Raining Cats & Dogs (A Melanie Travis Mystery)

by Laurien Berenson

  26

  “Good-bye?” I echoed faintly. “How can you leave now?”

  “Why would I stay? Now that my mother’s gone, there’s nothing left for me in Greenwich anymore. Believe me, that’s been made abundantly clear.”

  “What about Mary’s will…?”

  It was a rude question. I didn’t quite have the nerve to finish it. But I let the topic dangle in case Michael wanted to contribute. Fortunately, he did.

  “The will said just what I expected it to. Most of my mother’s money was tied up in the family trust. She had a bit on the side, and that came to me.”

  In a family that had been manufacturing widgets for decades and for whom great wealth was the norm, even “a bit on the side” could add up to a substantial amount.

  Michael must have been reading my thoughts. “It’s not about the money,” he said. “It was never about the money. It was about family and belonging and having a chance to see my mother again before it was too late.”

  He stopped and sighed. “None of that happened. And now, obviously, the chance has been lost forever. I’ve made a good life for myself, one that doesn’t need to involve my relatives. So I’ll be going home in a day or two. Actually, it will be a big relief to get out of here.”

  I supposed I could understand that, but the thought that his family would be lost to him forever seemed infinitely sad to me. “Did you ever talk to your relatives about your illness?”

  “No, I never had the chance. And, frankly, under the circumstances, it wasn’t any of their business. If that’s what it would have taken—the knowledge that I might die soon—to make them welcome me back into the fold, then I’m afraid I’m just not interested.”

  In his place, I’d have probably felt the same. I wondered whether the police had counted Michael as a suspect in his mother’s murder and how they felt about his leaving town. He laughed in reply when I asked.

  “If the police are thinking about detaining me, they certainly haven’t let on. I checked in with Detective O’Malley a couple of days ago. All he told me was that the investigation was proceeding, whatever that means. I don’t think my presence here makes a difference. I’m sure the Livingston clan has enough clout to keep law enforcement working diligently.”

  Two weeks had already passed, I thought. If the police had turned up any viable leads, they hadn’t been reported in the newspaper. Which brought me to the topic I’d come to broach.

  “Do you mind going over a few more things with me?” I asked.

  Michael shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

  “When you first came back to Greenwich…when was that, by the way?”

  “Last month. Which is another reason why it seems like time for me to go. My lease is just about up, and I don’t plan on renewing.”

  I nodded. “Upon your arrival, how did you go about getting in touch with your mother?”

  Michael thought back. “I started by calling the house. You know, the phone number she had the last time we’d spoken, which, admittedly, was a while ago.”

  “You didn’t know that Mary was living at Winston Pumpernill?”

  “I didn’t know anything about her life, which was just the way the family wanted it. Unfortunately, she’d decided to accede to their wishes, or maybe she’d been browbeaten into agreeing. Anyway, when that didn’t work, I tried calling my cousin Sylvia and ended up talking to Paul. He made it perfectly clear that my presence was neither needed nor wanted here.”

  “Did he tell you where your mother was?”

  “He did give me that much.” Michael’s tone was bitter. “I guess he felt pretty secure in the family’s ability to keep us apart. And as it turned out, he had good reason to feel that way. Before I’d even placed my first phone call to Winston Pumpernill, the administrators knew who I was. None of my calls was put through, and when I tried to visit, I couldn’t even get inside the front door.”

  “You must have been feeling pretty frustrated.”

  “Frustrated isn’t the word. I was about ready to kill someone.” He stopped abruptly. “It’s a figure of speech.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m not above using it myself.”

  Faith, having grown bored listening to our conversation, was now stalking a pair of squirrels that were racing up and down a nearby tree. If I’d thought she had even a hope of catching one, I’d have called her off. But she seemed to enjoy the chase more than the kill, so I left her to her game and turned back to Michael.

  “And then?”

  “Then I got lucky. It was the last thing I expected. I was walking down Greenwich Avenue one day and I ran into someone I used to know. Her name was Stacey Quillan back then. We went to high school together.”

  Stacey Quillan then, Stacey Rhoades now. The woman hadn’t been an old friend of Mary’s, she was an old friend of Mary’s son. That made more sense.

  “But that’s not the amazing part,” Michael continued. “It turned out that Stacey knew my mother was at Winston Pumpernill. She’d been visiting the home once a week with some sort of dog group.”

  “I know,” I told him. “I’m a member of the therapy dog group, too. That’s how I met your cousin, Paul.”

  “So you’ve already spoken to Stacey about this part?”

  “Actually, no. That’s why I wanted to hear it from you. You wrote your mother a note and had Stacey pass it to her during one of the visits, didn’t you? That’s how Mary found out that you were in Greenwich and wanted to see her.”

  Michael nodded. “It went like clockwork. I told my mother that I’d been prevented from getting in touch with her directly. I wrote that she had to initiate the contact herself. I gather she went back to the family and raised holy hell. Which was pretty gratifying under the circumstances.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  Faith came racing back, warm from her exertions, tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. She’d done her job; the squirrels had vanished. She flopped down on the cool grass feeling like a hero.

