Dog Helps Those (Golden Retriever Mysteries) (6 page)

His next slide popped up, a mockup of a stock certificate for Facebook. “Angel investors aren’t creatures from the Bible; they’re rich people who provide startup capital for small businesses, in the hopes that they will get big payoffs.”

He went on to explain the way an individual or small group might come up with an idea for a product or service, but need money to get it off the ground. “Usually an inventor starts with money from the three F’s: friends, family and fools.” He paused for a laugh.

“Once the business has shown it has some potential, the inventor turns to outside sources of capital. But venture capital companies like the big Wall Street firms like to see a real product and a record of earnings before they pour millions of dollars in. That gap is filled by angel investors.”

I was surprised to see Rita Gaines’s photo pop up on the screen. “One of the most prominent local angel investors was an Eastern College alumnus named Rita Gaines. She passed away recently but she made a lot of investments in high-tech companies.”

I had read a bit about Rita’s investments in her obituaries, and I was pleased that Yudame had done enough research to discover her, and that he was savvy enough to include her in his presentation. And sensitive enough not to add angel wings to her photo.

We made it through half the presentations that day, with the rest scheduled for Wednesday. As I was walking out, Lou Segusi said, “Hey, Prof, can I talk to you?”

I picked up my bag. “I need to get back to my office. Can you talk on the way to Fields Hall?”

“Sure.” He hesitated, then jumped in. “So, I’ve been doing this tutoring gig at the Writing Lab, like I’m supposed to.”

He had been pressured into writing papers for a couple of other students, and while they had been expelled I had argued on his behalf, and he had agreed to volunteer for tutoring in the lab, which helped students improve their writing.

“How’s that going?” I asked, as we walked outside.

“Real good, real good. But there is this problem.”

“Hey! Lou!”

We both turned at the sound of a young woman’s voice. She was a voluptuous brunette with skin the color of very light coffee. “Oh, hey, Des,” he said.

He turned to me. “This is Desiree.”

I nodded. Lou had been sneaking around with Desiree earlier in the term, and when her boyfriend found out, he’d broken Lou’s arm. All part of the drama of undergraduate life; I remembered a number of similar incidents when I was a student.

“This is Professor Levitan,” Lou said to Desiree. “The one I told you about.”

Desiree came up to Lou and snuggled under his arm. I noticed it was the one that hadn’t been broken. “Listen, I’ll talk to you about that later, Prof,” Lou said. “Thanks.”

“Sure. You know where my office is.”

They turned away from me, and I wondered what Lou’s problem was. I hoped it wasn’t going to involve police action—as his previous problems had. I’d had enough of that.

When I got back to my office I still hadn’t heard from Rick, so I called and left another message. I spent the rest of the afternoon coordinating details for an alumni reception during graduation weekend. Mike was hoping to put together a group he wanted to solicit for major gifts for the capital campaign, and I knew everything had to be perfect.

As I was shutting down my computer for the day, Rick finally called. “Got your messages but I’ve been swamped all day. You up for a beer tonight? We can talk about whatever you want then.”

“Sure. Let me take Rochester home, and I’ll meet you at the Drunken Hessian around six. We can get a couple of burgers.”

 Spring was bursting out all over campus as Rochester and I walked back to my car, and I could see that the Building and Grounds department had been busy prettying up the place in advance of graduation. Tulips, daffodils and hyacinths bloomed in big clay pots, the grass was neatly trimmed, and new, darker asphalt covered the winter’s potholes.

Rochester stopped several times to sniff and pee, and I enjoyed the fresh evening air. Around us, students hurried from dorms to libraries lugging rolling suitcases full of textbooks. The palpable sense of urgency and desperation around us probably had to do with final exams coming up.

A pair of students passed us as we were entering the parking lot. “I can’t believe he’s going to fail me,” a girl in a Burberry skirt cried. “I went to every class. Just because I didn’t write the papers.”

“These professors are assholes,” her friend said. “They have no sense of priorities. I tried to explain to my organic chemistry professor about James getting tickets for the Squashed Mushrooms concert on Monday night in Philadelphia, and asked if I could take the final exam some other day. He stared at me like I was crazy.”

I’d heard many similar stories from my own students, and I had probably said the same kind of thing when I was an undergrad. I refrained from commenting to either girl.

That reminded me of Lou Segusi, and I wondered again what his problem was. I hoped he hadn’t gone farther than he was supposed to with his tutoring, writing the papers for students he was supposed to be helping with grammar and structure.

Then Rochester strained ahead, and reminded me what my real priority was. Taking care of one very bossy golden retriever.

Once Rochester had been emptied and refilled, I left to meet Rick at the Drunken Hessian, a bar in the center of Stewart’s Crossing. It had the oldest continuous liquor license in the county, and looked like it hadn’t been redecorated since Lucius Stewart started his ferry crossing business in the late 1700s. At least they kept up to date with their beer selection; they had the best range of microbrews in Bucks County.

“Did you get hold of Felae?” I asked when we were seated at a booth in the back.

Rick shook his head. “College has an address for him in an old house at the far end of Leighville, but the housemates say he moved out a year ago. Nobody liked him, so no one kept in touch with him. He doesn’t have an account with PECO for gas or electric, he doesn’t own property, and the address listed with Verizon for his cell phone service is a post office box.”

I picked up my Dogfish Head Midas Touch ale and sampled it. I knew that it was made from ingredients found in King Midas’s tomb, and had a sweet, yet dry flavor that was halfway between beer and mead. “Students move around a lot.”

“Especially students with an FBI file.” Rick was drinking the 90 Minute IPA, and I had to wait until he’d taken a healthy swig to hear more. “Seems like Mr. Popescu has been very active with animal rights groups. He’s been arrested for protesting outside animal shelters, and he’s a suspect in a break-in at a pharmaceutical lab that tests products on rabbits.”

