Hair of the Dog (14 page)

Faith stood by the pool, waiting to see what new form of excitement we would come up with next. Her long, luxurious mane coat hung in streaming clumps.

Alicia looked at her and grinned. “I guess I know how you'll be spending the rest of the day.”

“Maybe I could towel her dry,” I said hopefully.

“Don't count on it. I'm no Poodle expert, but even I can see that if you don't want that coat to mat, it's going to need to be bathed and blown dry. I'll get out of your way and let you get started.”

Accompanied by Faith, we walked around the front of the house to her car. “You be careful,” I said. “Okay?”

“I will.”

“If you need help, call me. I'll come.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I'm sure I'll be okay. Now that we've talked things out, I feel much better.”

I stood in the driveway, my hand resting on Faith's back, and watched Alicia drive away. I was glad that she felt better, but unfortunately, that made one of us.

 

When Faith and I went inside, the phone was ringing. I wasn't surprised. Aunt Peg seems to have a sixth sense where Faith's coat is concerned. Whenever I've really screwed up and I'm tempted just to let the coat go, there she is.

“I have an idea,” she said.

“I have all sorts of ideas,” I told her. I was hoping that might slow her down, but it didn't.

“Why don't you take that new Volvo of yours in for servicing?”

Of all the things she might have said, I wasn't expecting that. “Why?”

“Maybe Ralphie Otterbach could look at it for you. I've done a little checking around. Did you know he's a car mechanic?”

“Yes, but—”

“So I was thinking that even a new car must have something it could have done. Something innocuous. How about an oil change?”

“I take it you think I ought to talk to Ralphie.”

“Melanie dear, catch
up
. Of course I think you ought to talk to Ralphie. It occurred to me that he's been an objective observer of much of what's gone on at Barry's kennel recently. Maybe he has something interesting to say.”

Knowing Ralphie slightly better than Peg did, I sincerely doubted it. Still, it couldn't hurt. Besides, in a pinch, I could manage an oil change myself, so the job shouldn't be beyond Ralphie's capabilities.

“I'll have to track him down,” I said.

“Already done. He works at Premier Motors in Brewster.”

Brewster?
“Nobody drives an hour to get their oil changed.”

“So don't tell him how far you've come.” Another objection disposed of in Aunt Peg's usual high-handed fashion. “Here's the phone number.”

“You mean you haven't already made the appointment?”

“I may be pushy, but I'm not totally manipulative.”

That, I thought, was open to debate, but when she rattled off a phone number, I dutifully copied it down. Then I told her about the visit I'd just had with Alicia.

“What do you mean, Barry isn't the baby's father?” she cried. “Then who is?”

“She wouldn't tell me. Apparently he's married, and his wife doesn't know a thing about all this.”

“I guess that lets out Bill,” Peg mused. “He might have been my first guess.”

“If Alicia was telling me the truth.”

“Do you think she might not have been?”

“I'm not sure. Certainly she was very eager to keep the man's identity a secret. Saying he was married might have been a way to throw me off track.”

“I'll tell you the first thing that occurs to me,” said Peg. “Barry Turk always struck me as someone who had a high opinion of his sexual prowess. If he found out that Alicia had something going on with someone else, I can see how he would have been very, very angry.”

“You're thinking maybe Alicia killed him because she was afraid?”

“It's a possibility. Beth saw her go in the front door of the house. And yet Alicia was the first one to realize what had happened. How did she know?”

“She heard the shots,” I said, although I wasn't sure that was true.

“Mother dogs will do almost anything to protect their puppies,” Peg pointed out. “Humans are no different. It's instinct.”

I frowned and changed the subject. “What about these accidents Alicia's been having? What do you think of that?”

“It seems to me that they sounded a lot worse in the telling than they actually were,” Aunt Peg said briskly. “Maybe she's playing on your sympathies again. Just because she claims to like Standard Poodles doesn't mean you should trust everything she says.”

