Dog Dish of Doom, page 6
Truly, it was a completely logical and rational choice.
I called Consuelo, who routed the call with the bear cub’s handler to the Bluetooth in my car. I spoke to the parakeet’s owner and handled that issue in the car as well (it had to do with the size of the birdcage backstage at the nightclub where the bird was to be employed) and asked Consuelo to handle the calico’s callback because cats are her absolute favorite and she wants to be an agent herself someday.
I tried calling Louise again and got the same response. She hadn’t seemed especially concerned about Bruno’s whereabouts, and I’d bring him back as soon as she got in touch. I left a message on her voicemail and kept driving, listening to an audiobook all the way to Scarborough. Bruno did not comment on the story, but lay on the backseat looking like this was just the most interesting adventure since Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Once we got home (my home, not Bruno’s), we had barely made it to the back door when Eydie had stuck her snout out to see what was going on. She didn’t care for dividing my attention, and had only put up with Steve because I’d adopted them together so she knew him. Most of the time she snubbed him when she could, but now with Bruno approaching and the smell of another male dog in the air, she was howling at Steve to come see the atrocity being committed by their subservient human (that’s me).
Mom appeared directly behind Eydie just as Bruno and I were pushing our way through my own back door. “Well now, who’s this fellow?” she asked, bending down to say hello to Bruno. Eydie snarled a bit, but Steve, on his pillow at one end of the kitchen, barely moved. Steve is cautious to the point of abject terror in the face of anything new.
“That’s Bruno,” I said. “He’s just spending the afternoon until his person decides to call me back. Dad back yet?”
She pointed toward the living room. “Auditioning a stand-up comic.”
“How bad?”
Mom made a point of eye contact. “Pretty bad,” she said.
“I’ll leave him to it. Did anybody call the house?” I got a bowl from the cabinet and put some water in it, then put it on the floor by the sink and showed it to Bruno. Eydie gave some thought to drinking out of it to show him who was boss, but I simply said, “No,” and she walked over to her dish and drank heartily. That was who was boss.
“Nobody called,” Mom said. “Don’t they usually call your cell?”
I went to the refrigerator to get something for, believe it or not, me (after giving Bruno a liver treat, and then one each to Steve and Eydie, so they knew he wasn’t getting special treatment). “Yeah, but I thought maybe Louise had called here looking for Bruno because she hadn’t called my cell.”
“Louise is the one with the husband?” Mom asked. She had processed the information about Trent, probably done some online research into it, and no doubt knew more than I did by now. She was drawing me into a conversation with an agenda, but I didn’t know what it was yet.
“Yes, Louise was married to Trent Barclay and you know it,” I said to my mother. I found an apple that probably hadn’t been in the fridge for too long, and took out some cheddar cheese I had in a block. Mom finished petting Bruno, watched the dogs scout one another out, and then sat down at the kitchen table while I got a knife and a cutting board to put there. “So tell me what you’ve found out.”
“Found out?” My mother is a fine entertainer but a lousy actress.
“I’m too tired to go through the first six minutes of the conversation, Mom. Can’t we get to the part where you admit you’ve been looking up Trent Barclay all day and then you tell me what you’ve discovered?” In my family, direct talk is considered the norm. Well, it is when I do it. My parents are more civilized, but that takes up a lot of time.
Mom did look slightly disappointed. She likes to show off how computer literate she is and to have people “discover” her intelligence, but I had known her pretty much since birth so she didn’t have to show off for me. “Okay,” she said. “Did you know that this Trent guy’s real name was Moshe Berkowitz?”
That was news. I sat down and put some cheese on a slice of apple. “Nope, didn’t know that. I’m used to people changing their names for business, but that’s a pretty big change.”
“The funeral home where his service is scheduled is called Anshe Emeth, and in lieu of flowers, people are asked to donate to something called Chai Lifeline,” Mom reported without referring to notes. “The funeral’s going to be tomorrow morning.”
