by J. A. Jance
Afraid Mel might hear me, I was careful not to allow the slightest hint of a chuckle to escape my lips. Instead, I feigned sleep and waited to see what would happen.
I heard the toilet flush and the bathroom light switch off. I squinted my eyes open wide enough to see Mel standing beside the bed, looking down at the dog.
“Off, Rambo,” she ordered, pointing at the bed. And do you know what happened? Rambo got off! Just like that, leaving me to spend the night wondering, Why the hell didn’t I think of that?
CHAPTER 7
I WON’T SAY I SLEPT LIKE A BABY, BUT I SLEPT WELL enough that by the time I woke up, Mel was already up, showered, and dressed.
“Rambo’s already been out,” she told me as she handed me my morning cup of java. The dog bed had been moved back to the kitchen, and Mel’s handover of coffee was done under the dog’s watchful eyes.
“And not through the doggy door, either, I’m willing to bet.”
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Mel retorted. “Rambo grew up living in an apartment complex. Renters aren’t allowed to install doggy doors. I’m sure yesterday was the first time Rambo ever saw one. She’s a good girl. Give her a break.”
Mel went off to work shortly thereafter, leaving it up to me to maintain what was clearly an uneasy truce between me and our new addition. Part of the rhythm of bringing a new dog into your home is learning to keep track of the pees and craps. Since Rambo was a large dog, potential problems with those were not insubstantial. After meeting Mel for lunch, I stopped off at Home Depot on the way home and invested in a proper pooper-scooper along with an outdoor trash container and a box of large garbage bags. I went back to Target and dragged home another large dog bed. I didn’t see any logical reason for us to have to keep hauling that one bed back and forth between the bedroom and the kitchen.
I know I’m coming from a whole different era in terms of the fundamentals of relations between the sexes, but in my book, yard work is still something menfolk are supposed to do. Once I got home, I went out to the front yard and started doing exactly that. I was in the midst of walking a sizable scoop of dog leavings over to the trash can when my cell phone rang with Scott’s name in the caller ID. I took the time to empty the scooper before answering the phone.
“Hey, Scotty,” I said. “What’s up? Are you back at work?”
When I had spoken to him last, he’d been considering taking Monday off, and with all the Rambo hullabaloo, I hadn’t taken the time to check in on him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m back at work today, and I just had a strange call.”
“What kind of strange call?”
“Someone called into the homicide department looking for you, and whoever took the call was smart enough to put it through to me.”
Considering how long I’d been away from Seattle PD Homicide, whoever was looking for me obviously wasn’t someone I knew well.
“She said her name was Erin Howard,” Scott continued, “but that you would probably remember her as Erin Kelsey. She asked me for your phone number. I suggested that she give me hers instead. Do you want me to give it to you?”
“I’m out in the yard scraping up doggy doo-doo at the moment,” I told him. “How about if you text me the number?”
“Doggy doo-doo?” Scott repeated. “Does that mean you and Mel have a dog?”
“Long story,” I said. “And it’s more like a temporary dog rather than a permanent one.”
“Does this dog have a name?”
“Rambo.”
“If you’ve already named him, that means you own him,” Scott told me. “I’ve gotta go. I’ll send the number.”
He was gone without giving me a chance to explain that Rambo was really a girl. As I slipped the phone back into my pocket, I heard the ding of an arriving text. I picked up the scooper and headed back toward another pile of poop, one I had spotted on my way to the trash can. When I was halfway there Rambo silently appeared beside me. I turned back toward the front of the house and checked to make sure the door was closed. It was. That meant she had deigned to use the doggy door for the first time.
“Good dog!” I exclaimed enthusiastically. “What a good out!”
Rambo rewarded me with a dignified wag of her tail. It may not have been a gesture of complete accord between us, but it was a mutual acknowledgment that you can teach old dogs new tricks, human ones included.
With my scooping job done, we headed back inside. Rambo was happy to be let in through the front door as opposed to using the plastic flap, but I considered the whole transaction a huge step in the right direction.
