Raining Cats & Dogs (A Melanie Travis Mystery)

by Laurien Berenson

  “It just isn’t what you want for yourself,” I guessed.

  “Hell, no. Me? I’m going out with a bang.”

  The eternal optimism of youth. “Not anytime soon, I hope?”

  “Nah.” Jay cupped an arm around my back and ushered me into the room. “Not anytime soon. Don’t you worry about that. Now look here, I shouldn’t be monopolizing your time. Mr. Beamish over there is staring at us like he thinks I’m talking too much. Probably right, too. That man, he’s just sitting there waiting for a visit from a pretty lady and a big Poodle. You’d better get going now.”

  “I will,” I said. “But thanks. It was nice meeting you.”

  “You, too,” Jay replied.

  Mr. Beamish was indeed eager for a visit from a big Poodle. Seated in a wheelchair in the sun with a lap robe thrown across his legs, the old man reached out his hand as soon as he saw Faith head in his direction. His face creased in a broad smile.

  “I knew if I waited long enough, someone would make their way over here and find me,” he said.

  “No complaining now,” said the nurse standing behind his chair. A name tag affixed to her tracksuit revealed her name to be Molly. “You haven’t even been in here but five minutes.”

  The old man’s eyes twinkled. “Maybe so, but at my age, every five minutes counts. Come on over here, girl. What a pretty doggie you are.”

  Faith preened from side to side, as charmed by the older man as I was. She sniffed his fingers, then pressed her body up against his legs, so he could run a gnarled hand down her back.

  “Her name is Faith,” I said. “And I’m Melanie.”

  “Pleased to meet you, miss. Sit down and stay a spell. I think I’ve met most of the other dog handlers, but I’ve never seen you before. Why is that?”

  I dragged over a chair and had a seat. Molly, seeing that everything was under control, faded back to give us some space. At a nearby card table, a spirited game of bridge was in progress. The nurse strolled over to kibitz.

  “This is only my second visit,” I said. “Faith and I just joined the obedience class, and we came here last Sunday for the first time.”

  “Not a great start for you, was it? I guess you know what happened to poor Mary Livingston.”

  “Yes.” I’d only spoken to Borden and Madeline the day before, but word had evidently gotten around.

  “Hell of a shame, pardon my French.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Hard to imagine what this world is coming to when something like that is even possible.”

  “We…all of us…” I gestured toward the rest of the obedience club members, who were scattered around the room. “…are really sorry about what happened. And we’re sorry it happened while we were here.”

  “Can’t say it had anything to do with you and your dogs. Leastwise, I wouldn’t think so.” Mr. Beamish frowned, peering at me closely. “Would you?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Me neither. So that’s enough of that. Why talk about something depressing when you don’t have to? Aren’t you supposed to be cheering me up?”

  “I think so.” When he smiled at me and lifted his brow, I couldn’t help but smile back. “But I’m new at this, so you tell me. All I know for sure is that I’m supposed to be letting you play with my dog. You know, since you’re not allowed to have pets here, and maybe you miss having them around.”

  While we were speaking, Faith had climbed quietly up the side of his chair and placed her front legs across his lap. Her head was resting against his chest. His fingers were curled through her thick coat. The two of them were breathing in unison.

  “Never had a pet before in my life,” he said cheerfully. “Can’t miss what you never knew.”

  “Didn’t you just tell me that you knew all the other handlers? I thought you were a regular for the dog club visits.”

  “Of course I’m a regular. Look around, wouldn’t you be?”

  I did. The room didn’t look any different than the last time I’d scanned it a few minutes earlier.

  “All those nice young women want to come and pay an old man a visit, you think I’d be crazy enough to stay in my room?” He shook his head, looking very pleased with himself. “Nope, not a chance.”

  Young, I thought, was a relative term. The ages in our group ranged from Kelly in her late twenties to Stacey’s early forties. Compared with Mr. Beamish, however, I supposed we were a group of youngsters.

  “Everybody doing okay over here?”

  Molly materialized beside us. She stared hard for a moment at Faith, and belatedly I wondered whether dogs were allowed to climb up on the patients. Then the nurse’s gaze lifted, and she smiled.

  “Looks like you’re making friends, all right. I have to run out for a minute, but I’ll be right back. Our bridge group is breaking up, and two of the players have decided they’d like to try another game, but that nice leather backgammon set seems to be missing from the cabinet. Everybody knows the games aren’t supposed to leave this room, but somehow that doesn’t stop them from walking all over the building. Let me just go see if I can hunt up another set.”

  While Molly was gone, the bridge players got up from their table and wandered over to say hello. I already knew Borden Grey and, luckily, he seemed to remember who I was. He introduced me to his partner, Sandy Sandstrum. It was no wonder the foursome had broken up; these two were still bickering over the outcome of the rubber they’d just finished.

  “When I open with one heart, you aren’t supposed to come back and say three hearts when you’re only holding two of them in your hand,” Sandy said to Borden. He looked over at me, “Isn’t that right?”

  “Umm…I don’t know. I’ve never played bridge.”

