Drop Dead on Recall (25 page)

79

Tom was decked out
in an oversized chef’s hat and an apron that said “The chef is not responsible for dog hair in the food” under a comedic black Lab. He struck a pose, nudging the hat flirtatiously. “Like my outfit?”

“And me without my camera!”

“Christmas presents from my kid.” He winked, and something just south of my stomach did a flip-flop. “Need another beer?”

Hey, drink up!
Janet Demon was on alert.
You can blame the booze for anything that happens.
“I’m fine, thanks.”

He saluted, and went back to the kitchen. I moved to the right-hand bookcase. There were tons of paperbacks, mostly thrillers, some sci fi, on the bottom shelf. A row of anthropology and botany journals, a number of field guides to trees, mushrooms and fungi, birds, bugs, and flowers, and several volumes on training retrievers. The next two shelves were home to ethnographic monographs, in
cluding such classics as Turnbull’s
The Forest People
and Mead’s now-controversial
Coming of Age in Samoa
, both of which I’d actually read in an anthro class way back when. The rest were more recent and focused mostly on Mexico, Spain, and Central and South America. I took another swig of Killian’s, then went cold as I examined the top shelf. Book after book on poisonous and medicinal plants.
Run
was my first reaction.
Don’t be silly,
whispered Janet Demon.
His interest is academic—he studies plants and shamans and such.

I heard the back door slide open. “Whoa! Give me that! No sticks in the house!” I walked to the kitchen doorway. Jay and Drake had their muzzles deep in a big stainless-steel water bowl, slurping and dripping, Drake’s thick tail wagging away, Jay’s little nub wriggling. Drake quit first and settled with a grunt onto the cool vinyl floor. Jay flopped down next to his new buddy and sighed.

The table was set, informal and inviting. A rough-woven table cloth of robin’s-egg blue flecked with bits of white, yellow, and red supported honey-colored stoneware plates. The plates supported dark brown salad bowls, and not-quite-matching dark brown rough-woven napkins underlay heavy stainless place settings. A handmade clay pot held a splashy assortment of blooms and foliage, garden and wild flowers mingled with greenery.

“You know, if the research and teaching doesn’t work out, you may have a future as a restaurateur.”

Tom wrinkled his nose as he delivered a wooden bowl brimming with dark and pale greens, crimson grape tomatoes, golden bell-pepper bits, and brown-black olives. My reptilian brain hissed something about how easy it would be to hide noxious herbs in a mixed salad, but was interrupted when Tom said, “I was a waiter—or what do we say now, server?—off and on in college. Enough restaurant work for me, thanks. I prefer to do my serving at home.”

“Here I thought you were strictly a rough-and-tumble Labrador Retriever sort of guy. Figured you lived on beef jerky and trail mix.”

“I have been known to eat baked beans out of a can, standing at the sink and watching hockey on TV.” He cocked his head. “Does that restore my rough-and-tumble image?”
What the heck
, I thought.
So have I, except for the hockey.
“Would you like wine with dinner, or another beer?”

I figured I’d better stick with the beer. I can’t mix my alcohol and pretend to be rational as convincingly as I could a decade or two ago.

Tom set a golden-brown loaf of warm, garlicky bread in front of the flowers, and served vermicelli topped with a thick sauce that made my mouth water.

“What’s that fragrance that I can’t place?” I asked.

“Wet dog?”

“Noooo. That I can identify, thanks. No, sort of, sweet? Like licorice?”

“Ah. Sorry, secret ingredient. You’ll have to wait until I know you better.”

Yeah!
Shouted Janet Demon.
In the biblical sense.
I felt very warm.

Before he sat down, Tom set two bowls of freshly grated cheese on the table. “Romano on the left,” he rolled the r, “and Parmesan on the right.” He sat down, flicked his napkin open with his left hand, and tucked it into the neckband of his shirt. “I don’t know why I wear white when I eat tomato sauces. You’d think I’d learn.” He grinned at me and lifted his beer. “To us.” I could drink to that, I thought, until he pushed the cheeses toward me and said, “Pick your poison.”

80

Tom’s eyes widened and
a deep furrow dug into the spot between his eyes as soon as the word
poison
left his lips. “Bad choice of words. Sorry!”

For half a heartbeat I thought of forgoing the cheese, then decided that even if I were a failure at judging people and he was in fact a murderer, he wouldn’t be dumb enough to kill me in his own home. Besides, he covered his own generous serving of pasta and sauce with a thick blanket of both the Romano and the Parmesan, rolled a fork full of pasta against a spoon, and gobbled.

