Raining Cats & Dogs (A Melanie Travis Mystery) (21 page)

Trust Aunt Peg to point out the truth.

L
ife is never simple.
What great philosopher said that? Whoever she was, she must have been a mother.

Thankfully, when I woke up Saturday morning, the child I was worried about wasn’t my own, which didn’t make my concerns any less daunting. Ever since my tutoring session with Brittany Baxter at the beginning of the week, I’d been trying to find a few minutes to corner her English teacher, Ed Weinstein. Somehow, given the demands of both our hectic schedules, it hadn’t happened.

So I’d sent him a note on Thursday and told him to pick a time for us to meet to discuss one of his students. Improbably, he’d chosen Saturday morning at Hay Day, a country market in Greenwich that sold fresh fruit, sinfully delicious pastries, and great coffee.

I arrived first, purchased a cream cheese croissant and a cup of Colombian brew, then staked out a small table by the windows overlooking the parking lot. Ed drove a dark blue Buick, a sturdy, no-nonsense car that suited his sense of propriety and would be easy to spot among the bevy of sleek imports already filling most of the spaces. I leaned back in my chair, sipped at my coffee, and waited for him to drive in. I was so busy looking out the window, I didn’t hear him come walking up behind me.

“Good morning!” Ed sang out cheerfully, and I jumped in my seat.

He slid into the chair opposite me and set a mug of herbal tea and a protein bar down on the table. When I’d first met Ed two years earlier, he’d been sarcastic and argumentative, and he’d smoked like a chimney. To be fair, he was also semi-brilliant in his own pompous, professorial way.

Since then, he’d gotten divorced, shaved off an unflattering mustache, and started jogging. He looked five years younger, and his attitude toward life had improved markedly. Fortunately for his students, the edgy brilliance remained.

Ed was wearing nylon shorts, a black T-shirt, and a pair of serious-looking running shoes. His shirt was damp, and a bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face. No wonder I hadn’t seen him drive in; he’d jogged over to Hay Day to meet me.

“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” he said.

“No, I just got here.”

“I apologize for my appearance. Saturdays I run five miles, and I hate to give it up. Especially after a long week at work, exercise really restores the soul.”

Ed plucked at his wet, form-fitting T-shirt and pulled it away from his body. The move had a practiced look to it, and it achieved its purpose. I noticed how smoothly muscled he’d become.

“Divorce agrees with you,” I said, breaking off a piece of my croissant.

He laughed, and I wondered if he’d gotten his teeth whitened, too. “Divorce agrees with everyone. Freedom regained. What’s not to like?”

I wondered if his ex-wife felt the same way. Not that it was any of my business. The subject I’d come to discuss was touchy enough. No point in starting the conversation by getting his hackles up.

“You just got married, didn’t you?”

News travels fast at Howard Academy; gossip travels even faster. I wasn’t surprised that Ed was familiar with the details of my personal life. In a closed community like our private school, there were times when we all seemed to live in one another’s pockets.

“Last month,” I said.

“And are you blissfully happy?”

“So far, so good.”

If someone else had asked the question, I might have provided a few details. But there was something about the deft smoothness of Ed’s demeanor that made me wary of sharing confidences.

“But that’s not what you asked me here to talk about.”

“No.” I picked at my pastry. The croissant was delicious. Too bad I was mostly just shredding it with my fingers. “Brittany Baxter.”

“Fourth period English. What about her?”

“As you know, she’s been seeing me for tutoring.”

Ed nodded. His tea was green and it smelled vile. I’d have wrinkled my nose if I had to drink it, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“She was getting behind in her reading. Maybe I jumped on her too hard, but I hate to let stuff like that get out of hand. Let a kid drop back some, and pretty soon they get it in their heads that they can’t catch up. Fortunately, we seem to have gotten things sorted out. I’m sure the sessions she had with you were a big help.”

“Plus, I hear you scheduled a couple of extra sessions with her yourself.”

A look of surprise came and went briefly in Ed’s eyes. He recovered quickly. “That, too.”

“I was told she’s started calling you Ed.”

His shoulders rose and fell in a negligible shrug. The soft material of the black shirt pulled across his pecs. Ed busied himself getting the wrapper off his protein bar.

