Jingle Bell Bark (12 page)

“I live in an apartment.” Tired of standing, Laurel finally sat down on the couch. She crossed her legs gracefully and placed her folded hands atop her knee. “So Pepper and Remington will have to be disposed of with the rest of our father's things. We intend to sell them to the highest bidder.”

My brow lifted. They couldn't be serious. “The
highest bidder?”

“Precisely,” Robin confirmed. “Laurel and I have spoken about it and we've decided that's the best way to handle things. We'll place an ad in the newspaper and see what kind of offers come rolling in.”

I cleared my throat. It was either that or laugh in their faces. “What makes you think any offers are going to come rolling in at all?”

“Perhaps you don't know much about dogs,” said Laurel. “At any rate, I imagine you're unaware that these two are excellent purebreds. Our father was very particular about the things he owned. Pepper and Remington have papers and pedigrees.”

So did nearly every purebred dog in the country, I thought. But a pedigree alone wasn't enough to confer value on an older dog. Rebecca Morehouse could have told them that; she hadn't wanted him back for free. And as for her puppies that presumably carried the same pedigree, she'd resorted to selling them out of the back of a car.

The notion that someone might actually pay a large sum of money for either of those two dogs was dizzyingly optimistic. And vastly untrue.

“That's not all,” said Robin. “I remember Dad telling me that one of them comes from a famous breeding kennel. He has relatives that showed at Westminster. That's the big dog show in New York that they show on TV every year,” she added helpfully, in case I wasn't familiar with the name.

“I know about Westminster,” I managed to say.

“Then you should understand why we value these dogs so highly,” said Laurel. “Westminster is the pinnacle.”

“Well, yes, but . . .” There were so many things wrong with their logic, I scarcely knew where to begin refuting it.

“But what?”

“Lots of dogs come from the same stock as those that show at Westminster. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're worth money.”

Laurel lifted her head back and gazed down her nose at me. “I see what this is about. You knew our father in his capacity as a school bus driver.” She said the words distastefully and quickly moved on. “Obviously, this has colored your impression of his business affairs. Let me assure you that our father was very well situated financially. Living simply as he did was his choice; it was by no means a necessity.”

“I'm aware of that—” I began.

“Then perhaps you take my sister and me for a pair of fools?”

“Of course not, but—”

“Yet somehow you believe that we are going to allow you to abscond with valuable property that rightfully belongs to use?”

I sighed and settled back in my seat. Good thing I hadn't brought Pepper and Remington and left them waiting in the car. It looked as though sorting this mess out was going to take some time.

I
n my experience, “abscond” is one of those fancy words people use when they want you to believe that their education is better than it really is. But since Laurel had used the word first, I felt free to toss it right back at her.

“No one wanted to abscond with your property,” I said. “I was trying to look after it.” Not that I'd cared one bit about the sisters' feelings in the matter; it was Pepper and Remington I'd been trying to protect. And judging by the way these two were acting, my job wasn't over yet.

“I'm curious,” I said. “If you believed the two dogs were so valuable, why didn't you make arrangements for their care when you received the news about your father?”

“Naturally, we just assumed . . .” Robin shrugged as if the answer was obvious. It wasn't to me.

“What?” I asked.

“Our mother died ten years ago,” Laurel said. Her tone clearly implied this was none of my business. “In the meantime, our father, being a man . . .”

“Hasn't lacked for companionship,” Robin finished when her sister's voice trailed off. “For a while now, he's been seeing a woman who breeds dogs. In fact, she bred one of his dogs. So when something happened to Dad, we thought she would step in and take care of things.”

Henry Pruitt and Rebecca Morehouse? On the surface, they seemed like an unlikely couple. Henry with his baseball cap and fingerless gloves, a warm smile always at the ready; and Rebecca whose rigid demeanor and steely gaze could freeze the laughter in children's throats. Then I remembered the way she'd looked the day before, wan and unhappy. Maybe this explained a great deal.

What it didn't explain was Rebecca's reluctance to get involved after the fact. Now that I knew Remington was more to her than a puppy that had been sold at the first opportunity and never thought of again, her callous refusal to help out was even more inexplicable to me.

“Clearly,” Laurel said coldly, “there's been no attempt on our parts to shirk our duties.”

“I never said—”

“No, but you were thinking it.” Robin frowned. “Just like Dad's neighbor who read us the riot act when we arrived. Like it was our fault that something had happened to him. Like maybe things would have been different if we'd been here.”

Laurel gave her sister a quelling look. Robin either didn't notice or she didn't care. My guess was, she was feeling guilty enough about her absence from her father's life to feel the need to justify it.

