by Lyle Howard
The puppy was a brown and white cocker spaniel with eyes the color of chocolate fudge, a sadness in them that could melt the heftiest of icebergs or the coldest of hearts. When he stared out of his plastic penitentiary at Winslow, the puppy whimpered pitifully under his breath. Winslow checked to his left, and then to his right, just to make sure no one was looking as the corners of his mouth uncharacteristically began to curl upward.
Perhaps it was time that he took an afternoon off, Winslow thought to himself. Maybe the puppy just needed someone to look after him. Maybe they both did.
Winslow unhooked the latch and let the cage door swing open on its hinges. The first thing Winslow noticed was that the puppy was sitting on a wet towel. Winslow leaned over and sniffed the air but could not sense any pungent urine-like odors. The puppy seemed to be in fine shape with a strong back and a shiny coat. Winslow didn’t know anything about dogs, but he was sure that he would be able to tell if the dog looked visibly sick. Besides, Winslow could always find a veterinarian on the way home that could give the puppy a quick once-over for any canine viruses.
Winslow reached in and squeezed the corner of the towel and then smelled his fingers. The liquid had no scent at all. He put his fingers to his lips and tasted nothing either. Water. Winslow tipped his head to the side and the puppy mimicked the gesture. Why would anyone put a wet towel in the puppy’ s cage?
The intercom on Winslow’s desk buzzed, startling both him and the puppy. The president’s voice boomed over the speaker and his tone was not happy. “Kirby? What is going on with the dog situation out there? I thought you said that you’d handle it?”
Winslow looked past the pet carrier and across the lobby to Ritchie’s office. The pompous, third-generation twit was standing behind his desk and looking out through his opened doorway at him. Winslow waved guardedly and smiled. “I’m taking care of it right away, sir.” Hell, Winslow thought, there was no use undermining what everyone thought of him at the bank over something as trivial as this. What Elsworth Ritchie III and the rest of the staff wouldn’t know, wouldn’t hurt them. “I’m going to need the rest of the afternoon off, sir,” Winslow begged. “I want to take this infested creature to Animal Control. They can put him to sleep, for all I care!”
Winslow could see the president nodding in agreement with him. “This won’t put you behind on your foreclosure list, will it, Winslow?”
“No, sir, Mr. Ritchie. I’m way ahead of schedule. There’s nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow.”
“Then what are you waiting for, man? Take care of it!”
“Yes, sir.” Winslow leaned back in his chair and grinned. His dubious reputation was still intact with the management. He pressed his face into the cage and whispered to the puppy. “You want to come home with me, little fella?”
The puppy leaned forward and warmly licked the tip of Winslow’s nose.
“I think I’ll name you Hershey, like the candy bar,” Winslow confided. “Partially because you’re brown, and mostly ‘cause you’re nuts to want to come home with me!”
Winslow couldn’t stand it any longer, he had to hold Hershey. When he reached into the cage, the puppy shied away. It was as if the dog instinctively knew that he didn’t want to be held. “Come on, boy,” Winslow chastised the pup. “It’s all right, everything’s going to be fine now, you’ll see!”
Winslow reached in again, but this time the puppy bared his fangs and growled in protest. If Winslow was ever going to show Hershey who was the boss, he might as well start now. The last thing Winslow wanted was to bring an unruly animal into his apartment. There were too many breakables in the tiny one-room flat to have Hershey running rampant while Winslow was at work.
Fangs or no fangs, Winslow pushed up the sleeves of his suit and pulled the puppy out of the cage by the scruff of his neck. Winslow pressed Hershey down on his lap, but the puppy struggled to climb back into the carrier. “Whoo, hold on little fella’,” Winslow warned. “Sit still here for a second so that we can get used to each other.”
The puppy whined like a hungry baby as his pink tongue darted in and out of his mouth.
“See this isn’t so bad, now is it?” Winslow consoled, as he began to lovingly stroke the puppy’s fur faster and harder.
