Paws For Death

by Susan Union

  Randi felt sorry for Andrew. Gina’s memorial was a three-ring circus. Where was her mother? If she were here she wouldn’t stand for this. She’d take control of the situation rapidly slipping through Andrew’s fingers.

  “Okay, well,” Andrew cleared his throat, “let me begin by saying—” he faltered and wiped his eyes, “my sister had a heart of gold.”

  Behind Randi, somebody snickered, muttering, “More like brass. Tarnished brass.”

  A black snout appeared under Randi’s chair, followed by a swirl of blue and white dog head. Bess exposed Sheila as the one who’d made the tarnished brass remark.

  “Valerie and I miss her terribly.” Andrew stopped to blow his nose and dab at his eyes again. “Gina and I lost our parents last year. The only good thing I have to say about losing my sister is she’s finally reunited with the ones who loved her best.” He hung his head long enough for the crowd to start to shift. He raised his chin. “I’m going to leave the podium open. If anyone would like to speak, now’s the time.”

  The awkward moment stretched into two, then three. An eternity for a room full of people all waiting for something to happen. At last, Gina’s competitors had managed to humiliate her.

  Randi bent down and put her plate on the floor. If no one else had the guts or the decency to get up there, she would. She wanted to be a fly on the wall this afternoon, remain inconspicuous and simply observe, but she refused to let this happen to her mother’s best friend. She could at least come up with a sentence or two. Part of something was better than all of nothing. She handed Shane to Kira and braced her hands on her thighs in preparation to rock herself to her feet, when a voice came from the back of the room.

  “I’ll go.” A young man, a teenage boy, by the looks of his lankiness, his self-conscious way of walking and the facial hair that wasn’t quite there, made his way to the front of the room and took the stand.

  Relieved, Randi leaned back.

  “Uh…hi, everybody. I don’t have much to say, just that Gina helped me teach my dog Casper, the white poodle back there,” the crowd turned and made the appropriate cooing noises, “how to get over his fear of the dog walk. Uh…we used a clicker and liver treats. Gina was really patient with me, with both of us. Now it’s Casper’s best obstacle. We even double Q’ed yesterday.”

  The kid’s heartfelt story broke the awkwardness. After a polite round of clapping, people got to their feet and shuffled to form a line. Earl took the podium next, Pierre in tow. “Well, good afternoon, folks.” Earl’s kindly brown eyes roamed the audience. “First, I’d like to address the importance of going DOG, which is really just the flip-side of GOD, if you ask me, and I mean that with nothing but the highest respect for both entities. Second, I didn’t know Gina real well, but she smiled at me sometimes while we waited in line at the food truck. Once she gave Pierre part of her soft pretzel.”

  The crowd twittered and seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief, ready to hear more of Earl’s warm fuzzy yarns. “Yup, Pierre never met a pretzel he didn’t like.” Earl stared at the podium, lips moving silently.

  Was that it?

  Kira nudged Randi in the ribs and pointed at her watch. She leaned over. “Five more minutes then I gotta go. Can you give Mel a ride back to the restaurant?”

  Randi nodded. “Sure thing.”

  Earl brought his mumbled reminiscing to a close and, with a shake of his head, stepped down from the lectern.

  A woman in her thirties, wearing the standard dog-person uniform of jeans, sweatshirt, and tennis shoes, made her way to the podium next. Her hair was yanked into a harsh ponytail, pulling the corners of her eyes. “Hi there, I have an Irish setter. Her name is Candy and she got qualifying scores toward her title today.” The woman, who remained nameless, smiled as she backed away.

  Mel leaned over, her punch cup empty. “Is that a joke?”

  Randi snuck a glance at Andrew, several chairs away. He hardly seemed to notice the woman’s shameless self-promotion, as he was deep in bent-head conversation with Valerie.

  Carolyn approached the podium. “Good afternoon, everybody.” Her eyes assessed the gathering, taking control of the crowd, obviously more comfortable with public speaking than her predecessors. “Gina was a quintessential competitor. I think we can agree she was what we all aspire to be in the world of dog agility.”

