A Pedigree to Die For (20 page)
In no time at all I had the routine down pat. The Poodles were smart enough to make the adjustment easily. Aside from a constant need for human companionship, they pretty much took care of themselves. After a day or so I'd sorted out the different personalities and found myself growing rather fond of the group.
None of which I had any intention of telling Aunt Peg. As far as I was concerned, she owed me big time.
Friday morning I'd dropped Davey at camp and was just returning from a stock-up trip to the supermarket when the telephone rang. I'd been taking messages all week. The pad and pencil were sitting on the counter ready.
“Hello?” said a voice when I picked up the phone. “Is this Margaret Turnbull?”
“No, she's not here. Can I take a message?”
“It's very important that I speak with her. Urgent, actually. Do you know where I can reach her?”
“She's gone to Saratoga for the weekendâ”
“Damn! I was hoping she'd chosen the New Jersey shows. I need to talk to her about her husbandâ”
“What about Max?”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Look,” I said quickly. “I'm Margaret Turnbull's niece. I'm sure I can help you. Who is this I'm talking to, please?”
I could sense his indecision and sweated out a long moment before he finally said, “My name is Randy Tarnower. I'mâ”
“I know who you are. I've seen you at the shows.” To hell with my cover. If Tarnower had information about Max, I wanted to know what it was.
Then he told me and I nearly fell off my stool.
“Your uncle,” he said. “I think he was murdered.”
Twenty-one
I'd never known before that it was possible to feel both hot and cold at the same time. Simba, sensing my distress, came over and pressed a wet nose into my hand.
“Hello? Are you there? Maybe I'd better wait for Pegâ”
“No!” I cleared my throat and got the quaver out of my voice. He'd said that his information was urgent. Aunt Peg wouldn't be back until after the weekend. The earliest I could reach her would be tonight. Even then, she'd be six hours away.
“Please,” I said, “talk to me. I want to hear about Max's death.”
“I don't want to do this over the phone.”
“I'll come to you,” I decided quickly. “Just give me directions.”
He lived, I discovered, forty miles beyond Newark. Midday, if I didn't hit traffic on the George Washington Bridge, I could make the trip in an hour and a half. I told him I'd be there as soon as I could and set about making arrangements for Davey. Joey Brickman's mom, Alice, was home on the first try. She and I have saved each other often enough in the past that she didn't even ask any questions.
“Take all the time you need,” she said, probably imagining a midday tryst in the city. “When you get back, you know where he'll be.”
That cleared away one problem. Another presented itself as I was rushing around dog-proofing the house before leaving. This time when the phone rang, it was Sam Driver. He'd been trying for Aunt Peg. It took him a startled moment to realize he had me.
“I've been to see Will Perkins,” he said.
“Good. I'd love to hear all about it. Just not now, okay?”
“You're in a hurry?”
“One foot out the door.”
“When will you be back?”
There was just the briefest flash of somethingâintuition maybeâand I almost asked him to come with me. But I didn't and then the chance was gone. Instead I told him Peg was away for the whole weekend and that I was off to Randall Tarnower's and expected to be back by mid-afternoon.
There was construction on the Georgeâof course I
would
pick the lower levelâso I made up for the time I lost by speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike. Nobody noticed. It's a road where seventy is considered base speed and eighty is required for passing. By the time I reached Tarnower's, the Volvo had blown clean all its cylinders and was chugging along nicely.
would
pick the lower levelâso I made up for the time I lost by speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike. Nobody noticed. It's a road where seventy is considered base speed and eighty is required for passing. By the time I reached Tarnower's, the Volvo had blown clean all its cylinders and was chugging along nicely.
His kennel was set in the midst of farm country. Open land, tall corn, and herds of black-and-white cows filled the eye. I felt as though I stepped back a hundred years in time. The impression was reinforced by the small tidy stone house set up close to the road, with neat cream-colored shutters and window boxes filled with impatiens. There was a big red barn out back and an array of large paddocks bounded by dog-proof fencing.
The whole place looked neat, well kept, and modestly prosperous. Someone here was paying attention to details. It was probably that same skill that had Tarnower's Poodles winning so much in the ring.
