Raining Cats & Dogs (A Melanie Travis Mystery) (25 page)

“F
ix them how?” I asked.

Michael didn’t answer. That might have had something to do with the fact that he was still two steps ahead of me and he’d already reached his car. He unlocked the door and yanked it open.

“Where are you going?”

He glanced at me briefly over his shoulder as he slid onto the seat. “To see Stacey. To figure out what the hell is going on.”

Good idea, I thought. It was the kind of thing I might have wanted to do myself. Except that I would have been tempted to stop by the police station on the way to tell Detective O’Malley what we’d figured out.

Michael didn’t look like he was going to be stopping anywhere first. He looked mad enough to spit nails.

“Do you know where she lives?” I thought the question might slow him down, but it had no discernible effect at all.

Instead, Michael reached down and started his car. “Hell, yes,” he said through the window. “I know where to find her.”

I cupped a hand around Faith’s muzzle and pulled her swiftly out of the way as the car began to back out of the space. As soon as he was clear, I released the Poodle and sprinted toward the Volvo, which was parked several spots down. I had no idea what Michael was planning to say to Stacey, or what she might do in return; but whatever was about to happen between them, I had no intention of missing any of it.

Faith liked this new game of spin and run that we were playing. She beat me to the Volvo and jumped up to plant both front feet on the door. I beeped the locks and let us in.

Luckily, Michael was a cautious driver. Before he’d even left the park, we’d fallen in neatly behind him. Michael never glanced in his rearview mirror; I doubted he even knew we were there. I tailed him up onto I-95, heading east toward Darien. Faith, riding shotgun, sat upright on the seat beside me and kept him in her sight.

As I drove, I pulled out my cell phone. I called Aunt Peg and quickly brought her up to speed on all the latest developments.

“Not Stacey Rhoades,” she said incredulously. “The woman with the Papillon?”

“Bad owners happen to good dogs,” I replied, watching Michael edge his car into the right-hand lane. He turned on his signal and prepared to exit, so I did the same.

Aunt Peg harrumphed. “You said she didn’t seem serious about obedience training. Maybe after she found out about the visits to Winston Pumpernill, coming to class was just an excuse.”

“Quite possibly,” I agreed.

“Where are you now?”

“Darien. I believe I’m on my way to Stacey’s house.”

“Don’t you
know
?”

“Not exactly. I’m following Michael.”

“I hope you’re not following him right into trouble.”

Poppycock. I knew Aunt Peg better than that. She thrived on trouble. And there was nothing she liked more than knowing I was, once again, right in the thick of things.

“Give me the address,” Peg said, and I did. Up ahead, Michael was pulling over to the curb and parking his car. “Maybe I should call the police and send them your way.”

“We should be fine,” I said. “All I’m planning to do is watch and listen when these two get together and see what shakes out. I’ll call Detective O’Malley afterward.”

“Call me, too,” Aunt Peg said. I snapped the phone shut and tucked it away.

The neighborhood Stacey lived in was not unlike my own—rows of neatly kept smaller houses on quarter-acre lots. We’d headed south toward the shore when we left the thruway, and although I couldn’t see Long Island Sound, I could smell the tang of salt in the air.

Halfway down the block, I found a tree to park beneath. I rolled all four windows part of the way down and told Faith to stay. She looked disappointed but resigned. Chin resting on the top of the open window, she settled down to await my return.

By the time I joined Michael on Stacey’s front step, he’d already rung the doorbell. He looked at me in surprise. “Where did you come from?”

“I’ve been following you since you left Bruce Park.”

“You have?”

The man really was oblivious.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to talk to Stacey, too.”

“Me first,” said Michael. He looked as though he thought I might want to fight him for the privilege.

So he wouldn’t get the wrong idea about that, I took a step back. At that moment, Stacey opened the door. Her eyes widened. Mouth slightly agape, she stared out at the two of us. Bubbles, standing on the floor beside her, began to bark. The little Papillon bounced up and down in place.

“May I come in?” Michael asked.

He didn’t wait for her to answer. Instead, he simply pushed past Stacey and walked into the house. Precedent set, I followed suit. It was nice not to have to be in charge for a change.

