The Big Chili

by Julia Buckley

  They both smiled at me, their faces relieved.

  “But,” I continued, “I also think you should tell this to Detective Parker.”

  “Why?” Shelby moaned.

  “Because. Think of it this way. He’s trying to put together a big puzzle, which means he needs all the pieces. What if someone overheard your conversation and it made them angry, too? Whoever did this was, let’s face it, not quite right. So what if you provided a motive and you didn’t even know it?”

  This shocked them; they hadn’t considered it, but they did so now. Meanwhile I recognized my own hypocrisy. Wasn’t I suppressing a very big puzzle piece by not coming forward as the chili maker?

  “Lilah, you look nervous,” Shelby said.

  “Well, your story has me a little on edge. Did you tell this to your parents?”

  They looked guilty again. “No,” Jake admitted.

  “Guys,” I said. “No one is going to put you in jail, because you are clearly not guilty of anything beyond speaking your mind. But I think you will feel better, and it will be the right thing, if you and your parents go to the police and tell them what you told me.”

  “You don’t think they’ll be convinced we poisoned her?”

  “Because you just happened to have the poison with you in your pocket, in case someone offended your animal-rights sensibilities?”

  Shelby laughed, covering her mouth. Then she dropped her hand and turned to her boyfriend. “She’s right, Jake. We don’t have to be afraid of anything.”

  Now that they both felt relieved, their faces looked younger and more vulnerable, and I felt a moment of longing for my own teenage days, when things had seemed complicated but were really far less so. . . .

  Shelby got up and hugged me. “Thank you, Lilah. I knew you would help us.”

  “Thank you for the cookies. But please take them away so that I do not eat them all. Call or text me after you talk to the police, okay?”

  Jake shook my hand, seeming suddenly adult, and then the two of them wandered out, Shelby clutching her cookies (in an enviable vintage Tupperware cake and cookie carrier with a removable transportation handle), and Jake with a casual arm dangled over Shelby’s shoulders. They were well suited, I thought, watching them. Some people just met the right companions early.

  * * *

  MICK AND I went for an afternoon walk and I inhaled deeply, appreciating once again the scent of someone’s outdoor fireplace, making me long for days of yore, when my parents took Cam and me on camping trips and we roasted hot dogs over open fires.

  We came across the remnants of a broken beer bottle, glowing green and dangerous in the middle of the sidewalk. I paused to push it all to the side, wondering why people persisted in breaking glass all over town. One always saw the evidence, but never the act. “So thoughtless,” I murmured to Mick. Then we kept walking, past the Rite-Aid and the second-run movie theater, and then looping around the other side of Dickens Street. By the time we got home, Mick seemed to be flagging. This was odd, because he was only four years old and usually could outlast me on any walk.

  “Feeling tired, bud?” I asked him as I unlocked the door and then unfastened his leash. He moved down the hall and headed toward his basket; that’s when I saw the blood. Red, paw print–shaped bloodstains had appeared every time he set down his front right paw. I screamed at the sight, then ran to him. “Stop, Mick!” I said.

  I lifted his paw, and sure enough, there was a shard of green glass sticking into one of his pale brown paw-pads. I pulled on it gently, and Mick yipped. “Sorry!” I said. The glass had come out and now he was bleeding even more. I ran to the bathroom and found a washrag, which I wrapped around his paw and then fastened with some masking tape I pulled out of a side-table drawer.

  “Okay, that looks terrible. But you won’t have to put up with it for long, okay? Come here, my sweetie.” I slung my purse over one arm and then lifted Mick, who was a substantial canine, in both arms. I managed to lock the door after me and then stow Mick into the passenger seat of my car.

  On the way to the vet I kept a watchful eye on Mick, who seemed happy enough to be in the car with me. He watched the scenery, as always, with his wise gold eyes.

  I lucked into a close parking spot and wrestled my Labrador out of the car and into the Friends of Animals Veterinary Center. “Hello,” I said to the silver-haired receptionist. “I don’t have an appointment, but my dog stepped on glass and I need someone to look at him. Can anybody squeeze me in? I usually see Dr. Harkness.”

