“And if nobody did see him?”
“Then we take another tack,” Becker said. “Or it may end up like the death of ‘Mr. A.’, death by misadventure. That would have a kind of poetic justice, now, wouldn’t it?”
I did a double-take. “Did you just say poetic justice?” I said. He smiled. “Yup,” he said. “You aren’t the only artsy-fartsy around here, you know.”
“After Morrison gets through questioning the people at Steamboat, I’ll bet I’m the only friend Rico’s got left, though,” I said.
“That may be true,” Becker said. He didn’t sound particularly regretful.
“I don’t suppose it would do any good at all to tell you I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, would it?”
“Arf, arf,” Becker said.
“What about Jason’s notebook? The one I told you about that has all the dirty laundry notes in it about the Steamboat staff?”
“I think that Jason McMaster wasn’t a very nice young man,” Becker said, “but he didn’t deserve to die for being a gossip, and I don’t think that’s why he died. I think he died because he said some nasty things, probably true, about a drama teacher who messed with him ten years ago.”
“What do his parents think?” I said.
“They believe it was an accident, and we’re not going to tell them anything different until we know for sure,” he said. “And if I hear that you’ve been in touch with them during their time of grief, Polly Deacon, you’re in deep shit.”
“Not even a sympathy card?” I said.
“Nada. I mean it.”
“You’re bullying me again.”
“Your fault,” he said. Then, just to screw me up completely, he glanced around to make sure there was nobody watching, then he kissed me. What’s worse, I kissed him back—a lot. There we were, on the patio of the Rock Cut Steak House, necking. Dammit, I’m an idiot.
Being the pushy, nosy friend that I am, I decided to drop in on Rico on my way home. I didn’t really have the energy to talk to him, and I needed what little head-room I had left for the show the next day, but I suspected he’d be a little freaked out and would appreciate the support.
There was a light burning in the upstairs apartment over the Tiquery, so I left Luggy sleeping in the truck and knocked quietly on the door. The footsteps that I heard coming down the stairs were unsteady, and when Rico opened up, I could see why.
“Polly,” Rico said. “S’nice to see you. Cops send you round to check up on me?” A thick wave of booze-breath enveloped me.
“Nobody sent me, Rico. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Oh, I’m maaahvellous, dahling. Why wouldn’t I be? That nice big policeman asked me all kinds of personal questions and practically accused me of murdering Jason. Very nice evening.”
“You want to talk about it? Can I come in?”
Rico regarded me gravely, teetering a little bit. He was really very drunk. I’d never seen him like that. In spite of the fact that he made his own wine and tippled regularly, he was usually pretty controlled. “Well, you know, I don’t think so,” he said, after a moment. “I’m not very good company right now. I’m having a private party, you might say, and you’re not invited.”
“I had nothing to do with this, Rico,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sure you didn’t mean to,” he said. “Keeping secrets in bed is never easy.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means be careful what you say to people who fraternize with policemen,” he said. “And don’t expect them to keep you in the loop, even if it means you’re prime suspect number one. Thanks, Polly. I was going to come to the show tomorrow, you know, to provide moral support, but I find I’ve lost my taste for the theatre just at present. Goodnight, dear. Sleep tight.” He closed the door in my face, and I stood there, stunned, listening to him make his way slowly back up the stairs. I couldn’t believe it. Rico, my “best friend” Rico, believed that I’d ratted him out to the cops. Not that ratting him out was possible, because there was nothing that I knew that would have put them on to him in the first place, was there? Feeling horribly snubbed and inexplicably guilty, I returned to the truck and headed home. Rico wouldn’t be at the show tomorrow. I felt like it was my fault.
Luggy was fast asleep beside me. He hadn’t stirred when I climbed back into the cab at the Steak House, and I figured he was exhausted. All that laundry scent, probably. I didn’t want to disturb him.
