Raining Cats & Dogs (A Melanie Travis Mystery) (23 page)

I waited, and after a minute, she continued.

“It’s a sad fact that I’m more likely to remember what I wore to a ball sixty years ago than I am to remember what I had for breakfast this morning. You’re asking me about people I don’t know, who were doing things I didn’t care about at the time.”

Entirely too true. I should have realized this probably wasn’t going to work out.

“If you want to investigate something, I’ll tell you what you ought to be asking questions about.”

“What’s that?” I asked. Even Faith pricked her ears.

“Things have been going missing around here lately. Even more so than usual.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Big stuff, little stuff. You name it. I lost some money myself. Not a huge amount, just something I had tucked away in my jewelry box for a rainy day. I went looking for it the other day and it was gone. Now where did it go, can you tell me that?”

“Did you report the theft to anyone on the staff?”

“Not much point, is there? In the first place, cash is cash, and I’ll never see it again. Second, at my age they’ll probably think I just misplaced it. And third, the way the whole administration’s been acting so skittish, I’m not about to be the one who adds to their worries.”

“If you like,” I said, “I’d be happy to talk to someone about it.”

“Talk is cheap,” Mrs. Ellis snapped. “I’d rather see some action.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

Just one more thing to add to the list.

I
left Mrs. Ellis and went to stand beside Jay. He’d positioned himself in a back corner of the room to observe the proceedings unobtrusively. Security might have been downgraded at Winston Pumpernill since my last visit, but it hadn’t disappeared entirely.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked.

“Sure thing.” The big man leaned down and greeted Faith. One hand stroked the top of her head; the other shook her paw solemnly. Then he straightened and looked me in the eye. “What’s up?”

“I’ve heard some things…”

“Uh-oh, bad sign,” Jay said, but his dark eyes were twinkling. He didn’t look like a man who had anything to hide.

“I was told that if someone wanted to smuggle something into Winston Pumpernill, you’d be the person to see.”

“You were, were you?” He still didn’t look unduly dismayed. Jay gazed around the room. “Got to say something for these old folks. They mean well, but not a single one of them can keep a secret worth a damn.”

“So then it’s true?”

“I guess it might be under certain circumstances. But let’s be clear on what we’re talking about here. In my whole life, I’ve never done anything that would cause somebody harm, and I’m not about to start now. The fact that an eighty-five-year-old man wants to enjoy a smoke every now and again? Frankly, I can’t see how that hurts. And those Twinkies for Mrs. Boardman? They may not have been on the approved diet plan, but they made her as happy as I’ve ever seen her all year.”

“I hadn’t heard about the Twinkies,” I said.

“Did Mr. Beamish tell you about his stash of girlie magazines?”

I shook my head, and Jay grinned.

“Maybe I better just shut up then before I incriminate myself any further.”

“Actually, the only thing I’m interested in is a note.”

“You want me to pass someone a piece of paper?” Jay sounded incredulous, and with good reason. He was probably wondering why I couldn’t manage that feat myself.

“No. I’m talking about a note you already delivered. Probably about three weeks ago. It went to Mary Livingston.”

He thought for a minute, then slowly shook his head. “Nope. Didn’t happen.”

“It was from her son, Michael,” I prompted.

“Sorry. Never met the man.”

“Maybe he had someone else give it to you?”

“But I would have delivered it to Mrs. Livingston?”

“Right.”

Jay was still shaking his head. “I’d have remembered something like that, especially in light of what happened and all. Nobody ever gave me anything and asked me to take it to her. And she never asked me to bring anything in to her. I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Well, that rearranged things, didn’t it? I’d assumed Jay knew about the note. I’d been hoping he might have been there when Mary had opened and read it. I knew it was a long shot, but I’d wondered if he might have had some idea of its contents.

Now I was back to square one and faced with a whole new set of questions. If Jay hadn’t delivered Michael’s note to Mary, then who had?

“Thanks for your time,” I said.

“No problem. I guess I wasn’t much help. Seems to me, if you want to know something about Mrs. Livingston, you ought to try talking to Mr. Grey and Mrs. Reeves. Those were the two people she was tightest with. Near as I could tell, those three were great friends.”

He’d directed me to Borden and Madeline, the two people Mary had been sitting with the first time we’d met. Borden had been among the group that had pointed me toward Jay, but he’d also freely admitted that he never remembered much of what happened from one minute to the next. Maybe Madeline would have a lead for me. At any rate, it couldn’t hurt to talk to both of them again.

