Pall in the Family

by Dawn Eastman

  “Just leave it by the steps and we’ll go get him,” I said to Seth, who was holding the scooper at arm’s length.

  I unlocked the door and stepped inside, bracing myself for Tuffy’s attack. It didn’t come.

  “Tuffy?”

  “Here, puppy,” Seth said from behind me, and got down on one knee. He whistled. “Come on, boy.”

  Still nothing.

  “This is weird, Seth. Stay here.”

  The shades were still down, and I threaded my way through the dimly lit living room, which was crowded with a sectional sofa that must have been purchased for a larger room, and a coffee table piled with books on spiritualism and séances. On the mantel, pictures of two college-age girls flanked a photo of the elusive dog. Sara’s divorce had turned nasty over custody of the shih tzu. Had I been in her shoes, I would have walked away from the sectional and the dog.

  Something definitely wasn’t right. With a growing sense of dread, I headed toward the dining room. I wouldn’t have noticed the dog, but Seth, who was following like a stealth ninja, did.

  “There he is!”

  I jumped and backed into Seth, almost knocking both of us to the ground.

  “I told you to stay put.” My voice edged toward drill sergeant, but Seth didn’t seem to notice.

  “Sorry.” He was already on his knees, looking under the table. “Is that Tuffy?”

  I bent down to get a better look. A small ball of fluff was sitting under the dining room table shivering, its brown eyes shining. I nodded and kneeled next to Seth.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Seth asked, leaning toward the dog.

  “Maybe he’s afraid of you. I’ve never brought anyone with me before. I hadn’t thought about it, but he could be . . .” I stopped as Tuffy came out from under the table, crawled into Seth’s lap, and continued trembling.

  “He doesn’t seem afraid of me.” Seth said, and stroked Tuffy’s head.

  “No, I guess not. But something’s wrong.” I reached out to pet Tuffy, who usually was against all physical contact unless food was involved. He licked my hand and leaned closer in to Seth.

  “Stay here with the dog. I’ll be right back.” I stood and scanned the room.

  The hair on the back of my neck prickled, and my ears buzzed. I moved slowly toward the kitchen, old instincts kicking in. I hadn’t felt this rush of adrenaline and fear since I’d returned to Crystal Haven. I couldn’t say I’d missed it. As I reached back and felt along my waistband, I did miss the gun.

  From the kitchen doorway I could see why Tuffy was quivering. Sara was sprawled on the floor: faceup, motionless, legs at an odd angle, eyes staring at the ceiling. The blood had spread underneath her and across her tunic, obliterating the brightly colored flowers.

  2

  “Is she . . . dead?” said a small voice from behind me.

  I turned quickly to see Seth staring with huge eyes at Sara, and Tuffy trying to climb over Seth’s shoulder to get as far away from the kitchen as possible.

  Before I knew what was happening, my police training kicked in, and I pushed Seth behind me against the dining room wall. I peeked around into the kitchen and signaled him to be quiet. I was sure Sara had been killed, but I couldn’t be sure the murderer was gone.

  I stood for a moment and willed my heart to stop racing. Between the dizziness and the pounding in my ears, I was forced to lean against the doorjamb and take deep, slow breaths. The metallic tang of blood was so strong I could almost taste it. I was trained to deal with violence and death. I tried to remember what I was supposed to do next. My mind flashed back to that warm spring evening in Ann Arbor—the last time I had seen so much blood—but I quickly put a stop to that. I had to stay calm.

  I cataloged the area to focus my thoughts. The back door was closed but not locked. A half-full coffee cup sat on the counter by a plate of untouched toast. Sara was wearing bright floral-patterned silk pants and a matching tunic. The pool of blood that had collected underneath her looked thick and dark against the beige tile. I started worrying about how she would ever get her grout clean—obviously, my shocked brain’s attempt to distract.

