The Twelve Dogs of Christmas

by David Rosenfelt

  I know I should get this over with, but I can’t help myself. “What happened to those three guys?” I ask, since I know I’ll never get the information out of Marcus.

  “You don’t want to know,” he says.

  “Marcus didn’t kill them, did he?”

  Suddenly, Big Tiny’s face lights up in recognition. “That’s Marcus Clark?”

  “Yes.”

  “Man, I heard about him, but I didn’t believe it. Now I believe it.”

  “Just to confirm, and not to nitpick this, but he didn’t kill them, did he?”

  “Nah, but they ain’t gonna be no good for me for a while, that’s for damn sure.”

  “Sorry, but they brought it on themselves. Nobody messes with me and Marcus; if I was there, it would have been worse,” I say. “And even though you may not believe this, we are all on the same side here.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s the truth. So let’s talk about your brother.”

  What the hell you want to know about my brother?”

  Big Tiny stiffens at the mere mention of his brother; his death is obviously still a sore point for him. He half stands up, and the only purpose for standing would be to either leave or make a physical move at me. But Big Tiny didn’t get to be where he is by being a dummy, and he instantly realizes that Marcus’s presence makes either of those choices impossible. Since he wants to remain the only living Tiny, he sits back down.

  “We want to know who killed him,” I say.

  “If I knew that, he’d be a dead man. Nobody could stop me, not even Mr. Marcus here.”

  “The police thought it was a gangland shooting.”

  “The police don’t know shit.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You think I don’t have people on the street? Somebody in another gang orders breakfast, I know how they take their eggs. You understand?”

  “I think so. You have informants that supply you with information about other gangs, including their preferences regarding eggs and, I assume, pancakes and cereal.”

  Big Tiny turns to Marcus. “Man, whatever he’s paying you, it ain’t enough. Come work for me; we’ll take over the damn world.”

  Marcus doesn’t respond, which might make Big Tiny think that he’s pondering the proposal. He’s not; Marcus never responds. At least I hope he’s not. If Marcus were to switch sides, it would cause a significant shift in the balance of power, generally, and at this table, specifically.

  “So all the information you gathered told you it wasn’t a gang killing?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What about someone else who might have had a grudge against your brother? For whatever reason, maybe an argument over a girl?”

  “No chance. Everybody liked him.”

  Big Tiny’s assessment of his brother’s likeability doesn’t completely jibe with his criminal record, but that could just be a case of blind brotherly love. “He had arrests for assault,” I say. “Maybe one of his victims was getting revenge?”

  “Whoever did would know they’d have to deal with me. I’m telling you, there is no chance. Now, we done here?”

  I’ve got nothing else to ask him, so I say, “Yeah, we’re done.”

  Big Tiny stands up, and in doing so towers over us; the man is huge. He says, “If you guys are really trying to find out who killed my brother and you need my help, just ask. Like I told you, I got guys on the street. You got a pen?”

  I hand him one and he takes out a small piece of paper, then writes a phone number on it. “You want to reach me, that’s my private number. I don’t want you showing up at my office no more.” Then he turns to Marcus and says, “Man, you…,” and then seems unsure how to finish the sentence, so he just turns and leaves.

  I didn’t get any information out of this encounter, which in itself is a significant piece of information. The police, while considering Little Tiny to have been the target, came up with no suspects. His highly motivated older brother, no doubt telling the truth when he said he was well tied in to street information, came up empty as well.

  It tends to confirm my existing theory that the killer was after Jake. I don’t have to prove the theory to use it as my operating assumption, so it will help me keep focus in the investigation.

  Unfortunately, I don’t have to prove it to a jury either, because the prosecution will be making the same argument. They will agree that Little Tiny was not the target but, rather, that the intended victim was Jake Boyer. It will be the centerpiece of their case.

  They will tell the jury that the killer was the person who had the murder weapon, his wife and my client, Pups. Then, having murdered once and gotten away with it, she had no qualms about killing a person who infuriated her eighteen months later, Randy Hennessey.

  After all, what did she have to lose? She knew she was dying, anyway.

  I ask Marcus if he wants to get something to eat while we’re here, and I’m glad he doesn’t. There’s always the chance that Big Tiny might be back with some big friends, seeking revenge.

  We get in my car and drive off, passing the bar where we had our confrontation. There’s a bit of traffic, caused by the presence of an ambulance, with another ambulance pulling away.

  “Marcus, is that … never mind.”

  He used three names, sometimes four, on a regular basis.

  He used only one name on each project, regardless of the complexity, or how much was involved. It helped him keep things straight. He never used his own name, and sometimes he couldn’t be sure that he really had one anymore.

  The one he used on this project, from the very beginning, was Caffey. It was one of his favorites, though he wasn’t sure why. It sounded important, and it sounded tough. Which was good, because he was important, and he was tough.

  He’d been back east for less than two weeks, and he hadn’t been called on to do much, just to follow that lawyer, Carpenter. Not exactly tough work, but not particularly exciting or challenging either. The previous times he’d been called here, he’d had to kill people. First, the two guys outside the restaurant, and then that loser Hennessey.

