Hair of the Dog

by Laurien Berenson

  “I don’t think your daddy would like having a Poodle named after him,” I mentioned.

  “Cedar Crest Bob,” said Sam, adding Peg’s kennel name as a prefix. “I think maybe we can do better than that.”

  “Cedar Crest Scimitar,” I suggested. “That’s a kind of sword,” I added for Davey’s benefit.

  “Scimitar!” Davey slashed his arm through the air. “You could call him Tar.”

  “That’s not bad.” Sam helped himself to another slice of pizza. “Tar it is, then.”

  Faith and Callie came over to see what we were so excited about and each got a piece of pepperoni for her trouble. Thus bribed, neither offered any disagreement with our choice, and so the puppy was named.

  Tuesday morning the telephone rang early. I’d just wandered downstairs in my pajamas to get the coffee started. Faith was taking a stroll around the backyard, and Davey, who was due at camp in forty minutes, was sitting in front of the television with a bowl of Cheerios. Bert and Ernie were singing the alphabet, which qualified the experience as educational, not just mind-numbing.

  “Oh, good,” said Alicia. “I was afraid I wouldn’t catch you.”

  At seven forty-five?

  “I was hoping we could talk. Maybe you could give me directions and I’ll stop by later this morning?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Is there anything in particular you want to discuss?”

  “Beth and I had a long talk last right,” said Alicia. “There are some things I think you need to know.”

  Thirteen

  After she’d left me dangling like that, I couldn’t wait for Alicia to arrive. In the meantime, I got Davey dressed and drove him to camp. When I got home, Faith was waiting for me with a mischievous gleam in her eye and a tennis ball in her mouth. It’s bad enough when your child can manipulate you, but when the dog starts, you know you’re in trouble.

  It was too hot to play catch for long. After half a dozen tosses, I brought Faith inside and brushed through her coat and topknot, then put everything back together. I checked the clock eight or nine times, paid some bills, balanced my checkbook, and seriously considered washing the kitchen floor. By that time it was nearly eleven. Alicia had sounded eager to speak to me; I wondered what was keeping her.

  “Car trouble,” she said when she arrived. “I was driving along fine, and next thing I knew, there was steam pouring out of the engine. I had to get out and walk. Luckily I was only about a mile from a service station.”

  “What was the matter?”

  “Broken hose. Once they’d towed the car in, it was pretty easy to fix.”

  I nodded, sensing there was more she wanted to say. Instead of continuing, however, Alicia glanced around. We were standing in the front hall, and she could see most of the first floor of my small house. “Cute place.”

  “Thanks.” No point in pushing. I didn’t have to pick Davey up for another two hours. “I thought we might sit out back. Most of the yard is shaded and it stays pretty cool.”

  When we reached the kitchen, Faith, who’d been in the yard when the doorbell rang, was throwing herself against the back door. Like my son, she hates to be left out of anything.

  “That’s Faith,” I said. “Appearances notwithstanding, she’s very friendly. How about something to drink? Iced tea or coffee? Juice? Water?”

  “Don’t worry, I love Standard Poodles. Can she come in?” Alicia walked to the door. I nodded on my way to the refrigerator, and she let the bouncing dog into the room. “Iced tea would be great, but caffeine’s off limits. How about a glass of water?”

  I poured our drinks and we carried them outside. Faith bounded through the door behind us.

  Over near the grill, two wrought iron chairs flanked a small table. A chaise longue sat in the shade. Davey’s swing set was on the other side of the yard with a small round wading pool beside it. Alicia walked straight there.

  “Do you mind?” She slipped her feet out of their sandals. “Being pregnant seems to have raised my temperature by about ten degrees. I’m always hot these days. And on top of that, my feet are killing me. I hadn’t planned on taking a hike this morning. Otherwise, I’d have worn different shoes.”

  “Go right ahead. In fact, I’ll join you.”

  I put down my drink and dragged the two chairs over beside the small pool. Now we could sit and dangle our feet at the same time. I kicked off my shoes, then picked up a rope chew toy and tossed it to Faith, who caught it on the fly. She carried it into the shade and lay down.

  I waited until Alicia looked comfortable, then said, “So, what do you suppose happened to your car?”

  “It’s no big deal.” Alicia shrugged. “A broken hose can happen to anyone.”

  “Sure,” I said agreeably. Judging by her tone of voice, there was more to come.

  “It’s just that . . . it’s not the first thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining things. I’ve heard that pregnant women can be fanciful. Or maybe I’m just having a run of bad luck.”

  I set my drink down in the grass. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  “You don’t have to make it sound so ominous. Nothing’s exactly going on. I’ve just had a couple of accidents around the house. Small things. The kind that could happen to anyone.”

  That was the second time she’d said that. I wondered how often she’d been repeating it to herself. “Like what?”

  “There was a broken step outside in the back. I guess maybe it was loose and I just never noticed. Anyway, the tread broke and I fell down.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “I wrenched my ankle. Other than that, I was just bruised a bit. There are only a couple of steps.”

  I thought of the way Barry Turk’s house had looked when I’d seen it a year ago. Then it had been pretty run-down. Last time I was there, it had looked considerably better, but it wouldn’t have surprised me to hear that there were pieces still in need of repair.

