Murder Had a Little Lamb (22 page)

“Jessie,” she demanded angrily, “may I ask what that was all about?”

“I, uh, don’t like snakes,” I replied with an apologetic shrug.

“So I gathered,” she snapped. “Why didn’t you tell me that before we went on the air?”

“I would have if you’d told me in advance that that was the topic you came up with for today’s show!”

“But I did tell you!” she cried. “Early this week, when I called you—”

We didn’t have a chance to continue our conversation. The doors of the studio flew open. Standing in the doorway was a man I immediately recognized, even though we’d never met. Kenneth Decker, the president of Sunshine Multimedia.

The Big Boss, in other words.

“May I have a word with you?” he said icily.

“Jessie?” Patti said, sounding just as frosty as she gave me a little push.

“Not Dr. Popper,” the Big Boss said.
“You
, Patti.”

Uh-oh, I thought as I watched Patti slink out the room, following him a few paces behind.

While my first reaction was relief, that feeling quickly gave way to guilt. After all, I hadn’t exactly performed to the best of my ability on air.

Poor Patti, I thought as I stole away from the studio.

Still, I had a feeling all this would blow over. Patti was good at her job, and I knew how valuable she was to the station. As for me, I resolved that from now on, I’d make a point of being completely sure of my special guests’ identity before going on air.

Even though I had a feeling Patti wouldn’t be booking any more snakes.

•   •   •

As disastrous as that week’s TV spot had been, at least it was out of the way. As I got back into my van to head off to my first call of the day, my mind had already drifted back to the pressing matter that had occupied me all week: identifying Nathaniel’s killer.

Oddly enough, I was in the midst of muttering to myself about my future mother-in-law, the person who’d gotten me into this in the first place, when my cellphone rang. Sure enough, it was the same person I’d just been cursing.

“Jessica! It’s me, Dorothy.”

As if that shrill voice could belong to anyone else, I thought ruefully.

“Hello, Dorothy,” I replied with my usual daughter-in-law-esque politeness. “How are you—?”

“Jessica,” she interrupted, her impatience with my passion for pleasantries spewing through the phone, “this morning I realized I never got the chance to tell
you the entire story of why Nathaniel was considered the black sheep of the family. I seem to recall being rudely interrupted by Henry.”

That wasn’t quite how I remembered it. But at this point, I was more worried about how serious Dorothy’s omission would turn out to be.

Sweetly, I said, “This might be a good time to fill me in.”

“The patterns he’d been exhibiting his entire life finally came to a head when he was a teenager,” she said. “There was a perfectly awful incident during his freshman year of high school that really showed Nathaniel’s true colors.”

“What happened?” I prompted, aware that my heartbeat had quickened.

“He was fourteen or so, and he’d just enrolled at Schottsburg Academy. You’ve heard of it, haven’t you?”

“I don’t believe I have.”

“It’s a prep school in Pennsylvania. A boarding school. Not one of the best schools, but still highly competitive. Nathaniel didn’t have the grades or the pedigree to get into one of the top schools like Choate or Andover, but Schottsburg was nothing to sneeze at.” With a little sniff, Dorothy commented, “His mother always insisted on only the best for her Nathaniel. Which, I suppose, could explain why he was the way he was.

“Anyway, a few weeks after his first semester started, one of the students stole a car,” she went on. “A van, actually. It belonged to the school. In fact, it was hard to miss, since it had the Schottsburg crest
right on the door. Late one night, someone took the keys from the caretaker’s office and went for a joy ride. Apparently the trip lasted less than a mile, since the thief didn’t know how to drive and had barely gotten it off school grounds before crashing into a wall and totaling it.”

“That’s terrible!” I cried. “And Nathaniel was the thief?”

“That’s where it gets tricky,” Dorothy said somberly. “Someone—a man who lived in town, I believe—saw the van careening down the street, and noticed that the driver was wearing a red baseball cap. In those days, Nathaniel insisted on wearing that silly cap wherever he went. He practically slept in it, for heaven’s sake. When the witness heard what happened with the stolen van, he came forth and told the police what he’d seen.

