.” His tone was low, ominous. “She’s twelve, for Christ’s sake, a seventh grader. She’s not even a teenager yet. And if you’re trying to say you think I would have done anything even remotely inappropriate…”

  Ed shook his head, ground his teeth. His features curled in a snarl. “We’re done here. This meeting is over.”

  He shoved back his seat and stood. The chair wobbled for a moment, then tipped over backward. Diners at other tables looked in our direction.

  “Ed,” I said quietly, “sit down.”

  He stood there, thinking about it. At least he didn’t leave. After a minute, Ed reached around behind him and righted his chair. Once it was upright, he stared at it hard, then finally sat back down.

  “How dare you?” he demanded.

  “You know the answer to that,” I said. “I’m a teacher, I love my kids. I’d do anything to protect them. You’re a teacher, too. You know what I’m talking about.”

  His nod was short, almost imperceptible.

  “Brittany told me some things that made me nervous. I had to check them out. In my place, you’d have done the same thing.”

  “In your place, maybe I wouldn’t have been so quick to rush to judgment. I wouldn’t have started by making accusations.”

  “This isn’t an accusation,” I said. “All we’re doing here is clearing the air. If I had wanted to accuse you of something, I’d have gone straight to Russell Hanover.”

  “I guess now I’m supposed to be grateful that you didn’t?”

  “No.” I braced my elbows on the tabletop and leaned toward him. “What you’re supposed to do is think long and hard about the perception that’s created by the relationships you have with some of your students. I know perfectly well Brittany’s at a difficult age—”

  “It’s not just Brittany,” Ed said. “It’s all of them. The boys are nearly as bad as the girls. Sometimes I look around my classroom and think I’m less of a teacher than I am a traffic cop at Hormone Central.”

  “They’re testing you,” I said. “And each other. Trying out their sexuality to see what works and what doesn’t.”

  “It didn’t used to be like this,” Ed grumbled. “Ten, fifteen years ago, kids didn’t grow up so fast. Third grade boys with pierced ears. Fourth grade girls wearing bras. It’s like none of them want to be children anymore. They have no idea where they’re going, but they’re all in a huge hurry to get there. It confounds the heck out of me, and it makes me sad at the same time. It’s not like the outside world is such a great place. Why don’t their parents shelter them a little longer?”

  “Because most of them are too busy,” I replied. “That’s why they’re paying that enormous tuition. So we’ll do the job of raising their children for them. If Brittany’s parents were paying enough attention to their daughter, they’d be the ones sitting here across from you this morning instead of me.”

  “It’s stupid,” Ed muttered.

  “I agree.”

  “Look, I gotta go.” He drained the last of his tea and pushed away his plate. “Are we okay on this issue now? If Brittany thinks I’m giving her the wrong idea, I’m just as happy to keep my distance. She’s still got her sessions with you. You keep her on the straight and narrow. I’ll keep my nose out of it.”

  “Done,” I said, and Ed turned and left.

  He’d said all the right things, I thought. Now it remained to be seen whether his actions backed them up.

  I’d be watching.

  Back in my car, I gave Steve Barton a call.

  It took me a while to get used to cell phones. In the beginning, I carried one for safety’s sake, but never turned it on. The thought of actually making a call while I was driving was unthinkable. But, eventually, I got with the program and stopped thinking of my cell phone as a necessary evil. I wasn’t in love with the gadget like some people, but I could appreciate the convenience it occasionally afforded me.

  Steve was mowing his lawn when I reached him. I told him I was in the neighborhood—a lie, but what the heck, I was heading that way—and asked if he minded if I stopped by and asked him a few questions. Steve seemed somewhat surprised by the request, but was otherwise amenable to having his Saturday interrupted, so I hopped on the Merritt Parkway and drove up to New Canaan. By the time I found his house, a tidy ranch on a cul-de-sac two blocks from South Avenue, Steve had finished his chores.

  The sweet aroma of freshly cut grass hung in the air as I climbed the front steps and rang the bell. Subconsciously, I braced against the barrage of sound that, in my experience, inevitably followed. Can I help it if nearly all my friends are dog owners? Most, in fact, shared their homes with more than one dog. Now that I thought about it, it seemed unusual that Steve, a man who taught an obedience class to other dog lovers, wouldn’t have at least one dog himself. And yet, he’d never brought one to class.

  Nor, I discovered now, did one accompany him to the door. Instead, Steve pulled the door open wide like someone who had no fear that a dog might slip out. He smiled, stepped back, and motioned me inside.

  “Come on in,” he said. “I’d been expecting your call.”

  “You were?”

  “Of course. I know you’ve been talking to everyone else in class. I figured it was only a matter of time before you worked your way around to me.”

  As I followed him to the living room, I was still looking down, as if waiting for a dog, any dog, to magically appear. Apropos of nothing, I noted that Steve was barefoot and that his hardwood floors were blindingly clean. Much cleaner than mine, unfortunately. Maybe that was because I was living with a bevy of carousing canines and he wasn’t.

  “Looking for something?” Steve asked. A large recliner dominated one side of the room. He waved me toward a couch beneath the front window; then he walked over and sat down in the big chair.

