Fit To Be Dead (An Aggie Mundeen Mystery Book 1) (19 page)

Thirty-One

First thing Thursday morning, I stuffed toast in my mouth and called Meredith. “Hey, I feel great. What are you doing tomorrow morning?”

“Gee...I don’t know. What are you thinking?”

“I feel fabulous but fat. Want to work out? The club received clearance to reopen Friday morning. They’re giving special discounts to the first two hundred people who show up.”

“I can’t believe you want to go back there. Does Sam know about this?”

“Not exactly. When he sees us there, he’ll know we’re fine. In the meantime, he has this patrol officer driving by and lurking outside my house to protect me. It’s driving me crazy. I really need to work out. It’ll be therapeutic after all the stress.” I coughed.

“Agatha, you’re impossible. Have you forgotten you almost got killed over there?”

“No, but whoever did it won’t try that stunt again. No balloons. It’ll take the creep a while to come up with something new. Just think, we might get a cheap six-month membership. This is our chance to maintain our workout routine. My body is just beginning to firm up.”

The “firm” part wasn’t exactly true. I hadn’t eaten much except peanut butter for a week and was probably aging from malnutrition.

“Why don’t we wait until the police find this crazy person and Holly’s killer and then go back to the club?”

Meredith relied on logic. She couldn’t help it. Sometimes her logic was really a pain. “Because we’ll have to wait forever and pay full membership price.”

“Yes, but...”

“Look. Police will be swarming the place. The balloon creep knows they’re searching for him and so does Holly’s killer. They’re not about to try anything. This is the perfect time to go.”

“Well, I don’t know...”

“Okay. Think about this: We sign up and get the discount, then we leave. Or I find Sam or a police officer, tell him we’re there, and we go ahead and work out.”

“Well...”

“While you’re thinking, let me tell you how we can slip past this cop and get to the club...”

I had deliberated about how to elude Sam’s police officer and reach the club without being followed. It occurred to me Boffo might help, so I’d powered up my computer and searched through dog sites until I found “Earthdog Startup Training.” It was exactly what I needed. I put my Big Chief tablet nearby to make notes. I clicked to a history of terrier/dachshund combinations like Boffo that explained how to train them to become good earthdogs. Boffo would have the opportunity to exhibit his proud heritage.

“Even an older dog,” I read, “whose instincts have never been challenged, but lie beneath the surface waiting for that special moment to arrive, may prove to be the finest working terrier or dachshund in the kennel.” There it was in black and white. Boffo had the chance to be a star.

The article described how to train a dog to develop his instinct to chase vermin through tunnels, route them out of burrows and capture them. It said the trainer should start the dog off by tantalizing him with a rat in a cage. “An adult dog, depending on the strength of his instincts, may easily accomplish cage training in one or two sessions.” I had personally witnessed the strength of Boffo’s genetic inclinations. He was about to fulfill his destiny.

I hopped into my Wagoneer, drove to the Austin Highway pet store and bought a laboratory rat, an 8” x8” x6” cage, rat food and doggie treats. The rat was kind of cute. I named him Addison. I took him home in his new cage, set it just outside my front door and threw in a few rat treats. My feet itched ferociously. After stuffing doggie treats in the pocket of my jeans, I bounced over to Grace’s house and knocked on her door. “I hope I’m not bothering you.”

“No. I’m trying to keep Boffo quiet so I can play the piano.”

He flopped over my tennis shoe and growled, chewing the laces. I wondered if my insurance covered dog attacks. “If you put his leash on, I’ll take him for a walk.”

“Would you do that? That would be great.”

“Sure. Before we go, I wonder if you have any clothes I can use for the military-civilian party at BAMC in March. I volunteered for the committee. We thought it might be fun to dress like people did during World War II. I know you were a child then, but I thought maybe you saved something from a relative.”

“I kept a couple of items from Aunt Justa’s war years. How about her boxy shoulder-padded jacket? I might even have one of her skirts.”

“Perfect. Do you have one of those big hats they wore? The kind that covers your hair?”

“You bet. Aunt Justa kept a knitted snood women wore to keep their hair from tangling in machines when they worked in war production factories. She also had a big, floppy hat she called her ‘nineteen forty-two’ hat. You can use those. I don’t have any shoes, though. I threw them out. Wait, I know. What about wearing Charlie’s old Army boots? I saved a pair. I’ll trap Boffo in the bathroom, and we’ll have a look.”

It was wonderful living next door to a pack rat. Grace dragged out boxes from the storage closet in the girls’ old bedroom. We’d started rifling through containers when the doorbell rang. Grace answered the door and returned with Elmore Moseley carrying an armload of books.

“You know Elmore, don’t you?”

“Yes.” I managed to smile. “We met out front one day.”

“Hello, again. I thought I ought to bring these back, Grace, before I take any more.”