Inside, I washed my hands, made a new cup of coffee, and then pulled out my phone to dial up Erin Howard. She answered on the second ring.
“J. P. Beaumont here, Erin,” I said when she came on the line. “My son mentioned that you had called. I heard about what happened to Maxwell Cole, and I know the two of you were very close. I’m sorry for your loss.”
The strangled sound that greeted my words of condolence was, no doubt, a half-stifled sob. “Thank you,” Erin murmured. “I wasn’t sure you’d even remember me.”
The truth was, I had spent a good deal of my Sunday afternoon hike thinking about little else—of her and that whole long ago tragedy. “Of course I remember you,” I said. “How’s your dad these days and what’s he doing now?”
“If you’re referring to my father, Chris McLaughlin,” Erin said stiffly, “he’s been dead for more than forty-five years. If, on the other hand, you mean Pete Kelsey, the guy who pretended to be my father, I have no idea.”
Whoa! That gave me a pretty clear view of the lay of the land. As far as Erin was concerned, nothing that had happened all those years earlier was either forgotten or forgiven.
“Are you planning on coming to Uncle Max’s funeral?” Erin asked.
That took me aback. John Madsen, aka Pete Kelsey, the man who had rescued her from an uncertain fate as an abandoned baby in Mexico—the guy who had brought Erin home and cared for her for years as his own—had been summarily kicked downstairs, while Max had somehow been elevated to honorary uncle status. That didn’t seem right, at least not to me. As far as the funeral was concerned and despite Mel’s urging, I wasn’t planning to go, but I didn’t want to come right out and admit that.
“I didn’t know it had been scheduled,” I hedged.
“The ME’s office released the remains to the Poindexter Funeral Home a little while ago,” Erin said. “The memorial service will be tomorrow morning at eleven in their chapel in Interbay. I’d like you to be there.”
Given the circumstances, it was an unexpected request, but not one I could reject out of hand. “Of course,” I agreed at once. “I’ll be happy to show up.” That was an outright lie. In actual fact, I didn’t expect to be happy about it at all, but I knew Mel would be.
“Has there been any word on the cause of the fire?”
The pause before Erin answered was long enough to make me think we’d been disconnected. I actually checked the screen on my phone to see if the call had failed.
“Everyone keeps trying to tell me it was an accident,” Erin said at last. “They say he was smoking in bed, the bedding caught fire, and his oxygen equipment made the fire more intense. I don’t believe a word of it,” she added, “not one word. That’s why I need to talk to you.”
For the life of me, I couldn’t see how the one thing would automatically lead to the other, but I wasn’t prepared to argue the point.
“No problem, then,” I said. “Whenever you’d like to talk, just say the word.”
“Uncle Max was a well-known figure in town back in the day, but I don’t know how many people will actually show up for his funeral,” Erin continued, “probably not that many. How about if we get together to talk after that?”
“Sure,” I said. “Would you like to do lunch?”
“Yes, please,” she said, sounding as though I had just lifted the weight of the world off her shoulders. “I’d l
ike it to be just the two of us.”
I finished my coffee and my last online crossword puzzle toward the middle of the afternoon. Rambo was in the kitchen on her bed when I took my coffee mug to the sink. Her food dish was empty and so was the water dish. As I filled the food dish, I made a mental note to see about finding a larger water dish. Leaving Rambo to crunch her kibble, I went into the bedroom and looked through the clothing in my walk-in closet. (The fact that our proposed master bedroom had included two matching walk-in closets had been a big selling point as far as Mel was concerned when it came to designing the house. In actual practice, my closet is only half-filled with my clothing, with the remainder being encroached upon by Mel’s.)
I searched through my collection of clothing bags until I located a pinstripe suit that looked suitably funereal and also still fit—something for which I was immensely grateful. I also located a suitable tie and a fresh-from-the-cleaners white shirt and put them on the bar next to the suit.
