Stay Calm and Collie On

by Lane Stone

  I absentmindedly agreed as I tried to look under the envelope flap.

  “Do you think we could steam the envelope open with hot water from it?” Lady Anthea asked.

  That got my attention—and admiration. “Depends on what kind of system she has,” I said as I left the porch and walked around to the outdoor shower. The wooden slats were painted to match the house color. The opening was in the rear; and we walked around to it and looked inside.

  “I don’t see a way to steam the envelope without us and the statement getting soaked, but, nice try.”

  “Do these bank statements ever get lost in the post?” she asked.

  “Rarely, but I guess it could happen.” Before I could finish my sentence, she grabbed the envelope out of my hand, stepped through the opening to the shower stall, and ripped it open.

  “It just happened to Ms. Kerwin.”

  I joined her in the cubicle and stared at the defiled envelope. “You just opened someone’s mail.” I stared in disbelief at what I’d just seen.

  “You were trying to see inside. Is there a difference?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said without much conviction. You could say the difference was that with my method, Mary Jane Kerwin would never know. In the stratosphere where Lady Anthea operated, it never occurred to her that she wasn’t allowed to rip open someone else’s mail if she wanted to. She was born into that world and had known no other.

  As she read the first page, her eyes widened. “Is it typical to have a balance this high in this type of account?” she asked.

  I looked over her shoulder. “No, most people don’t have a checking account balance with that many figures.” I scanned down the page and whistled. A fifty-thousand-dollar deposit had been made three weeks ago.

  “Didn’t the couple last night say she worked part-time at the Best of the Past? Would that be as lucrative as this would indicate?”

  “I don’t see how,” I answered. “Wonder what else she does? She hasn’t lived here very long, so I don’t know her well. I saw her once or twice when she brought her puppy to Buckingham’s.” My eyes were glued to the paper in Lady Anthea’s hand. “I don’t know where she lived before moving to Lewes.”

  We heard a car coming down the street and getting closer, with its radio blasting Beach Boys music. I pivoted and looked through half-inch slits between the wooden boards. “What kind of person plays Beach Boys music at that volume?” I whispered.

  Lady Anthea shot me a look.

  “Honestly, I want to know. The two just don’t go together.”

  This time she shushed me.

  I saw a young woman in a red Corvette convertible, top down, slowing. That’s who. Too bad I would probably never get to ask her to explain. “That’s her,” I whispered. “It’s Mary Jane Kerwin.”

  We heard tires on the gravel drive. Unwelcome noises are louder when you’re holding your breath, the way we were. Lady Anthea looked down at our feet and my eyes followed hers. There was about a foot of daylight between the ground and the wall of the outdoor shower. Still, the shower was far enough back on the side of the house, that unless she came around and looked in, she wouldn’t see us. I tapped Lady Anthea on the arm and then pointed at my car on the opposite side of the road, instead of in front of Mary Jane’s house. She gave me a thumbs-up and we grinned at each other. It looked like someone was visiting the house across the street. We heard the front door open and that meant all we had to do was wait a few more seconds then we would be home free. Lady Anthea stuffed the purloined mail into her handbag. We turned back to the opening to wait until it was safe to tread back to the Jeep.

  Then we heard the back door open, and judging by the slam, there was a screen door too. Next something heavy, with toenails, scampered out. Our presence in her outdoor shower may have escaped Mary Jane Kerwin’s notice, but her Saint Bernard puppy knew we were there. I motioned for Lady Anthea to move to the side so we wouldn’t be standing in front of the opening, just in case Mary Jane walked around the house with her dog. We watched through the slats as he galloped toward us, panting so heavy that each exhale sounded like, “Who, who.” Really. It wasn’t my guilty conscience imagining it.

  I hadn’t seen this sixty- or seventy-pound guy since he’d attended Puppy 101 at Buckingham’s, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember his name. I certainly knew nothing about his temperament. Was he aggressive or a sweetie pie? I took a deep breath. “I’ll distract him while you run to the Jeep.”

