In Dog We Trust (Golden Retriever Mysteries) (29 page)

“This is not your fault, Edith,” Rick said. “You didn’t even know a crime had been committed when you talked to Caroline, and if you’d come to me instead of her, I would have told you I couldn’t do anything—that you should just get yourself a good accountant.”

He frowned. “You’re just as much a victim here as Caroline was. And I guarantee you, we will find out who did this to you and make them pay.”

I told Irene about how Edith knew my student, Melissa, through her work-study job at the music department, and how Melissa had recommended her boyfriend, Menno, as Edith’s handyman.

“I’m glad I never asked him to do anything for me,” Irene said tartly. “Although if he was here now I’d certainly give him what for.”

“Any luck on tracing Melissa or Menno?” I asked Rick.

He shook his head. “Yesterday afternoon, I had deputies go to the dorm at Eastern, Birthday Hall. Her roommate hasn’t seen her since Thursday morning, though she hasn’t moved her stuff. I called her parents in Massachusetts, and they haven’t heard from her.”

“You think she’s on the run?”

“I don’t know. The street address that the college has on file for Menno Zook is the same one that was used on the application to start the fake account in Edith’s name—and as you and Edith discovered, that address doesn’t exist. His father has a record, so I tracked him through his parole officer. He says Menno doesn’t live with him, and he hasn’t seen him in a couple of weeks.”

“Well, I saw both him and Melissa in class on Wednesday.”

“They may have gone to ground out in the Amish country,” Rick said. “The father, Floyd, told me his ex-wife’s name is Sarah, but you know the Amish and technology. There’s no phone listed under her name, and he says she had to sell the farm and move and he doesn’t know her new address.”

“Yeah, he was shunned,” I said. I explained what I had read in Menno’s paper. “So it’s not surprising that he doesn’t know where his ex-wife is.”

“Zook is like Jones to the Amish,” Rick said. “There’s dozens of them. And Zook’s her married name; her maiden name is Yoder, which is just as common, and she could be staying with her family. I’ve got a detective out in Lancaster who knows the Amish checking around, but that could take some time.”

He frowned. “I even went into the property appraiser’s database to see if Melissa Macaretti or Menno Zook had bought property in their own name, or in their parents’ name. No luck.”

“They’re both a lot smarter than I gave them credit for,” I said. “When I was in college I had no idea about money—CDs and IRAs and bank accounts. My parents gave me an allowance, and I had a work-study job. If I ever had more than fifty bucks to my name I’d be surprised.”

Irene shepherded Edith out a little later. “Well, that was a pretty lousy experience,” I said, once they were gone.

“Had to be done,” Rick said. “She has to understand the whole problem before she can start to solve it.”

“That doesn’t make it feel any better.”

“You up to walking the dog? Or you want me to do it?”

“How about we divide the labors. You walk the dog, I’ll order a pizza.”

He called, “Rochester!” and the traitorous dog went right to him.

I spent the rest of Saturday, and most of Sunday, grading papers. By Monday, I had finished and was ready to return them to Eastern. It was the kind of day that made me love living in Bucks County: the sun was shining, all the trees were in bloom, and the flowerbeds in River Bend were a riot of bright colors.

Our townhouses are built in pods of sixteen—for example, eight facing Minsk Lane and eight backed up against them, facing Sarajevo Court. Wherever there’s a space between pods, the original developer landscaped a walkway between streets. Where Minsk Lane curves, there’s an extra-large empty lot, big enough just for a single townhouse, which the developer left empty.

It seems every dog in the neighborhood feels obliged to leave a deposit, and many of my neighbors don’t pick up there, since it’s not in someone else’s yard. Thus, the place is like a minefield, and I don’t let Rochester go in, for fear he’ll drag me through something that will be hell to get off my shoes.

That morning, though, I let him walk in, sniffing out an interesting trail. Tiny white butterflies danced in the field, like a symbol of resurrection – I’d survived being run off the road, and I had my dog with me. All was right in the world.

