“You knew there was a crime when you saw the damage to the door,” he pointed out.
“Wellll – but by then I was right there. And Paco was barking like crazy and, I don’t know, it just seemed…”
“Never mind,” he said with a sigh. “Go on.”
“I went in and I called for Rose, I saw the blood on the floor – and you know the rest.”
“The rest including feeding the dog, causing him to barf all over my crime scene.”
I missed the faint crunch of gravel, but Polly, who’d been taking up half the sofa and seeming to listen politely to our conversation, jumped to the floor and padded into the kitchen. Paco began his shrill keening again as the door opened.
Luther and I waited in silence as footsteps crossed the kitchen to the laundry room door, and an exasperated male voice exclaimed, “Aw, HELL no!”
My beloved husband was home.
“Cissy?” he called. “Where are you and why is there a little yapping dog in the laundry room? And if you think for one minute we’re going to keep it…” Jack appeared in the doorway and stopped. “Oh, hello, Luther.”
He gestured back toward the kitchen. “Cissy? – “
“That’s Rose’s Paco,” I told him. “Remember I told you about the chihuahua?”
“What’s it doing here?”
“Rose is dead, Jack. I found her in her kitchen with her head bashed in. And with all the police and crime scene business going on, I brought Paco here.”
As I was speaking, Jack slowly lowered himself onto the ottoman. “Oh, not again!” he moaned. “Luther, make her stop!”
“You think I’m encouraging her?” Luther asked with wounded astonishment. “You think I like this?”
“Hey!” I objected. “I know this isn’t any of my business, and I’ll keep out of it, so long as it stays none of my business. Last time, might I remind you, you folks were just about to arrest Jack! That made it my business.”
“Alright,” Luther said peaceably. “Just so long as we understand one another.”
We went over my actions and observations again several more times, while Jack listened in disapproving silence. Finally Luther felt he’d got everything he could out of me and closed his notebook.
As he stood to go, I asked, “About Rose’s next of kin. Are they local?”
“What did we just agree about you keeping out of it?” Luther asked in exasperation.
“The dog, Luther!” I pointed out.
“I need to know what to do about the dog.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll have to check and get back with you on that.”
He headed toward the kitchen. Jack stood up. “Wait a minute!” he objected. “Are you saying we’re stuck with this dog? Why us?”
Luther shrugged. “Ask your wife, she’s the one who volunteered to remove it from the crime scene. Maybe the vet wo
uld board it for a while
.”
Out in the yard, Luther was just opening the car door when the Expedition lumbered up to park beside him. Luther shot me a disappointed look. “I didn’t call her!” I assured him.
Julia jumped out of the car
and hurried toward me. “Cissy, what happened with Rose? Bob just called me from Buddy’s.”
“Buddy’s.” Luther shook his head, got in his car and drove away without another word.
FIVE
Julia shooed me back into the house. In the kitchen, Paco started up again. I was glad Julia hadn’t brought Beau.
Julia went to the laundry room door to observe Paco. “Well,” she said at last, “I never much liked him, but it’s sad. I think he’s lost the only person in the world who could tolerate him.”
She turned back. “Is there coffee? Let’s take it to your office.”
What a great idea. I corral
l
ed
cups and the coffee pot and we
headed to the other end of the house.
Jack joined us. So did Polly. So did Tough Stuff. Suddenly everyone wanted to be at the opposite end of the house from the laundry room.
Jack grabbed the recliner, and Tough
Stuff leaped into his lap and began industrious kneading. Julia opted for the sofa and received Polly’s head in her lap. I took the office chair.
“So?” Julia prodded. “Tell me all about it!”
Jack frowned. “Didn’t you just tell Luther you weren’t going to meddle this time?”
“Discussion among friends is not meddling,” I assured him. “It’s only natural and it’s not like I’m going to run around and look at things and question people. Right?”
“You’re not?” Julia asked in surprise.
“Why should I?” I asked her. “Last time it was right on our property, and the sheriff almost arrested Jack. This time it’s some woman I barely knew, I don’t know anything about her other than that she sure didn’t train her dog.”
“That’s something you can do,” Julia suggested. “I’ll bring you a video about training. If ever a dog needed some training, it’s that one.”
Paco was still keening from the laundry room, but he seemed to be winding down.
“So,” Julia said, bringing us back on topic. “Rose?”
“Oh my god, Julia!” I moaned. “It was awful! She’d obviously been dead for days! There was this horrible smell, and the back door lock was busted.”
“For days. Hmm.” Julia considered that. Then her eyes widened. “I wonder if she was killed the same day my place and Amy’s were broken into? What if we’d been home, or came home in the middle of the break
-
in?”
It sounded scarily plausible. “You suppose Luther would tell us about time of death?” Julia added.
“No,” Jack said. “No, he wouldn’t.”
A depressed silence. Then I had a notion. “Didn’t Amy say that Rose lists auctions every evening?” I turned to the computer and logged onto the internet.
“What are you doing?” Jack asked.
“I want to see when she last listed auctions,” I told him. “That ought to give us an idea.”
I looked up Rose’s auctions. “Aha! Her last listings were Sunday evening.”
“So she could have been killed on Monday, sure enough,” Julia said.
Jack cleared his throat significantly. “Uh, Cissy? Wouldn’t you call what you’re doing right now investigating?”
“I’d call it web surfing,” I replied defensively. To prove it, I surfed over to my own auctions. “Hey, look! That kaffee klatch tablecloth is up to $47.50, and the cutter bedspread is at $21.”
