In Dog We Trust (Golden Retriever Mysteries) (2 page)

We’d bonded over mutual bitterness. I remember him asking that day, “If a tree falls in the forest and kills your ex-wife, what do you do with the lumber?”

I laughed. “Are you still in contact with her?”

“As far as I’m concerned, she’s moved to Whoragon,” he said. “And I don’t mean Portland.”

“Somebody’s shot Caroline Kelly,” I said, when Rick answered his phone. “My next-door neighbor. I think she’s dead.” My voice was higher than normal, and I was panting for breath after that quick run with Rochester.

“Whoa, Steve, hold on!” Rick said. “Where are you?”

I described the spot, between River Road and the entrance to River Bend. “I’m on my way,” he said. “Did you call 911?”

“Not yet.”

“Do it.” He disconnected, and I called the emergency number.

The dispatcher was calm and professional. She led me through what had happened and where I was, and promised to send police and an ambulance.

All the while, Rochester paced around me, alternating between barking and whimpering. He’d strain to go over to Caroline’s body, then when I pulled him back he’d jump up on me, as if he was trying to convince me to do something more than just wait for the police to arrive.

I shivered in the cold, damp breeze, starting at every noise, worried that whoever had shot Caroline hadn’t been in that car, that he was still lurking in the wooded preserve. But the one-two punch of a visit from Santiago Santos, and the discovery of Caroline’s body, had knocked all the initiative out of me. All I could do was sit on the ground with the big golden dog next to me, and wait for whatever fate had in store.

I remembered the first time I’d met Caroline, a few months before. Moving back to Pennsylvania from Silicon Valley had been more expensive than I’d anticipated, and I’d run through a lot of the money my dad had left me. The townhouse was paid off—but there were still utilities and taxes and the business of putting food on the table.

It was December 15 and I was just about ready to put on a paper hat and practice saying, “Would you like fries with that?” when I stumbled on an opening for adjunct faculty at Eastern College, my alma mater, a ‘very good small college’ just upriver from Stewart’s Crossing. I had to get up to the college as soon as possible that morning to meet with the department chair before the college closed down for Christmas break.

I rushed through a quick shower, cut my chin while shaving, and didn’t realize that I’d forgotten a belt until I’d locked the door behind me. I was opening my beat-up BMW sedan, the one I’d bought new twelve years before, when out of nowhere a huge golden beast came galloping toward me. I might have taken it for a lion if not for the long red tongue lolling out of its mouth as it ran. I heard a woman call, “Rochester! Come back here!”

The beast, which appeared to share its name with Jack Benny’s valet, pinned me against the car, placing its large paws on my chest and licking my face. My CV and transcript pages went flying.

“Rochester! Down!” The woman pulled the dog’s collar, and he fell to the ground, where he began sniffing my feet. “I’m so sorry,” she said. She wore a maroon turtleneck, pressed jeans and expensive sneakers. “I thought he was upstairs, and when I opened the front door he shot out past me.”

Rochester rolled over onto his back, and the woman reached down to rub his belly. “You’re just a little too friendly, aren’t you, Rochester?” she asked.

She stood and stuck her hand out. “Hi, I’m Caroline Kelly. I live next door.”

Our townhouses were connected in a pod of sixteen—eight backing on eight. My kitchen wall abutted Caroline’s living room, and sometimes when I was fixing dinner I heard her come home and greet her dog, and for a moment or two—but just that long—I missed having someone to come home to. Not my ex-wife, you understand. Just someone.

Then I looked down and realized Rochester had left muddy paw prints on my khaki slacks. Too late, no time to change. “Sorry, I’m in a rush,” I said. “Job interview in—” I looked at my watch “twenty minutes.”

She called “Good luck!” and held Rochester’s collar as I backed down the driveway. After that, we’d seen each other out walking. Ours was a friendly community, lots of joggers, walkers, and dog owners, and I nodded to her as often as to any of the other neighbors.