When I got to George’s, Susan’s car was there. It was filled with boxes. The move had begun, then, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I wished I felt more positive about it. After all, the two people I loved most in the world were embarking on an exciting journey together. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d bought passage on the Titanic.
“C’mon, Luggy. Let’s go to bed,” I said, opening the passenger door so he could jump down. He didn’t even bat an eyelid. “Lug-nut?” Nothing.
Oh, I’m probably overreacting, as usual, I thought. I reached over and shook him and when I got no reaction, I slipped into immediate full-blown panic.
Thirty-Five
WOODSMAN: He lives in that cave over there by that tree / Dragons hide ’till it’s dark, which is when they can see.
-The Glass Flute, Scene ix
Susan later said I’d been incoherent.
“Now you know what it feels like when your child is hurt, and there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it. Reminds me of when you collided with that tree on your toboggan,” she said helpfully. We were sitting in the vet’s office at midnight. Luggy was having his stomach pumped. I still have a scar from the toboggan episode. I just hoped my dog would get off equally as lightly.
The vet said that Luggy had ingested a narcotic of some sort, and a lot of it was absorbed into his system by the time we got him to the emergency animal clinic in Laingford. We had to carry him in. He was totally unconscious and I was crying so hard that Susan had to do the talking.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if that evil man next door had put down rat poison for him,” Susan said.
“Rat poison affects the canine in a rather permanent way,” the vet said. “This is a sedative of some sort, but powerful. Did he get into your medicine cabinet?”
“He’s been with me all day, and it can’t have been the Neighbour from Hell,” I said, between hiccups. “Luggy was already unconscious when I got to George’s. I thought he was asleep in the van when I came out of the restaurant in Sikwan. He must have eaten whatever it was much earlier.”
“You keep sleeping pills in your van, maybe?” the vet said. “Look, you’ll have to wait out in the other room while we wash out his insides. It’s not very pleasant.”
“He’ll be okay?”
“I expect so, but we have to work on him now,” the vet said. It was Dr. Singh on call that night, a very young vet who handled his patients with a gentle firmness that was remarkable to watch. He specialized in farm animals, but occasionally put in time in the small animals emergency clinic. I’d seen him sew up a gash on Julian of Norwich’s udder with such deftness she didn’t even notice, just nibbled his hair and muttered goat nothings into his ear. Luggy was in good hands.
Out in the waiting room, Susan made the toboggan remark, which I think was supposed to make me feel better.
“I guess someone could have tossed a poisoned scrap of meat or something in the van window while I was in the Rock Cut,” I said. “But why would they do that? How would they know I was there?”
“What were you doing at the Rock Cut? That’s hardly a hang-out for actors,” Susan said.
“I was being interviewed by Mark Becker,” I said. “Don’t ask.” Susan drew breath for another remark, then thought better of it. She could hardly have ragged on about how bad policemen were after her testimony of the night before. However, her natural distrust of cops was still there, below the surface. If I told her about his conclusions concerning Rico, she’d start
ranting, and though I might agree with her, I didn’t have the energy for it.
“It’s more likely that your dog got into something at the theatre,” Susan said. “Maybe he nibbled on some explosives.”
“That stuff’s kept locked up in a box, and anyway, it was in the van with the rest of the set,” I said. “The only thing that wasn’t packed away was the serpent puppet, which is still down in the workshop. That and the laundry.” The laundry. The green garbage bag full of stinky costumes that had inexplicably rolled down the stairs by itself. I remembered Luggy attacking it while I let Becker into the theatre, and our subsequent search of the rehearsal hall upstairs for an intruder. The dog had ripped the bag apart, I thought, because of the compelling whiff of thespic sweat, but perhaps there had been something else in there. Something yummy, laced with a substance guaranteed to be bad for dogs. I was immediately certain of this, and with that certainty came extreme, red-rimmed anger. Someone had deliberately tried to hurt my dog. Whoever it was would pay, big time.
Dr. Singh emerged from the inner sanctum, looking cheerful. “Well, we got the stomach all cleaned out. You don’t feed him table scraps, do you?”
