A Moment in Time (33 page)

Finally, she set her coffee cup down on the
table and took a deep breath. She looked directly into her mother's
eyes. "There will be no wedding, Mother," she said quietly but
forcefully.

"Don't be absurd," Marguerite replied,
laughing lightly. It was as if she'd heard the words but gave them
no credence. She looked at Teddy and Jamie and shrugged
eloquently.

"I'm not being absurd, Mother," Valerie
said.

"What on earth can you mean?" Marguerite
asked, the laughter gone from her voice now.

"Just what I said," Valerie replied. "There
will be no wedding. Because I'm not getting married."

"Val, dear, don't—" her mother began.

"I'm sorry to have to say this in front of
other people, Teddy," Valerie said, turning to look at him, "but
I'm not going to marry you."

For a moment, there was a stunned silence
around the table as the words actually sank in. Valerie noticed
Effie in the doorway to the kitchen, a smile on her lips. Then
Jamie broke the silence with a bark of a laugh.

"Oh, Val," he said, "you were always so ...
so different. I just love it. You're such a jokester."

"I'm
not
joking, Jamie," she said,
turning her gaze on him.

"Val, I think we should discuss this in
private," Teddy said, reaching for her hand.

She brushed his hand away. "There's nothing
to discuss," she said softly.

She reached for her carryall on the floor
beside her and rummaged around inside it for a minute, finally
extracting the black box stamped Bvlgari. She put it down on the
table and slid it across the tablecloth toward Teddy.

"I hadn't planned on doing it this way,
Teddy," she said, "but I don't have much choice, do I? You've
planned all of this without consulting me, and I'm left with little
choice but to return your ring and call it off before you plan
anything else behind my back."

"But we—" Teddy began, his voice angry and
bewildered at once.

"You ungrateful child!" Marguerite exclaimed,
interrupting Teddy, her voice quavering with rage. "How dare you go
against my wishes! And what a terrible lack of manners! I can't
believe you're my daughter! My own flesh and blood! To do such a
thing to such a wonderful young man without taking him aside for
privacy."

"Don't preach to me about manners," Valerie
said in a barely controlled anger. "You and Teddy didn't have the
decency to take
me
aside to discuss my wedding with me, did
you, Mother? No! You invited me over here, thinking that your
plans—and Teddy's—were a fait accompli. That I would do anything
you asked me to."

Marguerite stared at Valerie as if she
thought her daughter had gone mad.

"Well, surprise, surprise," Valerie said,
scooting her chair back and rising to her feet. "I'm not doing what
you want this time!" She reached down for her bag and slung it
across her shoulder. Turning to Teddy, she said, "I really didn't
want it to end in such a shabby way, Teddy, and for that I'm truly
sorry. But your plotting behind my back was a little bit shabby,
too, you must admit." She looked at Jamie and her mother. "Now, if
you'll all please excuse me, I'll be going."

She walked to the door, but when she reached
it, a voice stopped her.

"Val, dear?" her mother said.

"Yes?" she replied without turning
around.

"The two of us will discuss this later."

"No, Mother," Valerie responded, turning to
face her mother, her voice full of the determination she felt, "we
will not discuss this later. Or ever again, for that matter."

She opened the door and hurriedly walked to
her Jeep. She got in the car, fired up the engine, and pulled out
of the parking area, heading down the long drive that led away from
her mother's stately home atop the hill.

By the time she reached the highway, her eyes
were nearly blinded by tears. Tears of shame and humiliation. Tears
of relief. But most of all, tears of joy.

She opened the front door, and Elvis
virtually danced before her, his toenails clicking on the entrance
hall's wooden floor. "Oh, Elvis," she said, "I'm so glad to see
you." She went down on her knees and hugged him. "You're so lucky
you weren't with me, but now we can start the whole day over again.
It can only get better, old boy."

She walked back to the kitchen, Elvis
following her. She dropped her carryall on the center island and
looked at the clock. A little after ten. She had a powerful urge to
call Wyn at once to tell him the news, but she decided she wanted
to calm down a bit first and digest the turn of events herself. She
still felt unnerved from the scene at her mother's, and she didn't
want to come across to Wyn as some sort of hysterical basket
case.