“You knew our father,” she said, “so I'm sure you understand. He could be ... difficult.”

“He was impossibly demanding,” said Laurel. Now that the topic had been broached, she wanted to be heard too. “He was set in his ways and determined that everyone conform to them. Heaven help the person who had a different idea.”

“It didn't matter how old we got to be,” said Robin. “In Dad's eyes, we were still his little girls. He wanted to run our lives for us.” She snorted under her breath. “It's probably no wonder that we ended up in Alaska and California. That was how far we had to go in order to be able to make our own decisions and lead our own lives.”

“Don't get us wrong,” said Laurel. My head was swiveling back and forth between the two sisters like a spectator at a tennis match. “Of course we're sorry he's gone. But we weren't a touchy-feely sort of family. That just wasn't us. Not ever.”

I clasped my hands together in my lap and stared calmly at two of the coldest bitches I'd ever seen. The kind of family life they were talking about was utterly foreign to me. I'd been close to both my parents until their deaths when I was in my early twenties. And even though I'd subsequently discovered that there were areas of their lives I'd known nothing about, that hadn't in any way diminished my wonderful memories of the time we'd spent together.

“I see,” I said. “So you haven't come to Connecticut to mourn your father, you've simply come to claim his property.”

Laurel smiled tightly. “You may think we're unfeeling, but the truth of the matter is, your opinion is immaterial to us. This afternoon we'll see our father's lawyer. His will will be read. Barring any last-minute surprises, everything he has will be divided between my sister and me—including his two dogs.” She paused, then added, “And any other items of his you may have seen fit to remove from his house?”

I'd started to stand. That crack about my opinion being immaterial had pretty much done it for me. But now, incredulously, I sank back down into my seat. “Excuse me?”

“I think you heard me. Be assured that Robin and I will be spending the next few days doing an inventory of our father's possessions. If anything should turn up missing, we'll know where to come looking for it.”

I opened my purse and got out a piece of paper and a pen. Leaning on my knee, I wrote
Two Golden Retrievers, Remington and Pepper. Approx. 20 pounds of lams kibble, 2 stainless steel bowls.
Then I signed the bottom.

“There you go,” I said, tossing the sheet onto Laurel's lap. “That's the sum total of everything I took from the house. I'll go get your dogs now. They're not far from here. I'll probably be back within half an hour, so that's how long you'll have to make other arrangements for their care. By the way, I won't be allowed to bring them into the lobby so you'd better be prepared to meet me at the door.” I stopped, then smiled sweetly. “Unless you'd like me to check Pepper and Remington with the parking valet?”

“Wait, please,” Robin said quickly. “I know my sister's offended you and I'm sorry. Much as she might like to think that she speaks for both of us, she doesn't. Obviously, there are things we didn't understand. You've gone out of your way to be helpful and we appreciate that.”

Robin must have thought I'd be dazzled by her apology. Either that or she was hoping I was half-blind. Because otherwise there was no way I could have missed the fact that when Laurel opened her mouth to speak, probably intending to repudiate what her sister had said, Robin kicked her in the ankle. Hard. A bruise was going to mark that spot later. That thought didn't distress me in the slightest.

“You're quite right to point out that we're going to need a place to keep the dogs until we manage to dispose of them,” Robin said. “Perhaps you could suggest something?”

I shrugged. If it weren't for those two lovely, innocent Golden Retrievers, I would have already been long gone. “The boys are happy where they are now.”

“And that would be exactly where?” Laurel demanded.

“At my aunt's house. She breeds dogs on a very small scale and had the facilities for taking in a couple of extras on short notice. Remington and Pepper have been there since midweek. They've settled in just fine.”

“So you say. My sister and I would like to check out these arrangements for ourselves. I assume there will be fees involved for their care?”

“I'm not surprised you'd think that,” I said. “Since you've obviously never done anything in your life out of the goodness of your heart. My aunt may have her faults but, bottom line, she adores dogs. Big ones, little ones, all kinds of dogs. Just the knowledge that these two were being neglected was enough to make her want to help them.”

Laurel's cheeks were bright with color. Robin looked like she was ready to burst; whether with laughter or outrage, I wasn't quite sure. Nor did I intend to hang around and find out. I gathered up my things and stood.

“There aren't any fees,” I said. “There aren't any conditions. Just someone who doesn't mind doing her share to make her part of the world a slightly better place. My aunt's name is Margaret Turnbull, you can find her in the phone book. I'm sure she'll be happy to show you ‘the arrangements.' ”

Aunt Peg was going to have a field day with these two, I thought. I debated calling to warn her, then decided against it. Better to let her form her own opinion on the spot; that way none of her anger would be mitigated by my advance notice.

