Dead Ringer

by Lisa Scottoline

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s sad, but people gotta live somewhere.” Michelle shrugged.

  “Actually, I’m looking for someone who used to live around here, a family who used to own one of the horse farms nearby. It stood where the development is now, Hunt Country Estates. This would be about two years ago.”

  “I don’t know.” The cashier shook her head, setting her ponytail swinging. “I’ve only worked here a few months.”

  “Damn.” Bennie was tired of saying damn all the time. It just didn’t go far enough. “They had horses, and a caretaker, and I was guessing they came in here for their horse stuff, or for horse food, like hay. Don’t horses eat hay?” She was pretty sure horses didn’t eat Iams.

  “They do, and grain, but we’re not feed or hay dealers. We sell tack, bridles and saddles, and gift items like books, mugs, and computer games.” The young woman gestured helpfully at a shelf behind Bennie.

  “Well, do you have records of customers, or mailing lists I can look at? I know the family’s address, but not their name.”

  “No, I think any mailing lists are all packed up, if the owner even kept them. He’s retiring, and our lease is up in two weeks, then we’re outta here. The mailing lists wouldn’t have helped anyway, they were only in order of names. If you didn’t know their name, you’d have to look through every entry.”

  “I’ve done dumber things,” Bennie said. “You think the mailing lists have been sold to anyone? It would seem like too valuable a thing to throw away.”

  “Maybe Janet would know. She’s worked here forever.” Michelle gestured behind Bennie, to a petite older woman walking toward them with a thick key ring that jingled closing time. Her gray hair was cut in a neat feathery bob, and with her green Mack’s Tack polo shirt she wore loose jeans and tan Birkenstocks. The cashier waved her over. “Janet, you know what happened to our mailing lists?”

  Bennie turned around. The older woman has worked here forever. “Or did you know the family who owned the horse farm that became Hunt Country Estates?”

  “Hi, I’m Janet, and sure, I knew the Rices,” the woman answered, and Bennie’s heart leapt up.

  “The Rices? They lived on Owen Road? They had a horse farm?”

  “Of course, Peg Rice came in here all the time. A very active horsewoman, even at her—our—age. She hunted regularly with her son. They even hunted in Ireland, with the Galway Blazers.” Janet thought a minute. “Yes, they had a thoroughbred and an old paint pony, Buddy. Cute, and a good little mover. The pony was her daughter’s. She was a pony clubber.”

  She clubbed ponies? Bennie knew that wasn’t right. Horse people had a language of their own. She was feeling more left out than St. Amien.

  “And Peg’s husband had the Apps. Four Apps.”

  Forget the Apps, Bennie could barely believe her luck. “Janet, do you know where they moved? Maybe they mentioned it?”

  “Ocala, Florida.”

  “Great! Then it would be no trouble to find them.”

  “Not at all, I have their address. We just sent Peg a new bridle she’d ordered for Sewanee. He’s in between a horse and a cob and it makes her crazy.”

  Bennie was too happy to ask what a cob was. She always thought it came with corn. “The Rices had a caretaker, right? For the estate?”

  “Bill?”

  “Yes, Bill Winslow!” Bennie was astounded. It was the break she’d been waiting for! “You know him?”

  “Sure, he used to come in here all the time, to pick up orders for Peg. A quiet man. I don’t think he ever said two words to anyone.”

  “That’s him, all right,” Bennie said, with a tight smile of recognition. Practically the only words he’d said to Bennie were “hello” and “good-bye.” And she remembered how he’d recoiled from her touch when they’d met. “Very quiet.”

  “A bookish man, too.” Janet was gesturing at the wall of books behind her. “In fact, most of the books behind you belonged to Bill, the used ones. We’re trying to sell them.”

  “They’re his?” Bennie turned to the wall she hadn’t looked at before. It was full of horse books, obviously used, and worn in a friendly way. Centered Riding, A Horse of Your Own, and A Horse Around the House. She flashed on her father’s small white cottage, filled with every sort of book imaginable, many bought at library sales. She doubted that he’d been a rider, and she remembered him collecting the classics and lots of other books, almost randomly. She ran an index finger along the spines of the books, as she had the time she’d seen him at the cottage.

