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Authors: Neil S. Plakcy

Tags: #humorous mysteries, #pennsylvania, #dog mysteries, #cozy mystery, #academic mysteries, #golden retriever

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BOOK: Dog Bless You
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Trust

Rochester didn’t get up when I opened the door to my
office, and I hurried to see if he was all right. His nose was warm, but he sat
up, and when I hooked his leash he got to all fours and followed me outside.

The rain had ended and the clouds overhead were moving
away as I led him around the gray-black stone bulk of Fields Hall to the Cafette,
an on-campus sandwich shop in an old carriage house. It was a worn,
homey-looking place, decorated with Eastern pennants and faded T-shirts, with
old wooden picnic tables and benches. Rochester stopped beside a trash can and
lifted his leg to pee, his nostrils quivering as he did so.

I looped his leash around the leg of an Adirondack
chair painted in Eastern’s colors of light blue and white and went inside. The
kitchen took up most of the back of the room, while the front was cluttered
with small tables and uncomfortable metal chairs. Off to the left was an
inglenook, almost a separate room, with a fireplace in the center and
overstuffed chairs around it. In the colder months the staff kept a fire going,
and it was a favorite place for students to curl up and study. In the summer,
the multi-paned windows at the far end were kept cranked open and a warm breeze
floated through.

I ordered a strawberry-banana smoothie and a pair of
chocolate croissants, then went back out to Rochester. A cluster of undergrads
filled one of the nearby picnic tables, each of them busily texting on their
phones. A couple of other chairs were occupied by individual students, some
reading textbooks, others intent on their iPads or laptops. A white butterfly
swooped around the oak branches above my head.

I settled down in the oversized chair and began to
read. Babson’s plan included courses that might last anywhere from three hours
to three weeks, taught by our regular faculty. A professor of accounting might
offer an update on tax law, while a professor of folklore could host a
residential program during the summer on Pennsylvania Dutch handicrafts.

“I guess you college types don’t work much during the
summer, huh?”

I looked up to see Rick Stemper standing beside my
chair. The only indication that he was a detective was the Stewart’s Crossing
Police Department logo on the breast of his white polo shirt—and the fact that
his shirttail was out, covering the holstered gun attached to his belt.

“I’m working,” I said, holding up the report. “What are
you doing up here?”

Rochester jumped up to greet him, and Rick ruffled the
big dog’s furry neck. He had a tall clear plastic glass of lemonade in his
hand, and he pulled another Adirondack chair over to face mine. He reached over
and took one of the croissants.

“You’re a bad man,” Rick said. “You know I’m trying to
watch my waistline.”

“And you’ve got it right out there where you can see
it,” I said.

“Asshole.” At least he said it with a smile. And I was
kidding him, of course. Rick was almost as lean as he’d been when we were at Pennsbury
High together. We hadn’t been friends then—just acquaintances and occasional
classmates. But after I returned to Stewart’s Crossing we bonded over our
divorces, and the bond between us had been solidified when he adopted Rascal
from the local shelter. The
A
ustralian
shepherd had become Rochester’s best friend.

“How’s the Rascal?” I asked, picking up the other
croissant before Rick could grab it.

“Wild as ever. Yesterday he tried to herd Mrs. Kim’s
schnauzers.”

Mrs. Kim was Rick’s elderly Korean neighbor; she was a
sucker for rescued schnauzers and usually had at least three or four in the
house.

“How’d that work out?”

“One of them nipped him on the nose, and he came
whimpering back to me.”

“So what brings you up here? Digging up hidden secrets
of faculty members?”

“Nah. Looking into a series of robberies in Stewart’s
Crossing, and turns out there have been similar ones up here. Tony Rinaldi and
I met this morning to compare notes. Thought I’d get something cold before
heading back downriver.”

I had met Tony, Rick’s counterpart in Leighville, a
year before, when the investigation of Caroline’s murder led to Eastern
College. “But the towns don’t share a border, do they?”

Rick shook his head. “No, Washington’s Crossing is in
between, along with a big chunk of unincorporated Bucks County. But in each
case, the robbers are targeting single-family houses on oversized lots.”

“Like Crossing Estates?” When Rick and I were kids, the
hills above Stewart’s Crossing had been lined with endless fields of corn and
U-pick strawberry farms. But in the early eighties, a couple of larger farms
had been developed into a sprawling landscape of mini-mansions.

