Notoriously Neat

by SUZANNE PRICE

  “Uno tenía una pistola,” he said.

  I looked at Vega. “He says one of them had a pistol.”

  “Can he describe these men for me? Were they white? Black? Latino?”

  “¿Cómo?”

  “Blancos,” he said finally. “White.”

  “All three of them?”

  “Sí. Todos.”

  “And what age were they?”

  “They young,” Orlando said in broken English. “Mi edad, como yo. . . maybe like me.”

  “And how old would that be? Nineteen? Twenty?”

  “Dieciocho.”

  Vega looked at him. “Eighteen, right?”

  “Sí.”

  Vega was nodding. “Did they say what they were after?”

  Orlando didn’t wait for me to interpret.

  “They want money,” he said. “Y drogas.”

  “Drugs?”

  Orlando nodded.

  Vega was watching his face. “Tell me how the animals got free.”

  Orlando didn’t answer.

  “Do you understand?” Vega said. “The animals—who opened their cages?”

  Orlando just sat there with his arms around the monkey. He seemed upset by the question.

  “Sky,” Vega said, “can you ask him . . . ?”

  “I understand, sí,” Orlando said at last.

  Growing more visibly distressed by the second, he explained in rapid Spanish that the robber with the gun turned it on him when he’d run into the waiting area, and then asked him where the money and drugs were kept. He said he didn’t tell them—“No porque era un héroe”—not because he was a hero but because he was so frightened he’d gotten tongue-tied, especially trying to speak English, and because he had no idea where Dr. Pilsner locked away her cash and her credit receipts. The robbers had thought he was deliberately keeping the information from them, gotten angry, and started releasing the animals, bringing him into the kennels to watch at gunpoint, telling him they wouldn’t stop until he told them what they wanted to know.

  Vega’s face was intent.

  “Is he saying all three robbers were letting go of the animals?”

  Orlando shook his head, held up two fingers. “Dos . . . two.”

  “And the third man?”

  “He hold the gun.”

  “Held it on you,” Vega said.

  “Sí.” Orlando mimicked a man pointing a gun again.

  “And then what? Something must’ve happened in here to scare the three of them off.”

  Orlando looked at him blankly, turned to me for help.

  “¿Qué pasó en próximo?” I said.

  Orlando nodded his understanding and stroked the monkey’s head.

  “Mickey,” he said.

  Vega raised an eyebrow. “What about Mickey?”

  Orlando had continued to face me. “Creo que Mickey les habían asustado . . .”

  He was back to talking at light speed. I did my best to keep up, concentrating, once or twice asking him to repeat himself. I didn’t want to miss any part of his story.

  The robbers were very scared of the monkey, he said. Muy, muy asustados. He’d heard one in particular tell that to their leader, the man with the gun, refusing to go near its cage to set it free. Mickey had been swinging around inside it, rattling its sides in a panic, and that spooked all three men. And then Mickey’s frantic jumping around tipped the cage over on its side. The door had opened somehow, and the monkey escaped from the cage, screaming with fright, running all over the place before he scampered out into the barn and . . .

  “. . . that distracted the man with the gun long enough for Orlando to follow Mickey and make a break for it too,” I finished translating.

  Vega looked at the kid. “Then what? I’m guessing these men wouldn’t just let you take off on them without a chase.”

  Orlando made a confused face.

  “Did the robbers run after you?” Vega clarified.

  “Sí. They run. No catch me . . . I run more fast.”

  Silence. Vega did that thoughtful neck-rubbing thing he does. Then I heard what I recognized as the sound of a cell phone set on vibe tone.

  Vega reached into his pocket, listened, and thanked the caller for keeping him posted. I supposed it was Larson again.

  “Okay,” he said to me after putting the phone away. The entire call must have lasted a minute. “Tell Orlando I want to hear the rest.”