Without warning, the puppy began to howl hysterically like a wild coyote lost in the desert. Winslow P. Kirby was about to reprimand his new companion, but his words of admonishment were cut short as both he and the dog erupted into a fatal firestorm of uncontrollable flames and toxic smoke.
TWO
Gretchen Peters-Smythe was one of the most successful store owners on posh Las Olas Boulevard in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Her renowned antique dealership specialized in only the hardest-to-find masterpieces of fine French furniture and the rarest of Oriental heirlooms.
Gretchen’s clientele read like a list from Who’s Who and only the wealthiest of the wealthy would be expected to patronize Le Magasin d’Antiquites. It wasn’t unusual to hear of affluent customers driving all the way down from the Palm Beaches, or sailing in from the Caribbean to browse through her celebrated emporium. Visits to her fifty-year-old establishment were handled by appointment only, with Gretchen herself greeting each prospective buyer at the door.
But Gretchen was getting on in age, and irritability had given way to senility. She could no longer tolerate the casual shopper, and bristled with contempt whenever a patron took too long to browse through her extravagant merchandise. Seven decades of loneliness and bitterness had eventually transformed the once exquisite swan back into an ordinary ugly duckling.
All the cosmetic surgery in the world couldn’t cork the flood of years that had eroded Gretchen’ s beauty. Her cheekbones had been lifted so far up on her face, that it seemed she was perpetually squinting. Her hair had crossed the line long ago from shimmering silver to straw-like gray, and no combination of exotic conditioners or hot oil treatments could reverse the ignoble destruction that time had done to her gossamer mane.
Gretchen Peters-Smythe had shriveled up into one of the most arrogant and self-absorbed women living in southern Florida. She had subjected her body to so many surgical tucks and pulls, and was so scar-riddled from those operations, that other envious socialites professed that Gretchen could tell when there was going to be a temperature change in Saskatoon.
On Wednesday, the fifth of August, like many other days as of late, Gretchen Peters-Smythe grew typically bored of quibbling with the cream of society and decided to close the shop early. The sun had finally decided to make an appearance, and its warmth began drying the standing water that had accumulated in the flower box below the store’s front window. Gretchen’s prominent collection of colorful impatiens lifted their delicate petals to greet the toasty rays as she closed and locked the door behind her.
Gretchen stood restlessly, wrapped in a garishly sequined white trench coat, below the golden awning that arched protectively over the doorway to Le Magasin d’Antiquites. Her driver was late. She knew she had called in plenty of time. He had no excuse. Fifteen minutes was all it should have taken for Mitchell to drive here from the estate, but according to her diamond-encrusted Rolex, he was three, almost four minutes late!
A young couple brushed by, not even pausing to look at any of the items she had placed on display in her window. She mumbled something catty about the length of the young woman’s skirt, thinking that neither of them would hear, but they did.
“Pardon me, did you say something to us?” the young man asked as he turned to face Gretchen.
“Come on, Neil,” the young woman said. “She’s old, leave her alone.”
Neil Baron, an up-and-coming, third-year lawyer for the firm of Fenn, Witlaw, and Schrieber, was dressed in a brown business suit with a coordinated tie. His creases were perfectly ironed and he wore round, wire-rimmed glasses that made him look older than his years.
“Are you a lawyer?” Gretchen asked, totally ignoring the woman, whom she considered a dar
k-haired slut, standing next to the young man.
Neil looked over to his companion and then back at Gretchen. “What does my occupation have to do with what you said to my friend here?” he demanded to know.
“You’re an arrogant bastard,” Gretchen snapped. Suddenly, as though an insanity warning buzzer had gone off in both of their heads, the young couple realized that they were arguing with someone who was one sandwich shy of a picnic. They didn’t have time to continue trading barbs with the old shrew. They were running late and had to hurry if they wanted to meet the rest of their friends for the happy hour at the local pub on the corner.
Baron, with his emotions torn between pity and outrage, stood with his fingers clenching and opening involuntarily. He wore an expression that Gretchen correctly interpreted as one of contempt.
“Lady, what’s your problem?” he finally growled. “Don’t you have a house to haunt?”