  I heard Seth breathing in my ear, and Tuffy trembled against my back. Otherwise, the house was silent. I signaled to Seth to stay put, and his wide-eyed nod assured me he would. I stepped into the kitchen, took a deep breath, and forced myself to feel for a pulse, knowing I wouldn’t find one. As I touched her neck, I felt a surge of fear and rage and had to close my eyes until it passed. It was harder to ignore the rising nausea. Her skin was cold but still soft. We were too late to help her, but my exposure to death reports in my time with the police told me she hadn’t been dead very long.

  Keeping the back door in view, I returned to Seth and Tuffy in the dining room. We made our way quickly back through the living room and out the front door. I wasn’t prepared to check the house without backup and with a thirteen-year-old in tow.

  “I wish you hadn’t seen that. I told you to stay where you were. Why don’t you ever listen . . . ?” I began my tirade when we got outside but stopped as I noticed that Seth had transformed from an annoying adolescent to a little boy. He had the same look as the time he found a dead baby robin in the backyard when he was six, his first brush with death. I couldn’t remember the last time I had hugged him: a real hug, not just a quick airport hug. I had never embraced Tuffy, but I found myself holding both of them for a long moment.

  “Clyde, I don’t feel so good.” Seth muffled into my shoulder.

  I jumped back just in time to miss most of it. It only caught the toe of my shoe, but Tuffy wasn’t as lucky. The dog glared at me from under his poufy ponytail as if it was my fault. The combination of all that blood and remembering Sara’s lifeless body had my own stomach lurching in protest. I took deep breaths and held my hands together to keep them from shaking.

  “We have to call the police,” I said. I put my arm around Seth’s shoulder and urged him toward the Jeep.

  Baxter barked through the few inches of open window as we approached. We got in, locked the doors, and called 911.

  * * *

  We’d decided that being locked in a car with a vomit-covered dog was worse than a run-in with a murderer; even Baxter didn’t put up a fuss when we left him behind again. I was hosing Tuffy off in the front yard while Seth sat on the stoop with his head between his knees when the police cruiser arrived. A young man climbed out of the car, managed to trip over a pebble, and walked to where I was drying off the disgruntled shih tzu.

  “Hello, ma’am. I’m Officer Andrews.” He flipped open a small notepad. “Dispatch sent me here to check on a report of a dead body.”

  I nodded and offered him my hand. “I’m Clyde Fortune; this is my nephew, Seth Proffit.”

  “Clyde Fortune? The Clyde Fortune? Are you Rose Fortune’s daughter?” He looked from one eye to the other. I have two different-colored eyes, the one thing people always like to confirm for themselves upon meeting me. The left is pale blue, the right dark brown. Often people report this fact, as if I’d never looked in a mirror.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “My mother told me you went to Ann Arbor to join the police, but now you’re back and everyone says you’re finally going to join the family business.”

  “You are? Awesome!” Seth perked up at this news.

  “Andrews? Jillian is your mother?” I studied his face: thin nose, brown eyes, and dark hair. He had the height and gangly bearing of all the Andrews kids. My mother and Jillian are best friends, and I had been in school with her oldest daughter. “I probably used to babysit you. Which one are you?”

  “That’s harsh, Clyde,” said Seth. He shrugged and shook his head at Officer Andrews as if to say “you can’t take her anywhere.”

  A slow blush crept up from under Andrews’s uniform, spreading toward his hairline.

  “Th
omas. I think maybe you did babysit for us.” His shoulders slumped.

  “Sorry, that came out wrong. Listen, Officer Andrews, there’s a dead woman inside.” I swung my arm in the direction of the house. “I think that’s more important than small-town gossip. And you can tell your mother I’m not going to join the family business ever.”

  “Why not? It would be so cool—” Seth began.

  “Not now.” I gave him my best glare, and for once it worked.

  “Right, okay,” said Officer Andrews as he made a note on his pad. “Are you a friend of the deceased?”

  “Sort of. I’m the dog walker.”

  “The what?”

  “The dog walker.” I gestured to Tuffy.

  “People pay you to walk their dogs? Here? In Crystal Haven?”

  I just held his gaze. No one can do that for long; the eyes creep them out.

  “Huh. Okay, show me.” He sighed and pointed toward the house.

