Three Dogs in a Row

by Neil S. Plakcy

  Rochester didn’t believe him. “All right, I have one,” Rick said. “Courtesy of your Aunt Gail.”

  He gave Rochester the biscuit, and the dog flopped down at his feet, chewing noisily. “Yeah, you guys keep giving the dog treats and then he turns into a big fat monster,” I said.

  “Get over it. What’s new?”

  I told him I had found Caroline’s teenaged diary.

  “You think that has any bearing on her murder?”

  I shrugged. “Karina Warr thought Chris McCutcheon killed Caroline’s dog in Korea,” I said. “I wanted to see if Caroline believed that.”

  “And did she?”

  “She didn’t say so in the diary. But maybe Karina had an ulterior motive for suggesting it.” I told him about Caroline’s suspicion that Karina had a crush on Chris.

  “I’m waiting for this to matter somehow,” Rick said.

  “Suppose Chris and Caroline have been getting together, and Karina’s jealous,” I said. “I know Chris has been down for the weekend, because I saw his SUV in Caroline’s driveway. If Karina wants Chris for herself, she could have killed Caroline to get her out of the way.”

  He sipped his coffee. “It’s a motive. But how could I prove it?”

  I saw the way Rick was holding his coffee cup, thumb on one side, the four fingers wrapped around, and something registered. “Fingerprints,” I said. “If I got you Karina’s fingerprints, you could compare them to the print you found on the shell casing, right?”

  “How are you going to get her prints? You going up to New York again?”

  “No, but she’s coming to Stewart’s Crossing on Saturday.” I told him about the email, that she wanted to see Caroline’s mementoes of Korea.

  “Offer her a drink,” Rick said. “Then leave the glass wherever she puts it down, and call me after she leaves. I’ll come over and pick it up.”

  “Why don’t you just come over?” I asked. “We don’t have to tell them you’re a cop; you’re just a friend of mine who stopped by.”

  He nodded. “That would preserve the chain of custody,” he said. “If I witness her use the glass and then I take direct possession of it.”

  I told him what I’d learned in my online research about her. “Just because she’s a bitch doesn’t make her a murderer,” he said. “God knows if bitchiness was a crime, both our ex-wives would be behind bars for life.”

  “That’s something I can toast to,” I said, raising my cappuccino.

  He drained the last of his coffee and reached down to scratch behind Rochester’s ears. “You take care of this pup,” he said to me. “He’s a good boy.”

  I watched his truck merge into the busy Main Street traffic. Rick was a good cop, and I wanted him to keep his job. Maybe Karina would have some answers for us. If she didn’t, I feared we might never find out who killed Caroline.

  19 – Edith’s Money

  That afternoon, since I wasn’t going to get a visit from Santiago Santos, I decided it was time to tell Edith Passis what I thought was going on. Before I did, though, I did some quick research on the three main credit bureaus and how Edith could request her credit reports.

  I called Edith to make sure she’d be home, gave Rochester a biscuit, and then set off. It was a gorgeous spring afternoon, the kind that make me wonder why I would live anywhere other than southeastern Pennsylvania. The sky was a cloudless, crisp blue the color of Tiffany boxes. Every tree seemed to be coming into leaf, a burgeoning sonata of green. The flowerbeds under the Victorian street lights on Main Street were sprouting tulips and daffodils.

  An interconnected series of three lakes were the centerpiece to Lake Shores, the suburban neighborhood on the south side of town where I’d grown up. My parents’ house was on Center Lake, and I couldn’t resist making a quick pass by it.

  It was an unassuming ranch in a neighborhood of similar houses. The back yard sloped down to the lake, and I remembered summer days spent with my arms twined above my head, my legs locked, rolling down the broad green lawn. We had a little sandy beach and a concrete post where my father tied up an aluminum rowboat. I’d had a swing set and a ranger tower back there as a kid, and when I’d outgrown them my parents had planted apple, pear, peach and cherry trees.

