Pup Fiction

by Laurien Berenson

  The lemon chicken dinner was a big success. Even better, the television hadn’t been smashed, though we did lose a vase no one really liked. That night, I hustled the boys off to bed early, then Sam and I followed suit.

  * * *

  Monday morning, Davey, Kevin, and I were once again in the car on our way to Graceland camp. And again I had a game plan for after I’d dropped off the boys. Hopefully, this would be a good time for me to call on Jeff and Linda Earley.

  Like Graceland School, the Earleys’ house was set back from the road at the end of a long driveway. Colonial in style, it was painted white with pine green shutters and looked as though it probably dated from the middle of the previous century. By Connecticut standards, that meant it was relatively new construction.

  A low stone wall bordered a narrow band of woods between the Earleys’ property and the school. As I neared the house, I saw an older man bending over a gap where the wall had crumbled and the rocks had fallen to the ground. I got out of my car and went over to say hello.

  The man straightened as I walked across the wide lawn between us. He reached around to brace a fisted hand at the base of his back, before stretching his shoulders up and back. His other hand pulled a kerchief out of the pocket of his workpants. He used it to wipe his brow.

  It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet, but the temperature was already in the eighties. Luckily, the stone wall was shaded by the trees beside it.

  “That looks like hot work,” I said as I approached.

  “It is,” the man agreed. His head was mostly bald, and the hands that had now dropped to his sides were gnarled with age. “I’ve been out here an hour already, and it isn’t getting any cooler. Can I help you with something?”

  “I hope so. Are you Jeff Earley?”

  “In the flesh. And you are?”

  “Melanie Travis. I’m a friend of your neighbor, Emily Grace.”

  Jeff nodded. “That poor lady. She’s had nothing but trouble lately over there at that school.”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you about, if you don’t mind?”

  “No, I guess not,” he replied. “As long as you don’t mind if I work while we talk. I want to get this section of wall rebuilt before the sun’s overhead.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Can I help?”

  He looked at me appraisingly. I was wearing a T-shirt, khaki shorts, and sneakers. And I was at least several decades younger than he was. I figured all that had to count in my favor.

  “You know anything about building stone walls?” Jeff asked.

  “No. I just enjoy looking at them.” In Connecticut, stone walls were everywhere.

  Jeff pointed at a large rock near my feet. I picked it up and handed it to him. “What caused your wall to fall down?”

  “I dunno.” He shrugged as he set the stone on top of those he’d already placed in the gap. “Old age, probably. If I had to guess, I’d say this wall must be at least a hundred years old.”

  “Really?” I was surprised.

  “That’s right. Nearly all the walls around here date back to when Connecticut was a farming state. Settlers cut down trees to plant their crops, then discovered how rocky the soil was. Building walls was more of a disposal system than anything else. They piled up all the rocks in a row to get rid of them. These days, there are more than a hundred thousand miles of old, unused stone walls in the New England area.”

  “I had no idea,” I said as I handed Jeff another sizable rock.

  “That’s a two-hander,” he told me. “We’re almost finished with those. The smaller ones go near the top.”

  I nodded. Looking around, I saw plenty of small stones waiting to be picked up. “How come you know so much about these walls?”

  “Probably because I live right next to one.” Jeff’s gaze lifted to run the length of the low barrier. Out behind his house, the stone wall disappeared into the dense woods that abutted the reservoir. “Now that I’m retired, I’ve got time on my hands. Take it from me, it doesn’t pay to let your brain stagnate after you stop working. I’m trying to educate myself about at least one new thing every week.”

  “Good for you,” I said.

  “I know you didn’t come here to listen to me ramble on about stone walls.” Jeff turned to face me again. I’d picked two smaller rocks, which I placed into his outstretched hands. “I’m guessing what you really want to talk about is Will Grace’s murder.”

  Chapter 19

  “Yes,” I replied.

  Jeff stared off in the direction of the school. “You wondering who did it?”