  “They’re yours for a song,” Janet said. “Most of them are his, I believe. Were his. Peg donated them to us after Bill died.”

  Bennie’s finger froze on the spine of one of the books. She wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. She turned from the bookshelf and found that she couldn’t speak.

  “I’m sorry,” Janet said quickly. Her hooded eyes searched Bennie’s from behind her bifocals, and her expression softened, her wrinkled mouth turning down at the corners. “You didn’t know that Bill had passed. It happened last year, of a heart attack.”

  Bennie was trying to find her voice, to get over the awkwardness of learning from a complete stranger that her father had died. When her father was no more than a complete stranger, in fact. She experienced the moment outside her own body, where she saw herself standing, hollow, in a tack store in the middle of Delaware, holding a Soapy Pony and hearing this news. Feeling it rock her to her foundations, even as she knew that it could not. She struggled to absorb the information, only vaguely aware that the women were staring at her.

  “Did you know Bill well?” Janet asked.

  Not really. He was only my father. Bennie had momentarily misplaced her voice. Her heart hammered away. The little store seemed suddenly so quiet, the fluorescent lights white-hot. She shook her head.

  “Well, Bill did keep very much to himself. He was taciturn.” Janet and the young cashier exchanged tense looks. “Would you like a glass of water?”

  Bennie finally swallowed. “No, thanks. I’m okay. It’s just . . . I didn’t know.” Know what? Him? That he had died? Anything? She couldn’t specify.

  “Bill worked for the Rices for decades, tending the grounds.”

  Maybe they have the wrong man. Bennie had to make sure it was him they were talking about. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe he was still alive. “He was tall, right? Real tall, maybe six three. With blond hair, used to be before it went gray.”

  “Yes, that’s him. We saw quite a bit of him. He worked for them for a long, long time.”

  “But he took some time off, not too long ago, right?” When Alice had been arrested for murder, their father had come to Philly to tell Alice about Bennie, so Alice could get the best defense on the charge. He saw it as taking care of his daughters, but given what had happened next, Bennie saw it as something else.

  “Yes, he did disappear for a while. Said he was taking some time off. Peg was quite concerned. When he returned to work, he wasn’t the same.”

  “How so?” Bennie asked, though she wasn’t sure enough what “the same” was to know what qualified as different.

  “He seemed tired the times he came in here. Thinner. He had aged quickly. I guess it was his heart. You understand.” Janet gave a final sigh and walked to the counter, picked up a sales slip, and slid a pencil from a pencil cup. “Now, if you tell me your name and address, I can contact the Rices and perhaps they’ll give you a call.”

  Bennie noted she had just been demoted from getting the Rices’ address to giving her own. The saleswoman must have thought she was some kind of nut. She doubted the Rices would call her, but she told Janet her name and address anyway. It was something to say. An answer she knew.

  “Good, I’ll let them know.” Janet folded the slip and slid it into her back pocket, then checked her watch. The movement set the keys jingling on her ring. “Now, if you don’t mind, we really should be closing. Will you be okay?”

  Bennie n
odded. The Soapy Pony clenched in her hand made a hard fist. “How much do I owe you for the soap?”

  “You needn’t. It’s only a dollar.”

  “No, I insist. And . . . I want the books, too.”

  “Which ones?” Janet asked.

  Bennie turned and scanned the titles. Beginning Horsemanship, A Complete Medical Guide to Horse Care, Grooming from A to Z. “All of them,” she answered impulsively.

  “You’re a horse lover.”

  “No,” Bennie answered, and turned away.

  It wasn’t until Bennie reached the Tinicum exit ten minutes from the Center City that she became aware of a thought. She had driven for an hour to get back to Philly, yet she couldn’t remember a thing. Had her head gone blank for sixty miles? It didn’t seem possible. She had steered the Saab onto I-95, shifted gears and accelerated properly, and had seen cars, trucks, hotels, strip malls. Roadside lights had blurred as she’d whizzed past them; neon signs, lighted billboards, lights illuminating exit signs, red taillights flashing on and off, all of them bright holes puncturing the blackest of nights, like stars punched into the sky. She had seen these things and somehow she had made it home, but she couldn’t remember how this had happened exactly.