“Melanie?” Stacey asked, sounding confused. “What are you doing here?”

“Following Michael,” I said. How simple was that?

She closed the door and turned in place. Michael had kept going; he was heading toward the living room. “You two know each other?”

“We met a couple of weeks ago, after Mary Livingston died.”

Stacey seemed frozen in place, stuck in the hall next to the door, as if she was hoping that Michael would come back and she could open it and push the two of us out. Since that didn’t seem likely to happen, I decided to continue following his lead.

I walked into the living room; reluctantly, Stacey came after us.

“I wasn’t expecting visitors,” she said.

I wondered if that was supposed to be a comment about her housekeeping. Compared with my place, her home looked immaculate.

The living room was decorated in Early American, with dried wreaths on the walls and a hooked rug on the floor. The curtains were sprigged cotton, and the upholstered furniture was covered in denim. The fireplace had been neatly cleaned for spring; logs and andirons had been replaced by a big brass urn that held a spray of dried flowers. There were knickknacks on the mantelpiece and on nearly every other surface in the room, mostly Hummel figurines and small vases holding more dried blooms.

The place must have been a bitch to dust.

“Don’t worry,” said Michael. “We won’t be here long.”

I clasped my hands behind my back and smiled. This really was rather pleasant, I thought. I didn’t have to do any work at all.

“I want the truth,” said Michael. “And I want it now.”

He sounded ominous. Stacey began to look a little concerned.

“What the hell happened between you and my mother?”

“Oh, dear.” Stacey collapsed into a nearby chair.

Michael was unimpressed by her dramatic turn. “We’d like some answers,” he said.

At least, I noted, he’d begun including me in the discussion. Maybe he was hoping I might have something to contribute. Not that I needed to. Things seemed to be going pretty well without me.

“Maybe you should sit down.” Stacey gestured toward a dark blue love seat with plump, overstuffed cushions. “Would you like some coffee?”

“No,” Michael snapped, answering for both of us. “What I want is for you to tell me what’s really going on here. I thought we met up by accident that day on Greenwich Avenue. What a bit of serendipitous good fortune it seemed like at the time. Now I’m thinking maybe it wasn’t an accident at all.”

“Of course it was,” said Stacey. “Just a bit of good luck, that’s all.”

“Then how is it that I find myself wondering why you didn’t seem nearly as surprised to see me as I was to see you. And while you’re explaining that, you might want to rethink your claim that you had remained friends with my mother all these years. Even at the time that struck me as odd considering that she never liked you.”

Stacey’s eyes blazed. “She did too like me! I told her once that I thought you and I were the perfect couple. That when we got married, our children were going to be beautiful, and she agreed.”

Michael raked a hand through his hair. “My mother always agreed when people said outrageous things to her; it was just her way of trying to be polite. It didn’t mean anything.”

“I wasn’t being outrageous! I was telling her the truth.”

“Except that we didn’t end up getting married,” Michael pointed out. “And we don’t have any children.”

Stacey frowned in obvious annoyance. “There is that.”

This was good stuff, I thought. Since it was beginning to look like we were going to be there a while, I went to the love seat and sat down. Bubbles ambled over and sniffed my ankles. Checking out Faith’s scent, no doubt.

“How did you find out I was back in Greenwich?” Michael asked.

Stacey mumbled something under her breath.

“Pardon me?”

“Paul told me. He told half the class. That obedience club is worse than
Melrose Place
with all the gossiping that goes on. He was bitching about you coming back to try and coerce money out of his family, and I listened. Paul’s young enough to be from a different generation. He didn’t even know that you and I had once been—”

“Friends?” Michael supplied.

“Lovers,” she corrected.

“For Christ’s sake, Stacey, we were eighteen years old. I doubt that either one of us knew the meaning of love at the time.”

“We were old enough to make a baby together,” Stacey said quietly.

Michael stared at her for a long moment. “And mature enough to figure out what to do about that.”

“It was a mistake.”

“It had to be done.”

Both of them seemed to have forgotten I was even in the room.

“You moved on,” Michael said. “We both did. You got married.”

