by Lane Stone
Whatever. I ran to my office for my handbag—which is really a beach bag—and grabbed the keys on the plastic peg shaped like a dog’s tail. I yelled at the phone, “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in five.” It would take me ten minutes. I motioned for Shelby to disconnect the call. “Shelby, call the DRBA police desk in the ferry terminal. Ask for Wayne. Tell him I’ll buy him a drink if he stops this. Dana, keep trying Henry’s cell.”
As I ran by Anthea, it occurred to me that she might be able to help. What’s the use of having a local celebrity if they can’t get you and your dogs out of a jam? Without slowing down, I grabbed her arm. “Come with me.”
Chapter 2
I pulled out of the Villages of Five Points community and, in one of those little gifts from the universe, caught a green light to make the left onto Savannah Road. My passenger was silent. Our two-year-old partnership was the result of a project by Global She, an international organization of female small business owners, to encourage collaboration among women from different cultures. I’m not sure we’re what they had in mind, but it’s worked.
I was born and raised in Lewes but hadn’t lived here since I went away to college in Georgia. After graduation I worked as a dog walker, sitter, and trainer in one East Coast beach town after another. I had never stayed more than a couple of years in any of them. When I was thirty-six, I came home to Lewes. I was ready for the next phase of my life to begin. I wanted to open a pet daycare and boarding facility, with lots of frills. But mostly, I wanted to stay.
I knew a lot about caring for dogs, but I needed something to make my business stand out. I needed help with branding. Lady Anthea Fitzwalter was offering her consulting services. I sent her an email with my proposal and offered a percentage of the profits. For years, I’d read about this or that royal being a charity’s patron, and that was what I had in mind. She wrote back right away with her approval and the “pet-ronage” began.
To make conversation, I pointed to the local veterinary clinic, Lewes 24-Hour Pet Care.
“That’s nice to have a surgery so close by. Does the veterinarian make house calls?”
“Thankfully we’ve never needed him to. Our staff and his get along great.”
“But you and he don’t?”
Time for honesty. “Dr. Walton hates me. And our pet resort. A few months ago he stopped offering boarding and day care because we’ve taken 90 percent of his business.”
I glanced over to read her reaction. She was smiling. “Why only 90 percent?”
We both laughed. Then she said, “I appreciate your emails apprising me of all aspects of the enterprise. Why do you think it’s been such a success?”
“We have something special. That’s you. And I try to provide extras the pet parents want. For instance, Lewes has its share of retirees, and when we bought the van, the non-drivers became a source of new business, both for camp and grooming. We charge for pickup and drop-off for day camp, but not for bringing the dogs in for boarding or grooming.”
She nodded and then leaned back and seemed to enjoy the sights. We passed shops and restaurants as we drove through the first town in the first state. “Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, and Lewes was the first settlement in Delaware,” I explained. I told her city was founded in 1631, and other historical particulars.
“Lewes is in Sussex County, just like Lewes, England,” she said.
“Someone’s done her homework,” I said.
She didn’t respond, and we drove in an uncomfortable silence for a bit. Was even that gentle bid of teasing too familiar?
We crossed the canal bridge and just before the Lewes beach, I turned right onto Cape Henlopen Drive. This street ends at one of the country’s first open spaces, the five-thousand-acre Cape Henlopen State Park. But we weren’t going that far.
“You’ll give your driver a talking to when we get there?” she asked finally.
“If he’s there. They found the van, not Henry.”
She must have realized then that we wouldn’t need to unlock the vehicle if Henry was around because she murmured an apology. We were going to get the dogs out and back to their homes. We still had to locate Henry.
In a few minutes, she spoke again. “Do you think he may have, to quote some of the young people we’ve employed at home, done a runner?”
I shrugged. Truth was, because it was Henry we were talking about, I had no idea.
