Hair of the Dog (21 page)

We settled the bill, then walked outside into the warm August night and went our separate ways. Now that my brother had stopped bumbling and stumbling, I could tell he was dying to get Bertie alone. That was fine with me. My brother wasn't the only one with romance on his mind.

Back at home, Davey was already in bed asleep. Faith padded out onto the upstairs landing to say hello, then trotted back to Davey's room. I paid Joanie for the evening, and she left to walk home. That left just the two of us. My kind of odds.

“Come here,” said Sam, patting the couch beside him. “Have I had a chance to tell you how great you look tonight?”

I sank down beside him. Sam drew me close and buried his hands in my hair. “No, you haven't. I thought maybe I didn't measure up to the competition.”

Sam chuckled softly. “Fishing for compliments, are we?”

“You bet.”

His lips grazed the side of my cheek. “You are the most beautiful ... smartest ... sexiest ...”—each word was punctuated by a kiss—“woman I've ever met.”

“Works for me,” I said, leaning back on the couch and pulling him down on top of me. His weight settled down the length of my body and I wiggled in satisfaction. “Ah, I see it works for you too.”

 

Eventually we made it up to the bedroom. But once there, we still didn't get much sleep. It seemed as though I had barely closed my eyes, when Davey and Faith came bouncing in to wake us up.

Having Sam spend the night is a relatively new thing for us. For Davey's sake, I'd waffled over making that commitment for months. Then, in the spring when it finally happened, I found my reservations had been for nothing. My son was delighted with the new arrangement, and I was left to wonder why we hadn't done it sooner.

Ah, parenthood. It's not for the faint of heart.

We made pancakes and scrambled eggs for breakfast, then all piled in the car and drove to Sam's house in Redding. On nights that he's away, he makes use of a pet-sitting service for his Poodles, but I knew he wanted to get back home and make sure everything was okay.

His house is made of cedar and glass and perched high on the side of a hill. In winter, the driveway's a terror to negotiate, but once you reach the summit, the views are spectacular. Sam works at home designing computer software, so he'd chosen the setting with care.

Sam's five Standard Poodles were fine, although after his night away, they did their best to convince us that they'd been starved for attention and affection. Once that deficit was remedied, they welcomed Faith into their pack like a long-lost member of the family. Sam's yard was several times the size of mine, and Davey joined the troupe of Poodles in racing from tree to tree.

In the afternoon, Davey mounted an exploration of the woods around the house. By evening, he and Sam were setting up a tent outside the back door and making plans for the three of us to camp out. Sleeping for the first time under the stars, Davey was enthralled. With Faith snuggled on top of his sleeping bag, he fell asleep quickly and never even noticed when Sam and I slipped away for a little while to find some privacy.

The rest of the weekend passed in a quiet blur of good times. Sam and I try to spend as much time together as we can, but we're working around the demands of a two-career schedule that often leaves little time for maneuvering. Having an entire weekend to ourselves felt like an unexpected gift, and it was over much too quickly.

We were all sorry when Sunday night came. Back home Monday morning, Davey sat at the kitchen table and dawdled over a breakfast of Cheerios and sliced bananas. Faith was in her usual spot beside him, looking for handouts. I was rummaging through the refrigerator, hoping to find a container of yogurt whose date hadn't yet expired, when the phone rang.

It was Alicia Devane. “Melanie, thank God I got you,” she said, her voice high and breathless. “Can you come right now?”

“Come where? What's wrong?”

“I'm at Bill's house in Patterson. The ambulance is on its way.”

“What ambulance? Alicia, what's going on?”

“It's Bill.” Her voice broke on a sob. “I think he's dead.”

He couldn't be dead. It wasn't possible.

I started with that thought and was still clinging to it an hour later when I reached Bill's farm. The details Alicia had provided on the phone had been sketchy at best. Considering how upset she was, I hadn't wasted any time talking. Instead, I'd hustled Davey off to camp, then raced up to Patterson.

It didn't occur to me until I was almost there that Alicia might not be at Bill's. If he had been taken to a hospital, I was sure she would have gone with him. Rounding the last corner, I slowed the car to look for Bill's driveway. I needn't have bothered.

Yellow crime-scene tape had been strung from fence to tree along one side of the road, marking the approach clearly. A cruiser and two other cars were parked by the side of the road. Several policemen were engaged in examining the area. Another stood ready to wave me by.

I stopped at the end of Bill's driveway and rolled down my window. “I'm here to see Alicia Devane.”

The officer stared at me briefly. “Is she expecting you?”

“Yes, she asked me to come.” There seemed to be little doubt now, but I asked anyway. “Is Bill ... dead?”

“Yes, ma'am, he is.” He pointed up the driveway. “I believe you'll find Mrs. Devane in the house.”

Conscious of his eyes following me, I drove slowly down the long driveway and parked at the end. Muffled barking sounded from the direction of the barn, probably Bill's two Labs. The front door to the house was open. Through the screen I could see Alicia sitting on the couch. I knocked lightly and let myself in.

