Support Your Local Pug

by Lane Stone

  I heard oohs and ahs coming from the dining room and saw flashes of members of the wait staff going from the kitchen to the tables, so I stood up. “I guess we’d better go back in.”

  John stood but hesitated, rather than following me. Once inside I turned back to see him approaching Julie and David’s table. He positioned himself so I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  “Allow me. I’ll order a drink.” Lady Anthea whispered. My wingman chose that moment to go to the bar where she could eavesdrop more productively.

  “Where are you sitting? We’ll bring the wine to you,” the bartender said. Would she be thwarted in her mission?

  “I just wanted to compliment you all on the, the, those drinks you served on the porch,” she said and returned. No, she would not be.

  John was on his way over to us and Lady Anthea spoke quickly. “He wants to interview Julie Berger in the morning. She doesn’t know if she’ll be up to it. Junior says….”

  “Want me to take the story from here, Lady Anthea?” Chief Turner said.

  Her nod said, “Be my guest.”

  “David Fourie says she shouldn’t do anything that will upset her further.”

  All three of us rolled our eyes. We stopped speaking when the waiter delivered plates with salmon and grilled vegetables.

  Lady Anthea spoke first. “Do you think that fainting spell was put on?”

  I shrugged. “Looked real to me, but what do I know? Maybe she’s just that fragile.” I held my wineglass up to John. “You can say I told you so, if you want to.”

  “Why would I do that?” he asked.

  “Because there weren’t any photos of her in Billy B.’s condo. Not a single one,” I said.

  To avoid looking him in the eye, in case he was gloating, I scanned the room. David had switched sides of the table from his chair to the bench. Now he was sitting next to Julie instead of across from her. He reached his arm over the seat back, so it was around her shoulders. Then he leaned closer. Now he was facing us and I could hear them better. I had to stop myself from thanking him.

  With his right hand he got out his phone. “I’m not trying to big time you. What’s your number?”

  She laughed.

  “Seriously, I’m gonna call your phone.” I was struck again at how he could talk like a guy in his twenties.

  Chapter 23

  Shelby met us at my house after the Gate House gathering, and the three of us were sitting in the living room, staring at the fire in the fireplace.

  “Did you eat, Shelby?” Lady Anthea asked.

  “Yes, Jeffery surprised me at Buckingham’s and took me to the Crooked Hammock.”

  “That was nice of him,” I said. “Crooked Hammock is a brewpub,” I told Lady Anthea.

  “I doubt the food was as elegant as what you had, but we love the burgers and the beers. And yours was free,” Shelby said.

  “Oh, having to listen to Howard Fourie boast about his son felt like we were paying dearly for every bite,” Lady Anthea said with a groan.

  “I was outside, but I heard him say something about UNESCO. What was that about?” I asked.

  “It seems David is currently vice president of the South African Commission for UNESCO and, if his father is to be believed, is in line to be the next president of the organization.”

  “Not head of all of UNESCO, right?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, just the South African Commission, and at his age, that would be remarkable,” Lady Anthea said.

  I told Shelby what I had learned about Wags’s title and what Valerie Westlake had said about Captain Sandy’s plans to use Smoochie for breeding, and my suspicion that he wanted to do the same with Wags.

  “Can Chief Turner arrest Sandy Westlake just on principle?” Shelby asked.

  “We know he didn’t kill Billy B.,” Lady Anthea said.

  “Yeah, I can alibi him,” I said. “Unfortunately.”

  “Let’s look at this from the beginning,” Lady Anthea said.

  “I guess the beginning would be Billy B. stealing the dog food from Buckingham’s and from Raw-k & Roll,” Shelby said.

  “Who needs a lot of dog food?” I asked. Then I answered my own question. “Someone with puppies! Shelby, when you inventoried our supply, you said only puppy food had been taken.”

  “Or let’s back up, wouldn’t the beginning be when someone, I think it’s Sandy Westlake, put Wags on the Harbor of Refuge Lighthouse?” Shelby asked. “Remember, the boat pilot had already phoned in what he had seen to the authorities when Billy B. was driving out of Buckingham’s.”

  We did a little more serious fireplace staring, then Lady Anthea said, “Sue, you really don’t believe Rick’s father could have killed his partner?”

  “That might be the only thing he’s innocent of, but I don’t think he’s a murderer. This is what I want to know, if Martin Ziegler drove his car away, how did Billy B.’s killer get away, or even get here to kill him? The police have interviewed all the neighbors and the only suspicious car anyone saw was that thing Martin has.”

  Chapter 24

  “Sue, look at this!” Dana peered over her computer screen and called to me from the reception desk. She had come in on her way to school on Thursday morning. Mason stood next to her, and bowed when he saw Lady Anthea with me. This elicited her usual laugh.

  “It’s six o’clock in the morning! I thought teenagers hated to get up early!” I had gone for my early run, showered, and picked up Lady Anthea.

  “Other teenagers didn’t get to solve a murder,” she said.

  I gave her shoulders a squeeze, wondering again what I’d started. “Your mother is going to kill me.”