  “I’m just wondering why you don’t have any dogs.” The couch was much lower. Once I sank into its cushions, I found myself looking up at him. It wasn’t the most comfortable feeling. “With your interest in obedience, it seemed likely that you might have one or two.”

  “I’m between dogs at the moment.” Steve picked up a framed photograph from a side table, carried it over, and handed it to me. “This was my last dog, Stealth.”

  The picture was a close-up shot of an attractive German Shepherd. The dog was staring directly at the camera, and his dark eyes were piercingly intense. He was sitting down, but somehow didn’t appear still at all. It was as if the lack of motion was only momentary as he waited for his next command.

  “Very nice,” I said.

  “He was better than nice.” Steve replaced the picture and sat down. “Stealth was a dog in a million. He already had his U.D.X. and C.G.C., and he was only four when he died.”

  An impressive array of titles, especially for a dog so young. “What happened?” I asked.

  “Bloat.” Steve grimaced. “You own a big dog like that, you know you’re taking your chances. I knew there was a genetic predisposition in his family, but I thought I could manage his care well enough to keep things under control. Turns out I was wrong. So much for trying to play God.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and really meant it. Bloat, or gastric torsion, was a horrible thing, and a horrifying way to watch one’s pet die.

  “Me, too. I’m looking for another dog to start over with, but I’m taking my time about it. I’ve always loved Shepherds, but I’m not sure I can deal with another one right now. Too many memories there. I’ve been thinking about looking at Poodles. Smart as they are, I bet they’d be a blast to work with. But they’re susceptible to bloat, too, aren’t they?”r />
  I nodded. “Standards are. So far I’ve been lucky; there hasn’t been any incidence of it in the line my girls come from. Plus, like you, I manage their care pretty carefully. If you ever decide you want one, let me know. I’ll introduce you to my aunt. She’s Faith’s breeder, and she knows just about everything there is to know about Standard Poodles.”

  “I’ll do that. In the meantime, I suspect you didn’t come here today just to talk to me about dogs?”

  “No, not entirely,” I admitted. “I suppose you can already guess that a couple of your students had some rather interesting things to say about you.”

  A smile played around the corners of his mouth. “And yet they continue to come to class.”

  A point that hadn’t been lost on me either.

  “Minerva and I had a bit of history together. I imagine you’ve figured that out already.”

  “Yes, she told me about it.”

  “I’m sure she did.” His eyes went cold. “You’d be wise not to believe everything you hear.”

  “I never do.”

  “Mark Terry asked where I was when I left the sunroom during Coach’s performance that day. I assume you’d like to know that, too?”

  I sat still, hands demurely folded in my lap. “If you wouldn’t mind telling me.”

  “I took Boss outside. He can be a bit of a handful, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. He was trying to bully me, and I didn’t want to correct him the way he needed to be corrected with the patients and staff sitting right there. There’d already been one complaint lodged against him. I didn’t want to draw any more attention our way than I had to. The doors were right there, so we stepped outside.”

  “Where was Kelly?”

  Steve looked surprised. “Pardon me?”

  “How come you were holding Boss? Why didn’t she have him?”

  “She’d gone to visit the ladies’ room. For obvious reasons, Kelly didn’t want to drag the dog all through the building with her. Or be dragged by him, as the case may be. I told her I’d watch him for a minute.”

  I watched the play of expressions across Steve’s face. He was speaking slowly, thinking about his words before he said them. Mark Terry might have asked where the trainer had been, but clearly he hadn’t asked the follow-up question.

  Maybe Steve hadn’t even thought about it himself. But he was now, and he was already formulating excuses. “She was only gone a minute or two,” he said. “No time at all, really.”

  Two minutes might have been enough, I thought, with everyone else’s attention diverted elsewhere.

  “Did you happen to notice whether anyone else left the room?”

  Steve shrugged. “People were coming and going all the time. Stacey might have disappeared for a bit. And Paul did, too, I believe. But nothing about anyone’s activity seemed particularly ominous to me. Including yours.”

  “Mine?”

  “You were the only newcomer to the group. The only thing that was different on that visit was your presence. It’s hard not to wonder…”

  “What?” I asked, though I could already guess where he was heading.

  “Whether the fox is investigating the chickens, so to speak.”

  The best defense was a good offense. Clearly, Steve had figured that out.

  “So you have nothing to hide?”

  “I wouldn’t say that exactly,” Steve countered. “But murder Mary Livingston? Not me. Why would I? I have no motive.”

  “Nor, seemingly, does anyone else,” I said. “That’s the problem.”

  Steve stood up to show me out. “Your problem,” he said silkily. “Not mine.”

  23

  It was only a short drive from New Canaan back to North Stamford. I took the back roads rather than the parkway and was home in no time. To my surprise, as I drove up in front of my house I saw that a hand-lettered sign had been taped to the front door.

  I parked the Volvo in the driveway and got out. Sam must have written the note with a thick black marker because I could read it from where I stood. DON’T COME IN, it said.

  Well, that sounded ominous.

