PW02 - Bidding on Death (12 page)

“I know you’re not going to have a dog put down, if that’s what you mean,” Jack said with resignation.

Helen Maguire slipped out of the viewing room. “Mrs. Rayburn?”

“Yes?” I tried not to look guilty.

“I’d like to interview you about finding the body, what would be a good time?”

“I set my own hours, so any
time that’s good for you,” I told her. “You want me to come down to the sheriff’s department?”

“I can come to your home,” she told me.

We agreed to meet on Monday afternoon, and I gave her our phone number.

“She was awfully polite,” I told Jack as we walked back to our car. “Do you think that’s a bad sign?”

Jack laughed. “You think you’re a suspect?”

“We were last time,” I reminded him.

I didn’t go to Rose’s funeral, but I did go to the interment. I took Paco. Jack says I’m anthropomorphizing (he would), but it just didn’t seem right for him not to be there. I put on his little harness and clipped on his leash and off we went.

I have to admit that in the back of my mind was the hope that someone would catch sight of this sad little orphan and offer him a home. But it was not to be.

Paco was fine in the car, putting his front feet on the window ledge from the passenger’s seat and watching the passing scene. He was fine when we arrived at the cemetery, found a parking spot, and got out of the car. At home we’d been working on heeling, and I had some bits of liver with me, so Paco heeled along quite attentively until we approached the crowd at grave-side. Then he went ballistic.

He went into a fusillade of frenzied barking, turning in circles to
try to escape his harness, determined to hightail it out of there
. My face radiated heat and I knew I must have been bright red. “Crowds must be a problem for him,” I told the group in a general apology, and removed Paco to a distance.
When we got far enough from the crowd, Paco calmed down a bit, and we stood and watched the grave-side service.

I looked down at Paco. “Is this why Rose carried you around in her purse?” I asked him. To which Paco made no response.

I spent Sunday afternoon cleaning house, in preparation for my interview with the VBI. I confined my efforts to downstairs, and found my way into corners that I’d managed to avoid for far too long.

The truth is that Helen Maguire intimidated me. I remember when I first entered the work force after Jimmy died. At the time, and for quite some time afterward, I imagined that eventually I would get it all together. Eventually I would be the pulled-together working woman who turned herself out each morning as a sleek finished product, without the frantic search for hose that weren’t run and blouses that weren’t adorned with baby spit-up. I would finally master the technique of having a smoothly running home, well-behaved children, and a crisp professional office persona.

I finally decided that my goal was a myth. But now, here she was. It was attainable, just not for me. I felt like such a failure.

In the middle of all my cleaning frenzy, I tossed together a tuna casserole (which basically combines cans of tuna and soup and a package of noodles) and stuck it in the oven. Jack had seen early on how this day was going, and retreated to his l
ab in the barn. By sundown
, he was back, asking what was for dinner.

“Tuna casserole,” I told him. My tone of voice dared him to say something about it.

But I’d married no fool, witness his self-preservation in making himself scarce all afternoon. “Fine,” he said. Then he added, “Hey, I think there are still a few tomatoes left.” When I just looked at him, he said hastily, “And why don’t I go get some?” and headed out the back door.

I set the table and peeked at the casserole. After a few minutes, I heard a call from the back yard. “Su-SEEEEL-ya!”

Well, something was bothering the man. I went to the back door to see what it was. Jack was standing in the middle of the garden. He was holding a couple ripe tomatoes and staring back toward the back of the garden.

Oh. Looks like the cat is out of the bag. I went out to join him.

“What is it, honey?”
I asked in my best June Clea
ver manner.

He pointed. “What are those?”

“Those? Those are grape vines.”

“What kind of grape vines?” he asked dangerously.

I lifted my chin, remembering Admiral Hopper. “Scuppernong,” I said defiantly.

Oh, the enormity! “
You planted a rotundifol
ia in my vineyard?” My eyes had barely begun to flash when Jack recognized his error and stepped back from the ledge. “Our vineyard,” he corrected lamely.

“They’re not in Our vineyard,” I told him sweetly. “They’re in Our garden. You know, the garden that I plow, I plant, I fertilize, I weed, I harvest? That garden. The garden where they’ve been since I planted them this spring and you’re just now noticing.”

“And what are they doing here?”

“They’re growing,” I said impatiently. “In the fullness of time, they will produce grapes, which we will then eat.”

Why was Jack making a fuss? And if I wanted to eat grapes, there was a whole vineyard full of them, right? Well, truth is, there are grapes and there are grapes. The grapes in the vineyard are vitis vinifera. Sure, they come in a lot of varieties, the cabernet, the chardonnay, the pinot and the merlot, but those are all sub-groups of the vinifera, the classic Euro-asian wine grape.

Wine grapes are great for making wine. For eating? Not so much. They’re tasty, but tiny and full of seeds. Scuppernong has seeds too, but they’re good hefty grapes, some of them the size of golf balls, which makes navigating the se
eds worth it. I’d coveted
Evelyn
Ledbetter’s scuppernongs for years now, and this spring she gave me a couple, which I smuggled in to the back of the garden.

“Table grapes?” Jack said skeptically.

“Table grapes,” I assured him. I didn’t cross my fingers, except mentally. Because to tell the truth, when the Queen Anne
Historical Society me
e
t
s
at Evelyn
’s house, she always serves us tiny glasses of her homemade scuppernong wine. And to tell even more of the truth, I liked it. So I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps someday, years down the road, these vines might produce more grapes than we wanted to eat, and if that day ever came I was going to try my hand at a small batch of scuppernong wine. Not to sell, not to put the Passatonnack label on, just for home consumption.