  Lady Anthea and I joined them to see what was so interesting. The article from our local newspaper, the Southern Delaware Daily, that had mysteriously shown up in their online edition just hours after Henry Canon’s body had been found was displayed on the computer screen. Dana moved the cursor to the photograph of Chief Turner and me. Then she zoomed to my face. That was the article that had threatened to torpedo our Pet Parent Appreciation Gala.

  “Mason told me about a great facial recognition app,” Dana said as she tapped away. Other photos of me popped up on the screen. She moved the cursor to show me the name of the app. “It’s called HooRU.” It was pronounced, “Who are you?”

  “So this shows I’m me?” I asked. “Glad to hear it. Do I live in Lewes?”

  “Yeah,” Dana said, laughing, good naturedly.

  “Even better.”

  “Let’s try it on Lady Anthea,” Mason said.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “I’m game.”

  “First, I’ll take a quick pic,” Mason said raising his phone. She smiled and he clicked. “Now I’ll email it to Dana.”

  “And here it is,” she said. Then she was tapping away again. “Uhh, how old are you anyway?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Lady Anthea moved around the desk to look at the screen. She gasped and reached for her pearl necklace. “That’s my mother.” Her voice caught and she leaned closer to the laptop and smiled. “Everyone said we favored, but here the resemblance is uncanny.”

  “Yes, she’s beautiful, too,” I said. We all four had gathered closer to the computer. There was a photo of a painting, and it was part of an obituary or whatever the British expression for a death notice is. The woman’s dark hair was worn in a conservative style and she had almond-shaped intelligent eyes, just like Lady Anthea. She wasn’t smiling but she looked like she could any second—again, like my friend and Buckingham Pet Palace’s co-owner.

  “Could you use this program on the Fouries?” I asked.

  “Whatever for?” Lady Anthea asked, pulling her eyes away from her mother’s image.

  “Lady Anthea, want me to email this photo of your mother to you?” Dana asked.

  She smiled
and nodded.

  “Who knows, maybe they’ve put on events in other cities, or in other countries, and come away with their valuable artifacts?” I said.

  “Valuable?” Lady Anthea raised her eyebrows.

  “Okay, valuable to the town artifacts,” I said.

  “Sure!” Dana said. “I know they didn’t have anything to do with Billy B. getting killed, but this is good practice.”

  I scrolled through emails on my phone, as Dana typed away. “Suspicious Minds” had been playing in my head during my run, and I hummed it while I emailed back to some friends. After a few minutes Dana said, “I need photos of the Fouries.”

  “They’ve been here for weeks, haven’t they? There aren’t any in the papers?” I asked.

  “The father has been here longer, but David arrived the day I did, Tuesday,” Lady Anthea said.

  We heard the door open and turned to see Kate Carter coming in with Robber, her Collie mix. She was followed by Betsy Rivard with Paris and Riley. From the corner of my eye I saw Dana discreetly close her laptop.

  When the dogs were where they needed to be, Paris with Joey in the grooming salon and Riley and Robber in the play room with a nanny, and the lobby was empty again, Dana said in a low voice, “That’s just it. There aren’t any photos of Mr. Fourie in the paper. Well, just his back.”

  “Still, they’re in business so there should be many to choose from on the internet,” Lady Anthea said.

  Dana shook her head. “Their website has lots of graphics, but no photos of either of them.”

  “I didn’t find much when I Googled them on Tuesday night,” I said.

  “Both of them will be at the city council’s public hearing this morning,” I said. “I guess we could try to take a quick photo then.”

  “Dana, while it’s true that they don’t have anything to do with the murder investigation, Howard Fourie is a powerful man,” Lady Anthea said. “You don’t want him as an enemy. We’ll try to get photos if you promise not to let anyone, outside of your mother and us, know that you’re doing this.”

  Dana held out her hand for Lady Anthea to shake on the pact.

  “Are you going with me to the hearing?” I asked Lady Anthea. She hadn’t mentioned it before. “You don’t have to since you don’t have a dog in this fight.”

  “I’m happy to come to give you moral support,” she said. “I’ll be between the dog trick class and the agility class.”

  * * * *

  Lewes has only one building for conducting the city’s business, and that’s where Lady Anthea and I headed as soon as the morning trick class was over. I saw on my car dashboard screen that I had a text. It was from Kyle O’Malley and at the next stop sign I read it. I saw he had located the opera singer who had been Wags’s pet parent before Billy B. “She’s still alive!” he had written. He was coming to Lewes that afternoon. He said he and his car were taking the Cape May–Lewes ferry so I wrote back that I would meet him at Irish Eyes. Where else should you go with someone named O’Malley?

  Lady Anthea and I found a free parking spot at the end of the block and walked back up the sidewalk. She looked in shop windows now and then.

  I pulled her elbow. “Look, there’s Julie Berger and David Fourie.”

  They stood close to one another by the entrance to the city building. She shivered in the February air and he began rubbing her arms, looking over her shoulder with a dreamy look on his face.

  “They’ve had sex,” Lady Anthea and I said at the same time.

  Howard Fourie approached from the other side and motioned for his son to go in. A balloon over David’s head would have read, “Not so fast.”