  * * *

  I didn’t know if it was the puddle of vomit by the porch or the pool of blood in the kitchen, but Officer Andrews didn’t have a strong stomach. Fortunately, he made it outside before contaminating the crime scene. He pulled himself together just as the ambulance arrived.

  “I didn’t expect . . . ,” he said.

  “I told them it was a murder scene on the phone.”

  “Dispatch just said a body was found. I thought, you know, a heart attack. I need to get the medical examiner out here, and the homicide detective.” He began punching numbers into his phone.

  “Okay, well, you know where to find me if you have any questions.”

  “Ms. Fortune, please don’t tell anyone about . . .” He tilted his head toward the mess in the grass.

  “It’ll be our secret.” I turned toward the car.

  “Wait, I really don’t think I can let you leave yet. The detective will want to talk to you and your nephew. He’s a real stickler for details. I think you know him—Mac McKenzie?”

  My head began to pound. I wasn’t ready to face Mac. I had to get out of there.

  I coughed to steady my voice. “I’ve been here for an hour already. I told you everything I know. I have a list of dogs waiting for me. My clients won’t be happy if they come home to find out their animals haven’t been taken care of and have been left to their own devices.”

  “But, I . . .” I could almost see the lightbulb over his head as he figured out what I meant.

  “I’ll give you the list of every place I’m going today. And you have my cell phone number. I can come right back as soon as everyone gets here or as soon as you need to talk to me.”

  “Well . . .” Tom watched the ambulance driver unload a gurney from the back of the truck.

  “Seth, where’s that list?”

  “You have it,” he said, as he and Tuffy wandered over to the cruiser.

  “No, I don’t. I told you to take it off the table.” My hands found my hips of their own accord, and I realized I probably looked just like my mother.

  “No you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I—check your pockets.” I crossed my arms to keep from frisking him.

  “No, you . . .” He grimaced at Tom and began rummaging in his jeans pocket. “Oh, here it is.” He handed a crumpled piece of paper to the officer.

  Tom looked it over. “Archie, Molly, Roxie, MacDuff, Tuffy, Bonnie, Bear, Jewel, Crystal, and Hamlet.” He stared at us. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “What should we do with Tuffy?” Seth interrupted.

  “I guess he’ll have to go to the shelter,” I said.

  “The shelter! He can’t go to the shelter.” Seth bent to pick up the dog. “He just lost his person, look at him. He’s devastated. How can you put him in a shelter?”

  “Now you sound like Auntie Vi. He’ll be fine. He’ll have plenty of food, which is all he cares about anyway,” I said.

  “Clyde, we can’t do that to him. You saw how traumatized he was. We have to take him with us. We’re the only people he knows.”

  “He just met you and he doesn’t like me.”

  “I’ll take care of him. I’ll do everything. We’ve already bonded. Look at him.”

  I had to admit. It was hard to resist two sets of soft brown imploring eyes. I sighed, knowing I would regret this.

  “If Officer Andrews has no issue with it, I guess we can keep him until Sara’s family is ready for him.”

  Seth and Tuffy hurried off to the Jeep before I could change my mind. I followed before Tom could make up his mind. He was distracted by the ambulance driver and the need to protect the crime scene.

  I should have listened to that little voice that kept saying, “Shelter, shelter, shelter!”

  3

  Thanks to Seth, Baxter was out of the car again “because he was lonely and worried about us.” After allowing Baxter and Tuffy to do the whole doggy ritual, which involved a lot of sniffing and walking in circles, we put Tuffy in the front and began to wrestle Baxter into the backseat. He stared at the house, carefully watching Officer Andrews and the paramedics. I made Seth pull from the front end this time, thinking I would avoid the drool. The dog made his front legs stiff and then turned and dripped on my arm, which he knew would make me jerk away. Fortunately, Seth was on it, and he pulled Baxter’s face forward just as I let go. I gave Baxter a big shove from behind. The dog chose that moment to leap willingly into the Jeep, leaving me facedown in the dirt. Grateful that Officer Andrews was occupied with the ambulance driver and hadn’t witnessed any of this, I glared at Baxter and slammed the door. He refused to acknowledge me.

