Support Your Local Pug

by Lane Stone

“You didn’t come on Sunday and I missed you!” she said.

  I knew there was a chance Billy B. had taken Wags to visit her, but it hadn’t occurred to me that she might not know that Billy B. was dead. From the corner of my eye I saw Kate tap the toe of her stiletto. I moved behind Pauline’s chair. “Doesn’t know,” she mouthed. Then she shook her head and I took that to mean I wasn’t to tell her.

  I nodded.

  “Wags and Billy B. visited her every Sunday morning,” she said. “Isn’t that nice?”

  I would have to tell Mason and Joey about this arrangement, if they ended up keeping him.

  “This is William, who you call Billy B.,” Pauline said, pointing to one of the boys on the screen.

  I stared, unable to speak.

  “And that’s his brother,” she went on. “They didn’t have to change their name after the war, but others did.” She listened to more of the music before speaking again. “This was one of the most ruthless men in Cologne,” she said, reaching for the screen, and pointed to a man in the background. He had been listening to the music with a scowl on his square face. He stood there in what looked like a gray uniform, along with jackboots. He was who and what the children were escaping from in their minds through the music they were making. “I understand his family changed their last name.”

  “What do the lyrics mean?” That was something in Lady Anthea’s wheelhouse, not mine.

  She dreamily rubbed Wags’s back. “They are singing about families.”

  “Her daughter-in-law also put this on YouTube. We showed it in the community room last week so everyone could enjoy it,” Kate said.

  “And now both boys are dead,” Pauline said. Even though one of those boys was in his late seventies, the pain in her voice was obvious.

  If what Kate had told us was a ploy to get us off the subject of Billy B., it hadn’t work. “I didn’t know if you knew. I didn’t want to upset you,” she said.

  “Most of my friends are dead, my dear,” she said and looked at me. “The newspaper said he was murdered.”

  I nodded, then I told her about his body being found in my driveway. “I saw him and I don’t think he suffered.”

  “Thank you for telling me that.” She went back to stroking Wags’s back, hypnotizing him. When she stopped again he nudged her arm with his nose for her to keep her hand going. “What will happen to him? We’re not allowed to have pets here.”

  “That will be up to his great-niece, Julie. Have you ever met her?”

  “No, I don’t believe so, but William talked of her often,” she said.

  “I don’t know if Julie can care for a dog. If not, there’s someone keeping him now who has grown very attached to him. We’ll see.”

  “Someone is taking too good care of him. He’s getting fat.”

  Chapter 29

  Lady Anthea stifled a yawn. “An early night is just what I needed.”

  She, Shelby, and I were eating Grottos pizza in my dining room. Kate had given Wags and me a ride back to my Jeep still parked at Irish Eyes and Kyle had stayed and interviewed Pauline. I’d made a large salad and we’d opened a bottle of Chianti that no one should be embarrassed to be seen drinking.

  “Do you think Julie will want to take Wags back to New York with her?” Shelby asked. “If she does, Pauline will never see him again.”

  “I don’t think Julie wants to go back to New York,” Lady Anthea said. “She’s smitten with David Fourie.”

  “Or she wants him to get her out of the country because she’s a murderess,” Shelby said.

  “But if she flees, she won’t get her share of Mozart’s,” I said.

  Shelby nodded. “Either way, Wags is in limbo for now.”

  We ate in silence for a while and then my phone pinged.

  “Here’s a text from Rick,” I said. “He says they’re having a memorial service for Billy B. tomorrow at Mozart’s at one o’clock. He hopes we’ll be there. Want me to tell him we will?” I looked around the white wood table for their answers.

  “It will be held at Mozart’s? So, has Chief Turner arrested Martin Ziegler yet?” Lady Anthea asked.

  “He’s still letting Rick babysit him,” I said.

  “That’s fair,” Shelby said, reaching for a slice. “He’s a business owner, so he’s not going anywhere. Besides, any judge who’s eaten at Mozart’s would set bail at zero just to keep the place open.”