  He reached for Julie’s hand, in a she’s with me way, and the three walked up the stairs and into the building.

  “Hmm,” Lady Anthea said.

  “What do you make of that?” I wondered aloud.

  “Julie’s not good enough for the prince?”

  I held the door open for her. “This won’t take long. I’m just going to say possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

  We looked down the center aisle of the meeting room at Howard Fourie. He was talking to David and gesturing close to his face. I felt myself lean back from the tirade, even as I walked forward. For David’s sake, I hoped he wasn’t a spit-talker.

  Mayor Rivard called the meeting to order, with a bang of the gavel. She read from her notes that the purpose was for council members to get citizen input before they deliberated on the loan or the transfer of the partial wine bottle artifact to South Africa.

  “What?” I almost jumped up. “Or transfer? What the hell?” I whispered to Lady Anthea. “Even after what I’d heard David say on Tuesday, I held out hope they only wanted Lewes to lend it to them so they could show it in an exhibit or something.”

  “We have two speakers this morning,” the mayor said.

  Someone had slid into the seat beside me and I turned to see Chief Turner. He gave me a smile. He looked like he felt sympathy for me for some reason.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’ll do fine,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “Who would like to speak first?” Betsy Rivard asked.

  Howard Fourie looked around at me, eyebrows raised. His voice said, “Would you like to begin?” But his tone said, “I want to go first.”

  “Please, go ahead,” I said.

  “My son, as hopefully the next president of the South African Commission for UNESCO, might be the better person to speak on this but he’s graciously agreed to let the old man present our case.” He paused, waiting for a polite chuckle. That South African accent caused a slight time delay in his humor. “First, Lewes does not own the article since the ship did not safely make it to shore to unload her cargo.” He paused to let that sink in, similar to what the Severn had done in the bay. “I will not claim that the artifact belongs to South Africa, where it could have been used for education for families like mine for generation after generation. No! Cultural objects belong to all of humanity, past, present, and future,” he said. So far, so good. He hadn’t really said anything I could disagree with. “As world heritage, they are the birthright of all of us. These items, including the partial wine bottle, represent the collective human achievement of the transcendent.” We were still talking about the bottom of a wine bottle, right? “To be used for education, artifacts need to be seen in context. This can only be done at the History Museum of South Africa. An institution that can preserve it better than a small museum in a small town.” He paused and I thought he was through. Before I could stand, he was off again. “Fracturing cultural heritage by keeping the artifact in question away from similar pieces turns it into an instrument of division between two former friends.”

  Whoa! I gulped. Then I glanced back at the door. The room wasn’t large, by any means. I could make it out of there in three seconds, four tops. Then I thought about how embarrassing that would be if any pet parent saw me.

  I stood and took a deep breath. “He’s not a citizen.” Then I sat back down.

  “That’s all you’ve got?” John whispered behind me.

  “You said this was for citizen input and he’s from South Africa,” I elaborated. The groan I heard from Lady Anthea I could have done without.

  Then she rose. Good, she wanted to leave, too.

  “Your honor, members of the city council, may I have a bit of the time Ms. Patrick has remaining?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Thank you. Ordinarily the transfer of artifacts is to right a wrong. There is no wrong here that needs righting. The transfer of the artifact would not rectify any injustice. The town of Lewes has the artifact from a good faith acquisition, and as such it is protected, even without proof of title. Mr. Fourie’s claims are spurious and unsupported.” Her accent took some of the sting out of what she had said, but I still would not have wanted to be on t
he receiving end. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law and it’s up to South Africa to prove they own the artifact, something Mr. Fourie has not done. The wine was on a British ship, the Severn, when it sought shelter from a storm. Now for what Mr. Fourie said about who would be better guardians of the artifact, I find his comments offensive. Lewes has protected and preserved the item since it was discovered. There’s no reason to think that will cease.”

  I looked around to see how this was going down with the city leaders. They were nodding in agreement. Lady Anthea wasn’t done. “I completely agree with what my friend,” she paused and sneer-smiled at Mr. Fourie, “said about the importance of cultural objects to all of humanity. Art connects us. Do you know what else connects us?” I almost said television. I was glad I hadn’t when she continued. “Oceans,” she practically whispered the word. “I crossed an ocean to come here. Twice. The town of Lewes welcomed me. And I will be forever grateful. I would suggest that the artifact in question has less to do with the history of wine in South Africa and more about the history of a town on an ocean. Thank you for letting me speak.” Then she sat down.

  I gave her arm a pat. “Thank you,” I said.

  The room was hushed until Betsy Rivard looked up and down the line of politicians and said, “Are we ready to debate?”

  Several nodded that they were.

  “Mayor Rivard?” Howard Fourie had jumped to his feet. “I plan to leave this evening so a quick decision would be most appreciated.”

  “Mr. Fourie, the celebration is tomorrow!” Betsy said. Was he threatening the city?

  Had Lady Anthea overplayed her— no, our— hand? I leaned over to her. “I can’t believe he doesn’t want to stay to take credit for the events….” I trailed off when I caught sight of Julie, seated a few rows behind us. She looked confused, and like she was about to cry. She was staring at someone at the front of the room.