There was just no way to sugarcoat it. “Definitely,” I said. “Most definitely with Tommy. He’s not cheating on you, Cat—that I know. So will you please contact your attorney and call off this divorce nonsense?”
I was worried for my brother-in-law; he took such good care of my sister, and basically worshiped the ground she walked on. I was afraid she’d done some real damage to her marriage by accusing him of things I knew he hadn’t done.
Cat had started to tremble a little. Looking at her it was obvious she’d been up all night. “Oh, what have I done?” she wailed, and went back to burying her face in her hands.
“Nothing we can’t fix, sugar,” I said softly as I folded her into my arms and rocked her small frame while she cried. When her tears turned to hiccups I gently asked her, “So how did you get here?”
“I flew. Tommy and I got into this horrible fight last night, and I just left. The boys are at Disney with Tommy’s parents, so luckily they weren’t around to witness our shouting match. It was awful! I was so angry I just took myself to the airport and waited there for the first available flight, which wasn’t until six this morning. I was even forced to fly coach, if you can believe it!”
I smiled; my sister hadn’t known the discomfort of anything less than first class in at least a decade. “How did you get from the airport to here?”
“Cab.”
“I tried to call you last night, but no one answered, not even your housekeeper.”
“I had to let her go—her reading suggested she was a thief.”
I rolled my eyes. “Who else did you give a reading to?”
“Just the gardener.”
“And his fate?”
“He’s going to have an awful tractor accident. I’m considering letting him go; I mean, who wants that on their insurance?”
I sighed heavily, stifling the urge to laugh. Cat gave a huge yawn and sighed with me. The dark circles under her puffy eyes and her slumped shoulders all indicated she was fading fast.
“All right, how about this?” I offered. “Why don’t you go upstairs and take a nap in my bed? You look like you haven’t slept in a couple of days. Later on we can go out for some lunch, okay?”
“And shopping?” she asked, perking up a teeny bit.
I chuckled. “Of course. I’ll call Tommy and let him know where you are. He’s probably worried sick.”
Cat nodded against my shoulder. “Will you tell him I’m sorry?” she whispered.
“Of course, honey. Now come on; let’s get you to bed.” I pulled my sister up from the couch and walked her up the stairs to my bedroom. She was swaying on her feet from exhaustion, and I quickly set out a clean nightshirt for her and closed all the blinds, making the room nice and dark. Cat gave me a shy smile as I closed the door, then headed back downstairs to call Tommy.
“Hello?” he answered immediately.
“Hey, there, brother-in-law,” I said easily.
“Abby? Oh, my God, I was just about to call you! Your sister’s missing, and I can’t find her anywhere. . . . Have you heard from her?” Tommy’s voice had the mounting panic of someone truly worried. I was quick to set him at ease.
“She showed up on my doorstep this morning. She’s here, safe and sound. How about I keep her for a day or two, then send her back to you?”
“Does she even want to come back?”
Oh, yeah, the argument. “She told me about your reading,” I said.
“Abby, I swear to you, I have never—”
“Relax, Tommy. I’d know if you were cheating. I set Cat straight, and I think she feels like an idiot, but you know how proud she is.”
“Those stupid tarot cards. I knew they were trouble the minute she showed up from New York with them. . . . What the hell was she thinking?”
“That’s Cat for you. She’s got to try everything once; you know how she is.”
Tommy chuckled, probably for the first time in two days. “Let’s just hope she leaves all this psychic stuff to the expert in the family from now on, huh?”
“That’d be my preference. Listen, I’ll have her give you a call as soon as she wakes up. You going to be home?”
“Yeah, I canceled my tournament this morning because I had no idea where she’d gone, so now I’m stuck here for the next two weeks.” Tommy was a golf pro.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “I’ll have her call you as soon as she wakes up.”
“Thanks, Abby,” he said, and we disconnected.
After hanging up with Tommy I headed downstairs to the basement to see about some laundry—I hadn’t done any in a while. I loaded the darks and headed back upstairs, where I did housework and paid some slightly overdue bills until a little before noon.
