Three More Dogs in a Row

by Neil Plakcy

  He thought for a minute. “And you know, a couple of times he asked if he could borrow the van—wanted to go somewhere he couldn’t get to on his bike.” He frowned. “Shit. You think those times he borrowed the van he was using it to rob people? Holy Bible in a purse!”

  We both looked at him. “Sorry, that’s an old family expression. When my brother and I were teenagers we weren’t allowed to say things like holy shit. My mom had this purse with a bible built into it—the holy bible in a purse, they called it. My brother and I used to say that as a curse.”

  “Sounds like something Robin would say to Batman,” I said. I picked up a tortilla chip and scraped some cheese and meat onto it. “Rochester’s usually the friendliest dog, but he never liked Owen.”

  “Next time I think about going on a date, I’m going to borrow Rochester,” Mark said. “Maybe I’ll have better luck that way.”

  24 – Good to Go

  We went through the pitcher, and the nachos, and then the waitress delivered us a round of burgers and another pitcher. Mark was rambling, talking about some pictures he’d taken of Owen, and how maybe they would help Rick find him.

  “That reminds me,” I said. “Lili found a picture online of Owen up at Friar Lake, with DeAndre and one of the monks.”

  Both Rick and Owen said, “DeAndre?” at the same time.

  “DeAndre Dawson,” I said to Mark. “The guy whose body we found up at Friar Lake.”

  “I read about that in the Boat-Gazette,” he said. “It was someone Owen knew?”

  I nodded. “When Lili and I went out to Friar Lake last week, right after I got assigned to manage the place, we took Rochester with us. He was running around the property, and I noticed he was digging something up by the lake. When I got over there I realized it was a human hand.”

  Mark looked green, though it was hard to tell in the dim bar light. “That part didn’t make the paper.”

  “Step back,” Rick said. “Tell me about this picture Lili found.”

  I felt the beer getting to me, and I made a conscious effort to clear my head. I took a long drink of water, then said, “Lili is putting together a photo book about the Friar Lake property, and she was looking for old pictures online. She stumbled on this photo on a Pinterest board of Owen with DeAndre and this old monk named Brother Anselm. I doubt either Owen or DeAndre knew the Benedictines even used Pinterest.”

  “Any idea when it was taken?” Rick asked.

  “I’ll have to check with Brother Anselm. But he said he was out at Friar Lake in the early spring, and there’s a dogwood with new blossoms in the background.”

  Mark looked from me to Rick. “You don’t think Owen killed this guy, do you?”

  “Don’t know what to think,” Rick said. “Right now I just know I want to talk to Owen. And not just about what he might have stolen from Mark.”

  By the time the evening was winding down I was still a bit shaky, but I’d drunk a lot of water and eaten a lot, and I thought I was good to drive. I could tell Mark Figueroa was completely wasted, though.

  Rick and I walked him over to the antique shop and made sure he got inside all right. Then we walked back to the parking lot. When we got to his truck, Rick opened the passenger side and pulled a gadget out of the glove compartment. As he turned it on, I said, “What’s that?”

  “Breathalyzer. Want to make sure we’re both good to drive.” It beeped, and he said, “Watch me.” He blew into it for a couple of seconds, then held it away from him.

  The parking lot light above us buzzed, and a car passed down Ferry Street, heading toward the river. “You think Owen Keely ran away?” I asked Rick.

  “As opposed to?”

  “As opposed to somebody killing him,” I said. “Like DeAndre Dawson.”

  “Don’t know yet.” He looked at the device. “I’m good. You try.”

  He held it up to me, and said, “Blow out long and steady, all right?”

  I followed his instructions, only stopping when he took the device away from my face. “Do you think Owen killed DeAndre?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know yet.” He held the device up to me. “Can’t drive in Pennsylvania over .08. You’re at .04. You feel okay?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I’ll take it easy going home.”