 “Exactly,” Rick said. “Every house either has no
burglar alarm, or had it shut off at the time of the break-in. No dogs to make
noise either.” He pointed at Rochester, who looked up at him in hopes of a
piece of croissant. “Homeowners drive luxury cars. Each house has sliding glass
doors with cheap locks and no pry-bar keeping them in place.”

“Doesn’t breaking the glass make noise?”

He shook his head. “These crooks don’t break the glass,
they pick the sliding door lock. Then they have access to the whole house.”

“Any leads?”

“Not a one. They don’t disturb much in the house, for a
day or two the homeowner doesn’t even realize he’s been burgled. The thieves
are careful not to leave fingerprints, and they’ve only been taking small
high-value items like watches, jewelry and collectibles.”

Rochester lifted his head up as if he’d been listening.
The sunlight glinted off his fine, wiry whiskers, which sprouted from his
eyebrows as well as his muzzle. “Nothing showing up in pawn shops?” I asked.

Rick held up a hand to me. “I know, your Hardy Boy
senses are all twitchy. But I don’t need any of your computer mojo – or your
dog’s crazy coincidental discoveries. It looks like they’re pawning outside the
area—maybe Philly or New York. Tony and I are upping patrols in the targeted
areas, and I’m going to put out an advisory memo to the at-risk neighborhoods.”

Rick might crack wise about me being one of the Hardy
Boys, but the truth was that Rochester had a nose for crime, and I had computer
research skills well beyond the capabilities of the Stewart’s Crossing police
force.

 “I had a scare this morning,” I said, after taking a
gulp of my smoothie. “I thought I was getting canned.”

“And you weren’t?”

“Nope. Just getting reassigned. You ever hear of a
place called Friar Lake?”

“The Abbey of our Lady of the Waters?” Rick said. “Sure.
We went out there on a CYO trip once.”

“I never knew you were Catholic,” I said.

“St. Ignatius all the way,” he said. “I was even an
altar boy. No cracks about diddling priests, please.”

St. Ignatius was the big Catholic church in Yardley, and
I’d known a bunch of kids from Stewart’s Crossing who had belonged to the
Catholic Youth Organization there. “Seriously?” I asked. “I never pictured you
as the religious type.”

“I did it for the basketball,” he said. “We had a great
coach and a strong team.”

I digested that piece of information. It’s funny how
you can know somebody for years—I’d known Rick as far back as junior high, been
a close friend for more than a year—and still learn new things.

“What makes a nice Jewish boy like you interested in
Friar Lake?”

“The monks and friars have moved on, and Eastern is
buying the property. President Babson wants to create a conference center out
there, and he wants me to run it.”

“Full-time gig?”

“Yup.”

He raised his palm and we high-fived. “Santos will be
happy.” Rick worked out at the same gym as my parole officer, and I knew they
had talked about me once or twice. “Steady job, something to keep you busy.”

“I’m still figuring it out. My boss told me my job with
the capital campaign was being phased out, and I thought I was SOL. I was
freaking out for an hour or two, until Babson gave me the news.” I picked up my
smoothie. “He pretty much came right out and said he knew about my criminal
record. Which makes it kind of surprising he’s willing to trust me.”

“Didn’t you have to disclose it when you first applied
there?”

“Yeah, but that was just an adjunct job. The chair of
the English department was my professor when I was in school, and I was
embarrassed to tell him. When I filled out the application for the part-time
job I checked the box that I’d been convicted of a felony, and I wrote a few
sentences of explanation. But I doubt he ever saw that form—it was just a
personnel thing.”

“What about when you switched to the full-time job?”

“When Mike MacCormac offered me the job, I told him
that I was on parole for a computer offense back in California, and he waved
his hand like it made no difference to him. Since I was already on the college
payroll by then, the only forms I had to fill out were to transfer from
part-time to full-time status.”

“How do you think Babson knew, then?”

“He knows everything that goes on at that campus. He
must never sleep.”

“Better keep your nose clean then,” Rick said. “You
screw up, you won’t just have me and Santos to deal with. You’ll have President
Nose-in-your-Business, too.”

“Yeah, thanks. Just what I need right now – a little
extra pressure.” Of course there was also my own internal desire to snoop
around in computer databases where I didn’t belong. I had justified my
activities over the last year because I was trying to find evidence to identify
some very bad people. But I knew I had a compulsion and it was tough to resist.

We sipped our drinks, and Rochester snoozed by my feet.

“So,” Rick said after a minute or two, “I had a date on
Saturday night.”

