Hare Today, Dead Tomorrow (12 page)

“Do you think her anger was rooted in the fact that her mother died when she was still so young?” I asked gently.

Joan shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe that, maybe a dozen different reasons. Or maybe nothing logical at all. Right after she turned thirteen, she really started acting out. You know, doing all the normal teenage girl things. Boys, smoking, drinking, drugs, cutting school, staying out all night...Poor Gordon! When I think of what he went through with her. Frankly, I was never sure if me being around helped him or made things more difficult.”

“I’m sure it helped,” I said politely. “He probably found having you in his life a great source of support.”

“That’s what he always said.” Joan stared off into the distance. “But I always wondered if—well, there’s no point making myself crazy about it all. Especially since Cassandra finally seemed to be getting her act together.”

“By meeting Robert?”

“That, and deciding once and for all that she wanted to get involved in the family business. Gordon was so pleased about that. And he was positively thrilled that she wanted to come back to the area where she’d grown up and start working for him. He was so relieved that she finally seemed to be settling down and that all the craziness of the past seemed to be over.”

In my mind, I replayed Virginia Krupinski’s description of her next-door neighbor. Her report that Cassandra was warm and friendly, sharing her special chocolates and pastries and finding time to read to Maggie Rose, implied that she had matured in other ways, as well.

“But I knew Cassie. I also knew we’d been through this before. Thinking the worst was over, I mean. Like the time she came home and announced she’d decided to go to art school. Gordon rented her an apartment in Manhattan, paid her tuition, bought her every kind of paint and brush and easel that had ever been invented— and within a month she announced that it wasn’t for her and she was dropping out. Then, a couple of years later, she decided she was destined to be a great actress. Once again, Gordon knocked himself out to help her. Another apartment in the city, tuition at an acting institute...At least that one lasted a little longer. I think she stayed in the program for about three months before she gave up.”

She shook her head sadly. “I guess I was afraid her sudden interest in the wine business wasn’t going to pan out either.”

“What about the fact that she was engaged to be married?” I asked. “Surely that was a sign that she was finally finding her way.”

Joan grimaced. “I might have been less skeptical if she hadn’t been engaged at least twice before. Cassandra’s attitude toward relationships had always seemed to be just like her feelings about careers. You choose one and try it for a few weeks, and if it doesn’t immediately turn out to be exactly what you wanted, you chuck the whole thing.”

We were both silent for a few minutes, pretending to be busy drinking coffee but each of us lost in our own thoughts. I had no idea what Joan was finding so absorbing, but I was mulling over what she’d told me about her relationship with Cassandra. She had openly admitted that she and her stepdaughter had never gotten along very well, and her honesty made her less of a suspect in my eyes. Still, she didn’t seem particularly saddened, aside from the effect the young woman’s death was having on her husband, about whom she clearly cared deeply. The idea that she would ever do anything to cause him pain struck me as remote.

Still, I’d misjudged people before.

“What about the last few months?” I finally asked. “What was going on with her? Who was she seeing, what was she doing . . . what was her life like?”

“Gordon and I only saw what she wanted us to see,” Joan replied. “Cassie was an expert at hiding things. As far as we knew, everything was going just swell. She was working for Thorndike Vineyards, selling our wines to high-end restaurants on Long Island and in New York City.

“She and Robert were planning their wedding too. At first, Robert wanted a big, fancy wedding, just like his first marriage. But Cassie insisted on a modest affair, just family and a few friends, and he finally came around. They’d even picked a date: a Sunday afternoon next July. They wanted to get married at the vineyard, under a big white tent. The whole thing sounded absolutely lovely.” She sighed deeply. “Somehow, even when she was talking about it—and she talked about it endlessly, in that very intense way she had—there was always this feeling gnawing at me that it would never really come to pass.”

As if Coco had been listening in on our conversation and found it completely uninteresting, she suddenly yawned.

“Are you bored, Coco?” Joan asked in soft, cooing voice. “Have we been ignoring you?”

“It looks as if she thinks so,” I observed with a smile.

