Death of a Dog Whisperer (9780758284570)

by Berenson, Laurien

  “I know,” I said softly. “But you made me feel like maybe I couldn’t trust you.”

  Sam reached out and took my hand in his. “You can always trust me.”

  “I don’t like secrets,” I said. “Especially ones that concern Davey.”

  “I know that.” His thumb stroked back and forth gently across my palm. “I made a bad decision. I wish I could promise you that it will never happen again but I’m new to this parenting stuff and, as I’m learning, I’m far from perfect at it.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  Sam chuckled. The sound bubbled up from deep in his throat as he used his free hand to reach for me. “Come over here, you. Let’s join forces and be imperfect together.”

  I scooched toward him along the couch. God, I had missed this, the easy rapport we’d always shared, the laughing and touching that went along with it. Our connection had frayed but it wasn’t torn. Now I could feel it knitting back together.

  I leaned toward Sam and placed my lips right next to his ear. “You’re on,” I said.

  Chapter 20

  I woke up the next morning feeling refreshed, revitalized, and ready to do something useful. When I checked my e-mail I saw that Claire had sent me contact info for Taran Black—the guy who owed his old buddy Nick a sizeable sum of money that he didn’t want to repay. It turned out that Taran lived in Port Chester, a medium-sized, mostly blue-collar city just on the other side of the New York/ Connecticut border.

  I waited until after nine A.M. to call. Even so, I got the impression I might have woken Taran up. He coughed and grumbled under his breath while I explained who I was and why I was getting in touch. When I mentioned that it was Nick’s girlfriend, Diana Lee, who’d been the one to point me in his direction, I was pretty sure I heard a disgusted snort.

  Nevertheless, Taran agreed readily enough to meet with me. Maybe he just wanted to get me off the phone so he could go back to sleep. I let him choose the time and the place, and our meeting was set for five o’clock that afternoon at a bar in downtown Port Chester.

  That left my entire day unexpectedly free. Since it was Saturday, Davey didn’t have camp, so Sam and I decided to take the kids to the beach at Tod’s Point. Technically the beach pass belongs to Aunt Peg because she’s the Greenwich resident, but Peg hasn’t been on a beach in decades. At the beginning of each summer, the sticker seems to find its way into our hands and we always find an opportunity to put it to good use.

  I packed a picnic lunch and plenty of sunscreen and we spent most of the day playing in the sun and the surf. By midafternoon, Kevin was half-asleep and even Davey’s energy was beginning to flag. We got home in plenty of time for me to shower the sand out my hair and make my appointment in Port Chester.

  When I left the house, Sam, Davey, and Kevin were zonked out in front of a baseball game on TV. The Poodles had brought a selection of toys into the living room, hoping for a game of catch or tug-of-war. It didn’t look like that would be happening anytime soon. Five hours in the sun and waves had left my human family totally beat.

  “See you guys later,” I said.

  Sam sketched a half-hearted wave. Nobody else even looked up. As I let myself out, I made a mental note to pick up something easy for dinner on the way home.

  It took me half an hour to get to Port Chester and an additional ten minutes to locate the small, slightly dilapidated, neighborhood tavern where Taran had wanted to meet. I entered the establishment and pushed the warped door shut behind me. The bar’s interior was cool and dimly lit, and I paused for several seconds to let my eyes make the adjustment from the bright sunlight outside.

  Before I’d even had a chance to take a look around, a man seated by himself at a quiet corner table, pushed back his chair and stood. He was an inch or two under six feet tall with a pudgy body and soft, fleshy features. His jaw was lined with several days’ worth of stubble. His T-hirt, straining to fit around his torso, pictured a palm tree and a sliver of moon. Its motto extolled the virtues of the South Carolina coast.

  He walked toward me, holding out his hand, and when he spoke I could hear the remnants of a southern drawl. “Hi, I’m Taran Black,” he said. “You must be Melanie.”