  I told him. But he didn’t have much to add. Orlando said he’d managed to shake the three robbers almost right away, although he thought they might have decided to take off before someone noticed all the animals on the street and realized there was trouble at the clinic. Once it seemed they were gone, he went looking for Mickey for a little while, but then realized he’d better call the police. He was rushing toward the station house on Broadway when Poole and Woodburn came driving by with their sirens on, saw him running, and picked him up—

  Vega made a stop gesture with his hand.

  “Hang on,” he said. “Didn’t you think to come back here before heading over to the station?”

  Orlando sat uncomprehendingly, and I put the question to him in Spanish.

  He still seemed confused. “¿Por qué?”

  Vega shot me a glance.

  “Did he just ask why?” he said.

  I nodded, meeting Vega’s gaze. Now we were the ones who looked baffled . . . as did the pair of veteran cops in the room with us.

  “Ask him if it occurred to him to see if Dr. Pilsner was okay,” Vega said.

  His eyes went from mine to Orlando’s, held on them as I posed the question.

  The kid just shrugged.

  “No,” he said. “Dr. Pilsner no estaba aquí. Fue a hacer recados.”

  My jaw dropped. He’d answered that Dr. Pilsner wasn’t home. That she had gone out to run some errands. Was it possible . . . ?

  Orlando was suddenly looking at me.

  “¿Es algo malo,” he said.

  I faced him, thunderstruck. He didn’t know. I was sure of it. He didn’t know what had happened to Dr. Pilsner.

  “¿Es algo malo?” he repeated, tensing as he read the shock on my features.

  “He’s asking if something’s wrong with Dr. Pilsner,” I said to Vega.

  The chief’s eyes had zeroed in on the kid. Though his expression wasn’t quite disbelieving, I could tell he was miles and miles away from trustful.

  “Dr. Pilsner is dead, Orlando,” he said flatly. “Do you understand me?”

  Orlando stared at him in silence.

  “Do you understand?” Vega said.

  Orlando sat there gaping at him a second or two. Then a huge shudder ran through him and he clapped his palms over his eyes.

  “Orlando . . .,” I began, then realized I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say and gently put a hand on his shoulder.

  A moment later he let out a small, muffled moan and started sobbing convulsively, still covering his eyes, tears streaming down between his fingers, dripping down over his cheeks and beard until it glistened with wetness.

  I kept my hand where it was and exchanged glances with Vega. We both knew I had no need to translate anything more for Orlando, not right then and there.

  Clearly, he’d understood.

  Chapter 4

  “Are you okay, Sky?” Vega said, his hands on the steering wheel.

  “Fine,” I said. And paused. “Well, so-so, I guess.”

  Vega glanced over at me. I was in the squishy leather passenger seat of his silver Range Rover, looking quietly out the windshield as he drove me home to the Fog Bell. It was about eight o’clock at night, and the town center’s elegant old houses were pretty in the twinkle of our old-fashioned streetlamps, the white clapboard Colonials and redbrick Federals lined up one after another behind blossoming trees and lawns.

  “I’m sorry,” Vega said. “This was some night out.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Which part do you mean? The animal
stampede? Mickey the monkey eating your food? Or your winding up as an interpreter at a murder scene?”

  “None of those.” I offered him a thin smile. “I was glad to help. And besides, Mickey was sweet.”

  Vega didn’t say anything as he turned onto Main Street. I thought of the monkey and felt sorry for him, remembering his sad, wizened little face when the police put him back in his cage. I knew he would be returned to his companion soon enough, but he’d seemed so unhappy being separated from Orlando.

  It was the image of Gail Pilsner at the foot of her stairs that really bothered me, though. That and Orlando getting taken into custody. I couldn’t let go of either one.

  “I don’t think he did it,” I said. “The kid, I mean.”

  Vega drove by the post office, and then the big limestone structure of Carlson Public Library, where several tables already stood out front for the upcoming weekend’s spring Book ’n’ Bake Sale. I noticed that somebody had dropped a big carton of donated books on one of them, and shook my head. In Pigeon Cove, crimes such as theft and murder were normally the furthest thing from people’s minds.