Sure enough, the Buckingham van was on the street, in line to turn into the parking lot and go through a ticket stall. Just waiting there surrounded by the white Lewes police cars, parked at a respectful distance, like suitors and a debutante. A Lewes police officer directed traffic headed farther down Cape Henlopen Drive to the far-right lane. Wayne waved me around to enter the ferry parking lot through a closed ticket booth, and motioned for me to park at the curb. As I passed, he gave a lazy salute, then mouthed Gilligan’s. I wondered why he had chosen that restaurant for me to pay up at, instead of On The Rocks, the outdoor bar at the ferry terminal he usually preferred. It was all good. Lady Anthea and I could have dinner at Gilligan’s after I’d settled my debt to buy him a drink.
One of the ferries had docked and cars waited to drive onto the ramp. Their passengers gawked at the hive of police activity back on the street, but the drivers had to pay attention. There was another delay before the cars could drive onto the ferry for the seventeen-mile, eighty-five-minute crossing. The cars were stopped at a spot farther along the route to the waiting ferry, where a bomb-sniffing dog, a powerful and attentive German Shepherd, walked up and down the line, and an officer with a mirror checked undercarriages. Almost everything had changed at the fifty-year-old ferry after 9/11. The Delaware River and Bay Authority operates the Cape May-Lewes Ferry, among other transportation links between Delaware and New Jersey. Both the DRBA Police Department, made up of officers like Wayne, and the City of Lewes Police, would want to know why a van had been abandoned just outside a parking lot full of a few hundred people.
I parked and took a couple of steps toward the action before I realized Lady Anthea hadn’t moved. “If you’d rather wait in the car…” I held out my hand with the car keys. She could listen to either the Elvis or the Jimmy Buffett satellite radio station.
“I should go with you.” She took a deep breath and got out of the car.
We backtracked to the street and looked around at all the purposeful chaos. It wasn’t hard to tell who was in charge. Chief John Turner was tall, maybe as tall as Dana, but then she’s a model. He was new, so I had never met him, but I certainly liked him better when he wasn’t yelling. The whimsically painted mini-van was in sharp contrast to his severe demeanor and uniform. Said uniform wasn’t particularly stern, being a light blue, short-sleeve shirt and navy pants. It was somewhere between late afternoon and early evening, which placed the sun behind him, outlining his broad build. I guess the way we’d been let through told him who we were because he left the group of uniformed officers he’d been talking to. We watched each other through matching Ray-Bans and met up at the back of the Honda.
He gave me his name then reached out and we shook hands.
“I’m Sue Patrick and this is Lady Anthea Fitzwalter.”
She stared at his outstretched hand for a beat. It seemed an eternity—like what her formality was going to make this week feel like—before she relaxed and shook his hand.
“Nice to meet you,” he said. I’d place his age in the mid-forties. He looked like he’d spent a lot of time outdoors. “You’re from the dog place?” He had to speak loud enough to be heard over the barking coming from inside the van.
“The Pet Palace,” I corrected him.
Suddenly, the barking stopped.
“The what?” Turner said with a raised eyebrow and a curled lip. He glanced back at the now quiet van.
Lady Anthea cleared her throat to regain his attention
and pointed to the burgundy lettering on the van. “We’re the owners of the Buckingham Pet Palace.”
Turner turned back to us. Derision oozed out of the police chief’s pores, making me feel like the 1950s Elvis surrounded by a congregation of Southern Baptists. He opened his mouth to say something, and the barking started again. A small dog first, a larger dog joining in. And the third rounding out the harmony.
“Uh, I have the key,” I said. The van went silent again. “Can I open the door now?”
He held up a stop-sign hand. “Juuuust a second.” His voice was deep, almost a growl. He scanned the parking lot, stopping when he saw the handler of the German Shepherd. Then he spoke into the radio on his shoulder. “Chuck?” The handler looked our way and the dog lowered to a ready sit. From this position, he could jump up in less than a second. Chief Turner motioned for him, actually them, to join us and spoke into his radio again. “Can you give this another check?”
We watched and waited as the dog handler and the German Shepherd wove through the cars to get to us.
