Ruff Way to Go (19 page)

I was
finished for the day by seven
p.m.
and
drove home, feeling that this had been at least a moderately successful day. My
mixed-breed client with the fear of separation was making good progress, as was
the fear-of-cars springer spaniel. However, as soon as I reached my street, I
started remembering how Mom had blabbed everything to Tracy Truett. For once,
it was my turn to take her to task for something she’d done, and I was going to
make the most of it.

Mom’s pickup
was in the garage. I was mulling over my opening line—”Mom, how could you
be so stupid?” versus “Do the words ‘talk show host’ mean nothing to you?”

She was
standing fifth in line to greet me, behind our three dogs plus Shogun. Suds had
rushed upstairs, too, but was darting around the kitchen as if she were a wild
animal in a cage.

Mom held up
her hands the moment we made eye contact. “Before you say anything, I’m sorry.
I just didn’t think. I can’t believe how stupid I was not to realize that Tracy
Truett was just pumping me for information to use on her talk show. I guess I
was just so excited at the thought of my being able to help you get some
exposure for your new business venture that I didn’t use my brain.”

Well, that
was no fun whatsoever. “That’s all right, Mom. I already called the sergeant’s
office and let them know what happened.”

“I listened
to the entire show, by the way—after hanging up with you, that is. If
only I’d been listening from the beginning, I could have warned you.”

“It’s all
right. Really.”

“Did you
listen to what went on after your phone call?”

“No. Why?”

“Tracy not
only spilled the beans about the bloody paw prints, but the fact that the
victim had been taking care of a convicted felon’s dog and her puppies.”

“Oh, good
Lord. She didn’t say anything about the dogs still being in the neighborhood,
did she?”

“No.”

“It’s
probably fine, then.” I wasn’t sure if that was true, though.

“I tried to
speak to the Haywoods today, by the way. They looked out their front window,
saw it was me ringing their doorbell, and wouldn’t answer.”

“This is
insane,” I said, having surpassed my threshold for strained relationships. “Let’s
go over there now. Maybe if I apologize for the stupid Shoe Incident, they’ll
lighten up. Maybe we’ll even find out what Harvey was up to last night.”

There was no
guarantee that they’d answer their door now, either, but they eventually did.
They grudgingly invited us inside. This was my first time in their house and I
looked around in curiosity. Every square inch of the furniture was covered with
either a lace doily or a blanket. The lampshades still had the clear plastic
coverings from the store, and plastic runners crisscrossed the green
wall-to-wall carpeting.

“Hello,
Betsy, Harvey,” my mother said with a great deal of warmth. “My daughter and I
wanted to come over and clear the air.”

“Air looks
pretty darned clear to me,” Betsy grumbled.

“Not from
our side of the street,” Mom said with a sigh.

Betsy
cleared her throat, looked at her husband, then said, “Harvey told me to
apologize to you for his sleepwalking.” Harvey merely blinked, but Betsy
continued, “Didn’t you, Harvey?”

“Oh. Eh,
sorry if I scared you. Sometimes in my sleep, I get to remembering a time when
I lost my keys and locked myself out of the house. Ever since that time, I hide
a screwdriver in the bushes so I can get back inside. I must’ve gotten that
screwdriver, but wandered over to your place.”

“Which
bushes do you mean?” I asked. “The ones nearest Edith Cunningham’s house?”

He shifted
his glance to his wife, but answered, “Uh, yeah. That’s right.”

“That’s
where I was looking for the note from Edith’s house.” All I’d seen back there
were the paw prints, not a screwdriver, though perhaps this was insignificant.
In any case, I didn’t believe a word he’d said.

Mom said, “I
understand you were quite upset by a prank one of my children played on you
several years ago, involving a pair of shoes and some Super Glue.”

“Don’t
remind me,” Betsy said, the frown lines on her face deepening.

I was
thoroughly baffled that they not only expected us to believe that Mr. Haywood
had been sleepwalking last night, but that glued shoes were a feasible cause
for upset decades later. However, when you’re in someone’s doghouse, the
best-tasting selection on the menu is probably crow. “I apologize for my
immaturity,” I interjected. “I was only ten at the time. It was a nasty thing
to do, though, and I assure you I won’t do anything remotely like that ever
again.”
Twenty-two years later,
I silently added.

“Well, all I
can say is it’s about time you owned up to your actions and took responsibility
for it. That’s more than I can say for your brother.”

I had to
keep myself from laughing. “Mrs. Haywood, my brother David didn’t apologize or ‘own
up to it’ because he was innocent. He had nothing to do with it.”

“Huh. Well.
Yes, but he was your brother. He should have stood up on your behalf and taken
your punishment like a man.”

“‘Taken it
like a
man’?”
I repeated. “He was
eleven.”

“Even still.”

Mom said
calmly, “I fail to understand why, if this has obviously upset you so much, you
waited all this time to bring the matter to my attention. We’re talking about
something that happened over twenty years ago.”

“Twenty-two,”
Betsy corrected.

“Was that
the worst thing that anyone’s ever done to you?” I asked.

“No, just
the catalyst for what was to follow. You see,
Marilyn”
—she shifted
her gaze to my mother—”when your son insisted he had nothing to do with
it, Harvey and I just couldn’t believe it was sweet little Allida. We accused
our own daughters, and decided it was Susan. Things were never the same in our
family after that. She was sixteen at the time, and she started to run with the
wrong crowd, got herself into all kinds of trouble. Said her own parents wouldn’t
believe her when she told the truth.” She looked back at me and lifted her
wrinkled chin to peer down at me. “So, Miss Babcock, that may have just been a
childish prank as far as you were concerned, but it destroyed our lives.”

I couldn’t
respond to that and looked at my mother helplessly.