  “Well, then, you can take my word on it, it’s just plain wrong.” His hand reached down absently to stroke Faith’s hindquarter. She wagged her tail in reply. “I’ll tell you this,” he said to Borden. “We would do much better as partners if you could remember some of the rules of the game.”

  “It’s not my memory that was at fault, it was your playing,” Borden replied. “I had fourteen points and two aces. That’s an opening hand right there. Anyone would have jumped in my position.”

  “Jumped maybe, but not in hearts. Why didn’t you bid your own suit?”

  “Because I didn’t have a suit, so I figured we ought to go with yours. It was perfectly clear to me.”

  “Clear as mud,” Sandy muttered. He pulled over a chair and sat down. “I went to game when we didn’t even have the majority of the cards in our own suit, and we went down in flames. Thanks, partner.”

  “Anytime,” Borden said with a grin. “Don’t you mind, Sandy,” he told me. “He takes his games a little too seriously.”

  “If you’re going to play,” Sandy grumbled, “play to win. No point in doing it any other way.”

  “Here, here.” Mr. Beamish thumped a fist on the arm of his wheelchair. Startled, Faith lifted her head. Bracing her feet gently on either side of him, she hopped back down to the ground.

  “I heard about you,” Sandy said to me as Faith came back to my side. “Borden said you were the one that gave him the news.”

  “I guess I was.” I hoped that was a good thing.

  “Thank you for that, then. There’s nothing worse than being coddled like we’re a bunch of old fogies who wouldn’t know how to handle the truth. At least now we know what we’re up against. This way we can be on the lookout.”

  “For what?”

  “You know, a killer.” Sandy’s voice dropped to a confidential tone. “A murderer among us, so to speak.”

  I must have gone slightly pale, because Borden clapped a hand heartily onto my shoulder. “Now, Melanie, don’t you pay any attention to old Sandy there. He’s always had a flair for the dramatic. None of us has any intention of hunting down any murderers.”

  “Good,” I said faintly.

  “Speak for yourself, you big chicken,” Sandy snapped, and Mr. Beamish began t
o laugh.

  “Now, Harry.” Borden looked wounded. “You wouldn’t be laughing at me, would you?”

  “I’m laughing at the whole lot of you,” said Harry Beamish. “It looks to me like the only one around here with any sense is that big black Poodle.” He glanced at me and added, “No offense, miss.”

  “None taken. But since we’re already on the subject, do the three of you mind if I ask a question?”

  “About Mary, you mean?”

  “What else would she mean?” Sandy inquired tartly. “That’s what we’ve been talking about, isn’t it?”

  “We don’t mind,” said Harry. “You go ahead and ask.”

  I paused for a moment and glanced around. The majority of the residents and staff in the room were occupied with other members of the obedience club. Molly hadn’t returned yet, and nobody seemed to be paying any attention to us.

  “I guess the three of you probably knew Mary pretty well,” I said.

  “Some better than others.” Sandy offered a broad wink.

  Borden reached over and slapped him on the knee. “Cut that out! The lady is trying to ask a simple question here. No sense in your clouding things up with all sorts of gossip and innuendo.”

  Actually, gossip was exactly what I was looking for. That and a little insight into how things really worked at Winston Pumpernill. According to Madeline, Sandy was the man who regularly had his forbidden cigars smuggled into the nursing home. I wondered how much he’d be willing to admit about the route his contraband supplies traveled.

  “Did any of you ever hear Mary talk about her son, Michael?” I asked.

  The three of them shared a glance.

  “Only recently,” Sandy said after a pause. “And then not very much. Why?”

  “I know he’d just arrived back in Greenwich after a long absence. I heard he was anxious to see his mother, and that she was equally anxious to see him.”

  Borden hung his head; he looked down at the hands that he’d clasped in his lap. “Her family was against it,” he said quietly. “Didn’t even want her to know he was here. We didn’t think that was right.”

  “I can see why you wouldn’t,” I agreed. “I only met Mary once, but she seemed quite capable of making her own decisions.”

  “That’s what we thought,” Harry piped up. “When she got word that he was around and nobody had let her know, she was pretty upset. And let me tell you, she had every right to be.”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” I said. “I know the family tried to keep the news from her. So how did Mary find out that Michael was here?”

  “That part’s easy,” Sandy said with a sly grin. “You know the old expression, “Money talks”? Well, that’s just as true here as it is everywhere else. When you want access to something badly enough, a means can be found to obtain it.”

  “Like your cigars,” I said.

  Sandy frowned at Borden. “Tattletale.”

  “Right,” Borden snorted. “As if you can keep a secret.”

  Sandy leaned toward me and said in a low voice, “Only reason Borden doesn’t blurt out everything he knows is because he forgets most of it the minute after he learns it.”

  “I heard that!” said Borden. “Why do people keep saying things right in front of me like they think I’m not even here?”

  “Because they know how bad your memory is,” Harry chortled. “Even if you get mad, you wind up forgiving us because you always forget what you were mad about in the first place.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Borden admitted.

  “Back to the cigars,” I said firmly. Monitoring this crew was like trying to herd cats.

  “What was the question again?” Sandy asked.

