To Sketch a Thief

by Sharon Pape

  Rory found the side streets clogged with commuters eager to get home to dinner and their favorite programs. She was banking on Larry being a typical nine-to-fiver who was out the office door as soon as the workday ended, but when she reached the Sugarman house at five forty there were no cars in the driveway. There was no way to tell if Marti’s car was in the garage or not, but Rory suspected she was home at this hour, busily whipping up dinner. She would have preferred confronting Larry alone, but that would have been difficult to arrange.

  She drove around the block and parked at the curb two houses down from the Sugarmans’ to wait for Larry’s homecoming. She left the engine running, because Hobo got antsy when she shut it off and remained in the car. They didn’t have long to wait. At five fifty Larry drove past them and swung into his driveway. Rory gave him another ten to put down his briefcase and unknot his tie. A relaxed suspect was preferable. She didn’t pull into the driveway, since that would immediately have set Falcon off. Instead she and Hobo walked up to the front door, so the Maltese wouldn’t alert his humans until he heard the bell. The less prepared the suspect, the safer the PI. Rory pressed the bell, and Falcon started his high-pitched yapping on cue, which set Hobo to do some woofing of his own. She tried to hush him, worried that Larry might not open the door if he had a chance to think about who was waiting on the other side of it and why.

  After several moments, it was Marti she heard telling Falcon to be quiet, to no effect.

  When the door opened, Marti stood in the doorway with the Maltese still barking from her arms. Hobo fell silent, more interested in sniffing the air that wafted out redolent of something roasting.

  “Ms. McCain,” Marti said, looking from her to Hobo and back again. “Why are you here?” It wasn’t the most gracious of greetings, but then Rory had caught her by surprise again.

  “Actually I was hoping to speak to your husband briefly, if I may,” she said, pouring on the syrup.

  “About what?” Marti asked warily.

  “It would just be quicker if I could talk to him,” Rory tried. She had to get Hobo into the same room with Larry, or the visit would be pointless. “Of course you’re welcome to be there.”

  Marti bristled. “I should hope so! This is my house too.”

  Rory gave her a sweetly innocent smile. Then a timer rang back in the kitchen, and Marti’s attention was sorely divided between Rory and her need to get back to the roast.

  “Well, all right,” she said, backing up so Rory would have room to enter. “Can’t Hobo wait in . . . ?” It finally occurred to Marti that she hadn’t seen an extra car in her driveway or parked at the curb. “Where is your car?”

  “We’ll only be a minute,” Rory promised, entering the house with Hobo before Marti could start quizzing her further.

  The timer beeped again, causing Marti to adjust her priorities. “Just keep him away from my Falcon,” she said as she toddled off in the direction of the kitchen with the Maltese peering over her shoulder and growling at Hobo.

  As far as Rory could tell, Falcon was the one with issues. Hobo padded quietly along beside her, no longer showing any interest in the little dog.

  “You can have a seat,” Marti said grudgingly as she went to the oven to baste what looked like a rib roast. “Larry’s just changing his clothes. He’ll be down in a minute.” Falcon was still in her arms, trying to dive headfirst into the pan with the roast.

  Rory sat down at the kitchen table. Hobo lay down next to her, intoxicated by the smells, strands of drool hanging from his mouth. When Rory heard Larry on the staircase she stood up, ready for action. He came around the bend into the kitchen as Marti shut the oven door.

  When he saw Rory and Hobo some of the color drained from his face, but he did his best to act normally. “Hi, it’s Rory, right?” He held out his hand to her, at which point all hell broke loose in the Sugarman kitchen.

  No longer anesthetized by the smells, Hobo jumped up snarling, ears flattened back against his skull. Rory had never actually seen him this way. If she didn’t know him better she would have been scared even on her end of the leash. She tightened her grip on him just before he lunged for Larry and nearly pulled her off her feet.

  Marti shrieked, crushing Falcon against her chest to protect him as Larry stumbled backward. “Get that dog out of my house!” He screamed in a voice approaching falsetto range. “Get him out of my house now! What the hell are they doing here, Marti?”

