by Lane Stone
“I just thought you’d want to have, I believe you call it, a lie-in.”
“Oh, no. I was looking forward to observing your start-of-day procedures.”
“Why?” It wasn’t the first time I’d wondered about her interest in the least interesting aspects of the pet resort. After all, she was here for the week to give us some royal street cred thereby validating our business theme. That was her part of the bargain. Mine was to be in at six o’clock, six thirty on the days I jogged on the beach, and work until seven o’clock or later every night, seven days a week. “I mean, there’s really not a lot to see. I like to spend a few minutes catching up with the overnight staffers. Then I go over my calendar for the day to see if there are swim lessons or agility lessons I have to give.”
“How many employees are here at night?”
“Usually two, but sometimes three, depending on how many boarders we have.” I stood. “We didn’t have time for our tour yesterday. Would you like that now? Shelby is handling the reception desk.”
“But that’s not what you were doing this morning, was it?”
“No. Have a seat.” I carried the tablet I’d spent the last half hour on to the white leather sofa. “Let’s sit over here.”
She picked up the throw pillow, embroidered with an Elvis impersonator bloodhound, and moved it to the side.
“This is Henry’s tablet. It’s the one we issued him and he’d left it here. He should have had it with him, and I don’t know why he didn’t. Anyway, the password is one we set, so I know what it is. I’ve been going through his emails. The police will probably want this and, before I give it up, I want to see if there are any work-related emails. Like special requests or anything about future pickups that haven’t been transferred to our main files.”
“Are you sure you weren’t trying to find information that might lead to your employee’s killer, and stay one step ahead of Chief Turner?”
“Maybeeee.”
“Let the professionals do their job. Don’t draw attention to what happened,” she said.
“Aren’t you suspicious about how most of the town knew about Henry’s death so quickly?” I asked.
“I remember people from that outdoor pub looking on,” she countered.
“That’s On the Rocks, and that’s a stretch to think someone drinking there would call Charles Andrews. Besides, it’s on the other side of the building.” Several of the waitresses were my friends, and I already couldn’t wait to tell them that our local no shirt, no shoes, no problem hangout was an outdoor pub. They’d love it. “Anyway, look what I’ve found. This came in yesterday morning.” I read an email to her. “Sorry, Henry. My bad. You need a sign saying if this van’s rockin’, don’t come knockin’. Right?”
“What does that mean?” She hadn’t taken her eyes from the screen. Though I could only see her profile, I could tell she was as serious as a Chihuahua staring down a blow-dryer.
Where to start? “If a van is rocking, there might be a couple inside having sex.”
“Henry could not have been snogging in the van here in Delaware last weekend. His fiancée said she hasn’t seen him for the last month.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
She started laughing. Thank the Lord. Another joke. What her comedic skills lacked in quality she was determined to make up for in quantity.
“Obviously, I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did. This email is from Rick Ziegler. Some of our dogs are on raw food diets, and he’s our supplier. He’s about Henry’s age, late-twenties, early-thirties, something like that. Henry picked up our orders in the middle of the day and that’s how they knew each other. I thought you and I could go today and ask a few questions. We can leave right after the morning rush.”
“What morning rush?” Shelby was standing in the doorway.
I was always half listening to the lobby in case I needed to help out. Now I listened with both ears and heard nothing. It was quiet. Lady Anthea and I followed Shelby out to an empty lobby. “The campers have all been checked in?”
“We had twelve cancellations,” she answered.
I took a deep breath. “The grooming appointments start at eight. No cancellations there, right?”
“Five cancellations. There would have been more if I hadn’t talked them into home visits,” Mason called from the hallway.
He and our second groomer were running toward us in the lobby dressed like the Beatles, pointed-toe boots and tightly fitted suits. Actually they weren’t running; their ultra-skinny pants wouldn’t let them. Mason slowed when he saw Lady Anthea and bowed. Joey, who Mason called his wingman, did the same, and they were gone. Sort of a reverse British invasion.
“Thanks, guys!” I yelled after them.
“Love you!” Shelby blew them kisses.
“Uh-h-h.” Lady Anthea seemed at a loss, but recovered nicely. “Carry on!” she called out.
The elevator door opened and two part-time employees came out, laughing and talking. They stopped short when they saw Lady Anthea. They had yet to meet her in person. She was dressed in a similar style as yesterday. She wore an expensive, well-cut skirt and blouse.
Lady Anthea stepped forward and introduced herself. “Good morning. Was it a long evening?”
“No, ma’am,” they said in unison.
I had stopped by last night to check in on them. I was proud of their loyalty and poise and came around the counter to give them each a hug. “We have six moms who job-share the night nanny positions.”
The taller of the two, Taylor Dalton, said, “We work when our husbands are home and that saves us from paying for childcare.”
Lady Anthea clapped her hands. “Brilliant!”
She beamed and I had to laugh at her reaction. Sure, it was a win-win solution to a staffing need, but she sounded like we’d won the lottery.
“But, ladies, isn’t working through the night difficult?”
“We’re moms. We’re not used to sleeping!” said Laurie Williams. “And it’s just a couple of nights a week.” She looked at her watch. “Gotta scoot to be home before the day camp bus comes.”
