A Farewell to Legs (25 page)

“What’s that?”

“Well, if you’re assuming that Stephanie killed
Crazy Legs, then got right on an airplane at Reagan, flew to
Newark, hopped in a rental car and drove to the reunion, you’re
forgetting that she had her own car when she pulled into the lot in
Scotch Plains.”

“You noticed that?” I asked incredulously.

“Sure,” Mahoney said. “It’s second nature now. I see
a car, I check the plates, and I look for a sticker or a number
that would indicate it’s from a rental company. Got to keep up with
the competition. And Stephanie’s car was definitely private.”

I thought for a while about that. “That leaves a few
possibilities,” I said. “But one thing’s for sure.”

“What’s that?” asked Mahoney, always dependable to
deliver a straight line when you need one.

“Well, you gentlemen—and I use the term loosely—have
answered your questions very well, so
Snapdragon
is
definitely picking up the tab for dinner,” I said, reaching for my
American Express card.

There was a good deal of cheering while I calculated
the tip, and how to convince the people at surrounding tables that
I’d never met these men before in my life.

I got home after Leah was in bed, but Ethan was
still up, wreaking havoc with my computer by playing Internet games
on the Nickelodeon site. Abby, with a Sphinx-like look on her face,
told me he had been on the Internet pretty much all evening.

We sat in the kitchen, she having a cup of decaf and
me having a couple of tablespoons of Maalox. And the idiot grin
that kept trying to conceal itself on my wife’s face finally got
the better of me.

“Okay,” I said, “tell me about the dog.”

“It’s so
cute!”
she gushed. “We found it on
the site for this shelter in Hackettstown. . .”

“Hackettstown!” I groaned. “That’s an hour and a
half drive easy.”

“You only have to do it once,” Abby said. “He’s so
adorable, Aaron. Part beagle, part basset hound.”

“A bagel. Very appropriate.”

“You have to see. As soon as Ethan’s done playing,
I’ll show you the picture.”

“Don’t show me anything,” I said. “I don’t want to
be infected with cute dog disease like the rest of you.”

“You are a very difficult man,” my wife said.
“Believe me, once you see the picture, you’ll fall in love.”

“I might fall in love tonight, but in February, when
the wind is blowing and it’s twelve degrees outside and Mr.
Adorable wants to be walked, I’m not going to be so in love.”

Ethan called in from the den. “I’ll do it, Dad,” he
said. “You don’t have to walk the dog.”

Abby and I looked at each other, but our looks were
saying two different things: hers was all about “see?” while mine
was very clearly stating, “famous last words.”

A
fter the Y the next
morning, I decided to let bygones be bygones and go get a water
bottle at the Kwik N’ EZ. In my stinky sweats, I didn’t want to
inflict myself upon anyone at a real store, and besides, I thought
with a certain malevolent glee, they were used to things that
didn’t smell especially good around there.

Not paying attention to the staff, I just walked
over, picked up the bottle of Poland Spring, and headed for the
counter. The owner, Mr. Rebinow, was eyeing me warily the whole
time, but he wasn’t working the register. I noticed that he had
taken the box of stink bombs off the counter as soon as he saw me
walk in.

I paid for the sports bottle, took the top off, and
raised the bottle in his direction, which I considered a
conciliatory gesture, and left. But he made no sign, no movement,
no nod in my direction. Some people—you mess up their store for two
stinking days (literally), and they never forgive you.

When I got back to the house, Preston Burke was
there, admiring his work. He had finished painting the window
frame, and it looked better than at any time we’d lived in the
house. The man lacked social skills, but he could certainly fix a
window, which was more than I could say for myself.

“Oh, Pres, I forgot to take the money out of the
bank. Do you mind if I give you a check?” I could do an online
transfer of the money from our savings account later.

“It doesn’t matter, Aaron. You ever think about
painting that front door? It really doesn’t match the window
anymore.” Burke looked sideways at me, trying to convince me this
was a spur-of-the-moment idea.

“Come on, Preston. You’re becoming the Contractor
Who Came To Dinner. Besides, painting the door is something I can
do myself, and I’ve blown my annual home repair budget on you
already.”