“Are you shitting me? Move, TS.” Jack brushed Tough Stuff onto the floor and heaved out of the recliner to come over and look over my shoulder. “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” he said in wonder. “People are buying that old junk?”
“They’re vintage collectibles,” I told him loftily.
“Hey, do they sell books?” Jack asked.
“I think they pretty much sell everything,” I said.
“Can I look?”
Awestruck, I moved out of the desk chair to make room for Jack. Julia and I exchanged wide-eyed looks.
I’ve been trying to interest Jack in the internet for three years now. Oh, he has an e-mail address but he hardly ever remembers to check his mail. I have his password and weed out the spam about once a week, and when I see something he ought to know about, I print it out for him. He’s gotten better about checking his e-mail since Danny, our college student son, shifted most of his communication with us from ‘snail mail’ to e-mail.
But for the rest of the wonders of the web, Jack has been spectacularly uninterested. He says he’s got plenty to keep him busy without spending time sitting at a computer, but I long ago realized what the real problem is, and watching his agonizingly slow hunt-a
nd-peck on the keyboard just rei
nforced that realization. My brilliant and talented husband can’t type.
I suspect future generations will find this hard to believe, but there was a time, and it wasn’t all that long ago, when a man could spend an entire career
without knowing how to type. I say ‘man’ advisedly. Women always wound up learning how to type. Even the women who didn’t start in the secretarial pool still always seemed to be the ones producing the minutes of meetings, making the flyers for the fundraisers, and everything else involved in the production of written communications between the organization and the world. But a man? At most, a man needed a pen and a yellow pad. At best, he could call in a woman with a steno pad, who would take dictation; he could simply recite what he wanted written, and the written product was produced by the women.
Of course those days are changing and not a moment too soon, if you ask me.
“Look!” Jack exclaimed. “They’ve got Richard Burton’s books. I’ve been looking for some of these for years.”
“Ooh, I loved him in Becket!” Julia said. “Did he write books?”
“Not the actor,” Jack said absently. “The explorer.” He scrolled down the list avidly. “Hon, how do I buy some of these?”
Bingo! We had a convert!
“Well,” I said, “I could bid on my account, or you could open your own account.”
“I want my own account,” Jack said.
Now I recalled that some of Burton’s writing was fairly
risqué
. Translations of the Kama Sutra and similar topics. So I showed Jack where to click to register.
While he was working his way through the registration screen, the phone rang. I answered it, “Rayburns.”
“Cissy!” It was Doc. “I just heard! Rose is dead and that’s why you have Paco?”
Passatonnack Winery isn’t the only place in Queen Anne County where you’ll find grapevines; the whole place is littered with them.
I lifted the phone cord over Jack’s head and carried the phone to the recliner. I gave Doc a brief rundown of what I’d discovered at Rose’s house, Paco’s distress (tailoring my story to my audience), and how he’d behaved since I brought him home.
“He’s always been an only child,” Doc told me. “And like so many chihuahuas, he’s got that Little Big Dog syndrome; can’t understand why the whole world doesn’t just accept that he’s in charge. You’re going to have your hands full. I hope sharing a house with some other pets will be an attitude adjustment for him.”
“Yes, but Doc,” I complained, “for how long? Do you know anything about Rose’s relatives, how I could reach them? Somebody’s got to take this dog.”
There was a pause as Doc thought about it. “I think she’s got a brother, but not local,” she finally said. “And his name would be different; someone told me once that Rose had been married and then divorced a long time ago.”
“I’ll have to keep after Luther on the next of kin question,” I decided. “Surely her nearest and dearest will give her dog a home.”
Doc said sadly, “You’d be surprised the number of pets I’ve had to rehome when their owners die; plenty of times the next of kin bring them in here and ask for them to be put down.”
Surprised, yes, and shocked too. What is wrong with some people?
Doc signed off and I turned back to the computer to see what Jack was up to. “Sixteen volumes?!” I asked. “Were there that many Arabian Nights?”
“Yep,” said Jack. He hit the enter key and placed a bid. I gasped at the amount.
“Okay, I don’t want to hear a word about the digital camera I bought,” I told him. “That will actually be useful around here, for selling on eBuy and
for the website.”
“Not a word,” Jack agreed.
Julia took her departure then, ominously declaring that she hadn’t made any commitments about not investigating. I gave Paco some more pieces of softened kibble, and took him out to the yard to do his business. I was glad to have the harness; the way he tugged and pulled, he’d wind up strangling himself with a leash attached to a collar. He obviously seemed to believe that he got to decide where we went and the speed at which we got there.
Polly nosed open the screen door and joined us, curious about this new addition. Paco gave a shrill scream of defiance and flung himself on Polly. Did he really not notice that she was ten times his size? Startled, Polly danced out of his reach. I saw that Paco had a mouthful of fur, and reminded myself to check Polly for damage
later, though that thick fur usually makes good armor
.
That ended our yard excursion. Polly continued to follow us just out of Paco’s reach and Paco kept pulling impatiently, determined to teach her who was boss. I put him back in the laundry room and hoped he’d settle down eventually. Polly could do some real damage to the little terrorist if she wanted to, and however unpleasant he was, I didn’t want for him to be injured while under my care. Surely someone was going to want him.
I crashed right after dinner. I’m a big fan of murder mysteries, but one thing they don’t really convey is just how exhausting it is to find a body, and all the activity and questioning that entails. I was out like a light for hours.
But I woke up at three in the morning. Jack was beside me, and I could feel that he was tense as an over
-
coiled spring and just about to snap. And no wonder! That sound! Drifting up from the first floor was an eerie keening, unspeakably tragic and incredibly grating at the same time.
“You awake?” Jack asked quietly.