  “I never met the man. You two go to the memorial service and I’ll stay at Buckingham’s,” Lady Anthea said.

  “We can leave Mason or Joey in charge,” I said.

  She nodded and we went back to eating. I told them about my chat with Julie, and the inconsistencies I’d learned from John.

  “So where was she on Monday morning?” Lady Anthea asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said. I helped myself to more salad. “I wonder if the reason she was standing staring at Mozart’s yesterday afternoon was because she had just realized she would inherit half of it?”

  “Could be,” Shelby said.

  “I remember the way she looked standing there,” Lady Anthea said, “quite a tableau.”

  Next, I told them about Martin Ziegler claiming I was his attorney, and they howled laughing.

  “What’s that quotation, ‘a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client’? Well, anyone who has me for their lawyer is a fool,” I said.

  “Do you think Julie and David will stay together?” Shelby said. “They met at Buckingham’s and we were there. Maybe we’ll be invited to the wedding. Wouldn’t that be so romantic?”

  “Stay together? They met yesterday! How can they even be together?” I choked on my pizza at how far Shelby thought their relationship could possibly have progressed.

  “This is honestly like Ariadne aux Naxos,” Lady Anthea said, looking around at us expectantly. Why, I didn’t know since we never understood any of those references.

  “What does that even mean?” I said. “What’s that opera about?”

  “It means Ariadne at Naxos. Ariadne is a Crete princess in Greek mythology. Naxos is an island. You see, this wealthy—” she said stopping when she saw the looks on our faces. “Anyway, my point is it’s a serious opera within a comic opera. Billy B.’s murder is the serious opera and Martin Ziegler is the clown.”

  “He really is,” I agreed.

  “Did he honestly pretend to cry?” Shelby asked.

  I nodded. “Oh, yeah.”

  “Then we have David and Julie’s love story in it,” Lady Anthea continued.

  I leaned back in my chair. “In it? It seems to me we have two parallel events. We have Mr. Edutainer and son trying to take a Lewes artifact out of the country. Then we have Billy B.’s murder. Julie is the bridge between the two. That’s the way I see it.”

  My cell phone next to my plate rang. “Hi, Mason.” I heard lots of noise in the background. Then I held it out for Shelby and Lady Anthea to say, “Hi.”

  “Lady Anthea, I’m bowing,” he said.

  “I trust that you are,” she answered, laughing.

  “Sue, Dana found something online that you should see. Joey and I have repeated what she did to be sure we came up with the same results, and we did. We thought it could wait until morning, but now we’re not so sure. Can you meet us?”

  I refilled my wineglass. “We were hoping for an early night. Are you sure it can’t wait until morning?”

  He lowered his voice to a whisper. “It’s about the Fouries.”

  “Where are you?”

  “We’re at Fish On,” he said.

  “You’re not too tired?” I whispered to Lady Anthea.

  “I’m wide awake now.”

  “We’ll walk over there,” I said and hung up.

  * * * *

  Fish On was in Villages of Five Points, and ten min
utes later we found Mason and Joey at the bar. Mason stood when he heard us and drained his wineglass.

  The very shy Joey stood, too. “After we hung up, we decided that since Dana discovered this she should be the one to tell you. We called her and she’s meeting us at Buckingham’s.” He was pulling on his quilted vest as he talked.

  “Let’s go,” Mason said, already walking. “Put ours on her tab,” he called over his shoulder, pointing at me.

  “I don’t have a tab, but I do have this,” I said to the bartender. I slapped down a credit card. I’d brought it intending to buy the next round.

  Shelby cleared her throat and I looked around. She was motioning toward the back of the restaurant. David and Howard Fourie were eating, and staring at their respective phones. Howard Fourie saw me and forced a wave.

  “I wonder where Julie is?” Shelby whispered.

  “Did you know they were here?” I asked Mason and Joey.

  “Papa Bear walked by,” Mason said.

  “A couple of times,” Joey added.

  Lady Anthea began clearing her throat. She was nodding in the direction of the restaurant entrance. Martin Ziegler, and Rick, holding Dayle’s hand, stood at the hostess desk.

