Dog Bless You (4 page)

Rochester belched again, then yawned and went back to
sleep, and I returned to the report. When Lili walked in, the big dog jumped up
and threw himself at her as if there was nothing wrong with him. I was just as
glad to see her as he was, and I stood up to kiss her, with the dog trying to
nuzzle his way between us.

She pulled away and handed me the paper bag with our
lunch, then turned to the dog. “What’s the matter, boy? You not feeling well?”
she asked, chucking him under the chin. “You look fine.”

She wore a scoop-necked black sundress and matching ballet
flats. Her exuberant auburn curls streamed around her face, and her upper body
was deeply tanned.

“Don’t believe that angelic look,” I said, as I spread
our lunch out on my desk. “He might hurl again at any minute.”

“Gee, that really boosts my appetite.”

Rochester jumped up and put his paws on the desk, and
she hauled him down with a firm hand on his collar, then pulled a chair up
across from me. “So what did you want to talk about?” she asked, beginning to
unroll the paper around her sub.

“I met with Babson this morning. He wants me to take on
a new job, and he’s going to shift responsibility for press relations for the
campaign to the News Bureau,” I said.

She picked up the sub. “What are you going to be doing”

In between taking bites of my own sub, and draughts of
black cherry soda, I explained to her about Friar Lake. “What do you think?” I
asked when I finished.

“Are you sure it’s the right move for you?” she asked.
“Since you got out of prison you’ve been like a pinball, bouncing around. Tech
writing, adjunct teaching, then public relations. Now this. Have you ever even
been on an executive education course?”

It was hard not to sound defensive, but Lili was right,
and she was just voicing the fears I had myself. “My boss sent a couple of us
to a two-day seminar to learn HTML, back when nobody knew what it was,” I said.
“But we met in an office building and went home at the end of the day.”

“I think Babson is trying to make this seem a lot
easier than it’s going to be,” Lili said, sitting back in her chair. “Not that
you can’t handle it—I know you, you’re smart and you work hard when you need
to. But I think you need to take a day or two and think this through before you
jump blindly into it.”

“But if I don’t take the job, then I’m unemployed again,
scrambling to piece together a living from freelance work and adjunct teaching.
At my age, with my background, I’m not going to get too many opportunities.”

“Slow down,” Lili said, reaching out for my hand. “I’m
not saying you should turn the job down, and even if you did I doubt you’d be
out on the street. Just slow down and look at all your options.”

I took a deep breath. “You’re right. I don’t even know
where this place is yet.”

“Then let’s check.” She nodded toward my computer, and I
turned the monitor so she could see it. I pulled up Google Maps and searched
for the property’s address, on Birch Road. There was no indication of it on the
map view; I had to switch to the satellite view to figure out where along the
road the buildings were.

Leighville sat on a bluff overlooking the Delaware,
halfway between Stewart’s Crossing to the south and Easton to the north. The
college’s buildings occupied most of the hilltop, while the town was spread on
the flat plain between hill and river. Friar Lake was about five miles north of
campus, along a country road that passed behind the town and then dipped down
toward the Delaware. It was about a mile inland from the river.

I zoomed the computer’s display and saw the abbey
proper, laid out as I’d seen in the plans. A two-lane road curved from the
hilltop church down to the lakefront where a suburban-style ranch house hugged
one shore. The roadway continued to the street through a stand of trees.

“That must be where the mendicant friars lived,” I
said, pointing.

“I didn’t think mendicants ever got this far out of the
city,” she said.

“You know what they are?”

“Of course. Didn’t you?”

I shook my head. “I’m Jewish. What do I know from
friars, mendicant or otherwise?”

“I’m as Jewish as you are. Just better educated, I
guess.”

Rochester was sitting on his haunches so peacefully
that I rewarded him with a piece of fatty roast beef. Better his cholesterol
than mine. “I got my degree from Eastern College,” I said. “That should tell
you something.”

“Back when I was doing photojournalism, I did a lot of
inner-city shoots,” she said. “I ran across friars in a bunch of different
places, living among the poor, providing education and medical services.”

“When they get too old to mendicate, or whatever the
verb form is, they retire to abbeys, according to Babson’s report. The monks
lived in the dormitory on top of the hill, next to the church, while the friars
needed more modern quarters, all on one floor.”