Poor Caroline. We’d talked, and I’d entertained the idea that I might ask her out to dinner sometime, when I felt a little more comfortable mentioning my parole on first dates. I felt sad that her life had been extinguished, and that I’d never had the chance to get to know her better.

While I waited, the occasional car passed, heading in or out of River Bend, and every time I heard the crunch of gravel I thought Rick or the ambulance was arriving. The night was quiet, and a brisk wind rose up, moving the clouds across the sky. Rochester sat on his haunches and began howling, and even though I didn’t like him, the mournful tone pierced my heart.

There was a coppery smell in the air that I thought might be Caroline’s blood, mixed with auto exhaust and a swampy tang rising from the canal, a few hundred feet away, beyond a narrow wooded area. I felt sick, but I managed not to throw up. Between keeping watch for Rick and trying to control Rochester, I had too much to do to indulge my distress. Darkness fell, but there was a three-quarter moon shining, and I could make out the outline of Orion and his fiery sword.

Rick was there first, followed by Fire Rescue and a blue and white squad car with “Stewart’s Crossing Police” emblazoned on both sides. I stood off to the side, holding Rochester’s leash, as he strained and barked, wanting to know what was going on with his mom.

Two guys spilled out of the ambulance and assessed Caroline’s situation. Because they didn’t load her up and speed away, I could tell that my initial thought was correct—she was dead.

The two officers in the squad car set up a perimeter around the area and Rick called for crime scene investigators. For the next couple of hours there was a flurry of activity—lights being set up, people searching, evidence collected, photos taken.

I couldn’t remember the last time there had been a homicide in Stewart’s Crossing. It’s the kind of small town that falls under the radar most of the time. We were named for a guy who ran a ferry service across the river, the eighteenth century equivalent of being called Yellow Cab, PA. Our most famous citizens are a minor soap opera actress and a professor at Princeton University who studies why chameleons change color.  The VFW post runs a Memorial Day parade, where the kids from the high school drama club dress up as wounded veterans, teenagers wrapped in bloody bandages, hobbling on crutches, plastic guts spilling out of their T-shirts.

When I was in high school, our chapter of the Future Farmers of America set up a demonstration farm in the parking lot of the high school.  Jeff DiSalvo’s prize bull got loose when Jeff was attempting to demonstrate gelding, and it trampled the chicks, the ducklings and two lambs. That was about the extent of the violence in Stewart’s Crossing.

Since we’d reconnected, Rick and I often met up for a beer at The Drunken Hessian, a place we’d always wanted to get in when we were under age. Now that we were old enough, some of the thrill had worn off, but that’s the way it is with most things. When he came over to talk to me, he reminded me of the only other homicide in town during our lives, a shooting that had taken place there while I was in California. “But we do a lot of accident investigation and reconstruction,” he reassured me. “We have a crime lab and access to a lot of sophisticated equipment through the county.”

By then, the coroner’s office had taken Caroline’s body away, and Rochester had stopped straining and jumping. Instead, he sat on his haunches at my feet, alert to everything that was going on. Rick pulled out his notepad and had me walk him through everything I’d seen or heard, starting with the three shots. Then he nodded and said, “Good. Now I need you to tell me everything you know about Caroline.”

“It’s not much,” I said. “I moved into the townhouse in November, but I didn’t meet her until just before Christmas. She works for a bank in center city, but I don’t know the name. I know she has a degree in English from SUNY, and an MBA, but I don’t remember from where.” My voice warbled a little, and I still felt panicky.

“OK, take it easy, Steve. That’s her dog?”

I nodded. “She was walking him.”

“She do that same time every day?”

“Pretty much.” I saw him write that down, and my brain ran off. So somebody had been watching her, waiting to kill her. Oh, my God.

“Steve?” I heard Rick say, though I was busy imagining horrible scenarios for poor Caroline. “Stay with me, here.”

I came back to the present. “Sorry. You were asking?”