“I can probably get her to do some of her tricks for you,” she offered proudly. “At least, if she’s in the mood. Let me see if I can get her to cooperate. . . .” She placed the cat on the kitchen floor. “Come on, Coco! Shake a paw!”

I was amazed to see the cat actually extend her paw. I’d rarely seen a feline that eager to please.

“Stand up!” Joan commanded, and Coco balanced on her hind legs like a begging dog.

We were so busy enjoying the cat’s antics that we didn’t notice that someone else had come into the kitchen until he cleared his throat.

“Gordon!” Joan exclaimed, jumping out of her seat. “I was wondering where you’d gotten to.”

She went over to the tired-looking man who was dressed in a faded blue T-shirt and khaki pants, both hanging loosely on his tall, gaunt frame. She planted a kiss on his cheek, then rubbed his back affectionately.

He didn’t seem to notice. “Looks like you made coffee,” he said flatly. “I was lying down and smelled it all the way upstairs. Mind if I help myself?”

“Please do,” Joan replied. “Here, let me get you a mug.”

I immediately saw the family resemblance. Gordon Thorndike had the same distinctive blue-green eyes as his daughter. He also had straight black hair, but his was streaked with gray. I wondered how much of the color change had occurred in just the past few days.

“I hope we didn’t wake you,” Joan said anxiously, handing him an empty mug.

He shook his head sadly. “I wasn’t really asleep. Just trying. But I haven’t been able to . . .” His voice trailed off. He leaned forward to pour himself some coffee, his stooped shoulders creating the very image of despondency.

“Goodness, I didn’t even introduce our guest,” Joan said brightly. “Gordon, this is Dr. Popper. She’s a veterinarian who makes house calls. She stopped by to look at Coco. You know she hasn’t been herself for the past couple of days.”

He didn’t respond or even look up. Instead, he shuffled across the room toward the door. “I’ll just leave you two to whatever you were doing.”

“You’re welcome to join us,” Joan said hopefully.

He was already on his way out, however, disappearing with as little fanfare as when he’d arrived. In fact, it was almost as if he were fading from the room rather than leaving it.

When I glanced at Joan, I saw that her expression had grown sorrowful. Gazing off into the distance, she said, “I’m really worried about Gordon. You should have seen him at the funeral! If his doctor hadn’t pumped him full of Valium, I don’t know how he would have gotten through it. He’s taking this really hard. Cassandra was the apple of his eye. And having a child die before her parents—well, it’s just not what nature intended.”

“I can hardly imagine what a terrible time this must be for all of you,” I said softly.

My comment seemed to remind her that I wasn’t a member of the Thorndike family.

“Oh, dear, I’ve kept you here much too long,” she said. “And you’ve been too polite to say anything about it. Here, let me write you a check...”

After we’d settled up, she said, “Before you go, could I ask you for one more favor?”

“Of course.”

“My stepson has a cat too. But Ethan is really bad about bringing Jenny to the vet. Of course, the fact that she’s ridiculously afraid of veterinarians doesn’t help. Anyway, since you’re already here, I wonder if you could—”

“Just point me in the right direction.”

“Thank you so much,” Joan said gratefully. “He lives in a small apartment above the garage. Maybe you could just go over and knock on his door. I’m sure he’s there.”

“Actually, animals are frequently less afraid of women than they are of men,” I told her. “So having her treated by a female vet might not be such a bad idea.”

“We’ll have to see how Ethan feels about that,” Joan muttered, more to herself than to me.

She walked me over to the back door and pointed. At the end of the driveway, a few hundred feet behind the house, sat a tired-looking white-shingled building. “Go in through the side door and you’ll see a set of stairs,” Joan told me. “Ethan’s place is at the top. You can just knock. Or yell.”

I made my way up the driveway, meanwhile studying the garage. The sagging building appeared to have once been a barn, or maybe a carriage house. At ground level were three garage doors, painted black. Above them, two eaves protruded from the dark-shingled roof, inset with small windows.

Yet there was no indication that anyone was home. No open windows, no blaring music, not even the clinking of dishes. I hoped Ethan wasn’t sleeping, since I was about to interrupt him without any warning.

