He didn’t slip up and smile, but his eyes warmed a bit and he nodded. Another car drew up, and Deputy Morgan walked over to meet Sergeant Woodrow Owens. Mame squirmed in my arms and I put her down. Like a little guided missile, she headed straight back toward the thicket. I had the leash this time, so I pulled her back and glared at her, feeling like an embarrassed parent whose child is showing unflattering traits in public.
2
As he passed by with Deputy Morgan to go look at the body, Sergeant Owens flapped his hand at me. A tall, lanky African-American with droopy basset-hound eyes and a slow drawl that sounds like he just swallowed a mouthful of warm buttered grits, Sergeant Owens is the man who once looked me in the eye and told me I was too fucked up to continue as a law-enforcement officer. He understood why and was sympathetic, but he couldn’t have a deputy who was liable to go apeshit every now and then. I don’t hold it against him. I’d have done the same thing in his position.
I sat down on one of the cypress logs edging the lane and trapped Mame between my knees. In a few minutes Sergeant Owens came out and squatted beside me.
“You okay, Dixie?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“Haven’t seen you since that other business.”
I nodded. “That other business” had been a few months back when I had gone in a house to feed a cat and found a murdered man in the kitchen. I had ended up nearly getting killed myself, but in an odd way it had been good for me. I had thrown off a sick sense of victimhood and done what I needed to do to defend myself. I’d also stopped being afraid that I might be truly crazy. Now I was pretty sure I wasn’t much more neurotic than the average person.
I said, “I left shoe tracks by the body, and there are probably some dog hairs there too.”
“I’ll tell the crime techs. I’ve called Lieutenant Guidry. I imagine he’ll want to talk to you.”
“Guidry will be handling this?”
I didn’t like how my voice went up an octave when I said that or how my heart did an annoying little tap dance. Guidry had been the homicide detective on the case where I’d found the murdered man in the cat’s house, and there had been times when I’d hated him with a fine and pure venom—mostly because he had usually been right and also because he had forced me to move out of the dark web I’d spun round myself. I was much stronger now, and I had to admit that Guidry had a lot to do with why. Even so, I wasn’t ready for any kind of relationship with a man, and it irked me that my body didn’t seem to know that.
I said, “I need to take the dog home.”
Sergeant Owens stood and reached to give me a hand up. Keeping Mame’s leash short, I dusted off my cargo shorts and pointed toward her house. “It’s just down the road there. I won’t be long.”
“Take your time. We’ll be here awhile.”
I knew what he meant. Nothing is rushed at a crime scene. Crime technicians would walk shoulder to shoulder around the area looking for anything a killer might have dropped. They would photograph the mound and the protruding hand. They would photograph my tracks and Mame’s. They would look for any other tracks, for fibers, for hair, for anything that might point to the identity of the person or persons who had covered a dead body with soil and duff. They would take several measurements of the exact location of the body from the base of the tree and from other markers. Only then would they uncover the corpse.
As I carried Mame home, she looked over my shoulder toward the brambly woods as if I’d deprived her of the most fun she’d had in a dog’s age. We met two unmarked cars, with a van from the Crime Scene Investigation Unit close behind. They pulled close to the cypress logs along the edge of the street, but they still blocked the single-car lane. Secret Cove residents were going to be pissed.
At Mame’s house, I carried her straight to the bathroom and scrubbed my hands several times with antiseptic soap. Then I gave Mame a bath, wrapped her in a big beach towel, and brushed her teeth with poultry-flavored toothpaste. Every time I thought of that dead finger in her mouth, I said “Bleh!” and went over her molars again. For good measure, I gave her a Greenie to make her breath sweet again. I was a little tempted to chew one myself.
While she chewed on her Greenie, I took her out to the lanai to brush her dry in the early sunshine. I talked to her while I pulled my brush through her ear fringes and down her trousers and inside her forearms, telling her how beautiful she was and what a good girl she was, but my mind kept straying to what was happening at the crime scene. Mame seemed preoccupied too, chewing her Greenie with her eyes half closed as if my voice was background music to the images in her head.
