Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund

by Blaize Clement

  As we came out of the condo and trotted into the parking lot, I noticed a dark wannabe monster truck—a small pickup raised on ridiculously huge tires—idling with its lights off at the edge of the lot. I gave it a second glance because it was the kind of show-off vehicle that flaunts Confederate flags and semiliterate bumper stickers, not the sort of vehicle that people living at the Sea Breeze drive. Then Billy Elliot pulled me in the other direction, and I turned away from the truck and followed him, not hitting my full stride yet because it takes a minute or two for my muscles to get the message that it’s not a bad dream, they really do have to run like hell that early in the morning.

  Billy Elliot strained at the taut leash until we got to the end of the line of cars parked in the middle of the lot. As we turned into the open area, I let the leash play out to its full extent and began running in earnest. Behind me, the pickup pulled out of its spot, drove to the exit into the street, and sped away, its indistinct form looking like a prehistoric monster in the darkness. It was still without lights, which meant the driver was either extremely unaware or had been in the parking lot for some illicit purpose. Neither is unusual in Florida.

  It was around 6 A.M. when I worked my way to Secret Cove and Mame’s house. Everything about her was listless, including the way her tail drooped. I knelt beside her and inspected her ears and felt her nose. She wasn’t feverish, and she didn’t have any sign of infection in her eyes or ears. No limping and no sore spots. But she wasn’t feeling well, and most of the food I’d given her the day before was still in her bowl.

  I considered calling her vet and asking if holding a dead man’s finger in her mouth yesterday could have given Mame indigestion, but I didn’t want that piece of gossip to fly all over the key. Besides, I knew what the real problem was. Mame was almost at the stage when she would want to crawl off to hide and face her death alone. It’s the way animals handle the end of life. Perhaps humans should do the same.

  I led her out the side door of the lanai and let her squat in a circle of Asiatic jasmine in the backyard. We played fetch-the-ball for a few minutes, but she walked stiffly after it, and I got the feeling she was indulging me. I lifted her to the table on the lanai and brushed her auburn coat until it gleamed. Long-haired dachshunds don’t really need to be brushed every day unless they’re shedding, but I do it anyway because they like it. Besides, I like it for myself. There’s nothing like grooming a pet to get you calm and centered. Mame raised her nose and closed her eyes, with a dreamy look that caught at my heart. Her world was closing in, moments of satisfaction coming in smaller and smaller bits.

  By the time I left her, she had perked up enough to trot behind me to the door. She even wagged her tail when I kissed her nose good-bye. I think she did it to make me feel better.

  Lights were on at Stevie’s house, and she opened the door before I rang. Her long dark hair was hanging free, and she was dressed a lot like me, shorts and a sleeveless top. She looked pale and tired but a lot more focused than she’d been when I left her last night.

  She said, “I’ve already walked Reggie and fed him, but would you mind coming in for coffee?”

  It was more request than invitation, so I followed her to the kitchen, where she gestured toward a table in a windowed alcove.

  “There are some bran muffins if you’d like one. We have a cook twice a week, and she bakes up goodies when she’s here and freezes them.”

  Bran muffins didn’t sound like goodies to me, but I sat down and took one from a basket and broke off a chunk. Stevie slid two mugs of coffee on the table and took a chair opposite me.

  She said, “I lay awake all night thinking about what Conrad would want me to do. He would want me to be strong. He would want me to take charge. So that’s what I’m going to do. Because if I don’t, Denton will.”

  The muffin tasted healthy but blah. I took a sip of coffee to wash it down.

  I said, “Denton gave me the creeps last night. Is there something wrong with him?”

  “Nothing except innate meanness. He and Marian are both despicable people.”

  “Stevie, I’m sure Lieutenant Guidry asked you, but is there anybody you know who had a grudge against Conrad?”

  Her lips firmed in unconscious resistance. I waited, knowing that silence is often the best way to encourage somebody to tell what they’re reluctant to say.

