Stay Calm and Collie On

by Lane Stone

  “It’s tremendous,” she said.

  I nodded in agreement. “Each of its three blades is one hundred and forty feet long.” I pointed straight ahead on the opposite shore. “That’s a Coast Guard installation.” Then I pointed to our right, out to sea. “Beyond the inlet is the Delaware Bay and then the Atlantic Ocean.”

  “This is all just so interesting,” she said. “The English coast is quite varied, but no part that I’ve visited is like this.”

  We got out of the Jeep and I continued my commentary. “You haven’t seen anything yet. When you’re on a boat, you can tell when you’ve left the bay with your eyes shut. The temperature drops and the water gets choppy.”

  Two people were seated on folding chairs on the little rocky bit of land at the end of the parking lot, in the direction I’d pointed. The man waved at me and I saw it was Garrett Coleman. He was with his wife, Pam.

  That was as good a place as any to start.

  “Hi,” I said. Garrett was pushing up from his chair, but I told him not to get up. I leaned over to hug him and then Pam. Then I introduced Lady Anthea.

  Garrett reached out his hand to shake hers. This time she extended hers without missing a beat, and without overdoing it. Then he looked up at me. “Sue, I’m sorry to hear about Henry.”

  “Thanks. You knew him?”

  “Sure. We used to see him and Mary Jane Kerwin here all the time. Hard to believe we all stood right here several nights last week.”

  “We saw them Saturday, Garrett,” Pam corrected. “Two nights before he was murdered.”

  Garrett considered what she said and nodded.

  I nodded, too shocked at how the information had just fallen into our laps to trust myself to speak. We must have asked twenty people at Lewes Beach. Lady Anthea’s mouth had dropped open. I didn’t know what she was about to say and I didn’t know what to do next, so I just kept nodding my head up and down like an idiot. Is a thank-you called for in a situation like this? Suddenly she snapped her jaw shut and gave me an uncertain smile. “The sunset!” she cried and pointed west across the waterway.

  Garrett’s, Pam’s, and my head jerked that way. There it was: red and orange and round. Lady Anthea exhaled, proud of herself for the excellent save—two nights in a row.

  It was time to drill down and find out if they had anything else to tell us. I went for a casual tone. “I met Mary Jane at Buckingham’s but it’s been a while.”

  “Mary Jane works at the Best of the Past,” Pam said.

  “The new antiques gallery on Second, right? The one owned by Peter Collins?”

  “Yeah, that’s the place,” Pam answered.

  “We met him last night at the pub,” Lady Anthea told them.

  “Gilligan’s,” I specified. “She brought her Saint Bernard puppy to puppy school,” I said to Lady Anthea. I almost added “and I haven’t seen the dog since,” but stopped myself since I didn’t know what Henry had told Garrett and Pam. Or what he had left out—like the part about being engaged to someone else.

  They stood up and folded their chairs. “You’re leaving?” I asked in surprise. For a split second it seemed like they were going because they’d already given me my answer, then I realized we could all leave since the sun had set.

  “Yeah,” Garrett said, giving me a quizzical look. “We leave as soon as the sun goes down. Mary Jane and Henry would sit with us, then we’d get in our car to go home and they’d sit in the van and talk awhile.”

  Since I was not blessed with a poker face, I dropped my head and looked down, going for a grieving look.

  Garrett was talking again. “I hope Mary Jane is okay. What a thing to happen. Have they caught whoever murdered him?”

  “No, but they’re working on it. You know the rumor about Henry trying to steal the dogs was just nonsense, right?” I asked, looking up.

  Pam laughed out loud. “Oh, yeah. Henry couldn’t wait to get away from dogs at the end of the day. The stories he used to tell. He cracked us up.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “All the crazy things dog owners would ask you to do,” she answered. “Like the dogs on raw food diets. Puh-leeze. Or grain-free snacks. He said he didn’t know how you listened to them with a straight face.”