  The Saab sped forward as if it were driving itself, turned on its blinkers and switched into the correct lane for the exit off of I-95, and headed into the oldest part of town, then turned north, straight toward the Fairmount section. The tight turn shifted the books in their box on the backseat, but Bennie didn’t notice the sound. She didn’t think about the fact that her father was dead. That she wouldn’t be able to mourn him. That she had missed his funeral and didn’t even know where he was buried.

  She wiped unexpected wetness from her eyes and swung the Saab onto the parkway, between the line of the amber lights limning the broad Ben Franklin Parkway, its asphalt slick with a rain past. A bright red traffic light burned into the night, but Bennie saw its blazing only blurrily, even though she wasn’t whizzing past anything, but was stopped there, rolled to a halt at a light and shifted out of gear. It was then that she realized that her mother and her father had died of the same thing. Their hearts had failed; hers from being used too much. And his, too little.

  Bennie hit her house lonely, quiet, and depressed, an array of human emotions evidently lost on golden retrievers. Or at least, Bear. He threw himself on her chest the moment she came in the backdoor, licking her face the way he did every day and almost stripping her of the box of books. She told Bear the usual forty-four times to get down and no jumping and stop that, all of which he ignored seriatim, dancing delightedly at her feet, his toenails clicking on the hardwood floor as he tried futilely for traction among the clutter of CDs the cops had left on the dining-room floor. Bennie set the box on the rug amid the mess and, even so, couldn’t help but smile.

  “Yo, what happened to that legendary intuition of the canine? You’re supposed to gauge my mood, then try to comfort me. Don’t you watch Animal Planet?”

  Bear plopped his furry butt on the floor and pawed at the air until Bennie settled him by scratching the bozo hair behind his ear. The dog pressed his head against her palm in a way that told her the yeast infection had returned to his ears, which had to be some cruel gynecological joke. She stepped over the dumped CDs and went to the kitchen for his goopy ointment as he trotted behind her, scooping up his scummy tennis ball on the way and dropping it at her feet when she stopped before the cabinet. She had to grab his collar before she found the medicine among the cereal and sugar on the counters, or he’d escape.

  “Aha, tricked you yet again!” she said with complete satisfaction, plucking aside a rattling bottle of Excedrin and a thin box of heartworm medicine until she located the crimped tube of Panalog. She twisted off the red cap one-handed and squirted a wiggly line of goop into the dog’s raggedy ears, then closed and massaged each in turn, holding on to his collar while he wriggled to save face.

  “Poor baby, hang in there.” She put the crumpled tube back on the counter, and he picked up his ball again and let it drop at her feet, where it bounced and rolled to a stop, as if on cue.

  “Nice move,” she said with a smile, and when she bent down to retrieve the ball for her thrilled retriever, realized his secret plan. Bear wasn’t the kind of dog who sniffed out your lousy mood and shared it; he was the kind of dog who ignored your lousy mood until you surrendered to join his, which was uniformly and consistently terrific. Bennie stroked his soft nose, just beginning to gray, shot through now with tiny spears of dull silver, and she bent down and kissed him on the muzzle more times than she would have in public. Then she whispered to him that she loved him, and when she straightened back up again, she didn’t feel like crying anymore. Nor did she feel like cleaning up.

  She felt like figuring things out.

  Ten minutes later, she was hoisting the box of books onto the tiny kitchen table, covered with paper napkins taken from their ceramic holder and a grainy pile of sugar dumped from a matching bowl. She tore into the books, taking the top one. Horsemanship was the first title, a thin green volume, and she opened it to the flyleaf. Ashleigh Rice, read a name in a child’s hand, and underneath: Wilmington Pony Club, D-2. Age 6.