“Naturally, Nathaniel was immediately called into the headmaster’s office and asked to explain. Even though he’d only been at the school for a few weeks, he was already well-known as the boy who never went anywhere without his cap. But instead of admitting that he was the person who’d taken the van and wrecked it, he concocted this ridiculous story about how one of the other students had borrowed his cap—coincidentally, that very night. Based on Nathaniel’s story alone, the other boy was accused of the crime and thrown out of school.”

“That’s terrible!” I cried.

Dorothy let out a snort. “It certainly is. Of course everyone in the family knew immediately that
Nathaniel had lied. As for the boy he chose to accuse—well, that made the whole thing even worse!”

“Who was the boy?” I wondered how
much
worse this could possibly get.

“A scholarship student,” Dorothy replied curtly. “Someone who’d worked his tail off to get into Schottsburg, since his family was much too poor to pay the tuition. He had an unusual name. Wilhelm or Willard … something with a W. Something that sounded German. His last name, too. Farber, maybe? At any rate, he, too, was new at the school. But instead of getting the education he’d been hoping for, he ended up being blamed for what we all knew perfectly well Nathaniel had done.”

“Did the school press charges?” I asked.

“No, they decided that throwing poor Wilhelm out of school was punishment enough. They claimed the damage to the vehicle wasn’t that terrible. Besides, the school’s insurance apparently covered all the costs. But my theory was that they wanted to keep the entire incident hush-hush, since they didn’t want the school to end up in the headlines. The last thing a place like that wants is for its students to appear to be anything less than perfect.”

“So that’s when Nathaniel became the black sheep of the family,” I mused, thinking out loud. “What about Wilhelm? What ever happened to him?”

“I have no idea,” Dorothy replied. “But that wasn’t the last time Nathaniel demonstrated the kind of person he was. Over the years, he showed us again and again that he didn’t have an honorable bone in his body.”

So Nathaniel started making enemies at a young age, I thought grimly, then continued to follow the same pattern throughout his life. I suppose it was only a question of time before his behavior caught up with him.

Yet the fact that the man had such a long history of ruthless behavior raised the possibility that it wasn’t someone at the Worth School who was responsible for his death after all. The main reason I’d pursued that path was that it been Dorothy’s original theory. But that didn’t mean it was correct.

I suddenly felt overwhelmed. Piecing together the story of someone’s life and figuring out who their enemies might have been was a hard job. The fact that Nathaniel had apparently exhibited a lifelong pattern of stepping over people to get what he wanted made it even harder.

When it came to figuring out which person on a very long list might have wanted him dead, that was starting to strike me as downright impossible.

I
welcomed the weekend as a chance to take a break from playing sleuth. I also saw it as a much-needed opportunity to catch up with some of the details of my day-to-day existence.

Under the best of circumstances, running my veterinary practice keeps my schedule packed—even with Sunny’s help. But on top of that, over the past week I’d heaped on the additional duties of teaching at the Worth School and investigating Poor Cousin Nathaniel’s murder. All that had left me with little time to breathe, much less keep up with my email, do errands, or perform any of the other eight million tasks required to maintain a life.

So after Nick and I spent Friday evening chilling with a DVD and Chinese food, on Saturday I methodically worked my way through the to-do list I composed
over breakfast. It actually felt good to do laundry and restock the freezer with Ben & Jerry’s instead of struggling with a puzzle that was still missing a frustrating number of pieces.

Then came Sunday, the day whose arrival I’d been dreading more and more with each passing second.

It was the day I’d begun thinking of as D-Day. Dinner Day—as in Dinner with Forrester Sloan, Who I’d Rather Not Have Dinner or Any Other Meal With, Day.

On top of that, I felt a little guilty that I’d made a point of not mentioning it to Nick. I tried telling myself that the reason was that it was such a nonevent that there was no reason to say anything about it.

“Have fun!” I cheerfully told Nick early on Sunday morning as we both stood in the doorway of the cottage, him with one foot out the door.

