Dead Dogs and Englishmen (9 page)

“Why are they leaving?” Dolly asked.

Again he shrugged and looked hard at his dusty shoe tops. “I heard some things. Just some things I don't know for sure. George
asked me what I know and I told him not a lot. Just things I
heard.”

“What are those things, Carlos?” Dolly asked, glancing at George Sandini then back to Carlos. “It would help if you could tell us what's going on. One woman is already dead. You know who that could be?”

He shook his head. “I only heard one thing.”

“What's that?” Dolly prodded.

“That the woman wasn't just nobody. I heard she might be official, with the Mexican government.”

Dolly and I exchanged a look.
What now?
“Was she looking for somebody? Like a fugitive or something?”

Carlos shook his head again. “I don't know. Somebody said he heard a woman was around asking questions. They thought she was from immigration at first but she was Mexican. I mean, she came right from Mexico. She showed one man a badge.”

“Badge? Like a police badge? Government badge?” Dolly asked.

“Don't know for sure. Just a badge.”

“Can you give me the name of the person who talked to this government woman?”

“Yeah. But he left. He went out to where his cousin works, in California.”

“Right after this woman talked to him?”

“Soon after, is what I heard. I asked a friend of mine what he thought was going on. My friend said it's something pretty bad.”

“Can I talk to your friend?”

Carlos shook his head. “He's gone too.”

Dolly thought a minute. “How many have been threatened, that you know of?”

He shrugged, looked up at George Sandini, then back down at his shoe tops. “All I heard was six or more. The ones who pulled out. Seems some of them got dead dogs thrown at their houses. Some just got scared because of what's going on.” He squinted his black eyes at first Dolly then George. “Since we heard about this woman getting shot—with that dog there with her—well, I think more men want to leave.”

“What about that Diaz family? You know them pretty good?”

He shook his head. “I knew of them, but …” Here he spread his hands to show he had nothing more to give.

“Are you afraid? I mean, now that you talked to us?” Dolly asked, voice low. “George here won't say anything. We're not going to bring you into it …”

Carlos shrugged. “I'm a citizen. Where can I go? I don't have anybody in Mexico any more. I don't know what this is all about. Maybe my brother, in California. But that would leave George, here, stranded right when he needs me the most.”

George toed the ground. “If it comes to your safety, Carlos. Nothing is worth putting your life on the line.”

We all fell silent.

_____

On the way home we kept our talk to what we'd just learned and what we didn't learn. I had a lot more notes and many more questions.

Dolly said, “I'm gonna call Lieutenant Brent, see if we can get the government to find out who the dead woman is. Maybe immigration, I'm thinking. Or drugs. Those cartels down there are powerful. Could reach all the way back here, I guess. Not like we're near a border or anything. Only Canada. Drugs don't usually come in that way. More like down in Florida. But I heard even Atlanta's got some big drug problems going on.” She talked almost to herself. “Still, I haven't heard of any new drugs, or even more drugs, up here. A few guys grow their own weed. That's about it. With the recession, nobody's got money for crap like that.” She turned to face me. “Wha'd you think? Look like an agent to you? The dead woman?”

I shrugged. Never having seen a Mexican agent of any kind, I had no idea. “Had on shorts, not a uniform. Maybe she wasn't here officially.”

“Wouldn't you think somebody in this country would've been alerted if a Mexican agent came in? 'Less she was undercover. Something like that.”

“Wouldn't you think she'd have tried to fit in then? I mean, she looked like a middle-class woman. Not the kind of thing she'd wear undercover if her trouble was with the migrant population.”

She shrugged. “People in different countries do different things. Could've been just the cover she needed.”

I let that one go by me. We could beat it to death, but I had something else on my mind and I couldn't keep quiet.

“You going to get in to a doctor or a hospital now?” I asked, circling us back to where we'd been before.

She nodded. “Yup. Soon as I call Brent. Soon as I get this report turned in …”

“Soon as the moon turns purple …”

“Don't you worry about it.”