“I’ll do that,” I said.

I scanned the room and located the older woman among a cluster of people gathered around Mark and Reggie. There was no point in interrupting her, so I looked for Borden. For a minute, I didn’t see him at all. Then the door to the sunroom opened and he came shuffling through. With Faith by my side, I moved quickly to intercept him before he could join a group of friends.

“Hi, Borden,” I said brightly. “I’m Melanie. Remember me?”

“I never forget a pretty lady,” Borden said with a practiced smile. He reached out and patted my arm in greeting, but his eyes remained frustratingly blank.

“We met a couple of weeks ago. Mary Livingston introduced us. Then we spoke again last week when you were playing bridge with Sandy and Harry.”

“I know who you are.” The light was slowly beginning to dawn, and Borden, accustomed to covering for his faulty memory, was loathe to admit that things had ever been dark. “You’re the lady from the obedience group who has the big Poodle.” He glanced down at Faith and was pleased to see his guess confirmed.

“Exactly.”

“So this must be Sunday,” Borden said happily. “I knew there was a reason why Nurse Sims sent me to the sunroom.”

“It was to enjoy a visit from the dogs.” I placed my hand on top of his and led him to a plump, overstuffed chair.

Borden sank down into the cushion and patted his knee. “Here, girl,” he said to Faith. “Come on up and say hello.”

The Poodle obliged him by hopping up and placing her front legs across his lap. Gently, he fingered the silky hair on her ears. “Like down from a pillow,” he said. “I never saw a dog this soft in all my life.”

I settled in a chair opposite him. “Her hair gets blown dry after she has a bath. That’s why it’s so plush and smooth.”

“Blown dry?” Borden looked startled. “Like with a hair dryer?”

I nodded. “A really big one, on a four-legged stand. It takes a really long time to do. Faith usually lies down on the grooming table and goes to sleep.”

“Sounds like a lot of work to me.”

“It is.”

“So why do you do it?”

I thought for a minute. “So she can be beautiful, I guess. Once you get used to seeing a Poodle look this way, it’s hard to let them go back to being scruffy.”

“I never had anything but scruffy dogs myself,” Borden said. He leaned down and inhaled Faith’s clean scent. “Mutts and retrievers and the like. I always heard Poodles were supposed to be the smartest dogs.”

“They are.”

That answer was easy. Anyone who’d ever lived with a Poodle would tell you the same. Lots of dogs are smart, however, so it wasn’t just the innate intelligence of the breed that made them a joy to live with. It was their desire to please and to communicate with people that set Poodles apart.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good thing.” Borden’s hand continued to stroke Faith’s neck, and she leaned into the caress. “I wouldn’t want to have a dog that was smarter than I was. She know any tricks?”

“Just the basics: sit, stay, come, shake.”

“Seems to me—though maybe I’m mistaken, that happens to me a lot these days—that somebody brought a dog to visit us once that could do all sorts of things. Jump through hoops and the like.”

“That was Minnie.” I gestured toward a nearby couch where she and her Standard Schnauzer were holding court. “She and Coach gave a demonstration a couple of weeks ago.”

Borden nodded, but I got the impression that he was being polite rather than actually recalling the incident.

“As it happens, I wanted to ask you a question about something that happened around the same time,” I said.

“Same time as what?”

I’d expected this to be slow going, and it looked like I’d been right. I took a deep breath, moderated my impatience, and backed up a couple of steps.

“You remember your friend, Mary Livingston?”

Borden sat up straight, shifting Faith abruptly to one side. “Of course I remember Mary! Nicest lady you’d ever want to meet. Known her for years. How could anyone forget someone like that?”

“Do you remember when we spoke about a note she’d received from her son, Michael, shortly before she died?”

“Mary’s passed on?” Borden thought about that for a minute, processing the information. Then finally he nodded. “That’s right, I remember. Maddy and I went to her memorial service.”

“Yes, you did. And then last week when you were playing bridge with Sandy, the two of you told me about a note Mary had received from her son who wanted to come and visit her. Whatever the note said made her very upset.”

“Never play cards with Sandy Sandstrum,” Borden stated firmly. He stared off into the distance. “The man cheats, and that’s a fact. He thinks he can slip all sorts of things by me, but I’m as sharp as I ever was.”

For Borden’s sake, I really hoped that wasn’t true.