  My father had sold the place when he moved to River Bend, and the new owners had ripped out all the overgrown landscaping, even the fruit trees from the back yard. Gone was the dogwood tree my mother planted the year my grandmother died, and the low boxwood hedge outside my bedroom.

  The windows were all new, and instead of white, the house had been painted a pale terra cotta. The scrawny weeping cherry at one corner of the front yard was gone, replaced by a pair of maple saplings. The lawn glowed a verdant green, and daffodils peeked out of a bed in front of the living room windows.

  Life moved on, I thought. Mine hadn’t been an idyllic childhood, and I had been glad to see the back of that house when my parents drove me up the river to Leighville for my Eastern College orientation. Even so, there were kids like Caroline, Karina and Chris who hadn’t had the solid, rooted childhood I had, and envied it, just as I envied their chance to live in exotic locations and see the world.

  Despite the changes in my parents’ house, and in many neighbors’, Edith Passis’s looked just as it had when I was a kid going there for piano lessons. It was a one-story Cape Cod, freshly painted white, with a red roof. The bushes were trimmed, the grass edged next to the driveway.

  The upright piano was in the same place in the front room, gleaming with a coat of furniture polish. “Edith, this is a trip back in time,” I said, after she’d hugged me, taken my windbreaker, and led me to the dining room table, where her financial paperwork rested in haphazard piles. “Your house looks just the way I remember it.”

  “I have a great handyman,” she said. “I have to admit, things started falling apart after Walter died. I just didn’t know what to do or how to do anything.” She smiled. “Walter did everything for me. He used to say, ‘Edith, you just concentrate on your music and leave everything else to me.’”

  We sat down across from each other. “But just when I was lost, my angel from heaven showed up, and he cleaned my gutters, trimmed the hedges, repaired my leaky kitchen sink—I just don’t know what I’d have done without him.”

  “It’s good you found him,” I said. My parents’ friends were running into the same kinds of problems—old men who couldn’t do what they’d once done, old women who’d never had to do anything for themselves. Mary’s mother had never even learned to drive, and when Mary’s father died she’d had to move into an assisted living facility.

  “I wish I had the same good luck with all this paperwork,” Edith said. “Walter, bless his heart, left me very well off, but lately, I feel like I’ve just lost control.”

  “Let’s see if we can get you organized,” I said, holding off the bad news until I got a better sense of what we were up against.

  We sat down at the table, and the scent of lemon Pledge rising off the wood was enough to remind me of how her piano had always smelled. We spent the next two hours just sorting paperwork into piles. There were brokerage statements on three different accounts, a checking account, and a savings account. Each one sent her monthly statements, and some of the envelopes hadn’t even been opened.

  She had an old ledger Walter had maintained, which listed corporate bonds, municipal bonds, and a bunch of what appeared to be loans to individuals. “Edith, you own a bus?” I asked, when I pulled out one piece of paper and read it.

  “A bus? What on earth would I do with a bus?” she asked.

  “According to this, you own a twelve-passenger bus that’s leased to Royal Limousines. They’ve been paying you annual payments for the last six years, and this year the ownership of the bus transfers to them.”

  “I had no idea,” she said.

  That was Edith’s refrain no matter what I asked. There were some corporate bonds that should have come due in the past year, but she had n
o record of receiving them. There was a $50,000 certificate of deposit in Walter’s records, but the last statement she had was six months old.

  It was just a nightmare. I’ve never pretended to be a financial genius, but when Mary and I had money, we invested in a couple of stocks and CDs, paid our mortgage on time and so on.

  By the time we had the piles sorted, Edith was getting more and more upset. “Could I have a cup of coffee?” I asked, just to give her something to do.

  “Of course! How silly of me. Here you are working so hard and I haven’t even offered you anything to drink. And I made cupcakes specially for you.”

  She bustled off to the kitchen, returning a little later with some watery supermarket brand coffee and a tray of orange-frosted cupcakes. She calmed down a bit, but I could tell she was watching me and worrying over what I was finding.

