Alice and I both ordered no-frills coffee. A plate of biscotti arrived on the tray with the two cups. Alice feigned innocence as to where they’d come from, then attacked them with relish.
I added a dollop of milk to my coffee, sat back, and waited until she was ready to start.
“Now I know why they call it work,” she said finally. “And it’s not because the stuff is so hard to do. It’s because offices are filled with people who go out of their way to make your life miserable.”
“Already?” I said. “You’ve only been employed for six hours.”
“Six hours spent trying not to step on anybody’s toes or choose up sides in their petty little office turf war.”
“Welcome to the real world. You’re the boss’s wife. Did you think they were going to welcome you with open arms?”
“I thought they would at least give me a chance to prove myself before making a judgment. But based on this morning, I’d have to say that there isn’t a single person on the office staff who doesn’t think I’m a potentially incompetent boob who only got her job because she’s sleeping with one of the partners.”
“Come on,” I said with a laugh. “Surely it can’t be that bad.”
“I’m not even telling you the half of it.” She stopped, sighed, then raked her fingers back through her hair. “You know, before the kids were born I was a damn good paralegal.”
“I’m sure you were.”
“But it’s been ten years since I was a member of the workforce. Maybe my brain has atrophied in the meantime.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“I don’t know which was worse, the fact that they all acted like they were humoring me, or that I just knew that they were talking about me behind my back. Do you know what I did all morning?”
I shook my head, sipped my coffee, and let her rant.
“Filing! That’s it. Idiot work. A second-grader could have done it. They said they wanted me to ease my way into the job. I’m supposed to be a paralegal. Hell, I am a paralegal. And I never got within fifteen feet of an actual lawyer.”
“Joe included?”
“Joe.” She spat out the name.
I was glad I wasn’t going to be having dinner at their house tonight.
“Do you know what he did?”
I shook my head again. Trust me, words were superfluous on my part.
“He asked me out to lunch. To lunch! To celebrate my first day of work.”
“What a jerk.”
Alice’s brow lowered menacingly. “Don’t start with me, Melanie. I mean it. I’m in no mood.”
“I can see that.”
“Here I was doing everything I could think of to fit in with the rest of the staff, and Joe does the one thing that’s guaranteed to set me apart.”
“I’m sure he didn’t do it on purpose.”
“What he didn’t do was think. I might as well just have a sign taped to my forehead that says PARTNER’S WIFE.”
“Better than an L,” I commented.
“Not necessarily,” Alice grumbled, but I could tell that she was finally running out of steam. She took the last piece of biscotti and stuffed it into her mouth. “So now you know how my life is going.”
“Change is hard.”
“Fortune cookie wisdom.”
“If the shoe fits . . .”
The same thought struck both of us simultaneously. Alice had slipped a pair of flip-flops on her feet. Her Italian leather pumps were still in the car with Berkley.
“Oh Lord,” she moaned.
“Think of it this way,” I said. “If he got them, at least you’ll never have to wear them again. Your feet will thank you.”
“I better go,” she said. “It’s just about time to pick up the kids.”
She started to rise, then sat back down. “I guess I never asked about you. Everything okay? Anything we need to talk about?”
“Nothing that can’t wait.” I reached out and scooped up the check. “Well, one thing . . . Amber Fine?”
Alice frowned. “What about her?”
“Bob wants to know where her husband is.”
“Don’t we all.”
I looked at her in surprise. “You mean you’ve never met James either?”
“Met him? If it wasn’t written on the mailbox, I wouldn’t even know his name.”
“Try to find out.”
“Yeah right. Why would I want to do that?”
“You gave me Candy’s problems to solve. I’m giving you Bob’s.”
“No fair,” Alice protested.
I ignored her grimace and walked over to the counter to handle the check.
“Tell me about it,” I said.
14
When I got home, Sam had everything under control. Not that I’d ever doubted his ability to cope. The man was an organizational marvel. Actually, he was a marvel of many kinds. How I got so lucky I have no idea.
Kevin spent the rest of the afternoon napping, then decided when we put him to bed that night that sleep was superfluous. Sam and I took turns rocking, soothing, putting him back down in his crib, but nothing made the slightest difference. Kevin was ready to party and he couldn’t understand why we didn’t feel the same way.
By four A.M. when Sam and I were both bleary-eyed, not to mention a step slow in getting out of bed to respond each time Kevin began to wail, Eve decided to help out.
Faith had been Davey’s guardian since the moment she arrived. The big Poodle slept every night curled up at the foot of his bed. So when a second child joined the family, Eve followed in her dam’s footsteps. Her nights were spent stretched out on the rug beside Kevin’s crib, a constant, supportive presence.
As long as she felt we were on top of our duties, Eve remained quiet and out of the way. But as soon as we began to slack off—and in the Poodle’s mind, that meant letting Kevin cry for more than a few seconds before swooping in to pick him up—she made her displeasure felt.
Now she came trotting into our bedroom, stood beside the bed, which put her nose in line with my face, and stared at me accusingly.
I opened one eye. “I know,” I mumbled. “I’m coming.”
Apparently my response wasn’t satisfactory. Eve grabbed the quilt between her teeth, braced her feet, and pulled.
“Hey,” Sam said sleepily from the other side of the bed. “Give a guy a break.” Then he stopped and listened, hearing the sound of Kevin’s cries for the first time. “Oh.”
He started to swing one leg over the bed. I pulled him back.
“My turn,” I said. “I’ll go.”
Sam didn’t argue. His head flopped back down on the pillow. “Then give me back my covers.”
“Eve has them.”
He turned and looked at me.
“She thinks I’m too slow.”