  I paid the check and we filed out.

  “Where was Billy B.’s family from?” Mason asked.

  “Cologne, Germany,” I said. “Julie told us that today.”

  “Interesting,” he said.

  I figured there was more to that subject but we all wanted to talk to Rick, Dayle, and Martin. When the hostess came to seat them we said goodbye and started the chilly, but thankfully short, trek up Village Main Boulevard to Buckingham’s at the intersection of that street and Savannah Road.

  Dana was sitting in her car when we got there. She jumped out and bounded to the door. “Did you come up with the same results I did?” she asked Mason. “You did, didn’t you?!”

  I had telephoned our nighttime hostess and Taylor and Laurie were waiting downstairs to open the beautifully repaired doors for us.

  “Is everything okay?” Taylor asked, her forehead furrowed.

  “We need to have a meeting and this was the best time,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  They took the elevator back upstairs and the rest of us went to my office.

  I sat behind my desk. Lady Anthea, Shelby, and Joey sat on the sofa. Dana’s young bones sat on the floor, by Shelby’s feet. She was carrying her laptop. Mason stood with his laptop under his arm.

  “Lady Anthea, remember when we ran your photograph through the facial recognition app, HooRU?”

  “Sure,” she said. “You found the image of my mother.”

  Mason continued. “We ran Howard Fourie, and this is what the app came up with.”

  He and Dana opened their laptops for us to see. Shelby, Lady Anthea, and I stared. Our mouths dropped open at the sight of the man with a wide face, a big hand held against his uniform.

  “A Nazi?” I croaked.

  “This is Howard’s father, David’s grandfather,” Dana said. “I Googled him. He was a big deal in the Gestapo in Cologne, Germany.”

  “I told you Ariadne was German!” Lady Anthea exclaimed. “Someone has been speaking German to that dog.”

  “They’re not from South Africa?” I asked.

  “This man and his wife emigrated in 1945. Howard and David were both born in South Africa,” Mason said.

  “But when he spoke at the mayor and city council meeting this morning he talked about his family living there generation after generation. Those were his words!” I said.

  Mason said, “Cologne!”

  Lady Anthea, Shelby, and I turned to him.

  “Are you saying the Fouries have a connection to Billy B.?” I asked.

  Mason, Joey, and Dana nodded once, unequivocally. Lady Anthea and Shelby shook their heads side to side. Once, and they were just as unambiguous in their opinion. We had a generation divide.

  “Cologne is a big city. It could be a coincidence,” I said. Why was everyone so down on coincidences? When did they get a bad name? I loved them. A book I’d read just last week, The Porcelain Parrot, had ended with one and it was masterful.

  * * * *

  Both Dana and Mason had offered to give us a ride back to my house, but Lady Anthea and I chose to walk. Now the cold air had us speed walking.

  A Mercedes pulled up next to us and stopped. Howard rolled the window down. “Are you ladies out for an evening stroll?”

  “Brisk!” Lady Anthea recovered first and said, “Brilliant.”

  “Aren’t you cold?” the older man asked. The epitome of urbanity and polish.

  I leaned over to see David behind the wheel. When his father asked us if we would like a ride home, they had plenty of room, would be happy to, no trouble at all, were we sure, I caught the younger man looking at the dashboard. At the clock? Wanting to be with Julie? We assured him we wanted to walk and I saw David’s shoulders relax.

  He offered again and we demurred again. Finally the big black car drove away.

  “Do you think it’s fair for Howard or David to be blamed for what someone in their family did before they were born?” I asked.

  “I don’t know but Howard must feel some guilt or he wouldn’t have lied at the hearing,” she said.

  “Does he feel guilt or shame?” I asked. “I think they’re different.”

  We walked on, thinking our thoughts. When we turned left onto West Batten we were ready to talk again. “I think Rick feels it, too,” she said.

  “This should make him see his father differently! There’s really no comparison between a mass murderer and a clown or con man, or whatever Martin is.” I opened the front door. “There’s a chance that we have one opera now, isn’t there?”