The friend in the miniskirt started laughing hysterically until Gretchen stepped over and backhanded the smile off her face.
Baron’ s escort put her hand over her mouth and could feel the warm pain in her cheek spreading like an allergic rash.
Without any warning, Gretchen’s eyes glazed over and her face turned expressionless as Baron reared his fist back to deliver a knockout blow. As if Gretchen had tripped some microscopic circuit breaker in a dark recess of her mind, her nervous system suddenly shut off, but that wouldn’t stop Neil from venting his anger. He didn’t give a damn how feeble she was, the old crone was going down for the count!
As his fist moved forward with all the intention of a sledgehammer, it was abruptly halted in the palm of an enormous hand. Neil never saw or heard the white Rolls Royce as it pulled up to the curb behind him, because he was too intent on defending his date’s honor.
Mitchell Parsons prided himself on never having used steroids to achieve his massive physique. If muscles were concrete blocks, then Mitchell Parsons was the Sears Tower. To Neil, it felt as though his knuckles had struck a stone pillow.
Parsons had been employed by Gretchen’s late brother, Oscar, to look after her, drive for her, and to provide any needed security around the estate. He led a charmed life that his old pals at the gym could only dream of. In exchange for his bodyguarding services and driving skills, he was provided with his own room, bath and workout equipment. He had full access to the estate’s pool and private beach, and since Gretchen usually turned in between eight and nine o’clock each night, he was allowed to entertain in the house as long as it didn’t’ t wake her up. At first there wasn’t much call for his protective services, but as Gretchen’s mental well-being began its long spiral downward, he was more than willing to work for his money.
While Mitchell’s fragile employer stood silently dumbstruck, having fallen perilously into her own psychological dungeon, a crowd of perplexed spectators began to gather outside the antique store. Baron’s fist was still firmly planted in Mitchell’s palm, as the monster of a man smiled cordially. “Is there a problem here?”
Baron struggled to free his fist, but soon realized that his exertion was doing nothing more than causing him to sweat profusely and ruin his oxford shirt. His hand may as well have been caught in a bear trap, because he didn’t have the strength to liberate it.
“This old woman,” Neil labored to say, “slapped my date.” The chauffeur took his free hand, and compassionately examined the Latin-looking girl’s face. There was a hand print on it all right. He had seen it before, and would probably see it again before Gretchen shucked off her mortal coils. “She’ll live,” the weightlifter assured the lawyer.
Baron stared in envy at the way Parson’s biceps tested the elasticity of his short sleeves, and could do nothing but nod in passive agreement.
“You’re not going to swing this fist at me if I let it go, are you?” Parsons asked.
“Uh-uh,” the lawyer groaned in pain.
Parsons released his grip and brushed off Baron’s lapels. “That’s good, we don’t want any more trouble here.”
“This old woman should be locked away!” Baron protested. The bodyguard’s blue eyes glistened cheerfully, but the last thing he wanted was to cause a scene directly in front of Gretchen’s place of business. He turned to the cluster of onlookers and held up his hands to disperse the gathering. “It’s all right folks, the show’s over now. Go ahead,” he said, waving his hand. “Go on, everything is fine now.”
As the ten or twelve people began to move about their private business, Baron and his date started whispering to each other. Mitchell stepped up to Gretchen and let her feel his body against hers. As if by instinct, the old woman catatonically leaned against him for support.
“I could sue that old bat for assault, you know,” Baron bragged.
Mitchell placed his arm around Gretchen’s shoulder and led her toward the back seat of the Rolls. “I’m sure that suing this fine woman would give you a great deal of satisfaction,” Parsons observed, as he helped Gretchen into the car.
“Then what makes you think that I won’t?” Boland asked, suddenly feeling as though his law degree had given him the upper hand.
Mitchell gently closed the door to the car and reached into his back pocket to produce his wallet. “Two reasons.”
Baron straightened his tie, but his shirt collar was damp and sticky. “We’re listening.”
