In Dog We Trust (Golden Retriever Mysteries) (24 page)

Sometimes I wished for simple things: I wanted to get through all the papers I had to grade quickly, or for a cold to clear up fast. Sometimes I wished for things for other people—I’d been wishing for a quick resolution to Edith’s troubles, and when the roof of The Chocolate Ear had been damaged in a storm, I wished that the insurance money Gail received would be enough to fix it. When money was tight, I wished for a lucrative new client, or an unexpected check, and sometimes those wishes came true. When I was feeling melancholy I wished for something to happen, something good, something that would shake up my life.

I guess the old adage is true—be careful what you wish for, or you just might get it. I tugged on Rochester’s leash as we passed Caroline’s house again, and took my adopted child inside.

I didn’t know what time Karina was going to show up, which was annoying, but I worked on that big manual, and I’d made a lot of progress when the guardhouse called to say I had a visitor.

It was Rick Stemper—but a few minutes later, the guard called again. “There’s a Chris here to see you.”

Chris. Who was Chris? “For me? Levitan?”

“That’s what he says.” He was off the phone for a minute. “Chris McCutcheon, he says.”

“Oh,” I said. He must have driven Karina Warr down from the city. “Sure, send them in.”

Rick was at my door a minute later, and Rochester went into his big happy dance. Rick had parked down at the guest parking, to leave the other side of the driveway free for Karina, and was pleased when I told him that Chris had driven her.

We hung around the front door, waiting, and I had the chance to look at Rick in his off-duty mode. From his posture and his military-short brown hair, you’d peg him as a cop, and the touches of grey at his sideburns gave away his age, though he was in better shape than he had been in high school. He was wearing khakis, deck shoes and a dark green polo shirt. If I’d made a couple of different wardrobe choices that morning, we’d have looked a lot alike, but instead I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt from a Meat Loaf concert years before. I wondered if Rick had a gun hidden somewhere on his person, or maybe a knife stuck into the side of his shoe.

Oh, wait, I’m in TV mode again, I thought.

A few minutes later, a black SUV pulled into my driveway. At the sound of the car doors opening, Rochester started barking, and when I opened the front door he went ballistic, barking and snarling and struggling to get out of my grasp.

Karina and Chris hung back as I manhandled Rochester into a sitting position. Chris wore jeans, a fitted T-shirt, aviator sunglasses, and finely tooled leather boots. Karina, on the other hand, was dressed for cocktails at a chic SoHo bar—low-cut white blouse, red leather miniskirt, matching red high-heeled shoes. She had a brown leather jacket over her shoulders. Despite myself I thought she looked hot.

I introduced Rick as a friend who’d dropped by. By then, Rochester had stopped barking, but he was growling and showing teeth. “Why don’t I take the dog for a walk,” Rick suggested. “Has he got a leash?”

“On the kitchen counter,” I said.

“He always used to like me,” Chris said.

“I’m so sorry. I’ve never seen him like this.”

“I knew there was a reason why I didn’t like dogs,” Karina said.

Rick returned with Rochester’s leash, and it took both of us to get him hooked up. Then, pulling the leash tight so that Rochester’s collar was almost up to his ears, Rick walked him out.

Once the way was clear, Karina and I touched cheeks, and Chris and I shook hands. I offered them both lemonade, and brought it out in big plastic tumblers—red for me, blue for Chris, green for Karina. We sat on the sofa and chatted about their trip. “No trouble finding the place?” I asked. “Oh, that’s right, you’ve been to Caroline’s before.”

I turned to Karina. “But this is your first time in Stewart’s Crossing, isn’t it?”

“I’m allergic to the suburbs,” she said, sounding only half kidding.

“Let me get the stuff that Caroline left behind,” I said. I’d tidied up as much as I could, vacuuming Rochester’s golden hair, dusting the bookshelves and even mopping the white tile floor on the lower level. Karina made suitable noises about how
sweet
the house was—how much
space
! Chris sat on the leather sofa as if the day was about Karina and he was just along for the ride.

I brought the box out, and we spread the contents on my coffee table.

“I remember this play!” Karina exclaimed, pulling a program for a high school production of
West Side Story
off the top of the pile. “You were Tony.”

To me, Chris said, “There weren’t a lot of boys in our school that year.”

“You were fabulous!” Karina said, pushing him lightly in the side. “You know you were.” She began to sing, “Tonight, tonight…”

Chris said, “Musical theater is not your strength, Karina,” and she shut up.

They went through the yearbooks, the programs, and the other paperwork. Karina took a couple of things, but Chris didn’t want anything. “I just came down to drive Karina,” he said. “Unlike her, I like getting out in the country.”

“The
country
is different,” Karina said. “You know I love to go biking with you in Westchester.”

I found it hard to imagine Karina on a bicycle—but if she liked Chris McCutcheon enough, I could see her pretending until she had a ring on her finger.

“It’s nice that Chris brought you down here,” I said to her. “You guys will probably get to spend a lot of time together, now that Caroline’s out of the picture.”

“What do you mean?”

“You wanted Chris for yourself, didn’t you? Ever since Korea, you’ve wanted to be the center of attention—but Caroline was always around. Convenient for you that she’s gone, now, isn’t it?”

“What a
terrible
thing to say!” Karina said. She stood up. “And I thought you were so nice, taking care of her dog after she was shot.”

“It’s touching that you care about Rochester. But then, you’re not the one who hates dogs, are you? Isn’t that you, Chris?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Karina and I both know what you did to Caroline’s dog when you were a teenager.”

“What the fuck?” He stood up, too.