That reminded me of Faith. While I'd been talking on the phone, she'd grown bored and gone into her crate to lie down. Any idiot could see that meant that the cedar bed that lined the bottom was now sopping wet too.

“I have to go,” I said. “Faith's waiting for her bath.”

“Carry on,” Peg said cheerfully. “And don't forget to clean her ears.”

As if I could, with such an ever-helpful genie perched upon my shoulder. I woke Faith up, and added another item to the list of things to do.

Later that afternoon, when I had Faith lying on her grooming table and the dryer going full blast, the phone rang again. Davey was down the street playing with his good friend, Joey Brickman, so I was able to take my time about turning off the dryer and getting to the receiver.

“Hey,” said Bertie when I picked up on the fourth ring. “I thought you weren't there. I was just waiting for the machine.”

“I'm here. I'm blow-drying. What's up?”

“I talked with two of the women I told you about, Ann Leeds and Christine Franken. Ann shows French Bulldogs, and Christine has a couple of different toy breeds. Both of them spent plenty of time competing against Barry. Ann was the one who was actually going to file the complaint.”

“Is she willing to talk to me?”

“She said sure, although now that Barry's out of the picture, she couldn't see how it would make any difference.”

“What about Christine?”

“Same thing. She didn't think she knew anything that would help you, but she was willing to give it a try.”

“Great.” I reached for a piece of paper and pen, and copied down the addresses and phone numbers Bertie gave me. Christine lived in Pennsylvania, which meant it was likely I'd try and talk to her at a show, but Ann was in Bethel, only about forty minutes away.

“Thanks for the information,” I said. “Do you mind one more question?”

“Shoot.”

“Last spring, when I was looking into Monica Freedman's murder, you wouldn't give me the time of day. How come you're being so helpful now?”

“Last spring, I seem to recall, you thought of me as a suspect.”

“I had good reasons.”

“Yeah, well, I still wasn't too pleased about it. But now—” Bertie paused. “I guess I like you fine when you're not investigating me.”

“Fair enough.”

I hung up the phone and tucked the notes I'd taken away in a safe place. At this rate, Bertie and I might even become friends.

 

It didn't take much notice to get myself an appointment for an oil change at Premier Motors in Brewster. One phone call and I was on my way back up Route 684 the next morning. I'd specified I wanted Ralphie Otterbach to do the job, and the receptionist had jotted down my request without a quibble. Either I'd happened to hit upon his specialty, or good old Ralphie wasn't too busy.

Premier Motors was housed in what appeared to be a converted gas station on the outskirts of Brewster. My first impression was that the most premier thing about the operation was the sign. It was nicely lettered and freshly painted.

After that, however, it was all downhill. The lot out front held at least a dozen cars, most suffering from varying degrees of decay. Doors to two of the bays were open; the third was closed and several of the small panes of glass in its windows were cracked.

The bay next to the office was empty. I pulled in front of it and parked. The middle bay held a car up on a lift, which appeared to be unattended. I walked in the office and saw why. It was coffee break time.

“I'm telling you,” Ralphie was saying, his thick forefinger poking the air to punctuate the statement, “this is going to be the Yankees' year.”

“Like you don't say that every year,” another man scoffed. He was wearing a putty-colored jump suit that looked as though it had never seen the inside of a washing machine. “So they got lucky once. With Steinbrenner in charge, I wouldn't bet on it happening again.” He glanced over and saw me standing in the doorway. “Help you?”

“Yes, my name is Melanie Travis. I have an appointment for an oil change.”

“That's mine,” said Ralphie. “You can drive her right in there.” He stared for a moment. “Do I know you?”

“We met at a couple of dog shows. I'm a friend of Beth's.”

That was stretching things a bit, but Ralphie didn't seem to notice. As I left the office, he was being ribbed about his attendance at dog shows which, the other men assured him, were only for pansies and Poodles with bows in their ears. Good thing I'd left Faith at home. I could only imagine what they would have thought of her.

Ralphie walked through the connecting door into the first bay as I drove in over the lift and stopped. “This car looks new,” he said. “How many miles you got on her?”