  Their chairs were folded, and so we said goodbye and they headed to their Volvo. Lady Anthea expected me to follow them, but I was rooted to the spot. “I kept a straight face because I respect our customers,” I said to her.

  “And you care for the animals,” Lady Anthea said. “I can tell that. The whole town can.” She pointed to a group of three people walking along the path that ran from the back of the yacht club to the beach.

  I had been vaguely aware of a deep voice on the breeze and now I saw it was Chief Turner. He was accompanied by the mayor and his wife. Swell. Just what I needed. I jerked my head back to Lady Anthea, hoping Chief Turner hadn’t caught me looking at them.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered. On one hand, I wanted to know if he had learned anything from the camera footage at the entrance gates to the ferry parking lot; on the other, I didn’t want to tell him about Mary Jane Kerwin since we were conducting parallel investigations, so to speak, on the identity of Henry’s Lewes girlfriend. But then I also wanted to know if they had found any fingerprints in the van.

  Lady Anthea interrupted my thoughts. “You want to leave because you can’t decide whether or not to lie to him?”

  No one could accuse her of being a flatterer, but she was right. “You read my mind.”

  Chapter 11

  We chose On the Rocks at the ferry terminal for dinner, where we could eat outside and Abby could join us. I’d taken the top off the Jeep and we were using beach breeze air conditioning as we sped along Kings Highway. Elvis was singing at the top of his lungs. I twisted around to Abby, harnessed in the back seat and sang a few lines to her.

  Suddenly Lady Anthea screamed, and I lurched back to the way I should have been facing all along. A car with headlights on high beam had wandered over into our lane. I tried to shield my eyes from the glare with one hand while I drove onto the verge of the road and came to a stop. The other driver corrected and got back into his lane and flew past us. “That was close! Are you okay?” I put a hand on her arm.

  Lady Anthea was looking in her side mirror. “He’s turning around.” She reached for her door handle. “I’m going to give him a piece of my mind!”

  I checked my rearview mirror. He was closing the gap between us at a high speed. An apology was definitely not what he had in mind. “Close your door!”

  I pulled back onto the road and floored the accelerator. Since I was starting from zero, the other driver quickly caught up with me and was inches from my bumper. Would I be able to make it to the ferry parking lot and the DRBA police? Too bad I never had time to find out.

  My reaction to the first bump from his car was to try to brake. I resisted the urge but it wasn’t easy. Next he collided against the driver’s side of the rear. I wanted to think that meant he was going to go around us, but when the third hit came, I knew his aim was to knock us off the road and down the embankment.

  With the next strike, I lost control of the car. We were airborne from the force of the impact and because of the ground sloping steeply from the road. In those few seconds my eyes teared as I thought about not being able to protect Abby. At least I’d harnessed her into the seatbelt, even though it was just a short trip. Would the harness hold? It had never been tested before.

  Honestly, when we hit the ground, the impact was not as bad as I thought it would be. The paved walking trail was straight ahead. On the other side was woods. If I could brake on the trail, we had a shot at avoiding hitting a tree—or several trees. Half thoughts raced through my mind. If I oversteered at this speed, the Jeep could flip. Just because we hadn’t somersaulted when we were airborne, didn�
��t mean we couldn’t now. I turned the steering wheel to the right as sharp as I dared and I braked. We stopped. Both passenger side tires were on the walking trail. Not so for the driver’s side, but the nearest tree was a good three or four inches away from my door. We were alive. I looked in the rearview mirror for Abby. With her dark coloring, I couldn’t see her, but I heard her breathing.

  “Pow!”

  Then the world was white. Maybe we weren’t alive after all.

  “Bloody airbags!” Lady Anthea said, sputtering.

  I turned to look for Abby and she was there. Then I could breathe again. She had the usual Schnauzer serious look on her face and waited for me to offer an explanation on this new game. “Hey, baby,” I said.