The remains of the evening passed without major incident other than my periodic non-menopausal hot flashes. The sauce more than lived up to its aromatic promise, and my taste buds were ecstatic and my stomach over-extended by the time we cleared the table and let the doggy boys pre-wash the dishes before loading them into the dishwasher. What the heck, the steam sterilizes, and even if it didn’t, I figure I’m more likely to catch something from someone handing me change in a store than from well-cared-for dogs licking some dishes. Apparently Tom agreed.

All the way home I could taste the goodnight kiss Tom planted right smack on my lips, leaning in through the window as I fastened my seat belt. It was a simple brush of lips on lips, but I couldn’t get it out of my head and was almost home before I knew it. Either I was entering my second adolescence, or I’d been celibate way too long.

I turned west off Maysville onto my own criminally dark street and once again cursed the neighbors who won’t sign the street light petition. The moon wasn’t up yet and the dark was impenetrable, and I barely saw the van parked on the wrong side of the street across from Goldie’s house. “Shit!” I whipped the wheels to the left, missing the other vehicle by a foot or so. “What kind of idiot …” I let the thought subside along with my adrenaline level. Jay shifted in his crate, and I tried to see him in the rearview mirror, but the
gloom was too thick. “You okay back there, Bubby?” His body thunked
down in the crate.

I parked in the driveway, grabbed my purse, and walked to the back of my Caravan. Goldie’s porch light popped on and her screen door banged. She came scurrying over, carrying two glasses and a bottle of Amaretto. “I brought the booze, and I want to hear all about it!”

“Any sign of Leo?”

“I’m sure he’ll be back in the morning ready for a nice breakfast and some catnip. He’s nobody’s fool.”

“No, I guess not,” I said as I got Jay out of his crate. We were halfway to the front door when he turned toward the street, the hair standing out from his neck, ears pricked, nose thrust forward and twitching. Even with my limited human senses, I could tell that something was moving in the shrubs across the street. He whined softly.

“Come on, it’s just a raccoon,” I sped our progress toward my front door, my hand firmly wrapped around his collar. Goldie held my screen door open with her elbow while I wrestled with my keys.

“Whose clunker?”

I pushed the door open and ushered Goldie and Jay into the house. “No idea, but I almost creamed it on my way in.” I glanced toward the dark street, then closed and locked the inner door. I could have sworn I saw a flicker of movement across the living room floor where shades of gloom fought for dominance, but Jay didn’t seem to find anything amiss. I decided I was paranoid.
Of course,
whispered the little voice in my left ear,
that doesn’t mean someone’s not out to get you
.

81

Another morning arrived with
no sign of Leo. Goldie promised again to check my yard and answering machine hou
rly and to call me if Leo showed up or if she heard anything, so I decided to proceed with my plans to drive the two-plus hours to Indianapolis for today’s Delta Society Pet Partner test for Jay’s therapy-dog certification. The tests are few and far between in our neck of the woods, and there was nothing more that I could do at home to find my missing cat.

If I’d had to pick a morning for a road trip, this would be it, except for the shadow that Leo’s absence cast over my world. The sky was a soft, clear spring blue laced with delicate high-cirrus wisps. The long curve of I-469 that encircles Fort Wayne to the east ribbons through a twenty-mile stretch of farmland laid out like a massive quilt. The patches were newly tinted in the tender greens of sprouting corn, soy, timothy, and alfalfa, the fence rows stitched in willow, trumpet vine, and Russian olive. The whole green world still glistened under a sheet of dew that the morning sun had not yet lifted. I tried to remember the whole of e. e. cummings’ poem of thanks, but it was buried too deep in memory, and all I could come up with was the beginning …
I thank you God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky
. Add a warm-eyed dog, and it was prayer enough for me.

_____

I pulled into the parking lot at the church where the test would be held about twenty minutes before our appointment. We had the second time slot, so I fluffed up Jay’s bed hair with a pin brush, pulled my tote bag from the front seat, and walked my dog to an enormous ginkgo in the grassy strip between the parking lot and the street. When Jay had watered the tree, we followed the hand-lettered “Delta Test This Way” signs through a bent-willow gate and down a winding path of red bricks laid in a herringbone design.

Pink and yellow columbines, white candytuft, electric blue forget-me-nots with sunny yellow eyes, and a riot of late-blooming daffodils in pale saffron, deep gold, oranges, and whites danced from the edge of the path to the church wall on my left, and right to a hedge of forsythia, gone green but for a whisper of gold still clinging here and there.

I checked in with the volunteer who was assisting the tester. My paperwork was all in order, so there was nothing to do now but wait. The assistant said the first pair had arrived a little late and they were running about ten minutes behind. I took Jay outside and pulled out my cell phone.

Connie answered on the first ring and asked, “Have you heard about Greg?”