“Do all your students do that now?”

He glanced up, but his eyes looked past me. “A couple.”

“The girls?”

“No.” Ed’s voice was suddenly curt. “Not just the girls. The ones that call me by my first name are the ones that need a little extra nudge in class. I’ve been a teacher for a long time. I’ve seen how it helps when I develop a real relationship with the kids. I want them to know that I’m not just some unapproachable authority figure. That I’m there for them if they need me to be.”

His explanation sounded okay. But I wasn’t sure I was buying it. Not yet anyway.

“Brittany’s very pretty,” I said.

Ed gave up toying with his plate. Now his eyes met mine, and his gaze was smoldering. “What are you suggesting?”

“She’s also very young.”

“I know exactly how old Brittany Baxter is.” His tone was low, ominous. “She’s twelve, for Christ’s sake, a seventh grader. She’s not even a teenager yet. And if you’re trying to say you think I would have done anything even
remotely
inappropriate…”

Ed shook his head, ground his teeth. His features curled in a snarl. “We’re done here. This meeting is over.”

He shoved back his seat and stood. The chair wobbled for a moment, then tipped over backward. Diners at other tables looked in our direction.

“Ed,” I said quietly, “sit down.”

He stood there, thinking about it. At least he didn’t leave. After a minute, Ed reached around behind him and righted his chair. Once it was upright, he stared at it hard, then finally sat back down.

“How dare you?” he demanded.

“You know the answer to that,” I said. “I’m a teacher, I love my kids. I’d do anything to protect them. You’re a teacher, too. You know what I’m talking about.”

His nod was short, almost imperceptible.

“Brittany told me some things that made me nervous. I had to check them out. In my place, you’d have done the same thing.”

“In your place, maybe I wouldn’t have been so quick to rush to judgment. I wouldn’t have started by making accusations.”

“This isn’t an accusation,” I said. “All we’re doing here is clearing the air. If I had wanted to accuse you of something, I’d have gone straight to Russell Hanover.”

“I guess now I’m supposed to be grateful that you didn’t?”

“No.” I braced my elbows on the tabletop and leaned toward him. “What you’re supposed to do is think long and hard about the perception that’s created by the relationships you have with some of your students. I know perfectly well Brittany’s at a difficult age—”

“It’s not just Brittany,” Ed said. “It’s all of them. The boys are nearly as bad as the girls. Sometimes I look around my classroom and think I’m less of a teacher than I am a traffic cop at Hormone Central.”

“They’re testing you,” I said. “And each other. Trying out their sexuality to see what works and what doesn’t.”

“It didn’t used to be like this,” Ed grumbled. “Ten, fifteen years ago, kids didn’t grow up so fast. Third grade boys with pierced ears. Fourth grade girls wearing bras. It’s like none of them want to be children anymore. They have no idea where they’re going, but they’re all in a huge hurry to get there. It confounds the heck out of me, and it makes me sad at the same time. It’s not like the outside world is such a great place. Why don’t their parents shelter them a little longer?”

“Because most of them are too busy,” I replied. “That’s why they’re paying that enormous tuition. So we’ll do the job of raising their children for them. If Brittany’s parents were paying enough attention to their daughter, they’d be the ones sitting here across from you this morning instead of me.”

“It’s stupid,” Ed muttered.

“I agree.”

“Look, I gotta go.” He drained the last of his tea and pushed away his plate. “Are we okay on this issue now? If Brittany thinks I’m giving her the wrong idea, I’m just as happy to keep my distance. She’s still got her sessions with you.
You
keep her on the straight and narrow. I’ll keep my nose out of it.”

“Done,” I said, and Ed turned and left.

He’d said all the right things, I thought. Now it remained to be seen whether his actions backed them up.

I’d be watching.

Back in my car, I gave Steve Barton a call.

It took me a while to get used to cell phones. In the beginning, I carried one for safety’s sake, but never turned it on. The thought of actually making a call while I was driving was unthinkable. But, eventually, I got with the program and stopped thinking of my cell phone as a necessary evil. I wasn’t in love with the gadget like some people, but I could appreciate the convenience it occasionally afforded me.

