Dead Canaries Don't Sing

by Cynthia Baxter

  I just stared at him. It was so tempting to point out that given the fact that we were standing in a deserted field with only two dogs in sight, the odds were astronomical that the gangly one-eyed Dalmatian and the hyperactive, tailless Westie were, indeed, mine.

  Instead, I simply replied, “Yes.” Then congratulated myself on my outstanding amount of self-control.

  “It was actually Max who found the body,” I went on. “The furry guy. He’s a West Highland White . . .”

  Pascucci didn’t appear to be listening. He crouched down to examine the witness more carefully.

  “What kind of dog did you say this was?” He stuck his hand out, as if he were about to grab Max by the throat to get a better look.

  “Hey!” he yelped, pulling it back abruptly and jumping up. “The little bastard tried to bite me!”

  “I’m so sorry!” I grabbed the perpetrator and tucked him under my arm like a football, thinking, “Well, what did you expect, approaching an animal like that?” Still, I knew that Max’s tendency to snap, at least under pressure, wasn’t one of his more endearing qualities. “He only does that when he’s excited or scared. I know it’s a terrible habit, but I’ve never been able to break him of it. His original owners weren’t exactly the nicest people in the world.”

  Pascucci’s face twisted into an ugly scowl. “You got a license for that mongrel?”

  It was probably just as well that the other cop chose that moment to step in. “Why don’t you go check out the body, Vince?” he interjected. He was as lanky and fair as his sidekick was stubby and dark. “Officer Nolan,” his name tag read. “You know Homicide’s gonna want to ask their own questions.”

  Officer Pascucci shot Nolan a look that told me his surliness wasn’t reserved purely for members of the general public. Then he strutted away, positively oozing self-importance as he headed toward the woods.

  As soon as he was out of earshot, the second police officer smiled apologetically.

  “Sorry about that. I’m afraid Vince has seen too many cop shows. He thinks ‘tough’ and ‘obnoxiously rude’ are the same thing.”

  I put Max back on terra firma, then smiled back. If these two are playing good cop, bad cop, I decided, they’re doing a pretty good job.

  “Besides, you gotta realize what a big deal this is, Dr. Popper. It isn’t every day we have a murder up here. Compared to the rest of the Eighth, this area’s Disneyland. The worst crimes we ever get up here on the North Shore are little old ladies who lock themselves out of their houses. Maybe the occasional cell phone gets stolen out of somebody’s BMW. So for somebody like Pascucci, this is the thrill of a lifetime.”

  He smiled again. He had a rather nice smile, I noticed, one that lit up his entire face and gave him a boyish look that bordered on charming.

  “By the way, I’m Officer Nolan.”

  “Jessie Popper.”

  “A veterinarian, huh?”

  “That’s right. I specialize in mobile veterinary services. In other words, I make house calls.”

  “Yeah? How’d you get into that?”

  I didn’t have a chance to answer. A shrieking ambulance careened toward us, trailed by two cars. The isolated dirt road was beginning to look like a parking lot.

  “Get ready,” Officer Nolan warned me under his breath. “Here comes the big guy.”

  A well-dressed man with the posture of a four-star general strode toward us, glancing down at the scrubby terrain as if it were peppered with land mines. He struck me as the kind of guy who got his boxer shorts dry cleaned—extra starch, please—and I got the feeling he was more worried about getting his shoes muddy than he was about the unexpected appearance of a corpse in the woods. Still, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. The ambulance driver and an EMT followed, lugging medical equipment and looking substantially more anxious about what might be going on here than the man in the suit.

  The “big guy,” as Officer Nolan had identified him, nodded an acknowledgment at Nolan, then focused on me with pale blue eyes narrowed into slits. “I’m Lieutenant Harned, chief of homicide. You the one who made the call?”

  “Yes. I’m Dr. Jessica Popper, and—”

  “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  I elected not to point out that I’d been about to do precisely that when he’d interrupted me. “I operate a mobile veterinary services unit and I came out here on a call at about six-thirty. One of the Athertons’ horses is sick. My van stalled, and when I opened the door to check it, my two dogs ran out. They discovered the body over there.”

