Roll Over and Play Dead (6 page)

On the way back from NewCo, we stopped at Miss Emily’s to see if Nick and Nora were lying on the porch. They weren’t. While Caron and Inez made small talk with the violets, I went into the living room and sat down on a prickly puce settee, or whatever it was, dug through a decade’s accumulation of magazines and catalogs for the telephone directory, and called the animal shelter.

Jan reported that none of the missing animals had been picked up and brought there. I told her about the confrontation with Newton Churls, adding that he was by far the nastiest human being I’d encountered in my thirtysomething years. “Helen Maranoni was demanding his death,” I concluded, “and although I’m opposed to the death penalty, I didn’t hear myself protesting.”

“He is vile, isn’t he? I’m opposed to the death penalty, too, but if ever anyone were to change my mind, or at least cause me to question my position, Churls is the one. I’ve heard stories of him bragging about how lucrative his business is. He claims the Lincoln was bought from profits from dogfights, and he’s been known to drink a lot of whiskey and carry on about all the cash he’s got squirreled away at that filthy place. Talk about blood money…”

Shuddering, I said, “He mentioned that he bought dogs from an animal shelter in the next county. Has he ever tried to acquire animals from you?”

“He tried once,” she said with a harsh laugh. “I grew up out that way and I recognized him. The first thing I did when I took over was raise the adoption fees and require a lot of paperwork and a personal interview. I think Churls had a deal with the previous director or one of the officers. The records were haphazard at best, nonexistent at worst. Strays, and sometimes pets, were picked up but not logged in. Churls or one of his bunchers would come by at night, select the animals, and pay a small gratuity that never made it to the petty cash box. Now every animal is assigned a number when it’s brought in, and we track it through its departure. A tail count is performed every morning and every evening.”

I tried to imagine one of her less sober employees on his knees in front of the cages, trying to count a bouncy litter of puppies. “How’s Arnie?” I asked. “Did he straighten up?”

“He wouldn’t straighten up if someone inserted a ramrod in his rear,” she said, sighing. “I desperately need to replace him, but the salary’s low and not too many people want to wash down dog pens for minimum wage. And we must have a night watchman to make sure someone like Churls doesn’t try to pull a fast one. We have drugs on the premises, too.”

“He’s not armed, I hope?”

“Only with those developed in the womb, presuming he didn’t crawl out from under a rock.”

She promised to call if she learned anything, and we ended the conversation on a gloomy note. Caron and Inez had passed through the room earlier, so I called farewell to the violets and went out the front door.

What I saw was enough to stop a herd of buffalo in the middle of a stampede. Caron and Inez were in the adjoining yard, and included in the group of Culworthy, Daryl Defoe, Vidalia, and the Maranonis. George held the box of puppies, and his wife periodically leaned over to smile at them. Daryl was talking—and Culworthy was listening intently. Odder and odder, I thought as I walked toward them.

Seven faces went blank and Daryl stopped talking. It was not the warmest reception I’d had, and was in fact cooler than my last interrogation at the Farberville Police Station, when I’d been obliged to admit to a lack of candor in an official police investigation.

“Well?” I said.

Culworthy snapped to attention, catching himself before he actually saluted. “Ah, Malloy. Any luck at the shelter?”

“No, Jan hasn’t seen any of the missing animals, but she promised to call if the officers find them.” I looked at each of them in turn, on the off chance my ESP had improved greatly in the last day. “What were you discussing?”

There was a pause fraught with awkwardness, and therefore hinting of impending deceit. “The stolen animals and that horrible man,” Helen answered, but not at all briskly.

Vidalia sniffled. “And he might get his filthy hands on Astra. She has never been kept in a cage, and she’ll be badly frightened. I can’t bear to think about it.” She sniffled more loudly as she fumbled in her cuff for a handkerchief.

“Then don’t think at all,” Culworthy snapped. He looked at Daryl and said, “Talk to you later, Defoe. Come by at nineteen hundred hours.” He muttered a generic good-bye and marched into his headquarters.

“Why did you look in the shed?” I asked Daryl.

“Too many cages.” He went up the stairs to his apartment.

After another awkward pause, Vidalia trilled something about searching once more for Astra and wafted away, her scarf fluttering behind her like a gossamer blue ponytail.