“I won't,” I answered.

She let me off at my mailbox. I slammed the car door behind me and she peeled off in a shower of stones. I was so pissed at her the stones felt good, hitting my bare legs. One more thing to be mad at Dolly Wakowski about.

Jackson picked me up
at exactly two-thirty, the immaculate white Jaguar sliding to a stop in front of my rose arbor in a cloud of dust and gravel pings. When he got out to hold the car door for me, he was resplendent in a white linen suit with a white tee shirt under the jacket. The guy would have been perfectly dressed for an afternoon soiree in colonial India, or maybe in Java. How about a pre-war plantation in South Carolina? Well—not the tee shirt and no socks with his loafers—but his air of
noblesse oblige
was firmly in place.

I, on the other hand, wasn't half bad either, despite needing a haircut and wearing old make-up I'd scraped out of the bottle.
Although it was hot, and I'd been tempted to wear shorts and a
tee shirt, I'd dressed in my best blue slacks and my next-to-best white tee shirt with only a little yellow staining under the arms. Because even I could be self-conscious about my appearance, I threw a yellow cotton jacket over my shoulders and gathered my blondish hair back into a ponytail tied with a white silk scarf over the red rubber band that held everything in place.

We made quite the pair as we drove past beautiful Torch Lake into the hills beyond.

_____

At the guarded gate to the Hawke estate, where Jackson and I stopped and were cleared to proceed by a uniformed sentinel, we were sent on through a thick wood with snarled, dense underbrush. Ahead of us, as the road twisted and straightened, a low, dark-roofed house rose sinuously from the ground. The house was of stone, with the long, low sweep of Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Waters. It was a house meant to become part of the landscape around it—a rock cliff built into the side of a rugged hill. The front of the house went on forever, curving at a far corner where a wall of mullioned windows looked into a thick copse of trees. The closer side curved back toward what must have been a garden. We parked beneath a low portico and climbed the wide stone steps to a door with stained glass panels that were oddly of doves and gargoyles. I thought I glimpsed Cecil Hawke's English background in small touches that would have been as much at home in the Lake Country of Great Britain, as here, in the woods of Northern Michigan. Above the door, a carved lintel read
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I thought it a bit much—Dante's hell—but Jackson touched my arm and nodded at the devilish warning, smiling at the man's cleverness.

Off to the east of the house, set back a ways, I'd noticed a huge U-shaped barn, like the mews I remembered from an English trip early in my marriage. The center, surrounded by the wings of the two-story barn, was enclosed by a high wire fence. Inside the fence the ground was churned and muddy as if trampled by many animals, not visible today.

Further east of the barn were small outbuildings and even further off I could see a low, gray, bunker-like cement block building. There were no windows in the building, nor any in the dark, octagonal building beyond it. Low-cut pastures stretched as far as I could see, with what looked like a thousand sheep grazing—small white blobs set against the bright green of the grass and the bright blue of a clear sky. I caught the slightest tinge of manure on the hot breeze. The sound of baaing drifted faintly from the far fields.

Jackson pushed the doorbell and leaned back on the heels of his loafers. He crossed his hands in front of him and rocked, turning to beam down one of his best
wait 'til you see this
grins at me.

The door opened wide. Amid a blast of icy, air-conditioned air stood a man in a wine-colored smoking jacket tied with a fringed belt. He was barely taller than I was—which is only five-five—
with a round face, like one of those upside-down puzzles. He smiled a wide congenial smile showing dull, small teeth. He looked
to be the kind of overly hearty man who would want to hug us, and who would laugh a lot, and be merry and all of that.

Beside him, kept still by one of Hawke's hands on a nasty- looking, studded collar, stood a one-eyed, very big, yellow dog. The dog, which looked fairly old or used, cocked his one good eye at us. The skin over the empty eye socket had been sewn shut but fluid leaked from around the fixed skin. Not a pretty animal, but neither was my dog—beauty in the eye of the beholder and all of that.