  “What else?”

  Alicia helped herself to a sip of water. “I guess I had a little fire.”

  “You guess you did?”

  “Well, I’m sure I did. I just don’t want to make it sound like more than it was. It started when I was asleep. Somehow the toaster oven got left on and it overheated. When I moved in, I made Barry install smoke alarms, thank God. The noise woke me right up. I ran downstairs and put the fire out with water from the sink.” She leaned back in her chair and wiggled her bare toes in the cool water. “I’m not exactly helpless, you know.”

  “Good thing,” I muttered. “Was anyone else in the house at the time?”

  “No. Beth has a room and bath off the kennel. She uses my kitchen, but she sleeps in the other building.”

  “Could she have left the toaster oven turned on?”

  “I asked her about it,” said Alicia. “She said she hadn’t.”

  “And you don’t remember doing it either?”

  “No, that’s what’s so odd. That and the fact that there was a stack of paper napkins sitting on top of it. That’s what caught on fire. Why would I have left napkins there? Luckily they made a lot of smoke and set off the alarm.”

  “Luckily,” I repeated. “Just like it was lucky you were near a gas station today when your car broke down. What if your curtains had caught fire? What if you’d broken down at night on a deserted road?”

  “I know.” Alicia sighed. “I’ve thought about that. It wouldn’t be so bad if I had only myself to worry about, but I don’t.”

  “Maybe you should have someone move in with you,” I suggested. “Do you have any family around here, anyone that you’re close to?”

  “No one whose lives I could disrupt that way.”

  “Maybe Beth could move into the house with you.”

  “I can’t see how that would help,” Alicia said flatly. “Actually, she’s the reason I came to talk to you today.”

  “You mentioned that on the phone. You
said that you and she had had a talk.” I kept my voice carefully neutral, which was hard when I considered all the things these two women might have had to say to each other.

  “What we had was more like a soul-baring.” Alicia didn’t sound pleased. “I gather you two spent some time together at the show on Saturday.”

  “Beth got off to a late start and fell a little behind. I helped her get a Mini bitch ready for the ring.”

  “I guess you also got her to talk too, because apparently she decided after the fact that she’d said entirely too much. Last night she showed up in my living room with half a bottle of cheap wine. She’d already drunk the other half, and was ready to spill her guts.”

  “That must have been interesting.”

  “The most interesting thing about it was that it happened at all. Beth and I have been living on the same grounds for nearly a year. We get along okay but we’re not exactly friends. This was what you might call our first heart-to-heart chat.” Alicia frowned. “I’m hoping it will be the last.”

  “What did you two talk about?”

  “I imagine you already know the answer to that. Barry, of course. Specifically the fling he and Beth seemed to have had last winter.”

  I searched her expression for signs of distress and was surprised not to see any. “She told you because she was afraid I might?”

  Alicia nodded. “That, and because she was drunk. Beth isn’t a drinker. On one glass of wine, she was probably high as a kite. After two, it was true-confessions time.”

  “You don’t sound too upset.”

  “Don’t I? Maybe it’s because I’ve had a night to get used to the idea.”

  “Maybe it’s because you already knew,” I guessed.

  Alicia sipped at her water, then set her glass aside. “I wouldn’t say I knew, exactly. I did have my suspicions.”

  “And it didn’t make you angry?”

  “Of course it made me angry. But it didn’t surprise me. If you’d known Barry, you’d know what I mean.”

  The more I learned about Barry Turk, the more it seemed to be just as well that I hadn’t known him any better when he was alive.

  “You’re carrying his baby,” I said. “You must realize there are people who would see this as a motive for murder.”

  “Not exactly.” Alicia’s lips curled upward in a small smile. She looked like a cat contemplating a bowl of cream. “You see, Barry isn’t the father of my baby.”

  It’s a good thing I was sitting down. As it was, I nearly fell off my chair.

  “Yes, he is,” I said stupidly. As if I would know.

  “No,” Alicia repeated. “He’s not.”

  I contemplated that information for a moment. It seemed to put a slightly different spin on everything.

  “I guess Beth isn’t the only one who had a confession to make.”

  “Oh, don’t go getting all melodramatic,” snapped Alicia. “I’m certainly not the first woman to be living with one man and pregnant by another.”

  “Did Barry know?”

  “Of course not, and he never would have either. I’d have made damn sure of that.”

  “What about the baby’s father? Does he know?”

  “He does now. I guess maybe he suspected before but he never said anything. With Barry gone, there didn’t seem to be any reason to keep it from him.”

  I reached for my glass and took a long, cold swallow. “Are you going to tell me who he is?”

  “No.”

  “You asked me to figure out who shot Barry. Now I find out you’ve given me only part of the story.”

  “I answered your questions. I told you everything that was important. So I had an affair. So what? It happens. And it had nothing to do with Barry’s murder.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I know this man, and I know he wouldn’t have done anything to hurt Barry. He wouldn’t have had any reason to.”

  Everything about Alicia—her demeanor, her tone of voice—implied that she thought what she was telling me made perfect sense. Was I the only one who was floundering here?