  “I am,” I agreed, and we shook on it.

  Taran led the way back to his table. Even this early in the evening, the bar was half full. I wondered how he’d picked me out so easily. When I asked, Taran just laughed.

  “This place is like Cheers,” he told me. “Half the neighborhood hangs out here and everybody already knows everyone else. That’s why I chose to meet here. I figured we wouldn’t have any trouble finding each other.”

  A blue-jean-clad waitress skirted her way to us through the closely grouped tables and took our order. Taran asked for a draft. I opted for club soda with a twist of lime.

  We made small talk until she returned with our drinks and a bowl of unshelled peanuts. Taran’s draft arrived in a tall, frosty, mug with a rim of foam on the top. He lifted the heavy glass and took a long drink.

  Then he set the mug down on the scarred, dark wood table, and gazed at me with an expression that conveyed both annoyance and resignation. “So Diana sent you,” he said. “What does she want now?”

  “Nothing,” I replied. The word just popped out. Too late, it occurred to me that Taran might have been more forthcoming if he’d thought I was there at Diana’s behest.

  “Nothing? That’s a pleasant change.” He paused to take another hefty gulp from his glass.

  So far I’d only sipped at my club soda. Taran’s beer was already half gone. He lifted his hand and signaled the waitress to bring him another.

  “Then why are you here?” Taran asked.

  “I wanted to talk to you about Nick,” I said.

  Taran’s thick fingers scrambled around in the bowl of peanuts. He drew out a handful and closed his fist to crush the shells, then let the pieces dribble down onto the tabletop. One by one, he tossed the peanuts into his mouth.

  “Nick was a great guy,” he told me as he chewed.

  “That’s what everybody says,” I told him. “So how come he’s dead?”

  Taran shrugged. “When your time’s up, it’s up.”

  “So you think fate is responsible?”

  “Sure. What else?”

  “Nick was shot,” I said. “Fate didn’t pull the trigger.”

  Taran polished off his first beer and slid the empty mug to the edge of the table. As if on cue, the waitress set the refill down in front of him.

  “Why do I get the impression you think I might know something about that?” he asked.

  “Do you?”

  “Look. Nick and I were old friends, we’d known each other for years. Sure we’d had our differences of opinion. I gave Nick a black eye in fifth grade. He retaliated by knocking out one of my teeth. But that’s the way these things go.”

  Not among my friends, I thought.

  “It sounds like you had a pretty contentious relationship,” I said.

  “Nah, that was just kid stuff.”

  “And now?”

  “People grow up, things change. It turns out that we don’t have that much in common anymore. Maybe we got together for a beer every so often, but that was about it. Our lives went in different directions. It happens.”

  “So you wouldn’t have any idea why someone might have wanted to harm Nick?”

  “None,” Taran said firmly. “Like I said, Nick was mostly someone from my past. I didn’t really know him that well anymore.”

  I wasn’t buying that for a minute. Taran was stonewalling. I wondered why.

  “And yet,” I said, “Nick felt that he still knew you well enough to lend you a sum of money.”

  Taran scowled. “Did Diana tell you that?”

  I nodded.

  “You don’t want to believe everything that bitch says.”

  Despite the hostility of the words, Taran’s tone remained matter-of-fact. And that wasn’t the only thing that seemed contradictory
about the man sitting across from me. I got the impression that he wasn’t telling me the whole truth—parts of it possibly, but certainly not all of it. Claire had called him harmless. I wasn’t sure that I’d agree with her assessment.

  I wondered what kinds of secrets Taran was keeping from me and how much it meant to him to keep them hidden.

  “Then it isn’t true?” I asked. “You didn’t borrow money from Nick and refuse to repay it?”

  “Refuse to repay it?” Taran snorted. “That’s rich.”

  “Why?” I asked curiously.

  “I didn’t have Nick’s money. By the time he came looking for it, it was long gone. He knew that in the end.”