She smiled lovingly at the old sneak while she retrieved books from the top of his pile. “Elmore loves science. He’s been enjoying the girls’ collection.”

My blood started to boil. SAPD had encouraged the old snoop to dig through her daughters’ books? I wanted to throw them at him. It was smarter to see what titles he found so interesting:
Basic Chemistry
;
Plants and their Properties
;
Chemical Compounds in the Workplace
;
Fabrics with Panache: The History and Components of Textiles...
.

“You’re interested in science?” I smiled sweetly.

“Yes. As a business major, I studied only basic science. Now I’m satisfying my curiosity.”

The old busybody.

“We have more books in the closet,” Grace said.

“I have enough for now. I’m reading their research papers. With Linda studying chemistry, and Kim studying textiles for interior design, I’m learning a lot. It’s a good thing they had the computer for writing papers.”

“You have their computer?” I asked.

“I never use it,” Grace said. “Elmore enjoys it, and I got the ugly machine out of this room.”

I bet he enjoyed it, the meddlesome old coot.

“Let’s think of something to do on Friday, maybe drive to the hill country.” He winked at Grace. “I’ll let myself out.”

Cozy. Maybe Grace would get lucky and Elmore would tumble off a hill. The more I thought about Elmore’s invasion, his pawing through books and documents that belonged to Grace’s children, the madder I became at Sam.

After he left, Grace and I resumed sifting through her keepsake garments. Her clothes were exactly what I needed. Even Charlie’s clunky boots fit me pretty well. The whole dowdy outfit was perfect.

Grace attached Boffo’s leash, and he strained for the door.

“I’m going to let him sniff around our yards before we take off. After I bring him back, I’ll take your clothes home and try them on, if it’s all right.”

“Sure. That’s fine.”

Grace was at the piano when we left. While she warmed up playing scales, I took Boffo around the outside of her backyard and took off his leash beside the fence. Just as I’d hoped, he wriggled under her fence and dug into his escape hole. Grace, oblivious to us, sang joyously.

When he burrowed into his cavity, I heard a varmint squeal. Grace was right: a rat lived in the underground hole. I scratched open the outlet in my yard and heard Boffo chasing the critter toward me through the tunnel. Poised at my end of the passage with a doggie treat, I leaned over the exit hole so my voice would carry inside.

“Addison alert. Addison alert,” I called. The earthdog article said to repeat the same phrase to train the dog.

When the rat surfaced, I dropped the doggie treat. It almost hit Boffo on the head. He screeched to a halt, glanced at the escaping rat but went for the treat. He chomped and gazed at me lovingly while I re-attached his lease. We were bonding.

From there, the mutt and I sprinted to the front curb where he peed on my bush near the street. I used the opportunity to give him another treat and lengthen his leash. Then I ran him back toward the house where I’d stationed Addison in his cage, just outside my front door. Boffo sniffed and pointed his ears. He had spotted the quarry.

“Addison alert,” I chirped.

Addison twitched, and Boffo lunged. When his nose was about four inches from Addison’s cage, I yanked Boffo’s leash taut. With his tongue hanging out, he sniffed and strained, circling his prey. The more he sniffed, the more excited he got. I gave his leash more slack. He barked louder, becoming more and more aggressive. Fortunately, Grace played and sang too loudly to hear him. Addison put his tiny feet over his eyes, balled up and rolled to the corner of his cage.

With the rat immobilized, Boffo appeared to lose interest. I’d attached a rope to Addison’s cage and hidden it in the hedges, so I grabbed the end and gave the rope a yank to stir up Addison. “Addison alert. Addison alert.”

When Addison rolled across the cage, Boffo went wild. I tightened his leash to keep him from biting the cage. When I yanked the rope again, Boffo strained harder against the leash and made frantic digging motions on my concrete porch. I let him bite the cage a couple of times, hoping Addison wouldn’t die from fright. When I thought Boffo’s feet might be getting a little sore from scraping cement, I tossed him a tidbit to distract him from the cage and pulled his leash toward the west side of my house. He bounded toward me. The pooch was getting the idea.

We charged around my house toward the back. When we stopped, he gazed at me, probably expecting another treat. I tossed him a stuffed mouse I’d purchased as a roommate for Addison. Boffo growled with glee, shook it, bit it a thousand times and wrestled the imposter to the ground. When he paused, panting, I flipped him another chewy morsel. He bathed me with grateful eyes. When I reached down to pet him, he rolled over so I could scratch his stomach. He had expended his aggressive behavior. Perfect.

I led him back to the street. We strolled down Burr Road at a respectable pace while I fumed over Elmore Moseley’s sniffing through property that belonged to Grace’s children.

After attacking, eating and running, Boffo panted hard. Every ten or twelve feet, he flipped around and lunged for my feet, but having nearly captured real prey, his heart wasn’t in it. When I yanked his collar and chastised him, he resumed walking like a normal dog. By the time we got back to Grace’s house, Boffo had logged in a month’s worth of exercise.

