Dog Dish of Doom, page 7
To show what a nice woman I am, I went into the kitchen and got each of the dogs a very healthy rawhide-free chew chip. I gave one to Eydie, who was haughtily refusing to fraternize with those other two animals by staying in the kitchen. Then I walked back into the living room to distribute chews to Steve and Bruno, and found my parents in enthusiastic conversation with the NYPD detective.
“So you see, we believe that we should do some investigating on our own,” Dad was saying as I entered.
“No,” I said without hesitation. “We don’t believe that. We have never believed that. We believe the police are professionals and should be allowed to do their job without any interference. We’re going to be excellent witnesses—or actually, I’m going to be an excellent witness and you’re going to be my parents—and we will cooperate in any way the detective thinks we should, but we are decidedly not going to investigate on our own.” Dad’s mouth pursed, but I didn’t give him a chance to protest as I sat down and faced Rodriguez. “Now, Detective, how can I help you?”
“I’d like you to do some investigating on your own,” Rodriguez said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I believe to this day that Detective Rodriguez said that because she had a dry, subtle sense of humor and saw an opening for a really good joke. That’s what I think, and I’m sticking to it.
At the time, however, my mouth dried out and I remember wheezing a bit. Mom leapt up to head into the kitchen, where I knew she would find a bottle of water for me and bring it back before I could make such a sound again. Dad, on the other hand, was clearly vindicated in his investigative fantasy, and was grinning.
“What?” I managed to croak. Sure enough, Mom was at my side with a bottle of spring water, which had been properly chilled in the refrigerator. Room-temperature water is a crime against the human digestive system.
“Let me be more clear,” Rodriguez suggested. “I want you to ask a few questions that you would normally ask in your usual work with the people in the theater, and then I want you to immediately tell me what they said and take absolutely no more action than that.”
But the winds of this conversation were swirling around me and I wasn’t yet able to comprehend those sounds coming out of the detective’s mouth. So I fell back on an old favorite and said “What?” again, this time with a bit more clarity in my voice.
“I’ve spent the day talking to people who work in the theater,” Rodriguez said. “I’m also talking to friends and relatives. This is a weird murder that doesn’t seem to have a motive yet, and I’m having to straddle the two sides of it. Frankly, I’m not doing that well on the theater side. Mrs. Barclay showed up there when I was asking around, and everyone seemed more open to talking to her than to me.”
This was not explaining why Rodriguez was looking at me but seeing Nancy Drew, but I hadn’t yet regained the ability to form complete sentences, so she went on as if I understood how all that was relevant.
“It’s clear to me that people at the theater, especially the director, Mr. McMaster, and his assistant, Ms. Levy, know more than they’re telling me. There seems to be an odd sort of code that goes on there. You’re either an insider or you’re not, and outsiders don’t get told the juicy stuff. I don’t think anybody’s lying, but they’re holding some things back.”
Dad was chewing on his lower lip. “But this Barclay guy, the one who used to be Berkowitz, he was only at the theater once, and that was yesterday,” he said. “Do you really think his murder is tied to the audition for his dog?”
“I don’t know what I think yet,” Rodriguez replied. “What I can see is that there’s information I’m not getting, and since that’s my end of the case, I’d like to find out what it is.” She turned toward me. “So I want you to talk to some of the personnel at the theater and report back.”
Now, you’d think that would be a no-brainer. And if you were anyone but me (which you undoubtedly are), you’d probably be right. But I’m me, and no matter how inconvenient it is at any given moment, I have to act like myself.
Before I could, Dad was acting like himself. “We’ll be happy to,” he said. “The Powell family is always glad to help out our men and women in uniform.” Forget that Rodriguez wasn’t in the military; she was a cop, and a plainclothes one at that.
“Just a second,” I interjected. “Don’t go volunteering me for anything yet, Dad. I have to work with these people. My agency is just starting to get a reputation. If they find out I’m dropping dimes on people in the theater to the police, my name is no good anywhere in the live theatre community in New York. I’m not sure I can risk that.”