  Chapter 30

  The garage door purred as it lifted open. Abby was frantically barking. I was out of bed and running out of the bedroom.

  Lady Anthea opened her door. “Sue, is that you? Are you—?”

  “I’m over here,” I called to her from across the living room. “Call 9-1-1.” I remembered last year when she was under stress she had forgotten that we use 9-1-1, not 9-9-9.

  Someone was trying to open the door from the garage to the mudroom. Abby growled and snarled at the door. She barked between growls. The volume was louder than I had ever heard from her.

  “9-1-1,” I repeated. “Then close the door to your room. Stay there!” I looked around for something to protect us with. I lunged for the kitchen countertop and grabbed my car keys, then I pressed the red alarm button on the fob and was rewarded with an instantaneous response. The car horn sounded over and over again, along with a piercing siren I’d never heard before. Never needed it. From under the door, I saw the car lights were flashing.

  Lady Anthea hadn’t stayed in her bedroom. She was by my side, with her phone to her ear. “I don’t know this address!” she called out to me over the noise.

  “They’ll know it,” I assured her. I saw her eyes were wide with fear. I wanted to remind her that 9-1-1 operators could tell the address of the caller.

  She hesitated and then thanked him or her.

  “Ask them to stay on the line with us,” I said.

  “Uh, she said she would. There’s a patrol car in the area.” She listened again to the dispatcher. “They’ll be here—”

  There was a crash of something hefty hitting the door, and I flinched. Lady Anthea cried out, and I took her arm and nudged her behind me. Abby sprang to the mudroom in one bound and her barking increased in volume, though I hadn’t thought that was possible. She was sniffing the bottom of the door, then she stopped for a long, low, you’ll-have-to-come-through-me growl again. Then her thunderous barking was back. Our would-be home invader was definitely still in the garage.

  The door had held, but w
ho knew for how long. Could it take another blow with the force of the first?

  “We may need to go out the back door,” I said, when I knew Lady Anthea could hear me.

  Was that what we should do? We could run to a neighbor’s house. Whoever was in the garage would chase us. Not could. Would. Though my mind was racing I knew that was our only option. If he got inside, we would run out the back door. “Get ready to run.” I hoped my confusion didn’t show. I needed Lady Anthea to run, but I also knew I wouldn’t leave the house without Abby.

  Between the blasts of the horn from the car alarm sounding, I heard movement in the garage. Then the car noises drowned whatever it was out. There was another crash against the door. Again, it held. The hinges, the lock, the frame everything rocked but stayed. I stared at it, as if the door might weaken if I took my eyes off of it.

  “Sue, I hear a police car,” Lady Anthea yelled.

  I pressed the alarm button on the car key fob and the Jeep silenced and the lights turned off.

  “Let’s look out the front windows,” Lady Anthea whispered. She was still holding the phone to her ear.

  “Ma’am, do not open the door until instructed to by an officer,” the dispatcher said.

  I looked at Abby for a true read of the situation, knowing I could rely on her. She had relaxed, though only slightly, and was looking up at me with her glossy brown eyes. I looked through the kitchen to the dining room window and saw a flashing red light. Then I turned back to the garage door. Nothing from there. We went to the living room and waited. Lady Anthea collapsed onto the sofa and I propped myself on the arm of a chair by the door. The patrol car lights strobed through the room and I, for one, let myself be mesmerized. I leaned over and rubbed Abby’s back. “Good girl.”

  I jumped at the knock on the door.

  “Sue,” John called.

  I opened the door. “Are you always on duty—”

  He grabbed me in his arms and pulled me in so tight my face was smushed and contorted into his uniform. I smelled soap and cold night air. I heard him breathing. Then he pulled one arm back and held it up in a stop sign to whoever was behind him. He took a deep breath in, exhaled, then let me go. At first I stumbled from being lowered down by an inch or so. “Sorry,” he said, but not to me. He was talking to Officer Statler. “Just needed a second.”