  She said, “About a year ago, a man showed up here claiming to be Conrad’s cousin. He said his father and Angelo Ferrelli were brothers, that they grew up in the same village in Italy. He claimed his father had originated Madam Flutter-By, and that Angelo had stolen it. He wanted money.”

  I blinked at her, wondering if the muffin had made me stupid. “Stevie, I understood about three words you just said: cousin, brothers, and money. The rest was Greek. Or maybe Italian.”

  “Sorry, I guess I always assume everybody knows who Angelo Ferrelli was. He was Conrad’s father—Denton’s too, of course, although not spiritually, like Conrad. Angelo Ferrelli was a famous clown with the Ringling Circus. He was known as Madam Flutter-By.”

  I must have still looked blank. She said, “I have a picture of him.”

  She got up and left the room. While she was gone, I wadded the rest of my muffin in a paper napkin. Stevie came back and set a framed photograph facing me on the table.

  I did a double take, and Conrad’s androgenous way of dressing suddenly made sense. Madam Flutter-By wore crisp white trousers and a matching cutaway coat, but the coat nipped in at the waist and its long skirt fanned out like a woman’s peplum. It also had exaggerated leg-o’-mutton sleeves with black ruching at the wrists. He wore a closefitting hat with a crown curiously rounded to give the suggestion of a prim librarian’s bun. His face was stark white, with only five marks on it: two curving high on the cheekbones like long black tears, two arched above his eyes like blackbirds in flight, and one between the painted brows in a black teardrop. The only color was a wide bright-red mouth.

  I thought of the red grin slashed on Conrad’s face and felt ice running up my spine.

  “Tell me again about that man’s claim.”

  “His name was Brossi. He said his father was Angelo’s brother and that Angelo had stolen Madam Flutter-By from his brother when they were boys in Italy. He wanted money.”

  I still didn’t get it, so she explained it slowly, the way you’d explain long division to a three-year-old.

  “The name Madam Flutter-By is registered, like a patent or a trademark. The makeup, that white face with the distinctive black marks and red lips, can’t be used by any other clown. If his likeness is used in any way, his estate gets paid, the same way Disney gets paid if somebody runs a Mickey Mouse cartoon on TV or puts a Mickey Mouse face on a kid’s lunch box or watch face. There were Madam Flutter-By films, Madam Flutter-By charms, and oil paintings and coffee mugs and pillows and thousands of other things with his face or form on them. They’re collector’s items today.”

  “So if that guy Brossi was telling the truth—”

  “If he was telling the truth, his father should have got some of the money Angelo made.”

  “But Angelo was the one who actually made the idea work. His brother must not have had Angelo’s talent, or he would have become famous himself.”

  “That’s what Conrad said, among other things. Mostly, he said his father had created Madam Flutter-By, that nobody else had ever done the act, and that Brossi was a fraud. But I’m not sure if he could be positive about that. It was so long ago, and in some little place in Italy. Who knows who first came up with the act?”

  “Do you know where Brossi went?”

  “He didn’t go anywhere. He owns a telemarketing firm here in Sarasota.”

  I said, “Did you know Madam Flutter-By?”

  “No, but I knew Angelo Ferrelli. He had already retired from the circus when I met him, but he was a lovely man. Highly intelligent, cultured, witty. Conrad is a lot like him. Was. Conrad adored him. Denton was ashamed of him. Of cou
rse, Denton was ashamed of Conrad too.”

  I tried to think of a way to say it tactfully and couldn’t, so I just said it. “Was Denton embarrassed by the way Conrad dressed?”

  She grinned. “He hated it. Marian too.”

  “Is that why Conrad did it?”

  “No, Conrad just liked wearing that crazy stuff. Growing up in a circus family, I guess it seemed normal to him. Sometimes I thought he could have been a little more sensitive to Denton’s feelings about it, but it was a point of pride with him. You know, to be who he was, no matter what other people thought about it. He was that way when I met him.”

  “Where was that?”

  She looked startled for a moment, as if she’d opened up something she hadn’t intended. “We were both in drama at Yale.”