Cecil Hawke threw his arms wide, as I expected. “Ah, yes, Jackson Rinaldi. My friend. How good to see you. Come in. Come in.”

The accent was definitely British, but hard to place. Not Cockney, certainly, but also not the London accent I was familiar with. Cecil Hawke stood back, moved the yellow dog beside him with a kick, and motioned us into a wide front hall where the walls were white and covered floor to ceiling with what I judged to be a mass of bad paintings. Not a single sensibility here, not even good taste. Renaissance to Postmodern. Many were copies. Even these were washed out and badly done.

Cecil Hawke, himself, was astounding. His blond hair was an obvious toupee cut neatly to fit his head and curve around his long ears. He was clean shaven, almost hairless. His skin was pale, as if he hadn't left the house all summer. In his left ear shone a huge diamond stud. Over the paisley ascot he wore at his throat hung a heavy gold chain. He was straight out of a thirties romantic comedy. I smiled, trying not to laugh, thinking him funny and odd, as he clapped his hands together, then tented his fingers at his chin. Most of his left index finger was missing, leaving only a blunt stump. The other fingers were long and bent.

“And you must be Emily Kincaid, the astounding writer and editor Jackson speaks of so highly.” He wobbled his head back and forth, then reached out and grabbed me in surprisingly strong arms. He pulled me close and hugged the breath out of me, finally giving a hearty pat to my back, then letting me go to step away while trying not to choke. The hug from the man was powerful. The smell of the man was even more powerful. I hadn't smelled that much cologne since a Mafia trial I'd covered for the
Ann Arbor Times
. The don, who had whispered in my ear that if he got off he'd give me a call; his two attorneys; and two rows of hefty male spectators all smelled like Macy's perfume aisle at Christmas. This guy smelled like that—musky and thick. I supposed it was expensive but it tasted cheap in my mouth. I could feel the cologne settling in my nose, certain to haunt me for the next few hours. Ever since I was a kid and passed out in church from the perfumes and colognes and lotions, I'd avoided all scents that weren't normal to the human body. I also avoided the normal ones, unless they came from me and it was a hot summer day and I was too tired, from working in my garden, to take a shower. But then, we all do have our standards.

Cecil talked on as he led us and the yellow dog, who tap-tap-tapped a limping tap along behind him into a room that looked like an English library. Books were everywhere: walls, cases, tables. Among the books were obvious collectibles. Most, when I got a glimpse of labels and titles, either had to do with Noel Coward or were his plays and ephemera: playbills from theatres where his work had appeared, small holiday editions of his plays. There was photo after framed photo, all standing around the large room on square tables, round tables, and long, library tables. The lamps, lighting the room to a soft, rosy glow, were dimmed by pink silk shades. Over the fireplace hung what had to be a painting of the man himself—not Cecil but Noel Coward, dressed, no doubt, for one of his plays in a smoking jacket, pipe in hand, seated on the arm of a tapestry-covered chair. Cecil Hawke's passion was evident and established his bonafide interest in Coward's life history. Maybe Hawke really could write, I thought, raising my expectations of the job ahead of me.

“They say I resemble him, you know. Noel Coward.” He patted his small, round stomach. “Except in a few places.”

“Isn't this a totally amazing room?” Jackson said, turning in circles, then pointing to one bit of Coward memorabilia after another. “Who else to write the definitive work on the man's life?”

“Please,” Cecil preened beside me. “I'm sure this lovely creature doesn't want to hear my praises. Though, of course, I'm loath to stop you.” He turned to me, grinning widely. “You would like a peek at the manuscript, am I right?”

Speechless at what I took to be an old British comedy I was caught up in, I only nodded.

“In due time. First, shall we draw up chairs and get to know each other? My wife, Lila, will be in shortly. She does love to make an entrance. Actress, you know. She'll see to tea.”

“Freddy.” He clicked his tongue at his dog and motioned hard with a bent finger to a place beside his chair. The dog, broad head puckered with old scars, settled to the parquet floor with a painful grunt.

