As Dog Is My Witness (9 page)

M
ahoney’s next patient was
close to home, in Edison, so I drove to Oak Tree Road and began
watching, again to no avail. But, par for the course, Mahoney
informed me via cell phone that the Florham Park car, which I
hadn’t gotten to, had been sabotaged.

“All it needed was a tire. Can you believe it?”
Mahoney moaned. “And he slashed it in exactly the same place as the
one I’d fixed. If I didn’t put the flat tire in my van, I’d start
to think I wasn’t doing the work.”

“Wow, a dead battery and a flat tire,” I said. “You
get all the tough repairs, don’t you?”

His voice took on a professorial tone. “These are all
pretty new cars. Most of them require simple repairs. In fact,
tires and batteries are the most common. These are even things
you
could do.”

“Touché.”

“But when something big comes up, they need someone
who really knows his stuff,” said Mahoney, never one to take his
work lightly.

I, on the other hand, did. “Bicycle Repair Man!” I
shouted, re-call-ing the vintage Monty Python sketch.

A growl from the cell phone. “Very amusing.”

He finished his work (a fan belt) relatively quickly,
and drove off. And the result was pretty much the same as the last
time—no saboteur, and no difficulty. I drove home.

Four seconds after I walked in the door, the phone
rang, and naturally, it was the person I was least prepared to talk
to. I checked the caller ID box, saw who it was, sighed, and picked
it up.

“Hi, Glenn,” I said, hopefully without a tinge of
weariness in my voice.

“Mr. Tucker? This is Jackie from Mr. Waterman’s
office.” Like most people in Hollywood, Glenn felt the need to
impress everybody with how busy he was. So he had people call you
and then tell him you were on the line. That way, if you weren’t
there, he hadn’t wasted his precious fifteen seconds dialing your
number. “I have Mr. Waterman on the line for you.”

“I’ll try to contain my excitement.”

A split second later, Glenn’s voice broke through,
and like most people who have someone else call you up, he felt
compelled to sound surprised. “Aaron! How
are
you?”

“Wait . . .  who is this?
Glenn
? My goodness! How surprising to hear your voice, after
someone called up and said it’d be you!”

He snickered, but I couldn’t tell if his heart was in
it or not. “Okay, I get the message. Always have to shoot down the
pompous, eh?”

“That’s me,” I said, “the old pompous-shooter.” It
doesn’t always come out the way you want it to.

“Okay, Aaron,” he said. “How far have you
gotten?”

“I made it all the way through college,” I offered,
but I knew that wasn’t what he was asking. I was stalling for
time.

“You know what I mean,” Glenn said. “How are the
revisions going?”

There was no point. I’d have to level with him.
“Great,” I told him. “I think you’ll be pleased.” Okay, so some
things are more level than others. I have the same philosophy when
it comes to home repair, which is why all the shelves on my walls
are slightly off.

“Terrific,” Glenn gushed distractedly. “How far have
you gotten?”

“How far?”

“Yes.”

“How far have I gotten?”

I could sense him sitting up behind his desk,
suddenly concerned. “That
was
the question, Aaron,” Glenn
said.

“Well . . .  Come on, Tucker, you make
stuff up for money—say something! “I’m not really doing it in
sequence, you know. I’m fixing the little things first, then moving
on to the heavy lifting.”

The crinkling in the earpiece told me Waterman was
relaxing back into his leather chair (PETA be damned!). “You had me
worried there for a minute.”

“Yeah,” I said, “me too.”

“How soon do you expect to be done?” he asked.

“How soon?”

“Don’t start this again, Aaron,” Waterman warned.

“Soon,” I said firmly. “Very soon. What’s our
drop-dead date on this?”

Waterman thought for a moment. He was calculating the
real deadline versus what he thought he should tell me, so I’d be
done sooner, or, if I went over “deadline,” still be on time. I
understand the impulse—I do it to interview subjects all the time.
“I can give you a week,” he said finally.

A
week!
I did everything I could to avoid an
audible intake of breath, then gritted my teeth and lied directly
through them. “No problem,” I said. “Nothing to it.”

“Good enough,” said Glenn. “Aaron, if you want to
confer with me on anything, bounce something off me, feel free.
I’ll always take your call. You know that, I hope.”

“Yes, boss.”

I hung up as quickly as I could and opened the
“
Minivan
” computer file for the first time since I’d arrived
home. The changes Glenn wanted really weren’t all that extensive,
and if I put the effort into it, I could certainly finish in
time.

The phone rang. I considered not picking up, what
with having all this newfound resolve and everything, but the
number, from within my own area code, was one I didn’t recognize.
Curiosity didn’t necessarily kill the freelance writer, but it more
than likely wasn’t going to make him a lot of money, either.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Tucker, this is Arnold Rezenbach.” He waited, as
if the very mention of his name usually brought awed gasps or
prayers muttered under one’s breath. I was pretty sure I’d heard it
before, but I couldn’t remember where. “I’m the attorney for Karen
Huston,” he added, realizing I wasn’t providing an adequate amount
of shaking-in-my-boots.

“Oh yeah,” I said, mostly to myself. I immediately
switched into freelance reporter mode, noting with some pride how
quickly gungho screenwriter mode had evaporated. If I played this
right, I might be able to pave the way for eventually getting an
interview with Michael Huston’s widow. “I was calling about an
article I’m writing for
Snapdragon.
”

“Yes, I remember,” Rezenbach said. “I’m calling to
inform you that Ms. Huston has consented to an interview.”

Damn
, I’m good.

I
had an hour and a half
before the kids would come home, so I rushed to Karen Huston’s home
in North Brunswick before she or her lawyer could change their
minds. He was already there, as it turned out, having called me on
the cell phone from Karen’s living room. I love being dependable,
while people like Rezenbach just assume you’ll be available at
their
convenience.