Maybe I'll call Colette
, she thought,
and we can have a cup of coffee and talk. I need to gather my
wits about me, and that should do the trick
.

She started to pick up the telephone, and it
rang just as she reached for it.
Maybe it's Wyn,
she thought
excitedly. She grabbed the receiver.

"Hello," she said.

"Val, it's-it's Eddie," her old friend said
in a strangely choked voice.

"Hi, Eddie. What is it?" she said, her
antennae on full alert. "You don't sound like yourself." He was
definitely upset about something.

"It's . . . it's Noah." He managed to get the
words out before his voice collapsed into heart-wrenching sobs.

"Eddie, listen to me," Valerie said. "Try to
tell me what the problem is."

"He-he-he's . . . d-d-dead," Eddie
sobbed.

Dead? But that isn't possible
, she
thought.
He checked out perfectly okay only a few days
ago.

"Please, Eddie," she said, "tell me exactly
what's going on."

Eddie took a few breaths and managed to
control his sobs. "I let him out to do his business about ten or
ten-thirty last night," he said, "and I left one of the French
doors in the back open for him like I always do. This morning he
wasn't in his bed like he usually is, so I thought he was outside.
I went out and called him and called him. When he didn't come,
Jonathan and I went out looking for him. I thought maybe he'd
cornered a chipmunk or something and just wasn't paying any
attention."

His voice choked up again, and Valerie waited
patiently while he calmed down. "We-we found him down near the
creek," Eddie continued. "Dead."

"You're sure he's not just injured, Eddie?"
she asked.

"He's been murdered!" Eddie cried. "Somebody
deliberately killed him!"

"Murdered?" she asked incredulously.

"I'm positive," he declared, indignant.
"Somebody murdered Noah!"

"I'm coming straight over," she said.

"Oh, would you, Val?" he said, weepy
again.

"I'll be there in five minutes," she said.
She hung up the receiver and grabbed her carryall, then headed to
the front door.

"I'll be back soon, Elvis," she said, leaning
down and giving him a few fast strokes. "You guard the house."

She dashed out to the Jeep and hopped in,
heading to Eddie's as quickly as possible.

Eddie and Jonathan were both standing outside
their beautifully restored Greek Revival house waiting for her when
she arrived. They had obviously been crying, their red and swollen
eyes testament to their grief. She hugged them both, her heart
aching for them, then immediately got down to business.

"Okay," she said. "Show me."

"It's this way," Jonathan said, pointing down
toward the creek that bordered the property. "You want to wait
here, Eddie?" he asked. "I can take Val."

"Oh, no," Eddie said. "I'm coming, too."

They walked through the lushly planted garden
and then through the parklike grounds toward the rocky creek,
Jonathan leading the way, Val taking Eddie's hand in hers.

"We didn't move him," Eddie said, "because I
wanted you to see him first, Val. I don't know whether to call the
police or what."

"We'll have a look," she said.

"From a distance, he looks like he's spread
out just like he's asleep," Eddie told her, "and when I saw him
like that, that's what I tried to tell myself. That he was just
sleeping. But when I got closer to him, I could see that he
definitely wasn't asleep."

They neared the creek, and Jonathan came to a
standstill ahead of them. Val could see his shoulders begin to
shake and a hand go up to his mouth. She and Eddie drew up to his
side.

Noah certainly didn't look asleep, she
thought. He looked very dead—and as if he'd died in terrible agony.
Eddie really had been trying to fool himself at first. The handsome
dog was on his back, his forelegs stiffly drawn back and slightly
curled. His eyes looked huge, and his mouth was drawn back in a
terrible rictus of death.

She went down on both knees and started to
examine his body, but her eyes were drawn to a hideous,
fly-infested, bloody-looking mass on the ground near Noah.

A chunk of meat
, she thought, bile
rising in her throat.
It must have been a roast or
something.
Her eyes began to tear, but she quickly wiped them
and tried to focus on Noah's lifeless body. She examined him,
noticing that his eyes were widely dilated.
Poison,
probably
, she thought. She turned to Jonathan.