Next I got dressed in my now-clean clothes and, after leaving Cat a note, headed out to pick up some groceries. I hadn’t checked my messages from work yet, or gotten the mail, so I headed over to my office to take care of business. On the way I passed the post office, which sat just catercorner to my office building, and I voluntarily shivered. To think that some poor, unsuspecting woman had been murdered there gave me the willies. She had been someone simply out running an errand, some innocuous thing, and it had led her to her death. The injustice of it pissed me the hell off, and I made up my mind to give Milo a call later and get back to work on the case.
After checking messages and getting the office mail, I headed back toward home, but thinking of something I made a quick detour and pulled up in front of a familiar Cape house. I sat inside my car for a minute or two, looking up at Dutch’s tidy lawn and well-manicured shrubs and sighed heavily. Even though I was still a little angry at him, I missed him terribly.
Unbuckling my seat belt I got out of the car and moseyed around back to the flowerpot that hid his house key. I found it right away and let myself in, punching in his birthday into the alarm and flipping on some lights while I called, “Virgil!” into the silence of the house. I was rewarded a few moments later by the appearance of Dutch’s silver-gray tomcat as he rounded the corner with an excited meow. I bent low and scratched his ears as he rubbed against my legs and hand, his purr vibrating loudly from his throat. I then got up and went to check on his food dish, water bowl and kitty-litter box. All were being well maintained by Dutch’s neighbor.
Feeling melancholy, I walked into the living room and looked around, remembering fonder moments of Dutch and me curled on his sofa watching a ball game. I smiled in spite of myself, and felt a tug of regret as I thought about how our last conversation had ended. I was about to leave when something caught my eye from across the living room, and being the curious type I walked over for a better look.
On the far end table next to the couch was a beautiful silver picture frame, and inside the frame was a five-by-seven photo of me taken when Dutch and I had gone to the state fair. I’d forgotten all about the roll of film Dutch had shot that day, and as I picked up the picture a new wave of guilt knotted in my stomach.
How could I doubt a guy who had a photo of me encased in a silver frame on his end table? To reinforce that idea, I felt my intuition weigh in, and I knew that Dutch was serious about us, and that I didn’t need to doubt him anymore. My insecurities were more about past relationships than present ones, and I knew I needed to reel in the green-eyed monster and learn to trust again. With a smile I put the picture back down on the tabletop and gave Virgil one more good scratch before setting the alarm and heading home, feeling much better than when I’d arrived.
When I got back to my place I found Cat in my robe and a towel wrapped turban style around her head, sitting in my kitchen having a cup of tea. “Hey, there,” she said as she gave me a small, sheepish smile.
“Hey, there,” I said, playfully bumping her with my hip as I set the groceries on the table.
“Sorry I borrowed your robe; I didn’t bring any extra clothes with me.”
I regarded my sister ensconced in my bathrobe as it puddled around her feet. I’ve got six inches on Cat,
and about twenty pounds. She’s a natural blond to my artificially enhanced color, and her eyes are vividly bluer. She wears her hair short, spiky and messy—Sharon Stone style, and her preferred color of wardrobe is white, right down to her shoes. I haven’t seen her in anything that wasn’t a designer label since the nineties, and her favorite mode of transport is chauffeured. Cat believes in the finer things, and, lucky for her, she’s made enough money to be able to afford most of them.
Seeing her in my beat-up flannel robe with a turban on her head took a minute to get used to. “Comfy?”
“As a matter of fact I am. What is this material?” she asked, picking at the sleeve of my robe.
“Flannel,” I said, rolling my eyes. I only half believed she was pulling my leg.
“Ah. Yes, I remember. Well, are we still on for lunch and shopping?”
“Absolutely. Why don’t you go get ready while I put the groceries away?”
“Meet you back here in fifteen minutes,” she said, getting up from the table and picking up the bottom of my robe so as not to trip over the hem. “By the way,” she called over her shoulder, “your room is a refrigerator!”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, avoiding an explanation. If my sister knew why my room was so cold she would want to fix it, and pay for it too.