When she was all dry and gleaming, I put her on the floor and pulled some hair from the grooming brush to put into a plastic bag. In the kitchen, I got out a twenty-pound bag of organic senior kibble and measured a half cup into her bowl—all a miniature dachshund needs for good health and a shiny coat. I added a Jubilee Wafer to keep her joints supple and gave her fresh water in a clean bowl. Mame wagged her tail and followed me to the front door to let me know we were friends again.
At the front door, I took her face in both hands and kissed the tip of her nose.
“I’ll be back tonight, okay?”
Mame swallowed the last of her Greenie and licked my hands with a chlorophyll-green tongue. People say dogs live only in the moment, that they don’t have memories of the past. I don’t believe that for one second. I was sure Mame remembered everything that had happened, but I didn’t mention it. Some things are best left unsaid.
I walked down the street to the crime scene, where more cars edged the lane and yellow crime-scene tape had been stretched around the trees. A deputy from Community Policing stood beside the crime-scene tape.
I said, “I’m Dixie Hemingway. I was with the dog that found the body this morning. I brought some of the dog’s hair for the techs.”
She took the plastic bag and looked at the silky russet hairs inside.
“Irish setter?”
“Long-haired dachshund.”
“I’ll give it to them.”
“Is Lieutenant Guidry here?”
She tilted her head toward a group of people standing behind an ambulance. “He’s over there.”
“I imagine he’ll want to get a statement from me.”
She nodded and strode to the clump of officers. They all turned and looked at me, and then they parted and Lieutenant Guidry stepped through the gap.
Gosh.
Nobody should look that good, especially not somebody in law enforcement. Most law-enforcement men look like they’ve gained twenty pounds since they bought their last suit, but since they don’t have the time or money to buy new clothes every time they gain weight, they just keep cramming their expanding guts into old pants and letting their jacket sleeves strain at the armpits. Half of them wear Thom McAn shoes and black socks that haven’t faded the same way, so one is darker than the other.
Not Guidry. Some Italian designer kept him supplied with the kind of easy free-hanging jackets and pants that only the very rich can afford. The kind of things that wrinkle because they’re made of natural breathable fibers from countries where people live in yurts or alpaca tents. Poor people get stuck with complicated clothes made of crap left over from oil refining, synthetic stuff you can wad up and run a truck over and it won’t wrinkle. He wore leather sandals and no socks, and anybody looking at the leather could tell it was the best damn leather money could buy. Guidry was either independently wealthy and just working as a homicide detective for kicks, or some rich woman dressed him.
Not that I cared. Neither he nor his clothes were any of my business, and I never wasted a second thinking about him.
Truly.
Guidry is olive-skinned, probably late thirties or early forties—old enough to have acquired permanent parentheses around his mouth and fine white laugh lines fanning at the corners of his eyes. His hair is dark with a sprinkling of silver at the sides, close-cropped to show a shapely skull and nice ears.
He has gray eyes, a beaky nose, and even white teeth. I didn’t know anything about his personal life, or care, but he had mentioned once that he’d been married in the past and didn’t have any children. Okay, he didn’t mention it until I asked a leading question. I don’t know why I asked. I didn’t really care one way or the other.
Today he wore an oatmeal linen jacket with the sleeves pushed up his tanned forearms. His pants were linen too, brown and nicely wrinkled, and his knit shirt was a dark salmon pink. I absolutely hate it when a man looks better than I do. As he approached I was acutely conscious of my rumpled khaki shorts and of my bralessness. My sleeveless T was black knit. You couldn’t see through it, but men have a kind of X-ray vision that always alerts them when a woman isn’t wearing a bra.
We shook hands, formal as if we were meeting for the first time. Neither of us mentioned what had happened the last time we were together. I don’t know why he didn’t mention it, but I had almost got killed then, so it wasn’t something I wanted to talk about.
He said, “I understand your dog found the body.”
