Drop Dead on Recall (23 page)

72

I don’t think of
myself as a morning person, and was shocked to find I was up with the sun again Thursday morning. Jay and I went for an early walk to beat the heat, which was intensifying by the day.

The River Greenway led us into the rising sun, which danced among the leaves of tulip poplars, sycamores, black walnuts, beeches, and several species of oak and maple. A fine gray veil drifted over the murky surface of the Maumee, and the wooded banks fairly screeched as bluejays and crows called each other names. A farm field to the north of the trail showed a faint scatter of soft green shoots over the surface of the dark soil. Corn or soy beans, no doubt. Last year it was beans, so this was probably corn. We met only a handful of early joggers and cyclists.

A splash in the river caught our attention and I watched a pair of wood ducks paddle out of sight under some low-hanging branches. Cerise redbud and ivory dogwood blossoms, luminous in the morning light, danced beneath the hardwood canopy along the riverbank. An Indiana May morning at its finest.

The sirens of the river and woods urged me to linger, but I had things to do. Breakfast for Jay, and a quick shower, and I was on my way once more to Shadetree Retirement Home.

Jade Templeton met me at the front door. “Janet! So nice to see you. Mama is doing fine. She’s out in the garden. I just came from there.”

We walked through the common area where my mother had behaved like a berserker. Was it only three days ago? Two men played checkers by one of the floor-to-ceiling windows that flanked the French doors leading to the enclosed courtyard. An elfin little man with a fringe of white hair around his bald and spotted pate snoozed in a wheelchair toward the center of the room, and a cherry-cheeked woman with tightly curled too-black hair and an electric-yellow velour jumpsuit looked up from her book and fluttered her fingers at us. We exited the room through the French door.

Mom was busy at what appeared to be a brand-new flower bed. It was raised for easy access for gardeners in wheelchairs, or folding chairs like the one Mom sat in. Great idea, I thought. I could use a little less bending over in my own garden.

“Hi, Mom.”

She didn’t react, so I touched her lightly on the sleeve. “Oh, hello. I didn’t hear you come in, dear.” For a moment, I hoped she might be lucid. But then she carefully wiped the fresh soil coating her old, familiar garden gloves onto her light blue sweatpants before pulling her hands from the gloves and extending one in my direction. “I’m Elaine Jones.”

Jones was her maiden name. It hadn’t been her legal name for more than half a century. I worked to keep my voice upbeat. “Mom, it’s me, Janet.”

She went back to planting her bedding plants, gloveless now. She seemed to have this plot of raised soil all to herself. Two women and a man worked companionably at another bed, and at the third, a young volunteer aid steadied a gentleman whose hands shook too much to plant his tomato seedlings by himself.

Mom’s aesthetic abilities were intact, judging by the way she arranged the baby plants. I imagined the bed as it would be in a month. Plastic name tags identified the contents of the plastic containers, and there were no dainty pastels in mom’s selections. I knew there would be no symmetrical rows for my mom, either. I watched her anchor the center of the bed with purple and pink cleome and tall white cosmos. Around those she planted sweeps of crimson zinnias, electric-blue ageratum, and clear-yellow French marigolds. A froth of white alyssum played in the spaces where the colors met, and the borders were edged in vinca vine and blood-red, purple, and white trailing verbena that would soon drape the outer edge of the box like a curtain on a Gypsy caravan. This tiny garden promised me a glimpse of the mother I used to know.

I watched her work for a little more than an hour, enjoying the warm sun and the Big Band music playing softly in the courtyard. I felt calmer than I had in many days, reassured that my mother would be happy here, at least in the warm months.

By the time I left, Mom was focused on patting handfuls of mulch into place around the plants. She acknowledged my goodbye with a dismissive wave.

Jade called to me as I walked through the front lobby. “Wait, child, I’ll walk you out.” She caught up with me and asked what I thought.

“She seems as happy here as she was at home. And she’s safer.”

“Your mama is a sweet lady. I wish I’d known her before.”

I nodded.

“So, the reason I wanted to talk to you, your mama showed me some pictures of your dog, and she got all teary-eyed. Your dog and other dogs. She had a bunch of dog pictures, all in a little box. So I wondered—why don’t you bring him to visit sometime. Your mama would like that.”