  “All right. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  It was almost eleven o’clock, and I only passed two other cars on my way back to River Bend, but I still drove with exaggerated care, and felt relieved when I pulled into my driveway. As I opened the front door, I remembered I’d left Rochester uncrated, and braced myself for damage.

  All I saw, though, was the dog eagerly greeting me, and it looked like he’d been good. I hooked up his leash and we went for a quick walk, and after some more water and a couple of aspirin I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Wednesday morning, I walked Rochester down Sarajevo Court past the Keelys’ house. I hoped that Phil would be out working in the yard, or Marie riding on her tricycle, but Phil’s SUV, usually parked in the driveway, was gone, and the garage was closed. Had they gone after Owen? Or were they just out running errands or off to see a doctor?

  Not my business, I reminded myself. If Rick asked, I’d be happy to help him. But I wasn’t a cop and it wasn’t up to me to investigate anything.

  The rash of break-ins at Crossing Estates finally made the Bucks County Courier-Times that morning. It was in only a small article in the second section, but I knew it had to be causing trouble for Rick Stemper. I wondered about the earring that Mark had found in his van, and if that clue had helped Rick show he was making progress.

  I’d only been in my office for a few minutes when Elaine from HR called. “Good news, Steve. Your application has everything we need, and President Babson has authorized me to close the search.”

  “Does that mean I have the job?”

  “There are still a few more hoops, but this is a good step forward. The hiring site is down right now – something to do with that crappy Freezer Burn software, I think. I’ll be glad when they finally get that removed from every computer. Once it comes back up I have to finish the formal job description and schedule an interview with you where we discuss the job. Assuming he gets the approval he needs from the Board of Trustees, then I prepare an offer letter for you and get Babson to sign it.”

  After I hung up I sat back in my chair. I felt better—but not completely. I wouldn’t be satisfied until I knew that the Board had signed off on Friar Lake, and I had the counter-signed offer letter—maybe not even until I’d been established in the job for a while.

  Joe Capodilupo called me about eleven, as I was packing more boxes to send to Ruta del Camion in the press office. “I’m up at Friar Lake,” he said. “Looks like there was a break-in here.”

  “A break-in? Was it vandalism?” I asked. “There wasn’t much there to steal.”

  “A broken window in the anteroom at the back of the chapel. Then a big mess in the chapel itself.” He turned away from the phone to call a workman over. “Remember that hole under the altar? Whoever broke in made it a lot bigger, and dragged a bunch of crap out from underneath the altar.”

  “Looking for something,” I said. I remembered the reliquary that DeAndre had been searching for. It seemed to be at the center of everything. Had DeAndre found it and been killed for it? If so, then why was someone still searching the abbey?

  Or what if Owen had been working with DeAndre, and then for some reason Owen had killed him before they found the reliquary. And then, after leaving Mark Figueroa’s, Owen gone back up to the abbey and found it — and that’s why he’d left town?

  “Don’t know what they’d be looking for under there,” Joe said.

  I didn’t share my suspicion with him. Instead I said, “I’m going to call the Leighville cops. Don’t touch anything that looks like it was disturbed—maybe they can get fingerprints or something.”

  “I want to get that window fixed by dark,” Joe said.

  “I’
ll get on it right now. I’ll let you know what I hear.”

  “Better call John Babson too. He’ll want to know.”

  Great. I just loved taking bad news to the president. What if he used this information as a reason to hold off on talking to the Board of Trustees? Where would that leave me?

  First, though, I hung up and dialed Tony Rinaldi. “There was a break-in last night at Friar Lake,” I said. “I think it might be connected to DeAndre’s death. Can you get one of your crime scene techs up there to take fingerprints?”

  “Connected how?” Tony asked.

  “Rick told you about the photo Lili and I found, that linked Brother Anselm, DeAndre and Owen, didn’t he? I think Owen knew about the reliquary, too, and he broke into the chapel to look for it.”

  “You think the thing really exists?” Tony asked.

  “Doesn’t matter what I think right now,” I said. “Seems to me like DeAndre believed in it, and Owen, too.”