  Bennie flipped though the book. Glossy pictures of people jumping things on even glossier horses. Nothing to tell her anything about her father. No secret notes stuck inside, no receipts from stores, no photos or papers of any kind. She went to the next book, Lessons on the Lunge, which bore no name in the flyleaf, merely a faintly penciled-in price, $14.95. She flipped through the pages again, not knowing why or even what she was looking for. Just that she was looking.

  After the whole box had been emptied and all the books gone through, she still hadn’t found anything. She considered that then, with the books lying open on the table. In the back of her mind, she’d always understood that her father was terribly unfinished business in her life, and she’d always thought she’d get back to Delaware when she was ready to deal with him. There was so much she’d wanted to know, about his life, about his decisions, and his acts. And now about Alice.

  But as it happened, he couldn’t wait for Bennie. Death had intervened, not impatient, merely inevitable. It hadn’t known of her intentions and plans, inchoate and well-meaning. It had taken her father on a schedule all its own, denying her her answers, conclusions, and explanations. Some families died with their mysteries still, and Bennie’s would be one of those. And though she had lost the chance to know her father, she still felt grief at his passing. Which was the biggest mystery of all.

  She considered that, too, letting it lie in her heart for a minute longer, giving him that much due and no more. Then she closed the book.

  And went to clean up her house.

  13

  The next morning found Bennie in her office at seven o’clock. It had taken her until late to get the house back in order and she hadn’t slept much, but with adrenaline and caffeine she was coming around. Marshall and the associates had put the offices back together after the police search, hard work which wasn’t in anybody’s job description. And for that Bennie felt responsible.

  A pale ray of sunlight shone translucent through her window, too weak to warm her, glaring off the hard finish of the papers cluttering her desk. She normally loved to work early in the morning, but she was feeling wretched this morning. She had lost a father she’d never known. It left her feeling oddly restless, and had implications for the present. If the Rices didn’t call her, she’d have to find another way to get to Alice. But for the time being she had to concentrate.

  Today was the day of fighting back, on all fronts. First, fighting Alice. No way could Alice dress like her today. Bennie had retired the khaki uniform that was too easy to copy, and this morning she was wearing a bright red suit she’d bought on sale at Ann Taylor but had never worn because the color was too Nancy Reagan. Its short jacket cinched in at the waist, and its skirt was high enough to have locked Bennie into shaving above her k
nees. Eek. And she’d brushed her hair and moussed it back into a sleek, if wavy, ponytail, which was disguise enough for the present.

  She’d channeled the remainder of last night’s angst into work, drafting a discovery, interrogatories, and document requests in support of St. Amien. She had to get this case—and this client—back on track. She’d called St. Amien’s office last night, hoping to explain that pesky felony arrest on the street, but he hadn’t returned her calls. Concerned, she’d E-mailed him and asked him to meet her today, but he hadn’t responded. He wasn’t the E-mail type, so she’d assume she wasn’t fired and go forward. Asserting his legal interests was the best way to keep him happy, and Bennie was coming out slugging. She swiveled her desk chair to her computer keyboard and opened the file for the draft discovery on the screen, then reviewed it carefully, putting on the finishing touches.

  Bennie read the interrogatories, which were one of the better sets she’d written, and hit the Print icon with satisfaction. Usually when she drafted discovery she’d anticipate striking fear into the heart of the opposition, but this time she was thinking about giving a cardiac to her co-counsel. She refused to let Linette and his posse run all over her. She had to get the upper hand on becoming lead counsel, and she knew just how to do it. She imagined Linette’s ruddy face when he got her papers—and the other trick she had up her very stylish sleeve—which she would set in motion right now.

  She hit a button on her computer and summoned onto the screen a fresh white sheet of computer paper. She was supposed to be a maverick; she’d start acting like one. She tapped away on the keyboard. She couldn’t keep playing nice with Linette, attending meetings that he ran, at his office, on his agenda. His was a closed club and they’d never let her in. Good girls didn’t get to be lead counsel. She’d take this battle straight to the top. There was only one place to get justice, and it wasn’t from a lawyer.

  She had almost finished when Mary DiNunzio stuck a head inside her door, reminding Bennie of a turtle peeking out of its shell. “Bennie, can I ask you a dumb question?”