  Throats were cleared and a few people coughed. Randi glanced around. Gina’s killer could be any one of them, hiding in plain sight. Perhaps it was Sheila, or Mel, or Copeland. Maybe Earl or Carolyn or Theresa or one of the other competitors, a person Randi didn’t know by name. Knock Gina off her perch and pave the way to the top with her blood. People had killed for less.

  Another buzz rose from the crowd. Necks swiveled. Steve Copeland was striding toward the front of the room. The man didn’t walk, he flowed. Michael Jackson’s moonwalk in reverse.

  Carolyn handed him the mic like it was a hot potato and scurried away. Copeland gripped the side of the podium and switched off the microphone. “Gina Thorton,” his voice boomed with the authority of a church minister’s, “was a fine competitor and an even better friend.” He held up his hand to quiet the mumbling from the crowd.

  “I know what you all are thinking. You think I was grabbing onto her coattails. Either that, or I wanted to lull her into complacency so I could take the number one spot. Well, you’re wrong.” He paused, like a practiced politician, letting his tone of disdained disbelief sink in. “You’re all wrong.” He took a deep breath, nostrils flaring. “As soon as this trial was over, we were planning on getting married.”

  Mel bolted from her chair so fast Emma, the Border terrier, let out a yip. Mel marched to the podium, holding out her hand for the mic. Emma loped obediently behind. Copeland ignored her.

  Mel raked a hand through her hair. “That’s fine. Two can play at that game. I don’t need a damn microphone.” Her voice shook. “Everyone in this room is going to hear what I have to say—loud and clear.”

  Andrew barreled his way toward the drama, pushing himself between Copeland and Mel. “Okay. That’s it, folks. If you’d please sign the guest book by the door, Valerie and I would appreciate it. Also, feel free to peruse the photo board Valerie made from all the trials this year. If you’re lucky, you might find a picture of yourself and your dog.” He glared at Mel and Copeland as he pulled the plug to the microphone and rolled up the cord.

  Mel returned Andrew’s hateful stare. Randi strained to hear what she was saying.

  “You can’t hide from the truth, Andrew. Sooner or later it’s going to come back and bite you in the ass.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Kira slid a coaster across the bar. “Where’s Mel?”

  Randi eased onto a stool. “Bathroom. She made it to the podium to speak at Gina’s service but couldn’t get a word in before Andrew shut her down. On the way here, I did my best to pry out of her what she wanted to tell that crowd, but she just stared out the window.”

  Kira motioned with her chin. “Here she comes.”

  Mel clambered onto the seat next to Randi, her face red and freshly scrubbed. She’d hit the punchbowl hard after her scene with Andrew. She slapped her palm against the bar. “It’s five o’clock somewhere. Hit me, boss.”

  Kira crossed her arms. She didn’t mind her employees drinking, as long as they weren’t on the clock, didn’t make a scene, and paid for their own liquor. Most of them could meet one condition, two at a stretch. Three? Rarely.

  Kira wiped her hands on a towel. “What’d you have in mind?”

  “A shot of something strong.”

  “Who’s buying?”

  “I’ve got money.” Mel pointed to a bottle on the top shelf of the back bar. “How ‘bout that Don Julio. Make it a double. Randi? You want anything?”

  The question gave her pause. When her father was on a roll, he’d start as soon as he opened his eyes, whether it was six in the morning or one in the afternoon. Because of the traumatic memor
ies many of those days created, Randi had made a rule not to drink before the sun went down. So far, it had served her quite well, but she’d already blown it with the spiked punch. “Sure. The usual, please.”

  Kira reached into the cooler, popped the cap on a Negra Modelo, stuck a lime wedge in the neck and slid it across the bar.

  “Thanks.” She picked at the foil label. If Luke were here, he would’ve peeled it away from the lip for her. She’d never asked him to. He just started doing it one day.

  Kira opened the tequila, mumbling something in German that didn’t sound nice, but then mumbled German never sounded nice. She poured a generous shot and set it in front of Mel, who gulped it down in one quick breath. Randi’s eyes went wide. Kira scowled and strode away, heading for the customers at the opposite end of the bar.