  I was standing there wondering what to do next, when Sam came strolling around the side of the house. I noted with relief that he looked calm and composed. His hands were slipped nonchalantly into the pockets of his shorts. He looked as though he might simply be out for a walk on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

  What he didn’t appear was unduly alarmed or half crazed—like I might have looked if I had had a good reason to be barring people from their own home.

  “I thought I heard a car drive up,” he said. “Did you have a nice morning?”

  “I had a fine morning.” My gaze slid over to the sign on the door. “Until now.”

  “Problem?” Sam asked innocently.

  Davey had been known to give me exactly the same look when he knew he was in trouble. Bob, too, come to think of it. Maybe it was a male thing—that wide-eyed, who me?, I-haven’t-done-anything-wrong look that had the immediate effect of putting every woman in the vicinity on her guard.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Everything’s under control here.”

  Sam linked an arm through mine and began walking again, heading back around the house toward the fenced yard. I was towed smoothly in his wake like a tugboat escorting a barge to the harbor.

  “Sam?” I said sweetly.

  “Hmm?”

  “Why aren’t we going into the house?”

  “There’s been a minor complication.”

  “Minor?”

  “Exactly.” His stride never faltered.

  “Involving the whole house?”

  We were approaching the gate, which Sam had shut and locked behind him. That meant that the Poodles were within the enclosed yard—so they weren’t in the house either. I’d only been gone two hours. What could have gone so wrong in the meantime?

  “You know how it is,” said Sam. “Sometimes even a little problem has to be treated in a forceful way. Nipped in the bud, so to speak, before it can escalate into something bigger.”

  What escalation? I thought. Complications were bad enough. Now we were worried about escalation?

  Sam held the gate open, and I slipped through in front of him. The Poodles gathered en masse around my legs, a sea of wriggling bodies and wagging tails.

  “Exactly what little problem are we working on?” I asked.

  Sam said something under his breath. Or maybe he just coughed. It was hard to tell, and either way I was none the wiser. He looked at me brightly, as though he were happy to have cleared things up. Which, of course, he hadn’t done at all.

  “Pardon me?” I said.

  Sam mumbled again. It sounded as though he might have said, “Please,” which made no sense. Please what? Please stop asking? Please go away? Please get a grip…? And then it hit me.

  “Oh, crap,” I said out loud. “Fleas.”

  “Now, now.” Sam’s tone was soothing. “It’s not that bad. I’m almost finished dealing with the situation.”

  Contrary to what Mr. Sunshine said, it was that bad, and we both knew it.

  Fleas are the bane of a Poodle owner’s existence. Dogs “in hair,” those that are ready to be shown, are never allowed to scratch. Scratching made mats and holes in the coat. It played havoc with the all-important mane hair. It could keep a Poodle out of the show ring for weeks.

  And if a dog wasn’t allowed to scratch, then it followed that his owner must never allow him to become itchy. So fleas were definitely out. One of Aunt Peg’s favorite lectures had to do with how two small fleas, left untreated, could quickly lead to a whole infestation. And once a battalion of fleas got inside your house, there was nothing left to do but…

  “You bombed the house,” I said.

  Sam nodded. “About an hour ago. I had to run out and get some stuff or I’d have started sooner. I treated the Poodles, too.”

  Several years earlier, that would have mean
t dipping or powdering each dog. Both processes were deadly to show coats, unless the flea preparations were immediately washed out, rinsed clear, and the hair blown dry; and that often meant that the products weren’t as effective against the fleas as they needed to be. Now, thankfully, there were products on the market that could do the same job while only causing minimal havoc.

  Still, it was a big job, and an annoying one, and a totally unnecessary one if precautions were taken against letting the dogs be exposed to fleas in the first place. Which I thought I’d been doing. So where had I gone wrong?

  Sam’s Poodles were newly in residence, but he wouldn’t have brought me fleas. Tar was as much at risk from the pesky intruders as Eve was. Besides, Sam had been the one to discover the problem. If his dogs had had fleas before moving in, presumably he’d have found them earlier and dealt with them.

  Still simmering with annoyance, I looked around the small backyard. To be certain of wiping out the infestation, we’d need to treat that area, too. My gaze skimmed upward to the top of the cedar fence. Considering my frame of mind, it was probably a good thing that no cats were perched up there at the moment, waiting to heckle us. Maybe with all the Poodles out in the yard, they hadn’t liked the odds…

  Sam was watching me closely and following my train of thought. He knew the moment I figured out what had happened.

  “Damn!” I spun around and headed back toward the gate.

  “Wait.” Sam grabbed my hand, and I slid to a precipitous halt. “Where are you going?”

  As if he didn’t know.

  I simply stared. He got the point.

  “It wasn’t Amber’s fault,” he said.

  “Her cats have fleas.”

  “Apparently so.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Whose fault is that?”

  “She didn’t know.”

  Like that helped. “Then she didn’t care.”

  “She’s not the one who let her cats into our house,” Sam pointed out.

  Right. That had been Davey. I’d deal with him when he got home. In the meantime, I was itching to go and blow off some steam at the new neighbor. In fact, now that I knew we had fleas in our house, I was itching all over.