I knocked on the front door and heard the usual cacophony within. A moment later a slender brunette dressed in cut-offs and a tee shirt drew the door open just a bit. She brushed a fall of long hair back out of her face and wedged herself into the crack so that none of the dogs who crowded behind her legs could escape. I'd seen her at some of the shows, brushing out, spraying up, and ferrying dogs to Tarnower at the ring. The number one assistant.
“Hi, can I help you?”
“Yes, I'm here to see Randy Tarnower. He's expecting ” me.”
“Sure.” She smiled easily. “Randy's back in the barn working on his specials dog. I'll show you the way.” She slithered through the small space and shut the door firmly behind her. “I'm Kim. Sorry, I don't know your name?”
“Melanie Travis.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Kim, heading off around the house. “I'm glad you're here. Randy's been all over the place today. I mean, he's usually jazzed before a weekend, but this morning it's been wild. I got two Toys and a Mini bathed, but then I had to have a break, you know what I mean?”
I nodded, but it was hardly required. She simply kept talking. “Randy's a perfectionist. He works himself and everyone else around the clock. And then he has these moods. It can drive you nuts, let me tell you. Before I got here, he went through assistants like crazy.”
“Is the kennel in the barn?” I asked. That's the direction we were heading.
“The barn is the kennel. We converted the whole thing. It's pretty great. Wait til you see.” Kim, it seemed, was happy to expound on almost any subject. She pulled the door open and we went inside.
Pretty great was an understatement. Big rooms, lots of light, and what by now I'd come to think of as the usual accompaniment: barking dogs.
“Randy! Your visitor's here!”
There was no response, but Kim didn't seem to expect one. Somewhere, deep within the barn, music was playing. Glenn Miller's “In the Mood.” We walked through the empty office area into a second room filled with grooming tables and pens. Every available surface held a Poodle, all of them up now and barking at us.
“Quiet!” Kim yelled in a voice louder than seemed possible from so slender a frame. Miraculously, the noise ceased. “He's got to be around here somewhere. Probably next door in the grooming room. Come on.”
The Poodles all eyed me with curiosity. They danced on their tables and hopped up and down in their pens. I was fascinated by the fact that although none were tied, they all stayed where they'd been left. I wondered if Randall Tarnower could be interested in a career in child care, preferably in Fairfield County.
“Aha!” said Kim, striding through the doorway. “Hey Boom, what's the matter?”
I followed her into the next room. It held two bathtubs, four grooming tables, and a whole wall full of supplies. On one of the tables stood a large, very hairy, Standard Poodle. Though the dogs in the first room had been excited by my presence, this Poodle was clearly agitated before we even arrived. He was pacing back and forth on the rubber-topped surface and whining audibly.
“That's Boomer, our specials dog,” said Kim. She quickly crossed the room to his side. “What's the matter, boy? You're okay.”
With Kim, like so many of the dog people I'd met, the crooning just seemed to come naturally. Boomer pricked his ears in response but didn't calm down. When she placed both her hands on his front puffs and pulled forward, he lay down as she'd asked him to. But the moment she released his legs, he sprang back up, still whining.
“Sorry,” Kim apologized. “I think everybody's wired today. Why don't you stay here and I'll see if Randy's out back in the pens. I know he was expecting you, and with Boomer on the table, he wouldn't have gone far.”
As it turned out, she was right. He'd gone almost nowhere at all. Passing an open closet door on her way out of the room, Kim reached automatically to shut it. Then stopped.
“Oh,” she said, and I heard the horror in her voice. “Oh no.”
Hands over her mouth, Kim was backing quickly away. I skirted around the table to have a look. I shouldn't have, but I did. It was one of those scenes that in the space of seconds etches itself within memory forever.
It was a big, walk-in closet, and Randall Tarnower was lying on the floor. For the briefest of moments I thought he had spilled something and slipped. Then I realized that the thick dark pool on the linoleum underneath him was blood. Tarnower's blood. His eyes were open, the pupils opaque. He'd fallen on his side, and I could see his back. The handle of a pair of grooming shears protruded from between his shoulder blades.