I discovered buttercups pushing through the grass, which reminded me of my childhood, when we’d hold those flowers up under our chins to determine if we were “sweet” or not. The more pollen that rubbed off, the sweeter we were.

If I held one under Rochester’s chin, I knew the pollen would coat his muzzle, because he was such a sweet dog. I decided to take him with me to Leighville and let him loose in the dog park. He deserved a good run, and I hadn’t been the best walking partner for the last few days; my ribs ached and I still slept a lot.

Rochester found he was most comfortable with his back paws on the passenger seat, his front paws on the door ledge, and his big golden head stuck out the window, his fur flying behind him like a thousand small prayer flags. The slopes along River Road were sprinkled with wildflowers and it was clear spring had arrived.

I always preferred to drive the River Road between Stewart’s Crossing and Leighville, rather than taking the inland road, which ran through the centers of Washington’s Crossing and New Hope. River Road hugged the Delaware’s banks and threaded its way under maples and sycamores, past broken-down stone walls, fallow fields, and renovated barns that served as vacation homes for wealthy New Yorkers. The fields were already green, the trees in leaf. Sunlight glinted off the river, and fish jumped in the shallows.

I parked in the faculty lot, hooked Rochester on his leash, and took him upstairs to meet Candy Kane, who’d warmed up to me once I’d started talking about my new dog. And yes, I knew I wasn’t supposed to call her Candy, but I couldn’t resist. Kind of like my problem with computer information. In case security stopped me, I figured they would be more forgiving now that school was out.

I handed in my grades for the term, as well as a stack of graded papers for students who would never come back to pick them up. Rick had taken away Menno’s and Melissa’s papers for fingerprint analysis, but I didn’t tell Candy.

“This place is like a ghost town,” I said.

Usually, when I walk down the hallway toward Candy’s post at the center of the third floor of Blair Hall, a half-dozen faculty members have their doors open. There are students milling around waiting to speak to Lucas Roosevelt, or coming and going from faculty consultations. The part-time tutors hold court at the big round tables outside Candy’s office, which has a pass-through window where students can hand in late registration cards to be stamped, drop off messages for professors, and interact with the staff without being able to intimidate them.

That Tuesday, there wasn’t a single faculty door open, except Jackie’s, and there were no students anywhere in sight.

“Today’s the last day of finals,” Candy said. “Most of the students have already left for the summer. And the faculty? They were out of here last week, except for the few who give final exams rather than final papers.”

Rochester lay down in front of the faculty mailboxes, and Candy petted his head. “The whole campus is emptying out,” she said. “I drove in this morning up that little street that runs by Birthday House. Deserted. It was creepy.”

“We’re going down that way when we leave here,” I said. “I want Rochester to run around in the dog park for a while.”

“Just be careful,” Candy said. “You know how the crime rate goes up in Leighville when the college empties out.”

Leighville is a small town, but it revolves around college students. When they leave for Christmas break or for the summer, whole blocks empty out, and there are apartments ripe for burglary. Those who stick around find themselves walking empty streets at night, vulnerable for mugging, and incidents of vandalism go sky high. The problems of the big city have come down to the small towns—at least Leighville.

Candy and I chatted for a while as Rochester dozed. Her student assistant, a senior, had decided to skip graduation and had left the day before, moving to New York for a fresh start. It reminded me of my own move to the city, and I wondered how many more fresh starts I had left in me, as I said goodbye to Candy and walked down the hall to Jackie’s office. I liked living in Stewart’s Crossing and didn’t want to move again, at least not for a long time. Yet I needed to earn a living, and as I’d already discovered, there weren’t that many jobs for ex-felons.

I was forty-two, and still stuck, at least to a degree, in my mid-life crisis. I’d given up my home, career and friendships in Silicon Valley to return to Pennsylvania, and though I’d been able to reconnect with a few old friends, like Rick and Edith, and make a few new ones, like Gail Dukowski and Mark Figueroa, I hadn’t settled into the same level of comfort I’d had in California.