Having done my best to prepare for the unwelcome duty of attending Max’s services the next day, I went back to the living room, turned on the gas log, and prepared to enjoy the sunset over Bellingham Bay, which gave every evidence of being magnificent. (As far as I’m concerned, being able to watch sunsets in the late afternoons and evenings is one of the unheralded side benefits of being retired.)
I had settled into my easy chair and was totally relaxed when the dog appeared at my feet. Her arrival was accompanied by an unfamiliar thump, thump, thump on the hardwood floor. Looking around the hassock to see what had made the racket, I spotted one of Rambo’s worn tennis balls go rolling back toward the dining room table. The dog chased after it, brought it back, and dropped it for the second time on the far side of the footstool. While the second thump, thump, thump sounded, Rambo gave me a quizzical look with those fathomless black eyes of hers as if to say, “Don’t you get it?”
The night before she had nosed the doorknob to tell me it was time to go out. Tonight she was telling me it was time to play ball. I took the hint. I put on a jacket, grabbed the ball, and escorted her outside. Flinging the ball as hard as I could throw, I could bounce it off the fence at the far end of the yard. Running low to the ground, Rambo raced after it, catching it each time on the first bounce. Once she had the ball in her mouth, she galloped straight back to me and dropped the slobber-covered mess at my feet, and then stood waiting impatiently for me to throw it again.
Which I did. I have no idea what the sunset looked like that evening, because I never saw it. I was out in the yard having way too much fun playing ball with a dog who wasn’t supposed to be my dog but, as Scott had pointed out, probably already was.
CHAPTER 8
THE NEXT MORNING, ONCE I WAS PROPERLY ATTIRED AND ready to head south to Seattle, I was faced with the dilemma every owner of a newly acquired dog must face sooner or later, which is to say—what happens when I have to leave the house? I understand that crating dogs is sometimes recommended, but we didn’t have a crate. Besides, I was going to a funeral almost a hundred miles away and had no idea how long I’d be gone. Would Rambo use the doggy door if she needed to go out and relieve herself? In terms of size alone, if she ended up doing her duty in the house, it was bound to be a big problem. As househusband of the moment, I had a pretty clear understanding of whose problem that would be.
Rambo was lying on her bed in the kitchen, regarding my every move as I picked up the car keys and put them in my pocket. “You be a good girl now,” I admonished. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
Did she understand what I was saying? I don’t know. Maybe the words “good girl” registered. Her head didn’t move. Her eyes didn’t move, but her tail gave a tiny, halfhearted thump.
I got into the car, turned on the heated seat, and headed for I-5. Driving time has always been my best thinking time. These days I often find myself resenting the way cell phones have intruded on those formerly peaceful drives. On that Wednesday morning, however, the phone in my pocket remained blessedly silent, leaving me free to contemplate the strange dream I’d had the night before about my grandfather. It occurred to me that the dream had been sparked by Erin Kelsey’s sudden reemergence in my life. (No matter what she calls herself these days, that’s how I’ll always think of her.)
But back to my grandfather. By the time my mother was eighteen, she was an unwed mother with an infant son. With World War II still in full swing, she had fallen hard for a young sailor named Hank Mencken, who hailed from Beaumont, Texas. My mother was pregnant with me and they were engaged to be married when Hank died in a motorcycle accident on his way back to base.
When my mother refused to give me up, her father, Jonas Piedmont, had disowned his daughter on the spot. In taking care of me, my mother had no help from her side of the family. As for my paternal grandparents? When my mother appealed to them for help, Hank’s parents, too, turned their backs on her.
The whole time I was growing up and long after I achieved adulthood, I remained estranged from my maternal grandparents, had never even met them and most likely never would have—had it not been for the murder of Marcia Kelsey.
In the course of that investigation, I had been searching the phone book for the telephone number of a witness whose last name started with a P. Driving into Seattle that morning, I couldn’t remember the witness’s name at all—Pierson, maybe? At any rate, at the very top of the page where I eventually found the witness’s name and number, I saw something surprisingly familiar—my own names and also my grandfather’s—Jonas Piedmont. I suspect now that my mother named me after her father in hopes of one day sparking some kind of reconciliation between them, but that never happened.
