To Sketch a Thief

by Sharon Pape

  “Rory McCain,” she said, laughing and shaking his hand as the Lab with a neck like a linebacker ran up to them, the Frisbee in his mouth. “And this I presume is Baxter.”

  “The one and only. I saw you come in with Hobo, right?”

  Rory nodded. “He needed exercise and I needed information.” As she told Dowling and the women about her investigation, she could see that they were regarding her with renewed interest.

  “Have you noticed anyone hanging around the park here, checking out the dogs, maybe taking notes?”

  Pete and Susan shook their heads.

  “I think I did,” Jean said. “There was a man standing outside the gate last Thursday. I saw him here once before too. He watches the big dogs here for a couple of minutes, then he goes over and takes a look at the smaller ones before he leaves. I didn’t see him taking notes, but he was holding some paper in his hand.”

  “Would you be able to describe him?” Rory asked.

  “I think so.”

  She excused herself and ran back to the car for her sketch pad. When she returned, she saw that one of the benches was now empty so she asked Jean to sit there with her. Pete and Susan followed them and Susan sat herself down on the other side of Rory.

  Before beginning, Rory took a moment to check on Hobo. He was over on the far side of the enclosure still cavorting like a loon, the other dogs following his lead. He was definitely the life of the party. If there were a lampshade to be had, she had no doubt that he’d be the one sporting it. Satisfied that he was safely occupied, she opened the sketch pad to a clean page and took her pencil out of her purse.

  “I hope I get this right,” Jean said, rubbing her hands together from nerves or the cold, or both.

  “There’s no right or wrong,” Rory assured her. “All you have to do is tell me what you recall. I understand that memory isn’t a digital camera and that even the sharpest memories fade with time. But whatever you give me will be a lot more than I have now.”

  Jean smiled, clearly relieved. “Where should I start?”

  “Why don’t you estimate his height and weight first. Even though I’ll be concentrating on his face, knowing body proportions helps.”

  Jean took a deep breath. “Okay, he was average height or a little under. I’m not good at guessing weight, but he was maybe a hundred seventy-five.”

  “Good, that’s good,” Rory said. “How old do you think?”

  “The older I get, the younger everyone else seems to me.” Jean gave a self-conscious little laugh that was loudly echoed by Susan. “I’d say he was in his late thirties.”

  “Okay. How about the shape of his face, the cut of his hair, the set of his eyes?”

  Jean thought for a minute. “His face was more round than anything else and he was bald. I was too far away to tell if he was really bald or just shaved his head the way a lot of guys do. I can’t tell you much about his eyes either, except for the fact that he was wearing glasses with a dark frame.”

  “You’re doing great,” Rory told her, although expectations of a viable sketch were fading quickly. Unless this guy had some striking feature, her drawing wouldn’t be specific enough to check against the police database. “What about his nose and mouth? Take your time and try to visualize him standing over there where you saw him.”

  Jean focused on the place where she had seen him, the skin between her brows bunching with concentration. After a minute she turned back to Rory, looking defeated. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember anything special about his nose or mouth. I think they were just ordinary.” She shook her head. “I didn’t realize how hard this is. I guess I don’t have as good a picture of him in my mind as I thought I did.”

  “You’re not alone. Most people are surprised by how little they actually notice about an individual, especially if it was just a casual observation.” Rory put down the pencil and flexed her fingers, which were beginning to feel stiff and a little numb from the cold. Jean looked uncomfortable too. Her arms were crossed, her shoulders hunched forward as she huddled to keep warm.

  Some of the other owners had wandered over to see what was going on, but Rory barely noticed them. Working with the police, she’d learned not to let onlookers distract her.

  “Do you mind a few more questions?” she asked Jean, unwilling to walk away without the best sketch she could get.

  “Not if you think it’ll help.”

  “I’ll make it quick. Did he have any facial hair?”

  “No.”

  “Were his ears flat against his head or did they project at all?”

  “Flat I think.”