“Never,” I said. “It encourages begging.”
“I thought not. Most of what was in there was high-grade kibble. But there was a chunk of raw meat in there, too, barely chewed. That’s the saving factor. If he’d chewed it, we might have been in a bit of a pickle. I’ll analyze it for you, but I think you can be fairly certain that someone slipped him a bit of doctored beef.”
“I thought so,” I said. “He’ll be all right, then?”
“I’d like to keep him here overnight for observation,” the vet said. “Call me tomorrow around noon. He should be alert by then.”
“Can I see him?” Okay, I know this Dr. Kildare stuff is maudlin and perhaps overdramatic, but you have to understand that Lug-nut, whom I’d had for less than a year, was the love of my life. Only a dog, you say? I don’t think so.
He was wired up to an IV drip, like a fuzzy extra on ER, and his tongue flopped out the side of his mouth in cartoon, dead-dog fashion.
“They all do that,” Dr. Singh said. “Totally relaxed, that’s all.” I kissed Luggy’s head and whispered something I’d rather not admit to into his ear.
“Attached to that dog, aren’t you?” Susan said on the drive back. We’d taken her car, so I could hold Luggy in my lap on the way there. Susan’s glove-compartment is full of unpaid speeding tickets, and she has more demerit points than a shopaholic has Air Miles. We made it to the vet’s in about six minutes, but now she drove more circumspectly.
“Yeah, Susan. We’re joined at the hip,” I said. I told her about my suspicions concerning the laundry, and then filled her in on the Becker/Rico theory. As expected, she ranted. I waited until she’d run out of steam.
“At least they haven’t arrested him,” I said. “They’ve got no evidence to speak of, and you and I both know that there’s no way Rico Amato would hurt anybody or anything. What I want to find out tomorrow is whether everybody at Steamboat went to the Falls Motel last night while I was waiting for Becker, or whether somebody stayed behind. I’ll bet you it wasn’t Rico.”
“Of course it wasn’t. That nice little man? Honestly, I don’t know why we bother with policemen at all.”
“Oh, they have their uses,” I muttered. I was starting to fade. It was well after midnight now, and I had a show the next day. I said my goodnights and stumbled up the hill to my cabin. It was awfully lonely and quiet without Luggy. I locked my door, made sure the windows were shut and went to bed. The fact that Laingford High School hadn’t changed very much shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has had the misfortune to return to their alma mater after a fifteen-year gap. It was smaller than I remembered it, of course, and more depressing. The lockers were still painted the same old military green, and the hallways were still filled with surly teenagers in packs, leaning up against the walls and making comments about passers-by. The office (in which I’d spent next to no time, having been a “browner” with perfect attendance) still made me feel nervous, and the cafeteria (which my friends and I had avoided as enemy territory) still smelled of mashed potatoes and sour milk. In order to get our Glass Flute gear to the gym, which was on the third floor and didn’t have any access doors, we had to carry everything up two flights of stairs and through a maze of hallways. A six-pack of Laingford High hockey team members had been dispatched to help us. They were very glad to do it, as the assignment effectively excused them from class, and so the load-in took less time than we’d expected. Because of this, we had over an hour to put everything together, which left the cast more time to fret than was healthy.
They had been told about Jason. Morrison had told them the night before, I suppose in order to justify the questions he had asked about Rico. Predictably, nobody had seen Rico at the theatre after I left with him on Sunday night. That left the field open in terms of who dunnit. The cast was subdued and not inclined to chatter about it. Amber was preoccupied. She had left her puppy at the motel with the daughter of the owner.