“He might be pretty tired,” I told Grace.

“It’s good for him.” When she gave him a dog cookie, I failed to mention he’d already consumed a handful. He burped and plopped in the corner.

Grace handed me her vintage clothes. “I loved playing the piano without Boffo jumping up and down, howling at me. Take him anytime you’re going for a walk.”

“Okay.” I’d already planned to extend Boffo’s exercise program. “By the way, I almost forgot. I hear there’s a fabulous 8:00 a.m. breakfast concert at the Sunken Garden Theater in Brackenridge Park tomorrow morning. I can’t go, but you and Elmore might enjoy it.”

“We’re both early risers. I’ll give him a call. It’s my turn to pay for something.”

Thirty-Two

After romping with Boffo, I nourished myself with leftovers from the fridge. I brought Addison’s cage inside and gave him water and a few treats. After I showered and flexed my arms in front of the mirror to check my tumors, I tried on Grace’s clothes to make sure they fit.

While Meredith pondered whether to go to the club on Friday, I had to spend Thursday afternoon with Dr. Carmody at University of the Holy Trinity. When it was almost time for class, I dressed in a cotton sweater and faded jeans to look like a student, while I tried to remember what I’d read about exercise and aging.

I drove to the university and slid quietly to my seat. My mind was so full of plans, I didn’t intend to contribute much to the discussion.

Carmody launched into the benefits of exercise. It was difficult to endure his proclamations with him in such lousy shape. My silence seemed to make him uneasy. Every now and then, he glared at me, probably expecting an interruption. Although stress and loathing emanated from his beady eyes, he was apparently resigned to endure me. He didn’t have grounds to expel me. His satisfaction would come at the end of the semester when he’d try to issue me the lowest grade possible.

He blabbed about muscle mass: “Without exercise, muscle mass declines twenty-two percent between ages thirty and seventy.” I calculated that my puny biceps had already shrunk five and a half percent. If I made it to age seventy, without exercise I’d resemble spaghetti.

Carmody didn’t look like he had any muscles. Soft and pliable, he appeared to be composed of tendons covered with rubber. My classmates gazed out the window.

“Exercise,” he droned, “prevents losing muscle mass. Tufton University conducted a study where ninety-year-old residents of Nebraska’s Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged increased leg muscle strength by one hundred seventy-five percent and muscle size by nine percent after only eight weeks of weightlifting.” It appeared I’d have to return to Machine Mecca.

Carmody said bone loss could be prevented by eating foods rich in Calcium and Vitamin D: dairy products, dark green, leafy vegetables, salmon, which I loved, and tofu, which made me gag. Three students dozed.

He quoted
Getting Fit for Life
, an article from the National Institute of Health: “Lack of physical activity and not eating the right foods, taken together, are the second greatest underlying cause of death in the United States. Smoking is number one.”

That assumed no one succeeded in bumping you off at the health club.

“Exercise helps older people feel better and enjoy life,” he announced. “No one is too old or too out of shape to be more active.” How could the bloated bird make that statement with a straight face?

He shot me a warning glance and launched into statistics: “A National Long-Term Care Survey reports disability among older Americans declined dramatically from nineteen eighty-nine through nineteen ninety-six, and the percentage continues to fall. Moreover, two hundred thousand fewer people live in nursing homes.”

That was good news. I didn’t want to escape being murdered at Fit and Firm just to register at the nursing home. He said many older people enjoyed a satisfying sex life, no matter their age. This combination of data reinforced my belief in a vitally important heath issue: Sam and I should get together.

To wake up the class, Carmody made us read,
What’s Your Aging IQ?
and take a test. It was simplistic, but I learned a few things: the fastest growing segment of the American population, people over age eighty-five, was expected to grow five times larger within the next fifty years. The Census Bureau predicted that by 2050, more than a million people in the U.S. would be over a hundred. I could look forward to being one of the younger members at Fit and Firm.

When Carmody repeated the obvious—keeping an active mind, eating well and staying physically active helped people remain alert—I could no longer remain silent. I knew I was on shaky ground, having endured only two weeks of the long spring semester.

I felt compelled to quote my findings from a Yale University’s study: “If a person has passion...a cause, a purpose, that gets him or her up, out and going,” I said, “that person stays young.”

“You go, girl!” a student bellowed. “Ahl right!” another shouted.

One kid actually clapped.

While Dr. Carmody smoldered, I stood and turned to acknowledge their enthusiasm. As a gesture of courtesy, I attempted to contain my glee. My test grades would be too good for him to fail me. Carmody and I were fated to tolerate each other through May.

Age was teaching me patience. Nodding respectfully to my professor, I dashed out the door before the old curmudgeon exploded.