He thought about that. “No charge,” he said. “I’d
hate to leave the house looking like that. I could take pictures,
and use it for promotion to get more work.” I hesitated, and he
knew he had me. “Just take a couple hours, maybe half a day.”

Before I knew it, he was scraping the front door in
preparation for painting. As we’ve established, I’m damn easy.

The phone was ringing as I walked in the front door.
Abby sounded as excited as she’s been since the first pregnancy
test came back positive thirteen years ago. You’d think she’d have
learned.

“I called the shelter, and they’re holding Warren
for us,” she exhaled.

“Warren?” Who the hell was Warren? I pictured Warren
Beatty in a homeless shelter, and that seemed wrong.

“The bagel.” Beat, two, three,
four. . .

“Oh, the
dog!”
Give me enough clues, and I’ll
still generally fail to solve your mystery for you.

“Can you get up there?” To Hackettstown? Now? When I
had such an enticing assignment, like parents to harass?

“I can, but. . .”

“Oh, Aaron, go ahead. We’ll talk about it later.
Once you see that face. . .”

I put on my Serious Husband voice. “Abigail, you
listen to me. I need you to understand that I am not in favor of us
getting a dog.”

“Aaron. . .”

“No. If this is going to happen—and I’m getting the
awful sense that it is—you have to understand that this is
not
my dog. I take no responsibility for it, I don’t want
it, I won’t walk it, and the first time it takes a leak on the rug
in my office when I’m the only one who’s home, I’m going to kick
its little canine butt out into the street. Do you understand
that?”

“Sure. Now. . .”

“Abby,
do you understand that?”

There was an appalled pause. “Yes. I understand
it.”

“You know it to be true? You acknowledge it?”

A little growl in the voice this time. “Yes.”

“Okay, give me the address of this shelter.”

She did, and before I could have a rational thought,
I visited MapQuest on the Internet and gotten semi-reasonable
directions to the current home of Warren the Bagel. MapQuest
estimated it would take me one hour and twenty-three minutes to
reach my destination, and it’s rarely wrong.

I bounced the calls from the land line to the cell
phone in case school called, and got out the minivan. If I was
going to bring home something whose toilet habits were unknown to
me, I’d rather have the van.

There are no good tapes in the van, and I’d
forgotten to transfer one from the Saturn, so I kept the cassette
player turned off, rather than have to suffer through the
Backstreet Boys, Smash-mouth, and whatever other bands my daughter
had picked up from the radio station her friends told her she
liked. I remember when the kids were big Beatles fans, because I
told them they were. Times change.

I had enough time during the drive to bounce around
a few ideas. If there was in fact a bloodstain at the foot of
Cherie Braxton’s bed, that probably meant Legs wasn’t killed while
he was lying down. If that were true, why would the killer bother
to arrange him on the bed? Why not just let him fall where he
stood?

That was the problem with this story—every answer
led to another question. I couldn’t think of a reason to move Legs
after he was stabbed. Maybe he lay down by himself, just to get
comfortable when he died. Uh-huh. Maybe he did a quick fox trot
while he was bleeding, too.

And if the stain on the rug was Legs’ blood, why
didn’t the police get DNA on it? Abrams had told me the only blood
found was on the bed, and that it had soaked through the mattress
to the box spring, which Cherie Braxton had told me forced her to
get a new bed, which she expected the government to pay for. Fax
McCloskey, on the other hand, had already put out a release stating
that Ms. Braxton was not entitled to relief from the government. It
was the only useful information he’d ever sent to me, or anyone
else.

Did the fact that the carpet might have been cleaned
with club soda
really
implicate Stephanie? After all, she
wasn’t the only one who used that stuff to clean stains—Friedman
had known about it. It was just the swiftness with which she had
wiped up Leah’s ketchup that had impressed me—that and being able
to think on her feet so rapidly. That didn’t make her a murderer.
Necessarily.

The big question, though, was where was the thirteen
million, and who had taken it? Stephanie was living well, but not
well enough for that. Legs was probably not using the money, what
with being dead and all, and that left. . .