Exactly fifteen minutes later Cat met me back in the kitchen wearing the same white suit I’d seen her in that morning. “Would you mind if we stopped off at Neiman’s before lunch? I have got to get out of this suit!”
“Sure, and don’t tell me you’ve already called ahead.”
“Of course I have. We’re meeting Crystal in the couture department in twenty minutes.”
“My sister, ever the efficient shopper,” I said, grabbing my purse and giving Eggy a kiss as we headed out the door.
Cat purchased four outfits that varied in color from pearl to off-white to two separate shades of cream. She then bought several pairs of underclothes and a silk nightgown, along with various toiletries. We also stopped in the luggage department, where she picked up a small carry-on bag so that she could lug all of her new belongings home. We left the store with Cat wearing one of the new cream outfits, and headed to PF Chang’s for a gourmet Chinese lunch.
We sat in a corner booth and gossiped, laughed and caught up for nearly two hours. I could tell our waitress was losing her patience, but had no doubt she’d be grateful when she discovered the fifty-dollar tip my sister left her.
Finally at four o’clock we got back in the car, and I looked at Cat expectantly. “So, where to?”
“What do you mean?” she asked innocently.
“Come on, Cat, I know you. Which hotel have you booked?”
Sheepishly my sister confessed with a sigh, “The Troy Hilton. I believe it’s just down the road.” Cat would have booked the presidential suite and probably ordered a massage and pedicure for later. She considered my modest accommodations the equivalent of camping outside without a tent or sleeping bag, and she and I had a long-standing agreement that when she came to town she would stay at a nearby luxury hotel, and I wouldn’t have to wait on her hand and foot. Trust me, the arrangement worked for both of us.
I smiled at her and asked, “And when are you catching a plane back home?”
“Well, I know you have to work tomorrow, but I feel like I’ve barely seen you at all. How about if I get some rest tonight and tomorrow we can have lunch together, then catch a movie and hang out tomorrow night? I’d also like to pop in on my friend Danielle—you remember her from high school?”
Danielle was my sister’s best friend in high school. The two were inseparable their senior year, but Cat had opted for Harvard, and Danielle had chosen a small local university here in Michigan. The two now led very different lives, but still kept in touch and remained close. They had children the same age, and I knew Cat would enjoy spending some time with her.
“Sounds like a plan. Tomorrow can be our night, and you can see Danielle on Thursday and catch a plane ride back Thursday night.”
“Perfect,” Cat sighed, leaning back in the seat. She looked exhausted, and I knew that an evening of being pampered at the hotel would probably be very good for her.
Half an hour later, after dropping Cat off, I pulled back into my driveway and stopped at the mailbox to retrieve the mail. I let myself inside and greeted Eggy, who was dancing on his hind legs, happy to see me. I gave him a quick kiss and walked through the kitchen to the back door, letting him out. Poor guy, I thought. He’d been cooped up all day.
I went back to sifting through the mail when a thought buzzed through my mind: Go find Eggy!
I blinked and hesitated, sorting through the mail for a moment, unsure what the message meant. Suddenly it came again, even more urgently this time.
Go find Eggy!
I dropped the mail and bolted out the back door, shouting, “Eggy!” as I came into the backyard. I looked frantically in the fading light for my chocolate-colored pooch and finally located him halfway across the yard. I breathed a sigh of relief; he was fine, just sniffing at something across the yard.
I was half turning back toward the house when I suddenly got the thought, Go to Eggy!
Something was very, very wrong. Without hesitation I bolted across the yard, calling to him, but Eggy was too interested in what he was sniffing. I reached him quickly and snatched him up in my arms, panic coursing through my veins, and I couldn’t figure out why. That was when I saw what Eggy was sniffing at, and my blood ran cold.