I hoped she ate them alive.

 

 

Stamford police headquarters was located in a square, nondescript building downtown. Taking Route One east from Old Greenwich, I got there in no time. After checking in at the front desk, I then had to wait twenty minutes before Detective Marley was available to see me. Since I hadn't thought to bring along a book to read, I had nothing to do but sit and stew.

Belatedly, I realized that one thing that hadn't come up in my conversation with Robin and Laurel was the fact that the police believed their father had been murdered. Surely news like that must have come as a shock to them, no matter how distant their relationship with Henry had been. Nobody expects their lives to be touched by violent crime.

I wondered whether Detective Marley had already spoken to the two sisters. I wondered if they'd known enough about Henry's current life to have any ideas who might have been responsible for his death. Then I found myself wondering exactly how large the estate was that the two of them stood to inherit.

“Sorry about the wait.”

Pulled from my musing, I looked up into a pair of inquisitive hazel eyes topped by bushy brows. Ron Marley wasn't tall but he was solidly built. His wiry brown hair was cropped close. His handshake was firm.

Working on a Saturday, he was casually dressed in jeans and a denim shirt. His tie sported a retro tie-dye design in eye-popping shades of mellow yellow, purple haze, and acid green. Like psychedelic, man.

The detective caught me staring and smiled. “My daughter's in preschool. This was their Father's Day project.”

“It's . . . um ... eye-catching.”

“Good save. I've heard it called worse.”

Taking my elbow, he guided me around the reception desk and into the back hallway that led to his office. The small room was sparsely furnished; a desk and credenza, two chairs, and a file cabinet filled most of the space. His window looked out over the mostly empty parking lot. Forced-air heat blasted into the room through two large vents along the floor. Quickly, I shed my coat. Detective Marley took it and hung it on a hook on the back of the door.

“Have a seat,” he said. “And thanks for stopping by. I'm sure you realize this is just a formality. We're talking to everyone who had contact with the deceased, Henry Pruitt, in the last weeks of his life. Although you are a bit of a special case in that you entered his house after his death....”

“For a very good reason.”

“Yes,” Marley said. I wondered whether he was agreeing with me or just encouraging me to speak. “Why don't you tell me about that?”

“Henry was my son's bus driver.”

The detective opened his top drawer and pulled out a pad of paper and pen. “That would be the bus to Hunting Ridge Elementary, right?”

“Yes. Davey's in the third grade. We—all the mothers in the neighborhood—liked Henry. He's been driving the bus for years. So when he didn't show up for several days and the company assigned a new driver to the route, I wondered if something was the matter.”

“And you decided to go see?”

“A friend and I wanted to check on Henry and make sure that he was okay.”

“So you weren't alone when you went to Henry's house for the first time?”

“No
_.
”

I was sure he must have known the answer to that. So why was he asking? Surely he didn't expect me to lie?

“Your friend's name?”

“Alice Brickman. We knocked on Henry's door and of course there was no answer, though we could hear his dogs barking inside the house. Then his neighbor, Betty Bowen, called us over and told us that he had died.”

“And it was at that point you decided to enter his house? A house where a suspicious death had recently taken place?”

I sat up straight, leaned forward, and braced my hands on the top of his desk. My fingers curled around the edge hard enough to make my knuckles whiten. “For one thing, at that point I had no idea that Henry had been murdered. All Betty told me was that he'd collapsed and been taken to the hospital. And for another, there were animals in distress inside that empty house. There was no way I was just going to walk away and leave them there.”

“Even though you didn't know Mr. Pruitt very well, you didn't have a key to his house, and you'd apparently never met his dogs before. You still felt it was your responsibility to do something.”

Ignoring the skepticism I heard in his tone, I said, “Yes.”

“Besides,” I added after a minute of silence, “Henry's neighbor had already been going in and out of his house to put food down for the dogs. So my going in really wasn't very different.”

Marley glanced down at his notes. Since there was barely anything written on the page, I couldn't imagine what he wanted me to think he was checking. “So you say.”

“It's the truth.”

“Except that you removed something from the house.”

I sighed softly. My patience was beginning to fray. Hadn't I had this conversation once today already?

“Would you like the dogs back?” I asked. “Because at this point I am more than willing to go get them, bring them here, and tie them to your desk. They're big but they're friendly. Not terribly well trained, but well meaning. There's a twenty-pound bag of kibble that goes with them. I stole that from Henry's house, too.

“The dogs' names are Pepper and Remington. They don't always come when they're called, so you're going to want to walk them on a leash. Three or four times a day should do it. Oh, and they're Golden Retrievers, so they're shedding. You'd better tell your janitors to get more bags for the vacuum....”