“Stop the presses,” I said. Rick was a serial dater; I
hadn’t known him to get involved in a relationship since his ex-wife left him
for a fireman a couple of years before.

“Not a first date,” he said. “It was like our third or
fourth.”

“Anybody I know?”

He nodded. “You met her once. Paula Madden.”

“The crazy shoe lady who’s obsessed with her little
dachshund?”

“Hey.”

“Sorry. I meant to say, that attractive blonde who runs
the shoe store at the mall? The one with the adorable little dog?”

“You don’t have to lay it on that thick.” Rick slurped
some more lemonade. “The dog is kind of a problem. She takes him everywhere.”

Lili and I had met Paula when we were investigating the
death of the woman who had bred her doxy, Lush. Since then I knew Lili had been
back to Paula’s store a few times to buy shoes.

“So?” I asked. “You like dogs.”

“Yeah, but I don’t carry Rascal around with me in a
little shoulder bag. Or feed him from my plate at dinner. Or call him my little
cuddly-wuddly.”

“Hey, I don’t know what you do with him when no one
else is around. But I can’t see you carrying him.” Rascal was as big as
Rochester, which put him in the 70-80 pound range. “But you must like her, if
you’ve gone out with her a couple of times.”

“She’s lots of fun, when she’s not obsessing about the
dog,” he said. “You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but she’s not a girly girl
at all. She loves football and country-western line dancing.”

“Don’t tell me she dances with the dog,” I said.

“Thank god, no. She says country music makes him
drowsy, so she leaves him in her bag and he sleeps.”

“You know what happens when you play a country song
backwards,” I said.

“You get your truck back, your dog back and your girl
back,” he said, standing up. “I know all the same jokes you do.”

My phone buzzed again. Great. I was due in yet another
meeting – something called the College Connection. I couldn’t remember what it
was but I was due in the auditorium in Granger Hall, which housed
communications and performing arts.

 I rousted Rochester from his slumber. He still didn’t
look one hundred percent, but I hoped if he slept the afternoon away he’d be
better by dinner time. I gave him some fresh water when we got back to my
office, and after he drank he slumped to the floor and rolled on his side.
“Take a nap, boy,” I said, as if he needed prodding to do that. I hoped he
wouldn’t make a mess. And who knows, maybe while I was gone he’d come up with a
slate of courses that would make Friar Lake a huge success.

Right. Rochester was a smart dog—too smart to get
caught up in human problems.

Connections

I had to scramble to make it across campus to Granger
Hall, and with the sun back out the air was hot and heavy. As I walked and
sweated I grumbled about the proliferation of meetings in academic
environments. At least in the corporate world, there were deadlines and profit
projections to meet; in academia, meetings seemed to spawn more meetings, with
little progress. I hadn’t bothered to investigate the meeting request from
President Babson—attendance wasn’t optional at meetings he called anyway. I clicked
“attend” in the right box on the email and sent in the response, then forgot
all about it.

As I approached Granger Hall, I ran into Jackie Conrad
from the biology department. I’d gone to her for help earlier in the spring about
a kind of poison that had been used in the murder of a dog breeder, and enjoyed
her company. “You know anything about this meeting?” I asked, as I held open
the big glass door for her.

She was a tall, broad-shouldered blonde, a former
veterinarian who taught anatomy and physiology classes at Eastern. She was
wearing her white lab coat, which I figured meant she’d just come from a lab.

“You didn’t read the attachment?” she asked.

“There was an attachment? To what, the meeting
request?”

“Yup. It was about some non-profit that exposes
inner-city teenagers to college life. Our beloved president signed Eastern up
to participate this summer. We’re getting our first group at the beginning of
next week.”

We ran into a few other faculty members and all of us
trooped into the auditorium together. I was surprised there were only about
thirty people in the room, a mix that leaned heavily toward administrators.
Jackie was one of about a dozen professors there—the other couple hundred must
have been on summer break, or too savvy to click “accept” on an unknown meeting
request.

Babson was up on the stage next to a video screen,
talking to a tech from the IT department who had a laptop open in front of him.

Jackie opened her shoulder bag and held up a small
stuffed animal that looked like a plush gray crab with a starfish attached on a
long, nobby cord. Rochester would destroy it in about sixty seconds.

“I recognize that,” I said. “It’s a brain cell.”

She held it up to her head like an earring and wiggled
it so the starfish part bobbed up and down. “We can all use a few extra brain
cells during the summer term, don’t you think?”