  Marti uttered some syllables that never quite made up a whole word.

  “What have you done to make him hate you so?” Rory demanded. As soon as the words left her mouth she knew she probably shouldn’t have said them. The plan had been simple. She was just going to see if Hobo reacted badly to Larry a second time. Well, mission accomplished. And exactly why was she still standing there?

  “How dare you come into my house and let your dog attack me? I’m calling the police.” Without taking his eyes off Hobo, Larry started edging over to the phone that was hanging on the wall just inside the kitchen entrance. “You and that mutt belong in prison or in a mental ward.”

  “When you get the police on the line you might want to save them some time and tell them why you killed Brenda Hartley.” Okay, she definitely shouldn’t have said that, but her temper had gotten the better of her.

  Marti went from looking terrified to looking bewildered and terrified. “What . . . what’s she talking about?” she sputtered.

  “Get out of here, Marti,” Larry ordered. “Get out of here before you and Falcon get hurt.”

  Marti didn’t move. She seemed rooted to the floor, as incapable of motion as a potted plant.

  Larry bypassed the phone to grab the knife that Marti had left on the counter for cutting the roast.

  Things were escalating rapidly. Rory regretted her decision to stow the new .45 in her handbag instead of in a holster on her hip. It had made sense at the time. Of course that was before she’d accused him of murder and more or less asked to be silenced.

  “Marti!” Rory shouted to get the woman’s attention. She needed to neutralize her to help balance the odds. “Do you know what Brenda wanted to tell you the day she was murdered?”

  Larry was circling to Rory’s right. With the knife in his hand he sounded almost jaunty. “Open your mouth again, bitch, and you’re going to be saying your last words.”

  “What’s she talking about? What’s she talking about?” Marti repeated like a one-trick parrot.

  Rory pivoted to keep Larry in full sight. “She wanted to tell you that she and Larry were having an affair.”

  Marti’s eyes popped to twice their normal size. Then her lower lip quivered like a child’s, and tears started pumping out of her eyes. Rory had been hoping for anger, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. What mattered was that Marti wouldn’t be helping her husband anytime soon.

  Larry must have come to the same conclusion. His eyes narrowed and jaw hard with purpose, he came at Rory and Hobo, the knife tight in his fist. Hobo strained at the leash, growling like a thunder roll. Rory released him so he’d be able to maneuver and protect himself. But defense wasn’t on his agenda. The first thing he did was lunge at Larry, who managed to step aside at the last moment, although with somewhat less grace than a matador. Hobo kept going on his original trajectory, obeying the law of inertia until he slammed into the lower cabinets. He picked himself right up without a whimper. He was accustomed to hard landings courtesy of a certain deceased federal marshal. Marti was screaming again, but it had lost its initial impact and was fast becoming as tedious as elevator music.

  Rory ordered Hobo to go, to run, to leave the room, but either Hobo didn’t understand the words or he was playing deaf and dumb. While she was still trying to shoo the dog out of danger, Larry saw his opportunity. He covered the distance to Rory in a couple of long strides. Rory grabbed one of the kitchen chairs and held it before her like a lion tamer under the big top. After several hectic seconds, Larry managed to wrench it out of her gr
asp with his free hand.

  Rory backed away from him until she was up against the refrigerator, her future dependent on how well she’d learned to feint and parry back on her high school fencing team. At that critical moment Hobo launched himself at Larry from a point just beyond the man’s peripheral vision. The unexpected, ninety-pound dog missile knocked him off his feet. His head hit the ceramic tile floor with a sickening crack, and the knife skittered to a landing near Marti’s feet.

  As Rory ran to retrieve her purse from the kitchen table, she warned Marti not to touch the knife, not to even think of trying to help her husband, or she’d be facing jail time as well. She needn’t have worried. Marti’s face was nearly as white as Falcon’s fur, and both woman and dog were absolutely silent, probably for the first time in either of their lives.

