I leafed through the magazine until 8:30, then dialed the Dorns’ number and counted thirteen rings. No Greg, no “leave a message after the beep.” The dogs bounded over when they saw me hang up, panting and wagging and eager to slobber on my clean sweatshirt. I blocked with a bent knee and a firm, if frantic, refrain of “Off! Off!,” saving myself from drool and paw prints but slopping tea all over myself.
The dogs suddenly spun toward Goldie’s yard, ears alert, Pip’s fully erect and Jay’s folded over about a quarter of the way from tip to base. They blasted over to the fence and shoved their black noses into the space between the pickets. Jay’s short little nub directed his fanny in a wriggle, and Pip’s long, lush plume swung back and forth.
“Good morning, Mr. Jay! And good morning to you, handsome boy. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name already, but I haven’t forgotten your toast!” Jay has a morning ritual of fence talk and toast with Goldie. Not a leftover morsel, mind you, but a fat slice of Goldie’s home-baked flavor of the week, toasted lightly and polished with a thin gloss of jam made from one of Goldie’s raspberry vines. This morning she brought two slices, neither of them for me. Maybe I should slobber and wriggle my fanny too.
Leo stopped his claw sharpening and studied the goings-on at the lot line. He trotted over, leapt to the top of the fence and onto the ground beyond, and began meowing and rubbing against Goldie’s legs. “Ah, Leo! Good morning to you. Come on, we’ll get you a fix, too.” I hauled myself out of my chair and walked to the fence, watching as Goldie and Leo strolled through one of the herb beds and selected a tender new sprout of catnip. Leo never helps himself to Goldie’s cat-drug stash, but waits for her to serve him as is his divine right. He took the morning’s tribute and trotted to a patch of lawn, where he chewed a bite of the herb, slid the top of his skull through the leaves, then his ears, neck, shoulders, and back, and began the whole sequence again.
Goldie turned to me and said, “I need to run to the co-op for some flour and stuff. Want to go?” Her face was pale in the morning light, and the dark circles I’d noticed the last couple of weeks still hunkered under her eyes. I was about to say yes, thinking I could press her about her health if I had her captive in the car, when my phone rang. A pang in my gut reminded me that I hadn’t returned Detective Stevens’ call. I nodded at Goldie and spoke into the receiver, expecting a summons to police headquarters.
It was Suzette. She wanted to have some pictures taken of Fly, so we set a time and I turned off the phone.
“Actually, I wanted to leave a note for Pip’s owner at his house. He’s not answering the phone and the machine is off. I want to be sure he has my number. We can do both.”
17
I bagged a half pound each of organic rolled oats (for homemade dog biscuits, the only thing I bake) and licorice all-sorts (for me) from the bulk bins at the Three Rivers Food Co-op. I was adding up the price tags on the stuff in my cart as I rounded the end of the aisle and pulled up just short of a crash. “Oh! Tom! What a surprise!”
Tom Saunders stood in front of a display of garden seed packets. “Janet! Hey! What’s up?”
“Running some errands. You? You’re not working today?” I caught myself wishing for the second time in so many days that I’d taken time for a dab of makeup this morning, at least a bit of shadow and mascara. I could have changed out of my tea-stained apparel, too. You slob, scolded my guardian angel. Get real, countered the little demon. If you’re looking for a fashion plate, it ain’t me, babe. “I’m on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule this semester.” I remembered then that I’d heard he was a professor, although I didn’t know whether he was attached to the Purdue or Indiana University side of the joint Fort Wayne campus.
“What do you teach?”
“Anthropology.”
“Oh.” I could have sworn someone told me he worked with plants. “Somehow I got the idea you were in botany.”
“I am, sort of.” He grinned. “Ethnobotany.”