The pleasantries were out of the way, and we were about to see how long he would think it was nice to meet me. “There are three dogs in that vehicle and it’s August. I’m responsible for them and I need to open that door right away.” Water bowls were attached to the rungs on the sides of the crates and the dogs sounded okay, but since mentioning either fact would hurt my case, I didn’t.
“Animals in a closed-up car is something we take very seriously,” Lady Anthea said. She was standing beside me, and it felt good to have her support.
The police chief took in my face and then hers. “I need just another minute.”
Another minute? No. I pointed the key fob at the van.
“Please.” Turner’s voice was unexpectedly gentle. I lowered my arm and took a deep breath.
I turned to Lady Anthea. “I know the dog handler, Chuck. There used to be a children’s daycare center in the Villages of Five Points. He and I gave a talk to the kids there and they met one of his dogs. They’re all cross-trained in bomb sniffing and attack. The dogs, that is. Not the kids. But maybe they are too, I wouldn’t know.”
Before he could stop himself, Chief Turner laughed.
I went on. “We didn’t mention the attack part to them.” I got a kick out of seeing him loosen up, but I was also rambling to hide my rising anxiety about the dogs.
When Chuck got closer, his dog turned in a circle either from excitement or confusion. The Shepherd walked around the back of the van and halfway up the length of the vehicle, then reversed and walked back to the middle of the van on the other side. When they passed our little group, the handler said, “Hi, Sue.” Then he turned to Chief Turner. “There’s an unfamiliar scent coming from the back of the van.”
“He’s not just reacting to the dogs in there?” I asked.
Chuck shrugged his shoulders. “Could be, but I don’t think so.”
“So are we cleared to open the vehicle?” Chief Turner asked.
“Go ahead.” The two men said goodbye via that reverse-nod motion their gender uses. Chuck and his dog went back to inspecting cars lined up to drive onto the ferry.
I went around to the side of the van and Lady Anthea followed.
“Those dogs gonna leap out?” Chief Turner leaned over me as I clicked the key fob, and the side door rolled back.
“No, they’re in crates.” I had my foot on the running board about to step in. The dogs went silent and stiffened as the door opened. All three—the dachshund, the collie mix, and the poodle—were on high alert, getting information from wherever they could. Seeing, smelling, or hearing. “It’s okay, fellas.” Their backs and tails relaxed. Robber’s front legs bent a little. The crates squeaked as they shifted their weight, moving their paws up and down as they calmed. Paris sighed and gave a little “mmm” whimper.
“Everything’s fine.”
Only it wasn’t. There was something on the floor, between the two rows of crates. My employee, Henry. The front of his white undershirt was covered in black blood. His eyes were open and his chin was raised. He seemed to be looking to his side, or over his shoulder. His right arm was bent at the elbow, with his lower arm either protecting his throat, or the lower part of his face. I backed out of the van, thinking my shoe would never reach the asphalt. “Chief?”
I’m five-foot-seven, but he bent forward to hear me. I tilted my head to the van’s interior. The dogs, all three, were still watching me. Waiting for me.
As I was processing what I’d seen, I was raising a wall so this couldn’t hurt me.
Turner leaned in and saw what I had seen. He radioed for another officer to join him, then he took off his sunglasses and looked at me. “I’m sorry. That explains Chuck’s dog’s confusion. He’s not trained to detect a cadaver.” Then he turned to the uniformed woman. “Get a crime scene team out here.”
A corpse, outside of a funeral, should have scared me. Instead, I was enormously sad. Henry was my latest hire. He had worked at Buckingham’s for three months but was still outside the team we had become. The confident, dynamic man I interviewed turned out to be arrogant and cagey. I was planning to fire him, but that didn’t change the fact that I hadn’t been there to take care of my employee. I found myself mentally promising him that we’d find out who did this. We?
I looked over at Lady Anthea standing ramrod stiff. “Henry? Is he…?” she asked.
I nodded, looking down at my feet.
She cleared her throat. If anything, she pulled herself up even taller, straighter, and more in control. Then she asked me, “Can we get the dogs out? We need to take them to their respective homes.”
Chief Turner’s eyes darted to the van, but he didn’t answer.