“Does this have some significance in his death?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think so. Are you investigating his death?” Mom responded.
That was an interesting question. I’d been acting like I was either Cagney or Lacey when in fact I was the dog’s agent. “No,” I said. “I’m just curious.”
Mom nodded. “That’s natural. I did all this research today because Dad was with you in the city or auditioning acts for the show, but I have to admit I do want to know what happened to Moshe.”
I wasn’t used to calling him that yet. “Was he really in the software business, or was that something else he made up?”
“From what I could tell, that was real,” Mom told me. “He didn’t actually write code or invent anything, but he knew talent when he saw it and invested in people who made programs run better. He didn’t get super rich, but he could afford to live in Manhattan.”
“And then suddenly he decides his dog is Sir Anthony Hopkins.”
“That part wasn’t in the obituaries, or anywhere else,” Mom told me. “There was no mention of him trying to get Bruno into show business.”
“No reason there should be.” Bruno was sniffing Eydie in one of her more sensitive areas, and she was not pleased, but she knew better than to snap at him; this was not the first time I’d brought a client home for a quick visit. “It’s not like he was Lassie’s trainer.”
“The other thing is that Louise, his wife, was once an actress. Small roles on TV, one national commercial for a soup mix. That could be where they got the idea to audition Bruno out.” Mom looked up, apparently noticing a quiet in the living room, because she said, “I think your father is finished in there.” She stood up and walked to the door, looked out, and nodded. “Be right back,” she said.
Suddenly I had a lot to think about. Trent Barclay (whose name was in my mind going to stay Trent Barclay) had made his money by exploiting other people’s work. To be fair, that was what I did, but for animals.
Trent had also married a woman who had been an actress, and the two of them—but from the surface of it, mostly Trent—had decided to try to get their dog on the stage. Lucky for them, the dog was really talented.
But what Mom had asked me had hit home—why was I so interested in Trent’s murder? Sure, Detective Rodriguez had vaguely treated me like a suspect, but cops tend to treat everybody like a suspect, so that was probably unimportant. I didn’t need to clear my name with the cops; they’d find someone who had a real motive and could have been in Trent and Louise’s apartment at three in the morning.
Of course, if what Les had said was true, Louise would have had a fairly classic motive to kill her husband, and she was certainly in their apartment at the time the stabbing had taken place. Why not think she was the killer?
And then I noticed I was sorting the facts in my head like an analytic detective when I should have been poring over Bruno’s contract for any strange provisions Les would have included restricting him from lifting his leg on a fire hydrant during the production because it would have created bad press for Annie.
Why was I acting like an investigator when being Bruno’s agent should have been more than enough?
Maybe it didn’t matter. All I had to do was stop. The police were investigating Trent’s murder and they had, you know, experience and training on their side. I had the ability to negotiate favorable terms for a cat who was eating scraps out of a dumpster three weeks before being tapped to play Angelina Jolie’s pet in a biopic about Marie Curie. If I just stuck to my job and let the cops do theirs, I could have a normal life and they could catch the killer, whom I had now decided was probably Louise.
That left me with one serious problem, which was determining who would take custody of Bruno when his remaining extant owner was carted off to jail for perforating the not-so-extant one.
Better not to think about that now. I looked over at Bruno, who now seemed especially interested in Steve. The dachshund was peering at the interloper with an expression of barely concealed terror. Steve is afraid of everybody until he discovers there is no danger to him, after which he becomes the most submissive dog in recorded history. Steve is endearingly neurotic.
I reached down for my briefcase and moved the cheese to one side in order to rest it on the table. Inside was Bruno’s contract, which Akra had been kind enough to provide. I’d told Les that I’d look it over for issues and consult with Louise before getting back to him with (hopefully) a signed copy for processing.