I knew better than to mention that to Jack, though. The very idea of making a wine from a non-vinifera grape would strike him as blasphemy. I’m married to a wine snob. I know it, I can’t change it, I’ll just have to work around it.

“They’ll stay in the garden?” Jack asked.

“Jack, they’re going to stay right here! And the closest vineyard is over there!” I pointed toward the nearest part of the vineyard.  “What do you think this is? Little Shop of Horrors? Attack of the Killer Tomatoes? The vineyard is fine, the garden is fine. Chill. Out.”

Mention of tomatoes brought Jack’s attention back to the tomatoes he was holding. He held them up and smiled weakly.
It was almost an apology.

I accepted it as such. “Come on, before the casserole dries out.”

Peace restored, we returned to the house.

During dinner, Jack wondered what my plans were for Paco. “Oh, I’m sure I can find him a good home,” I told him airily. “It’s a very popular breed.”

Jack looked down at Paco, who was watching us eat. “They are?!” he asked incredulously. “They’re the size of a large rat, they have weird buggy little eyes,
shrill voices,
nasty personalities,
and they’re not good for anything.”

“They’re companionship,” I told him sternly. “And a lot of people like little dogs. He’s – apartment sized.”

“He’s sure not a farm dog,” Jack agreed.

EIGHT

The next morning, rather than dithering while waiting for my interview with the investigator, I tackled the Paco issue. I called the vet’s office and talked to Doc. She suggested that I post on her bulletin board, with all the lost dog and free kitten notices. And she dug around and found a phone number for the chihuahua rescue people.

So I called them. I got a nice lady named Lorraine on the phone and explained that I had a situation here in Queen Anne with a chihuahua whose owner had recently died. Lorraine was sympathetic, but the first thing she wanted to know was, “Is he at a kill shelter?”

“He’s HERE,” I said. “He’s at my house. I’m not even a relative but the brother told me to take him to the animal shelter. And our shelter here does kill animals that aren’t adopted pretty quick.”

Lorraine took my contact information and asked me for details about Paco. I gave him as good a review as I could.
Two years old (Doc told me that), house-broken, trainable, the whole ball of wax.
She said she would see what she could do.

“Wait a minute,” I protested. “Isn’t someone going to come get him?”

Lorraine sig
hed wearily. “We have volunteer foster homes
, but everyone is ma
xed out right now. If you can just be patient a while longer.” She explained the situation. Apparently chihuahuas had become too fashionable lately. Some rich party girl
who was famous for being famous
had been making all the tabloids being photographed at trendy spots carrying her chihuahua, which started a craze for the little guys. Turns out it’s not go
od for a breed to become trendy. The breeders churn out more litters to meet the increased demand, and
people buy them on a whim and then abandon them when they turn out to require actual work and caring for. The long and short of
it was that there was a nationwide
chihuahua glut just now.

Lorraine was spending quite a lot of time talking to someone she wasn’t going to be able to help; gradually it dawned on me that she saw me as a potential recruit for chihuahua fostering. Once I realized where this was going, I got off the phone fast.

I looked at Paco and imagined a whole bunch of Pacos running around the house. Lordy!

Well, there was always Doc’s bulletin board. I still had Amy’s camera, and took a series of pictures of Paco.
He turned out to be surprisingly photogenic. I downloaded the pictures and added the most appealing to a Free To A Good Home flyer, and sent it to the color printer.

While I was at it, I took pictures of several Barbies and Breyer horses and the toy tea set.
I was admiring my current auctions (Amy is right – the bidding is always most intense on the last day) when I realized I’d let time get away from me again.
I realized that when I saw th
e large rental sedan coming up
the driveway; it was time for my VBI interview.

Drat. And here I was in my third-best blue jeans and my
six year old Qu’aot III tee-shirt (
Under The Catacombs!). Well, the Man From Richmond
was just going to deal with me as I am.

I stashed Paco in the laundry room, because I didn’t trust him to behave.
And I started a new pot of coffee, because the old one was breakfast leftovers and getting nasty.

I thought I was all ready, but I jumped when the front doorbell rang. Oh, right – I mentally thumped myself on the forehead. Special Agent Maguire was at the front door, because she wasn’t from around here and she didn’t know any better.

I answered the door and tried to seem less flustered than I really was. I got the agent settled in to the living room, speaking sternly to Polly who wanted to hail her as a long-lost sister. She politely refused coffee and settled herself onto the sofa and pulled out a no
tebook. I’d gone over the sofa
with the lint brush, but I suspect Agent Maguire would be leaving with a few souvenir pet hairs.

First, she asked me to describe how I found Rose. I explained my thought process, how I’d called Rose and she hadn’t returned my call, so when I was going by on an errand I decided to stop by.

“So you’d say you were a good friend of Rose’s?”

“Oh, no!” I was stunned by that interpretation.

“If you were dropping by…” the agent asked.

“That’s just being neighborly,” I insisted. “You know, looking out for one another. You don’t have to like someone for that.”

“So you didn’t like Rose?” she persisted.

“I didn’
t KNOW Rose
!” I took a deep breath. “I’d only met her that week, at the auction, and just to talk to.”

So we had to go back and go over the auction, and meeting Amy and seeing Rose and Paco and talking to Rose for a few minutes
in the line
at the BBQ Hut. I wond
ered if Special Agent Maguire had
ever talked to a stranger in line at a concession stand.
I suspect not.

Then we covered Julia and Amy’s visit here. When I started to explain eBuy, Agent Maquire just said dismissively that she knew about eBuy. (W
hat was she shopping online for
, I wondered.)  And the break-ins at Julia’s and Amy’s houses, and my theory that the big buyers at the auction had been targeted.