  Since my education consisted of two years of community college and six months at the police academy, that sentence alone exposed a social chasm between us. It also meant that Stevie could be a very good actress, pretending grief for a husband she’d killed herself. But I didn’t think so.

  I said, “When Brossi came—”

  “Conrad practically threw him out of the house, and the man told Conrad he would be sorry. What he actually said was One day you will see me again and be sorry.”

  “You didn’t tell Lieutenant Guidry about this?”

  “I didn’t think about it until just now. Brossi never contacted Conrad again, or at least not so far as I know.”

  “If Brossi raised the issue now that Conrad’s gone, what would happen?”

  “Now he would be dealing with Denton. I don’t know what Denton would do.”

  “Brossi’s the only person you know of who had reason to hate Conrad?”

  “He’s the only one.”

  The truth lay on the table between us, as tasteless as the bran muffins. Denton Ferrelli had hated Conrad too. Maybe he had settled old scores with his brother.

  “Stevie, I saw Conrad’s car yesterday morning, with Reggie in the backseat. It went past when I was leaving the Powell house and turned onto Midnight Pass Road. I thought Conrad was driving, but he couldn’t have been because just a few minutes later I found his body.”

  “But Reggie wouldn’t have got in the car with a stranger.”

  “Exactly.”

  She stared at me with unfocused eyes. “You think Denton killed Conrad, don’t you?”

  “I think he may have had something to do with it.”

  I didn’t need to remind her that Denton and Marian formed a duo. One of them could have killed Conrad while the other drove his car away with Reggie inside. I could see on her face that she had already figured that out for herself, but she didn’t want to believe it was possible.

  Her eyes suddenly blazed with tears. “I feel like I’m in a bad dream that won’t stop.”

  “Stevie, is there anything I can do?”

  “There’s one thing. Wait a minute.”

  She hurried out again, and came back carrying a long swallowtail coat on a padded hanger. The coat was made of squares of satin and velvet in brilliant stained-glass colors, with wide red satin lapels and fist-sized plastic chrysanthemums for buttons.

  “Conrad was going to wear this at a meeting to explain the details of the new retirement home to the circus community. He was looking forward to it so much …” She fought back tears and turned to me with steely control. “It should be returned to the people who made it. Somebody else should have a chance to enjoy it.”

  It was an oddly irrelevant thing to be concerned about right then, but I understood. When the mind has been shattered, it scrambles to find familiar things to do, little details to obsess over, bills to pay, appointments that must be canceled.

  I took the coat from her. For so much material, it was surprisingly light.

  I said, “Did the Metzgers make this?”

  “You know them?”

  “They have a couple of cats I take care of sometimes.”

  “You’ll explain to them? Why Conrad can’t wear it? And tell them Conrad loved the coat.”

  “I’ll tell them, Stevie.”

  If Stevie Ferrelli didn’t know her husband’s murder was front-page news, she was still in shock.

  7

  Before I pulled out of Stevie’s driveway, I put in a call to Guidry at his office, noting as I did that my phone showed three little batteries on its face, a gentle reminder to charge it. I got his mailbox and left a message that I had information about Conrad’s murder. He called back while I was brushing a black Persian named Inky. When the phone buzzed, Inky gave me an annoyed frown and jumped off the grooming table. Even before I looked at the caller ID, I knew it had to be either Guidry or Michael or Paco, because nobody else has my cell number.

  I said, “Hello, Guidry.”

  “You said you had information?”

  “Two things. Denton Ferrelli was ashamed of his brother and hated his involvement with circus people. Also, they have a cousin, or a man who claimed to be a cousin, who came to see Conrad about a year ago demanding money. Conrad threw him out, and the guy told him he would be sorry. He runs a telemarketing firm here. Name is Brossi.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Stevie Ferrelli. While we were drinking coffee. There’s something else too. Not exactly information, just something I forgot to tell you yesterday. About seeing Conrad’s car before Mame found the body.”

  “Mame?”

  “The dog. Not Conrad’s dog, another dog.”

  “So what did you forget?” Guidry sounded like he might be talking through his teeth, so I hurried.