“Come along, George,” Helen said. “We must feed the puppies. I’m sure that man gave them no attention. Aren’t they sweet?”

I put my hand in the box and let it be attacked by rough little tongues and teeth as sharp as knitting needles. “Can you describe the man who took the puppies?”

“I was at the nursing home when he came. Otherwise, this never would have happened, I can assure you. I’d have asked questions about this farm and demanded to see his driver’s license. I’d have required references.” She gave us a moment to appreciate her purported efficiency, then gazed stonily at her husband. “George dealt with him.”

George smiled benignly. “Yes.”

“The baseball game,” she prompted him.

He looked down for a minute and scratched his head. “That’s right. I was watching the game and dozing when he came. Ordinary fellow, said he’d parked down the street a ways, said he liked dogs.”

“But what did he look like?” Caron said abruptly.

“Ordinary.”

In a steely voice, Helen said, “Go on, George—tell them the truth.”

I would have felt some pity for him, if he hadn’t looked so guilty. About what, I had no theory. He shuffled his feet, rubbed his jaw, and finally said, “I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I took them off and was sound asleep when the doorbell rang.” He put the box down on the grass, took a pair of wire-rimmed bifocals from his pocket, cleaned them with a handkerchief, and settled them on the bridge of his nose.

“He couldn’t bother to find them,” Helen said.

“And I’m blinder than a bat without them,” he continued. His expression reminded me of Nick and Nora after they’d beset me the first day. Repentant, but not necessarily with measurable sincerity. “The man was average, and he sounded like a regular guy. I told him how Juniper had escaped while in heat and that the puppies were half poodle and half whatever was loose in the neighborhood that day. He asked me some questions about Juniper; I just thought he wanted to make sure she’d had all her shots and was in decent health. When I told him the puppies were in the backyard, he said he’d get them himself so as not to disturb me anymore.”

Helen crossed her arms. “Thus giving him an opportunity to examine the gate and consider how best to steal Juniper during the night.”

“You don’t keep her in the house at night?” I asked, surprised that Juniper didn’t have her own bedroom and private bath. This was my first serious encounter with pet owners, and I was beginning to grasp their devotion to their animals. Astra had a basket with a matching bedspread and preferred her fish broiled with butter. Patton no doubt had an air-conditioned doghouse, carpeted in khaki. Nick and Nora’s daily dinner took twenty minutes to prepare, and Miss Emily had noted in a postscript that a nice piece of filet mignon might brighten them up if they seemed depressed by her absence.

With an edge of accusation, Helen said, “George put in a doggie door so Juniper could go out whenever she wanted. She was very restless all evening, missing her puppies, and went outside numerous times to look for them. I attempted to soothe her with warm milk, but when we retired, she was pacing fretfully. I slept late the next morning. George discovered Juniper was gone after he returned from the grocery store.”

“The doggie door was your idea,” George said defensively.

I realized how simple it would be to stick a piece of meat through the doggie door in order to lure the dog outside. Unlike Churls’s pit bulls, all the missing animals were friendly and accustomed to kindness (and little treats) from humans.

A shiver ran down my back, as if Miss Emily’s bus had driven over my grave. I told the Maranonis to call me if anything noteworthy happened, and the girls and I went to the car. They were both very quiet and thoughtful, two characteristics uncommon in the last two years of melodramatic outbursts, egomania, and unfettered verbosity.

“What was Daryl saying when I came out of the house?” I asked Caron.

It took her a moment to concoct a lie worthy of her innate talents. “We were talking about putting up posters at the grocery store and the library.”

“Oh, really? Colonel Culworthy seemed interested in what he was saying,” I persisted. “I didn’t understand his comment about the cages, though.”

“I didn’t notice,” she muttered. She twisted around in the seat and said to Inez, “I’m spending the night with you tomorrow, right?”

“You are?” Inez said, startled.

“Yes. Remember how we’re going to make missing dog posters so we can put them up Saturday? We were just talking about it, for pity’s sake, Inez. What are you doing back there—giving yourself a lobotomy with your nail file?”

“I was worrying about Nick and Nora,” she said with a trace of spirit.