“Where are the monks and friars now?”

“They relocated to an abbey in western Pennsylvania
after the property was sold.”

She looked at her watch. “I’m done with class for the
day. Want to drive out and look at the place?” Though she didn’t have to, she
was teaching one class during the summer session, because that cut one course
from her load during the regular term, which gave her more time for her own
photography.

“Sure, as long as Rochester’s up to it.”

The big goof heard his name, raised his head, and nodded
it once, his metal collar and rabies tag jangling.

“Let me go back to my office and close up for the day,”
Lili said. “I’ll meet you in the employee parking lot in fifteen.”

I took Rochester on a circuitous route behind Fields
Hall, hoping that if he had anything inside he needed to evacuate he could do
it outdoors rather than in my car. But all he did was sniff a lot and pee a
couple of times.

Lili was standing by my car as we approached. She had a
digital SLR camera slung around her neck and a cargo vest over her sundress. I
knew that the pockets contained extra lenses, filters, and a rubber lens hood.

She had pulled her curls into a ponytail and exchanged
the ballet flats for a pair of duck boots—a smart move, given how marshy the
college property had become after the week of heavy rains. Who knew how bad it
would be out at Friar Lake, especially if the property had been abandoned for a
while.

We hopped into the Beemer and headed out. “I didn’t
tell you before,” I said, as I navigated my way through the campus to the road
that would lead us down to Friar Lake. “But I got roped into this College
Connection thing. Have you heard about it?”

“I was in the meeting, Steve.” She leaned against the
door and looked at me. “I slipped in late, and I waved to you as we were
walking out. But you were busy talking to Jackie Conrad and you didn’t see me.”

“She lent me a brain cell for the meeting.” Before I
could explain, though, we reached the bottom of the hill, where the swale on
both sides of the road was underwater, and I had to focus on driving. The Beemer’s
rattle startled a couple of mallards who lifted gracefully and winged away.

I drove carefully, staying to the center of the country
road as much as possible. “I don’t need the extra aggravation of this College Connection
thing,” I said. “I wish there was a way I could duck out of it, but I’m sure
Babson will be on me all the time about Friar Lake and he’ll definitely notice
if I drop out.”

“You’ll have to come up with something that doesn’t
take a lot of effort on your part,” she said. “We can brainstorm once you read
the book.”

“Yeah, my homework,” I grumbled.

She elbowed me. “You sound just like a student.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I love to read,” I said. “I just
hate having my books chosen for me. I had enough of that getting my master’s
degree. I remember after I graduated walking into a bookstore and realizing
that I could pick any book I wanted and have plenty of time to read it.”

The land along the road was flat and the water table
high. A hedgerow of mature oak, maple and sassafras framed the farms we passed.
It looked like the kind of place Peter Rabbit would live, and as I drove I
longed for the easy days of childhood when all I had to worry about was when my
library books were due.

We came to the turnoff for Friar Lake and I pulled to a
halt at the access road. It was blocked by a rope tied around a pair of leafy
green maples. A sign that read “Private Property No Trespassing” hung from it.

I stepped gingerly out of the car. The ground
underneath my feet was spongy, but the gravel road seemed in pretty good shape.

“Not much of a deterrent,” I said, as I undid the
simple half-hitch knot on one end of the rope and dropped it to the ground. I returned
to the car, kicking the dirt off my soles before I got back in.

The road wound through a stand of trees and then
branched in two. The right fork led to a low-slung ranch house, and beyond it
the sparkling waters of Friar Lake, with a couple of ducks paddling near the
shore. To our left, the road climbed up the hill to the monastery. “Might as
well start down here,” I said, turning right. I pulled up in the gravel lot in
front of the ranch and we piled out.

Rochester immediately took off for a tree at one side
of the house and lifted his leg when he reached it. Lili and I began to walk
carefully around the exterior of the building where the friars had lived. She’d
been smart to switch to boots; I was still wearing my deck shoes, which had a
good sole but were already getting mucked up.

I recalled from the report that the building had been
acquired by the monastery in the 1970s to serve as housing for the friars. It
looked like it had once been a standard suburban ranch, with a clapboard
extension on the right, a series of windows implying that the bedrooms were
down there. On the left was what looked like a large workroom or assembly room,
and then a double-wide garage.