“You bet. How come you’re not taking some time off?”

“Two teenaged kids who need college educations.
Sometimes I think they could use a few extra brain cells, too.” She looked over
at me. “How are things in the fund-raising department?”

“The capital campaign’s moving along. But then, so am
I.” I told her about the move to Friar Lake.

“Sounds impressive,” she said.

“Scary is more like it. I didn’t apply for the job—just
got moved over there like a chess piece on a board.”

Babson stepped up to the microphone and introduced a
video supplied by the group coming to Eastern, the College Connection. It began
with a couple of menacing inner-city shots—burned out buildings, graffiti,
trashed cars and discarded needles. Then the scene shifted to a bucolic college
campus, much like Eastern’s. A group of teenagers, mostly African-American and
Hispanic, stepped off a bus as if they were entering a foreign country. Over
the next few minutes, we watched them reading, sitting in classes, playing
pick-up volleyball games and exploring farms and forests.

By the end of the video, these kids, who had started
out looking like gang-bangers, had been transformed into contemporary college
students. It was a pat video, yet it had an undeniable power.

“Did we somehow sign up to participate in this
project?” I whispered to Jackie.

“If you responded to the meeting request, you did.”

I slumped back in the plush armchair. I was always
complaining about people who didn’t read emails, who blindly hit “reply to all”
and committed other electronic sins. And here I was, as guilty as the rest of
them.

Babson stepped up to the podium after the video
finished. He cued the geek in the orchestra pit to begin showing a series of
PowerPoint slides, as he sketched out what the group of CC kids would
experience at Eastern. They were going to read the first book in the
Hunger
Games
trilogy, and watch the movie. Then they would meet in small seminars
with faculty members to discuss issues in that professor’s discipline.

“Professor Conrad has already volunteered to lead a
discussion on genetic modification,” Babson said, pointing toward Jackie. I
immediately sat up in my seat next to her, not wanting Babson to see me slouch.
“Professor Shelton will teach a seminar on the totalitarian regimes of the past
and present.”

He looked out at the rest of us. “I hope you will all
consider how you can connect your own disciplines to the material in the
novels. I’m pleased that so many of our administrators have volunteered to lead
sections. Many of you have graduate degrees, and I look forward to seeing what
you can contribute.”

The rest of the program would include social events,
explorations of the area around Leighville, and a series of college-themed
movies, including
Love Story, Legally Blonde, Wonder Boys
and
A
Beautiful Mind
.

“Babson could have picked
Animal House
,” I
whispered to Jackie.

“I think these kids will be wild enough without the
incentive.”

Babson let us go a few minutes later, with the promise
of many emails to follow.

“What am I supposed to talk about?” I asked Jackie as
we walked out. “I haven’t read the book or seen the movie. And I have this
whole other project to work on.”

“You teach English, don’t you? As an adjunct?”

“I have. I don’t know if I will be in the fall.” I
doubted I’d have the time to teach even one section as I was trying to set up
Friar Lake.

“It’s a book, Steve. Surely you can find something to
talk about.”

I should have been excited about the College
Connection; it was an interesting experiment, a chance to engage with students
other than the traditional ones at Eastern, and maybe have a real impact on a
teenager’s life. But I was overwhelmed—first the assignment to Friar Lake, and
now this. And I realized I hadn’t told Lili about my new job yet. I knew she’d
be happy for me, even though it meant I’d be relocating away from the campus
and we’d lose the opportunity for casual get-togethers.

When I checked my mail slot at Fields Hall, I found a
copy of
The Hunger Games
there. Even though I loved to read, the idea of
having a book assigned didn’t sit well with me. “Great, homework,” I said,
picking it up. I started to wonder why people would go to academic seminars at
a place like Friar Lake—who wanted assigned reading as a grown-up?

When I got back to my office Rochester was sprawled
across the tongue-and-groove oak floor, sleeping. I tiptoed to my desk and went
back to the report on Friar Lake.

The more I read, the more scared I got. The property needed
a lot of work to make it suitable for the kind of continuing education classes
Babson wanted to offer. The large open yard between the religious and secular
portions of the complex would be landscaped for relaxation, with sculptures and
cozy areas for one-on-one meetings or small outdoor classes when the weather
was fine.