  “Any scars?”

  “Hey.” A young woman who’d been watching spoke up. “I think I know that guy.”

  Rory looked up at her. “You know his name?”

  “Yeah, that’s Eddie Mays.”

  The man standing next to her told her she was nuts. Rory was inclined to agree with him. The Eddie Mays she’d interviewed had a very distinctive, identifiable face, while the man in her sketch was far too bland and ordinary.

  “Could you make the eyes kind of buggy, the way thick glasses can make them look?” the young woman asked.

  Rory was happy to oblige.

  “And the nose should be thicker, fleshier at the tip.”

  As she made the requested changes, Rory was beginning to recognize the owner of Boomer’s Groomers too. Without being told, she added the little hoop to his eyebrow and the silver stud to the center of his chin. There was a really good chance that the face staring back at her was Eddie Mays after all. What the drawing had been lacking most of all was the attitude that informed Mays’s features. Now that she knew her subject matter, her pencil flew over the page, paring down the roundness of the cheeks, closing the distance between the eyes, adding shadows and lines and refining the set of the mouth.

  “Damn if she ain’t right,” the man murmured. “That’s him. I used to take my dog to his place to get groomed.”

  It was all very well and good that Rory’s sketch now looked like Eddie Mays, but if this face was no longer the one Jean remembered seeing at the park, it was worthless. She held the drawing up for her appraisal.

  “Okay, what do you think? Is this the man you saw here? Don’t let yourself be swayed by what anyone else is saying.”

  Jean stared at the sketch and chewed on her lower lip.

  “If you saw this man in a police lineup, would you pick him out as the man you saw here?” Rory prompted.

  “Yes,” she said finally, her voice shaking a bit from the cold. “Yes, I’m almost positive that’s him.”

  “Well that’s close enough for me,” Rory said. She thanked her for the help and apologized for having kept her out there in the cold. Then she flipped her pad closed and tucked the pencil back in her purse. “You should probably go home and have something hot to drink,” Rory told her, craving a big cup of hot cocoa herself, whipped cream piled high.

  She looked up at the people standing around her. They all resembled refugees from a blizzard, eyes tearing, cheeks and noses raw from the wind. She thanked the young woman who’d identified Eddie. Without her help, the sketch would have been largely useless. Instead Rory had a face and a name, and tomorrow she’d be paying Eddie Mays another visit.

  Chapter 21

  “You know it’s possible Mays was just out there takin’ a walk, or what folks today call ‘gettin’ some fresh air,’ ” Zeke said after Rory gave him the rundown on the dog park and showed him the sketch of Eddie. As if by mutual consent they’d both moved on from the impasse of the previous night without the need for apologies, for which Rory was grateful. She didn’t have the time to waste dealing with bruised egos, his or her own.

  The marshal leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb between the kitchen and the small laundry room where Rory had gone to transfer a load of towels from the washing machine to the dryer. “I mean he owns a dog groomin’ place so I’m guessin’ he likes dogs. Why wouldn’t he hang out at the dog
park from time to time?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Rory replied, tossing a fabric softener in with the clothes, “I’m not sure he loves dogs all that much. I doubt he even has one of his own. If he did, he’d take it to the shop with him and to the park. For another, if you’re working on other people’s dogs all day long, why would you spend your free time watching other people’s dogs run around? That’s what my dad would call a real busman’s holiday.”

  “What does a bus have to do with anythin’?” Zeke asked in the exasperated tone he reserved for modern expressions that made no sense to him.

  Rory almost fell into the trap of trying to explain it to him, but she caught herself in time. It was never worth the energy it required, because he’d already passed judgment on it and wasn’t likely to change his mind.

  Zeke wasn’t waiting for an explanation anyway. “I suppose you could be right about Mays,” he said, “but I’m assumin’ that even these days the police can’t arrest a guy for just standin’ there watchin’ some dogs play.”