There wasn’t anything especially unusual in the contract, aside from the language regarding Trent, which was now moot. Louise had been included as well—Les wanted both of them absolutely prohibited from attending any rehearsal at which Bruno would be working—and now I would try to excise the whole paragraph, seeing as how Trent was unquestionably not showing up to rehearsals and Les had probably just included Louise because she hadn’t spoken enough at the first audition for him to determine whether he needed her to be absent when he was working with the dog. Better to be safe than sorry.
Everything else was pretty standard. I made a few notes in the margins for small points that needed to be tweaked (Bruno could not be walked during performances by anyone in the theater company; only Louise or a representative of her choosing would be allowed to deal with the dog alone). And I was about three-quarters of the way through when Mom and Dad came in from the living room.
“I think we should investigate the murder,” Dad said without so much as a segue.
I was hip-deep in legalese about Bruno’s health insurance and looked up, probably with an expression of total and complete confusion. “Huh?” I said eloquently.
“Moshe Berkowitz’s murder,” Mom said, as if my problem lay in remembering which of my clients’ owners had turned up with a nose full of water and a back full of knife. “Dad and I have been discussing it. We need to make sure your name is clean in the business, and the only way to do that is to find the real killer.” Theatricality is a trait that runs deep in my family.
“No,” I said, and went back to checking subordinate clauses in Bruno’s contract. Bruno, for his part, had made friends with Steve and was now lying next to the dachshund in Steve’s fluffy bed, sniffing his neck. Steve’s tail wagged.
“No?” Dad asked. “What do you mean, no?”
“How is that unclear?”
He looked at me strangely, as clearly I didn’t understand him. “I’m saying your mother and I are going to help you find out who killed this Berkowitz guy so that you can go back to being an agent for dogs and cats.”
I nodded. “Right. And I’m saying no, you’re not. I’m not investigating Trent’s murder because I’m not an investigator, and neither are you. I don’t have to ‘go back’ to being an agent because I’m already an agent and nobody’s trying to make me stop that. I’m not a suspect in the killing, nobody is threatening me, and I have no reason to believe that the police are doing anything except putting handcuffs on the killer right now. So don’t tell me what you and Mom are going to do, because none of us is going to be looking into a murder that’s none of our business.”
Mom and Dad stared at me a moment. I don’t think I’d ever been quite so defiant, even when I—and this is how my father still refers to it—“broke up the act.”
“Someone has to do it,” Dad said. He looked embarrassed that he couldn’t come up with anything better.
“Someone is. They’re called the police.”
Bruno and Steve were lying on the fluffy bed, best of friends, when the doorbell rang. Eydie barked, which she usually does not do, but the two males just stood up, shook themselves, and headed toward the door to see who their new closest friend on the planet would be. I followed, since it seemed opposable thumbs would be necessary to turn the knob and open the door.
Once I did, I wasn’t so thrilled to have the thumbs. Louise Barclay (Berkowitz?) was standing outside my door, looking angry. My first thought was to wonder how she’d gotten my home address; I never give that to a client’s owner.
My second thought was to wonder exactly why Detective Rodriguez was standing behind Louise, also not seeming terribly amused.
Bruno and Steve, having walked all this way for the spectacle of the door opening, were remarkably unexcited. Bruno especially did not appear to be particularly thrilled to see the woman with whom he’d been living for quite a while. I’m told marriage can be like that too.
There wasn’t time to consider much else. Louise pointed at me accusingly and said, “That’s the woman who stole my dog.”
“Stole your … what?” That was the best I could manage.
My parents showed up behind me at that moment. Because I had once again assumed that things couldn’t get worse, and that’s always a mistake.
“What’s going on?” Dad demanded. He saw Louise and said, “I’m this woman’s attorney, and…”
“No, you’re not.” I cut him off before he could do any further damage. “These are my parents. Now, what’s this about a stolen dog?”
Bruno started licking my feet. He wasn’t helping.
Rodriguez raised one eyebrow and looked down at Bruno. “Is that this woman’s dog?” she asked.