However, on that long-ago day, there was my name and his, printed in bold black and white—staring back at me from the page of a phone book. (This was back in the nineties, when phone books still existed and people actually used them.) Not only was his name there, but so was an address on Dayton Avenue along with a listed phone number. In the ensuing weeks, I tried working up enough nerve to pick up the phone and make the call, but I never did. Instead I drove by the house several times before finally stopping the car one day, getting out, and walking up onto the front porch of what turned out to be little more than a humble clapboard cottage.
There had been a dog on the porch that day, an aging platinum-colored golden retriever named Mandy. She seemed happy enough to see me, but I still remember how my heart pounded in my chest as I stood outside that closed front door, trying to summon the courage to knock. When I finally did, a tiny, bent-over old woman answered the door and let the dog inside.
I’m not sure what kind of welcome I had expected, but as soon as my grandmother, Beverly, peered up into my face, she recognized who I had to be, greeted me by name, and welcomed me with open arms. She led me into the house and introduced me to the long-estranged grandfather I had never met. I’m sure that once upon a time Jonas Piedmont must have been a powerful figure of a man, but by the time I met him, he had been felled by a series of paralyzing strokes, leaving him only a frail echo of that. While I stood there dumbstruck and watching, Mandy had walked over to the side of his wheelchair, ducked under his hand, and then stood there patiently with his useless fingers resting on top of her head.
My grandfather and his dog—Jonas Piedmont and Mandy—were the two unsettling characters who had marched through my dreamscape the night before. In the dream, I was the same age I am now, but both the dog and my grandfather had been young and healthy. My grandfather and I were walking somewhere together (around Greenlake maybe?) while the joyous dog raced back and forth ahead of us.
None of that ever happened in real life—not once. By the time I met my grandfather, his walking days were long over, but maybe that’s what dreams are for—to fill in the blanks and allow us to glimpse things that would otherwise remain forever invisible.
Over the next few months after that initial meeting, my grandfather and I had that long-delayed reconciliation, the one m
y mother had always prayed for. When he passed away sometime later, my grandmother held on to his ashes until Mandy finally died, too, allowing my grandfather’s ashes and those of his beloved canine companion to be scattered together.
And just like that, a name came back to me out of the blue—the Academy of Canine Behavior. After my grandfather’s death and before Mandy’s passing, that was the place where my grandmother had boarded the dog on the rare occasions when she traveled. Beverly had raved about the place—said the spacious grounds had reminded her of some books she’d read as a girl, ones that featured generations of collies. She’d also mentioned that whenever she sent Mandy to board at the academy, they always did a certain amount of training.
About the time I pulled into the parking lot at the Poindexter Funeral Home and Chapel, I made a note to myself, as a newly appointed dog owner, to look up the academy online and see if it was still in business. Having a place in mind for us to board Rambo should the need arise seemed like a good idea.
When it came to estimating the anticipated attendance at Maxwell Cole’s funeral, both Erin Howard and I couldn’t have been more wrong. The place was packed, wall to wall. I ended up among the standing-room-only crowd stuck at the back of the room. A small wooden table on the dais was flanked by a metal tripod containing a single spray of flowers. (Obviously people had taken that “in lieu of flowers” admonition seriously.) On the polished surface of the table stood two items: a bronze funeral urn along with an easel-backed color photo of a much younger Max—a robust man with a full head of hair and a perfectly groomed handlebar mustache.
The reason cops routinely show up at homicide victims’ funerals is that the vast majority of the victims are killed by someone they know. That reality makes it reasonable to assume that the killer or killers are likely to be in attendance right along with everyone else. And so, with the situational awareness skills honed from a lifetime spent as a cop, I kept my eyes peeled for anything or anyone out of the ordinary.