  I nodded.

  “Me too,” he said. “It doesn’t make the wife and me feel very safe knowing that someone could get himself shot just a couple hundred yards from our back door. Especially after we found out that the victim was related to our neighbor.”

  “How long have you known Emily?” I asked as I cast around on the ground for more small rocks to hand him.

  “A long time,” Jeff replied. “Could be almost twenty years.”

  I looked in the direction of the school. Now, in the middle of summer, its buildings were just barely visible through the leafy trees. “Have you or your wife noticed anything suspicious happening over there recently?”

  Jeff thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, you know, it’s a school. So people are coming and going all the time. Nothing suspicious about that. Mostly, Linda and I just try to tune it out, you know?”

  I nodded again.

  “I’ll tell you what though. The artists—that place used to be an artists’ retreat, did you know that?”

  “I did.”

  “They were quieter. Not so much screaming and running around like you have over there now.”

  “He’s talking about the children,” a woman’s voice said from behind us. I hadn’t heard her approach.

  Linda Earley, I presumed. She was a slender woman, probably in her seventies, whose gray hair was cropped short around her head. Big, red-framed glasses circled her eyes. Bright yellow feathers dangled from both ear lobes. She was carrying three bottles of cold water in her hands.

  “This is Melanie Travis,” Jeff told her. “She’s a friend of Emily’s. Wants to talk about what happened next door.”

  He removed two of the water bottles from her hands. Keeping one for himself, he handed the other to me. “Melanie, this is my wife, Linda. You can probably tell that, since the minute she showed up she started correcting me.”

  “I wasn’t correcting you.” Linda opened her bottle with a practiced twist of the cap. “Merely elaborating on what you’d said. But here’s another thought. Maybe it seemed quieter to us back then because we both had jobs and weren’t at home during the day. Could be the artists were every bit as noisy as those children, but we weren’t around to hear them.”

  “See?” Jeff asked with a grin. “There she goes again.”

  I couldn’t help but smile with him. The two clearly enjoyed goading each other. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said to Linda. “Thank you for the cold water.”

  “It was the least I could do.” She gazed at her husband and shook her head. “Especially after I looked out the window and saw that he’d roped you into helping him move those big rocks around.”

  “I offered,” I said.

  “She did,” Jeff confirmed.

  Linda still looked exasperated. “You know that wall is only going to fall down again.”

  “Probably,” Jeff agreed. It sounded like an argument they’d had numerous times before. “But now that I’ve fixed this spot, next time it will happen somewhere else. In fact, I might even get Melanie’s phone number so I can call her to come and help when it does.”

  Linda laid a hand on my arm. “Don’t listen to him. He’s just an old man who likes to hear himself talk.”

  I opened my water bottle and took a swallow. “That’s a good thing. Because I came here to ask questions.”

  “How’s that working out for you?” Linda asked with a laugh. “
Have you managed to ask any yet?”

  “One or two,” I told her. “Probably not the important ones.”

  “Then you go ahead now.” She propped her hands on her hips. “I’ll stand here and try to keep Mr. Motor Mouth on track.”

  “Actually, I wouldn’t mind hearing from both of you about your impressions of what’s been going on next door.”

  “Most of what I know I learned from the police,” Linda said. “They came over here right away to talk to us. I’ve been trying to follow the story in the media since then—but nobody’s saying much. So I doubt I’d have anything to tell you that you don’t already know.”

  “You mentioned that you can hear kids playing at the school,” I said. “The night that Will Grace was killed, did you hear the gunshot?”

  Jeff and Linda looked at each other. They both shook their heads.

  “The detective told us it happened around midnight,” Jeff said. “If that’s the case, we would have been asleep by then.”

  That didn’t help.

  “The man who was killed was Emily’s ex-husband. Had you ever met him before, or ever seen him around the school?”