I told her about my visit the previous day from Stevens and Hutchinson.

“They came here, too. Said they’re talking to everyone from Dog Dayz. Must have been right after you saw them. I’m so upset. What do you think?” She sounded pretty calm to me, but that’s Connie. “They seem to think Greg killed Abigail and Suzette. I know we talked about that, but really, I don’t believe it.” We were both quiet for a moment. “I guess we all have our breaking points though.”

“I don’t believe it either.”

Her voice dropped to conspiracy volume. “But you know, he might have killed Abigail to be with Suzette, and Suzette found out, so he had to kill her to keep her from ratting him out.”

“‘Ratting him out’?”

“You know what I mean!”

Neither of us spoke for a moment, then Connie said, “I’d put my money on Giselle.”

I held the phone out in front of me, but there was no text message indicating that I’d heard wrong, so I put it back to my ear. “Is there anyone you don’t think is involved?”

“Oh, please!” I could almost see her roll her eyes. “Giselle’s in love with Greg. Maybe she figured she’d do away with the competition.”

Giselle is a bit off,
I thought, picturing the witchcraft books strewn inside her car.
She could have been into potions for more lethal pursuits than love. She did get pretty testy with me. But murder?

“So I take it you don’t know where Greg is?” I asked.

“How would I know?”

Jay put a gentle white paw on my knee. I massaged behind his ear and watched him tilt his head into my hand and close his eyes.
Why can’t people be more like dogs?
I wondered, not for the first time. I told Connie where I was and promised to call later.

82

When I walked back
into the church, I saw the first pair of Pet Partner candidates, a frail wee man who looked like he could use a little therapy himself and his tiny mixed breed with long black stand-away hair like a Pomeranian on a long body slung low over short, bandy legs. The tester was wrapping up the paperwork. The little dog waved the long fringe of her tail and sneezed at Jay. She took a step toward us, her round little head tilted to her left and her bottom incisors gleaming from her undershot lower jaw. I asked if it was okay to pet her, and her owner beamed. “I should think so! Lulabelle passed her test!” He had dark, round eyes not unlike those of his companion. I grinned back at him, had Jay lie down, and knelt to pet Lulabelle.

Our test took about twenty minutes, and Jay sailed through. He wasn’t happy about the part of the test in which a couple of people holler at one another, something that occasionally happens in therapy situations. But he responded as expected, staying where I told him to sit, and looking at me as if to ask why those people were so upset. When all the i’s were dotted and the t’s crossed, Jay and I backtracked along the brick pathway and headed for home.

Three hours later Jay polished off his supper, and we went looking for Leo again. I checked under and behind the shrubs, and into every nook and cranny I could think of in the backyard. Goldie leaned over the fence and said she’d walked the yard every hour to be sure the yellow guy wasn’t waiting to be let in, but no luck. I told her I was going to try again to see if Jay could find Leo’s scent trail. The old one would be getting weak by now, but if the cat had walked around the yard when we weren’t looking, I should see some change in Jay’s tracking behavior. At least I hoped so. Goldie said she’d like to watch and would meet us out front.

I took Jay into the house, snapped a retractable leash onto his collar, and grabbed the towel that lined Leo’s favorite napping basket. Normally I’d put a tracking harness on Jay and use long line to run a track, but this one should take all of about forty-five seconds, so I stuck with the basics. On the front porch I held the towel for Jay to smell and gave him his tracking command—“Find it! Find Leo!” He gave the towel two quick little jabs with his nose, then sniffed around the front yard. We had only started tracking training a couple of months earlier, but I was sure he understood what I wanted, because, as he had two other times since Leo went missing, he followed his nose to a patch of ground between a pink shrub rose and the vinyl siding beneath the living room’s picture window. It was one of Leo’s favorite vantage points when I was working in the front garden.

Jay’s eyes sparkled with anticipation. I slipped him a cheese-flavored training treat, showed him the towel again, and told him to “Find it.” If I hadn’t had a good grip on the handle of the retractable leash, I’d have been standing alone in the yard, because Jay took off again like his furry britches were on fire, nose to the ground and tiny tail wagging. As he had the other times, he raced around the side of the house, sticking close to the foundation. At the gate to the backyard he sniffed back and forth, made a quick about-turn, and shot across the grass to the edge of the driveway. He took a few more sniffs and a tentative lick, and finally sat down and looked at me as if to say, “Okay, end of the line, this is where I get my reward.” Just like before.

I popped a couple more treats into Jay’s mouth. Goldie folded her arms across her body and pooched her mouth out in a thoughtful
O
. “Is that what he did before?”

“Exactly. Except the first couple of times he did a lot more grass licking at the end of the track.”