“Yes, but I called her and told her that since I couldn’t get her on the phone, I’d be taking Bruno back to my house and waiting for her call. She didn’t call.” I was in the right here, but even I thought I sounded like a fifth-grader trying to explain why she hadn’t finished her social studies homework.
“What has this got to do with the murder investigation?” my mother asked. It was a good question, as I assumed Rodriguez did not handle all the crime that took place in New York City, even if this one was committed in Scarborough, New Jersey. Wait. There was no crime. Here. In Scarborough.
You know what I mean.
“I was questioning Mrs. Barclay when she complained that your … daughter? Your daughter had stolen her dog,” Rodriguez said with the same inflection she’d use if she were explaining how to change a flat tire, only with less raw emotion. “Since I wanted to interview her again, I decided to come out here with Mrs. Barclay and see what was going on with the dog. Now, everyone agrees that’s Mrs. Barclay’s dog. What about the other two?”
Two? Eydie had ambled in through the kitchen door just because it would be more confusing to explain three dogs than two.
“Those are both my dogs,” I said.
“Do you have any records that can prove that?” Rodriguez asked. “If you’ve stolen them too…”
“I didn’t steal any dogs!” Can a person sound more pathetic? I’ll bet not. “I am Bruno’s agent, and Mrs. Berkowitz here asked me specifically to take him to a callback audition with Les McMaster this afternoon. I did. Then I tried calling her after the audition to tell her Bruno had been offered the role in question, and I got no answer. I couldn’t leave Bruno alone, so I brought him here until such time as I heard back from her. Is that hard to understand?”
“Mrs. Berkowitz?” Rodriguez asked. She turned toward Louise.
“It’s been legally changed to Barclay,” she said.
“Did you ask her to take your dog to this audition?” Rodriguez asked Louise.
“No.”
Mom and Dad gasped. I was aware of my eyes narrowing because I couldn’t see the top of Rodriguez’s head anymore.
“Think carefully, Louise,” I said. “I have Les asking you to have Bruno at the theater at two, which can be verified through his office. I have my father here as a witness that I picked up Bruno at the time you asked and that you were happy to have me take him. And I have the contract that you and Moshe signed that named me as Bruno’s agent. So do you want to change your answer to that question?”
Rodriguez was watching Louise’s face closely.
“All right,” Louise said. “I did ask her to take Bruno to the audition. But I didn’t ask her to take him to New Jersey.” New Yorkers are so superior.
Rodriguez put her hands on her hips, perhaps trying to decide whether or not to draw her gun just to make herself feel better. She didn’t, but you could see the conflict in her eyes.
“I’m really investigating the murder of Trent Barclay,” she said finally. “I have a few follow-up questions for you.” She indicated me. “May I come in?”
I didn’t say anything, but Mom, Dad, and I created a path and gestured Rodriguez inside. She started in, then looked back at Louise.
“There’s your dog,” she said. “Take him if you want him that bad. Walk him around the neighborhood. I’ll be out in fifteen minutes.”
Louise looked as if she’d been slapped. Here she had tried a perfectly good plan to get me arrested for dognapping—for reasons I couldn’t begin to imagine—and now she was being told that I was a valuable witness and she was the dog walker. It was a swift and terrible comedown for her, and she had to take a moment to digest it.
“I … I can’t come in?” she pleaded, as if staying outside in my front yard was a certain death sentence.
“No,” Rodriguez answered sternly. “I don’t want you hearing the questions or the answers, and I don’t want you influencing them. You’re staying outside until I come out. You can have your dog for company.” She gestured toward Bruno again.
“I don’t want the dog!” Louise wailed. “I never wanted the dog!”
Rodriguez didn’t shrug, but her shoulders gave it some thought first. “Suit yourself.” She closed the door behind her. Bruno and Steve walked over to the corner of the room, tails wagging adorably, and lay down again. Bruno went down on his front paws, tail up, signaling to Steve that he wanted to play. They ran around the room once, then lay down again.