  “Orlando hasn’t been charged with any crimes,” Vega said after a moment.

  “But you arrested him.”

  “We brought him to the station for a formal interview.”

  “In handcuffs.”

  Vega nodded slowly. “That’s standard procedure,” he said. “We’re entitled to hold him overnight without pressing charges. If we decide there’s no basis, he’ll be released.”

  “And if you decide the opposite?”

  “A public defender’s on her way up from Salem . The kid’ll be treated within his legal rights.”

  I wasn’t sure that answered my question. In fact, I knew it hadn’t.

  “Do you believe he murdered Dr. Pilsner?” I asked.

  Vega hesitated. A few blocks ahead of us, the Fog Bell Inn stood on the corner of Carriage Lane radiating rosy pinkness from foundation to roof-top. Pink building exteriors violated town ordinances that were practically traceable back to the Pilgrims, but my friend Chloe, who owned and ran the B&B, was ordinance-proof. It’s hard to explain why. Like all true enchantments, Chloe-magic astounds and mesmerizes without ever baring its secrets.

  “I’m going to share some thoughts I probably shouldn’t,” Vega said at last. He glanced at me and our eyes briefly connected. “Cop business.”

  I studied his handsome face as he returned his attention to the road. Maybe I’ve already mentioned this, but in the entire time we’d been exclusive, Mike Ennis had never readily shared his newspaper reporter’s business with me. When he did, it was almost always because I’d backed him into a corner.

  “Got you,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as goopy as I felt inside. “This conversation stays between us.”

  Vega drove by the Art Association building. “Orlando’s story doesn’t wash,” he said. “There are discrepancies. Things that just don’t add up.”

  “Such as?”

  “What he told me about the thieves being after money and drugs. Remember when I had Connors check out the med cabinets?”

  I nodded yes.

  “Well, they were untouched,” Vega said. “Their doors are locked . . . There’s no broken glass . . . Nothing appears to be missing.”

  “And those pharmaceuticals you were concerned about—were they still inside the cabinets?”

  “Connors found bottles of ketamine, xylazine, all the rest.” Vega shot me another quick look. “They were in plain view on the shelves.”

  I considered that. “I don’t get it. Orlando claimed the robbers threatened to shoot him unless he told them where Gail stocked the drugs.”

  “And that he was so terrified he choked on the words,” Vega said. “The reason they started opening the kennels and pens was supposedly to coerce him into talking.”

  “But why bother? I mean, they tore the office apart. How could they have missed the drugs if they were in plain sight?”

  “They couldn’t,” Vega said. “Not a chance.”

  I sat quietly looking out the window. Though nobody would ever confuse Pigeon Cove, Massachusetts, with Rome, Italy, both were built on hills, and as we rolled onto the downside of one its steeper grades, I could see where Main Street ended at the narrow jut of land called Gull Wing, bending out into the harbor with its saltbox shops and fishing wharves.

  “Wow,” I said after a while. “That totally contradicts Orlando’s explanation for how and why the animals got released.”

  “And why the gang had a gun on him.”

  “Wow again,” I said, shaking my head. “None of this makes sense.”

  “There’s more besides,” Vega said. “I figured the commotion in the office must’ve been pretty loud, and that somebody nearby had to notice it . . . You probably heard me ask Connors to knock on neighbors’ doors.”

  I nodded that I had. “Did he turn up anything?”

  “Yeah,” Vega said. “He’s the one who called on my cell while we were talking to Orlando. The woman next door—her name’s Heidi Parsons or Paterson; Connors wrote it down—she told him she heard the racket over the sound of her television, and that it startled her. So she turned down the volume to try to find out what was going on.”

  “And?”

  “She heard dogs barking. At least two different men shouting in keyed-up voices. Then a woman’s scream and a loud crash. And then the men shouting again.”

  “Did she say what they were shouting?”

  “She didn’t know.”