I looked around for Rochester. “Where is that dog?” I
didn’t see him, but I could hear him. It sounded like he was digging. “Oh, no.
Rochester! Don’t you eat anything!”

I took off running around the side of the house, my
shoes desperate for purchase on the slippery wet grass. Rochester was a few
hundred yards away, down near the water’s edge, digging at something.

“He’s going to eat some dead thing and then throw up
again, I just know it,” I called back to Lili, who was following me at a more
careful pace.

I slid on a muddy patch and lost my balance. But I was
able to windmill my arms and catch myself. “Rochester!” I yelled. “Bad dog.
Stop that right now!”

He ignored me. Not a surprise. I stepped more carefully
toward him, my deck shoes covered in mud and squelching as I walked. “You’re in
big trouble, buster!”

I finally got close enough to grab hold of his collar
and pull him back. Looking down, I saw what he’d been digging up.

A decomposed human hand, palm up, attached to partially
skeletonized arm which continued down into the ground.

Lili was right behind me. Neither of us screamed or
shrieked, but I caught my breath and  heard Lili do the same thing. We’d both
been around dead bodies before. Lili had been a globe-trotting photojournalist,
and I’d already followed Rochester’s nose for death a couple of times. But each
one still represented a human being who had lived once, and now lived no longer.
It was a sobering thought. I reached for Lili’s hand and squeezed.

I bent down and tugged at Rochester’s collar, and he
reluctantly turned away from his new discovery.

The ground beneath our feet was mucky, and Lili stepped
carefully forward and then leaned close to the body. “It’s been here about
three months,” she said, after taking a look. “You can tell by the level of
decomposition.”

“How do you know that?” I asked, still holding tight to
the dog’s collar.

“I’ve seen a lot of bodies,” she said. “In war people
tend to bury their dead by hand, in shallow graves. The body starts to dry out
after a couple of weeks as maggots eat the flesh. When all that’s left is
tendons and ligaments, like we have here, the beetles take over.”

“That is truly creepy,” I said. “I mean, that you know
that kind of thing.”

She shrugged. “Bodies often rise up like this if they
aren’t buried deep enough, especially when we get rains like we’ve had lately.”
She looked at me curiously. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Are you some
kind of death magnet?”

“Not at all. I just happen to run across bodies.” Not that
I enjoyed seeing them; the first one I discovered was that of Rochester’s
former owner, my neighbor Caroline. Since then—well, it wasn’t something I
wanted to dwell on. But I did have a kind of insatiable curiosity that drove me
to snoop into places I didn’t belong. That’s how I had discovered my ability to
hack into websites – which led, in the end, to my incarceration.

“And this could be perfectly innocent,” I said. “The
Benedictines were in a hurry to move to Western Pennsylvania, and they didn’t
take the time to bury this guy properly.”

She shook her head. “Don’t be sarcastic. I don’t think
he’s a friar. If the Benedictines had buried friars back here, this body would
have been in a coffin, and there would be a headstone or a marker.”

“Well, it could be he or she died naturally and the
family or whoever couldn’t afford a funeral. They might have thought this was
sacred ground, because of the abbey nearby. The property’s been deserted for
the last few months, so anybody could have gotten in here and left the body.”

“It doesn’t matter right now how the body got here,
Steve. Even if this person died naturally, it’s not right that he or she was
dumped out here. The police need to figure out who this was and what happened.
And you don’t need to have any part of that. Let’s get out of this mud and call
911.”

We turned and trudged back up to the house where the
friars had lived. I had left Rochester’s leash in the car, so I was forced to
walk like a hunchback with one hand around his collar. Mud was seeping into my
shoes, and I’d lost my interest in exploring the property.

“Why don’t I call Rick Stemper directly?” I said. “I
don’t think this is his jurisdiction,  but he’ll know what we should do.” And because
I had helped him in the past, he might let me snoop around in the
investigation, I thought, but I didn’t say that to Lili.

“Fine. Whoever. Just make the call. I’ll keep the dog
busy.”

She took Rochester’s leash and walked off as I dialed Rick’s
cell. My hands were shaking; I guess seeing the dead body did bother me. But I
tried to keep my tone light when Rick answered.