  “I waved hello to him. To the driver of the car. I thought it was Conrad because I saw Reggie in the backseat. Reggie is Conrad’s dog—was—so I waved. And I think I said Hey!”

  The line was silent a moment.

  “You’re telling me the killer probably thinks you got a good look at him.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  I took a deep breath. “That’s all.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. I’ll talk to you later. In the meantime, be careful.”

  He clicked off and left me holding a dead phone.

  I said “Damn!” but under my breath, because I don’t like to cuss in front of my animals. I dropped the phone in my pocket next to the .38 and coaxed Inky back for the rest of his grooming. But our rhythm was off, and it wasn’t very satisfying to either of us.

  Josephine and Will Metzger’s street is only about a mile from the verdant beauty of Secret Cove, but the people who planned it must have decided to uphold the virtues of ugly. There’s not a tree in sight, and its sun-bleached frame houses squat gracelessly behind salty bald yards. It was about ten-thirty when I parked in the Metzgers’ shell driveway and walked to the front door, holding Conrad’s coat high above my shoulder so the tails wouldn’t drag.

  In their younger days, Josephine and Will had been aerialists with the Ringling Circus, but after they’d both broken and rebroken most every bone they had, the glamour of flying through the air without a net had lost its allure. Now they had a business making clown costumes. Will had a workshop over the garage where he made custom-designed clown shoes, while Josephine and a string of short-term helpers sewed baggy suspender pants and swallowtail coats made of outlandish polka dots and plaids.

  Josephine’s newest helper, an impossibly young mother named Priscilla, answered the door when I rang. I had never heard Priscilla speak, and I didn’t know whether she was mute or just painfully shy. She didn’t speak this morning either, but gave me a sweet smile with black-lipsticked lips. Priscilla had bright pink hair cut in a feathery halo and wore at least a half dozen rings around the rim of each ear. A diamond stud flashed at the edge of one nostril, and more diamonds, or reasonable facsimiles thereof, decorated her long emerald fingernails. A couple of gold rings flashed at her navel. Low-rider white Levi’s sat on her narrow hips, and her cropped top hugged breasts the
size of tangerines. Her shoes had soles a good four inches thick, with heels slightly higher, so that she tilted forward at a precarious angle. If it hadn’t been for the fading yellow bruise high on her right cheekbone, she would have looked like any other teenager trying out a new identity.

  She led me down the hall to a large square room that always made me feel like a visitor in an off-brand church. Sunlight streamed through ceiling-high windows, and bolts of fabric stacked on deep shelves absorbed the sound of two sewing machines that faced each other like dueling altars. A cloth tailor’s dummy stood in the corner wearing a red-and-yellow-plaid cutaway with zoot-suit lapels and formal tails. A playpen sat next to Priscilla’s sewing center, with a big-eyed baby girl clutching its mesh sides and doing bouncy knee bends.

  Josephine was at an ironing board steaming open a seam. She looked up long enough to grin at me and then went back to steaming. Like her neighborhood, Josephine had given up on pretty a long time ago. Her long gray hair straggled over her shoulders, and not a smidgen of powder or blush colored her face. She didn’t even bother to wear her bridge anymore, just flaunted all the gaps between her teeth.

  She said, “’Cilla, do you see somebody in this room that looks like Dixie Hemingway? You remember her, the one we haven’t seen in so long I can’t remember. Could it be that she has come to see us?”

  I hung Conrad’s coat on a metal clothes rack and helped myself to a stick of chewing gum from a selection in a hat box on a table.

  I said, “It’s been several weeks, hasn’t it?”

  “You been busy with your cats and dogs, I guess.”

  “I really am, Jo. About all I do is get up and walk dogs and clean kitty litter, and then it’s time to go back and do it all over again.”

  “Well, we love you anyway, even if we never hardly see you.”

  I chomped down on the gum and tasted its sweet juices flowing over my tongue. I hadn’t chewed gum since high school, and I wondered why I’d ever stopped. The baby gave me a toothless grin, and I went over and fluffed the blond floss on the top of her head.