  This time it was Linda who answered. “To tell the truth, we didn’t even know Emily had an ex-husband. For most of the time we’ve lived in this house, Jeff and I were both working. And it’s not like we have a reason to spend time next door at the school anyway. If I hadn’t seen Will Grace’s picture in the newspaper, I wouldn’t even know what he looked like.”

  “Me either,” Jeff added.

  Another dead end. At this rate, I’d be out of questions in no time. I took a sip of water, then tried again.

  “What’s the best way to access the woods behind your property and the school?” I asked. “How would someone get there?”

  “Easiest way is to go straight up Emily’s driveway, walk around the buildings, and keep going until you hit the trees,” Jeff said.

  I probably could have phrased that question better. “Suppose you didn’t want to do that? Could you get into the woods from the opposite direction?”

  He shook his head. “Not unless you wanted to swim across the reservoir, which—since it’s against the law—I wouldn’t recommend.”

  I huffed out a frustrated breath. “The properties on either side of the school also back up to those woods, right?”

  Linda suddenly went pale. “You mean, like our land? Are you saying that a murderer might have walked right past our house on his way to shoot someone?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said quickly. “Don’t forget, the school has a neighbor on the other side, too. I’m just trying to figure out why someone would have been back there in the first place. What could have drawn them there in the middle of the night?”

  “Maybe it was a secret meeting place,” Linda guessed. “I loved Nancy Drew when I was a child. I bet that’s what she would have said.”

  “Speaking of the school’s other neighbor,” Jeff said, “that’s the Greenfields development. From what I hear, some people in that place don’t much like the idea of living next to Emily’s school.”

  “I’ve met Steve Lambert,” I told him.

  “That man’s the worst.” Linda frowned. “He comes by a couple of times a year, trying to whip us up into a frenzy over the issue. He’s got a petition that he’s been taking all over the neighborhood. He wants everyone to sign it.”

  “Our motto is ‘live and let live,’” Jeff said. “Last time Steve was here, I told him where he could stuff his petition. He hasn’t been back since.”

  “Now that you mention it, though, anyone could access those woods from Greenfields,” Linda said. “Isn’t that how the body was found in the first place?”

  “I believe it is,” I agreed. “Were either of you aware that Emily had been having other problems at her school in the days before her ex-husband was killed?”

  Linda and Jeff exchanged another look. It seemed to be a habit of theirs.

  “What kinds of problems?” Jeff asked.

  “Someone released her puppies from their pen, and they nearly caused an accident out on the road.”

  “You’re talking about the Dalmatians?” Jeff asked.

  I nodded.

  “Those darn dogs being loose isn’t anything unusual. They come over here and pee in Linda’s garden at least once a week. If Emily’s telling you a different story, she’s been pulling your leg.”

  I frowned. That wasn’t the answer I’d expected to hear.

  “That’s not the only thing,” I said. “Someone took her truck out of the shed behind the school and sent it rolling down the hill into the pond.”

  Linda snorted under her breath.

  “What?” I asked.

  “That old truck was a heap of junk long before it ever landed in the water. The only good thing about it was its paint job.”

  Jeff nodded. “We borrowed it once to haul some stuff. That was a few years ago, and it was barely drivable then.” He paused, then added speculatively, “Before you waste any time worrying about Emily losing her truck, maybe you should ask her how much she had it insured for.”

  I gulped. Again, not the answer I’d expected.

  “What do you know about her stove catching fire last week?” I asked.

  “This is the first we’re hearing about it,” Linda replied. “Did the fire do much damage?”

  “No, fortunately it was discovered quickly. Emily and Mia managed to get the blaze put out before the fire truck even arrived.”

  “Well, then, there you go,” Jeff said. “It sounds as though Emily has everything under control.”

  Except for the fact that her ex-husband had been murdered, I thought.

  I thanked the Earleys for their time. Linda went back inside the house. Then I helped Jeff finish repairing his stone wall.