  She looked at me, neither nodding acquiescence nor shaking her head refusing.

  I steeled myself to step into the opening but before I could, the back door scraped open, again followed by the screen door slamming shut.

  “Whiskey?” the woman called out.

  Unless she was placing an order for a drink, I had the dog’s name. He stopped his charge toward us and turned around. He seemed to weigh his options and, sorry, decided we were the more interesting choice.

  She called his name again, but this time the dog didn’t turn around, he just kept walking to us.

  I had placed myself in front of Lady Anthea and turned my head to her. “I’m going out now. You need to go to the Jeep!”

  She was looking out from the wall. “There’s the owner.”

  I joined her lookout. My first thought was “so that’s who Henry cheated on his fiancée with.” It had been almost a year since Mary Jane Kerwin had brought her puppy to Buckingham’s, but she looked about the same, if anything, a little harder around the edges.

  “Whiskey! You come here right now! I have to go to work.” Ms. Kerwin had her hand on her hip.

  The dog looked at the shower stall and then back at her. Then he sat, which is the default action a lot of young dogs use when they don’t know what to do. It’s a command they have down pat. It was also a clue that very little training had taken place after the puppy classes he’d had with us.

  She stamped her foot. “Fine! Just stay there for all I care,” she yelled, turning on her heel and walking back the way she’d come. I noticed the soles of her shoes were red. Since I didn’t live under a rock, I knew that was the trademark of some designer. Not that I could have told you which one. “You stupid idiot dog,” she yelled as a parting shot.

  I squeezed my eyes shut in reaction to the unfairness of what she’d said. I wanted to yell out that she was the one who hadn’t found time to train her dog, and that wasn’t the dog’s fault.

  Whiskey was in a ready-sit position, and he was looking back and forth between Mary Jane’s back and the outdoor shower. The screen door slammed and he whimpered. I stepped out and went to him.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered, as I slowly approached him. He didn’t stand, but he wagged his tail, swishing it on the grass. I reached over to let him smell my hand and then I petted him. “Good boy.”

  Then I started walking toward the back of the house, stopping after a few feet to look back at him. “Come,” I said, still in a whisper. He jumped up and followed me. I took his collar and turned him to the porch, petted him one more time, and then nudged him in that direction. He looked at me again and then went to the door.

  “Okay, I thought if I left you sitting there you’d get up and come in,” snarled his owner. “Maybe you’ll know better next time.”

  Lady Anthea was peering out the shower door, and I sprinted back to join her. She tilted her head and whispered, “Sue, I think you work magic on dogs.”

  “Thanks.” I looked out into the yard, playing it off like I needed to check that Whiskey hadn’t changed his mind and come back. Obviously, this wasn’t the case since he was already in the house. The truth was that I was touched by her compliment. I turned back to her. “I was just thinking that since we came here to talk to her, why don’t we go to the front door and knock now?”

  “Brilliant,” she said. “She wouldn’t know which direction we walked from.
”

  “Let me catch my breath and we can casually stroll up to the door.” I leaned back. “Ho-o-o!” I had rested against the faucet and turned the water on. Very cold water poured down on me. The temperature paralyzed my mouth in the open position.

  Lady Anthea, expensive clothes be damned, lunged forward to put her hand over my mouth to keep the sound I was exhaling from becoming audible. With the other, she yanked me away from the knob. Though I was still in shock from surprise and from the cold water, and sputtering vowels, I managed to reach back and turned it off. “I’m so sorry,” I mouthed. I would throw my khaki shorts and Buckingham polo shirt in the washing machine, but she was wearing a silk blouse. Even her pearl necklace had gotten wet.

  “So much for casually strolling to the front…” Lady Anthea stopped speaking. The front door had opened and closed.