Getting to know each other became a discourse on Coward's
Blithe Spirit
between Jack and Cecil. Then criticism of other writers, Hawke quoting Noel Coward on Gertrude Stein, “‘
Literary diarrhea'
, as Coward would say.”

I smiled from time to time, then gave up and looked at my
nails which hadn't been manicured in months. I picked at one
obvious raw cuticle, making it especially interesting, then crossed my legs, recrossed them, and twisted in my chair. I scratched my neck, cleared my throat, blew out a bored sigh, and thought of a new mystery I might write, about a guy so in love with Noel Coward he took on his persona and then turned up dead; shot by a critic who hated Coward passionately. Would Cecil Hawke recognize himself? I decided that he would not. Not in the hands of a consummate professional like me.

After twenty minutes, Cecil struck the arms of his chair a solid whack, bringing the two of them back to the room and me. “But we've been neglecting you,” Cecil leaned over and set his hand, with the missing knuckle, on my knee, softly kneading the cotton of my slacks, then thumping my leg twice. “I've seen your work in the local newspaper, haven't I? Something about a murder, wasn't it? Grisly business, as I remember. A woman? Migrant workers?” He gave a delicate shudder. “Hardly what you would expect in this Eden, is it? I mean, for heaven's sake, wouldn't you think farm workers could keep their battles to their own little places?”

I bristled. I was about to say something when Jackson, recognizing the signs, reached over and put his hand on mine, holding me still, warning me to keep quiet. I swallowed my comeback about one immigrant being much like another—since he was, after all, an Englishman—and settled for a blank, noncommittal, but reddening, face.

Cecil got up. “You two wait here. I'll see why Lila hasn't appeared with our tea and I'll get the manuscript, such as it is. I must say you'll soon know why I require an editor of your caliber, Emily. But I'll be back in just a …”

The heavy, dark oak door to the hall opened with a solid bang against the wall behind it. A woman came in with a wide, Angelina Jolie stride, startling the dog. Tall and thin, with flowing, straight, white-blond hair, Lila Montrose-Hawke wore neatly pressed, wide-legged, white linen slacks with a red embroidered top. Gold, filigreed earrings hung to her shoulders, distending her earlobes. She was well tanned. Maybe a little too tanned, her skin having the leathery look to it that older, wealthy women get. Too many tennis games. Too many hours at the pool. Too many cocktails at the bar. Too many years living up to the trophy-wife image. I put her age at well over forty. Older than Cecil Hawke, but maybe not. Men like Cecil—the hearty, pink kind—didn't age as quickly.

Lila Montrose-Hawke hurried to where I sat, bent, and grabbed me before I could struggle up from my chair. I was given a quick, hard hug, and then a long, soulful look from a pair of clear, green eyes. “You must be Emily, Jackson's ex. He's told us so much about you.” She planted a kiss on first one and then the other of my cheeks, holding me close and whispering, “Don't mind if Cecil has his hands all over you. It's just his way. Just his way, darling. He doesn't even like women.”

I was dropped back to my chair as she turned to Jackson, who'd had enough time to stand for the onslaught of being hugged
and kissed. Her strong hands held his shoulders so he couldn't get away. She held him just a moment too long, looking soulfully into his eyes, passing on a message I'd seen a lot of women transmit.
She moved her body close to his, her knee pushing slightly
between his legs. I glanced at Cecil but he was looking out the window. I had to be embarrassed for them all by myself.

Lila went to Cecil and turned her left cheek, offering this small target, then quickly pulling away and back toward the doorway. “I'll see to tea,” she said over her shoulder and was gone; the whirlwind stilled.

I looked from Jackson to Cecil, who seemed to think nothing of the entrance and exit we'd just experienced. It had to be me, I told myself. Not used to city people any more. Certainly not used to English city people. But her warning …
hands all over me
? Oh God. I could have groaned aloud.