“How strange.” Jade looked puzzled, so I went on. “Oh, the timing. I’ve been planning to do something along those lines. In fact, I’m taking Jay to Indianapolis on Saturday to be tested for his certification as a therapy dog. That will make him official, you know?”

“That’s great then.” Jade’s smile was back. “We have some other dogs that visit, and our resident kitty, Thomas, but it’s always nice to have one more. And your mama loves that dog. What’s his name? Laddie, I think?”

“His name is Jay. But she thinks he’s Laddie, a dog she had before I was born. Sad.”

“Oh, no, not sad.” Jade wrapped an arm around my shoulders as we walked. “Memories of love are a measure of grace.” She gave me a squeeze. “In the end, love is all that matters in our lives.” She was right, of course, and who better to love than those who love us as our dogs do?

73

A message to call
Jo Stevens was waiting on my answering machine, so once I got squared away, I picked up the phone, tagged the detective’s voice mail, and thought about sorting and dumping some of the magazines and junk mail that had invaded my living room.

Thinking was as far as I got. Leo bounded in with a little yellow foam ball in his mouth and mrowled at me. I was bound by duty as a cat servant to sacrifice a tidy house in favor of play. Jay watched from the safety of the couch, more out of regard for his tender nose than for politeness. Leo is quite the defender of his little foam balls.

When the phone rang, I expected to talk to the detective, and was surprised by the voice at the other end.

“Janet, it’s Ginny Scott. You have a minute?”

“Ginny! Yes, sure. How’s Fly?”

“She’s a sweetheart. Moved in as if she’d never been gone. Seems to be looking for Suzette from time to time, but overall she’s fine. She’s eating, so that’s good.”

“Great.”

“I wanted first to thank you again for bringing her to me. I probably couldn’t have picked her up for another couple of weeks if I’d had to go to Fort Wayne. That would be an all-day trip.”

“Oh, no problem. I’m always looking for a good excuse to get to different places with my camera.”

She jumped ahead to what I suspect was the real reason for her call. “Something odd happened last night.”

“Oh?”

“Francine Peterson called. All friendly and gushy. Asked me ‘How’s that lovely bitch of yours?’ I must be slow, but I hadn’t a clue who she was talking about. I have six lovely bitches!”

Spoken like a true dog woman.

“She went on and on about how gorgeous Fly is. I was tempted to say something about all the trash she put out back when Suzette declined to breed Fly to Pip, but I held my tongue.”

“That must have been hard.”

“I guess I was curious about where Francine was headed. Anyway, I didn’t say much. Just let her blather on.”

“Did she have a point?”

Her voice turned to a snarl. “She wanted to buy Fly.”

“Did she make you an actual offer?”

“Oh yeah! Very generous offer, couched in all sorts of crap about how hard it is being a responsible breeder and what a nuisance it is to take back an adult puppy that someone else has owned for several years, complete with a story about one she took back that caused chaos in her kennel.” I was dying to hear how much the offer was, but Ginny was wound up. “I told her I don’t consider my puppies to be nuisances, no matter how old, and that the only time there’s chaos among my dogs is when I have a tennis ball or food bowls.”

“I know this is rude, but I’m dying to know—how much did she offer?”

“Four thousand dollars.”

“Whoa! You’re kidding!”

“Nope. I was blown away. She talked about breeding her to Pip, so she must not know he’s neutered. I’m sure she figured she could sell puppies from Pip and Fly for a pretty penny.”

“I can’t see Greg agreeing to that.”

“She claimed she’s getting Pip back.”

I remembered the scene at Abigail’s funeral. “I doubt that.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I take it you turned her down.”

“I’d as soon cut my arm off with dull thinning shears as let that woman get her hands on one of my puppies.”

That seemed perfectly rational to me.

“I’m really not such a big gossip, but I can’t stand Francine. I didn’t care for Abigail, either, God rest her soul, but at least she was good to her dogs and responsible about breeding. But you’re right there where the investigation is going on, and I don’t know why exactly, but I thought you should know about this.”

“Okay. I mean, I’m not involved in any investigating,” I ignored Janet Demon rolling her eyes and whispering,
yeah, right,
“but I’ll mention it to the police detective on the case. She’ll know better than I do whether it’s important.”