  I leaned toward him across the table. “What do you mean in the end?”

  “Nothing ominous, so don’t go trying to make it sound that way. Geez.” Taran shook his head. “All I’m saying is that everything got cleared up a couple days before he died. It was just a little family matter.”

  “Family matter?” Now I was confused. “Your family or his?”

  Taran didn’t answer my question. Instead he said, “Tell me something. Why is this any of your business?”

  “Nick was a friend of mine too. I want to know what happened to him.”

  “Then you should be talking to the police.”

  “They don’t know either,” I said. “If they did, I wouldn’t be here. And Nick’s sister, Claire, wouldn’t be wondering how something so awful could have happened to the only sibling she had left—”

  “Hold on!” Taran’s hand snaked across the table and grabbed my wrist. “You know Claire?”

  “She’s the one who gave me your phone number.”

  My arm was secured tightly within his grasp. When I tugged at it, offering a small amount of resistance, Taran looked down in surprise as if he hadn’t even realized he was holding me.

  His fingers snapped open. His hand jerked back.

  “You and Claire,” he said deliberately. “You’re like . . . friends?”

  I thought of our last conversation and nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Wow. Okay. Good!” Taran appeared to be digesting that information. “Let me think.”

  I certainly wasn’t stopping him.

  Something very odd was going on here. Taran had maintained his cool throughout our discussion of Nick’s murder and his suspicious, unpaid debt. But now with one mention of Nick’s sister he suddenly seemed flustered, almost agitated.

  “Look,” he said after a minute. “You have to do something for me.”

  I lifted a brow. “That depends on what it is.”

  “You have to give Claire a message.”

  “I can probably do that,” I said carefully. “But I would need to know what the message is about. Or you could call her yourself.”

  “I can’t.” Taran’s head jerked back and forth in a sharp shake. “I promised.”

  “Promised whom?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the waitress heading back toward our table. Taran lifted a hand and waved her impatiently away. Then he hunkered down and stared at me across the pitted tabletop.

  “How much do you know about Nick and Claire’s family?” he asked.

  “Mostly just the basics.” Taran was keeping a close hold on what he knew. I had every intention of doing the same.

  He frowned at my reply and seemed to be considering whether or not to press on. “Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you,” I told him. “Because I have no idea what you are doing.”

  “Breaking a confidence. At least considering it.”

  And then it hit me. All at once I knew what the topic we were dancing around, had to be. Taran had been Nick’s childhood friend. If he’d known the Walden family that long, he must have known Anabelle too. Nick’s big sister, last seen a decade earlier heading north to New York City—a city only thirty miles away from where we now sat.

  “Anabelle,” I said softly.

  Taran shot up straight in his seat. “What about her?”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “I might. Who wants to know?”

  “The police, for one,” I told him. “They’re working on finding her. And Claire wants to know too. She hasn’t seen or heard from her sister in ten years.”

  “That wasn’t Anabelle’s fault.”

  “Nor Claire’s either,” I pointed out. “They both got caught up in something beyond their control. I know that Claire would like to have the chance to get reacquainted with her sister. If that’s possible.”

  “It’s possible,” Taran said slowly. “We just have to figure out how to make it happen.”

  “We?”

  He nodded. “There are a few stumbling blocks in the way.”

  “Are you aware that Anabelle spoke with Nick only a few days before he died?”

  “Yeah. That was my fault.”

  “Your fault?”

  Taran looked glum. “It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.”

  “What way?”

  “It was about the money. You know, that I borrowed from Nick?”

  This conversation had more unexpected detours than a Kentucky highway. Taran’s thoughts were skittering all over the place. Rather than trying to make sense of everything now, it seemed smarter to just keep agreeing with him in the hope that that would keep him talking.

  “Sure,” I said. “What about it?”

  “It was for Alexander.”

  “Who’s he?” My voice croaked. Hastily I reached for a sip of my soda.