  “The funny thing is,” I said, “Stacey never mentioned to anyone that she knew your mother. And when I asked her about it earlier, she denied there was any connection.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Michael said.

  “I agree.” I reached down and stroked Faith’s long back. “And here’s something else that’s odd. Apparently Stacey finds the visits to Winston Pumpernill pretty stressful. I’ve been told that she always seems agitated and in a hurry to get away.”

  Michael looked up sharply.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Probably nothing.” He looked away.

  “But maybe it’s something.”

  “I shouldn’t be telling tales.”

  “Why not? We’re talking about people you haven’t been in touch with for twenty years. People who pushed you out of their lives.”

  “It wasn’t like that with Stacey,” Michael said. “She and I were close in high school. Boyfriend and girlfriend for most of senior year. We even went to the prom together. But then we both went off to college, and you know how it is. You begin to grow in different directions.”

  “Been there, done that,” I said.

  I could remember my high school boyfriend’s name, but the details of his face were a little hazy. We’d broken up when we both came home over Thanksgiving break of freshman year. The parting was mutual, and I hadn’t thought about him in years.

  “Anyway,” Michael continued, “what you said a minute ago about Stacey wanting to make a getaway just jogged something in my memory, that’s all.”

  I hadn’t phrased things quite that way, but I wasn’t about to correct him. This sounded interesting.

  “Back when we were teenagers, Stacey had a bit of a problem. You know what it’s like growing up in a town like Greenwich. Kids get given way too much, way too early. And when everything comes to you that easily, maybe you begin to look in inappropriate places for a quick thrill.”

  “Are we talking about drinking?” I asked. “D
rugs?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that,” he said quickly. “At least nothing beyond the usual teenage experimentation. This was something else entirely. I can’t say that I ever really understood what it was about, but Stacey liked to steal things…you know, shoplift? She’d stuff a blouse in her purse or a scarf under her sweater. She’d take things she could easily afford to buy, stuff she didn’t even need. Someone dared her once to steal a watermelon from the supermarket and damned if she didn’t manage to get it out of there without paying for it.”

  “Wow,” I said under my breath. I wasn’t admiring her technique, I was pondering the implications. And they were pretty big.

  “She was good all right.” Michael obviously had misunderstood my comment. “Scary good if you know what I mean. I’m not much of one for psychobabble, but, trust me, this was some sort of addiction. It was like she couldn’t stop. Sometimes I’d make excuses not to go places with her because you never knew what she might make off with.”

  “You were worried about getting caught?”

  “Hell, yes! It might have been a kick for her, but it scared me silly. I tried talking to her about it, but she just laughed and told me not to worry; that it wasn’t a big deal and she knew what she was doing.”

  “And nobody ever caught her stealing?”

  “Maybe once or twice, but don’t forget, this was twenty-five years ago and things were totally different then. The store manager would give her a lecture rather than calling the police. Her parents would come down and pay for whatever she’d taken, and that would be the end of it.”

  I thought of all the items that had gone missing recently at Winston Pumpernill: Madeline’s ruby brooch, the leather backgammon board, and Mrs. Ellis’s cash. There had to be a connection. I wondered whether things had started disappearing when the visits from our group began, and if they’d all been misplaced on Sunday afternoons.

  Michael was right. Times had changed, and the stakes were totally different now. Security was tighter everywhere, and people who got a thrill from stealing could expect to be arrested and prosecuted if they were caught.

  Unless, that is, they happened to stumble across the perfect locale in which to indulge their bad habits. One where security precautions were scarce and missing items would most likely be ascribed to the forgetfulness of their elderly owners.

  “What?” Michael demanded, staring at me across the table. “You’re thinking something. What is it?”

  “I’m wondering whether, in all those intervening years, Stacey ever got help for her problem, like therapy or counseling.”

  “I wouldn’t have any idea.”

  “I know,” I admitted. “I guess I’m just thinking out loud.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I’m not sure. But things have been disappearing recently at Winston Pumpernill. Little things, the kind of stuff that would be easy to snatch and stash away.”

  “The sorts of things Stacey might be lifting if she were still looking for a quick thrill,” Michael said.

  He wasn’t slow, I’d give him that.

  “Did she take anything from my mother?”

  “I don’t know. Mary and I never spoke about it.”

  “My mother wouldn’t have put up with it if she had.” Michael’s fingers curled into a fist. He looked as though he wouldn’t have minded hitting somebody with it. “You know, I hadn’t thought about any of this stuff in years. When I left Greenwich, I thought I had left it all behind.”

  I leaned closer. “All what?”

  “Back then…my mother knew about Stacey’s problem. I think a couple of the mothers had been discussing it by the pool at the club. I’d kind of forgotten this, but that was one of the reasons Stacey and I broke up. My mother brought some pressure to bear. She didn’t think it was right for me to be associating with that sort of person.”

  Gossiping around the pool at the club? Worrying about associating with that sort of person? How very “old Greenwich.” And yet…it sounded as though Michael might be onto something.