Rodriguez nodded. “I understand that. I can assure you that I’d do everything I could to keep your secret from getting out, but you know as well as I do that there are no guarantees with this kind of thing.”
Dad stood still, his eyes wide at my impudence. But Mom, suddenly standing behind him, put a hand on his shoulder and he turned to look at her. “El,” he said.
“Kay Powell,” my mother said, looking at my father and not at me. “The New York City Police Department is asking for your help in solving a murder. You are not going to put your own concerns ahead of that.”
My mother sees things very simply; she has never actually experienced a gray area in her life. “Mom,” I said gently, “I don’t think you’re getting exactly what I’m risking here.”
“You’re risking your business by risking your reputation,” my mother said, her voice as cool as a lemonade with extra ice. “You are going to be duplicitous with people whose trust is essential to your continued success in your chosen field. You’re going to have to lie to people you like and you’re going to tell their worst secrets, which might get them sent to prison for life, to a police detective. If you’re found out, they could easily blackball you out of the community and you might very well have to sell your house and move to California to agent for the occasional cow in a movie that takes place in the Midwest. That means your father and I would have to move out too and we really don’t have anywhere else to go for an extended period of time. So you’d have that on your head as well. Does it sound like I understand what you’re risking here?” She put her hands on her hips and looked at me.
I wet my lips because it was a thing to do. “Yeah. Sounds like you have a decent grasp of the situation.”
“Then just look at the detective and tell her that’s what you’re going to do,” Mom said.
I turned toward Rodriguez. “That’s what I’m going to do,” I said.
Never underestimate a mother.
Rodriguez, whom I think didn’t really believe what she’d just seen, said she couldn’t leave Louise outside for too long and feel comfortable with the security of the conversation. She handed me another of her business cards.
“I’m not going to call you,” she said. “Don’t enter my number into your cell phone, so my name won’t come up if we have any contact. You call me when you have something to tell me, so if you don’t have something to tell me, don’t call. This will work or it won’t, but I’m going to do my best to keep you out of trouble, okay?”
She was gone before I could even think straight.
As soon as the door closed behind her, Steve and Bruno walked over to me as if to ask exactly what was going on. I wondered if Louise was going to come in for her dog, but then I heard Rodriguez’s car drive away and I got the impression Louise had forgotten she had a dog. Until the Annie salary checks started coming in.
I looked over at my parents as I stroked the two dogs’ heads. “Well. Another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.”
They protested and eventually I gave in and told them I didn’t blame them for my predicament. It was a lie, but sometimes that’s the best way to move on. I ordered a pizza for the three of us and gave the dogs their food ahead of the major walk they would expect later in the day. I’d have to see if I had another dog bed for Bruno.
“We’ll be with you the whole way,” Dad said after the delivery guy brought our dinner. My father seemed practically giddy with the idea of informing on colleagues for the police.
“We?” I said. “You and Mom just have to audition some senior citizens for a revival of The Ed Sullivan Show and wait for me to come home from my new job as a snitch.” I threw the dogs a piece of crust and Eydie, with the longest neck, caught it. She put it down and sniffed at it, decided it was not juicy beef, and turned up her nose. Bruno, whose tastes I was finding were less specific—he was a gourmand and not a gourmet—picked it up happily and laid it down on the pillow between himself and Steve. Bruno was good at sharing.
“Don’t be silly,” Dad answered. “We wouldn’t let you do something this dangerous by yourself. I’m canceling the auditions and coming with you.”
Now I knew how things could get worse, but this time I wasn’t going to back down. “You are absolutely not doing that,” I told my father. “I’m questioning theater people. The worst thing that can happen is someone tells the company I’m wearing last year’s shoes.”
“It will look a bit suspicious if Kay has her parents following her around when she’s rehearsing with Bruno,” Mom pointed out gently.