She didn't rise. Indeed, she didn't even look up. Her hands were clasped together around a handkerchief in her lap. “Bill's gone,” she said quietly.

“I know.” I walked over and sat down beside her. Though her eyes were red, Alicia wasn't crying. Instead, her features seemed almost immobile, frozen. I wondered if she was in shock. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. Yes.” She shook her head.

I waited and let her make up her mind. The house felt empty and eerily quiet. A cup of cold coffee sat on the table beside her. I wondered if one of the officers had made it for her, and why they'd left her sitting there all by herself.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked. “Anyone you want me to call?”

“No.” Her voice was barely louder that a whisper, and the effort to speak seemed to take all her energy. “The police asked me the same thing. I told them I just wanted to be left alone. I'm sorry, I ...” Her hands fluttered helplessly. “I didn't know what else to do. You said before that you'd come if I needed you.”

“I'm glad you called me.” I slipped my arms around her shoulders. For a moment Alicia held herself stiffly away, then all at once her body seemed to melt, sliding boneless into my embrace. Still, she didn't cry.

“I was here,” she said when a few minutes had passed. “I must have been upstairs in the bedroom when it happened.”

She sat up, looking around the room as though she'd never seen it before. “I heard the dogs barking, but that didn't seem unusual. I'd just gotten up and Bill wasn't in the house. I figured he'd walked out to the end of the driveway to get the newspaper. He does that every morning.”

I nodded.

“Biff and Tucker were barking like crazy, but I didn't pay much attention. I thought they were chasing a rabbit or something. Bill doesn't like them to make too much noise, he's afraid it'll bother the neighbors, so I figured he'd quiet them down and I went in to take a shower.”

She stopped, looking around the room again. Her gaze was vacant and skittered from one place to another.

“Can I get you something?” I asked.

“Maybe a drink? There's some orange juice in the fridge.”

“Sure.” I leapt up, glad to have something useful to do. “Be right back.”

I found two tall glasses in the cabinet and poured us each some juice. When I returned to the living room, Alicia was sitting where I'd left her, dabbing at her eyes with the handkerchief.

“That's fresh-squeezed,” she said, her voice catching. “I guess it's stupid that something like that would make me cry. Bill got the juice ‘specially at a little vegetable stand up the road. He said it would be good for the baby.”

Silently I handed her the glass.

“He was such a nice man. Everybody liked him. That's why I just can't understand how anybody could have wanted to kill him.”

“You still haven't told me what happened,” I said gently.

“Oh.” Alicia shook her head, looking flustered. “I'm sorry. I guess I told the story so many times to the police, I thought you already knew.”

“Were you the one who found him?”

She nodded. “When I came downstairs after my shower, the dogs were still barking. That's when I knew that something was wrong. I put on some shoes and went out to have a look.

“Biff and Tucker were all the way down at the end of the driveway. That was odd too, because Bill never lets them go anywhere near the road. I didn't see him, and when I called out his name, he didn't answer.”

Alicia closed her eyes briefly and drew in a long sigh. “I was walking down the driveway, and then all at once I just knew something terrible had happened. I started to run, but I was too late.” She gulped heavily. “It felt like ...”

I knew what she was thinking. For the second time in six weeks, Alicia had been witness to the death of someone she was close to. “It felt like the night you saw Barry get shot?”

She nodded silently, shadows clouding her features. “Bill was lying by the side of the road. Biff and Tucker were standing over him. The police said it was a hit-and-run.”

“Do they think it was an accident?”

“No.” Her fingers twisted, mangling the handkerchief. “They said there weren't any skid marks. The driver never even tried to stop. Bill was probably standing next to the mailbox when he was hit. He wasn't even in the road.”

Oh, Lord. A second murder.

“I don't understand what's happening,” said Alicia. “Where am I going to go now? What am I going to do?”

“What about your family?”

She shook her head. “I have an aunt in Toledo and a sister in Santa Fe. We're not very close.”

She'd mentioned that before, I remembered. On the day she'd come to my house and told me about the accidents she'd been having. Bad luck, she'd said at the time.

“Alicia, did you tell the police about all the other things that happened to you? The fire? The broken step, the day your car broke down?”

“Yes. They wrote it all down, but I don't think they took it too seriously. I knew what they were thinking. A broken step, a burst hose? Things like that happen to everybody.”

Maybe, but two murders didn't. And Alicia had been right in the middle of both of them. One by one, her options were disappearing. I couldn't imagine her staying in this house all by herself.

“Why don't you come home with me?” I offered impulsively. “At least for a day or two, until you figure out what you want to do next.”

Alicia looked up. Surprise, then relief, showed on her face. “You mean it? I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble.”

“You won't,” I said firmly, pushing aside the question of where, exactly, in my two-bedroom house I was going to put her. “I'd like you to come.”

Alicia went upstairs and packed a small suitcase. It wasn't until we got outside that we both remembered the two Labrador Retrievers in the barn. Alicia opened the door and Biff and Tucker came flying out. They ran to the house and scratched at the door we'd just locked behind us.