  “How did Mary find out that her son was back in town?”

  “Somebody passed her a note,” said Harry. “That’s where the news came from.”

  “Who?”

  Sandy glanced toward the orderly who was still standing by the door. “We figure Jay must have given it to her. You want something brought in under the table, he’s the one to see.”

  Harry nodded in agreement. “It was a note from her son, Michael, all right. And it made her mad as blazes.”

  “I remember that,” Borden said. “I’d never seen Mary lose her temper like that. She was such a gentle person. Hard to imagine that something could set her off that way.”

  “Do you know what the note said?” I asked.

  The three men looked at each other. “I never saw it,” said Sandy. “You guys?” The other two shook their heads.

  “So you don’t actually know whether she was angry about Michael’s presence being kept from her, or whether it was something he’d written that upset her?”

  “I guess not,” Harry admitted.

  “She was planning to see him, though,” said Sandy. “Said there were some things that needed to be set straight between them.”

  “What things?” I asked, but nobody answered.

  For once, not one of them had anything to say.

  15

  An hour later, as Faith and I were leaving Winston Pumpernill, Minnie and Coach caught up to us on the front steps.

  “I saw what you were doing in there,” she said.

  I stopped and turned to face her. Faith, who’d bounded a couple of steps ahead of me, hit the end of the leash, spun a quick circle on her hindquarter, and came trotting back. She hates it when I do something she hasn’t anticipated.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. The other members of the obedience group filed around us and continued on to their cars. There was something in Minnie’s tone that I hadn’t liked at all. “I was doing the same thing you were.”

  “You were asking questions.”

  The administrators of the facility had a right to an opinion about my behavior. And perhaps Steve and Paul, too, since I was there under their aegis. But what I did or didn’t do was none of Minnie’s business.

  Keeping my voice purposely mild, I stared her down, “So?”

  “So I guess that means you really are a detective, like Steve said at class.”

  “Not a detective,” I corrected, “more like an interested bystander. Someone who would really like to see Mary Livingston’s murderer found and brought to justice.”

  “Geez, are you for real? I thought we were just fooling around the other night. You mean you actually investigate things?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “And you, like, solve crimes?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “And you’re going to solve this one?”

  With each question, Minnie’s tone had grown more incredulous. Now she was staring at me like I had suddenly grown a pair of spiked horns. Being the object of that much scrutiny was somewhat unnerving.

  “I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “We’ll see.”

  I glanced down at Faith. Having been caught flatfooted a minute earlier, she was at my side, nose tipped upward, watching to see what I was going to do next. What a good dog.

  I cued her with my hand and hopped down the last step. The Volvo was parked at the near end of the row. All that stood between me and the opportunity to escape was one very annoyed-looking woman. And a large Standard Schnauzer.

  “But you’re working on it,” Minnie persisted, not allowing herself to be left behind.

  “Yes, I suppose I am. Does that bother you?”

  “Should it?”

  I stopped again, exasperated. My key was out and in my hand. I’d already beeped the locks.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Is there something you’d like to talk about?”

  “Oh, like what? Like you think I should confess to you?”

  “That depends.” This conversation was growing stranger by the moment. “Do you have something you want to confess?”

  I had a cell phone. And although I didn’t happen to know the number of the Greenwich police station, I could press nine-one-one. If Minnie wanted to confess to Mary Livingston�
�s murder, she could do so directly. I wouldn’t even have to be involved.

  Except that Minnie didn’t answer my question.

  So much for the possibility of an easy solution, I thought.

  I opened the car door and loaded Faith into the backseat. The Volvo had been sitting in the sun, and the interior was warm. I rolled down both windows on the passenger side.

  “Look,” Minnie said finally, “it’s not what you’re thinking.”

  “Until you followed me out here,” I told her, “I wasn’t thinking anything.”

  “Don’t try to play dumb. I know you heard what Steve said the other night.”

  I thought back. Had Steve said something incriminating? My mind was a blank. “Steve said lots of things. I’m not sure I know—”

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

  “Sure,” I agreed. The way things were going, she probably would have followed me home if I hadn’t.

  The manicured grounds of the nursing home spread out around us like a verdant blanket. At various places around the lawn, hardwood benches had been placed beneath trees that were not yet in bloom. It was still early enough in the year, however, that feeling the sun on our backs was preferable to the shade that would come later.

  “How about out there?” I said, gesturing. “We could take the dogs and go sit on a bench.”

  “Fine by me.”

  I retrieved Faith from the car, and the four of us walked across the lawn. I wondered whether we were being watched from inside the building. Considering the extra security precautions that were now in place, it seemed likely. Good reason, I decided, not to unhook Faith’s leash and let her run free.

  Minnie must have felt the same way, because when we sat, she gave Coach the “down” command. The Schnauzer lay at her feet and cradled his head between his paws.

  “Everybody has things in their past they’re not proud of,” Minnie said before Faith and I had even gotten settled. “I guess I’m no exception.”

  “Let me stop you right there. There’s no reason you have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I’m not an official detective. I don’t work with the police. Maybe this is none of my business.”