Dad considered that, chewing lightly on the inside of his cheek. “We could wear makeup and costumes,” he suggested, but everybody—even Steve and Bruno—knew his heart wasn’t in it.
“I’m taking the dogs for a walk,” I said. “I’ll start my undercover work in the morning. Remind me to call Consuelo and get her to clear off part of my calendar.”
It was starting to get dark, so I took my phone with the flashlight app and I changed into sweatpants with a reflective stripe down the side before leashing up my three charges. They seemed happy to be outdoors, but of course Eydie was too sophisticated to let on such an emotion. She sniffed at the grass as if she’d never sniffed it before, looked up, considered, and sniffed again.
Walking three dogs at the same time takes a certain amount of skill, and I didn’t have it. The leashes kept getting tangled up as Bruno and Steve inevitably wanted to go one way, while Eydie would choose the other. They all knew not to pull on the leash, which was helpful, but Steve especially, with that dachshund nose, was intrigued by every new aroma very close to the ground, and wanted to investigate each one.
At one point Steve got a whiff of something especially exciting, and wanted to go to the left to track it down. Bruno, whose olfactory sense was average for a dog, didn’t pick up on that so he was moving forward and not noticing the path his new pal wanted to take. Eydie, I believe, was simply moving right because she felt someone should show these two ridiculous males who was in charge here.
All of that would have been fine except that Steve was on my right and Eydie on my left. So when they decided to move in the opposite direction at the exact same moment, they crossed the leashes right in front of my legs and I went down sideways on the pavement, scraping my right elbow.
I shouted something I’m not proud of and tried to get myself back into shape. The first priority was to grab the two leashes I’d dropped—Eydie’s was still firm in my hand, although she was pulling now in what was for her a panic. I reached out with my left hand and caught Steve’s, which was fairly easy because he had stopped in his tracks to look at me.
But Bruno, spooked by the sudden movement and my unfortunate language, was running away at a very high speed. Toward the street.
Bruno’s life flashed before my eyes, but mostly what I saw was a future where I spent my remaining time on Earth guilt-ridden and possibly in jail for causing harm to an animal I did not own. Rodriguez would have to find another snitch, because she’d be too busy arresting me and locking me up to use me effectively.
“Bruno!” I yelled, but he either didn’t hear me or was too shaken. He kept running. I scrambled to my feet and took off at full speed after him, holding the other dogs’ leashes. They, thinking this was a great game, matched my speed easily.
To be fair, a turtle with a torn ACL could have matched my speed easily. I’d just gotten up off the concrete.
I shouted his name again but there was no point; Bruno wasn’t going to stop and turn around. He was only a few yards from the curb now, and there were some cars in the road. I wanted to turn away but I felt an obligation to watch in case a miracle happened.
And then one did.
Just before he was going to bolt into the path of an oncoming Hyundai Sonata, Bruno’s leash pulled him back and stopped his progress. He looked quite surprised, then a little embarrassed, and walked gently back in my direction as I continued to run (or my version of it) toward him.
His leash was under a man’s foot, and the man was Sam Gibson. He casually reached down and grabbed the loop of the leash before taking his weight off the lead, then led Bruno back toward me with a satisfied smile on his face.
“You shouldn’t practice gymnastics when you’re walking three dogs, Kay,” he said as I stopped and gaped gratefully at him. “I’d think a person in your line of work would know that.”
“Sam,” I said, a little out of breath. All right: a lot out of breath. I made a mental note to get more exercise than simply walking dogs around suburban New Jersey. “Thank you. You saved Bruno’s life.”
“No charge,” Sam answered. “I was just flying back from Krypton and saw there was a problem.”
“I’m not kidding,” I said. “I was afraid something awful was going to happen.”
“I know.” Sam didn’t offer me Bruno’s leash; he just started walking along with us as I tended to Steve and Eydie. “How’s that arm feel? Looks a little scraped up.”