Steve was mowing his lawn when I reached him. I told him I was in the neighborhood—a lie, but what the heck, I was heading that way—and asked if he minded if I stopped by and asked him a few questions. Steve seemed somewhat surprised by the request, but was otherwise amenable to having his Saturday interrupted, so I hopped on the Merritt Parkway and drove up to New Canaan. By the time I found his house, a tidy ranch on a cul-de-sac two blocks from South Avenue, Steve had finished his chores.

The sweet aroma of freshly cut grass hung in the air as I climbed the front steps and rang the bell. Subconsciously, I braced against the barrage of sound that, in my experience, inevitably followed. Can I help it if nearly all my friends are dog owners? Most, in fact, shared their homes with more than one dog. Now that I thought about it, it seemed unusual that Steve, a man who taught an obedience class to other dog lovers, wouldn’t have at least one dog himself. And yet, he’d never brought one to class.

Nor, I discovered now, did one accompany him to the door. Instead, Steve pulled the door open wide like someone who had no fear that a dog might slip out. He smiled, stepped back, and motioned me inside.

“Come on in,” he said. “I’d been expecting your call.”

“You were?”

“Of course. I know you’ve been talking to everyone else in class. I figured it was only a matter of time before you worked your way around to me.”

As I followed him to the living room, I was still looking down, as if waiting for a dog, any dog, to magically appear. Apropos of nothing, I noted that Steve was barefoot and that his hardwood floors were blindingly clean. Much cleaner than mine, unfortunately. Maybe that was because I was living with a bevy of carousing canines and he wasn’t.

“Looking for something?” Steve asked. A large recliner dominated one side of the room. He waved me toward a couch beneath the front window; then he walked over and sat down in the big chair.

“I’m just wondering why you don’t have any dogs.” The couch was much lower. Once I sank into its cushions, I found myself looking up at him. It wasn’t the most comfortable feeling. “With your interest in obedience, it seemed likely that you might have one or two.”

“I’m between dogs at the moment.” Steve picked up a framed photograph from a side table, carried it over, and handed it to me. “This was my last dog, Stealth.”

The picture was a close-up shot of an attractive German Shepherd. The dog was staring directly at the camera, and his dark eyes were piercingly intense. He was sitting down, but somehow didn’t appear still at all. It was as if the lack of motion was only momentary as he waited for his next command.

“Very nice,” I said.

“He was better than nice.” Steve replaced the picture and sat down. “Stealth was a dog in a million. He already had his U.D.X. and C.G.C., and he was only four when he died.”

An impressive array of titles, especially for a dog so young. “What happened?” I asked.

“Bloat.” Steve grimaced. “You own a big dog like that, you know you’re taking your chances. I knew there was a genetic predisposition in his family, but I thought I could manage his care well enough to keep things under control. Turns out I was wrong. So much for trying to play God.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and really meant it. Bloat, or gastric torsion, was a horrible thing, and a horrifying way to watch one’s pet die.

“Me, too. I’m looking for another dog to start over with, but I’m taking my time about it. I’ve always loved Shepherds, but I’m not sure I can deal with another one right now. Too many memories there. I’ve been thinking about looking at Poodles. Smart as they are, I bet they’d be a blast to work with. But they’re susceptible to bloat, too, aren’t they?”

I nodded. “Standards are. So far I’ve been lucky; there hasn’t been any incidence of it in the line my girls come from. Plus, like you, I manage their care pretty carefully. If you ever decide you want one, let me know. I’ll introduce you to my aunt. She’s Faith’s breeder, and she knows just about everything there is to know about Standard Poodles.”

“I’ll do that. In the meantime, I suspect you didn’t come here today just to talk to me about dogs?”

“No, not entirely,” I admitted. “I suppose you can already guess that a couple of your students had some rather interesting things to say about you.”

A smile played around the corners of his mouth. “And yet they continue to come to class.”

A point that hadn’t been lost on me either.

“Minerva and I had a bit of history together. I imagine you’ve figured that out already.”

“Yes, she told me about it.”

“I’m sure she did.” His eyes went cold. “You’d be wise not to believe everything you hear.”

“I never do.”

“Mark Terry asked where I was when I left the sunroom during Coach’s performance that day. I assume you’d like to know that, too?”