  I listened for the sound of someone running down the embankment. Say, maybe the driver of the car that had put us in this predicament. Just night noises from the woods and the canal.

  “I’m afraid I owe you an apology,” Lady Anthea said.

  Of all the things she could have said at that moment, that may have been the last I would have expected. I had almost killed us. Then she continued. “For a moment I thought he was driving on the correct side of the road and you were wrong!”

  “Apology accepted,” I said. “Are you all right?”

  “Never better, and you?”

  “Other than being too close to this tree to get out of the car, I’m fine.”

  She batted the now limp airbag out of her way and looked out my side window. “I see what you mean. Just rest for a minute.” She looked around the floor board. “If I can find my telephone, I’ll call 9-9-9 to report the accident.”

  Her use of the British emergency telephone number told me she was more shaken than she was letting on. “Here, let me.” I rearranged my flattened airbag so that I could press the screen and make the emergency call. I told them we were unhurt. We didn’t need an ambulance but would need a tow truck.

  “What was the make of the other car?” the dispatch operator asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. I looked at Lady Anthea and she shook her head.

  “The model?”

  “We couldn’t see it.”

  “The color?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Did you see the driver that ran you off the road?”

  “’fraid not.”

  She had our location from the signal and said help was on the way.

  I unhooked my seatbelt. “If you can get out, I think I can climb over and get out on your side.”

  Lady Anthea looked at the console between the seats dubiously. “Better you than me.” She opened her door and got out.

  I scrambled over and got out of the car. I found I needed to lean on the Jeep before I could unhook Abby. “I’m afraid I’m a little unsteady on my feet,” I confessed to Anthea.

  “Just give yourself a minute,” she said.

  I took a deep breath and then reached in and released Abby’s seatbelt. “Should we try to climb that?” I said, pointing up the steep embankment.

  The end of my question was drowned out by a police siren. The sound had been getting closer, and I could see a red haze up the hill on the road. Then the car drove past us. After a few yards the noise stopped, but I could still see the pulsing light. Then I heard Chief Turner’s voice. He identified himself, then asked someone, “Where did you say she was?”

  Suddenly Abby leaped out of the car and took off up the hill. She was a blur of gray. “Abby!” I screamed. My strength came back and I took off after her. There was no way a driver would be able to see her in the dark. I reached the top and looked in both directions for her.

  “What?!” Obviously she had startled Chief Turner. “Is your name, uh, Abby?” He hesitated. Though I doubt he would ever admit it, he was waiting for an answer from my girl. “Shoo. Go find her.”

  “Grab her collar,” I yelled.

  I looked back to check on Lady Anthea. She was still at the bottom of the hill, so I trusted him to do as I’d asked while I went back down to help her. Meanwhile, back at the road, Chief Turner tried to shoo Abby again. Obviously, she hadn’t obeyed. And he didn’t have hold of her collar.

  “What an idiot. You can’t shoo a Schnauzer,” I whispered. I offered Lady Anthea my arm.

  “I’ll get a lead out of the car,” she said. “Go ahead and get your dog.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Shoo!” she said and we laughed.

  I took off back up the hill, yelling as I went. “Grab her collar!”

  “No,” was Turner’s answer.

  By that time I was close enough to the top of the hill to call Abby myself. She ran to me and I grabbed her collar. Not that hard to do.

  “Are you all right? You’re not hurt?” Chief Turner asked. I was kneeling by Abby and he came to stand on her other side.

  “I’m fine. We’re all fine.”

  He tried to look me in the eye; I guess to see if I was lying.

  “According to the dispatch operator, you saw nothing?” After what I’d been through I could have done with a little less attitude from him. He pulled a notepad from his jacket pocket and started writing.

  I told him about the large car veering into our lane and then making a k-turn to follow us.

  “What kind of shape is your car in?”

  Lady Anthea had joined me and hooked the leash into the ring of Abby’s collar so that I could stand upright.