“She’s not my dog, but I’m taking care of her. She must have smelled it from the street, and she ran to it and tried to dig it up. She bit on a finger.”
He didn’t look surprised. Dogs can smell dead bodies from a long way away, and they’re always drawn to them. That’s why rescue teams use cadaver dogs to find dead bodies trapped under wreckage.
“Break the skin?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
Dead bodies don’t bleed and I hadn’t looked that closely.
I said, “I gave the crime techs some hair from the dog for comparison.”
“You didn’t see or hear anything in the area before you found the body?”
“Not a thing.”
“Any cars, people?”
“There was one car earlier, but it was somebody who lives here.”
“Name?”
“Conrad Ferrelli. At least it was his car. I didn’t actually see the driver.”
He seemed surprised. “You know Conrad Ferrelli?”
“I’ve taken care of their dog several times.”
His gray eyes were watching me. “Something bothering you?”
“The car was going awfully fast.”
“Wait here.”
He stooped under the crime-scene tape and went over to talk to the Medical Examiner. The crime-scene technicians joined them, and from time to time they all glanced at me. I shifted from foot to foot, thinking uneasily of Conrad Ferrelli’s speeding car.
Guidry came back to me. “They’re ready to uncover the body. Come see if you know who it is.”
I followed him to the tree where the techs were kneeling beside the body, gently brushing soil away from the head. The techs blocked my view of the face, and as I waited I looked toward a rustling in the surrounding greenery. Conrad Ferrelli’s Doberman pinscher stood beside a tree trunk, a thin shaft of light sharply defining the rust markings on his muzzle and throat. His dark eyes looked puzzled and wary.
I said. “Oh, no.”
The Medical Examiner looked up. “Ms. Hemingway?”
I pointed toward Reggie. “That dog belongs to the Ferrellis.”
I squatted on the ground and stretched my hand toward Reggie. Behind me, I heard Guidry say, “Everybody stay where you are and be quiet.”
I could see Reggie clearly now. He wore a pale dangling necktie—probably one of Conrad’s—but he didn’t have a collar or a leash.
I said, “Reggie hi, boy, that’s a good boy, good Reggie, come here, Reggie, come on, Reggie.”
He raised his ears but he didn’t move. I crooned to him some more, while the people behind me stayed silent and still as statues. I stretched my hand toward him, palm up, and sent him mental images of my hand holding kibble, of my hand stroking his head, of my hand patting him with love. I’ve always done that with animals, and I’m convinced they get the pictures exactly the way I send them. I can’t prove it, and lots of people think it’s a nutty idea, but as long as animals respond to it, I’ll keep doing it.
Reggie lowered to his front elbows, a look on his face that I could only describe as ashamed. Still hunkered low, I slid my feet in his direction, moving in tiny increments while I crooned sweet phrases to him and sent him mental messages of our happy connection. Somebody shouted in the street, and I sensed Guidry leaving the tree to go shush the people beyond the crime-scene tape.
It seemed to take hours, but it was probably no more than a couple of minutes until I got close enough to get a firm grip on the necktie.
“Good boy, Reggie. That’s a very good boy. Sweet Reggie, you’re a good, good boy.”
I carefully moved my hands over his body, feeling for broken bones or swelling, watching his face for signs of pain. He didn’t seem hurt in any way, but I could feel fine tremors under his skin. When I sensed that he was calm enough to follow me, I led him around the group of forensics people to the Community Policing Officer. Then I went back to look at the dead body. So far as I was concerned, it had already been identified.
3
The forensics people resumed their careful work, brushing humus away from the corpse’s head, watching each spoonful they removed, exquisitely mindful that valuable clues could be mixed with the rotted leaves and bark. My breath was shallow and fast, filled with dread for what I was about to see. The techs’ hands stopped moving, and a ripple of silent shock seemed to run around the circle of people bending over the body. When they pulled back to let me see the uncovered face, I felt the same shock.
