Dog Bless You (6 page)

I struggled to push those doubts aside and focus on the
task at hand. If there was a chance I had to fight for the job, I was going to
do my best to entrench myself. I began by making a list of everything I had to
do. Coordinate with Joe. Hire a designer to source all the interior finishes. Develop
programming. Create a publicity campaign for the center. Write an operating
budget. Hire support staff.

I also needed to tell President Babson about the body
that we had found out at Friar Lake but I wanted to wait until we had more
information. If the body could be connected to the monks, then it was nothing
to do with Eastern. Though at that point I couldn’t figure out how the college
could be connected to the dead body at all.

I began to sketch out a timeline and realized that I
needed to find an interior designer. I didn’t know anyone like that. But then I
remembered Mark Figueroa, an antique dealer in Stewart’s Crossing. I often ran
into him at The Chocolate Ear café in the center of town, and at some point
he’d told me his college degree was in visual merchandising, and that he’d
worked as an interior designer in New York before opening his store. Maybe he
could help me out, or at least direct me to someone who could.

I stood up. “We’re cutting out early today, Rochester,”
I said. I grabbed his leash, and he hopped up from his place by the French
doors. It was a sunny hot day, and summer-school students crowded the lawns and
pathways, tanning and throwing Frisbees. Most of the girls wore bikini tops and
short shorts, while the boys wore Eastern T-shirts and football shirts and
board shorts that hung down from their waists.

I tried to remember what it had been like to be so
young and carefree, to know that I had my parents to fall back on in case of
emergency. Then Rochester squatted next to an ivied wall and let out a stream
of diarrhea.

“Yuck. Guess feeding you that burger at lunch wasn’t a
good idea.”

I had nothing with me to clean up after him, and I
wouldn’t have been able to get much of the liquid gunk up anyway, so I just
tugged him away and kept my head down, hoping no one had noticed. When we got
back to the BMW I used a baby wipe to clean Rochester’s butt.

When he was all minty fresh, I put the windows down and
we cruised slowly down the River Road, in and out of the shade of weeping
willows and stately maples. Butterflies flew in lazy circles among the daisies
and black-eyed Susans by the river’s edge. Just like the summers of my
childhood. The big difference was that I was the dad now, responsible for
myself and my furry son. And once again, I wished I had my father there to ask
his advice—about Friar Lake, about Rochester, even about my relationship with
Lili.

Decorating wasn’t one of my strengths. My townhouse
looked pretty much the way it had when I inherited it, with bits and pieces of
the furniture I’d grown up with. I remembered when my parents bought the oil
painting of red and yellow sunflowers that hung over the sofa, at a charity
auction at our synagogue. The two wing chairs flanking the sofa had belonged to
my grandparents, and my mother had them reupholstered when she inherited them.
My father had rewired the antique torchiere lamp in the corner.

The worries I had about my ability to handle the new
job were jumbled together with Lili’s comments and memories of my father. He
was an engineer and a home handyman, comfortable tossing around all those terms
Joe had been using. I was a clumsy kid, and my dad didn’t like me hanging
around his basement workshop too much; he was afraid I’d impale myself on a
drill, or cut off some body part with one of his sharp saws. I never did, but I
banged myself up in a dozen other ways.

After my mom died, while I was living in California
with Mary, my father sold our family house and moved to River Bend. He needed
to downsize, he told me then. “Too much crap in the house,” I remembered him
saying. He asked if I wanted anything, and I told him that my memories were
enough.

Now, I wondered what had happened to all his tools.
Throughout my childhood my mom, dad and I spent Sunday afternoons at the flea
market in Lambertville. My mother collected Lenox china, Boehm porcelain birds,
and a host of other knickknacks. I looked through boxes of books, often paperbacks
with the covers ripped off that retailed for a dime or a quarter.

My father always had an eye out for tools. He’d walk up
to a flea market table full of wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers and other
ordinary stuff, and pick out the strange one in the bunch. He’d hold it up and
ask the guy behind the table, “What does this do?”

Usually the owner would say something like, “Damned if
I know.”

“How much do you want for it?” my dad would ask. If the
price was right, he’d buy it and add it to his collection. Any time something
broke around the house, or I needed my bike adjusted or a toy fixed, my dad had
the tool and the skill to handle the repair.

I didn’t talk to him much about my criminal case, and I
don’t think he ever quite understood what the state of California was punishing
me for doing. While I was in prison I shut down every emotion, focused only on
living day to day, and when the warden notified me that my father had died I
don’t think I cried at all.

I didn’t realize how much I missed my father until I returned
to Stewart’s Crossing, into the house full of memories. I kept wanting to ask
his advice, to watch him fix something. I hunted through the artifacts in the
garage, looking for old home movies, hoping I could hear his voice. But he was
gone for good.

When we got home, I put a fresh bowl of water in Rochester’s
crate and tossed in a couple of chew toys. “Come on, boy, time to go into your
house,” I said, standing by the open door of the crate. “Come here.”

Rochester was a pretty well-behaved dog. But he was
still only two years old and he had his wild moments, and though he slept in my
bedroom at night, and had the run of the house while I was around, I was afraid
that if I left him in the house on his own, I’d come home to mayhem and
destruction.

He was sprawled on the floor about ten feet from me,
his head resting on the tile. “Come on, Rochester, let’s go.” He ignored me. I
walked over and grabbed a handful of fur and flesh between his shoulders—where
I’d been told his mother would have gotten hold of him as a pup. He resisted, splaying
his paws on the tile floor.

“I’m only going to be gone a little while,” I said.

He looked up at me with his big brown eyes, as if to
promise he’d be good on his own. “Will you be a good boy?” He thumped his tail
a couple of times, and I gave in. “All right. But if you make a mess you’re in
big trouble.”