  Finally I said, “Edith, I’m not going to be able to finish this afternoon. Can I take the rest of these papers back to my house?”

  She looked quite grateful, and found an empty box in her garage that we could use, along with a dusty, unopened package of file folders. I put her to work labeling the folders and filling them with the appropriate papers as I began putting each pile into chronological order, opening the unopened envelopes and throwing away all the advertising circulars that came with them.

  Before I left, I sat down in the living room with her. “Someone has been taking advantage of you,” I said. “You’re missing a lot of documentation, and I found this account at Quaker State Bank in your name that you say you never set up. It’s likely somebody is trying steal your identity.”

  I had to stop and explain identity theft, and Edith got more and more concerned. “I’ve heard about it on the news,” she said, and her voice warbled a little. “This lady lost her house.”

  “You aren’t going to lose your house,” I said, trying to smile. “I’m going to go through all this paperwork, and then we’re going to talk to Rick Stemper. But first, I want you to get copies of your credit reports.”

  “I don’t know how to do that,” she said. She looked like she was ready to cry.

  “I wrote it all up,” I said, handing her the instructions on who to call and what to ask for. “You do this, and I’ll look over all your paperwork, and we’ll talk.”

  I hated leaving Edith so upset, but I didn’t know what else I could do. I’d already spent much more time at her house than I’d anticipated, and I knew Rochester would be eager for his dinner and walk. I just didn’t know how I could make things any better for Edith.

  On impulse, I drove through the center of town and made a quick stop at The Chocolate Ear. Irene Meineke, Gail’s grandmother, was still there. I explained to her what had been happening to Edith, and she agreed to go right over to Edith’s and sit with her for a while.

  I felt better as I headed home, though I had that big box of Edith’s paperwork next to me on the passenger seat of the Beemer, and I knew it would take me hours more to get it sorted. When I walked into the courtyard of the townhouse, I could see Rochester through the sliding glass doors. He was on alert—head high, tail erect, looking just like the picture in the golden retriever book. When he realized it was me, the whole effect was spoiled and he went into his mad kangaroo routine.

  That night, I neglected my clients and the business plan for Santiago Santos, and ignored the papers I had to grade. I was about halfway done with Edith’s paperwork by the time I took a break at eleven to walk Rochester, and I didn’t get to sleep until after two. But everything was organized.

  The next morning I put a piece of brisket in the crock pot and invited Edith to dinner. For good measure, I invited Rick, Gail and Irene, too, and Gail didn’t have to twist my arm to get me to let her bring dessert.

  That morning, students in the tech writing class began making their presentations, so I had nothing to prepare, just the pleasure of sitting and listening. Of course, there wasn’t much pleasure in their choice of topics – you could call it 25 Ways to Die. Colon cancer, cervical cancer, skin cancer. Diabetes, multiple sclerosis, drug overdoses, eating disorders and brain tumors. I thought I might have to go on anti-depressants just to sit through their presentations.

  I collected the rough drafts of research papers from the freshman comp class, ignoring the simmering tension between Menno and Tasheba. I promised to read them all over the weekend and return them on Monday with advice and suggestions, so they could submit the final drafts the last day of class. Of course, five of the twenty-five students either weren’t in class or hadn’t brought their rough drafts.

  I sat in the faculty lounge with Dee Gamay and a couple of other adjuncts after class, all of us bent over stacks of papers, red marking pens in hand. Her cell phone rang while we were grading, and she answered, “Dee Gamay.” She listened for a minute, then said, “I don’t speak Spanish. Speak English, god dammit,” and then slammed the phone shut.

  “I tell you,” she said, and her accent made it sound like she was saying, ‘I tail you.’ “I get these calls every now and then—people just start in talking in Spanish, like I’m supposed to understand what they’re saying.”

  “Do you speak Spanish at all?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Not a word. And I’m not about to start learning.”

  “I learned a little, living in California,” I said, sipping my tea. “And I know that digame means ‘speak to me.’ So even though you think you’re saying your name, some Spanish person is going to think you’re saying ‘talk to me’ in Spanish.”