Rochester sensed what I was feeling and jumped up on me, putting his paws on my waist and struggling to lick my face, which he couldn’t quite reach. I stopped to stroke his head as we reached Jackie’s office.

She was sitting behind her desk, with three piles of student papers in front of her. “Hey, Steve,” she said, looking up. “You brought Rochester with you!”

She came out from behind her desk, and squatted down to pet Rochester’s head. “Hey, boy. Have you been enjoying your biscuits?”

“He loves them. I’ve been using them as rewards.”

“Has he been a good boy?” She stood up, and returned to her chair. I sat across from her, and Rochester sprawled on the floor, halfway between us.

“He’s turning into a detective.” I explained how he’d been finding clues to Caroline’s killer. “So of course, each clue he uncovers earns him a biscuit.”

“Really? What kind of clues?”

I mentioned a couple of the things Rochester had done—finding the shell casing, alerting me to the intruder at Caroline’s house, nosing out her PDA, and so on. “Are you sure you ought to be messing around with this, Steve? I mean, it could be dangerous for you.”

“I’ve got to help my friend Rick—if this case doesn’t get solved, it looks bad for him, and the police chief might have to make him take a fall to save his own skin. And besides that, it’s almost like I feel guilty for still being alive, and playing with her dog, when she’s dead.”

“We’re all guilty of stuff like that. Remember, a clear conscience is the sign of a bad memory.” She leaned down to pet Rochester. “What a smart boy you are. You deserve a reward for all your detecting.” She reached behind her and pulled a biscuit out of a drawer, which she handed to Rochester. He accepted it greedily, and sat on the floor chewing.

“This is a real reward day for him. From here, we’re heading to the dog park.”

“I wish I could take Samson out,” she said. “But I’ve got all these papers to finish marking up and I have to have my grades in the mainframe in two days.”

“Didn’t get much done over the weekend?”

“Well, yes, and no. I had to deal with a couple of students in trouble, and that took a lot of time. Plus, with six courses, there’s just so much to do.”

“We’ll leave you to it, then.” I stood up, and kissed her cheek. “If I don’t see you, have a great summer.”

“You too.”

With Rochester on his extendable leash, we walked down the hill toward the river, passing Birthday House, which did look spookily vacant. Instead of windows wide open, curtains flapping in the breeze, competing strains of rap and hip-hop blasting out into the air, there was a single student loading plastic trash bags overflowing with clothes into a station wagon with Connecticut plates.

The dog park was empty, and I might have found it creepy if it was later in the day and darker. But instead, I just opened the gate, let Rochester off his leash, and tried to get him to fetch by tossing a cloth Frisbee someone had left.

He chased it to the end of the park, grabbed it, and settled down to chew on it. “Rochester!” I called. “Here, boy. Come here!”

But he wasn’t interested. I had to walk all the way down to where he lay. I looked around. The grass looked pretty clean. So I lay down next to him, stroking his back as I watched the clouds scud by overhead.

Maybe it was nearly getting killed by the hit-and-run driver, but I was feeling reflective and sentimental about my childhood. From the buttercups that morning to the lush grass under me, I was regressing. My dad had been obsessive about our yard all the time I was growing up, watering and fertilizing and filling in dead spots with new sod. I remembered our back yard, the way it sloped down toward the lake, and how I’d lie there and stare up at planes passing overhead, dreaming of places I’d go and flights I’d take.

I spent a while woolgathering in the dog park. It was so quiet and peaceful I think I dropped off. Rochester lay next to me, gnawing on the Frisbee, until he heard the scraping of the gate opening, and took off down the field. I yawned and sat up, looking to see who he might be playing with. But there was no one there; I must not have closed the gate properly, and it had blown open in the breeze.

“Rochester! Come back here!” I called, but he was out the open gate before I could even get up and start to chase him.