Recalling his comment about commercial drugs, I would have pursued the topic, but Goldie rounded the end of the aisle, asking something about which essential oil I liked better for a spring potpourri, lilac or lily-of-the-valley. She stopped and got a tricky twinkle in her eyes when she saw Tom. I introduced them, and she offered her hand. He looked a tad startled when she held on longer than strictly polite and gazed into his eyes. Then they grinned at one another, and she let him go.
“It’s great to see you, Janet.” That struck me funny since he was still grinning at Goldie. “Unfortunately, I have a faculty meeting in half an hour.” He and Goldie both nodded, as if they shared a secret. Then Tom turned his baby browns to me, reached out and squeezed my shoulder, making several parts of my body contract. “See you soon.”
As we watched him walk to the check-out line, Goldie leaned into me and said, “Not bad!”
“Yeah, I guess.” My face was heating up again. “I barely know him.”
“Ha! But you’d like to!”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Me? Silly? You’re the one who’s drooling! And frankly, it’s about time. They aren’t all like Cheat.”
“Chet.” Goldie and I had played the Cheat/Chet game for years. “It has nothing to do with Chet.” She was right, of course. It had everything to do with cheatin’ Chet and his escapades. “I’m just not interested. I like my freedom.” And my sanity, credit rating, and bank balance, modest though it is.
Goldie rolled her eyes and made a rude sound.
“Oh yeah?” I couldn’t come up with anything intelligent for the moment. “And what, pray tell, was that business with Tom’s hand?”
“Just checking.”
“Checking?”
Goldie is not merely a New Age seeker of enlightenment. She’s been this way since the sixties. For all I know, she was born this way. More than once. “Feeling his energy,” she shrugged as she plunked both flower oils into her basket and furrowed her forehead. “I know him from somewhere.” Then she grinned at me. “Hey, girlfriend, go for it!” She adjusted her glasses halfway down her nose and spun the seed display rack.
“I’m not interested in going for anything!” I glanced into Goldie’s cart and did a double take. She must have had thirty bottles of vitamins and herbal concoctions. Saw palmetto. Green tea. Cat’s claw. Stuff I’d never heard of. What’s up with that?
I couldn’t think of what to say, so I read the names on the seed packets she was studying. Alyssum. Bachelor’s buttons. Calendula. Castor bean. “Castor bean? Aren’t these poisonous?”
“Deadly.”
“And they sell them?”
“Oh, my dear, lots of plants are poisonous. Castor plants are gorgeous big things. Just don’t eat the seeds.”
“Seems a bit casual to me.”
“Oh, heavens, we’re surrounded by toxic plants. Did you know that rhubarb leaves are poisonous? Tomato leaves too. Daffodil bulbs. Lily-of-the-valley. Here—foxglove—poisonous.” She pointed to a packet of Digitalis purpurea, then another with blue flowers like those painted on the Rule of Three sign in her garden. “Monkshood too. Deadly. Used to be known as wolfsbane. Those yews in front of every other house in suburbia? All toxic. Shall I go on? And then of course there are the wild poisonous plants—jimsonweed, the hemlocks, pigweed …”
“Okay, okay. I get it. Remind me not to piss you off.”
18
“Holy moly,” said Goldie. We had just pulled up in front of the Dorns’ house, one of a handful scattered around this slick new subdivision. The nearest neighbor was a block away, although not for long. Streamers of fluorescent orange tape flapped from stakes in the lot next door.
The front of the Dorns’ house was all glass, taupe-tinted brick, and putty-colored woodwork. The double front door was one of those snazzy jobs with an intricate full-length pattern of clear leaded glass se
t into a frame of rich, luminous cherry-stained wood. The landscaping, mostly shrubs and groundcovers and saplings, was professional and neat, but lacked the joy and passion of Goldie’s plot of ground. The path to the door was fancy aggregate set in concrete and hemmed on both sides by brick to match the house. It struck me as a swanky piece of impersonal architecture, but not a home to comfort those within, the expensive, hard facade of the house not unlike the face that Abigail herself had shown the world.