  “No, we haven’t sunk that low yet,” she said. “Look, I know this may not be a great lead, but it is a lead. And in case you haven’t been counting, we’re not exactly buried under dozens of them. So I’m going to follow this one wherever it takes me. And tomorrow morning it’s taking me back to see Eddie.” She started the dryer and turned to leave the laundry room, but she found Zeke occupying half the doorway. She could either chance squeezing past him or she could ask him to move. Recalling Hobo’s hysteria after bumping into the marshal, Rory went with a polite “excuse me.”

  Zeke moved out of the way without a single taunt about her lack of courage. Either he was totally focused on the Eddie Mays issue or he’d decided not to say anything that might push her into proving her courage in other, more dangerous ways.

  Rory walked past him into the kitchen and picked up the coffee she’d left on the counter. She’d stopped for it at a local deli on her way home, and it had gone a long way toward removing the chill from her bones. When she’d set it down on the counter earlier, Hobo had promptly fallen asleep on the floor below it, a strategy no doubt meant to keep him informed as to her whereabouts. But he hadn’t taken sheer exhaustion into account. Practically comatose from his romp in the park, even Zeke’s appearance and voice had failed to rouse him. Rory stared at him with some concern until she saw the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

  “What did you do to the mutt?” Zeke laughed, stepping over him as if that were the only available route through the kitchen.

  Rory held herself in check and said nothing, even though she could imagine the hullabaloo if Hobo chose that moment to wake up. But Zeke completed his transit, and Hobo snored on blissfully unaware.

  “You shouldn’t go makin’ an appointment with Mays this time,” Zeke said, straddling one of the kitchen chairs and looking at Rory over the back of it.

  “I can’t anyway.” She shrugged. “I’ve played out my welcome as a journalist, and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t agree to see me again if I did call ahead. So I’m just going to drop in on him and hope he doesn’t throw me out. All I have to do is come up with a different excuse for wanting to talk to him.”

  Rory sat down at the table, and in one quick blur of motion Zeke turned himself and his chair around so that he was facing her again. Thankfully Hobo wasn’t awake to witness Zeke’s little performance of legerdemain.

  “In my time I had some success usin’ the least likely of approaches with suspects,” he said with a nostalgic smile. “Like the time I went to Texas to help out some friends with a cattle spread there. They’d been losin’ a lot of their animals to rustlers. After a few days nosin’ around, I had me a pretty good hunch who was doin’ the rustlin’, but they turned those cattle over so quick I couldn’t catch them with the goods. So I sat myself down at a table in the local saloon and waited for those boys to get thirsty. Two of them came in that very afternoon. Once they’d had a couple of drinks, I went over to them and told them I had it on good authority that a marshal was coming to shut them down. They were real interested, and we got chummy quick.” His smile deepened into a grin. “It didn’t take me long to find out what I needed to know in order to catch them and their boss red-handed.”

  “So, make it seem like I’m on his side and just trying to give him a heads-up,” Rory said, a possible scenario taking shape in her mind.

  “Just don’t let this Mays fella get you into the back of that store. You stay up front where you can be seen and heard in case he decides you’re a problem he doesn’t need.”

  “You know I’m really not as dumb as those rustlers,” Rory said evenly, proud of herself for taking the high road when she actually felt like slugging him. It never failed to amaze her how helpful he could be one minute and how exasperating the next.

  “Maybe I should try to meet you there,” Zeke muttered, raking the hair back from his forehead, a gesture that generally meant he was feeling frustrated or helpless. Rory knew that “frustration” didn’t come close to explaining what it was like for him to exist on the outskirts of life all these years. Surely it had changed him from the man he’d once been. Not for the first time she wished she could have known him before his long tenure in her house. Yet in spite of all the empathy she had for his plight, she had to keep him reined in now that his actions affected her life too.

  “No way,” she said firmly, “no traveling. You’re not close to mastering it, and I can’t concentrate on Mays if I’m waiting for pieces of you to suddenly pop out of thin air.”