  Mel scrunched up her face. “What’s her problem? She acts like she’s never seen someone take a shot before.”

  “Don Julio is good stuff. Sipping tequila. For the purist, it’s sacrilege to toss it back like Cuervo.”

  “Yeah? She’s lucky I didn’t put lime and salt on your belly and lick it off first.”

  Randi smiled, playing it cool, because she didn’t know how else to react to a comment like that. “Forget it. No big deal. Can we talk about Andrew now?”

  “What’s there to talk about? The guy’s a dick.”

  “Why didn’t he let you speak at Gina’s service?”

  “I told you, he doesn’t like me.” Her purple-blue eyes had a sheen on them, same as they had the other morning.

  “What were you going to say if he hadn’t stopped you?”

  Mel pushed her glass across the bar.

  Kira caught the movement from the corner of her eye. She broke off her conversation with the couple at the other end and made her way back, a wary twist on her lips.

  “Hit me again.” Mel tapped the wood with her broken middle fingernail.

  Kira poured another shot and passed it to her waitress with a patronizing stare that didn’t seem to hit home. She put both hands on the bar. “Let’s not make a habit of this, okay?”

  ****

  Inside the verdant microcosm of the Aloha Residence Park, Randi squeezed her truck into Mel’s driveway. Again, no sign of her seven dogs. No barking, no flapping curtains or shifting blinds as proof they’d been watching with noses pressed against the window. “Do you crate your dogs when you go out?”

  “No.”

  “And they don’t chew anything?”

  “They behave.” Mel seemed to have already burned off the tequila shots. Turned out, instead of alcohol leading her down the path of loose-lipped despair, Mel only wanted to discuss light stuff. “Happy things,” she’d said with a sad face.

  Randi pressed the unlock button. “Call me later if you want to talk—about anything.”

  Mel put her hand on the door. “What good would it do me?”

  “Might make you feel better.”

  Mel snorted. “You know what would put me in a conversational mood? Another drink.”

  “Seriously?” Randi’s heart sank. All she wanted to do was put her truck in reverse and go home to a grilled cheese, more Campbell’s tomato soup, reruns of a mindless reality show and the slim chance her mother might show up.

  “Seriously. Why not? It’s early.”

  “I know, but it’s been a long day.”

  “Jesus, it’s Saturday night. Is this what happens when you turn thirty?”

  Ouch. No fair. “I’m not thirty—yet.” Apparently her mother wasn’t the only one who could play the ticking clock card. Dirty business.

  “Good. We’ll feed the dogs then go to The Triton. Shane can eat here. It’ll be fun for them. A doggy dinner party.”

  Eight dogs. A party. Good grief. “On one condition.”

  Mel shoved her hands in her pockets. “What is it?”

  “When we get to The Triton, you tell me what you’d planned to say at Gina’s memorial, whatever it was Andrew didn’t want you babbling.”

  ****

  The Triton was packed. Not unusual for a Saturday evening, especially at a place where it was always happy hour. Smoking wasn’t allowed, but a stale odor hung over the crowd nonetheless. Randi found two seats halfway down the long bar and she and Mel squished onto stools, hemmed in by flannel-covered elbows and tattooed forearms.

  A band was in the midst of a never-ending blues jam, led by a woman stuffed into a leather mini skirt that looked like it fit her twenty years and twenty pounds ago. She had serious pipes and belted out her song in a bouncy soul-filled voice that had everybody swaying to the beat.

  No Stella or Fat Tire on tap in this joint. Bud or Miller, take your pick. Randi swiveled on her stool. People laughed and drank—women with thick makeup and bodies to match, men with pool cues pressed up against potbelly-hugging wife-beater shirts. They all looked like they’d been dropped and broken, picked back up and glued together, yet every one of them wore a smile. Randi felt herself switching out of woman-with-a-mission mode and getting swept up in the good-times tide. Why not? Her mother was gone, she was no closer to finding Gina’s killer and she’d gone and pissed off the only man she’d ever met that treated her the way she wanted to be treated. A trifecta of bad luck.

  The remedy?

  Salt, tequila, lime—repeat.