  It didn’t much matter to Caffey if he followed someone or killed them. He got paid the same; he was on the clock, and it was a really expensive clock at that.

  So he followed Carpenter, and every other day he called one of his employers and reported Carpenter’s movements. His impression was that Carpenter was flailing around, covering bases but not making any real progress. But he left that out of his reports; all his employers wanted were the facts, not opinion. Which was fine with Caffey; for what these people were paying, they could have whatever the hell they wanted.

  So far, each time he reported in, the response was the same: just keep following Carpenter and keep reporting those movements.

  Caffey had been down this road before, and his hunch was that one of these times, the orders would be to follow Carpenter and kill him.

  Whatever.

  Randy Hennessey came into some money,” Sam says.

  He’s come to my office to tell me about it, which is not a big hardship, since his accounting office is just down the hall.

  Two questions come to mind, so I might as well ask both of them at once. “When, and how much?”

  “Fifteen thousand on November twelfth and another ten thousand five days later.”

  I can check this to confirm, but I think that those two dates are around the time he filed the complaints about Pups with the zoning board. If I had to guess, payment number 1 came before, and payment number 2 came after.

  “Do we know where the money came from?”

  He nods. “Sort of. It was wired from an account registered to the Committee for a Better America, set up at one of those online banks.”

  “Any way to find out who’s on the committee?”

  “No one; it’s all bull. The name is just a front. The people set up as the officers don’t exist. Those banks aren’t exactly rigid in setting up checking accoun
ts; I’m sure the documentation that was used was fake.”

  “Can you get copies of those documents?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure; I can try, but they have to have been entered online. But I know what they say, and they’re not going to help you any.”

  “Get whatever you can, Sam, just in case. Has Hennessey gotten payments like this before?”

  “I went back two years, and he’s never had more than two grand in his account at any point. Now he has almost twenty-four; he spent a little before he got shot.”

  “Sam, can you get into Hennessey’s phone records, landline, and cell—whatever he had?”

  He frowns as if I insulted him. “Of course.”

  “Good. I want to know everyone he talked to in the period before his death. Go back a couple of months.”

  “No problem.”

  “Thanks, Sam. This is a big help.”

  “I’m here to serve.”

  I call Hike, and I ask him to get a subpoena to legally retrieve the same records of Hennessey’s that Sam just got illegally. I also tell him to get in touch with Teresa Hennessey, tell her about this money, and help her do whatever is legally necessary to allow her to get her hands on it.

  Then I call Laurie and tell her what Sam has learned.

  “So unless we’re dealing with a huge coincidence here, somebody paid Hennessey twenty-five thousand dollars to complain about Pups’s dogs?” she asks.

  “Sounds a tad suspicious,” I say.

  “Why do we think they did that?”

  “To set Pups up as his enemy so that when he was killed, they would look to her. Hennessey didn’t realize that he was signing his own death certificate when he took the money and made the complaint.”

  “But the zoning board kept it confidential.”

  “Yes, but Hennessey apparently didn’t, and it was probably part of the deal that he made sure the word got out. I’m about to look into that now,” I say.

  My next call is to Pups, to find out exactly who told her that Hennessey was the one who complained. She gives me three names of neighbors, so I drive over to her street, figuring at least one of them will be home. I get lucky on the first try; a woman named Mary Dixon is there, and she recognizes me because she was at the hearing that overturned the zoning-board decision. She and some of the other neighbors had showed up to support Pups.

  She invites me in and immediately expresses a desire to help Pups in any way possible. “That sweet woman would never murder anyone,” she says.

  “Sweet woman?” I ask, my surprise evident. I have never heard anyone describe Pups that way. “We’re talking about the same Pups?”

  Mary laughs. “Maybe not sweet in the traditional sense. But if you dig deep enough … she’s got a sweet soul … Anyway, how can I help you?”

  “Pups said that you told her Hennessey was the person that complained to the zoning board.”

  She nods. “I hope I didn’t in some way contribute to all this.”

  “Not at all. But tell me how you found out about it?”

  “He told me,” Mary says. “And I didn’t exactly have to beat it out of him. He told me what he did and said he hoped I’d back him.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That I most certainly would not back him and that I was on Pups’s side.”

  “Did he ask you to keep his role a secret?”

  “Not at all. I told him I was going to tell her, and he was fine with it. He seemed to want me to.”

  “Did you talk about it with the other neighbors?” I ask.

  “I sure did, and Hennessey had the same conversation with most of them as he did with me. I hate to talk ill about the dead, but he was not a nice man.”

  I thank her and leave; there’s no reason to talk to any of the other neighbors. I have little doubt that Hennessey was paid to complain about the dogs, and part of his job was to make sure that Pups knew about it.

  He certainly did that job well; his complaint was heard, and he did everything but take an ad out in the paper to get Pups angry at him.