  “Not a scratch on the bonnet,” she said. “The driver’s side and the back look unmarked, too, but that’s all I could see in the dark.”

  “We’ll just need help getting…”

  I stopped when I heard an approaching vehicle and saw red lights. Turner turned on his heel and called over his shoulder. “Stop by the station for the accident report tomorrow. I’ve got something else to do.”

  “Thanks for nothing.” My retort lost its entire sting because of the earsplitting siren. The EMT’s got out of the Beebe Medical Center ambulance and approached us.

  “Why are they here?” Lady Anthea asked me.

  “Beats me, maybe it’s standard procedure.” I shrugged and went to talk to the man and woman.

  “I’m afraid you’ve made a trip for nothing. Neither of us needs medical attention. Sorry, but I told the 9-1-1 operator that.”

  “He was the one that called it in.” The older man jerked his thumb in the direction of the red taillights of the patrol car.

  Chapter 12

  By Wednesday, Buckingham Pet Palace was seriously short of both dogs and vehicles. We didn’t know when we’d get the van back, but the Jeep should be road ready by the afternoon. Once the airbags were replaced, it would be drivable.

  Shelby had already emailed and used all the social media tools at her disposal to get the word out that pet parents were to bring their dogs to Dewey Beach for the Wednesday morning dog swim, rather than to Buckingham’s, and we hoped that at least a few of the six regulars would show up. Lady Anthea, Abby, and I were in Shelby’s Prius driving south on Highway 1. Ashley Trent texted me to say she and Lion King would meet us there. Our first stop had been Starbucks. If Lady Anthea’s accent didn’t set her apart, her one-word order was certainly a first for the barista.

  “I have an observation, or maybe it’s actually more of a question,” Anthea said when we got back in the car.

  “Fire away.”

  “I hope this isn’t offensive…” she trailed off. After a sip of her tea she began again. “Sometimes it seems Americans do things just because they can.”

  “That does sort of seem like a lot of us.”

  “For example, why would anyone add pumpkin to coffee? And why froth it after you’ve added milk?”

  “I guess because we can.”

  For the next block or two she looked like she was pondering our eccentricities, then
she said, “I think I could…” Her voice trailed off.

  I waited for her to finish, but when it was obvious she wasn’t going to say more, I decided it was time to bring up last night’s accident that wasn’t an accident.

  “Do you think the driver knew—” I said.

  At the same time, she said, “Do you think the driver—”

  “Could we have been at the wrong place at the wrong time?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. At first, when he was in our lane and headed for us, I assumed he, or she—since, I never saw the driver’s face—had fallen asleep and drifted over,” I said.

  “When he, or she, returned to the proper side and passed us, it was at such a high speed, the driver’s face was a blur. I feel terrible that I wasn’t more observant,” Lady Anthea said.

  “And it was dark. That didn’t help. All I can state with certainty is that the car was large.” We were stopped at the red light at Route 24 and I turned to her.

  She nodded in agreement, her brow furrowed.

  “When he turned around and chased us, I knew this was more than a random impaired driver. I think we have to assume it was personal,” I said. “As if a murder on your first day in town wasn’t bad enough, now I have to apologize for getting you into a second mess.”

  “What if this is one and the same mess, as you call it?”

  Obviously she had never read Long Rifle, Short Life, nor come to think of it, A Vodka Before Dying. Of course, I wouldn’t make her feel bad by pointing it out. “I believe killers only try to knock off amateur sleuths when they get close to solving the crime. Sure, we learned that Henry was cheating on Ashley, and yesterday we found out that it was with Mary Jane Kerwin, but that’s all we do know. We’re not a threat to anyone.”

  “We might learn more when we talk to Ms. Kerwin today,” she said.

  “Hopefully. Since she works most afternoons at the gallery, I thought we’d try to catch her at her house later this morning. What time is your interview with the Southern Delaware Daily?”