I didn’t know a thing about construction. My father
used to joke that I didn’t know which end of the screwdriver you hammer the
nails with. I had always preferred to read or watch TV or play kickball and “Mother,
May I?” in the street with my friends instead of hanging around in his basement
workshop learning about the intricacies of table saws and drill presses. When
he did coax me into helping him it was always for simple jobs, like sorting
nails or sanding rough wood.

Rochester woke up, looked at me, and groaned.

“Oh, no, you’re not going to hurl again, are you?” I
jumped up and opened the French doors that led to the garden outside my office.
He made a deep belching noise and opened his mouth wide, but nothing came out. Then
he yawned and went back to sleep.

I closed the doors, shutting out the hot air that was
already flooding in, and went back to my desk. I was still reading the report
when Mike knocked on my door frame. A former college wrestler, he was thick-set
and muscular, with dark hair and a heavy five o’clock shadow.

“You spoke to Babson?” he asked.

“Yup. “

Mike walked over and scratched Rochester behind his
ears, then sat down across from me.

“You could have told me Babson had a new job for me,” I
said. “I thought I was getting canned.”

“You know how he gets if someone steals his thunder.
What’s the job?”

I sketched the plan out for him. “It’s huge. I’ve been
reading the feasibility study he commissioned and I still don’t have a handle
on it. He wants me to move out there once the renovation work starts. Can I keep
this office until then?”

“Nobody else needs this office for now. And you’ll have
to figure out a transition plan to shift your work away, and that’ll take you a
while.”

I nodded. “I’ll set up a meeting with Ruta del Camion
at the News Bureau and start passing over my files and bringing her up to speed
on my work in progress.”

Mike stood up. “Let me know if you need anything.” He
leaned over to shake my hand. “Congratulations and good luck.”

“Thanks.”

I was glad I could keep my office for a while, because
I wasn’t eager to relocate off campus. I had started feeling comfortable here—I
knew where I could walk Rochester, where all the good lunches were down in
Leighville, and I liked being able to meet Lili for coffee in the middle of the
day. I made a note to check how far Friar Lake was from the campus. Would I be
able to move back and forth easily?

Rochester groaned again, and rolled over. It was
already past lunch time, and the morning’s smoothie and croissant felt like
ancient history. I didn’t want to leave him alone again, but I needed something
to eat and a cup of coffee, and I wanted to talk to Lili.

I dialed her office number. “Hey, sweetie, I need a
huge favor,” I said. I explained about Rochester’s illness. “Can you pick up
some lunch for us and bring it over here? I don’t want to leave him here for
too long. And I have some news to share. Good, I think.”

“I’ve been jonesing for a roast beef hoagie from
Demetrio’s,” she said, mentioning a sandwich shop in Leighville famous among
undergraduates for its low prices and large portions.

“You fly, I’ll buy,” I said. “Make it two, and let’s
split a bottle of Black Cherry Wishniak.” That was my favorite soda, a
Philadelphia invention that Demetrio’s stocked in tall glass bottles.

“You got it. I’ll be at your office in a half hour or
so.”

Lili and I had developed a nice groove, where she knew
without being told the way I liked my sandwich—on a long white submarine roll,
with lettuce, tomato and Russian dressing, with a small bag of salt and vinegar
potato chips.

I roused Rochester and took him outside. Then back in
my office I poured fresh water into his bowl and gave him a rawhide to chew. He
looked expectantly at the jar of treats on my desk, but I shook my head. “Not til
your stomach calms down, bud,” I said.

I sat on the floor next to him and rubbed his belly,
and he stretched, his front legs raised above his head, his back ones almost
vertical. The skin of his belly was taut, covered with a layer of fine golden
hair. “Things are changing, boy,” I said, stroking the soft hair of his head
and neck. “Daddy’s got a new job. I don’t know anything about it, and I’m
feeling kind of scared. So I’m depending on you to be here for me, all right?
You’ve got to feel better and keep on giving me all your puppy love.”

When I was younger, I had a sense of entitlement that
came from growing up in a stable home where I was praised and encouraged. My
parents told me I could do anything I set my mind to, so whenever I had a
setback I had the sense that things would work out fine in the end.

Going to prison had changed that mindset. At
forty-five, I wondered how many fresh starts I had left in me, and I’d seen
what happened to men who had been hit with one too many body blows. I no longer
had my parents as a fallback, and I worried that if I got sick, or laid off, or
suffered some other defeat, I might not be able to bounce back.

I leaned down and buried my head in Rochester’s flank,
mumbling “puppy love” again and again.

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