  By the time Larry came out of his stupor, Rory had her gun trained on him and her cell phone in hand. Ordering him to stay where he was, she called 911 and then Leah at police headquarters. Hobo, who had appointed himself to guard the prisoner, paced back and forth in front of him, snapping at the slightest twitch.

  Police from the local precinct pulled up to the house within minutes, along with an ambulance for Marti, who had screamed her way into palpitations. Leah and her partner arrived from Yaphank half an hour later. Larry was read his rights and loaded into a police cruiser. Marti was carted off to the hospital, still clutching Falcon and threatening anyone who tried to pry him away from her. Then Leah pulled Rory aside and calmly inquired when it was that she’d completely lost her mind.

  Chapter 26

  The game was already into its final period when Rory arrived at the soccer field. She found Leah on the sidelines cheering loudly for her eight-year-old son and his team. Her husband, the team coach, was on the far side of the field, keeping pace with the players as they ran first toward one goal, then toward the other as the teams lost or gained possession of the ball. It was a mild day, a teaser that felt more like spring than fall. The parents and grandparents watching the game had traded in their parkas for lighter jackets, and some of the men had already shrugged off even those.

  Leah had asked Rory to meet her at the field so she could give her an update on the Larry Sugarman case. Her weekend was a marathon of running to each of her children’s sporting events; she wasn’t free for brunch or even a cup of coffee.

  “Sorry to drag you out here,” she said, giving Rory a quick hug before turning back to watch the game.

  “Hey, the weather’s great, and I get to spend some time with you and find out what’s happening with our murdering scum.”

  “Well, for one thing, he’s an arrogant, murdering scum,” Leah said. “Excuse me, I mean person of interest. Didn’t even blink when I told him we had his prints on the knife that killed Brenda. He just sat there with this little smirk and demanded to see his lawyer. You have no idea how much I wanted to rearrange his face with—way to go, Jake!” she shouted as her son maneuvered the ball away from an opposing player and headed for the goal. “Go, Jake, go—go—go—all the way!”

  Jake took a shot on goal. For a moment it seemed like the goalie would be able to deflect the ball, but it flew by him just out of reach. A cheer erupted from half the onlookers, while the coach from the other team called out encouragement to his players.

  When Leah picked up the narrative, she was going hoarse from all the cheering. “We had to wait for his lawyer to get there before we could finish questioning him.”

  Rory shook her head in disgust. “Let me guess—he’s claiming he killed Brenda in self-defense.”

  “Bingo! A lovers’ quarrel. He’d broken it off with her; she was distraught and came at him with a knife. In the ensuing struggle the knife found its way into her chest. Trite, but it works more often than it should.”

  “I’m surprised he told you that much.”

  “Sometimes they’re so full of themselves and so sure you can’t touch them, they like to dangle their ‘get out of jail free’ card in your face.”

  “If Hobo could talk, Larry wouldn’t have a prayer.”

  With her briefing finished, Rory took the opportunity to apologize for trampling on police turf. “You have my word that it won’t happen again,” she said.

  “Really?” Leah asked skeptically.

  Rory thought for a moment before she replied with a sheepish grin, “Well, I’m pretty sure.”

  “That’s what I figured. But joking aside, Rory, you’ve got to curb your impulsiveness. Preferably before it gets you killed.”

  “That’s number one on my ‘to do’ list.”

  “It certainly ought to be.”

  Then Jake had the ball again, and Rory joined in to cheer him on.

  “Hey, I almost forgot,” Leah said. “We found some scabbed-over bite marks on Larry’s arm, bites that came from the mouth of a large dog.”

  Rory issued a low whistle of amazement. “So heroism isn’t a new concept for Hobo.”

  “That’s one hell of a great dog you have there.”

  Rory couldn’t have agreed more. She stayed on to watch the last minutes of the game, but declined an invitation to join Leah and her family for a pizza victory lunch. As much as she loved pizza and spending time with Leah and her energetic little tribe, she had some unfinished business to attend to back home.