“Which is why we have to make posters,” Caron said with a lot of spirit. “Remember?”

They bickered until we dropped Inez off at her house, and then Caron turned surly, another talent, and refused to say anything beyond “I don’t know” or “Beats me.” When we arrived home, I found a postcard from Miss Emily. The lavender script informed me that she was having a wonderful time and was bringing me a small desertscape she’d painted herself. The front of the card depicted unsmiling Indians in expensive costumes that were probably made in Taiwan, as was the postcard.

The realization that she’d be home in two weeks did not warm my cockles, presuming I had cockles. The realization that the pet owners were up to something wasn’t all that soothing, either, especially since they’d decided to exclude me from the plan. The plot, I amended. The harebrained scheme. Howitzers and tanks. I knew that Colonel Culworthy had not been listening to Daryl discuss posters at the grocery store; anything that kept the two from arguing had ominous significance.

I wished Peter was in town. I glanced at the unoccupied half of the sofa and sighed, then fixed myself a drink before I lapsed into perilous thoughts. He and I were oil and water, not oil and vinegar. But at that moment, I felt very much alone, and had he been there, might have explored the possibility of vinaigrette.

The following day was a Friday, and usually a fairly decent day at the Book Depot. Caron had taken an overnight bag with her to school and vowed that the Willow Street neighborhood would be plastered with posters by noon Saturday. I made an unrewarded run by Miss Emily’s, then went to the store where I found my hippie waiting under the portico of the bookstore. He snuffled around like a bloodhound and left without buying anything. A woman with the scrunched-up face of a Pekingese and a gratingly shrill voice pawed through the counted cross-stitch pattern books and scolded me for the mess on her way out the door.

The sudden compulsion to categorize people as animals struck me as a symptom of mental degeneration, but I couldn’t control myself. Not when a well-coiffed Siamese cat bought a cookbook, while her two pointy-chinned children whined the entire time and almost knocked over the nonfiction rack. The next customer, a squatty, rumpled wino with a runny nose, had to be a bulldog, I decided as I took a dollar from the cash register and gave it to him, that being the most expedient way to rid the store of the noxious redolence that accompanied him.

I was having such fun that it took me a moment to realize the next customer was neither canine nor feline in essence, but was Daryl Defoe in a trench coat. “Hi,” I said, feeling justifiably foolish.

“I saw you come by Miss Emily’s house this morning,” he said.

“I was nurturing a wild dream that Nick and Nora had come home during the night, wagging their tails behind them. They hadn’t.”

“Then you don’t think they’re at NewCo?”

I waited while a sheepdog in sunglasses bought a study guide and left. “I don’t think there’s any evidence to prove that,” I said carefully. “We didn’t see them. Churls could be telling the truth.”

“Was I telling the truth when I said the plaster mold slipped out of my hands?” He came to the counter and grasped the edge of it. His lips were pinched together so tightly they quivered, and a thunderstorm seemed to be gathering in his eyes.

“I don’t have any reason not to believe you,” I said, concerned for his blood pressure.

“Culworthy as much as accused me of dropping it on purpose. The only motive for doing that is to destroy the evidence and protect the identity of the person who let the dogs go free.”

“Was it your footprint?” I said bluntly.

“I don’t know.” His intensity evaporated, and he stared at his white knuckles as if they belonged to someone else. “I live there, and I use the stairs several times a day. Maybe I dropped something and went near the gate to pick it up. I like Miss Emily. I wouldn’t put her dogs at risk—even if she kept them locked up.”

“How about Colonel Culworthy’s dog? I saw you go around the corner of the house, and minutes later Patton charged the car.”

His mouth moved indecisively as he looked at me. At last he said, “There’s something I’d like to explain to you. It’ll take some time. Could we maybe have a beer tomorrow after you close the store?”

“How about tonight?” I said innocently, remembering his appointment at nineteen hundred o’clock or whatever Culworthy called it.

“I can’t tonight. Tomorrow at seven?” When I nodded, he left hurriedly.

I was very intrigued by his desire to explain anything at all to me. I understood the others’ motives; they were distraught about their pets. Petless Daryl, on the other hand, had insinuated himself into the group, despite his dislike of Culworthy, and was apparently involved in whatever scheme they had devised.