An engine roared somewhere nearby but out of sight, and as I stepped from the car a noxious blend of gasoline and new-mown grass surged into my nose and planted a blade of pain in my skull. I was scurrying toward the front door and trying not to inhale when a boy of about fourteen pushed a beat-up mower around the corner of the house. He waved at me through the blue fumes, mowed to about ten feet from me, and cut the engine. The silence was deafening. The boy shoved a shock of brown hair off his forehead. “Mr. Dorn isn’t here right now.”
“Any idea when he might be back?”
“No. Not for a while, I guess. He paid me in case he doesn’t get back before I finish. He had to go to the store, for the new locks, I guess.”
I guessed I’d leave a note, and the kid nodded, restarted the mower, and roared away to where the yard met a raggedy lot aglow with early yellow sweet clover. There he turned and disappeared toward the back of the lot again.
Why did Greg need new locks? According to Connie, he and Abigail were separated. Had she changed the locks? I filed my questions away for later, finished the note, and went to the front porch. There was no storm door, so I wedged the scrap of paper into the frame around the leaded glass, hoping he’d see it there, and returned to the car.
“Speaking of toxic plants.” Goldie nodded toward the ratty vacant lot next door.
“What?”
“Right there. Poison hemlock.”
“As in Socrates and death by hemlock?”
“Precisely. The stuff with the purple stems. Grows all over in waste areas. When it’s in bloom it’s easy to mistake for wild carrot, you know, Queen Anne’s Lace, or for wild parsnip. If in doubt, think ‘hemlock is hairless.’ Wild carrot has little hairs on the stems and leaves, hemlock doesn’t. Not that you’re likely to be collecting wild carrot, although it is pretty in a late summer bouquet.” She spoke faster. “I remember a field near a lake, now where was that? I can’t remember, but this field was like a gigantic bouquet of Queen Anne’s Lace and ironweed and black-eyed Susans. Oh my, that white, purple, and yellow combination was exqui …”
“Shit!” I was about to turn left from Greg’s street onto Rothman Road when a green car with cancerous rust patches squealed around the front of my van from the right, nearly taking my left headlight as a souvenir. I slammed on the brakes.
Goldie twisted in her seat. “Don’t see many of those anymore.”
“What? Idiots?” My stomach heaved from the adrenaline surge.
“Yugos. And I’ve seen that one before.”
“Yeah?” I made myself resume breathing. “Well, I hope I never see it again.”
“So you don’t know whose it is?”
I glanced at her. “Why would I know tha … ?” The grumpy mailman shuffled into my thoughts. “Wait a minute! The mailman said there was a Yugo parked in front of my mailbox yesterday. That’s weird.”
“Weirder still, it drove by three or four times while I was waiting for you back there.”
19
I’d been home about half an hour when the doorbell rang. The canine welcoming committee was in the backyard, so Leo trotted to the front door and meowed at me to see who was there. He’s not the most patient character in the world. I picked him up and pulled the door open.
“Ms. MacPhail. You never returned my call.”
“I, uh …” I gestured for Detective Jo Stevens to come in. “I meant to. I’ve been busy.”
“I have a few questions.”
Like why did you tamper with evidence? I glanced at the magazines, books, videos, and unopened mail on the couch and coffee table in the living room, and suggested we talk in the kitchen. When I put Leo down, he promptly rubbed against the detective’s leg, leaving a streak of short yellow hairs on her navy slacks. She bent to pick him up and settled at the kitchen table, rubbing his head. “Nice cat.”
“His name is Leo. Thinks he’s a lion.” I picked up the carafe from the coffee maker in one hand and the teapot in the other and waggled them at her.
She asked basic getting-to-know-you questions while I set Mr. Coffee to work. I’m not particularly paranoid, but couldn’t help but wonder if this was her way of putting me at ease before the interrogation, or if she was genuinely interested in my work and my furry family. I sat across the table from her, and watched her reassemble her expression as she slid Leo gently to the floor. By the time she sat up she was all business again.
“Where’s your sidekick?” I asked.