A large doggy dish lay surrounded by leaves, obscuring it from the view of the house. Inside the dish was a thick steak, soaked in flourescent liquid. Next to the dish was a discarded small container of antifreeze. “Oh, my God!” I gasped, and bolted with Eggy into the house. In the light of my kitchen I looked closely at his muzzle, but couldn’t tell if he’d licked up any of the liquid. In a panic I grabbed my purse and the pet carrier from the closet and ran out the door to my car. Peeling out of the driveway I flew at outrageous speeds to my vet. If Eggy had consumed any of the antifreeze there would be very little the vet could do.
Tears slid down my cheeks as I squealed into the parking lot of the Royal Oak Animal Hospital, and I muttered, “Oh, God, please, please let him be okay!” I picked up the carrier with a trembling hand and ran full-tilt into the building. There was a receptionist who was startled as I came up to the counter and begged for assistance. “It’s my dog!” I nearly shouted. “I think he’s ingested some antifreeze! Please, please, you have to help him!”
The receptionist quickly came around the counter and grabbed the carrier from me, then ran into the back room. I stood there gulping my terror as I watched the door close behind her, and I tried to collect myself and stem the panic flooding my heart with adrenaline.
Seeing my distress, a kind, elderly woman approached me and gently led me over to a row of chairs. I sat down numbly and cried great painful sobs as she patted my hand and said, “There, there. He’s in capable hands. They’ll take good care of him. You’ll see.”
I wanted desperately to believe her, but terror was gripping my heart in a vise. Eggy was like my child. I had nurtured him from a tiny puppy as if he were my own baby, and I had no idea how I would ever cope without him. I rocked back and forth in the chair, anxiously watching for the reappearance of the receptionist.
She came back a few minutes later, and I stood up as she approached me. “The doctor is with him now. Can you come to the counter and fill out some information?” she asked gently.
Numbly I nodded and moved to the counter with her. There I gave her my information, then quickly took my seat again. I gave a small smile to the old woman, who offered me a tissue and held my hand as my foot tapped and unbidden tears dropped from my eyes. At this hour the waiting room was packed with pets and their owners, but no one in the lobby spoke, and as I looked around trying to distract myself I could see them all avoiding my eyes, hugging their pets a little closer.
Finally, after half an
hour, my veterinarian, Dr. Markland, came out and called to me. I jumped up and nearly ran to her. “Is he okay? Is he all right? Please tell me he’s okay!” I pleaded.
She put a gentle hand on my shoulder and said, “I think he’s fine. There was no trace of antifreeze in his mouth, but we induced vomiting just to be safe. I didn’t see any of it in his bile either, so I think we’re safe. Still, I want to keep him overnight, if that’s all right with you.”
I let out a sob of relief, and it was a moment before I could respond. “That’s fine . . . yes, anything as long as he’s okay,” I burbled.
“I really think he will be. How about we call you in the morning and see if he’s well enough to go home then?”
I nodded emotionally, trying to get a grip. I was just so relieved that he wasn’t going to die it was hard to keep it together. Dr. Markland stroked my arm and smiled kindly at me. “Did you want to see him before you go home?”
I nodded again, and she walked me to the back. We went to a large room where several dogs and cats were being boarded or treated for illness. Eggy was lying down in a wire crate on the bottom shelf, sandwiched between a miniature poodle and a Pekingese. I squatted down and poked my fingers through the bars, Eggy looked dazed and out of it, and didn’t respond to my touch. I was alarmed at his nonreaction, and Dr. Markland explained, “He’s been sedated. The best thing for him right now is to be calm and get some rest. We’ll see how he’s doing in the morning, and I’ll be able to assess whether or not there was any nerve damage.”
“Nerve damage?” I asked sharply. “He could have nerve damage?”
Dr. Markland’s eyes became pinched. “It happens sometimes. Antifreeze is incredibly poisonous to animals. My feeling is that if he had ingested any he would have shown symptoms within two to three minutes—it’s hard to miss. I really think he’ll be fine, but we just want to be cautious until tomorrow, okay?”
I nodded and stroked the soft part of his muzzle one last time. I got up with my head bent and followed her back out to the lobby. Dr. Markland asked me before I left, “So how did Eggy come into contact with antifreeze?”
Better Read Than Dead Page 16