74

Jay and Leo and
I went out to the backyard for a game of tennis ball. We each have our special plays. I try to fake Jay out, and he gives me his “How lame is that, trying to fake out a dog?” look. Then I throw it, and he races across the yard after the bouncing yellow fuzz, and another ball of yellow fuzz flies out from under the forsythia jungle in the corner, races after the dog, counts coup on Jay’s fanny, and races back to the leafy lair. Then Jay grabs the ball, spins toward the forsythia and charges toward the cat hunkered under its lowest branches, where he lets out a ball-muffled brrffff. Then he brings me the ball so we can do it all again.

I heard the phone through the open window and ran for the door. As I picked up the receiver, I glanced out the window. Jay danced from foot to foot at the back door, panting. His expression pleaded, “Wait! Wait! The game isn’t over!” Leo was strolling along the fence line, showing how much he didn’t care.

Jo identified herself. “We’ve confirmed that the chisel we found is the tool used to slash your tires.”

“Did you catch the fiend who did it?”

“Not yet. But we lifted fingerprints from the chisel.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Only if we identify a suspect. Or it’s someone with a record.”

I must have looked disappointed.

“It’s not impossible that the prints will lead us to the culprit.”

“But not likely either, right?”

“Turns out this chisel is really high quality. You know anyone who would have reason to have a good chisel?”

“Not really.”

Must have been something in my voice, because she pressed me, so I told her that I’d heard that Francine had a mobile repair business of some sort. “But judging by the beat-up old van she drives, I don’t know how much she’s into high-quality equipment.”

Jo let a beat go by, then went on, her voice pitched slightly lower and faster. “Look, I have no hard evidence, but you and I both know that the tires are linked to the stuffed dog and that both are somehow linked to the two dead women.”

My heart rate increased by half. “Wow. Hearing a cop put my thoughts into words makes them even scarier.”

I excused myself to let the beasties in and to collect my thoughts. Jay guzzled from his water bowl, but Leo was nowhere in sight. Probably prowling the perimeter. I’d have to retrieve him when I got off the phone, but for now I got back to Jo. “It makes sense that everything’s connected, but I don’t know what I have to do with anything.”

I heard a noise in the living room and walked to the doorway leading there from the kitchen. Leo was on the front porch, balanced on the ladder back of my rocking chair and patting the window with his claws. He’d have to wait a minute. My home is electronically challenged and I still have a phone with a cord. It didn’t reach to the front door.

“You’ve had both the dead women’s dogs in your possession, right?”

“Well, yes, but not for long. I had Pip for four or five days, but everyone knew that was temporary. And I had Fly for a couple of hours, in my car.”

“Still a link. And you knew both of the women. And you seem to know all the other players.” She added, as if she’d just thought of it, “And you take pictures.”

“Pictures. You mean that someone thinks I’ve taken a picture of something that I don’t even know I’ve seen?”

“Look, you need to be careful, okay? And not just about what you eat.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to scare you, but the bloody dog toy and the attack on your tires suggest more violence is possible than simply poisoning.” Having watched Abigail suffer, I wasn’t sure I’d call poisoning “simple,” but I let that thought go and listened as Jo continued. “Whoever’s doing these things is getting more desperate, so maybe you’re on to something without knowing what it is. Frankly, Janet, I think we have a nutcase on our hands, so you need to take these threats seriously. Be careful, lock your doors, and watch Jay and Leo. And if you feel remotely threatened, call 911 first, then call me.”

In my rush to get off the phone and go bring Leo into the safety of the house, I forgot to tell her about Giselle’s hissy fit or Greg’s travel plans or Ginny’s phone call. I really had to start making lists. I stepped out the front door, but Leo was no longer on the porch. I called his name, which usually brings His Excellency in at a leisurely stroll. He can’t appear to be obeying, of course, but he does come when called. Usually.

Okay, sometimes.

I went in, grabbed a can of salmon-flavored treats from the cupboard, and went back outside. I left Jay in the house—he was entirely too focused on the fishy smell coming from the can to be of any help. Why do cats have to pick the worst possible time to play games? Then again, Leo didn’t know there was a killer on the loose.

I walked around the yard, peeking under shrubs and into other hidey holes, calling and rattling the treats, but no cat appeared. Today was evidently not a come-when-called day, and after a twenty-minute tour of the front, side, and back yards, I went inside. I popped a salmon treat between Jay’s slavering jaws and told him, “The little booger was probably hunkered down out there watching me and laughing his furry little butt off.”