Not because the jaw had dropped in the automatic reaction of death, or because the eyes were wide and staring. Those things were expected. What was unexpected was the fool’s grin slashed with bright red lipstick on the bluetinged face.
They all looked up at me as if for explanation as well as identification.
I said, “That’s Conrad Ferrelli.”
Guidry gave a curt nod, managing to thank me and dismiss me with one gesture.
“I don’t need to tell you not to divulge anything about the lipstick.”
Of course he didn’t. Innocent people would come forward to make false confessions. Guilty people would give false alibis. Citizens would call with leads and misguided information. That angry lipsticked leer was knowledge that only the killer and the homicide investigators would have. And me.
I turned to go. I didn’t want to stay to see the rest of the uncovering. I didn’t want to find out how Conrad had been suffocated. That was something only the homicide investigators and the killer should know.
Guidry caught up with me. “You know Mrs. Ferrelli, right?”
“Why?”
“Her dog has to be taken home. I was thinking it would be easier for her if you came with me.”
“You mean if I told her.”
“That too.”
“What is it with you? Every time you get assigned to investigate a murder, you end up making me do all your dirty work.”
“I wouldn’t say every time, and I’m not making you do anything. You can refuse. You can let the woman open her door and find a total stranger standing there with her dog. You can let a total stranger break the news that her husband’s dead.”
I glared at him. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was tell Stevie Ferrelli that she was a widow, but Guidry had a point.
The Ferrilli house was just around the bend, the first one at the southern end of the waterside properties, but it seemed more respectful to arrive in a car than go straggling down the street leading a dog by a necktie.
I said, “We’ll have to take my car.”
The Community Policing Officer was kneeling beside Reggie, talking softly to him, and when I took the end of the necktie he came without resisting. Guidry followed us down the lane to Mame’s driveway and my Bronco. Reggie balked a bit at getting into the back but finally obeyed. With Guidry in the passenger seat, I looped a right to the bay and drove past a few shuttered houses
that looked closed for the summer.
The Ferrellis’ tall cypress house was on the edge of an inlet, with a curving drive sweeping across the front. The house had weathered silver gray, and near-black Bermuda shutters on its slim windows gave it a coy look, like an island woman with demurely lowered eyelashes. A louvered breezeway separated a wide carport from the house, and a sparkling white Scarab 35 Sport rocked gently at a wooden dock.
I parked in front of the entrance, went to the back of the Bronco, and looped a cotton leash around Reggie’s neck. He was tense, holding his neck stiffly arched as I led him up the steps to the door. Guidry rang the bell, and I laid my hand on top of Reggie’s head while we waited.
Stevie opened the door, her face showing a mixture of apprehension and irritation, as if she didn’t appreciate unexpected people at her door so early in the morning. She was about forty, with the lean high-cheekboned beauty I always associate with generations of money. She was barefoot, in white linen shorts and a high-necked black sleeveless knit top, her dark hair loosely twisted into a comb at the back of her head. When she saw Reggie, her mouth made an O of surprise, and then she looked quickly at Guidry,
I remembered the feeling, the dark curtain slowly descending so that color and light become dingy, the brain screaming that what you’re about to hear can’t be true, even though you already know before you hear it that it is.
I said, “Stevie, it’s about Conrad.”
She covered her own mouth, but I knew it was mine she wanted to shut up.
Guidry said, “Mrs. Ferrelli, I’m Lieutenant Guidry of the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department. May we come in?”
Mutely, she stood aside, and Guidry and I stepped into space that soared to a high cathedral ceiling, with a glass wall at the back overlooking the bay. We walked over dark tile to stand awkwardly on a rug where caramel leather sofas and chairs formed a grouping.
Stevie said, “Has Conrad had an accident?”
Guidry said, “I think you’d better sit down, ma’am.”
She sat, suddenly and heavily, as if her legs had suddenly given way. I slipped the cotton leash off Reggie, and he trotted to her, instinctively going to give comfort. She touched his neck with trembling fingers.
Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund Page 2