There was a little blood on my arm, but the adrenaline from the hideous moment I thought something was going to happen to Bruno hadn’t worn off yet, so I didn’t really feel any pain. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll clean it up when I get home.”
“You sure? We’re right by the store, and I have a first-aid kit.” He pointed to Cool Beans, which was just up the street. I looked at the arm and decided cleaning it off wouldn’t be an awful thing. We headed for the coffee shop.
Once inside, Sam closed the door so I could let the three dogs off their leashes and went rummaging behind his counter, pulling out a plastic box marked First Aid that looked like it had been used far too often.
Sam must have seen the look I gave it, because he shrugged and said, “I get a lot of college kids working here in a hurry with hot coffee and knives. Don’t worry. We keep it all clean.” He took out a tube of something and a bandage that looked like it could cover a cut the size of the Grand Canyon.
“Great,” I answered. “Now I have to think about all those scalded, lacerated college students. I’ll never be able to buy coffee here without weeping.”
He ignored my remark, which was probably wise. “Let’s get you cleaned up first. This might sting a little.”
“That’s what they always say in the movies before the tough guy hero starts breaking down and calling for his mommy.”
“This won’t be that bad. Probably.” The dogs were making themselves at home. Bruno was walking the perimeter, no doubt on the lookout for any intruders who might come by and try to breach our fortifications, while Steve crawled up next to the heating duct and lay down. Eydie, nose held high, was trying to figure out what those strange aromas were, and whether there was anything she could demand until we gave it to her. She walked toward the back of the room, where the refrigerated counter bins were, but they were closed and, you know, refrigerated, so there wasn’t much to smell. Quite the mystery for Eydie.
Sam dabbed at my arm with a cotton ball soaked in something, and it did sting a little, but it wasn’t really all that bad. He had a light touch and I’m a tough Jersey girl who actually grew up onstage in the Catskills and the Poconos. I didn’t cry or anything.
Then he came at me with that bandage and I held up my left hand. “Hold it,” I told Sam. “I just scraped my arm a little. That makes it look like I almost cut it off.”
“It’s not a deep scrape, but it covers a good amount of your arm,” Sam argued. “What do you want me to do, put on seventeen Band-Aids you’ll have to rip off individually later?”
“You’ve got to have something smaller. You could sell advertising space on that thing.”
Once again he completely disregarded what I’d said and started taping the bandage to my forearm. “Hey, if you don’t like the medical attention you get here, you can take your business to another coffee shop.”
“My parents are going to think I got hit by a bus.”
He reached into the kit and took out an Ace bandage. “I’ll wrap this around. You can tell them you strained yourself mildly while trying to refine your golf swing.”
“With three dogs?”
“Yeah, since when do you have three dogs? Where’d your new friend come from?” He tucked in the end of the stretchable bandage and patted my arm, declaring it done.
I told him about Trent, or Moshe, or whomever, and what had happened today, which seemed like it should have taken at least the better part of a week. Sam listened well, not interrupting unless he didn’t understand and, unlike most guys, not trying to inject himself into the conversation. He’d probably never had an experience where a customer of the coffee shop had been stabbed and then fell into a dog’s water bowl.
“You’re in an interesting business,” he said when I’d finished relating the tale.
“That’s it? What do you think I should do?”
Sam started putting the first-aid kit back together, but I saw his wry grin. “Why are you asking me? You’ve already decided what you’re going to do.”
“Oh, have I? I must have neglected to write down the plan. Tell me, Oh smug one, what is it I’ve decided?”
He slipped the first-aid kit back under the counter. “You’re going to do what the cop asked you to do and talk to the people at the theater and you’re going to tell her everything they say. You’ve decided you don’t like this Louise person and that she’s probably not worthy of the fine dog she has, so you’re not going to bring Bruno back and you’ll probably end up adopting him. That’s especially true if it turns out Louise killed her husband, because then Bruno will definitely need a new home. How am I doing so far?”