Branford T. Purell, killer, bon vivant, corpse.
There was absolutely no explanation for a hair of his to be in
Braxton’s apartment, and yet, there it was. Could it have ridden in
on the killer’s pants or something? Was the killer carrying it
around for seven years, waiting for the right moment to drop it and
confound the living hell out of law enforcement officials and
freelance reporters? Maybe the killer was the Texas state
executioner, a man who never had his clothes cleaned. But now, I
was just grasping at hairs.

Just then, the cell phone rang, and the number was
not recognized by the caller ID service Verizon gives you whether
you ask for it or not. So I picked up. And there was The Voice.

“Stop what you’re doing. It’s none of your
business.”

“You know,” I said, “this is getting tiresome. Who
are you, and what is it you want?” I thought I was starting to
recognize The Voice, and I wanted to keep him talking.

“Stop,” said The Voice, and the phone went dead.

Driving up to pick up the dog I didn’t want, I
thought: All in all, I wasn’t really getting much out of this
day.

T
he Hackettstown No-Kill
Shelter (HNKS) turned out to be someone’s house, with a huge
L-shaped wing built onto its side and extending back into the
property for about a hundred yards. That, I assumed as I drove up,
was where the animals were being kept. I looked at the digital
clock in the van: it had taken me an hour and twenty-one minutes to
drive this distance. Two minutes less than MapQuest had allowed. I
must have been speeding.

The front door was locked, but there was a bell,
which I pushed. A little window in the door opened. A pair of eyes
filled it from the other side, and they had to look down to find
me.

“Yeah?” the voice, of indeterminate gender, growled
at me. It’s nice to deal with humanitarians.

“Swordfish,” I said, but there was no response as
the eyes looked me up and down, which, alas, didn’t take long. “I’m
here to see Warren,” I added. The door opened, and in I went.

Inside, there was the usual office with dog food,
dog toys, dog accessories, and a huge donation box, which bore a
sign that said, “Help us keep these animals alive!” But hey, no
pressure.

The voice turned out to belong to a woman of about
five-feet-and-eleven inches, which, with help from her Jersey hair,
made her just a fraction shorter than Michael Jordan. She examined
me again and said, “You the one who called about Warren
before?”

“My wife,” I said in the deepest voice I could
muster. I’m a manly man, dammit. I would have spat, but there was
no receptacle in sight.

“He’s in the back, number thirty-six,” she said,
handing me a key and pointing to a door. I used the key on the
door, and miraculously, it worked. I walked into the animal
shelter.

It was dark, and I hit a light switch on my left
side. As soon as the lights came on, about two million dogs began
barking their brains out all around me. The room was a long, long
hallway, with what amounted to cells on either side going all the
way back. From the look, the sound, and the smell of the place, it
was full up.

Luckily, the stalls were numbered, and it didn’t
take long to find thirty-six, on the right side and about halfway
back. There, sitting and looking hopeful, was the only dog not
barking to beat the band.

He was, as advertised, an attractive animal. Big,
basset eyes, long basset ears, but otherwise beagle-like, Warren
was the poster puppy for dogs. “Take me home,” his gaze, from a
head tilted to one side, said. “I’m a good dog. See, I’m not
barking like those other demented animals. I’ll be a fine companion
for your children.”

The woman in the office had given me a short green
leash, and I opened Warren’s stall and attached it to his collar.
He promptly stood up and walked out just at my left heel. He
probably would have shined my shoes for me, too, but I was wearing
sneakers.

“How gentle is this dog in real life?” I asked the
woman.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I have a twelve-year-old son and an
eight-year-old daughter, and they have to be able to walk him,” I
said. I wanted a clear picture for me and for the dog.

“Well, my son has been walking him every morning for
the past two months,” she said.

“How old is he?”

“He’s five.”

“Okay, the dog’s gentle. But do I have to call him
Warren?”

She scratched her head. “Nah, that’s just the name
we gave him here. He was a stray from the Bronx, and they were
going to euthanize him, so we brought him here. You can change his
name to anything you like.”