  Neither of us breathed as we waited to hear Mary Jane Kerwin come down the porch steps and around the corner. It was just a matter of time before we were busted, so I started coming up with a story to explain what we were doing in her outdoor shower. After less than a minute we heard her car start. Lady Anthea and I smiled at each other. Another embarrassment averted.

  When the noise of the car engine died out, we left our hiding spot, and, hanging our heads, went back to the Jeep.

  “That was refreshing,” Lady Anthea said.

  I gave a little half laugh, but I was wondering how to interpret her remark. I’m no stranger to sarcasm. Actually, we’re quite close. I may have been overthinking what she’d said, but now that I knew the real state of Lady Anthea’s finances, that her involvement with the Pet Palace wasn’t just a hobby, I was even more worried that if this craziness continued she might want to cut her losses and sell out. After all our long hours, Shelby, Mason, Joey, Dana, and I had forged a go-down-with-the-ship loyalty to Buckingham’s, but Lady Anthea had been someone who sent us school teacher emails.

  Chapter 16

  An hour later, Lady Anthea and I walked into the Best of the Past, hair and makeup repaired, clothes changed, pearls around at least one of our necks. The store was situated across from St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, but since it was Wednesday we found a parking spot nearby, without too much driving around and circling. We walked the half block down Mulberry Street, which is perpendicular to Second. A bell rang overhead when the door opened, and Peter Collins was standing in front of us before the jingling died away. The guard dog greeting made me think he’d watched through the glass front as we’d walked down the hill. A group of four tourists, two women and two men, browsed in the main section of the store.

  “Remember, he said this was both an antiques store and an art gallery. Guess this is the store part.” The room was filled with display cases of thimbles, jewelry, and vintage toys. Book cases with dusty volumes lined the side walls.

  I saw two older women take a left down the hallway that gave the store its L-shape floor plan, but I didn’t see Mary Jane Kerwin. Behind me Lady Anthea was making nice with the proprietor, Peter, but there’s only so much obsequiousness one person can take and when she had her limit, she took my arm and led me away. “Sue and I would love to look around.”

  Not one to take a hint, Peter followed us. We covered the main part of the business and then sauntered to the back area. We weren’t only trying to shake him; we were still looking for Mary Jane.

  “We refer to this section as our art gallery,” he said, walking around to get in the lead, like a tour guide.

  The two customers passed Lady Anthea and me on their way out. The woman closest to me leaned over. “She’s not very friendly,” she whispered. I looked down the narrow room to see who she was. Mary Jane Kerwin was staring at us. I told my guilty conscience to shut up. It wasn’t like she knew we stole her bank statement out of her mailbox or had trespassed in her shower.

  It seemed Lady Anthea had the same affliction because she had a death grip on her shoulder bag, lest anything, like correspondence from a bank, should jump out. Mary Jane looked to the right, then to my left, like she was looking for the best escape route. Obviously, she didn’t want to talk to us. Too bad, because Lady Anthea and I still needed to talk to her about her clandestine relationship with Henry. I stretched out my hand and approached her. “Hi! Mary Jane Kerwin, right? You’re Whiskey’s mom?”

  Her red-orange lip curled at the mom part. “Yes, Whiskey is my dog.”

  “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Sue Patrick from Buckingham Pet Palace,” I said. Her four-inch heels raised her up to my height, but for some reason, in her painted-on red dress, she seemed to tower over me. I briefly wondered if she was physically able to overpower Henry, drugged or not.

  The space was reserved for ornately framed paintings, photography, and a drawing or two. Several had cards stuck into a bottom corner announcing the piece was “on hold,” or “sold.” There was no overhead lighting nor windows, instead small spotlights were aimed at the artwork that lined both walls. An interior decorator would say the difference in lighting between this room and the larger one was to make the side room a separate space from the main sales floor, without going to the trouble of building a physical wall.

  The low level of lighting was putting me on edge. The only way I could describe it was that it gave me the feeling there was someone or something around me, but outside my field of vision. It wasn’t just having Peter Collins on our heels, either. Maybe if I got to work questioning Mary Jane, I would calm down. Now if only Mr. Collins would go on about his business.