“I got divorced.”

“It happens.”

Michael walked over to a nearby table and picked up a figurine, a plump shepherdess holding a lamb in her arms. “You always did like trinkets,” he said.

Stacey’s expression brightened. “See? Even after all these years, you remember. You might have tried to forget me, but you didn’t.”

“What I remember is your proficiency as a thief,” Michael said coldly. He rubbed his thumb up and down, caressing the cool china curves. “Did this come from a jewelry store in town? Did you slip it into your pocket as you were walking out the door? Or maybe you picked it up in some patient’s room over at Winston Pumpernill.”

Stacey shrank back as if she’d been slapped. “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know exactly what I’m saying.” He nodded in my direction. “Melanie tells me there have been a number of incidents at Winston Pumpernill recently. Things have begun to disappear. Now to me, that sounds a lot like old times.”

Stacey braced her hands against the arms of the chair and rose. “It’s time for you to leave.”

“Not yet,” said Michael.

“Get out!”

She strode forward. Though Stacey tried her best to look threatening, she was smaller than either one of us. Michael could have subdued her easily. If it came to that, I probably could, too. Nevertheless, I stood up and moved to one side as a precaution. As full of surprises as Stacey was proving to be, I didn’t want to be caught flatfooted.

Michael wasn’t intimidated by her in the least. Instead of retreating, he walked toward her. “Did my mother catch you in the act?” he demanded. “Or did she hear her friends complaining about things that were missing and put two and two together? Either way, I’ll bet she confronted you. That’s just what she would have done. Once a thief, always a thief, right, Stacey?”

She glared at Michael venomously. Stepping suddenly sideways, she whipped a poker out of the stand of tools beside the fireplace. Stacey spun back around swinging the weapon in a wide arc.

Michael jumped back just in time to prevent the heavy metal bar from smashing into his side. Even though it was several feet from me, I jumped back, too. My reaction was reflex coupled with a quick reassessment of the situation.

Momentum from Stacey’s powerful swing carried the poker into a lamp. It flew from an end table and crashed into the wall. The base and the bulb both shattered; shards of glass sprayed toward us.

Michael looked at the carnage, incredulous. “Are you crazy?”

“Of course not. I asked you to leave my house, and you didn’t. You were yelling at me. I was afraid for my life and I acted in self-defense.” Stacey’s gaze shifted my way. “You heard him. You saw how he was behaving. I was acting in self-defense.”

Not by my book, but I wasn’t about to offer any commentary.

Michael had gone very still. His face was white, his lips drawn in a thin line. “I didn’t really believe it before,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine it was true. But it is, isn’t it? You killed her, didn’t you?”

“You don’t know anything,” Stacey snapped.

“Tell us what happened,” I said quietly.

“Yeah, right. So you can go running straight to the police?”

“We’re going to the police anyway,” Michael said. “And we’re taking you with us. You may not have to tell us anything, but you will have to talk to them.”

He advanced toward her. Stacey had lowered the poker. Now she raised it again and took a step back. “Stay away from me!”

“Like hell.”

She reached around behind her and grabbed the nearest object, a dainty vase filled with dried flowers. Stacey flung the vase and it hit Michael’s shoulder. She had quite an arm. The blow stopped him in his tracks.

“Don’t come any closer,” she said, snatching up a china statue.

Michael reached up and rubbed his shoulder. The vase lay broken at his feet. Bits of dried petals and stems clung to his sweater. He brushed them away.

“Why?” he asked.

“Your mother was going to tell on me.” Stacey lobbed the statue. Michael ducked to one side. It broke against the wall behind him. “She was going to have me arrested. I would have been booked and prosecuted. And for what? For helping myself to a few small items that none of those old people needed anyway?”

“You should have tried to reason with her,” said Michael.

“I did, but she wouldn’t listen. You have no idea what she was like. She said I’d been a wicked girl, and now I was a wicked woman. Who the hell did she think she was to talk to me like that?”

Stacey swept up another figurine and sent it flying. Michael, distracted, didn’t get out of the way in time. It struck him a glancing blow to the forehead. Blood beaded up on the spot; he didn’t seem to notice.