As Joan instructed, I pulled open the side door and stepped inside the garage. Unfortunately, she hadn’t mentioned the location of the light switch. The one window I could see was covered with a dark flowered cloth that had been tacked up haphazardly, as if to keep anyone from looking inside. The only other illumination came from dim bands of light shining through the loose slats of the walls.

I blinked a few times, trying to adjust to the gloom. Once I did, I saw several cars lined up inside the long, low interior space: a battered Volvo, a shiny new SUV, and a red pickup truck streaked with rust. Around the edges, the usual assortment of garage paraphernalia was piled up. Lawn furniture, bicycles, an archery target with its stuffing poking out in several spots, sealed-up cardboard cartons whose contents were probably a mystery even to the Thorndikes themselves.

But no staircase. At least, I hadn’t located one yet. I stood at the entryway, trying to spot it.

I’d thought I was alone. So I whirled around at the sound of a door slamming.

“Hello?” I called. “Is someone there?”

I’d barely gotten the words out before a head popped into a doorway I now realized opened onto the staircase leading to the apartment above the garage.

“Trespassers aren’t welcome here,” a strange-sounding voice said.

“I’m not exactly a trespasser,” I returned crossly. “In fact, Mrs. Thorndike—Joan—specifically asked me to come out here and find Ethan. Are you Ethan?”

“Now, that’s what you call a tricky question.”

I took a few steps closer—and realized that the person I was talking to seemed to have an unnaturally small head. Something else struck me as odd: His ears stuck out almost at right angles to his head and his forehead was completely smooth. In fact, the little bit of light that managed to sneak into the garage reflected off it.

“Are you a dummy?” The words popped out before I had a chance to think about what I was saying.

“I don’t think there’s any reason to be so rude,” he replied indignantly. “Maybe we all aren’t smart enough to have earned a medical degree, but that doesn’t mean other people have a right to call us names.”

“I didn’t mean—you
are
a dummy!” Now that I’d gotten even closer, I saw that I was right: The person I was talking to wasn’t a person after all. It was a large wooden ventriloquist’s dummy, his cheeks painted an unnatural shade of pink and his eyes fixed in a frighteningly steady stare. He was dressed in a tuxedo, complete with a bright crimson bow tie and a matching cummerbund.

I was even more astonished when he cried, “Ethan! I could use some help here!”

I jerked backward as a tall, lanky young man joined the dummy in the doorway. In the shadowy darkness, all I could make out was his silhouette.

A chill ran through me at the sound of a click. But it turned out to be nothing more onerous than a flashlight being turned on.

The man’s face was now illuminated. However, the fact that he held the light under his chin cast spooky shadows over his face, giving him a ghoulish look. Only his mouth, nose, and the corners of his eyes were lit, making him look as if he were wearing a mask.

Suddenly he moved the flashlight, casting a spotlight on his face. I let out a little gasp. Ethan Thorndike could have been Cassandra’s twin, except that he was a slightly more exaggerated version of his sister. While her face was narrow, his was positively gaunt, with a thin, straight nose and pronounced cheekbones. He had Cassandra’s dead-straight black hair, which was as sleek and glossy as hers was in her dramatic oil portrait. He also had the same startlingly blue-green eyes as both his father and his sister.

But Ethan’s right eye was crossed, making him look a little off. Of course, the fact that he’d chosen such a creepy way to introduce himself added to that impression.

“So
you’re
Ethan,” I said, not sure whether to laugh or feel annoyed. I turned to his wooden companion. “And you...you really are a dummy!”

“We don’t like visitors,” the dummy said rudely.

“This isn’t a social call—” I stopped mid-sentence, realizing I was defending myself to Pinocchio. Turning back to Ethan, I said, “Your mother asked me to look at your cat. You already seem to know that I’m a veterinarian.”

“Mr. Ed and I like to keep track of who comes and goes,” Ethan replied. “We find it...comforting.”

Mr. Ed? I thought. Why would someone name a dummy after a horse from a classic television series of the 1960s? I’d barely asked myself the question before I realized that a talking doll wasn’t that different from a talking horse. So maybe Ethan had a clever streak, after all.