The mind is an interesting thing. Stressed, it processes that which it has to deal with and filters out the rest. It took me a while to realize that someone was screaming. For a moment, I thought it was me. Then Boomer joined in, his howl raising the noise level another notch, and I realized it was Kim.
Well, you couldn't blame her. But we had to think of something better to do than stand around and scream.
“Where's the phone?” I asked.
Kim gestured into the closet. It was a sure bet neither one of us was going in after it.
“Besides that one.”
“In the office.” The screaming had stopped; now she was hiccuping. “He's dead, isn't he?”
“I think so.” I didn't see how he could look that bad if he wasn't. I guess I should have felt for a pulse; but this was the first dead body I'd seen. I wasn't about to go any nearer.
“Go call 911,” I said. “And try not to touch anything.”
Kim hurried out the side door as the back one opened. Her screaming had summoned another assistant. A chunky young man in his early twenties called out Randy's name, then stopped dead at the sight of feet protruding out of the closet.
“I don't think you want to come in,” I said. “There's been . . . an accident.” All right, so that wasn't strictly accurate. I wasn't about to go into details.
“Who the hell are you? Where's Randy? Where's Kim?”
I ignored the first two questions and answered the last. “She's gone to the office to call the police.”
Behind me, Boomer began to growl. His agitation had been growing by leaps and bounds. Now he was pacing like a caged panther. “Can you take him out of here?”
The assistant nodded. As he sidled past the closet, he had a good look inside. What he saw made him run to the nearest bathtub and throw up. He couldn't say he hadn't been warned.
“Damn,” he said when he was once more upright. “The Japanese scissors.” He hopped Boomer off the table and left. I followed him out and shut the door behind us.
I found Kim in the office. She was slumped in the corner of a tattered couch, pale and sobbing.
“Who else was here this morning beside you and Randy?” I asked.
She looked up, thought for a moment. “Just Ben.”
“He's the other assistant?”
“Yes.”
“No other visitors? Deliveries?”
“No.”
“Phone calls?”
Kim lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “This place is like Grand Central Station. The phone rings all the time. Sometimes I pick up, sometimes Randy does. I don't really pay attention.”
“But you knew that I was coming this morning?”
“Yeah, Randy said so.”
“Was he expecting anyone else?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Would he have mentioned it if he was?”
She thought again. “I guess. I mean, he told me about you.”
“Do you know what he wanted to see me about?”
Kim shook her head and lapsed into silence. I could hear sirens in the distance. The police were on the way. Maybe their questions would shed some more light. All I knew was that Randy Tarnower had had something important he wanted to tell me about Max's death. Something urgent, he'd said.
And someone had stopped him before he'd been able to.
The police and paramedics arrived in a flurry of flashing lights and blaring sirens. The coroner's van slipped in silently twenty minutes later. Kim, Ben, and I were fingerprinted and questioned at length. I told the police what I knew, which wasn't much and didn't impress them at all.
The only new bit of information I picked up was that Kim was separated from her husband and had moved in with Randy six months earlier. She insisted their relationship was platonic, but I saw the two officers exchange a look.
Finally they decided I could leave. Up at the house, I spent ten minutes in the bathroom washing my hands. Though I hadn't touched anything, the smell of blood still lingered. Or maybe it was my imagination.
Kim walked me out. “What will you do now?” I asked her.
Only a couple of hours had passed, but I could tell she'd been pondering the question. “Ben and I will have to talk. We might be able to make a go of it on our own.”
“I thought people sent their Poodles here for Randy to show.”
“They did. And we'll probably lose a few clients right off the bat. But I bet we'll be able to convince the others to give us a try.” The look in her brown eyes was shrewd. “It was Randy's operation. That didn't mean he was the only one around here with talent.”
Yes, well. I was glad I wasn't the one standing between Kim and something she wanted.
There was little traffic on the drive home. That was good because the trip passed by in a daze. I needed to pick up Davey, but Aunt Peg's was on the way, and I decided to stop there first. I could let the Poodles out and make sure they all had fresh water. Even more importantly, I could use the time to wind down and try and clear my mind of all that it had seen.
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