“Betsy, as
one experienced mother to another, let’s be honest here. Teenage years are
difficult for everyone. We parents have already had all of the preteen years to
impart a value system and judgment as best we can, then as you’re forced to let
go as they become adults, you hope for the best. But there’s never only one
particular incident that determines your teenager’s entire future. It’s human
nature to think back that if only I hadn’t done this one thing, all of my child’s
pain later might have been spared. But Betsy, we’re talking about an argument
over a pair of shoes glued to the porch. Do you really believe Susan made the
wrong choices of friends and her grades slipped all because of that?”

Betsy sat in
silent contemplation for a good minute or two. Finally, she rose. “I see what
you’re saying, Marilyn, but I think you’re wrong. There is a pivotal point in
everyone’s life. Normally, it’s just not as clear-cut as this one was for
Susan. But I can see how you want to support your daughter by taking her side.”

My mother
and I exchanged glances, then got to our feet. “I’d be happy to pay you for the
shoes. That would be the least I can do.”

“Fine. At
today’s prices, they’d be worth a hundred dollars.”

They were
Keds, not Air Jordans, but at this point I wasn’t going to quibble. “I’ll bring
a check over soon.”

“Just leave
it in the mailbox,” Betsy said, then left the room.

Harvey,
seeing everybody else was on their feet, got out of his seat as well. “It was
good of you to visit. Be sure and say hello to Frederick for me.”

I had no
idea who Frederick was, but assumed Harvey meant my brother, so I merely said, “Thank
you. I will.”

We left. Mom
put her arm around my shoulder and I said, “I’ll bet she thinks the Shoe
Incident is responsible for global warming and the national deficit, too.”

“You’re
probably right. And it’s nice to have a fall guy for whatever ails the world.
Now I know that it’s all your fault.”

“I thought
it was supposed to be a person’s mother that was the root of all evil, not the
person’s daughter.”

“Speak for
yourself.”

“I am.”

We went back
home. Shogun and our dogs joined us downstairs as we played with the puppies.
Suds, however, roamed around upstairs and soon started howling at the back
door.

As I let her
out, I happened to glance through the glass and saw that there was a white
cloth or paper hanging on the fence behind our yard. From this distance, it
looked like a man’s undershirt and did nothing to boost the appearance of our
property.

“Mom, how
long has that been out there?”

“What?”

“There seems
to be someone’s piece of clothing on the back fence.”

Mom came up
the stairs to see. “Must have gotten blown there at some point this afternoon.
It certainly wasn’t there the last time I looked.”

“I wonder if
it belongs to Mr. Haywood. He might have hung it there. Maybe he’s taken to
hanging his clothes on neighbors’ fences, in addition to roaming through their
yards in the middle of the night.”

“Could be.”

We watched
Suds, who barked frantically at the cloth, leaping at it and pacing back and
forth inside the fence. Suds then rushed over to whine at the back gate and
looked back at us, tail wagging slightly, a canine’s body language for “Come
and let me out of the yard.”

I slid open
the door and called, “Suds, come!”

She ignored
me completely. I called for her a second time and then a third. She stayed put
by the gate, dashing back and forth in front of it.

“I think I’d
better go check this out,” I told my mother, and went outside and crossed the
yard.

The cloth
was indeed a white T-shirt and had been fastened somehow to the back of the
fence. I couldn’t get it off from inside the fence.

This felt
like some sort of a weird setup to me. Suds was acting so frantic to get out of
the fence area and at the shirt that I began to wonder if she recognized its
scent.

Just to be
cautious, I grabbed her collar and pulled her back inside the house with me.
Some of the puppies came outside in the process of my dragging Suds through the
back door.

“What’s
going on?” Mom asked.

“The shirt
seems to be deliberately fastened onto the fence. I can’t shake the thought
that it’s there to lure Suds over to it.”

“Should I
call Sergeant Millay?”

“To report a
shirt? Keep Suds inside. I’m going to take Pavlov behind the fence with me.” I
called for Pavlov and put her leash on. There were few things as intimidating
to people as a large dog.

Feeling only
slightly ridiculous, I led Pavlov through the back gate. She immediately
started barking at the irrigation ditch, and I knew someone was back there.

An instant later,
Pavlov’s hackles raised, and she started growling. A man stepped out from
behind a copse of Russian olive trees and came toward us. He could have been a
young-looking fifty, but I suspected he was an old-looking forty-year old.

He was
wearing a faded denim jacket that matched his jeans, a dark black T-shirt, and
work boots. He stood only about five-foot-eight or so and had a decidedly wiry
frame, but his protruding cheekbones, week old beard, unwashed
and
greased-back hair hinted at his having led such a tough life that he had an
advantage over me: This man had much less to lose than I did. To slam home the
intimidation factor, he started trimming a hangnail on his dirty hand with an
unusually large pocketknife.

I don’t know
how long he’d been outside, waiting for the perfect moment to let me know he
was there. He smiled at the anxious facial expression that I couldn’t hide.

Mom was
inside and would be watching. She had perhaps already called the police, though
I wasn’t sure she could see the man from her vantage point.

“You Allida
Babcock?” he asked in a voice that sounded prematurely aged by cigarettes and
alcohol.

“How did you
know my name?”

He stared
into my eyes, not answering. His own were strangely hollow, as if there were
something missing. He hadn’t made one menacing move toward me, and yet I felt
terrified.

“How did you
know my name?” I asked again.

“I come for
my dog,” he said.

Pavlov
picked up on my fright. She quickly got in front of me, shielding me from the
man. Though she didn’t rush up to him, she let out a low, rumbling growl and
assumed an aggressive stance—slightly crouched, hackles raised, and ears
back.