  “I’ll get a guy up there,” Tony said. “Owen Keely was in the Army so I’m sure there are prints on file somewhere.”

  After I hung up, I walked down the hall to President Babson’s office. “Is he in?” I asked his secretary.

  She looked down at the phone console on her desk. “He’s on a call with one of the trustees,” she said. “You want to wait?”

  I didn’t see that I had much choice. I sat in one of the spindle-backed chairs and thought about the suspicions I had. I realized I’d only been taking Brother Anselm’s word about the existence of the reliquary. Sure, Lili and I had seen a grainy photograph of something that might have been the reliquary. But was it? If it existed, surely someone else must have know about it. I pulled out my cell phone while I waited and began searching for information on Saint Roch. The connection was painfully slow and my screen way too small to read much, but I found the same things that Brother Anselm had told me, about his sainthood and his connection to dogs.

  “He’s off the phone,” Babson’s secretary said.

  I hopped up and knocked on his door, then pushed it open. “Have a moment?” I asked. When he nodded, I said, “I wanted to let you know that there was a break-in last night at Friar Lake.”

  “What?”

  I stepped farther into the room and told him what Joe Capodilupo had told me.

  Babson shook his head. “First a dead body, now a break-in.” He looked thoughtful. “Have a seat, Steve.”

  I sat, worried about what he was going to say. What would I do if the job fell through? I’d already been told I was being phased out of the fund-raising campaign. Could I go back to adjuncting? Freelance writing?

  “Do you think maybe this project is too far from campus? Too hard for us to keep a handle on?”

  As it often did in my conversations with President Babson, my heart rate zoomed. Was he asking me if I thought the whole idea was a bad one? I sure wasn’t going to agree to that, when my job depended on it. I thought very carefully before speaking.

  “You know I have my master’s from Columbia,” I said. “They have all kinds of additional centers. The Lamont-Doherty observatory, Arden House in the Catskills.” I warmed to my topic, knowing just which strings to play. “Every good college has them. Middlebury College has the Bread Loaf Center, up in the mountains.”

  Babson nodded. “You’re right. If Eastern is going to keep its reputation as a very good small college, we need to match the resources our competitors have. But I need you to keep a lid on these problems before the Board of Trustees gets cold feet. Have the police wrapped up their investigation of that body yet?”

  “I’m in touch with the detective regularly,” I said. “I’ll let you know once there’s news.”

  “Good. I have the paperwork from Elaine about your job right here. As soon as I get things firmed up with the Board, I’ll sign it.” His secretary buzzed to let him know he had a call, and I stood up and walked out, feeling like I had just dodged one bullet. I just worried how many more there would be before the job was really mine.

  Back in my office, I continued searching online for information about St. Roch. After a few minutes, Rochester got up from his place on the floor and nosed at my legs. Looking from him to the screen I had a bit of a eureka moment. ‘Roch’ was the first syllable in ‘Rochester.’ What a wild coincidence. My dog was named after his patron saint.

  Of course I’d had nothing to do with that. Caroline Kelly had named him after the romantic hero of Jane Eyre, and if she’d known of the saintly connection, she’d never mentioned it to me.

  Did he know that I was looking for information on his namesake? Or did he just want to go out for a walk? I opted for the second choice, and hooked up his leash.

  I was distracted as we walked, still thinking about the reliquary. I picked up a sandwich from one of the lunch trucks and took it back to my office, where I ate while I continued searching. At long last, I discovered a church in Philadelphia that had an archive of old photos of all the churches and other religious buildings in the diocese there.

  I called and spoke to Esther Washington, who told me she was in charge of the archive. “Do you have any material there on the Abbey of Our Lady of the Waters, in Leighville?” I asked.

  “I can’t be sure,” she said. “We have an awful lot of material that hasn’t been catalogued yet. But you’re welcome to come down and take a look, if you’d like.”