  “If Barry wasn’t the father of your baby,” I asked, “why were you still with him?”

  Alicia looked down into her lap. Although the temperature hovered in the mid-eighties, she rubbed her arms as if she were cold. “It’s just the way things worked out. The other man is a good man, a decent man, but . . .”

  Not decent enough to stand by her when she was carrying his child apparently. I went for the obvious reason. “Is he married?”

  She let the question dangle so long that I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Finally, she did. “As it happens, he is. And he has no intention of getting a divorce. I knew that going in. We both did. We were two consenting adults doing something we wanted to do.”

  “How did a baby figure into that?”

  “The baby was an accident,” Alicia said with a small smile. “An unexpected bonus. Bill and I wanted children for years, but it never happened. Barry didn’t want kids, so we were using birth control. But no system’s perfect. You know how it is.”

  She looked at me, woman to woman, and I nodded.

  “Besides, a stolen moment of pleasure is no time to be worrying about whether or not your diaphragm’s in place.”

  Actually I’d have thought that was exactly the time, but I kept that thought to myself.

  “Who is he, Alicia?”

  “No.” She shook her head emphatically. “It’s none of your business, and I’m not going to violate his privacy by discussing it with you.”

  “You’re awfully concerned about protecting him. It’s a shame he isn’t as concerned about you.”

  “Nice try.” Alicia gave me an assessing look. “But it won’t work.”

  Too bad.

  “How much of this have you told the police?”

  “None of it,” she said. “They’re doing enough poking around in my life as it is.”

  Behind us, Faith tired of merely chewing her toy and tossed it up in the air. The thick rope knot flew in a high, soaring arc over our heads and landed with a splash in the pool. That wouldn’t have been a problem if Faith hadn’t gone in after it.

  “Oh!” shrieked Alicia, jumping up. Her legs and the front of her sundress were soaked.

  I was wet, too, but that was the least of my concerns. Faith followed her initial leap into the pool with a dive underwater to retrieve her toy. The water was less than a foot deep, but it was enough to soak her face, topknot, and ears thoroughly.

  I scrambled up and jumped in after her. The plastic floor of the pool was slick and slippery. When my feet shot out from under me, it was reflex to try to save myself by reaching for Faith. Great idea, right? When we both went down in the water together, I had only myself to blame.

  Faith’s ancestors were water dogs. The dunking didn’t bother her a bit. True to her roots, she hung on to her toy and quickly found her feet. Sitting in the waist-deep water, it took me longer to regroup. Which is why the mighty shake she gave hit me full in the face.

  I reached over and gave the Poodle’s hindquarter a strong shove. “Get out of here, you big bear!”

  Alicia was standing beside the pool, trying hard not to laugh. She reached down and offered me a hand. I took it and hauled myself out.

  Faith stood by the pool, waiting to see what new form of excitement we would come up with next. Her long, luxurious mane coat hung in streaming clumps.

  Alicia looked at her and grinned. “I guess I know how you’ll be spending the rest of the day.”

  “Maybe I could towel her dry,” I said hopefully.

  “Don’t count on it. I’m no Poodle expert, but even I can see that if you don’t want that coat to mat, it’s going to need to be bathed and blown dry. I’ll get out of your way and let you get started.”

  Accompanied by Faith, we walked around the front of the house to her car. “You be careful,” I said. “Okay?”

  “I will.”

  “I
f you need help, call me. I’ll come.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but I’m sure I’ll be okay. Now that we’ve talked things out, I feel much better.”

  I stood in the driveway, my hand resting on Faith’s back, and watched Alicia drive away. I was glad that she felt better, but unfortunately, that made one of us.

  When Faith and I went inside, the phone was ringing. I wasn’t surprised. Aunt Peg seems to have a sixth sense where Faith’s coat is concerned. Whenever I’ve really screwed up and I’m tempted just to let the coat go, there she is.

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  “I have all sorts of ideas,” I told her. I was hoping that might slow her down, but it didn’t.

  “Why don’t you take that new Volvo of yours in for servicing?”

  Of all the things she might have said, I wasn’t expecting that. “Why?”

  “Maybe Ralphie Otterbach could look at it for you. I’ve done a little checking around. Did you know he’s a car mechanic?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “So I was thinking that even a new car must have something it could have done. Something innocuous. How about an oil change?”

  “I take it you think I ought to talk to Ralphie.”

  “Melanie dear, catch up. Of course I think you ought to talk to Ralphie. It occurred to me that he’s been an objective observer of much of what’s gone on at Barry’s kennel recently. Maybe he has something interesting to say.”

  Knowing Ralphie slightly better than Peg did, I sincerely doubted it. Still, it couldn’t hurt. Besides, in a pinch, I could manage an oil change myself, so the job shouldn’t be beyond Ralphie’s capabilities.

  “I’ll have to track him down,” I said.

  “Already done. He works at Premier Motors in Brewster.”

  Brewster? “Nobody drives an hour to get their oil changed.”

  “So don’t tell him how far you’ve come.” Another objection disposed of in Aunt Peg’s usual high-handed fashion. “Here’s the phone number.”