  Tuffy shivered on Seth’s lap as we drove to my mother’s house to drop off the two unexpected boarders. Baxter slimed both back windows until I cracked one open so he could hang his head out and inhale the passing scenery. Baxter recognized, as we turned onto my street, that we were almost there and began with tail wagging, low woofs, and running the length of the backseat to check both windows. He loved staying at my mom’s.

  I’ve been told by too many people to count that my family’s house looks haunted. This statement is usually accompanied by a hopeful or terrified look, depending on the person, due to our reputation. A few blocks away from the downtown area of Crystal Haven, it’s close enough for quite a bit of foot traffic but far enough away that it’s definitely in the residential section. Surrounded by similar Victorian-style homes from early in the last century, ours stands out due to its size and general looming presence.

  Painted gray and white—no bright, happy colors here—the Victorian has steeply pitched eaves and a large side porch that wraps around the back. The spires and vertical white accents on the front make it look even taller than its three stories. The large trees in the yard lend a shady gloom even on a sunny summer day.

  I pulled into the long gravel driveway and thought yet again that if there were any dead to wake, the rocks pinging my undercarriage would do the trick.

  We all piled out and headed for the porch. The front door swung open slowly as we approached. It creaks because Mom refuses to let anyone oil it. She thinks it adds ambience. Then, the door flew open to reveal my aunt. A deep purple shawl was thrown over her shoulders, even though it was mid-July. Vi is always cold and has a vast collection of colorful shawls to combat the “chill.” Her twisted braid of white hair trailed down her back, her black eyes glittered.

  “I knew it! I knew you’d be home for lunch,” said Vi as she stepped forward. “I was just telling Rose to get some sandwiches ready, ’cause the kids are on their way.”

  I wondered how much the gravel driveway helped my aunt’s intuition.

  “We had a small mishap and need to drop off a couple of boarders,” I said as Baxter trotted ahead of me and Seth followed behind with the shivering fur ball in his arms.

  “Hello, Baxter. It’s nice to see you again. I
hope you enjoy your stay.” Aunt Vi directed her comments to the dog. I waited for her to ask about his luggage.

  Baxter sat and allowed himself to be petted and hugged by my aunt.

  “Who do you have there?” my mother said as she bustled in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She looked calmer than she had that morning. I assumed there had been no more bat sightings.

  “This is Tuffy, he needs to stay with us for a couple of days, Nana Rose,” Seth said as he sat in the middle of the entryway and cuddled Tuffy on his lap.

  “He’s not well. I can feel it,” said Vi. “You smell awful, Seth.” She was on all fours in front of Tuffy, ducking her head in her “submissive stance.” She claims it puts the animals at ease.

  “Isn’t that Sara Landess’s dog?” My mother looked to me.

  I set my messenger bag by the front door.

  “Mom, come sit down.”

  “What happened? I just knew that something happened,” said Vi, slowly coming out of her crouch and leaning heavily on Seth’s head as she stood.

  “Seth, go get cleaned up while I talk to Aunt Vi and Nana Rose.”

  Seth nodded and carried Tuffy to the stairs, while Baxter followed like a large shadow.

  I led the sisters into the living room. One of them had tidied after the bat incident. My mother and aunt sat on the couch; I chose the chair closest to my mother. It isn’t a very restful room, dominated by competing patterns and colors, fringe and trinkets in an excess of Victorian style.

  “So, what is it?” Vi demanded.

  I looked at her and hoped she could hear my loud thoughts of calm down and back off. She didn’t seem to be picking up on anything, so I turned to my mother.

  “Mom, I’m sorry, but Sara’s dead.”

  Her hand flew to her chest and gripped the amethyst and quartz amulet she wore around her neck.

  “What? She was so young! What happened?” she said. Her eyes welled with tears.

  “It looks like someone killed her,” I said. I leaned forward to hug my mother, but she held up her hand, stopping me.