  I established how late she’d be there, and then hung up. I dialed Lili’s office and told her what I’d discovered. “Do you have time this afternoon to go down there with me?” I asked. “You might find some other pictures there.”

  “Give me a half hour to finish up for the day,” she said.

  Rochester and I finished eating. “You ready for an adventure, boy?” I asked. “Even if it’s just into Philadelphia?”

  He woofed in agreement.

  25 – St. Mary Martyr

  We met Lili by my car in the parking lot. Seeing her, Rochester immediately clambered into the back seat. I lowered all the windows and we headed south.

  As we drove down River Road I told her about the break-in at the abbey chapel.

  “You think it was Owen Keely?” she asked.

  “He’s the logical suspect. I’m sure that Brother Anselm told him about the reliquary, too. Maybe he found it after he left Mark’s, and that’s why he took off—to sell it somewhere.”

  “Do you think he killed DeAndre, too?”

  “I don’t know. Hell, I don’t even know if I believe this reliquary thing is real. We only have Brother Anselm’s word that it ever existed. There could be some other explanation for DeAndre’s death and Owen’s disappearance.”

  “Maybe there will be something more about it in these archives,” she said. The church’s address was on Germantown Avenue in North Philly, and she used her cell phone to pull up driving directions. “It says we should go down US 1,” Lili said. “Isn’t that a long way?”

  I shrugged. “When I was a kid that used to be the way we went into Philly. It’s a lot of traffic lights, but I think it puts us closer to North Philly than taking 95.” We hopped onto I-95 at the Scudder Falls Bridge, just north of Yardley, and then took it a few miles south to where it met up with US1 – or “useless 1,” as my dad used to call it.

  “Sometimes I forget how lucky we are to live out in the country,” Lili said, as we drove through Bristol, the original terminus for the Delaware Canal. The divided highway was lined with warehouses, motels, used car lots and superstores with huge parking lots. “You can hardly see a piece of grass around here except for that cemetery over there.”

  “The city keeps spreading,” I said. “I remember coming down this way to visit friends of my dad’s, or to go to some special store. It was pretty built up even then.”

  As we continued into the heart of the city, the suburban sprawl was replaced by rows of brick apartment buildings and strip shopping centers that had long ago lost their parking lots to road expansion. In Germantown, the street was li
ned with two-story row houses with street-level storefronts—hair salons and dry cleaners and consignment stores, cheap-looking Chinese, Mexican and burger restaurants.

  A group of teenage boys played a pickup game of basketball in a park across from an Acme grocery. On the side streets we saw more row houses, these a bit more modern, with jutting second-floor projecting bays.

  There were trees here and there, but the sidewalks were damaged and some of the windows on Germantown Avenue were broken. We began to see exterior bars on windows and roll-up gates on storefronts.

  “The College Connection kids come from places like this,” Lili said.

  “So did DeAndre. I can see why he fell in love with Leighville and encouraged his half-brother to go into the program.”

  The church of St. Mary Martyr was a vaguely gothic stone building, with a couple of arched windows and a square tower over the entrance to the sanctuary. A long sloping concrete walkway, built to meet ADA requirements, I was sure, snaked along one side of the old building. I could see traces of old graffiti on the stone, and the grass outside was parched from lack of water or care.

  An electric trolley car rattled past as we pulled into the parking lot behind the church. When I got out of the car, Rochester hopped out behind me, and immediately peed against a lamppost. “They probably won’t let you bring him inside,” Lili said.

  “I’m not leaving him in the car in this neighborhood. If we have to, he and I will wait in the lobby while you look through the pictures.”

  Esther Washington was a black woman in her late sixties who worked in the church office. “My goodness, what a beautiful dog!” she said when we walked in.

  Rochester went right up to her and sat down on his haunches. She reached over and petted him. “My, my. I had a dog just like you, sweetheart. A long time ago.”

  She looked up. “You must be the gentleman who called earlier.”

  “I’m Steve, and this is Lili,” I said. “And that’s Rochester.”