He grimaced. While he was enjoying his summer internship, I knew he wasn’t exactly looking forward to bonding with the partners and the other lawyers at the firm—especially since the schedule included team spirit–building activities like raft construction and scavenger hunts.

“I’ll try.” He let out a deep sigh before adding, “Compared to this, I think passing the bar exam is going to be a breeze.”

“Just turn on the old Nick Burby charm and you’ll do fine.” I leaned over to give him a peck on the cheek.

“Hey,” he protested, “what about a real kiss?”

With that, he took me in his arms and planted a mushy, Hollywood-style wet one on my mouth. Ordinarily, I would have melted. But not today. Not with that little cloud of guilt hanging over my head.

You have nothing to feel guilty about! I told myself. So what if while Nick is putting in a grueling, emotionally-draining day trying to impress all the other lawyers with his heretofore-unknown raft-building skills, you’ll be entertaining a gentleman caller?

Not
, I thought.

In the first place, Forrester is no gentleman, I reminded myself as I waved goodbye, not exactly an easy feat since I was holding Max in one arm and clutching Lou’s collar with the other. And in the second place, he’s not paying a call. At least, not a social call. And even if it could technically be considered a social call, it’s not a
welcome
social call.

At any rate, I was determined not to put the least bit of effort into making the evening ahead into anything that could remotely be considered a success. I made a point of not straightening up, not washing my hair, and not giving a single thought to what I’d serve for dinner, aside from reminding myself of where I’d stashed my collection of take-out menus.

Yet even though I had no intention of taking any action that could possibly be interpreted as gussying up, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I desperately needed a shower. So fifteen minutes before Forrester was due to arrive, I peeled off my sweaty clothes and stepped into the tub.

While I loved the cottage, even I had to admit that the plumbing was not its strong point. In fact, I’d tried to come to grips with its capriciousness by thinking of it as just one more bit of the old building’s historic charm. So when I grabbed the handle of the hot faucet
to turn off the water and the stupid thing came off in my hand, I wasn’t entirely surprised.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t horrified.

“Argh!” I cried. Or at least something that sounded like that. Frankly, I was too busy staring at the clump of metal in my hand, marveling at all the rust-colored crud caked onto the piece of pipe that once upon a time had kept it attached to the wall, to pay much attention to the sounds that were spewing out of my mouth.

But the chunk of metal in my hand was the least of it. What was really terrifying was the hot water that was now gushing through the wall.

“Yow!” I exclaimed.

Frantically I looked around for something to cram into the gaping hole in the tile. I grabbed a washcloth and tried stuffing it in. That lasted about two seconds.

Trying to quell the feelings of panic that were already threatening to render me even more useless than I already was, I desperately surveyed the bathroom, hoping to spot something else that might work. A bigger towel? A handful of toothbrushes?

I was considering the effectiveness of French green clay—a gooey substance that Suzanne had talked me into buying after she’d decided that pore-reducing facials were a girl’s best friend—when I looked down and saw that the water in the bathtub had already risen halfway up my calves. Which meant the water was surging through the wall faster than the drain could suck it out.

Why didn’t I take any plumbing courses when I was in vet school? I wondered.

The realization that I was losing the ability to think logically only accelerated the feeling of panic that at this point was almost as forceful as the deluge.

Have to stop water. Have to stop water, I thought over and over as I climbed out of the tub. I grabbed Nick’s white terrycloth bathrobe off the hook on the back of the door. I pulled it on, only vaguely aware that it was inside out, as I sprinted into the living room. My feet were still very wet, causing me to slip and slide across the wooden floor.

Both my dogs and Tinkerbell interpreted my slapstick behavior as an invitation to play a thrilling new game.

“Woof, woof!” Lou barked happily, falling into step beside me and prancing along like a drum major. Max, meanwhile, grabbed his pink plastic poodle, its head half ripped off and its color badly mottled, thanks to constant exposure to dog spit. Tinkerbell leaped onto the couch to engage in some play of her own, which consisted of swatting at the loose button on one of the throw pillows.