“That’s ancient history,” Karina said. “I can’t believe you brought that up.”

“You still have those violent tendencies, Chris?” I asked, still reclining on the sofa. “Like maybe you got mad at Caroline about something and shot her?”

“We should go,” Chris said. Dragging Karina along, he stalked to the front door, then outside, not even saying goodbye.

When I followed them out, I saw Rick down the block, lying on someone’s lawn with his hand looped through Rochester’s collar. As soon as Chris and Karina drove away, he let the dog go, and Rochester came galloping down the street to me.

“Hey, boy, what was up with that behavior?” I asked, as he jumped on me, placing his front paws on my waist.

 “Do you remember what kind of car you saw leaving after Caroline was shot?” Rick asked.

We walked into the house. “I just remember it was a black SUV.”

“And what was Chris driving?”

“You think Rochester recognized the car?”

“At least the type of car,” he said. “I don’t think he got the license plate number that night. At least he didn’t tell me.”

“Which is why he barked at Chris, even though he’s been here before and Rochester liked him.”

“That’s what I think.” He emptied the lemonade from the blue and green tumblers, then put each one in a separate evidence bag. “The crime lab’s backed up at the moment,” he said. “But I should get prints back within a week.”

Rick started for my front door, but stopped when I said, “I might have stirred the pot a little this afternoon.”

He turned around. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I might have pointed out that both Karina and Chris had motives for killing Caroline.”

“You didn’t.” He shook his head. “Who died and appointed you detective?”

“Caroline Kelly.”

“That’s low, Steve. I’m working this case, you know I am. There just isn’t a lot to go on.”

“I know. That’s why I’m trying to stir things up.”

“You are not the cop here, Steve. You’ve got to let me handle things.”

“You needed my help to get their fingerprints.”

He blew a big breath out. “Yeah, and I can see it was a mistake. Listen to me. You are NOT to do anything else without checking with me first.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“You know, that attitude was cool when we were seventeen. It’s lame and childish at forty-two.”

And with that he stalked out the front door. Rochester came tumbling down the stairs, sliding across the tile floor to me. “I don’t know, boy, people just keep leaving without saying goodbye. Nobody seems to have any manners these days.”

I knew Rick was right; I spent my life among teenagers and their snarky attitude was rubbing off on me. And I shouldn’t have provoked Chris and Karina the way I did, but I was frustrated with the lack of progress. The detectives on
NYPD Blue
would have goaded one of them into a confession before the commercial break. But as Rick had pointed out, I was no cop.

Rick’s reprimand reminded me that if I didn’t get a business plan together by my appointment with Santiago Santos the next afternoon, I’d be getting bad feedback from him, too. So I sat down with the sample business plans I’d downloaded a few weeks before and tried to come up with one of my own.

I’d already put some of the material together—demand for my services, my qualifications and so on. I’d also created a list of all my personal contacts, including friends, relatives and former co-workers, who might be able to point me toward some work.

I went back through my email and generated a log of all the jobs I’d applied for, along with the responses I’d received. There wasn’t much good news there.

Maybe my plan was flawed. Suppose there wasn’t the demand I expected, or potential clients were scared off by my felony conviction? Would you trust your sensitive computer materials to a convicted hacker, after all?

What else could I do? I’d spent the last twenty years working around words and computers, and I didn’t know anything else. I didn’t even know how to work the computerized cash register at The Chocolate Ear, though I supposed I could learn. Would Gail hire me? Would any responsible business owner trust a felon with access to money?

I started to feel worse and worse. Rochester must have known what was going on, because he came over and laid his big golden head in my lap. I gave up worrying and sat on the floor to play with him.

After reading the paper Sunday morning, I spent a couple of hours finishing up that big manual. I decided that the only thing I could do was talk over my problems with Santos; at least he’d feel that I was trying, even if I didn’t have much of a plan ready to show him.

He couldn’t send me back to prison before the semester was over, right?

Caroline’s laptop was stored on the top shelf of my closet by the time Santiago Santos arrived on Sunday afternoon. But possession of an illicit computer was going to be nothing if he couldn’t help me put together a business plan.

He checked the audit trail on my laptop, then pushed it aside. “Sorry we have to do this today,” he said. “Let’s see if we can make it quick and painless. How’s your business going?”

“I wish I had better news,” I said. “I just can’t seem to get things going.” I went on to confess the fears that I had, that perhaps the whole freelance business was a bad idea, that I worried no one would hire me. “I’ve been trying,” I said. “But I’m just not getting enough work.”

I showed him the business plan in its rough state, worrying that he’d get angry, threaten to send me back to California. But instead he said, “This isn’t bad, Steve. You’ve just got to have faith in yourself.”

“It’s just that I don’t know what else I can do. I don’t have a backup plan.”

“Well, let’s work on that,” he said. “What else can you do besides writing and teaching?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t done anything else for twenty years.”

“Have you looked into the Work Opportunity Tax Credit?” he asked. “Private employers get a tax credit if they hire individuals from eight different groups—and one of those is ex-felons.” He opened up his briefcase. “I think I have a list somewhere in here of jobs you could look into.”

I was excited. I figured his list would show some things I hadn’t considered, some companies that would be willing to hire me. But when I looked it over, my heart dropped. “Laundry worker? Receiving clerk? Meat cutter?” I asked, looking up at him. “Is this all I can do?”

“It’s a drop in status from college professor,” Santos said. “But these jobs pay money. Not much, I grant you.” He looked around. “There aren’t any meat cutters living in River Bend, I’ll bet. What about a union apprenticeship? You ever work construction? There’s a lot of money there.”