"Have you got a freezer bag or any kind of
plastic bag I could use?"

"Sure," he said. "I'll go get it."

"Thanks, Jonathan," she said.

"I'll be right back," he said, and he dashed
off toward the house.

"He's been poisoned, hasn't he?" Eddie
asked.

She stood back up and nodded. "Yes, Eddie,"
she said. "It certainly looks that way."

"Val, look at this," Eddie said. "The
invisible fencing runs just along here." He was drawing a line
along the property with an outstretched finger, then pointed to the
bridge that crossed the big creek bordering his property. "Whoever
did it probably came down the path from the bridge, then walked
along the creek, and threw the meat over the invisible fencing to
this side."

He looked at her, studying her face to see
what she thought of this scenario.

Valerie nodded. "It makes sense, Eddie," she
said.

"Noah never crossed the invisible fencing, or
at least he hadn't for years," Eddie said. "Two or three shocks
when he was younger, and he stayed inside it."

"So somebody would've had to toss the meat
over here to this side of the fencing to get him to eat it,"
Valerie said. "But who would do a thing like that? And why?"

Eddie stared into her eyes. "The most
important question is, who would've done it that also knew where
the fencing ran?"

Val gazed at him with an expression of
curiosity. "Of course, whoever threw the meat to Noah didn't
necessarily know about the fence at all. But if what you're saying
is true, Eddie, it would probably be somebody who knows you pretty
well."

"Exactly," he said, nodding his head.

"Do you have somebody in mind?" she asked.
"Is there anybody you can think of that didn't like Noah for some
reason? Or . . . you?"

Eddie looked at the ground. "I keep asking
myself the same thing, Val," he replied, "but I keep coming up with
zilch. Some of the local guys park up near the bridge and come down
here to fish, and Noah would sometimes bark at them. But he always
stayed on this side of the invisible fencing. He never bit anybody
or anything." He shrugged. "I just don't know, Val," he said.
"Nobody ever complained to me or anything, and I can't think of
anybody who has a grudge against me."

Jonathan returned with a large freezer bag.
"Will this do, Val?" he asked.

"Perfect," she said. She took the plastic bag
from him, then went back down on her knees. She took several
Kleenex out of her carryall, then picked up the chunk of meat with
them and put it in the bag, along with the Kleenex. She fingered
the Ziploc bag shut and rose to her feet.

"I'll have the lab analyze this," she said,
"but I'm pretty sure we all know that there's some kind of poison
in the meat." She looked at them. "I'm just so sorry," she
added.

"Thanks for coming over, Val," Eddie
said.

"You'll let us know what they find out?"
Jonathan asked.

"Yes," she said. "I'll call you as soon as I
find out anything. I'll put a rush on it, and it'll be sometime
this coming week. In the meantime, what do you want to do about
Noah?"

"I don't know if there's a law against it or
not," Eddie said, "and I don't give a damn if there is. We're going
to bury him here on the property. Down near the gazebo."

"I can help you," Val offered.

"No, Val," Jonathan said. "That's okay. We
can do it."

"I'll be glad to help," she said.

"No, you've done enough," Eddie said.
"Jonathan and I'll do it."

"Do you want to call the police?" she asked.
"I can wait for them to come."

"I don't think so," Eddie said, a defeated
sound in his voice. "We don't have a thing to go on, do we?"

"Just the fact that he was probably
poisoned," she said. "And I'll know with what in a few days."

"I don't think they'll be able to accomplish
anything," Eddie said. "I can't imagine who would do anything like
this, so I couldn't be any help to them."

"Have you thought of anybody, Jonathan?" she
asked. "Or any reason?"

"No," he said. "I can't think of anybody.
Maybe not everybody's crazy about us, but I can't think of anybody
who actually hates us this much. I think it's got to be some kind
of nutcase. That's all I can figure."

"I guess you're right," she agreed. "It's
just so hard to imagine. Anyway, I'll drop this by the clinic, but
I'll be back home in an hour or so at the most. If you need
anything, anything at all, let me know."