  The woman smiled and typed something into a computer. “Dr. Harkness is booked all day, but Dr. Trent can see you. You can go into exam room one.”

  I was still holding Mick, who had rested his big head on my shoulder and seemed ready to take a nap. I staggered toward the room and managed to set Mick down carefully on the examining table. “Geez, you’re heavy,” I told him. “Maybe you get too many table scraps.”

  Mick stretched out his legs so that his belly touched the table. Then he set his head on his good front paw. I patted his head and said, “Don’t be nervous,” even though he looked perfectly content. It was I who felt nervous, still rather traumatized by the sight of blood on my floor.

  The door opened and Tammy walked in. Hank’s girlfriend, Tammy. “Uh—hi, Tammy,” I said.

  She smiled, slipping her hands into the pockets of her white smock. “Hi, Lilah!”

  “I had no idea you worked here. Or that you were a vet,” I said. Or that she did anything at all. Why had I assumed that Tammy was just some sort of professional husband-troller? Shame on me.

  “Yes, I’ve been here at Friends for about eight months. Before that I was at the Chicago Animal Welfare League.”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s your dog’s name?”

  “This is Mick. We were just walking, and I pulled this out of his paw.” I showed her the shard of glass, which I had put into my pocket.

  “Yuck. That’s sharp. Let’s check and see if you got it all. Okay with you, Mick?” She put her face in front of Mick’s face while she gently massaged his big square head. Mick licked her nose. “Oh, you are a cute one,” she said. Then she deftly took off my weird washrag bandage and studied Mick’s paw while still talking to him in a soft voice. I massaged his back, hoping to keep him relaxed.

  Tammy looked carefully in all the crevices between his footpads and then nodded. “Looks like you got it all. He’s just bleeding a lot because that one piece happened to hit him at an angle and it went kind of deep. I’ll put in a couple of stitches and he’ll be good as new.”

  “Will it hurt him?” I asked.

  “He’ll be fine. I’ll give him a little topical anesthetic, so he won’t feel much pain. Just some pressure, maybe. But I will need to clean the wound first. That’s the only part that may hurt a little. I’m going to have Rich clean him up in the back, and then I’ll do the stitches quick as a bunny and I’ll hand him right back to you. Okay?”

  “Thank you, Tammy.” I was truly impressed with her bedside manner, and Mick seemed to like her, as well.

  She surprised me again when she gave Mick a kiss on the nose and then lifted him up in one swooping motion. “Want to see the back, buddy? Let’s go see the back room. Okay?”

  Mick nodded. I felt a spurt of jealousy.

  As promised, she brought him back about half an hour later, his paw bandaged in a clean and tight white gauze. “Hey, Mick!” I said as he loped over to me.

  “He did great,” Tammy said. “I didn’t put on a cone, but I did put some nasty-tasting stuff on that bandage. Still, he’ll probably work it off by morning, but that’s no big deal. By then you can leave it off and just keep an eye on the stitches.”

  “Okay. Thank you. Thanks so much,” I said. We were still in the little exam room; I was sitting in a chair and Mick was tucked between my knees, panting and drool
ing slightly. I decided to venture a personal question. “Is everything going okay—with you and Hank?”

  She sighed and rolled her eyes. “The police questioned him and let him go, but of course he feels like they’re watching his every move.”

  “Did he . . . get his dog back? After Alice—”

  Her eyes widened. “You know about Apollo?”

  “I didn’t, but then I ran into a girl from the church who told me about him, and that Alice had wanted to—debark him? Is that really the term?”

  Tammy sighed and nodded. “Debarkation. Or devocalization, it’s sometimes called. I can’t discuss—but then again, I guess I can. Hank doesn’t care, and Alice . . .” She shook her head. “Do you know that’s how Hank and I met?”

  “What?”