“She have any regular visitors? A boyfriend, maybe?”

I shook my head. “She mentioned a guy from New York,” I said. “I saw his car in her driveway one weekend-- a black Porsche Cayenne.”

He asked a lot more questions, and I found it sad that I knew so little about Caroline after living next to her for five months. “OK, why don’t you go home now?,” he said. “I know where to find you if I need anything else.”

I was being dismissed, which was fine with me. “What about the dog?”

“What about him?”

“What do I do with him?”

Rick shrugged. “Can you keep him until we find out next of kin, see what plans she made?”

“I’m not a dog person. I don’t know how to take care of one.”

“You feed it, you walk it, you pick up after it,” Rick said. “Smart guy like you, college professor, you can figure it out.”

I looked at Rochester. He was a big, hairy, slobbering beast, but he’d just lost his mother, and I remembered the piercing sound of his howls. I could keep him for a day or two. “You’ll call me when you know what to do with him?”

“Will do,” he said.

When I tugged on Rochester’s leash and said, “Come on, boy, you’re coming to my house,” he strained to go where Caroline’s body had lain, but I reined him in. He looked up at me, in the glare of the police car’s headlights, and in his face I thought I could see an understanding. His mother was not coming back. He was stuck with me, at least for a while.

As we walked home, I was lost in thought about Caroline, and Rochester kept stopping every few feet to sniff or lift his leg. As my house came in sight, and with it Caroline’s right next door, I remembered that Rochester had to have food, bowls, toys—who knew what else. All of it locked up inside Caroline’s townhouse.

We’d swapped house keys after we met, though I’d never had cause to use her key before. Rochester planted himself in her driveway and would not be moved onward, no matter how I tried to convince or drag him. He agreed to walk up to the townhouse’s courtyard, and I let him in through the gate, then pulled it closed behind him.

“I’ll be right back, boy, I promise,” I said. “I have to get the key.”

He lay down and rested his head on his front paws, regarding me with a baleful glance. “I promise, Rochester.”

I hurried to my own door, trying to remember where I’d stored Caroline’s key. I thought it was in my kitchen junk drawer, and I pawed through the take-out menus, loose screws, flashlight batteries and plastic doodads until I found it. I wasn’t quick enough, though; I heard Rochester start to howl next door as I rushed out.

“I’m coming, boy!” I called. I jumped through the flowerbed between the houses and showed my head over the gate. He leaped up and launched himself at me as I walked in.

“I didn’t leave you,” I said, reaching down to scratch behind his ears. “I had to get the key.” He rewarded me with a smear of drool across my leg.

I opened the front door and turned on the light in the living room. I shivered as I realized I was walking into a dead woman’s house, but there was no getting around it. I needed Rochester’s stuff.

The cushions of the black lacquer futon were covered in a fine layer of golden hair and the
Courier-Times
had been tossed atop the matching coffee table. A bookcase made of planks and black-painted blocks spanned one long wall, filled with books.

I followed Rochester into the kitchen, where I started assembling his stuff. There was a lot of it. Food and water bowls, and a half-full twenty-pound bag of dry dog food. A shelf of vitamin bottles, dog shampoo, leashes and collars and flea products. Scattered around the floor were a variety of heavy plastic dog toys and rawhide bones in various states of chewing.

Caroline’s model has a small bedroom off the living room, which she had fitted out as an office, and I found a big empty box there, beneath a sign that read, “I want to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.”

 I was loading the box when the front door burst open and I heard someone say, “Police! Don’t move!”

I froze like a statue. Rochester, however, did not obey. He rushed toward the door, barking. Then I heard a voice say, “Hey, boy, how did you get in here?”

“Rick?” I called. “It’s me, Steve.”

Rick came around the corner from the entry, his gun drawn. One of the uniformed cops was behind him. When he saw it was indeed me, he holstered it. “What are you doing in here?”

“You told me to keep the dog,” I said. I motioned toward the box I was packing. “I needed his stuff.”