I checked the odometer. “Three thousand. It's not even due for its first checkup yet, but I've heard it's really important to get the oil changed frequently.”

“Good thought.” Ralphie assembled the tools he'd need to do the job. “This'll take about half an hour. We've got some magazines in the office, if you want to wait in there.”

“Actually, I'd rather be out here.” I lifted my hair off the back of my neck, felt slightly cooler for a few seconds, then let it fall. “It doesn't seem as hot.”

“Suit yourself.”

He reached under the car and adjusted the arms of the lift. Judging by the ease and speed with which he worked, it was a job he performed often. A moment later, Ralphie hit the lever and the Volvo rose into the air. Dragging an oil drain with him, he ducked underneath the car and went to work.

A wooden shelf ran along the wall behind me. I found a spot that didn't look too oil-stained and leaned back against it. “How's it look?” I asked.

“Great.” His voice was slightly muffled. “You can't beat the Swedes when it comes to building cars, unless maybe you want to talk about the Germans. Shit, if they had this bolt on any tighter—” I heard him grunt, and surmised the bolt had given. Ralphie lapsed into silence and the oil began to drain.

Absently I traced my finger along the edge of the shelf. It came away coated with a thick layer of dust. “I guess Beth's pretty busy these days, now with Barry being gone and all.”

“Beth's always busy.” Ralphie gave another grunt. Whether it was a sound of disgust, or he was struggling with another bolt, I couldn't tell. “If you ask me, she works too hard.”

“I guess she wants to get ahead.”

“Ahead of what? Other dog people?” This time his tone left no doubt of his derision. “I know she likes what she does, but it sure doesn't seem like a real job to me.”

“Did you ever meet her boss?”

“Barry Turk? Sure.” He reached around, dragged a rag out of his back pocket, and swiped it across his face.

“Too bad about what happened, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess. Can't say as I miss him much, though. The man was a loser.”

“Really?” I asked innocently. “I didn't know him very well.”

“Consider yourself lucky. Turk was a pompous, arrogant son of a bitch. Just because Beth worked for him, he treated her like her owned her. I told Beth more than once that she was crazy to put up with that shit.”

Scowling, Ralphie moved out from beneath the car and went off in search of an oil filter. I fanned my face with my hand and thought about what he had said. Barry had treated Beth as though he owned her? I could easily see how big, macho Ralphie would have resented that. I wondered how much he actually knew about their relationship and how much he merely suspected. Either way, it sounded as though I'd hit a nerve.

When he returned, I decided to probe in another direction. “Things must have gotten better after Alicia arrived. Everybody says she made a huge difference.”

“Everybody doesn't know squat,” Ralphie muttered. “Alicia was supposed to help out. That's what Beth told me. But mostly she just stood around looking decorative.”

“When did you start going to the shows with Beth?”

“I guess I went to a couple over the winter.”

Last winter was when Beth had had her affair with Barry. I found it interesting that right around the same time, her boyfriend had developed a sudden desire to go to dog shows with her.

“How come?”

Ralphie turned and stared. “What is this, twenty questions?”

“Just passing the time,” I said easily.

“I told you you could've waited inside.” He slipped under the Volvo and went back to work.

I gave him a minute, then said, “Talk to me. It takes my mind off the heat.”

“What the hell?” Ralphie muttered. “It's not as though I'm going anywhere. I went to the shows with Beth because she asked me to. I think she had some idea that if I saw how serious and hardworking everyone was, I'd feel different about what she was doing.”

“And did you?”

“Not really. It was bad enough watching those dogs get fussed over at home. But at the dog shows it looked even sillier, all that primping and prancing around. Beth worked her ass off, and in the end all those dogs ever won was a little scrap of colored ribbon. What's the sense in that?”

I understood what he was saying. As a relative neophyte in the sport of dogs, I was new enough to remember when I'd felt the same way. That was before I'd begun to understand the finer points of handling a dog, or how truly difficult it was to produce a puppy that exemplified the breed standard, plus had the health and good temperament to withstand the rigors of a show career. If you looked at only the surface of a dog show, you missed what they were really about—contests that served as the ultimate selection process for the best canine gene pools available.

