Dead Dogs and Englishmen (22 page)

I got a warm
look from Jeffrey when we walked in. He smiled, which sent me thinking of other things besides dead bodies and dead dogs and a young woman who just might be totally insane though she looked sane enough, sitting there in Lucky's office, in a high-backed wicker chair, hands set primly in her lap.

She was much prettier than I'd thought, with the hat and veil gone. She had almost translucent skin, and bright, shining, blue eyes. She could have been a high school kid. The chair she sat in dwarfed her. Her back was straight—the black dress too large, pouching around her neck, short sleeves hanging wide over her arms. She held her hands tightly together in her lap, bitten fingernails picking at one hand and then the other. The nails were ragged, red around the cuticles. Her feet were set firmly against the worn linoleum as if planted there permanently in her Minnie Mouse shoes.

_____

“Courtney James,” she said, getting up clumsily from the wicker chair to take first Dolly's hand and then mine.

She looked at Jeffrey and smiled the kind of womanly smile you don't want to see other women give a man you just might be thinking could be special. “I had a difficult time stopping when Agent Lo motioned me to the roadside. Part of me thought he might be someone in Cecil's employ.” She lifted and dropped her shoulders, then put a hand up to brush a stray honey-colored hair back from her face. “With all that money … well … I'm very afraid …”

“Of whom?” I asked.

“Cecil. What he might do …”

“Where you from?” Dolly asked.

“Bristol. England. I had to come. I'd been following—through an American private investigator—Cecil's movements. I owe my mum at least that much. To find out for certain what he did …”

“If we call England …,” Lucky broke in. “This ‘Bristol.' They won't tell me you're a known stalker, will they?”

“Please call. I'm really just a girl. I guess you could say that. Second year at university. I have many friends who will vouch for me. They might tell you I've been obsessed with Cecil Hawke, but for good reason.”

“And that reason is?” Jeffrey pushed her.

“As I said,” she turned first to him and then to both Dolly and me. “Because of my mum.”

“Your ‘mum'?” Dolly asked. “What's that?”

“My mother. She was Cecil's first wife. Or, at least, that's what I think. That's what she believed, that she was the first. I don't really know.”

“And?” Dolly pressed. “Your mother's where now?”

“She's dead. Three years.” The girl stopped to wipe quickly at her
eyes. “I've been looking for him ever since.”

“You called him your stepfather out there at the cemetery. Do you think of him as that—a kind of father?” I asked.

She made a quick, unhappy face. “A father? Heavens no. The man's a terrible human being. I know he murdered my mother.”

That sucked the air out of the room. Nobody moved.

“She was a diabetic for most of her life,” the girl went on. “Mum
was so sweet about it, didn't want anybody burdened. She always took care of herself—with the insulin, I mean. Never a problem—well, maybe once in a while, if she'd exercised too hard, or had forgotten to take one of her shots. But never a serious reaction. Until one night, three years ago, she slipped into a coma. The doctor said it was brought on by taking too much insulin. Way too much insulin. As if she would do such a thing.” Anger showed. Her quiet voice hardened.

“Was it called a murder by the coroner—or whatever you have over there?”

She shook her head. “She stayed in the coma for three months. And then, suddenly, she died. They said it was the diabetes that killed her. I know it wasn't.”

“Was Cecil Hawke at the hospital the day she died?” Jeffrey asked, stopping his note taking to look up and watch as she answered.

She dropped her head, then shook it. “No. As far as I could learn, Cecil wasn't there all that day.”

“Then how … ?”

She looked up, young eyes tortured. “You have to understand, Cecil has … for want of a better word … friends.”

“Friends?” Dolly was beginning to lose patience. We were going too far afield for her. She liked things much simpler and more direct. English cities and English girls and English women who'd died three years before didn't compute. What Dolly was looking for was an answer to a dead Mexican immigration agent, a dead wife, and a few dead dogs.

Courtney nodded. “Friends. How I hated them, but Mother said to just ignore their presence. She said all men had friends. But not like these men. Crude, they were. Like something from out of a pub, and I mean a very low pub. Please don't think me a snob. You would have to meet them … then you'd know. First one male friend and then another. More like acolytes, I guess you could call them. The men had come from Australia, Cecil told Mother. But they didn't begin to show up until after he and Mother were married and they began gathering earlier and earlier in the day until even Mother couldn't stand having them in the house. I think that's when the problems began.” She stopped to think a while. “But maybe not. Maybe whatever was going on was already worked out between them—those men. I really can't say. I just know as Mother began to put her foot down Cecil grew petulant, at times even surly—snapping at her. I know she was considering divorce just before she slipped into that terrible coma.”

“In this country,” I said, “a long time ago, there was a wealthy woman who had that same thing happen to her. Have you ever heard of Sunny Von Bulow?”

She thought a while, then shook her head.