  “I never heard of such a thing,” she said, as if she didn’t believe me.

  “Check with the Spanish department if you want,” I said, as I went back to work. Most students had improved enough that I could get over the basics of grammar and punctuation and focus on content. Menno’s paper was one of the better ones. Though I didn’t have much interest in offshore banking, the paper was well-organized, with a solid thesis statement, topic sentences for the paragraphs, and correct punctuation.

  I’d just given him an A for the paper when something caused me to look back and pay closer attention. He’d mentioned that the Cayman Islands were one of the prime locations for offshore banking, and something clicked. I remembered that a great deal of Edith’s money had been transferred to accounts in the Caymans. Was that a coincidence, or was it significant? I wasn’t quite sure.

  I got through half a dozen papers after Menno’s before I had to give up. Cruelly, the weather had warmed up, and spring had sprung in Bucks County. I put the windows down in the Beemer for the drive back down the river and enjoyed the only time I’d be out in the sun for the next few days.

  I spent an hour whipping the house into shape for company, baking potatoes in the oven and tossing a salad. The guests started arriving at five, and by quarter past everyone was enjoying a quick sangria I’d tossed together and making appreciative noises about the scent rising from the crock pot.

  I held off talking about Edith’s problems until we were relaxing over decaf cappuccino and slices of Gail’s chocolate raspberry torte, which was worth all the work I’d gone through on Edith’s behalf. I could definitely fall in love with a woman who baked like that. I missed Mary’s cooking more than I was willing to admit, even though she’d stopped preparing most of her special dishes after the first miscarriage.

  “With your permission, Edith, I’d like to share what I’ve found about your problems with Rick, Gail and Irene,” I said. I knew Irene could provide moral support for Edith, and Rick could help us figure out her legal recourse. Gail, of course, had brought the cake.

  “I just feel so terrible,” Edith said. “Walter would be so disappointed in me.”

  Irene reached over and squeezed her hand. In broad strokes, I sketched out what I thought was happening. “Somebody got into Edith’s mail,” I began.

  Homes in Lake Shores had mailboxes at the street, so anyone could walk or drive by, open the mailbox door, and pull out anything they wanted if they k
new Edith’s schedule—the day she taught at Eastern, for example, or the way she could be found at The Chocolate Ear nearly every afternoon.

  “The thief did a couple of things,” I continued. “Some of her brokerage and bank statements haven’t been coming in, because the delivery address was changed. There are checks Edith should have received from those accounts and she hasn’t. Those appear to have been cashed by the person who set up the account at Quaker State Bank in Easton and who changed the addresses on her accounts.”

  I saw Rick pull out a pad and start to take notes. Gail and Irene looked concerned, and Edith just looked miserable.

  “Walter left Edith a number of investments,” I went on. “Some stocks, some municipal bonds, some certificates of deposit.” I looked at Edith. “Now, I don’t want to speak badly of Walter, but I have to say he didn’t make it easy for you to keep up with things, Edith. There are so many different accounts, and loans he made to people, mortgages on property and so on—there’s no way he could have expected you to keep track of it all.”

  Edith’s lip was quivering. Irene said, “Now, Steve, remember, Walter didn’t plan for his death. He had a heart attack.”

  Edith said, “Steve’s right, Irene. Walter used to spend hours looking after things, and he should have known I didn’t have the head for numbers he had.”

  Somehow, a change had come over Edith. Her chin had stopped quivering, and she didn’t look ready to burst into tears any more.

  I looked over at Rick. “What do you suggest we do next?”

  He turned to Edith. “First of all, you have to contact every one of the places where you have accounts, everyone Walter loaned money to, every IRA and 401K and what have you, and make sure that they know someone has been messing with your accounts, and that all communication has to come to your address.”

  “I’ll help you with that, Edith,” Irene said. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll come over to your house before I go to the café, and we’ll start calling people.”