  It seemed like the least I could do.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, I was on my way. I paused at the end of the Earleys’ driveway. There weren’t any cars coming, but I did see a runner heading swiftly down the road in my direction. It was Emily’s brother, Miles.

  I’d thought the man looked good in street clothes. That was nothing compared to his appeal in a sweaty T-shirt and lightweight athletic shorts. His damp hair was slicked back off his forehead, and his face was a study in concentration. Miles’s legs pumped up and down in a steady rhythm, sneaker-clad feet hitting the macadam with precision. He clearly took his running seriously.

  I remained stopped until he’d gone by, waving as he passed in front of the car. Miles didn’t return the gesture. I figured he probably hadn’t even noticed it, until he made an abrupt U-turn and came running back.

  I rolled down my window as Miles slowed his stride. Lifting his arm, he fiddled with some settings on a sports watch that looked complex enough to train Olympians. He stopped beside the car, but continued to jog in place.

  “Hey, Melanie,” he said. “I thought that was you. How’s your morning going?”

  “Just fine. I was visiting Emily’s neighbors.”

  He nodded up the driveway. “The Earleys, right? Em told me about them. She said they’re nice people.”

  “They are.” I leaned my arm on the open sill. “You look like a real runner out there. How far did you go?”

  Miles shrugged. “Just five miles.”

  Just, I thought.

  “Are you training for a race?”

  “No, my racing days are behind me. Now I just try to keep in shape.”

  Again with the just, I thought.

  “How’s Emily doing?” I asked.

  “Better, now that I’m here.” Miles’s steps slowed. “At least I hope that’s true. Anyway, things appear to have calmed down. So that helps. Em told me you were helping her try to figure things out. Are you some kind of detective?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m just a friend who’s trying to be useful. You must have known Will when he and Emily were married.”

  Miles nodded. Then frowned. “He
wasn’t the guy I would have picked to marry my sister. But nobody asked my opinion.”

  The sun was high above us. I squinted as I looked up at him. “So you didn’t like Will much.”

  “Truthfully, I never got to know him very well. I lived in Boston back then. He and Em were down here. So I probably only saw him a couple of times a year. Then they got divorced, and he was gone.”

  Miles shrugged. It wasn’t hard to read that unspoken sentiment. Good riddance.

  “Do you have any thoughts about why someone would have wanted to shoot him?”

  “No, because it’s not my problem,” he replied. “That’s for the police to worry about. The only thing I wish is that it had happened anywhere else but here.”

  Chapter 20

  After Miles left to continue his run, I took out my phone and called Bradley Luft. Thankfully, this time Emily had already spoken to him and explained who I was. Will’s best friend said he would be happy to meet with me.

  He proposed that we meet over lunch. Bradley knew of a small café just north of the Merritt Parkway that served good food. It was called The Bean Counter. Would that suit?

  I almost laughed at his choice. Then I told him it would suit me just fine. We agreed to meet at noon.

  The Bean Counter belonged to my brother, Frank, and my ex-husband, Bob. It was a joint venture that had come about by chance, then turned into a terrific partnership. Bob was an accountant. He did the books and oversaw all the practical matters that kept the café running. My gregarious brother, Frank, managed the front of the house. He greeted guests, served up food, and was always on the hunt for new items to feature on the menu board.

  The café was housed in a small clapboard building on old Long Ridge Road, well north of Stamford’s main business district. Bradley and I were having an early lunch, so the compact parking lot out front wasn’t yet full. That meant my chances of getting a table were pretty good too.

  Frank was behind the counter at the back of the room when I entered the café. He looked up as the door opened, saw it was me, and gave me a cheery wave.

  My brother and I share certain physical similarities, like tawny brown hair and strong jawlines. But beyond those visible attributes, we have little in common. I’d always been the slow and steady ant to Frank’s flighty grasshopper. It wasn’t until we were in our thirties that we’d finally managed to put aside our differences and become friends.