  So what I know now is that someone murdered Jake Boyer, then waited a year and a half to set Pups up for it. That person, or group of people, then paid twenty-five thousand dollars to Hennessey, who did not realize he’d never live to spend it.

  These are serious, deadly, patient people we are dealing with. I just need to find out what they’re hoping to accomplish, and then maybe I can find out who they are.

  It’s got to be about the money.

  Pups has a lot of it, and somebody wants to take it from her. It’s the only way I can explain this, even though I still have no idea who is trying to do it or how they can possibly pull it off.

  Pups doesn’t seem to know how much money she has and isn’t terribly interested in knowing. Since she referred me to Walter Tillman about it, I decide to call Walter and pump him for more information. Maybe there’s something I missed the first time we talked.

  My need to call Walter is lessened somewhat when he calls me first. “You were my next call,” I say.

  “What about?”

  “Pups’s money.”

  “She already authorized me to pay whatever bills you submit for your fee.”

  “Nice to hear, but that’s not what I meant. Someone has gone to great pains to get their hands on her money, and I’m trying to figure out who that might be.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but how can I help?” Tillman asks.

  “You prepared her will?”

  “I did.”

  “Who is she leaving her estate to?”

  He hesitates, a lawyer’s natural reaction when asked to reveal something that might be in confidence.

  “She’s already authorized you to talk to me,” I say. “I can get her to do so again, but I’d rather move this thing along.”

  “OK,” he says. “She’s left it to a number of animal rescue organizations all over the country. At last count, I believe there were a hundred and fifty-one of them, and the average amount was, like, a hundred grand each in cash.”

  I’m thinking, Wow, so I say, “Wow.” Then, “That is going to be huge for those groups.”

  “And that doesn’t include the land that Jake owned, which is going to other animal rights groups. That could be worth almost as much. She put a lot of work into researching and choosing the beneficiaries, and then she gave it to me to do due diligence. People in my office spent three weeks talking about Chihuahuas. It’s amazingly detailed.”

  “So let me ask you what happens in the various scenarios. If she is not convicted of killing Jake, the will is executed as per her wishes when she dies?”

  “Correct,” he says.

  “What if she is convicted? What happens upon her death then?” I think I know the answer to this, but it’s not my area of the law, so I want to hear him confirm it.

  “Legally, whether she is alive or dead wouldn’t matter, because once she is convicted, the proceeds she derived from Jake’s estate will no longer belong to her. So her will would only direct money she had independently of Jake’s estate, which is almost nothing.”

  “So on a conviction, where does the big money go?” I ask.

  “Depends. If another potential heir steps forward, then he or she can claim it and the court would decide. If not, the state steps in and puts the cash in the state treasury. Then they’d sell the land in an orderly fashion and keep those proceeds as well.”

  “And the only potential heir would be Jake’s son?”

  “His name is Hank Boyer, and he’s the only one I am aware of.”

  “And he hasn’t been heard from in years?”

  “That’s why I was calling,” Tillman says. “I checked through the files like I said I would, and I found some information on him. I was trying to cover all my bases when I prepared Jake’s estate, and I got whatever information Jake had. I’ve got an address, though I don’t know if it’s still current, and even a photograph.”

  “W
here is the address?”

  “You ready? Deadwood, South Dakota.”

  “That’s convenient. Can you scan it all and send it to me? And can you also send me a list of the land holdings and a map of where they are?”

  “Sure,” Tillman says. “Hopes this helps.”

  “Not sure how it can, but the more information I have, the better.”

  “How’s the case going?” he asks.

  “It’s going. Merry Christmas.”

  Today is “tree decorating day.”

  It’s not my favorite day of the year, but it’s not the worst either. For instance, I like it more than “root canal day,” and “food poisoning day,” and “colonoscopy day.”

  We’re doing it late this year, as it’s only ten days until Christmas, but I’ve been so busy that I keep putting it off. Finally, Laurie and Ricky got tired of waiting, so they went out and got the tree without me. Today, we’re going to put on the lights and ornaments. Laurie has countless boxes of each; I believe it is the largest privately owned collection in the Western Hemisphere.

  We begin by wrapping the lights around the tree, starting at the top. I like to put a lot of distance between the rows of lights so we’ll get to the bottom faster. Ricky will take over when we get down to near his height level; it’s one of the reasons I wish he would grow more quickly. But Laurie insists on almost no space at all between the rows, so it takes forever to get down there.

  Then we start with the ornaments. Laurie and Ricky disapprove of somewhere between 98 and 100 percent of my placements, so I am given the responsibility of placing the ones in the back of the tree, facing the wall. That way, no one will ever see them.

  So I spend the time by myself back there behind the tree, adding the ornaments that will be forever unseen. Of course, that doesn’t stop both Laurie and Ricky from occasionally glancing back there and shaking their heads in a silent reprimand at my pathetic efforts.

  I finish the back before they’re even close to done with their masterpiece, so I head down to the Tara Foundation. This is a particularly busy time of year, since people often want to get dogs as Christmas gifts. We are not enamored of this type of adoption; dogs are not ties or sweaters or tennis racquets.