  She looked at her watch, then sat in the chair next to mine. “Alice came in here about eight months ago, asking about the operation. I said that we don’t do it at our practice because we consider it unnecessary and unethical. I told her there were other ways to modify her dog’s behavior. I could see it wasn’t the response she was looking for. I knew that she was not the person whose name was on Apollo’s contact card, so I called Hank. I asked if he knew about the procedure she was considering, and he was furious. He told me that they were divorcing and that she had Apollo for the time being.”

  She leaned back in her chair and looked at a framed picture of a Persian cat on the wall. “He came in the next day and said we were not to cooperate with anything his wife requested without contacting him. He was . . . really passionate about it. I told him I admired his attitude. Then he asked if it was appropriate to ask me out for dinner.”

  Her lovely eyes were dreamy as she smiled at me. “Probably not very romantic-sounding, but it really was. And we hit it off right away.”

  “So Alice—did she see it as a sort of betrayal that he ended up dating you after you refused to do her bidding?”

  She shrugged. “Alice didn’t like me for a lot of reasons. And the more I got to know her, the more that feeling was mutual.”

  “Did you know that she was still considering the debarking? Even on the night she died?”

  Tammy’s mouth turned into a thin line. “How do you know that?”

  “That girl I told you about—a teenager who was there doing service work. She and her boyfriend got into an argument with Alice about it.”

  “Is that so?” Tammy suddenly looked like a formidable opponent. In a battle between her and Alice, I would not have been able to predict the victor.

  “Yes. They just told me that today.”

  “I guess Apollo had a narrow escape,” she said. Her expression was reserved, but her voice had a victorious sound. Then she reached in her pocket, pulled out a cell phone, and started pressing buttons. Finally she held it up for me to see a picture of a truly beautiful German shepherd sitting in front of a rose trellis. “That’s Apollo,” she said.

  “Gorgeous,” I told her.

  “He’ll live with me soon. He and Hank both.”

  I nodded. It was good to know, somehow, that Apollo was with two people who loved him, and not with someone who resented him.

  Mick leaned over to snuffle at a scent on the floor. Tammy—Dr. Trent—giggled and patted his head. “Mick’s a great dog. Call if you have any problems with the stitches. You can make an appointment to have them removed in about a week.”

  I stood up and shook her hand. “Tammy, thank you so much. You’re really good at this.”

  “Thanks. Sometime you and I should go out for coffee. Since our paths keep crossing,” she said. For a minute I saw a look on her face that I sometimes recognized on my own in the mirror—a loneliness that had nothing to do with being alone.

  “I’d like that. Give me a call,” I said.

  Mick and I left the room and I went to the counter to make a new appointment. So far Mick was not biting at his bandage, but he was sniffing it a great deal. “Leave that alone, Mick,” I said.

  I paid the receptionist and brought Mick back to the car. It was now late afternoon and I still had a list of things I wanted to accomplish. As I drove, I tried to work on that list, mentally ticking things off, but my mind strayed to Dr. Tammy Trent and her almost smug expression when she spoke of Apollo’s “narrow escape.” It seemed to me that she had more than one motive for wanting Alice Dixon dead, and that she, perhaps more than anyone, had benefitted from that death.

  * * *

  WHEN I GOT home, I tucked Mick into his basket as one might a sick baby, and Mick clearly enjoyed all the doting. Soon he was snoring, and I took my cleaning supplies to the hallway to clean up his bloody paw prints. I left the door open so that my bleach-smelling cleaner wouldn’t dominate the house. “Out, damned spot,” I quoted to the floor.

  “Lady Macbeth,” said a voice in my doorway.

  I jumped and turned to see Britt Hansen, Terry’s girlfriend, chic as always, even though she wore a casual rust-colored sweater and a pair of jeans. She waved and said, “Let’s see, what else can I remember? ‘All the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten this little hand.’”

  “Very good! Did you major in English?”

  She smiled. “I majored in art history, which in retrospect was almost a guarantee that I would find it difficult to be gainfully employed for the rest of my life. Thank goodness for the gallery and the Internet, which provides all sorts of opportunities for luring customers.”

  I stood up. “Come on in! I was just cleaning up after Mick. He cut his paw and got blood on the floor.”

  “Oh—poor baby! Is he okay?” Britt asked, looking around for Mick.