“Same kind of thing.” I was a little suspicious of the girl's story. Something more she wasn't telling us. “You're not … eh … making any of this up, are you, Courtney? That woman's husband was suspected of giving her an overdose of insulin. Coma—the whole thing. She didn't die right away, though. Took her years. If the husband was after the money, he didn't get any.”

“Cecil got Mother's money. All of it.” She sat back. Here it was, I thought, the reason for her single-mindedness and inability to accept that her mother was dead, and probably had cut her out of the will.

“Most of Mother's money came from my real father. His father, my grandfather, had been in the House of Lords; he was a barrister. Quite famous. Father came into the money—all of it—because he was an only son. When he and Mother married he left everything to Mother, except a small trust fund for me. She'd always said it would all come to me, eventually. That it wasn't hers to give to anyone else. In fact, she led me to believe there was a prenuptial agreement when she married Cecil. If that ever existed, it wasn't anywhere to be found after her death.”

“Cecil Hawke isn't exactly …” Dolly was searching for the right words. “Well, not exactly young and good looking.”

“Mother thought he was funny. And terribly talented. He wanted so badly to write. You see, he'd grown up poor. His university education was gotten through the kindness of others. After they married he made it a point to give parties for writers, and attend poetry readings. All that sort of thing. He visualized a salon where writers gathered. Mother wasn't against it—it was just those other men, those friends, that she detested.”

“Ever anybody hanging around named ‘Toomey'?” Dolly asked.

The girl turned to face her directly. Her eyes opened wide, the blue irises large. “Nelson Toomey?” she asked. “Is he here too? Worst of all of them. How Mother hated Toomey. Simply detested the man.”

Now we had the
problem of Courtney James on our hands. If what she was saying about Cecil Hawke and Nelson Toomey turned out to be true, she was in danger. You didn't just turn a kid like Courtney out on unfamiliar streets, in unfamiliar towns, and ask her to take care of herself. I doubted, at this point, that returning to England was even the right thing to do. Courtney was ours until this investigation was over.

I had a bad headache. With a bad headache nothing else seems as important as the pain. What I wasn't letting into my brain was something that was scaring the hell out of me—if I even thought about it. I was the only one who had read Cecil's manuscript. Now that Lila was dead, I was the only one, other than Cecil, who even knew it existed. I was glad I'd made copies. Not to show to anyone, but to protect myself. The book was about a serial murderer, and his good friend. With two totally real murders on our hands here, I was beyond feeling uncomfortable about Cecil's book. I was moving into a place where I wondered if I was intended as a target too—in this biography that wasn't a biography, in this story of two men who lived to kill.

Jeffrey signaled he wanted to talk outside of the chief's office. I knew what had to be coming. We gathered at the front of the police station. Jeffrey leaned back against one of the scarred tables and looked from me to Dolly. “You know we can't let her go,” he said. “If this Toomey hears that she's in Leetsville, she'll be dead in twenty-four hours.”

Dolly nodded. “She's the only witness to anything that we've got.”

“And she can identify this guy,” I said. “Cecil told me he never heard of Toomey. Big lie. I don't know what kind of an awful game they're playing …”

Jeffrey nodded. “Don't get carried away.” He gave me a hard look. “We don't know for sure what the guy's done, as yet. Or even this Toomey. Let's take it slow. I'm going out to that sheep ranch and take a look around. That's what's holding us up.”

“Maybe Cecil Hawke's not even involved,” I said, wanting to believe the man I worked for wasn't as evil as I suspected. “Maybe it's all Toomey and he's only protecting him because they're old friends.”

“Yeah.” Dolly looked disgusted. “So he lets this Toomey kill his wife, maybe two wives now, and a Mexican agent here looking into threats against her cousin, and denies knowing him.”

“I'm checking with Australia—see if there's a criminal record. On either one of them,” Jeffrey said.

“What about Bristol?”

Jeffrey nodded. “Got that already. Nothing. As far as they're concerned Courtney's mother died of natural causes.”

“They say anything about Courtney?”

“Said they know what she believes, but there's no proof. Cecil was out of the country when his wife first went into shock from the insulin. They had nothing on him.”

“What about Toomey? They ever hear of him?” I asked.

“Only that the daughter said he was involved. They like the girl, but all she's got are suspicions. And, according to the officer I spoke to, there is the matter of her mother willing all her money to Hawke instead of to her. Makes for a bad grudge that could get in the way of the kid's judgment.”

We stopped talking to think.

After a while, Dolly offered, “I believe her. Maybe I wouldn't if it weren't for our own two murders.”

“We know Hawke didn't kill his wife,” Jeffrey said. “You two are his best witnesses. He was in plain sight when the shots from the library were heard.”

“And it wasn't Jackson,” I put in quickly. “Ballistics showed the same gun was used to kill the dog. And the Mexican agent.

“But there's Toomey,” I went on, knowing we were going around in circles. “And there are things about Hawke that worry me …”

“Like what?” Jeffrey lifted his chin, challenging me.