“They're looking for Bill,” Alicia said. “They don't understand what happened either.”

We put the Labs in the back of the car and left my name and address with one of the officers at the end of the driveway. Neither of us felt like talking on the way back to Stamford. The only sound in the car came from Biff, who was crying softly under his breath.

 

Back at home, I put Faith and the two Labs out in the fenced backyard and told them to cope. Then I went up and moved Davey's stuff around to make room for Alicia. Now that my son had developed a taste for camping, I figured he could sleep on my floor in his sleeping bag for a few nights.

With the addition of three guests, my small house felt as though it were bursting at the seams. I picked Davey up from camp along with his best friend, Joey Brickman, and took both boys to the beach for the afternoon.

Alicia had a number of phone calls to make. Funeral arrangements had to be taken care of, and various members of Bill's family needed to be told what had happened. I wanted her to have as much privacy as possible.

When Davey and I got home around five, Alicia was napping. I'd explained things to Davey, and he wasn't taking being kicked out of his room lightly. “What about my cars?” he asked. “And my desk? All my toys are in there.”

“You'll manage.”

I stood him in the middle of the kitchen floor and stripped him down to the skin. At five, he wasn't yet old enough to be modest in front of his mother, and undressing him here had the distinct advantage of dropping most of the sand he'd brought back with him in one easily cleanable spot. “When Alicia wakes up, you can go in and get a few things. In the meantime, there's a change of clothes on my bed. And be quiet, okay?”

Davey scooted upstairs with Faith trailing along after him. Biff and Tucker stayed with me. They were lying down in the kitchen, their two large bodies taking up most of the floor. The fact that I kept having to step over them didn't incite them to move, or even, actually, to look up. It was clear these boys weren't Poodles.

I shook out Davey's bathing suit and towel and put them in the dryer. Heading to the sink to refill the dogs' water bowl, I noticed that Alicia had left a note on the counter.

Peg called,
it said.
She's coming to dinner.

That was a fine state of affairs, especially since I didn't have enough food in the house to make dinner for three, much less four. A call to a local rib joint remedied the first part of the problem. I followed it with a call to Aunt Peg to tell her to pick up dinner on her way.

“I can't believe it,” she said when she picked up the phone. “Bill Devane is murdered, you have the closest thing to a witness right there in your house, and I have to hear the news from Crawford Langley?”

“Crawford called you?” Peg's connections shot up several notches in my estimation. Crawford Langley never called me.

“Actually he called to tell me that the Standard bitch he's been showing broke her toe. She's entered next weekend and there was a major spot on, so the major's broken. But that's beside the point. Of course when he told me about Bill, I immediately called you. Imagine my surprise when Alicia picked up the phone. You could have knocked me over with a feather.”

Hah. Aunt Peg was made of stern stuff. A two-by-four, maybe. But a feather? Never.

“So you told her you were coming to dinner.”

“Of course I did. I'm not about to miss an opportunity like this. Don't cook anything elaborate.”

“I'm not,” I said, and told her about the order I'd placed.

Peg sighed audibly, but when I bribed her with homemade brownies for dessert, she agreed to make the stop. Alicia walked into the kitchen as I was hanging up the phone.

“Your son's darling,” she said.

“Did he wake you up?”

“No, I was just kind of drifting and I heard him talking to Faith. Davey was telling her not to make any noise.” Alicia smiled wanly. “It was just as well I got up. To tell the truth, I was lying in bed feeling very sorry for myself.”

“You have every right to feel sorry for yourself.”

“Maybe. But it doesn't help anything, you know?” She pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. “I was feeling hopeless, and then I saw Davey and I thought, maybe if I'm lucky, my son will be just like that someday.”

“Yeah.” I smiled, feeling pretty lucky myself.

“Hey, Mom!”

Davey came skidding around the corner at top speed. He'd entered the kitchen that way many times. This was the first time, however, that there'd been a hundred and thirty pounds of Labrador Retriever draped across the floor.

He hit Tucker broadside and went flying. Somebody, boy or dog, grunted with the impact. Davey rolled across the floor and bounced up. At five, kids can still do that. Awakened by my son's spectacular entrance, Biff opened his eyes and flapped his tail up and down.

“So,” said Davey, “when's dinner?”

“It's only five-fifteen.”

“But I'm hungry now.”

I gave him a string cheese and a bowl of grapes. Then I got out the ingredients for brownies and went to work. They're one of the few things I can make from scratch. Luckily there's a great recipe right on the chocolate box.

As I melted and stirred and blended, Davey chattered nonstop. He told Alicia all about his camp, his friends, and his afternoon at the beach. Sometimes she answered him, but mostly she just sat quietly and listened.

At the first sign that he was bothering her, I'd have shooed him away. But instead, the opposite seemed to be true. In his own energetic way, my son provided a wonderful distraction.

When Faith ran to the front door, I left Davey licking the bowl of brownie batter and went to let Aunt Peg in. She thrust the fragrant bag of ribs into my arms, scratched Faith under the chin, and marched to the kitchen to offer her condolences.