  “Exactly what time did you get here?”

  The guy was big on exactness, I noted. “I’d say 6:25. Actually, I’m pretty certain of that, because I’d just looked at my watch to see how late I was going to be.”

  “Did you see anybody else in the area?”

  I shook my head.

  “Somebody driving away, maybe? Or maybe you passed somebody out on the main road?”

  “Not a soul. This area’s always quiet, and this early in the morning, it’s completely dead.” My hand flew to my mouth. “What I mean is—”

  Lieutenant Harned frowned. “What about seeing anything unusual? When you went after the dogs, did you notice anything out of the ordinary? A weapon, a footprint . . . anything at all?”

  “Well, there was this one thing . . .” I pointed to the spot where the dogs had found the body. From that distance, it was hard to make out the human form half covered by dead leaves. But the flash of bright yellow was unmistakable.

  “Max—this one’s Max, the Westie, uh, the West Highland terrier—dug up a canary nearby. I’m not sure how deep it was buried—”

  “A canary?” Harned repeated the word with suspicion, as if he deeply distrusted my ability to identify such a rare species of bird.

  I was debating whether or not to remind him that I was an animal expert when he commanded brusquely, “Give your name, address, and phone number to Officer Nolan here. And don’t leave yet. I’ve got a couple of guys from my unit on the way. They’ll want to question you.”

  As he turned and headed toward the body, I called, “I’d be happy to show you exactly where—”

  “We’ll handle this from here.”

  “Isn’t there anything I can do?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.” Lieutenant Harned paused long enough to glower back at me. “Put those two mutts on a leash and get ’em out of here. They’ve already messed up the crime scene enough.”

  By that point, my blood was boiling so violently I figured there had to be steam coming out of my ears.

  What exactly were you expecting from the cops? I asked myself. An engraved thank-you note? A proclamation commending your good citizenship?

  I answered my own question: How about a little civil treatment?

  When I heard another set of tires on the rutted road, my stomach tightened. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or even more agitated over Nick Burby’s arrival on the scene.

  How long has it been? I wondered, shielding my eyes from the sun with my hand as I watched the black Maxima jerk along the uneven road. Okay, I knew exactly how long it had been. Two months, one week, and four days. A grand total of seventy-one days.

  At least you haven’t been calculating the hours, I thought.

  I tried stepping out of myself, objectively viewing my reaction as I watched Nick climb out of his car. The reasonable part of me felt like shaking me by the shoulders and scolding me over the way my heart got that weird achy feeling. Not good achy; bad achy.

  It was the feeling that makes you realize where the term “broken heart” comes from.

  I took a few deep breaths. It has to be like this, I told myself firmly. You know perfectly well it’s the only way. You made your decision, and it was a good one. The only one. Now, you’ve got to move on.

  I repeated these assurances in my head as I watched Nick stroll across the field, his hands jammed into the front pockets of khaki pants that would hav
e greatly benefited from five minutes with an iron. As he walked toward me, he kept his head down. The lock of dark hair that was always falling into his eyes behaved exactly as predicted. He pretended he was being careful not to stumble. But I knew, deep inside, that he was trying not to look at me.

  I was determined to ignore my pounding heart and the adrenaline surging through every cell of my body. In the grand scheme of things, the fact that I had discovered a dead body less than thirty minutes earlier was surely much more important than my lurid past.

  I decided to act like a mature adult, focusing on the sticky situation at hand without letting my emotions get in the way, when Nick demanded, “Okay, Jess. What have you gotten yourself involved in now?”

  Within a nanosecond, my hackles were up. Here I had swallowed my pride by calling Nick in my time of need, breaking my long silence to humble myself before his years of expertise with crime. And what was his response? He was talking to me the way Ricky used to talk to Lucy.