  “If you listen closely, you can hear him snoring. He has been spoiled by both me and a very pretty veterinarian who smelled like a field of flowers, and now he’s probably having happy dreams.”

  Britt laughed. “All’s well that ends well. Oh—now I have Shakespeare on the brain.”

  “Come to the kitchen. I can make some coffee.”

  Britt followed me as I walked toward the back of the house, but said, “Oh, I can’t stay. Terry and I are going to some fund-raiser tonight. Mayor Emanuel will be there; I’ve never met him before.”

  I tried not to look as amazed as I felt. “Uh—me either, Britt! You guys are such jet-setters.”

  She waved the notion away. “Anyway, I wanted to borrow an idea from you. Normally I have things catered, but tomorrow Terry invited a couple of clients over in the morning, not exactly breakfast but before lunch, and I just wanted to put out a few things for them to eat, but I have no idea about what I would do with such short notice. And I know that you always bring such delicious things when you come over—maybe you have some ideas for me?”

  She perched on one of my kitchen stools and crossed her slim legs.

  “Well—let’s see. When would you be going shopping?”

  “Probably early tomorrow morning. Which is why I am warning Terry not to keep me out late tonight.”

  “Good luck with that.” Terry loves going out, and he claims to need only about four hours of sleep.

  “I know, right? Meanwhile he’s saddled me with this meeting tomorrow. He just counts on me to provide sophistication at a moment’s notice.”

  My mind was working; Britt had her own caterers, but she wasn’t using them tomorrow. This was an in for me. “Listen, I think I can help you out. First of all, I have a couple of frozen zucchini breads. Everybody likes those. Take one now; it will be defrosted by morning, and you can just set it out along with your butter dish, if they want to add some calories. That’s one thing. Then I have this really easy recipe for a brunch frittata—I made it up myself, actually—and it’s very popular. I could whip up the batter tonight and all you would have to do is put it in the oven. Then put out some lovely coffee and tea, some jam and scones, and you’re all set! I can bake up some scones for you in about twenty minutes
.”

  “Lilah, I’m in love with you.” Britt jumped up and gave me a hug. Her perfume was exotic and obviously expensive. With her 1920s hair and face, her scent always made me feel that I was getting a whiff of a bygone era. “And I am going to pay you handsomely.”

  “Well, just for ingredients,” I said.

  “Of course not. Your labor, which you are offering most kindly after a last-minute request, is also worth money.” Britt had her wallet out; she dug inside and took out a satisfying stack of bills, which she left on my counter.

  “When do you want to pick it up?” I asked.

  Britt pouted briefly with her lovely red-painted lips. “That’s the problem—I don’t know when Terry is going to let me leave this thing tonight.”

  “How about if I just leave everything in the kitchen, and you can use your key—just grab it whenever you get home. I’m an early bedtime sort of gal.”

  Britt clapped. “That sounds great! Thank you so much, Lilah! You are a lifesaver, as I knew you would be. You’re always so innovative.” Then she studied my face. “But you can’t always be an early bedtime girl. I’m going to drag you out soon for a girls’ night on the town. In a week or two, maybe. Right now I have to get ready for the Halloween party.”

  I tried to keep the envy out of my voice when I said, “It must be weird to entertain constantly.”

  Britt smoothed her lovely silken hair. “It has its rewards and its drawbacks.” She gave me another hug and ducked back out, telling me she had to change her clothes. I wondered what sparkly thing she would wear to her fund-raiser, where she would meet the mayor of Chicago.

  With a sigh, I took out a dozen eggs and began cracking them into a bowl. I would be sure that everything I made for Britt was top-notch. Then sometime in the future I would ask her casually if she ever wanted me to be a backup to her current caterers. Yes, that was the plan.

  I lost myself for the next hour, stirring and beating and blending and baking. I carefully labeled the frittata mixture and put it in my fridge. I let the scones cool, then wrapped them up with a note to Britt and Terry. I tucked Britt’s generous payment into my client earnings drawer, let Mick out and in, and climbed wearily upstairs.