“I’m paying her prime babysitting rates,” she said, “and she’s going to give Portia a bath.” Best of luck to her, I thought. Amber patted her little belly and smiled, rather sadly. “I guess I’ll be keeping the baby,” she said privately to me. I wondered if she were trying to imply that the baby was Jason’s. Not that it was any of my business, but I had a feeling that when the child was born, it would be blonde and gorgeous, just like Shane Pacey. Amber’s decision to keep the baby didn’t surprise me. After a week of looking after an infant creature, even if it’s just a puppy, the maternal juices are shaken, not stirred. Shane, Amber, Portia and the baby would make a lovely family. It occurred to me that Juliet might have encouraged Amber to get the puppy in order to set the stage for this decision. Maybe the director was a closet pro-lifer or something.
I had gone in early to get the show laundry done at the twenty-four-hour laundromat in Sikwan. None of the costumes appeared to have been chewed, which was a blessing, and when the cast arrived for their eleven o’clock call, I didn’t bother telling them about the walking laundry bag incident of the night before. I received various versions of the Falls Motel Pub interrogation, and Shane wasn’t speaking to me, so I guessed that Morrison hadn’t been easy on him. He had dark circles under his eyes.
Meredith had asked pointedly where our canine companions were. Amber explained her puppysitting arrangements, and I just said that Luggy was taking a sick day.
“Oh. He’s not well?” Meredith said. There was an evil little smile on her face.
“Just a touch of stomach trouble,” I said, watching her carefully.
“Huh. Must have been something he ate,” she said. “That’s what happens when you let dogs loose in a theatre. They get into all sorts of things they shouldn’t.” I wanted to strangle her right there, but I controlled myself. I knew she hadn’t liked the dogs being around, but I wouldn’t have thought she’d actually stoop to poisoning Lug-nut just to have a dog-free show day. I resolved to ask Brad later if Meredith had arrived late at the pub. I was almost certain she was my laundry ghost.
After the set was erected and the puppets and props pre-set, we still had tons of time to kill. Shane and Amber ran lines, Meredith and Brad worked on the Mother and Woodsman “happily-ever-after” scene, and I deked outside for a smoke.
I took the eerily familiar route through various basement hallways, past the machine and woodworking shops to the lower back entrance of the school, what we used to call “the north doors”. When I had been at Laingford High, the north doors were the official student smoking area. Now, of course, students are prohibited by law from smoking on school property, but fifteen years ago, the administration was mature enough to recognize that teenagers will smoke no matter what the rules are. Allowing them to do it in an out-of-the-way place which was theirs kept the sight of adolescent vice away from the disapproving eyes of the local
townspeople, and probably made them smoke less. Now, high school students smoke while walking to and from school. They light up as soon as they cross the school property border and are generally more public (and subsequently more defiant) about it. Back in the old days, teachers had been known to join the students occasionally for a pre-class puff. Now, if they’re seen smoking at all anywhere near the school, they get hauled up before the teacher’s council. Progress. Go figure.
Our audience was arriving. A couple of yellow school buses had arrived at the bottom of the hill behind the school, and a line of men, women and children was trudging up the path.
“They could at least have dropped them off at the front,” I muttered to nobody in particular. Making them walk up the hill as the high school students were expected to do didn’t seem quite fair. Especially since long, forced marches were supposed to have become a thing of the past for these people. When they got closer, I could see that there was a festive air about the procession, though. There were smiles and some laughter.
Leading the group was Laingford’s mayor, Gord Staples. I was glad to see that he had obviously chosen to slum it on the bus with his guests, rather than to arrive in his Lincoln. He was a large man, and the short climb was making him sweat. His round, florid face was glistening, and he dabbed at it with a big white handkerchief. He was deep in conversation with a handsome, middle-aged man wearing a Nike t-shirt and a tweed jacket.
I expected that it would take some time to get the audience settled in the gym. In fact, if they were going to enter the school via the warren behind the north doors, it could take upwards of an hour to round them up. Instead of stepping on my half-finished smoke and scurrying up to warn the actors that showtime was approaching, I elected to stay put.
Staples didn’t recognize me. He frowned as I held the door open for him. “Shouldn’t you be in class?” he said. I took it as a compliment.
Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle Page 47