  “I haven’t gotten involved in anything,” I shot back. “Is it my fault that some . . . some dead guy just happened to plant himself directly in my path?”

  “Where is he? The dead guy, I mean.”

  “Over there.” I pointed.

  “Not exactly in your path, is he?” Nick observed.

  “Okay, then. My dogs’ path.”

  Nick shook his head, then sighed. “That’s what happens when you go looking for trouble.”

  “I was hardly looking for trouble! I happened to be here for a perfectly legitimate reason. The Athertons called me in a panic, upset because one of their stallions has a dangerously swollen throat and can’t stop coughing—”

  “Then again, maybe some people are just good at having trouble find them.”

  I flung my hands in the air. “There’s no trouble. Forget trouble. I’m perfectly fine.” At that moment, I regretted having called Nick Burby more than I’d regretted anything I’d ever done in my entire life.

  As if he’d read my mind, he asked, “In that case, Jess, why did you call me? It looks like the cops have everything under control.”

  “My van is stuck in a ditch, and, you know, I guess I thought it might be helpful to have someone here who knows his way around a crime scene. Perhaps in my deranged state I actually imagined that a little moral support might even be forthcoming. Then there’s the fact that while I’m finding this whole thing absolutely horrifying, it’s also incredibly fascinating, and so I just assumed that you’d be interested, too . . .”

  “Actually, to me it’s just sad. That poor guy lying over there, whoever he is, just saw his life come to a close. He was probably a good person who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But no matter what the circumstances, it’s pretty nasty to end up buried in a field.”

  “He was buried in the woods, not a field. And there was a canary that looked as if its neck had been broken buried right next to him,” I announced. I tossed my head arrogantly, wondering if doing so emphasized the golden glints in my hair.

  And hating myself for caring.

  “A canary—get it?” I went on. “The symbol of ‘singing.’ Spilling the beans. Telling secrets that aren’t meant to be told. That leads me to believe he wasn’t exactly a stellar member of the community.”

  “Jess—”

  “And I don’t know about you, but the fact that I’m the one who found him, combined with the fact that there was no doubt something fishy going on that led to his untimely and undignified demise, makes me extremely anxious to know who did him in—and why.”

  Nick cast me a wary look. “Jess, if I were you, I’d answer the questions the nice homicide cops asked me, take a look at the sick horse that brought me here in the first place and then do everything I possibly could to forget all about this.”

  Before I had a chance to think up a snappy comeback, the cop who was tall, blond, and, I suddenly decided, quite good-looking sauntered over to join us.

  “I want to apologize again for Pascucci’s rudeness before,” Officer Nolan said. “That’s just the way some cops are. It probably has something to do with the bad coffee we’re always drinking.”

  A sense of humor. I liked that.

  “Pascucci’s here?” Nick glanced at the short, uniformed figure now standing at the mound of dirt and leaves.

  “You know him?” I demanded.

  “When you’re in the private investigation biz, you get to know the local cops. Vince is a pretty good guy.”

  I glared at Nick, making a statement about the fact that we couldn’t seem to agree on anything anymore. Vince was most definitely not a pretty good guy. Vince was a chauvinistic, obnoxious bore. Then I smiled at Officer Nolan.

  “It looks pretty impressive, the way you guys are handling this.” I had to stop myself from batting my eyelashes. “I guess you know what you’re doing.”

  “Well, Harned certainly thinks he does.”

  I laughed loudly, as if Officer Nolan were the funniest, most charming member of the male gender on earth. As I did, I stole a glance at Nick.

  Even though I felt unspeakably childish, I was pleased to see he was scowling.

  Chapter 2

  “Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.”

  -Plato

  My stomach was still in knots as I drove back home to Joshua’s Hollow later that morning after digging out my van and then treating Stormy Weather, the Athertons’ stallion, with penicillin for what turned out to be mild Streptococcus equi and instructing Skip to continue with three injections a day. The worst part about being in such a state was that I didn’t know what was to blame for it: finding an actual murder victim decomposing in the woods or seeing Nick Burby again.