“Hutchinson? He had other things to do.”
Like play tiddlywinks, whispered Janet Demon. As if she knew what I was thinking, Jo added, “He’s not as dopey as he acted the other day.” I withheld further comment, and she got back to business. “What do you know about the circumstances of Ms. Dorn’s death?”
Something twisted in my chest, but I worked at staying calm.
“I saw her fall, but I don’t know anything else except what’s been on the news.” I studied her face, and decided she must be a heck of a poker player. “You’re investigating her death?”
“Just asking a few questions.”
“You don’t think she died from a bee sting?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” I didn’t add that the more I learned the more confused I got. “She was in great shape and as far as I know had no other health problems. The two doses of epinephrin should have snapped her out of an allergic episode. I guess I think it makes no sense.”
“Did Ms. Dorn have any enemies?”
I didn’t like the direction the conversation was going, but what could it hurt Abigail now if I passed on what little I knew? If someone did kill her, maybe something I said would help the police figure out who. “I don’t know about enemies. She wasn’t very popular.”
She pulled her beat-up little pad and a pen from her breast pocket, wrote something, then looked me in the eye, her question clear if unspoken.
I went on. “You know, there’s always gossip. I’ve heard little snippets. Abigail was well known among dog people, and it’s been a shock. Someone you know dies suddenly, people are curious. Concerned.” Nosey.
“And what’s the gist of the gossip?”
“I don’t know that there is a gist. People want to know what happened. Some think Abigail died of a heart attack or a stroke.” Or meanness.
Jo didn’t seem very interested in that kind of gossip. “She had enemies?”
Enemies again. I retrieved a couple of clean mugs from the dishwasher, and poured the coffee, using the time to think. Don’t say too much, Janet. You don’t have any real information. But I couldn’t rid my mind of the disembodied words I’d heard at Dog Dayz: “I didn’t think Suzette meant it when she said she’d like to kill her.” Or the memory of Suzette herself, signaling her dog to bark during Abigail’s moment of silence. I set the mugs on the table and pulled a pint of hazelnut creamer from the fridge door. “Sugar?”
She shook her head. “Love this stuff though!”
“Do they know what killed her?”
“I can’t comment on the case.”
I took too quick a slurp of coffee, burning the tender spot behind my upper incisors, and struggled not to show the pain.
She jotted something on her pad. “Ms. MacPhail, were you …”
“Would you mind calling me Janet? Ms. MacPhail makes me want
to put my bifocals on and my hair in a bun.”
That seemed to relax her, and she told me to call her Jo. She smiled, leaned back in her chair, and set her pen down on the table. “Could I have more coffee? I woke up this morning with a headache and I think this is helping.”
I poured her a second cup and asked if she’d like some aspirin, but she said she’d already taken several more tablets than medically advisable. The caffeine would have to do.
Jay barked outside the back door. I was halfway there when he and Pip exploded into the kitchen. “You’re too smart for your own good, Bub.” Jay danced around me. “I’m going to have to change this handle back to a regular doorknob. I just had it put on a couple weeks ago, and he’s figured out how it works. As you can see.”
I looked out the door before I closed it. The sun was hidden behind a bank of thunder heads, the patio freckled with raindrops. Fortunately, the dogs had stayed under the awning and were dry, because they were soon mugging Jo. She stroked both heads, one with each hand. “Nice dogs. Border Collies?”
“The black and white one is. That’s Pip. He’s—or he was—Abigail’s dog. The one I brought home from the show. The other one, Jay, is an Australian Shepherd.”
“Beautiful color.” She ran her fingers down Jay’s shoulder through black and gray and silver waves.
“It’s called blue merle.”
“I miss having a dog.” She sounded wistful. “Wouldn’t be fair though. I’m gone so much.” She glanced at her watch.
“Jay, settle.” Pip apparently knew the command, too, because both dogs sprawled on the floor, bellies flat to the cool vinyl, panting and grinning.
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