  Zeke was shaking his head as if he already regretted telling her the story.

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll have my gun with me, and besides, I’m pretty sure I can outrun Eddie.” She’d added the last in hopes of getting him to lighten up and smile again.

  “This is serious business, Aurora,” he said, a smile nowhere in sight, “and you need to treat it as such.”

  The telephone rang before Rory could reply. Just as well; her store of patience was bankrupt. When she answered the phone, Leah was on the other end.

  “I ran the sketch of that guy you saw outside Boomer’s Groomers,” she said, “but there was no match. Whoever he is, he’s managed to stay out of the system so far.”

  Another dead end. Rory thanked her and they spent a few minutes chatting about their cases. Leah wasn’t having any more success finding Brenda’s killer than Rory was having tracking down the dog thieves. For that matter, they still didn’t know if they were looking for the same doers. Rory told her about Susan from the dog park who was sure Brenda was murdered because of the affair she was having. On its own, it didn’t seem to be worth much, but it did tie in nicely with the information from Brenda’s sister.

  Rory didn’t bother mentioning the sketch of Eddie Mays or her plan to visit him again. She told herself she’d let Leah know if anything came of it. Her conscience was stirring up a pot of guilt porridge over the omission, but not enough to change her mind. As she’d told Zeke on more than one occasion, she had to do right by her clients, and that meant not letting anyone tie her hands behind her back. For all of her fabulous qualities, Leah could be too maternal and protective of the people she loved.

  When Rory walked into Boomer’s Groomers, Eddie was behind the counter helping a woman who was there to pick up her dog, a miniature poodle that had been groomed and pruned into a canine topiary with a pink bow at each tasseled ear flap.

  Eddie managed to keep his pleasant business face on until after the woman and her dog left. The minute the door closed behind them he came out from behind the counter, scowling at Rory from beneath recently shaved eyebrows. Added to his shaved head and piercings his appearance had morphed from merely odd to menacing.

  “You’re not welcome here,” he said in a tone that matched his expression. “I called that magazine you supposedly write for, and they never heard of you. Who the hell are you? And why are you so interested in me?”

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” Rory said, l
aying on a heavy dose of sincerity, “you’ve heard of neighborhood watch groups, right?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  She could hear his anger start to give way to wary curiosity.

  “Well, I’m a member of PAW, Protect Our Animals Watch. The police haven’t been able to find the thieves who are stealing our pets, so we’ve decided it’s up to us to do whatever we can to protect them.”

  Eddie skewered her with his owl eyes. “What’s that got to do with lying and pretending to do an article about me?”

  This wasn’t going to be an easy sell. “Give me a minute,” Rory said, “I’m getting to that. PAW meets every week to share information, theories, suspicions. Last week your name came up.”

  “My name? What’re you saying?” The scowl was back, blacker than before. “You accusing me of something?”

  Rory’s feet were itching to backpedal, but she held her ground. “Take it easy. Let me finish,” she said more calmly than she felt. “A few of the members reported seeing you down at the Huntington Dog Park.”

  Eddie surprised her by chuckling. He held his arms out straight as if he were waiting to be arrested and cuffed. “You broke me. I confess. I was at the dog park.” Then he turned abruptly away from her with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You’re mad as a hatter,” he muttered. “Leave now before I call the police to haul your ass outta here.” He started to walk toward the back of the store.

  “They thought you were taking notes, possibly targeting certain dogs to steal.”

  Eddie stopped and turned back to her. “Yeah? And how was I supposed to know where any of those dogs lived?”

  “By following the owners home.”

  Eddie retraced his steps until he was standing toe-to-toe with her. “Get outta here!” he growled.

  “I stood up for you,” Rory said staunchly. She saw the rage ebb from his face and leave his features strangely blank. “I told them it wasn’t possible. That I knew too many people who loved Boomer’s Groomers and that you were a businessman with a good, solid reputation. I even said I’d check you out myself. That’s why I lied and said I was writing an article.”