“And the FBI is involved in that?”

“They consider it domestic terrorism,” Rick said. “They’ve got a whole task force keeping tabs on people just like your student.”

“Former student. Hey, you know, he used to work at the Hungry Horse in Leighville as a server, but I haven’t seen him there in a while. Maybe they have an address for him.”

 He pulled out a spiral notepad and wrote the restaurant’s name down. “Remember when that was?”

“Sometime during the winter. Not that long ago.”

I drank some more beer. “What’s going to happen to all Rita’s dogs?”

“She had an arrangement with another breeder,” he said. “Guy from the horse country in North Jersey. He’s coming down to pack up the dogs. In the meantime her neighbor is taking care of them.”

I sat back and looked around me. The ceiling lights advertising various beers glowed dimly, and the wooden booths were scarred with centuries of names, hearts and epithets. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a George
©
Martha somewhere.

Our burgers arrived. I got mine with ham and cheese, accompanied by curly fries. Rick was a purist; he ordered the quarter-pound burger with no garnish at all, and a trough of onion rings. “You can’t taste the beef if you cover it up with all that crap,” he said.

“Who says I want to taste the beef here?”

“Hey, I’ve been eating these burgers since high school and I’m still here.”

“You used to come here in high school?” I asked. “Even though the drinking age was twenty-one?”

“With my parents. My dad loved the burgers. And when my mom wasn’t looking he’d let me have some of his beer.”

Rick looked over at my burger. “How can you eat it so bloody?”

“It’s medium,” I said. “Pink. Not bloody. Yours is burned beyond recognition.”

“At least I know it’s dead. And speaking of blood, we got the autopsy results back on Rita Gaines late this afternoon,” he said. “Very strange.”

“That’s gross. You talk about my burger and then you go right into autopsy results.”

He laughed. “You know you want to hear all about it. Your junior investigator badge is glowing right now.”

Rick had teased me in the past about my interest in investigating murders. But honestly, I grew up reading mystery novels, from
Freddy the Detective
to the Hardy Boys to the classic British authors like Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.

I feigned nonchalance. He could tease me if he wanted—but I’d wait him out until he couldn’t resist telling me what I wanted to hear. I ate a hunk of burger, listened the jukebox play a Springsteen song, and then asked, “How’s Rascal?”

“He’s okay. You’d think all that running around yesterday would have tired him out. But no such luck.”

“You need get him some sheep to herd. They could keep your grass cut for you.”

“Can’t raise livestock on less than two acres,” he said. “You need a farm like Rita’s.”

I put my burger down. “All right, I give up. I do want to know about what you found out. What was weird about her autopsy?”

“She had a high level of flunitrazepam in her blood. You know what that is?”

“Am I wearing a white coat? Do I have an MD after my name?”

“Don’t get snotty.” He picked up a couple of french fries and nibbled on them. One of the waitresses passed by carrying a platter of cheesesteaks oozing sautéed onions and spray cheese, curly fries spiraling off the plates.

“Are we playing twenty questions? Is it some kind of sleeping pill? Did she commit suicide?”

He swallowed the fries and leaned closer to me across the scarred wooden tabletop. “It wasn’t suicide. The brand name is Rohypnol, but on the street they’re called roofies.”

“The date rape drug? Somebody raped her?”

“Keep your voice down,” Rick said. “There was no evidence of rape. It looks like someone slipped her a couple of roofies to knock her out. But that’s not what killed her.”

Rick picked up his bottle and drained it.

I wanted to kick him under the table. “Come on, don’t keep me in suspense. What did her in?”

“You won’t believe this. Cobra venom.”

“Are you kidding? Do we have poisonous snakes in Bucks County? Cobras? I thought they were only in India.”

“Join the club. I asked the medical examiner if he was sure. Got my ear reamed out, including a list of where he had gone to school and every certification he has in pathology.”

“You think a cobra was out at her farm? Underfoot when we were there?”

I shivered. What if Rochester had stumbled on a poisonous snake while he was running around the farm?

He shook his head. “She wasn’t bitten. Doc found a puncture wound in her wrist. Looks like the killer injected the venom directly into her vein with a hypodermic needle.”

“So it was murder?”

“Looks like it.”

“Then it should be easy to figure out who did it,” I said, sitting back against the hard wood of the booth. They probably don’t sell cobra venom at your ordinary drugstore. Or even veterinary supply place. Can’t you trace who bought it?”

“It’s not legal to sell, though you can buy a cobra and milk it if you want the stuff. And if you know someone who has a cobra…”

“Why would you? As an antidote for snake bites?”

“Beats me.”

“Any idea who could have killed her?” I asked. “Strictly off the record, of course.”

He shook his head. “You’re not a journalist, Steve, so there’s no record in the first place. And in the second place, it’s way too early. I need to find Mr. Popescu, and I need to look some more into Rita’s life and her business and see if anyone else has a motive. I won’t even start speculating until I have all that under my belt.”

“Party pooper,” I said.

“Hey, remember, we’re talking about a dead woman here. A woman you talked to yesterday. This isn’t some murder mystery novel or TV detective program.”

“I remember. I still think of Caroline sometimes. And reminders of Joe Dagorian are all over Fields Hall.” Both of them had been killed in the past, and in both cases Rochester and I had been involved in the investigation.

We both passed on dessert. Cake, pie and ice cream had become the latest casualties in my war against a creeping paunch. Crossing over forty had been a kind of Rubicon for me. I was in prison in California for that birthday, and I made a lot of extravagant promises to myself then, most of which I hadn’t kept. I was going to exercise more, eat better, color between the lines and keep my nose clean. I’d danced close to the edge a few times but I was still free, and that was what mattered most.