Mitchell plucked five, crisp, one-hundred dollar notes out of the billfold and slipped them into Baron’s jacket breast pocket. “That’s the first reason. Go out and have yourselves a nice weekend on Ms. Peters-Smythe and forget about this whole silly incident. I’m apologizing for her because she can’t right now.”
Baron and his girlfriend smiled at each other. Five hundred bucks that the government would never know about was nothing to sneeze at.
“Your face feels a lot better now, doesn’t it?” the bodyguard asked Baron’s date.
She winked at Parsons as Baron stepped possessively in front of her. The lawyer knew what she was thinking and he didn’t like the way she had been staring at the bodyguard’s enormous chest and tiny waist. “So what’s the second reason you think I wouldn’t sue her?” asked Baron arrogantly.
Parsons smiled and put his hand on Baron’s shoulder; feeling the scrawny bones buried beneath the padded suit. “The second reason is, that if you did pursue any legal action, I might have to track you down and slug your nose so far down your throat, you’d have to breathe through your ears!”
The lawyer stiffened at the threat that he knew was physiologically impossible, but nonetheless graphic. He gulped down a large dose of pride and tried to grin. “I believe that a fair and equitable settlement has been made for the minor damages inflicted here. Wouldn’t you agree, honey?”
Baron’s date reached into his pocket and pulled out the cash. With a quick flip of her fingers, she counted the five bills before folding and slipping them into her shoulder bag. “I’m the injured party here, Mr. Hotshot Lawyer,” she said with only the slightest hint of a Spanish accent. “This dough belongs to me!” Then she spun on her high heels and walked away.
Baron wanted to say more to the bodyguard, but he couldn’t let his escort just stroll away with the money; he barely knew her. “Hey,” he called after her, “I’m a lawyer, remember? Forty percent of that is mine!”
Mitchell Parsons moved around to the driver’s door and paused to hold his face up to the elusive sun. Another minor calamity had been averted, thanks to common sense and a great deal of legal tender.
The Peters-Smythe estate occupied 40,000 square feet of the total sixty acres of beachfront property that Gretchen held title to in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. The land sat west of a seawall that kept the pea green waters of the Atlantic Ocean in check. The shoreline behind the estate had long since been eroded by the constant pounding of the surf and wind, but since Gretchen hated the beach, no effort was ever made to restore the missing sand.
During the fifteen-minute drive back to the est
ate, Mitchell had to ignore the incoherent babbling Gretchen produced as she slowly resurfaced from the murky depths of her mind’s dark side. The bouts with her mental illness were becoming more and more frequent, and Parsons dreaded the day that he would have to inform Gretchen that she would no longer be able to tend to her shop. That day was coming, and Mitchell feared that it was sooner than both of them had ever thought.
As the white Rolls pulled off Ocean Drive, Parsons pressed the remote control which opened the mammoth iron gate leading to the house. The gate slowly swung open while the Rolls waited, revealing the elegant manor to any motorist lucky enough to be passing by at that moment.
Oscar Peters-Smythe had made his money in land development. A reputed homosexual, he never married, but insisted that his sister move from Indiana to come live with him. She agreed, with the stipulation that Oscar bankroll her lifelong ambition of owning her own antique store. The $10,000 dollars back in 1948 was only a drop in the bucket to brother Oscar, who was more than pleasantly surprised when Gretchen actually made a go of the tiny shop.
In 1987, at the age of eighty-two, an ailing Oscar Peters-Smythe hired Mitchell Parsons to oversee the estate and protect his younger sister. His foresight was remarkable; just three short weeks after Mitchell signed his contract of employment, brother Oscar was found face down in his bathtub, following a coronary seizure. Gretchen had never been the same since discovering his body.
The Rolls slipped up the long circular driveway, moving past rows and rows of perfectly manicured impatiens, just like the ones that bloomed in front of the antique store. The dainty flowers that lined the road were a rainbow of vivid colors, giving the drive up to the mansion an almost fairy tale illusion. The house itself was a coral and stucco affair, with two five-story observation towers that stood like bookends on both sides of the main house. These two spires were the prominent landmarks that loomed over the tops of the surrounding royal palm trees like huge stone guardians.