Karen’s house was lovely. A small Victorian, it had
been detailed within an inch of its life by whoever painted it
last, and was a tasteful combination of blue, aqua, and white, with
a white railing on the wrap-around porch and plants hanging from
the exposed beams on the screened-in section of the porch,
insulated now by glass so the plants were actually alive and well.
This contrasted with my house, where any plant that enters during
any season might just as well abandon all hope.

Rezenbach answered the door himself, which surprised
me. I figured he’d have minions with him, since these guys always
have minions. I also figured out that one of them would handle the
more mundane tasks, like opening doors. But there he was, showing
off his turning and pulling skills like a real pro.

The room I entered was not atypical in this part of
New Jersey. Long before television, it was built to be a living
room, where people would gather, perhaps sip a little brandy, and
generally wish someone would invent television so they could stop
being so damn bored. Today, of course, a large-screen TV dominated
the room, with a cabinet for the corresponding audio system (we
used to call them “stereos” in my day, which was October 2, 1978).
A sofa and two wing chairs served the god of television
entertainment quietly and subserviently.

This room, while not demonstrably different than
most, was, without qualification,
better.
The paint job was
a little more detailed, the carpet a tad softer, the furnishings
chosen and arranged more ergonomically, but with perfect placement
to create the homey-yet-elegant effect. Paintings—not framed
prints, but real paintings on real canvasses—were hung on the walls
in just the spots where paintings should be hung. The fireplace was
brick, and designed to be warm and inviting, not spectacular and
intimidating.

It was, in short, a perfect room, but not in a Martha
Stewart-anal-retentive-magazine-layout sort of way. It was a room
that invited you in, asked you to sit, be comfortable, enjoy
yourself, and share in the entertainment offered. It was not
something that shouted about its superiority, but spoke calmly
about days gone by.

Normally, all that perfection would have sent me into
the night screaming for my mommy, but here, somehow, it worked
perfectly. I didn’t want to run away at top speed.

Rezenbach, a thin, bony man who would have done well
in auditions for the role of Death, merely nodded his head at me
when I entered, foregoing the traditional handshake. No doubt he
was worried that my sub-zero grip from the arctic winds outside
would warm up his own hand too much, and he’d have to go back to
his tomb to reach his natural body temperature of 23 degrees
Fahrenheit.

“Mr. Tucker?” he asked, as if someone would actually
pretend
to be me. I assured him I hadn’t been abducted, then
replaced with an exact replica. His voice, which hadn’t actually
been booming to begin with, dropped to something between a whisper
and a hush.

“Karen is in the bedroom,” he said. “I’d like to ask
you to go easy on her.”

“I wasn’t planning on pulling out the bright lights
and the rubberhose, Mr. Rezenbach. I realize what she’s been
through.”

Though unappreciative of the imagery, he nodded, and
walked down a corridor to what must have been the master bedroom. I
did not follow. From somewhere nearby, toward the entrance to the
attached garage, I heard something.

Growling.

It wasn’t the kind of sound that set one’s mind at
ease, but I didn’t have the time to consider it. Rezenbach
returned, holding the hand of a woman about ten years younger than
I am. She was dark blonde, with a fit, athletic body, concealed in
a too-formal dress that wasn’t exactly black, but was pretending to
be. Her eyes, normally blue, registered mostly red.

I don’t know anything about murder investigations,
despite having done two earlier ones. But writers, particularly
those who deal in fiction, train themselves to understand human
emotion. And we’re usually fairly good at being able to distinguish
between the genuine and the artificial. Karen Huston’s grieving,
which I could see from 20 feet away, fell unquestionably into the
“genuine” category. She had been kicked in the gut by her husband’s
murder, and was just barely catching her breath.

She, however, held out a hand, and I took it gently.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice, Mr. Tucker,” she said
in a soft, melodic voice. Karen seemed much older than her years,
older than my years, even, and it was the weight of her recent
suffering that wore her down. Her mouth was clearly more given to
smiling.

“Thank
you
for seeing me, Mrs. Huston. And
call me Aaron, please.”

I sat in one of the wing chairs, clumsily removing
the reporter’s notebook from the back pocket of my jeans.
Rezenbach, who had actually taken my coat and gloves, hung them on
an elegant wooden coat rack. But, not wanting to stray too far from
his client, he sat next to her on the sofa. He was—or was it my
imagination?— proprietary about Karen Huston.

“I’m so sorry to be meeting you under these
circumstances,” I told her. I had rehearsed that line the whole
drive down. Cops always say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” which has
become something of a cliché, and therefore has lost all its
emotional meaning. This wasn’t much better, but at least Jesse L.
Martin didn’t say it on TV every week.

“I understand,” Karen said. “But I don’t know why
you’re writing about this. Isn’t it just a local matter?” She
stumbled on the word “matter,” as if she were first going to say
“murder,” but couldn’t bring herself to utter the word.

“It is, and it’s not,” I told her. “The young man who
was charged with . . .  the crime has a disorder
called Asperger’s Syndrome. I’m examining the incident with that in
mind.”

Rezenbach’s mouth tightened when I mentioned Justin,
but Karen didn’t seem to anger. She nodded slowly and looked at the
coffee table. “Yes,” she said. “The poor young man.”

The growling got louder, and—sue me—I must have
looked. I’m not used to the walls making a hostile noise when I’m
in the room.

Karen turned and shouted at the wall. “Dalma!
No!”

The growling ceased, replaced by whimpering. Karen
looked at me, and must have seen the admiration in my eyes. “She’s
really a good dog,” she said.