“Hey, Steve, what’s up?”

“I’ve got a little problem and I need your advice.”

“Please tell me this isn’t a criminal problem.
Rochester isn’t snooping around somewhere, is he?”

“I’m afraid he has been. And he found a body.”

There was a silence on Rick’s end. Finally he said, “A
human body?”

“Yeah. At least, I’m assuming there’s a body attached.
Right now there’s only a hand sticking up from the dirt. Kind of like some
creepy horror movie.”

I heard a slight quaver in my voice and resolved to
steel myself. It was just a body, after all. And a stranger. There was probably
an innocent explanation why his hand had risen up from the grave for Rochester
to find.

“Does it look fresh?” he asked.

“Not really. A lot of the flesh is gone. Lili says it
looks about three months old.”

“I’m not even going to ask you how your girlfriend
knows that,” he said. “Where exactly is this body? Or this hand.”

“At Friar Lake. The monastery I was telling you about. Lili
and I took Rochester out here to look around. Before we could get far he
started digging and going nuts.”

Rick sounded like he was thinking out loud. “If the dog
found a hand, then that means the body wasn’t in a coffin,” he said. “That’s
not a good sign.” He took a deep breath. “Here’s what you do, Steve. Don’t
touch anything. Call 911. And then call Tony Rinaldi. The Leighville PD covers
that area.”

I still had Tony’s cell number stored in my phone from
the last time Rochester had found a body, on the Eastern campus. “Will do.”

“And Steve? Try and stay out of this one. Even a cat
only has nine lives.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, keeping it light. But I knew that
there was no way my curiosity was going to let me ignore a dead body dumped at
my feet.

Since there was no imminent emergency, I decided to
call Tony Rinaldi first, rather than 911. “Hey, it’s Steve Levitan,” I said
when he answered. “Does your jurisdiction cover Friar Lake?”

“That’s unincorporated Bucks County, but we respond,”
he said. “What’s up?”

“Rochester dug up a body. Or at least a hand that looks
like it’s still attached to a body.”

“You let your dog disturb a crime scene?”

“Hey, we had no idea it was any kind of scene,” I said.
“We were walking out behind the house by the lake, and after all the rain
lately it looks like a lot of the dirt covering a grave was washed away. I
pulled Rochester away as soon as I saw what he was digging around. I called Rick
Stemper, and he told me to call 911 and then call you. But this isn’t exactly
an emergency, is it? So I just called you.”

“I’ll be there in a half hour. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Do we need to stay here with the body? Or can we go up
the hill and look at the monastery?”

“Is the scene secure?” he asked.

“There’s nobody else here,” I said. “And we’re pretty
far off the road.”

“Just stay in the area, all right?” he said.

“Will do.” I hung up, then took my shoes and socks off
and wiped my feet reasonably clean. I finished up as Lili and my dog returned.

“What did Rick say?” Lili asked.

“He told me to call Tony Rinaldi. Tony’s going to come
out here and take a look. I told him we’d wait up at the monastery.”

I kept a couple of old rags and a roll of paper towels
in the trunk of the BMW for Rochester emergencies, and I managed to do a quick
clean up of his paws, then lay the towels on the back seat. Rochester scrambled
in the back while Lili slipped into the front seat next to me.

“You do realize that this body is no business of
yours,” she said, as we drove about a half-mile up the curving, tree-lined
road. It was late afternoon, but the sun was still strong, dappling the roadway
and dancing between the leaves of the ancient oaks and maples.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you have no reason to nose around in Tony’s
investigation.”

I knew enough about women not to argue, even though I
felt that my new job managing Friar Lake certainly gave me the impetus to look
into who the body belonged to and how it had ended up there. So I just smiled
and pointed out the patches of daisies and black-eyed-Susans, and even a stand
of raspberry canes beginning to come into fruit.

“It’s really a pretty property,” I said, trying to
change the subject.

Lili wasn’t believing me. “Uh-huh,” she said, staring
out the passenger window.

I pulled into a cleared space of gravel in front of the
chapel. “Rochester’s staying in the car this time,” I said. “I don’t need any
more unfortunate discoveries today.”