“Heaven forbid Beth showed a dog and lost,” Ralphie grumbled. “Some of those owners acted like she'd just drained their last quart of blood.”

I'd seen that kind of behavior too. And while I couldn't seriously believe that anyone would kill a handler because their dog wasn't winning, I was curious enough to ask, “Like who?”

“Oh, you know. Just a bunch of dumb people. I didn't bother learning their names. If Beth was showing a dog, that meant it wasn't owned by one of the top clients. Not somebody like the Pullmans.”

I moved around to the end of the car so I could see his face. “You were around when Barry had their Chow, Leo?”

“Sure. It was over the winter, right? I saw them a couple of times at the shows. The wife, what's her name?”

“Viv.”

“Viv, yeah. She kind of stands out in a crowd, you know?”

I did. Compared to most of the people who frequented dog shows, Viv was younger, prettier, and more expensively dressed. I could easily see how she might have caught Ralphie's eye.

He lowered his arm and enjoyed a leisurely scratch. “I guess her husband must have plenty of money to hook a woman like that, because he sure doesn't look like much.”

“Ron Pullman?” I said, surprised. “I think he's very good-looking.”

“He's short,” Ralphie said derisively. “And just about bald. On top of that, he's
old.”

As if that were the ultimate insult. I pegged Ralphie's age at about twenty-two, which meant he had plenty of time ahead of him to regret that attitude. On the other hand, while Ron was a good deal older than Viv, he was neither short nor bald.

“That's not Ron. You must be thinking of Austin.”

Ralphie's eyes glazed over, mirroring inner confusion, just like they do in cartoons. In an intelligence test, Faith could run rings around this man.

“What's the diff? They're not around anymore anyway.” He was looking around the shelf, making sure he had everything he needed.

“That's because the Pullmans took the dog to another handler. You wouldn't happen to know why, would you?”

Ralphie shook his head. “Like I would care about something like that. Beth and me, we don't discuss her work. We got plenty of better things to do.”

He wrapped up what he was doing and dropped his tools on the bench. “Let me just write this up and I'll have you out of here in a jiff.”

Five minutes later, I was back on the road. The bill had come to thirty-five dollars and I had a fifty-minute drive home. And what had I learned? Mostly that Ralphie hadn't liked Barry Turk. An educated guess could have saved me the trip.

 

I swung by home and picked up Faith, then stopped at Graceland Camp for Davey. He bounced into the car, flung his backpack over the backseat, and gave Faith a hug. She returned the sentiment by licking what looked like the remains of a cherry Popsicle off his face.

Before he even had a seat belt fastened, Davey was already telling me about his day. He likes to give a minute-by-minute description, and if he forgets something, he's apt to go all the way back to the beginning and start over.

Faith, meanwhile, was sitting on the seat beside him, her nose pressed to the narrow crack of open window I'd allowed her at the top. Given her preference, she'd have ridden with head out and ears flapping in the breeze. Aunt Peg had told me that was bad for a dog's eyes, however, and asked whether I'd consider letting my son ride that way. Since she tends to think of the Poodles as her children, the analogy seemed perfectly apt to me.

“Where are we going?” Davey asked when he stopped talking long enough to notice that we weren't on our way home.

“I thought we'd go visit Aunt Peg. She and I have some things to talk about, and you can play with her puppies.”

I thought he'd be excited at the prospect of seeing Aunt Peg's litter again, but instead Davey zeroed in on the first part of what I'd said. “What are you going to talk about?” he asked. The gene for nosiness must run in my family.

“Just things.”

“Like what?”

“Like Aunt Peg sending me on a wild-goose chase.”

“You chased a goose?” Davey's eyes were round. Much to the town's dismay, our local park has a large population of Canada geese, and my son knows how big and how fierce the birds can be. “Did you catch it?”