  When Mel had several tequila shots under her belt and nothing left of her beer but foamy remnants clinging to the glass, it was time for Randi to call in her marker. “What were you going to say at the memorial?” She yelled to be heard over the crowd. “Why did Andrew stop you?” Far more than the third, perhaps the tenth time she asked would be a charm.

  Mel traced her fingers along the names carved into the bar. “It’s probably for the best I didn’t get to say it,” she yelled back. “It was a knee-jerk reaction, to go running up there in front of all those people. It would have been hurtful to Gina.”

  “So why head to the podium in the first place?”

  “The shit Andrew was saying about how much he loved her made me want to vomit.”

  “You don’t think Andrew loved his sister?”

  “He was adopted, you know.”

  Randi nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

  “He was always jealous of her. Said she was the favorite and got special treatment.”

  “You think he killed her?”

  “Nah. He’s too much of a chicken.” Mel signaled for another round.

  The bartender served up two more. “You girls want to run a tab?”

  Mel froze. Randi pulled out her credit card and put it on the bar. “You still haven’t told me what it was you were going to say.”

  “Are you always this tenacious?”

  “When I want the truth, and I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  Mel sighed and drank more beer. “Gina was hiding something. I’m not sure what it was. She never told me. I tried to pry it out of her the whole time we were together.” Mel smiled. “I think I was getting close. The day before she dumped me, I could have sworn it was on the tip of her tongue. That same day she gave me the letter I couldn’t open, the one I kept in the safe. I thought if I pretended I knew what I was talking about at the memorial, Andrew might get careless and let the family secret slip.”

  “That’s a long shot. Gina’s brother seems like a lot of things, but careless isn’t one of them.”

  “I’d hoped he’d get caught up trying to defend himself. Narcissistic people usually do.”

  “So you called his bluff.”

  “Yep, only it didn’t work.”

  “You think this secret played a part in Gina’s murder?”

  “You bet.”

  “And you’re absolutely sure you have no idea what it is?”

  Mel smoothed her hair behind her ears. “I’m sure.”

  Randi twirled the glass in front of her. This was a huge waste of time, and all she was going to have to show for it tomorrow was a hangover and a credit card bill. Maybe if she tried a different
tack. “Did you throw a rock at Andrew’s window?”

  Mel didn’t seem surprised by the question. “No. Why?”

  “Somebody did.”

  “Could have been anyone. Andrew doesn’t have a lot of friends. I don’t think it has anything to do with Gina.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What kind of rock?”

  Strange that she would ask. To most people a rock was a rock. “Rose quartz.”

  Mel stared at her like she was stupid. “Rose quartz isn’t a rock. It’s a gemstone. A crystal.”

  “I was sitting at the table with Andrew, Valerie, and my mother. It shatters glass like a rock. That I can tell you firsthand.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  Randi made a point of staring at Mel’s broken fingernail. The others were claw-like.

  “I can prove it wasn’t.”

  “How?”

  “Easy. Rose quartz is the love stone.”

  She already knew that, according to the Wiccan passage Valerie had read to Andrew.

  Mel continued, “It opens the heart to love, and while Gina’s brother and sister-in-law could use a generous dose of endearment, sorry, I ain’t gonna be the one to furnish it.”

  ****

  Randi woke with the vengeance that jolts drunks from stupor to reality. Heart drumming, mouth like cotton. Cushions cradled her body. Her knuckles pressed up against something warm and spongy. Somehow her hand had ended up tucked under Mel’s arm. She jerked it away, backed herself off the sofa and wobbled to her feet in yesterday’s clothes.

  Music from Titanic tinkled from the menu screen on the television. Randi snapped it off and set the remote down on a table next to two empty bottles of Roederer.

  Something cold touched the back of her leg and she stifled a scream. Two silver ears and a black muzzle appeared as Shane wagged his tail and sat at her heels with a panting smile.

  Mel’s dogs were all over the floor, passed out in the manner of their owner, who lay curled on the long end of the L-shaped sofa in nothing but a pair of red lace panties and a blanket tangled round her ankles. Sun streamed across her cheek, glancing off her hair and silver eyebrow ring. She snored.