We both hopped out quickly, closing the doors behind us
before Rochester could weasel his way out. I was still barefoot, and the gravel
was sharp against my tender soles. The front door of the chapel was locked,
which was a good sign. We walked along a concrete path around the corner and
through an arched passage into a broad yard that I recognized from the plans. Roses
had been trained up the sides of the chapel, and in the silence we could hear
the buzz of bees and the chirp of crickets.

“I’m feeling a bit creeped out,” Lili said, rubbing her
bare shoulders. “Too many memories of life in war zones coming back. I want to
walk around a bit on my own.”

I knew that when Lili was faced with troubling
situations, she preferred to approach them through the lens of her camera. I
guess we all have our coping mechanisms.

“Try not to get yourself in any more trouble while I’m
gone.” To soften the words, she leaned over and kissed my cheek.

She walked back out of the yard, and I began checking
the door locks. I found a side entrance into the chapel with a broken lock, and
pushed the door in.

The room was cavernous, three stories tall with an
arched roof, and lined with hard wooden pews. The light coming through the
stained glass windows threw jeweled squares over the solid wood floor. It was spookily
quiet except for a low scratching sound.

 I stood on the scuffed wooden floor, and realized I’d
have to familiarize myself with church architecture pretty quickly.

Through my bare soles I could feel the way thousands of
footsteps had smoothed the way before me. I rarely go into churches, except
ones that have become historical sites, and I felt like an interloper. I hoped
that the souls of all the dead monks and friars who had passed through the
place weren’t going to get cranky over Eastern’s plans to secularize the place.

To my right I could see where the two wings branched
off, and the rounded space at the far end. The long-gone crucifix left a
ghostly shadow on the wall above the dais. That reminded me of the dead body
down by the lake. Who was it? If Lili was right about how long the body had
been in the ground, that meant the Benedictines had already decamped for
western Pennsylvania by the time it was buried.

To the outsider, Bucks County looked like an idyllic
place. In the spring, dogwoods and magnolias blossomed, and in the summer
bright red strawberries glistened in the U-pick fields and acres of farmland
swayed with corn stalks. The fall brought a blaze of color as the leaves
changed, and in the winter the landscape was cloaked with a white blanket.

Revolutionary War landmarks dotted the river towns,
children rode their bikes along the narrow sidewalks, and McMansions on
immaculately groomed acre lots housed wealthy commuters. But pockets of poverty
hid around the curves of country roads, and Rick had told me stories of domestic
violence and drug abuse in the midst of the suburbs.

I knew enough not to generalize about felons—after all,
I was one myself. But even out here in the countryside, people were willing to
commit murder to achieve their goals. Whether the body down by the lake
belonged to an innocent victim or a hardened criminal, it was still a reminder
that danger could lurk around any corner.

I shivered and walked forward. The dais was raised
about two feet above the floor, and a beach-ball sized hole loomed in the
vertical support wall. The scratching noises were louder, and I worried that
animals nested under there. I’d have to hire an exterminator to come in and
clear the place out. Great. More displaced souls to haunt the space.

I decided against having a close encounter with any
home-protecting wildlife, and returned to the open yard, where I spotted Lili
down on her right knee, focusing on the outline of the chapel against the sky.
I didn’t want to disturb her, so I walked behind the chapel to a grove of old-growth
maples and pines. A doe grazing in the sunshine raised her head, looked at me,
and then took off through the woods.

Friar Lake was turning out to be a lot wilder than I’d
expected. I walked back to the dormitory building, where I noticed a broken window.
I looked through it to a narrow monastic cell. The Benedictines hadn’t left any
furniture behind, so the only thing in the room was a closet with an open door.
It was going to take a lot of imagination and hard work to make this place into
a comfortable retreat. All the emptiness continued to spook me and I turned
back to where I’d seen Lili.

She was still there, aiming her camera at the stark
outline of the wrought-iron spire against the bright blue sky. She snapped a
final shot and stood up as my cell rang.

“Hey, Tony. We’re up at the abbey. We’ll meet you back
down at the lakefront.”

I felt silly as I walked beside Lili to the car, tiptoeing
over the gravel to avoid cutting my feet. Rochester greeted us as if we’d
abandoned him, and I had to push back against his snout to keep him in the rear
seat.