He rolled on his side and yawned, and I walked out to
my car.

My hometown is still compact, with a single traffic
light at the corner of Main and Ferry Streets, and a cluster of one- and
two-story buildings that date back to the colonial era, when the Stewart family
ran a ferry service across the Delaware. I grew up in a suburban neighborhood
about a mile south of downtown, and I used to ride my bike into town after school
to buy candy at the five and dime, to check books out of the gingerbread
Victorian library by the lake, or sit on the banks of the lazy, slow-moving
canal and daydream about places that canal could take me, if I only had a mule
and a barge.

River Antiques occupied a restored barn that had once
served as a way station for mules traveling on the canal, which ran from Easton
down to Bristol. It had been a feed store when I was a kid and the countryside
around Stewart’s Crossing was still peppered with farms. Mark had bought it a few
years before, after his grandmother died and left him a houseful of antique
furniture and a business opportunity.

I parked at a spot on Ferry Street a block away and
walked up to the store. The bell over the door jangled as I walked in, and the
door from the back opened. I was surprised that it wasn’t Mark Figueroa who
appeared, but Owen Keely, my neighbor’s son. He was tanned and fit and
something about his ramrod-straight posture seemed out of place when surrounded
by doilies and delicate statuettes. He wore cargo shorts, sneakers, and a
T-shirt that read “Don’t Bro Me if You Don’t Know Me.”

For a moment I worried that I’d interrupted him in the
middle of a robbery, but then I stopped myself. “Hi, Owen. I didn’t know you
worked here.”

“Just part time. It’s been hard to find something
regular.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been reading about how tough it
is for vets to find work after they get out. It’s a real shame.”

“Especially vets who get screwed up in the service,” he
said. He leaned on the counter. “I got hooked on crystal meth in the Army, and
they kicked me out for it. Went to the VA for a while trying to get rehab but
they’re swamped. My parents ended up sending me to a private place to get
cleaned up.” He shrugged. “But people, you know? They just look at the
dishonorable discharge and the drugs and stuff, and they don’t want to take the
chance. There’s plenty of vets who don’t have my troubles who still can’t find
jobs.”

I didn’t know what to say. I felt bad for Owen, but I
had no advice to offer, no place I could send him for a job.

“You came to see Mark?” he asked. “He’s in the back.
He’ll be right out.”

We both stood there. “So, you’re interested in
antiques?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Mark’s been really good about offering me
an opportunity. So I’m learning.”

The back door opened again and Mark stepped out. He was
overly tall and scarecrow-skinny, a few years younger than Rick and I, with a
shock of black hair that stuck out from his forehead. He appeared gangly, but
he was deceptively strong, and I’d seen him handle expensive antiques with
exceeding care.

 “Hey, Steve,” he said. “How did your girlfriend like
the Regaud photo you bought her?” I’d been in his store a few months before and
bought a framed photo of a couple on a rainy Paris street, by a lesser-known
French photojournalist.

“She loved it. Turns out Regaud is one of her
favorites. You have any others?”

He shook his head. “But they turn up now and then. If I
see one I’ll keep you in mind.”

“I’m going to take off for Mrs. Christiansen’s,” Owen
said. “Striker and I loaded the sofa in the van.”

“Thanks, Owen. Call me if you run into any problems.”

He nodded and walked out the front door, leaving the
bell jangling.

“New employee?” I asked Mark.

“Business is good. With the housing market in the
toilet, people are staying put and redecorating. I finally broke down and hired
some help. And he’s got a friend who can help with the heavy lifting, too,
another vet. Lives in North Jersey but comes down this way to hang out with
Owen.”

“His parents live down the street from me,” I said.

“Marie Keely is a good customer,” Mark said. “She asked
me if I knew anybody who could hire her son and I figured I’d do her a good
deed. He’s a good guy at heart. Just been through some trouble.”

“What’s his story?”

“He’s a vet. Came home from Afghanistan with a drug
problem. His parents sold their house in Crossing Estates to pay for his rehab.
Had to downsize and move to River Bend.”

Mark’s store was a hodgepodge of fifties furniture,
rusty farm signs and antique china. Framed posters shared wall space with
watercolors of local scenes. I turned to watch Owen back the van out of the
driveway, and nearly knocked over a china statue of an Irish setter, and that
reminded me of Rochester, home alone and getting into who knew what kind of
trouble.

Mark reached over and picked up an ornate figurine of a
ballerina on pointe, and rubbed his sleeve on it to wipe away some dust. “What
can I do for you?” he asked.

 “I have something I want to talk to you about,” I said.
“If you have a couple minutes?”

“Sure.”

I told him about the college’s acquisition of the Friar
Lake property, and Babson’s plans, leaving out the bit about finding a dead
body there. “I’m going to need some help with design stuff. You do that kind of
thing?”

“I haven’t done anything like that for a while, and
like I said, the shop is very busy right now.”

“Come on, Mark, you’re the only person I know who could
help me out.” I had Joe Capodilupo handling the construction; I really needed
someone like Mark to take point on the interior decorating, and if Mark
couldn’t help me I’d be up a creek.

He pursed his lips together. “What’s your timetable?”

“Right now I need some general guidance—I’m pretty lost
when it comes to decorating. If you could come out to the property in the next
week or two, take a look, and point me in the right direction, I’d really
appreciate it.”

“From what you’ve said, this is a big project.”

I nodded. “You bet. But most of the interior work is
going to happen during the winter. And I’ll bet your business slows down when
the tourists disappear, right?”

“All right, you’ve worn me down,” he said, smiling.
“I’ll come out and take a look. I can’t commit to anything more than that right
now.”