After they left I turned to Shelby. “All our employees showed up, right?”
“Every single one of them.” A ring that sounded like a bicycle bell came from the computer at the reception desk. Shelby extricated her glasses from her hair and put them on. Then she began clicking away on the keypad.
I joined her behind the counter. “We have a Google alert set up to notify us when we’re mentioned on the internet, like when someone posts a Yelp review,” I explained to Lady Anthea.
“Oh, yes. I’m aware of them. We do the same for mention of Frithsden or one of our charities or, uh, friends in the press,” she said.
A Southern Delaware Daily article loaded onto the screen. The first words I saw were Murdered Employee. I looked out at the empty lobby. “I can’t breathe.”
Shelby put her hand on my arm. “This is just the online edition. We don’t know how many people have seen it.”
“From this empty lobby, I’d say lots of people have read it,” I said.
Anthea joined us and we stood on either side of Shelby and read the article. It was bad. There was a grainy photo of the van taken from a distance some yards away. I read the headline, “Murdered Employee Found in Buckingham Pet Palace van.” The barking dogs were described as traumatized. The article byline was Staff Writer. Whoever that was had repeated the rumor that the dogs were about to be taken out of state, via the ferry. Scrolling down, there was a photo of Lady Anthea and me standing next to the van. Chief Turner was looking at me. He was quoted as saying he had not notified the next of kin, so could not make the victim’s identity public.
Shelby leaned closer to the screen, almost touching it. “So that’s the new chief of police? I want to get me a piece of that.”
“Hey, girl. I think Jeffrey might have something to say about that.” I stopped staring at the newspaper photo long enough to say to Lady Anthea, “Jeffrey is her husband.” I had read enough. “So we know Chief Turner spoke to the press. You still trust him not to be the source of that rumor?”
Lady Anthea turned from the screen to face me. “He is the proper person to handle a….” Here she wrinkled her nose and lifted her chin. “A murder inquiry.”
I shook my head. “Does that mean you don’t want to go with me to pick up the dog food and talk to Rick Ziegler?”
“You’re determined to interview him?”
“Interview might be putting too fine a point on it. I’m going to ask him about the email.” I turned to Shelby, who was restocking the supply of tip envelopes. “Did you know Henry was engaged?”
“He was?” Shelby raised her eyebrows in astonishment.
“Seems so. His fiancée lives in Albany,” I said.
“He never mentioned her.” She shook her head.
“Do you know who he hung out with? Any friends?”
I must have drawn out that last word. This time it was just one eyebrow shooting up. “And cheat on himself? Nope, no fri-e-n-ds that I know of. He always gave the impression that we, the dogs, and the pet parents all bored him stiff.” The decision to fire Henry over his poor customer service skills had been a joint one between Shelby and me. “It’s weird that he never told us about his family. I guess what we took to be aloofness was actually him hiding his secrets.”
“But why would he lie about being engaged?” I asked. “I mean, of all the things to lie about that’s an odd choice.”
“Indeed,” Lady Anthea said.
Shelby shrugged and went back to the article, clucking now and again.
***
I gave Anthea her promised facilities tour, then she said she wanted to stroll around the neighborhood. We agreed that I’d work on payroll until nine o’clock when we’d leave for the ten-mile drive to Milton—not to be confused with other nearby towns of Milford or Millsburg.
When we got to Raw-k & Roll, Rick Ziegler was hard at work behind a heavy oak country kitchen table. He was spooning the raw dog food into plastic bowls. His gloved hands flew, but he had a meditative expression on his face. I had to raise my voice to get his attention over a Ziggy Marley tune coming from a speaker I couldn’t see and the whine of the two meat grinders along with an industrial size food processor. “Hellooooo.” He looked up and then did a double take at Lady Anthea in her tan skirt and white silk blouse. He took her in from her pearl necklace to her sensible heels. Someone this formally dressed was definitely a first for his establishment.
I followed his gaze. She was examining Rick’s full but well-ordered workshop. Freezers and refrigerators lined two walls. Wicker laundry baskets and wooden crates of fresh fruits and veggies sat on immaculate mismatched tables. There were too many to count. “Are you okay?” I asked her.
“I think I know how Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon felt.”
“Huh?” Rick asked. His long, black ponytail hung from his HLFM baseball cap. This time of year a lot of his produce comes from our Saturday farmers’ market. It’s real name is the Historic Lewes Farmers Market.
“I think they discovered King Tut’s tomb,” I said.
Rick smiled. “Cool. Beer?” He held out a bottle of Dogfish Head Summer Ale. The brewery’s motto is “Off-centered brews for off-centered people.” I knew Rick a little from surfing and that pretty much described him too. His drinking philosophy was unique. He says you should be sober for the best part of your day—which is after work hours. That’s why he was drinking beer at 9:45 in the morning. I could make out the whir of at least three pieces of machinery he was operating, what you might call a chink in the logic of his thinking.
I make a point of never saying, “A little early for me,” when offered a beer in the morning because I don’t want to be judgmental. So I just smiled and shook my head.