  “I’m guessing that’s because she couldn’t make it out clearly enough?”

  Vega shook his head. “Didn’t know as in ‘couldn’t understand their language,’” he said. “She insists they were hollering in Spanish.”

  I squelched the urge to say something as moronic as “Triple wow.” Instead, I silently recalled Orlando’s claim that the three men who’d broken into the clinic were English-speaking Caucasians.

  “Now maybe you get why we took Orlando into custody,” Vega said. “I’m not sure how much to believe of what he told us. There’s too much wrong with the picture for me to consider anything he says trustworthy.”

  I wondered whether I agreed.

  “You know, I’m good at solving puzzles,” I said. “Jigsaws, brainteasers, it doesn’t matter what kind. Sit me down by one of those what’s-wrong-with-this-picture diner place mats and I’m content.”

  Vega smiled. “Maybe my real mistake tonight was not taking you out to Chuck E. Cheese.”

  “There’s always next time,” I said, smiling back at him. “I really am compulsive about it, though. Guess it’s tied to the same mental circuitry as my clean-freakiness. I can’t help looking for order when it isn’t plain to see. I get very logical and methodical about trying to make things fit together. It’s a challenge I can’t resist . . .”

  “And you’re trying to figure out how Orlando’s story jives with what happened at the clinic.”

  I struggled with my answer a moment. “That’s the weird part. On the one hand, yes. On the other, I’m having trouble processing it.”

  “Logically, you mean?”

  “You saw how Orlando reacted when he found out about Dr. Pilsner,” I said, nodding. “You saw him fall apart, same as I did.”

  Vega sighed.

  “I’ve seen a lot of guilty people manage to look very innocent,” he said. “But I’m not saying you’re wrong that he was convincing.”

  And for that I was grateful.

  As we neared the Fog Bell, I was also grateful to see lights on behind the tall, pedimented downstairs windows. It was a good indication that Chloe was home. When she wasn’t, her husband, Oscar, would stalk around the house turning off light switches everywhere but in the back parlor, where he relentlessly practiced his clarinet playing. With the tourist season still a month off, and no guests, Chloe had been out and about a lot—gone so much, in fact, that I’d gotten curious about where she was spending
her time. If I hadn’t known her so well, and she was any less the social diva, I might have suspected she was heading out on naughty tête-à-têtes . . . but that just wasn’t Chloe.

  Anyway, I wanted to visit with her for a few minutes before heading up to my apartment. I’d had a rough night and knew it would help settle me.

  Now Vega eased the Rover to the right, stopped against the curb near the yew hedge edging the inn’s front garden. Then we sat in the SUV’s darkened cab, the heater blowing softly to oust the unseasonable chill of the night.

  “So,” he said, shifting around to face me. “You’re home.”

  I sat looking at him. “Been some eventful night, huh?”

  “In all the wrong ways,” Vega said. “Sky, I’ve waited a long time for our date. And I wish it had turned out differently.”

  I gave him one of those combination shrugs and nods. “There’ll be others.”

  He smiled. “I hope . . . that is, I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”

  His green eyes met my brown ones, held them. I felt my heart swell up into the vicinity of my tonsils.

  “I won’t be,” I said, “if you kiss me.”

  Vega smiled again. Then he slid over toward my side of the cab, and put his arms around me, and obliged, kissing me long and deeply and probingly as my lips parted against his. And I knew then that if the night had gone differently, I wouldn’t have wanted it to stop there. Not even close to there.

  I might mention that it was the first time we kissed like that. The first time we’d kissed at all since we rang in the New Year together in the City Hall bell tower.

  I shouldn’t have compared him with Mike. It was terrible of me, I knew.

  But as I left the Rover and started toward the front porch, gasping for air, I was thinking Chief Alex did it better.

  Chapter 5

  I’d reached the top of the front porch when I caught a whiff of something unpleasant, to put it very, very mildly. With my stuffed sinuses knocked partly out of commission, it took me a second to identify the nasty smell.