  She’d decided that she had to tell Zeke about the events at the Sugarman residence. As unpleasant as that conversation was likely to be, Hobo deserved his due. The marshal needed to know about the dog’s heroic efforts on her behalf. She was trying to work out a sanitized version of the truth, one in which she hadn’t egged Larry on, when the telephone rang. The woman on the line introduced herself as “Debbie from It’s a Dog’s World.” But Rory had already recognized her voice and shifted gears. If she wasn’t careful with what she said she could compromise the sting.

  Debbie said she was pleased to let her know they had her beagle puppy. Rory was thrilled. It was barely twenty-four hours since the puppy was reported stolen. Either it was an amazing coincidence or Dog’s World was in the “steal to order” dog business. Of course she and Zeke still didn’t know the names of the thieves or whether the suspects on their list were among them, but they finally seemed to be headed in the right direction. In one day they’d made more progress than in all the weeks before.

  Rory asked the questions that she thought a prospective owner would ask, like what kind of food to buy for the puppy and whether he’d been given any of his shots. When she’d run out of questions, Debbie asked if they could deliver the puppy the next day. Rory said that would be fine, and they agreed on a time of two p.m. Debbie repeated the time to someone else, after which Rory heard a man in the background give his approval. Apparently Debbie had her on speakerphone. In a tone that was far from pleasant, the man reminded Debbie to get the address right this time. Rory thought his voice sounded familiar. If he would just continue talking she might be able to place it, but instead she heard a door close, and then Debbie was speaking directly to her again.

  Flustered and stumbling over her words, she apologized for the interruption. Whoever the man was, he certainly had enough clout to make her nervous. Her voice still wobbly, she asked Rory for her address.

  The address Rory gave her was Helene’s. She’d decided to take delivery at her aunt’s house to avoid the possibility that someone at Dog’s World might recognize her own address. When she’d talked to Helene about it, the conversation had been more trying than arranging for the stolen puppy.

  “I don’t see why I have to leave,” Helene had said, as if Rory were borrowing her house to throw a party that she wasn’t invited to attend.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Rory told her. “I can’t take the chance.”

  “You wouldn’t be taking the chance,” Helene pointed out. “I would.”

  “Semantics aside, the result would be the same. I’d rather not have to explain to my mother why I let you get killed. That kind of thing is hard on family relationships.�
��

  Helene ignored her attempt at humor. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating. It’s not like this is a drug bust. They’re going to drop off a puppy. What could possibly go wrong?”

  It occurred to Rory that her aunt was a lot more naïve than she’d realized. “You read the papers and watch the news, Aunt Helene. Things that shouldn’t go wrong, go wrong every day.”

  Helene had begged to differ. That sort of thing was actually rare if you took population numbers into account. Rory stood her ground. She couldn’t remember ever arguing with her aunt before, and, though she didn’t like it, she refused to give in and put her at risk. She finally had to threaten to use her parents’ address, before Helene would agree to leave.

  “And that includes the immediate area,” Rory had added firmly. “No lurking behind bushes or parking across the street to watch.”

  Helene’s huffy sigh told her she’d been entertaining thoughts of doing exactly that.

  Chapter 27

  With the delivery arranged and Helene given notice that she had to be out of the house well before two the next day, it was time for Rory to bring her partner up to speed. Maybe the news about the puppy would help distract him from asking too many questions about her little set-to with Larry. Zeke’s name was barely out of her mouth when he appeared in his customary seat at the kitchen table, eyebrows hitched up with curiosity.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “Actually I want to fill you in about everything that’s been happening,” she said brightly. No problems here. She dashed through her epiphany about how Hobo loved everyone but Larry, and that she’d taken him to see Larry to test that theory. In her revamped version of the event, Larry became unhinged the moment he saw her and Hobo in the kitchen with Marti. One minute Rory was trying to calm the dog and the next she was fighting for her life. She wouldn’t be standing there if not for Hobo’s heroism. He’d defended her without hesitation and without regard for his own survival.