  Abruptly, he shoved back the bench and stood up.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Somewhere, anywhere. I don’t know. I need to process this and think things through.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Let’s walk.”

  Faith liked this form of entertainment even better than lying in the shade. The park was mostly empty, so I didn’t bother putting her back on a leash. The Poodle gamboled on ahead several steps in front of us as we started down the hill and around the lake.

  “Tell me what else you know about Stacey,” I said.

  “She was never a violent person, at least not back when I knew her. But she was an opportunist.”

  With a hobby like hers, she’d have to be, I thought. What was it I’d said when I was talking to the other club members about Mary’s murder? That with the distraction provided by Minnie and Coach, the killer must have seen his shot and taken it?

  “Are you thinking that Stacey might have felt threatened by your mother?” I asked Michael. “Maybe by what your mother knew about her?”

  That was what I was thinking, at any rate. It would have been nice to have my ideas seconded.

  “Possibly…” Michael stopped and shook his head. “It’s looking like this is all my fault.”

  I stopped, too. Faith, circling past us, skidded up short. “What is?”

  “Don’t you see? My mother was fine, everything was fine, until I came back to Greenwich and started this whole chain of events. I’m the one who gave Stacey the note to deliver. I’m the one who sent her to my mother. I came back into my mother’s life, and now she’s dead as a result.”

  “That’s not true—” I said, but Michael wasn’t listening. Instead, he was moving again, faster now, and heading back toward the lot where we’d left our cars. Faith and I hurried to catch up.

  “Paul said I was nothing but a bad luck charm, and it looks like he was right. I’ve made a mess of everything. There’s only one thing I can do now.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, pretty sure that I wasn’t going to like his answer.

  “I have to fix things,” Michael said.

  27

  “Fix them how?” I asked.

  Michael didn’t answer. That might have had something to do with the fact that he was still two steps ahead of me and he’d already reached his car. He unlocked the door and yanked it open.

  “Where are you going?”

  He glanced at me briefly over his shoulder as he slid onto the seat. “To see Stacey. To figure out what the hell is going on.”

  Good idea, I thought. It was the kind of thing I might have wanted to do myself. Except that I would have been tempted to stop by the police station on the way to tell Detective O’Malley what we’d figured out.

  Michael didn’t look like he was going to be stopping anywhere first. He looked mad enough to spit nails.

  “Do you know where she lives?” I thought the question might slow him down, but it had no discernible effect at all.

  Instead, Michael reached down and started his car. “Hell, yes,” he said through the window. “I know where to find her.”

  I cupped a hand around Faith’s muzzle and pulled her swiftly out of the way as the car began to back out of the space. As soon as he was clear, I released the Poodle and sprinted toward the Volvo, which was parked several spots down. I had no idea what Michael was planning to say to Stacey, or what she might do in return; but whatever was about to happen between them, I had no intention of missing any of it.

  Faith liked this new game of spin and run that we were playing. She beat me to the Volvo and jumped up to plant both front feet on the door. I beeped the locks and let us in.

  Luckily, Michael was a cautious driver. Before he’d even left the park, we’d fallen in neatly behind him. Michael never glanced in his rearview mirror; I doubted he even knew we were there. I tailed him up onto I-95, heading east toward Darien. Faith, riding shotgun
, sat upright on the seat beside me and kept him in her sight.

  As I drove, I pulled out my cell phone. I called Aunt Peg and quickly brought her up to speed on all the latest developments.

  “Not Stacey Rhoades,” she said incredulously. “The woman with the Papillon?”

  “Bad owners happen to good dogs,” I replied, watching Michael edge his car into the right-hand lane. He turned on his signal and prepared to exit, so I did the same.

  Aunt Peg harrumphed. “You said she didn’t seem serious about obedience training. Maybe after she found out about the visits to Winston Pumpernill, coming to class was just an excuse.”

  “Quite possibly,” I agreed.

  “Where are you now?”

  “Darien. I believe I’m on my way to Stacey’s house.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Not exactly. I’m following Michael.”

  “I hope you’re not following him right into trouble.”

  Poppycock. I knew Aunt Peg better than that. She thrived on trouble. And there was nothing she liked more than knowing I was, once again, right in the thick of things.

  “Give me the address,” Peg said, and I did. Up ahead, Michael was pulling over to the curb and parking his car. “Maybe I should call the police and send them your way.”

  “We should be fine,” I said. “All I’m planning to do is watch and listen when these two get together and see what shakes out. I’ll call Detective O’Malley afterward.”

  “Call me, too,” Aunt Peg said. I snapped the phone shut and tucked it away.

  The neighborhood Stacey lived in was not unlike my own—rows of neatly kept smaller houses on quarter-acre lots. We’d headed south toward the shore when we left the thruway, and although I couldn’t see Long Island Sound, I could smell the tang of salt in the air.

  Halfway down the block, I found a tree to park beneath. I rolled all four windows part of the way down and told Faith to stay. She looked disappointed but resigned. Chin resting on the top of the open window, she settled down to await my return.