  “So, you work here?” I asked.

  She gave me a “duh” look of exasperation, which I guess I deserved. Why else would she be there talking to customers? But was the attitude really necessary? I could be in the market for antiques or a nice painting for all she knew. Finally, she answered with a nod.

  “She’s indispensable to me,” Collins said.

  Lady Anthea and I turned and he continued. “Ms. Kerwin is both my accountant and my art buyer.” He beamed at her, and she looked more than a little uncomfortable. “Sue, since you’re here, may I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  He led us farther into the room and Mary Jane had to back up. She had been standing in front of a large oil painting of a man wearing knee-high boots, sitting on a rock with two dogs jumping around and having a grand old time behind him. By oil painting, I mean oil painting or watercolor, or something. A “sold” sign tucked into the frame. Collins was finally silent, wearing a smile I couldn’t interpret, and waiting for our reaction to the artwork.

  As I took in the painting, I became aware of Lady Anthea standing beside me, but leaning closer and closer still to the piece of art. Though her mouth was open, she didn’t seem to be breathing.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She turned and looked at Peter Collins. “Is this what I think it is?” Her voice was low, and she dispensed the words one by one, her eyes were wide as Abby’s water bowls. I looked at the work of art again, but slowly. I took in the paint colors, and the colors within colors, and I wanted to be there, just walk into it.

  Peter Collins flung his hand in the direction of her new treasure. “This? It’s suitable for a bachelor pad. Or are they called man caves these days?” I didn’t do a Daniel Webster on him about the correct definition of man cave because I think people who do that are obnoxious. And because I think he knew that. He’d spoken so quickly, almost chattering.

  He was pointing back and forth to the painting and to its partner on the right, a landscape that also included a few dogs and a couple of fine looking horses. By landscape, I mean land was portrayed somewhere on the canvas. The two were the same size, maybe three feet wide and four feet tall. “I inherited these two, plus one other, but as I’ve been informed, sentimental value is all they have.” He paused and looked over my shoulder at Mary Jane. “I’m afraid my knowledge of art isn’t what it should be. They’ve been
in my family for years, and I thought they were a good start to this addition of an art gallery to my antiques store. They’re fun, aren’t they?”

  Fun? Lady Anthea looked like she was in the presence of greatness. She was back to staring at the painting. I was curious about her reaction and couldn’t wait to hear what was behind it. I turned my attention to the second painting and found it just as compelling as its mate.

  Peter Collins reached out and tapped the sold card on the first painting and when he spoke again, what he said delivered a shock to all three of us. “Henry was the buyer. Should I deliver it to Buckingham’s?”

  “Henry?” The word flew out of my mouth, an involuntary reaction like a cough.

  “Henry!” Lady Anthea’s voice was so loud it sounded like she was calling him for dinner.

  All Mary Jane could say was, “Uhhh.”

  Peter looked at Lady Anthea and then at me. “Yes, Henry had already purchased the first in the group from me, and this one also.”

  The idea of my slacker employee as an art collector, if buying two paintings qualifies one as a collector, would take some getting used to. Frankly, the artwork seemed above his taste level—it was certainly above mine—but Lady Anthea was truly shocked.

  Mary Jane was frowning at the painting that sported the sold sign, and now she walked up to it and reached around the top right corner. “Has this been moved recently?” The stern tone said somebody had some explaining to do. She made some kind of adjustment to the way the painting was mounted, then pulled back to evaluate the result. I guess it was A-OK, because next she turned her attention to Peter Collins. She lowered her head and glowered at him. The effect was not unlike a bull communicating with a matador. “It hasn’t been paid for,” she said, answering her boss’s question.

  At this, Collins jerked his head away from us to face her. “My mistake. I was not aware of that.” Declarations of war have been made with less venom than what I heard in those two sentences. He had bared his teeth into what we were supposed to think was a smile.