Rick held the beer toward Lady Anthea, who simply stared at it. I’d like to think it was out of a desire not to be censorious, but honestly, it was probably surprise.
I held up my bag of Raw-k & Roll BPA-free containers from the last batch that Henry had cleaned out before he left to drop off the dogs yesterday. “Put these over here?” I motioned to an open spot in the corner of the room.
“Nah, just throw them in the sink. They get sterilized before we reuse them. I’m working on your order now. Almost done.” He reached over a basket of mixed organic vegetables and flipped the off switch for the grass-fed beef grinder and then the other machine which was processing hormone-free chicken. The food processor had timed-out and shut itself off.
Lady Anthea leaned closer to me and whispered, “This must be costly. Are all the dogs fed this food?”
“Lord, no. Just the clients who pay for it.” I mouthed, “Let’s talk about it later.” I didn’t want to be disrespectful of Rick’s religion. Actually, it was getting caught that I minded, since Rick was a legend for pet parents who worship at the church of raw food.
“Did you hear what happened to Henry Cannon?” I asked.
“Since you’re here to pick up the order, I’m assuming you canned him.” He dropped a heavy spoonful of meat into a container and pushed the lid onto it.
Even though that was exactly what I had intended to do, I resented the implication that I was trigger happy. I told Rick the whole sorry business, as far as I knew it.
He picked up the next plastic bowl, then put it down again still empty. “Man.” He shook his head side to side. “Who would’ve done something like that?”
“I want to know the same thing. Since this happened, I’ve been feeling like I didn’t know Henry at all. But you seemed to have.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Who were his other friends?”
He shrugged his shoulders and hesitated, about to turn a machine back on.
I helped him along. “I saw your email to him. Did he have a lady-friend who he would take out in the Buckingham van?”
He chuckled. “Take out?” Then I realized the laugh meant he would not have expressed what Henry was doing in the van exactly the way I had.
“How about for a hook up?” As I live and breathe, this was from Lady Anthea.
My head jerked around. Rick’s head swiveled to her. He seemed as shocked as I was to hear those words from such a proper Englishwoman.
“Well?” she asked.
He nodded and grinned sheepishly.
“Who was it?” I asked.
“Couldn’t see.”
“Then how do you know it was a woman he was with?” Lady Anthea asked.
Rick looked down at the table then he mumbled something that sounded like, “I just figured—uh, ya know.”
“But you know Henry was in the van?” I asked. “You saw him?”
“Nah, I heard him.”
“What was he saying?” I pressed on, but it was slow going.
“I couldn’t make out any words, but I got the general idea.”
“Where was this?” I asked.
“At sunset on Lewes beach with the old pe—…. No offense.”
“None taken.” I wasn’t offended because I was probably only five or so years older than him, but significantly more grown up.
“They were watching the sunset?” Anthea asked.
“Uh, they were in the van at Lewes Beach. Let’s just leave it at that,” he answered.
“And this was night before last?” I asked, just to be sure. Since he had emailed Henry on Monday, I assumed he had been referring to Sunday night.
Rick furrowed his forehead and looked at the ceiling. “Depends. What’s today?”
“Tuesday.”
He seemed to be taking the question up with an advisory council in his head. “That would
make yesterday Monday. Yeah, I saw the van Sunday night.”
Then he made a mistake. I caught him looking longingly at his assembly line on the countertop. If he wanted to get back to work filling his precious containers that badly, he could tell us what we wanted to know instead of making us wrest every word out of him. I mentally put myself sitting on my surfboard at Cape Henlopen with gentle waves rocking under me, lifting me up then lowering me. I smiled at Rick, with the knowledge that I could wait all day.
He took a deep breath. “I know it was a woman because Henry had talked about meeting someone. He used to brag that they were getting together almost every night. I only saw him the one time since I tend to go to beaches that are off the beaten path, instead of Lewes Beach, but I believe what he said.” At long last.
I slapped my insulated tote bag on the counter. He loaded my order and insisted on taking it to the Jeep for us. I knew when I was being escorted out and left gracefully. Lady Anthea, however, was not going quietly.
It was her turn to prod him. “May I ask one last question, Mr. Ziegler?”
“Sure.” As if he had a choice.
“Why did you assume Mr. Cannon had been dismissed when you saw that we were picking up the order today?”
Rick looked at me. “She never met Henry, did she?”
I shook my head. Not when he was alive was what I wanted to say, but I held myself back.
“Henry was lazy and dishonest, and often bragged, which doesn’t go down well in a small town. I try to get along with everybody, especially good customers, but he was not—I think you would say—a mate. That’s why I figured he’d been fired.”
“Thank you for your forthrightness. We’ll be on our way,” she said and got in the car for the drive back to Buckingham’s.
Almost before the end of Raw-k & Roll’s driveway, Anthea said, “So we learned that Henry had a lover.”
“Still wonder why I’ve never gotten married?” I asked.
“I was married to the most wonderful man in the world for almost twenty years. He died three years ago and I miss him every day.” Her voice was so soft that if we’d been riding with the top off the Jeep, I wouldn’t have been able to hear her.