“Do you remember the note I’m talking about?” I persisted. “Sandy and Harry thought that Jay had delivered it to her, but he didn’t.”

“No, he didn’t.” Borden shook his head.

Now we were getting somewhere.

“Do you know who did?”

He stared at me. “Now how would I know something like that?”

“I just thought that maybe since you knew it hadn’t come from Jay…”

“Of course I knew it didn’t come from Jay.” Borden’s voice rose. “You just told me that, didn’t you?”

Damn. I’d misunderstood. He’d been agreeing with me, not offering new information.

“I’m sorry,” I said gently. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Let’s just forget about the whole thing.”

“Too late for that,” Borden announced. “I suppose if you’re going to keep asking about these things, they must be important. And if they’re important, that means I probably have something written about them in my files.”

“Your files?”

“Right here.” He reached up and tapped his chest. “That’s where I keep all the things I need to remember these days. Right next to my heart. That way I always know where they are.”

He reached inside his sports coat and withdrew a small notebook. “Maddy, now, she makes fun of me for taking notes. But I say, hell, why not? It’s no different than keeping a diary.” He peered over at me. “You ever keep a diary, journal, something like that?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You ought to give it a try. It’s a good habit to have. And when you get to be older like me, it helps you to keep things straight in your mind. Now let me see, when is this we were talking about?”

“It would have been about three weeks ago. That was when Mary first found out that her son was in town.”

Borden flipped back through the pages, stopping every so often to check the dates on the top. Faith, realizing she was no longer the center of his attention, hopped down from his lap and came over to sit beside me. I pushed my fingers into her thick hair and rubbed her shoulders.

“You’re very organized,” I said to Borden.

“I ought to be. I used to be an accountant. I’ll bet you didn’t know that, did you?”

“No. I have an ex-husband who’s an accountant.”

Time was passing and we were making small talk. Once again, I had to try to curb my impatience. Borden continued to thumb through the pages of his small notebook, stopping every so often to read an entry that caught his eye. I wondered if he even still remembered what he was looking for.

Finally, he looked up. “Here we are.”

I leaned forward. It was all I could do to keep from snatching the pages out of his hand. “What does it say?”

“Looks like I wrote down that Mary’s son, Michael, was back in town.”

“Yes.”

“He’d been gone for a long, long time.”

“Twenty years,” I said.

“That’s a long time,” Borden repeated. “Mary was excited that she was going to get to see him.”

So far, he hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know. Maybe I’d been crazy to think that he would.

“Does it say how Mary knew that Michael was back in Greenwich?”

“Let me see.” Borden licked his finger and slowly turned the page.

Inching closer across the distance that separated us, I could see the rows of aimless scribbling. Even right side up, I knew I’d have a hard time deciphering Borden’s script.

“He got a message to her, even though her family didn’t want him to. He had an old friend deliver it.”

“What old friend?” I asked. “What did the message say?”

He chewed on his lip and consulted his notes. “The message said that Michael needed to see her right away; that it was important. I remember that now. Mary was upset because she’d had no idea that her son was in Connecticut, much less right here in Greenwich. Of course she wanted to see him, and the sooner the better. She was mad as blazes when she got that note and found out that her relatives had tried to keep them apart.”

I sat back in my seat, feeling deflated. So the note itself hadn’t contained anything inflammatory. What had upset Mary Livingston, and justifiably so, was her family’s meddling.

Almost as an afterthought, I said, “Did you happen to write down who the friend was who brought the message to Mary?”

“Sure did. It says so right here.” Borden lifted his eyes and gazed around the room. “It was that lady sitting right over there.”

I looked in the direction he indicated. The middle of the room was filled with people, patients, and dog handlers alike. Borden and I had been talking for so long that the groups were beginning to break up. It was time for our visit to end; staff members were starting to escort the residents back to their rooms.

I saw a nurse heading toward us and quickly turned back to Borden. “Which lady are you talking about? Who brought Mary the message?”

“That one.” He lifted a finger and pointed. “The nice one with the silky little dog with the big ears.”

Silky little dog…big ears…Bubbles the Papillon. It had to be.

“You mean Stacey Rhoades?”

“If you say so,” Borden said vaguely. He closed his book, replaced it in his pocket, and smiled at the approaching nurse. “You here for me?”

“That’s right, Mr. Grey. It’s time to take a walk.”

“Glad to hear it.” He slipped her a wink. “I’m always happy to take a walk with a pretty lady.”