I turned to him. “With some help, we can take the crates out the back of the van, and not disturb anything.”
Finally, he said, “All right, but can you take the animals and leave the crates? I’m concerned there might be blood spatter on them.”
“Sure.” I had read enough murder mysteries to know what blood spatter was. Just last night I had finished Murder, My Dear and planned to begin drawing the secrets out of Assassins Aren’t Angels—or maybe the title was Angels Aren’t Assassins—later that evening.
“Would you pull the Jeep over here?” I asked Lady Anthea.
“Certainly.”
I handed her the keys, and she turned and marched back to my car.
She went first to the passenger side, then corrected. I hoped Chief Turner hadn’t noticed. No such luck.
Turner touched my elbow. “Was that a good idea?”
“She’ll be fine. She’s in a parking lot, so she doesn’t have to worry about which lane to use.”
We walked to the rear of the van, and I raised the door. Anthea drove back to the street without incident. Then she backed the Jeep up to us until I called out, “Okay, that’s close enough.”
Chief Turner pulled me away from the van, and I instinctively yanked my arm back.
“Brake! Brake!” I yelled.
Every cloud has a silver lining. She wasn’t accelerating when she collided with the van, so she rolled into it. “Considering she’s probably never driven an automatic transmission car in her life, not bad,” I said to Chief Turner as I waited for Anthea to climb out of the Jeep. I took her place and pulled my vehicle forward a few feet and got out.
I turned to Anthea. “I’m not wild about driving with dogs loose in the car, but I don’t think we have a choice. I have a harness we can use for Robber.”
“I can sit with the dachshund and the miniature poodle in my lap,” she offered. “Are their leads in the van? I’m sure they’ll need walks.” I didn’t know if Chief Turner understood that walk was a euphemism for going to the bathroom, but I knew that’s what she meant. She seemed happy to be of service that didn’t involve driving in the States, in wh
at to her was the wrong side of the car.
Chief Turner was shaking his head. “Sorry, that van is a crime scene now. Anything in there, other than those dogs, has to stay.”
“The only leash I have in the Jeep is Abby’s,” I said.
“That’s fine. If we can’t get the leads from the van, I’ll just take them one at a time.”
I took a deep breath. I’d have to get the dogs to her before she could start taking them to relieve themselves. After steeling myself, I climbed into the van. At least two of the dogs could be handed out the rear door. The dachshund would come out first. I awkwardly straddled Henry’s legs, careful not to touch his pristine deck shoes or his blue jeans. I leaned over and opened the door to So-Long’s crate, careful to keep the wire door from touching the body. Once I had him out, I held him close and backed up. I kissed the top of his head before twisting around and positioning myself to lower him down to Lady Anthea’s waiting arms. Suddenly all four of his feet were scrambling in an attempt to stay attached to me. “It’s okay,” I whispered.
Lady Anthea snapped her fingers at him. “We’ll have none of that, young man!” I handed the dog down, and she walked over and deposited him into the back seat of the Jeep. We repeated the maneuver—no finger snapping needed this time—for Paris, the miniature French poodle. Robber’s crate was behind the driver’s seat. The doors to the crates faced the van’s center aisle, and I inched forward then stepped over Henry’s shoulders. I stood straddling Henry’s head and neck, wondering how the hell I was going to get a seventy-five-pound dog out of there, without any of his four feet touching the floor. I looked at Robber for—oh I don’t know, maybe some guidance or a little I-know-you-can-do-it energy. The collie stopped pacing long enough to give me a blank stare. She seemed mildly curious to see what I would come up with. The longer I stalled, the more fidgety she grew.
“Sue,” Lady Anthea called, “the bitch needs to know you’re in charge.”
I leaned closer to Robber. “You know she was referring to your gender, right?” The dog was so anxious to get out that I was sure she’d lunge for freedom as soon as the crate door opened. Chief Turner was watching me from the still open side door. The side door! That’s how I would get her out. I carefully rotated myself, reversing so I was facing the back of the van. I took a deep breath and opened the crate door. “Go!”