  “Anabelle’s son.” Taran frowned. “I guess you probably know about Zane?”

  “I know that he took off for New York to look for a record deal and that Anabelle went with him.”

  “That was the idea in the beginning, but it didn’t work out. His band may have been a big fish in the small pond at home, but up here they were nobody. They couldn’t even get gigs in bars.”

  “And the record producer?”

  “Never even met with them.”

  No surprise there.

  “The band stayed together for a couple of years. You know, looking for their big break? But it was pretty clear to everyone but them that they were never going to make it.”

  “What about Anabelle?” I asked.

  “She hung in there. What choice did she have? Zane was the only family she had left. Along the way, they went to City Hall and got married. She clung to the idea that they were living this romantic fantasy. You know, like the Romeo and Juliet of the Bronx?”

  Taran shook his head, looking disgusted. “Pretty soon she was working two jobs a day. She ended up supporting Zane and whatever other musicians happened to be crashing on their couch at the time. Even after she got pregnant. By that time, Zane had found work as some other band’s roadie. He was always looking for ways to follow his dream. That was the only thing that ever mattered to him.”

  “Are they still together?” I asked.

  “No way. Zane is long gone. He met some guy who said he could introduce him around in L.A. and Zane bought a plane ticket and took off. He never even looked back. I guess he didn’t want a wife and kid tying him down anymore.”

  “Bastard,” I muttered under my breath.

  “You got it.”

  “What’s your part in all this?” I asked him.

  Taran looked at me and shrugged. “Old friend who reminded Anabelle of better days? Occasional baby-sitter and shoulder to cry on? Anabelle and I reconnected when I came up here for a job after college. Mostly I just watched the whole mess unfold from the sidelines. Zane’s music scene and his ultra cool buddies? That wasn’t my idea of a good time.”

  “Tell me about the money,” I said.

  “About a year ago, Alexander started having medical problems. It turned out that he needed surgery. Anabelle had insurance but it wasn’t enough. She was pretty frantic. Her credit cards are maxed out. The loan officer at the bank just laughed at her.
She needed money fast and she had no way to get it.”

  “Why didn’t she contact her family and ask for help?”

  “Her father had told her that she was dead to him.” Taran’s voice was hard. “She would have groveled for Alexander’s sake, if that’s what it took. But she didn’t think it would do any good.”

  Would Claire’s parents have turned their back on a grandchild in need? I wondered. The notion seemed almost incomprehensible to me. But then I couldn’t imagine throwing a child out of the house in the first place.

  “So I got this bright idea about borrowing the money from Nick. He was living in Connecticut and doing pretty well. His business was starting to take off.”

  “And Anabelle agreed to that?”

  “No way. She told me absolutely not. She figured Nick was like the rest of her family. That he’d turn his back on her too.”

  “And yet he gave her the money she needed,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Taran told me. “But Anabelle didn’t know that because I never told her where I got the money from. At least not at first, anyway. And I didn’t tell Nick what I needed the loan for either.”

  “You’re quite the manipulator,” I said.

  Taran shook his head. “You’re missing the point. It wasn’t about me. It was about making things work. So Alexander had his operation and everything went great. The only problem was, Anabelle didn’t have the money to pay me back. Which meant that I couldn’t repay Nick.”

  “What did you do when he started pressuring you?”

  “I stalled for a while. What other choice did I have? Nick was pissed about it, but I just kept putting him off. He and I had been buddies for a long time, and this loan put a big strain on our friendship. Eventually I had to do something, so I confessed to Anabelle about where the money had come from.”

  “And when she found out, she called Nick,” I said.

  “Well, first she read me the riot act.” Taran smiled ruefully. “And then she got all teary-eyed about the fact that the money to save Alexander had come from a brother she thought had forgotten all about her. But finally, after she pulled herself together, Anabelle said that it wasn’t fair for me to be caught in the middle, especially since I’d only been trying to help. So she called Nick and told him where the money had gone.”