  There was one thing I did know. I needed a good strong dose of Betty Vandervoort.

  For at least the millionth time, I thanked fate—or my real estate agent—for finding me my cottage. There are three things about it that are unique. Number three on the list is its history. Number two is its beauty. And number one is my landlady, the only person who shares the sprawling property with me.

  I dropped Max and Lou at my cottage, knowing they would be welcome at Betty’s but not wanting the hassle of keeping them from shattering any valuable antiques. As I trekked toward the Big House, otherwise known as the Tallmadge mansion, I could hear the opening bars of “Everythin’s up to date in Kansas City” blaring from inside. I knocked on the front door so hard that my knuckles hurt.

  “Jessica! You’re just in time!” Betty’s sapphire blue eyes twinkled like Christmas tree lights as she threw open the door. “I’m about to give my old audition routine a try. You know, the one that got me into the chorus of South Pacific.”

  I stepped inside a foyer that was as big as my entire cottage. “Don’t tell me they’re reviving it on Broadway?”

  “If they’re not, they should. All those ridiculous Andrew Lloyd Whoever monstrosities they’re putting on these days! It’s a disgrace. There’s nothing like the classics when it comes to musical comedy.”

  With that, Betty shrugged off her pale pink silk kimono. I was about to avert my eyes when I realized that underneath it she was wearing a tap-dancing outfit. At least, that was what I surmised it was. The clingy black scoop-necked top looked like a leotard. Over it, she wore a short crimson skirt. At the end of her long, graceful legs were two old-fashioned tap shoes, tied with fat black bows.

  I let out a wolf whistle.

  “Surprised it fits?” She struck a pose, meanwhile fluffing her smooth, white hair, carefully styled into a flattering pageboy. “The old legs still look pretty good, don’t they?”

  I had to admit that they did. Even at her age, Betty Vandervoort didn’t have legs; she had gams.

  As for her age, I estimated it to be seventy-five plus. Although I’d known her for nearly three years, I never could get a straight answer about the year Betty was born. I’d tried to trick her into an admission by casually asking how old she’d been that ti
me she took the gamble of a lifetime, investing an entire summer’s earnings as a waitress at the Paper Plate Diner in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in a one-way ticket to New York City.

  She hadn’t fallen for my ploy. Betty was hard to fool. And today was no exception.

  The twinkle in her eyes faded as she studied me more closely.

  “Something’s wrong.” It was a statement, not a question. “You don’t need a performance. What you need is a cup of tea. A strong one.”

  She scooped up her silk robe and headed out of the room, with me trailing after her. It was a long walk, one that took us through an elegant front parlor decorated with gilt-framed mirrors and Victorian couches covered in silk brocade. Next came a dining room featuring a table that could sit fourteen, with a huge crystal vase of long-stemmed white roses at its center. Then a butler’s pantry so big a butler could actually live in it.

  Finally, we reached the kitchen. As I sat meekly at the table, Betty put the kettle on. She had a firm conviction that water boiled in a microwave didn’t taste as good as water from a kettle. She placed an empty Limoges teacup in front of me with a bit of a flourish, no doubt an unconscious move from the old days at the Paper Plate.

  “Now tell me.” She sat down and fixed her perfectly made-up eyes on me.

  I took a shaky breath. “This morning, I was on my way to see a sick horse at Atherton Farm when Max and Lou found a body in the woods.”

  “A body?” Betty frowned. “What kind of body? You mean a deer or an opossum—?”

  “I mean a human body. A murder victim.”

  “Murder? In Brewster’s Neck?” Betty shook her head, which sent her long gold earrings swaying. “That’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard. Who was the victim?”

  “I don’t know. The cops made me leave before I had a chance to find out.”

  “You must be in shock!” She pushed back her chair. “I think you need something stronger than tea.”

  Reaching into one of the upper cabinets, she pulled out a bottle of whiskey. She plunked it on the table, right next to the sugar bowl, and sat back down again. “I want to hear everything.”