“Like, well, I think you could call Cecil a game player. I saw it with Lila. I read …”

“Read?” Jeffrey was fast.

Not yet. I wasn't ready to give up Cecil's book. What was it, after all, but fiction? And I'd agreed, in writing, not to divulge anything about it to anyone. It was a bind I didn't appreciate. Depending on how bad things got, did I have a breaking point? A place where I'd be forced to show the book to Jeffrey or Dolly? I could be sued by Cecil Hawke. At some point I was going to have to face my fear—of maybe losing the only thing I had in a lawsuit: my house on Willow Lake—and do what I knew I had to do.

That point wasn't yet. I couldn't take the chance until I was sure …

“Books I've read about psychopaths.”

He nodded then got right back to Courtney James.

“That leaves you and Dolly to keep this kid safe,” he said, wiping his hands together. “Here's what I propose. You two take an hour, go off somewhere, and come up with a plan between you. The chief and I will take her statement, have Courtney sign it, and use that as a way to get moving on this. I'm taking on the sheep ranch. Don't know how, but I'm getting in there to have a look around, maybe talk to men who work there. Lucky's following up with the farmers. You two stick tight to Courtney, and, Emily, we'd like you to keep seeing Hawke, if you think you can handle it. You're editing for him? What's that book about?”

I shrugged and said, “You know, about Noel Coward.”

That satisfied Jeffrey. My first lie to him—a big one. But maybe not for long. If we found proof linking Cecil to any of the murders, I'd drag that manuscript out in a flash and face the rest later.

_____

Dolly and I had an hour to come up with a plan to keep the girl alive and have her around as a witness when we caught up with Toomey. EATS was out of the question. They'd know the whole story before we drank a single cup of Eugenia's strong coffee or, in my case, a cup of weak, generic tea.

Dolly said we could talk at her house, since she was still off duty. “We'll work out how I can help you—having her there with you,” she added.

“With me?” I wasn't sure I'd heard that right.

That set us off, arguing over who was best set up to protect a young woman who some creep nobody could find was after.

Cate Thomas, Dolly's grandmother, was sitting at Dolly's kitchen table when we got there, a cup of hot tea in front of her. She stared off, out across Dolly's backyard toward a stand of tall fir trees. Her greeting was halfhearted, though she offered tea, which I knew would be hot and dark and good.

“So, you don't want to take her in?” Dolly said.

We sat at Dolly's white, wooden table. I remembered coming here before Cate arrived and having to carve a place to sit at the table, clearing off cereal boxes, newspapers, and books on forensics. Then there were dirty mugs, plates with dried chili stuck to them, and small blue pots with food burned at the bottom. Cate, with not much of a place to call home herself, got busy when she moved in. Now it was a pleasure to sit at Dolly's kitchen table without the fear of a bug carrying off your cup.

“You got a dog,” Dolly went on.

“And you've got Cate, here,” I said with perfect logic. “When you're on patrol, Cate can keep an eye on her.”

Dolly made a noise, expressing her disagreement. “You think this is some runaway kid we got on our hands? You think all she needs is watchin'? You're nuttier than ever.”

“And you think me and Sorrow can keep away some killer bent on getting to her?”

“Better than here, in town. How about Harry's house? Think he'd keep an eye on her?”

“Yeah. The house is big enough for about a half of a human being, and you're going to put this young Englishwoman there.”

“Got a better idea?” Dolly asked.

Cate Thomas, dressed in her usual getup of green scarves twisted around her neck, a long pink cotton skirt, a lacy blouse, and tons of make-up, cleared her throat. “Don't count on me.” She shook her head vehemently. “I'm going. I'll be in France, looking for my daughter. It's time she stepped right up to the plate …” She sipped her tea and stole a look at Dolly. “Now that this one's gone and got herself pregnant. I'm not a young woman. I can't take on a baby. No sirree.”

Cate turned to me. “I told her, dumb thing to get yourself pregnant.”

“Didn't get myself any way at all.”

“Well, this mysterious immaculate conception of yours,” Cate turned to me. “She tell you a father's name?”

I shook my head.

“Me either. Could at least get some support …”

“Don't put on, Cate,” Dolly growled across the table at her. “You're doin' what all the women in our family do. You're runnin'. So, what's new? Guess you can't break a cycle like ours. Only thing I know is, I'm not runnin'. This kid is going to have a great mother. Best ever, if I have anything to say about it.”

Dolly's hat was off, that short, dirty-blond hair sticking up like a teenage boy's buzz cut. Nothing beautiful about Deputy Dolly, but I had to admit there was something new there. If this was the glow of pregnancy, maybe she was right. She was already improving.

Dolly slumped down in her chair, staring at her hands. Cate kept her eyes turned from both of us. I sipped my tea and stayed out of this ongoing battle.

“So, what are we doin' about this Courtney James?” When Dolly got back to the subject at hand her voice was strong and unemotional. We were on the work track again and off babies, mothers, and traitorous grandmothers.