Sam groaned and passed a weary hand over his face. “She’d be slow, too, if sleep was just a fond memory.”
“Mom?”
Davey appeared in the doorway. His bedroom was at the other end of the hall. Kevin’s cries almost never woke him up. Faith was at his side. That meant the other three Poodles had to get up and mill around too.
Join the party, I thought. I was probably getting punchy.
“How come Kevin’s crying?” Davey asked.
As if on cue, the wails crescendoed.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Believe me, if I had known, I would have fixed the problem before now.
“Maybe he’s hungry.”
“Nope,” said Sam.
“Needs a new diaper?”
“Doubt it,” I said. “But I’ll check.”
I threaded my way through the pack of canine bodies and headed for the door.
“Maybe he’s bored,” said Davey.
“It’s the middle of the night,” I said grumpily. “He’s supposed to be bored.”
“He supposed to be asleep,” said Sam. “And that isn’t working either.”
Then suddenly, miraculously
, the noise ceased.
I stopped in the doorway, waiting for the next round. It didn’t come.
After a minute, Davey yawned. His eyes slipped half shut. He turned around and headed back to his room, with Faith padding along behind him. In the morning, he probably wouldn’t even remember he’d been up.
I looked at Eve. “Satisfied?” I asked in a whisper.
She slipped past me like a shadow and went back to the nursery. The other three Poodles lay back down.
I fumbled my way to the bed and fell in next to Sam. He pulled me close and piled covers on both of us. My eyes were closed before my head even found the pillow.
Wonderful quiet. Blessed peace. Who knew how long it would last?
I wasn’t about to waste a second.
The next morning, fortified by two strong cups of coffee, I dropped Davey off at camp, then headed in the direction of Pine Ridge. So far, everyone I’d spoken to had professed to be surprised and saddened by Steve’s death. It was time to take a new approach. I needed to start talking to people who hadn’t felt so kindly toward the day care facility owner.
The first person Candy had mentioned in that regard was an unhappy neighbor who lived to the north of Pine Ridge. Adam Busch’s house probably wouldn’t be hard to find; and she’d said that he was retired, so hopefully he’d be home. I wondered if he’d be willing to talk to me about what had happened.
As it turned out, Mr. Busch was not only willing, he was delighted. He seemed to think it was about time someone was interested in listening to his side of the story.
“Come in, come in,” he said expansively, throwing his door open wide as I stood on his doorstep. “Let’s go out back to the deck where we can talk. You want something to drink, some iced tea maybe?”
He didn’t remember me, I realized, though I’d recognized him immediately. We’d spoken briefly on my first visit to Pine Ridge. Busch was the impatient man in the gold Lexus who’d come whipping into the parking lot as I was leaving.
Up close, he was short and slight, with weathered skin and wispy gray hair that barely covered his freckled scalp. His eyes were a washed-out shade of blue, and thick jowls bracketed his mouth, dragging it down into a permanent frown.
Just judging by the expression on his face, I could see how the Pines might have found him to be a troublesome neighbor. He looked like someone for whom disgruntlement was a way of life.
I declined Busch’s offer of refreshments and followed him through his medium-sized, ranch-style house that was neat as a pin. I doubted it was the kind of place where either pets or children would be welcome.
On the other side of the house, we walked outside onto a small raised deck that overlooked the back of the Pine Ridge property. From our elevated perch, we could see over the solid cedar fence that marked the perimeter. The facility’s buildings and paddocks were clearly visible. I didn’t hear any noise, however, and the only scent was that of the honeysuckle climbing on a nearby trellis.
Busch waved me to a padded seat in the shade and settled down quickly opposite me. He rubbed his hands together, looking eager to get started.
“You’re not from the press by any chance, are you? Stamford Advocate? Greenwich Time? ”
“No, I—”
“Town official? Zoning office? That’s good too.”
“I’m afraid not,” I said.
My second denial brought him up short. As if he’d suddenly, and belatedly, realized that he’d invited a stranger into his home for no good reason.
“Then what do you do?”
Not the easiest of questions to answer right at the moment. Mother? Teacher? Sleuth? I wondered which answer would be most likely to make a good impression. None seemed terribly promising.
“I’m a concerned neighbor,” I said after a moment’s pause.
That would be neighbor in the broad sense. After all, I did live in Stamford too. No need to mention that my home was a half-dozen miles away.
“I assume you’re aware of the recent tragedy that occurred at the Pine Ridge Canine Care Center?”
Busch snorted. “Hard not to be, seeing as I live right here. Good riddance to bad rubbish, that’s what I say. Steve Pine got what was coming to him. Before those people arrived, this was a decent place to live. Now I guess nothing that happens around here would surprise me.”
“You sound as though you think the Pines were the ones who attracted a bad element to the area.”
“What else would a reasonable person think? Especially as he’s the one who ended up dead. Him and his sister and that other guy in with them, they all came over here before they even started construction on that place. Trying to make nice and act friendly—as if a social visit was going to make me overlook the fact that they were building a commercial business right in my backyard.”
Busch was growing agitated, working himself up into a frenzy of annoyance. He bounced up out of his chair and began to pace as he spoke, striding back and forth across the length of the deck.
“That was the beginning of the end right there. Next thing I knew, friends and neighbors who had lived here for years were selling out and moving on. I told them they ought to stay and we could fight progress together—”
“But—”
“But nothing,” Busch overrode my objection. He was the kind of man who liked to hear himself talk. And pontificate. “Money talks, isn’t that what they say? People got paid to sell out and leave their homes behind and they did. A row of nice houses gets bought up and next thing you know there’s a strip mall where they used to be. Like anyone in their right mind would consider that progress.”
Busch wasn’t just mad at the Pines, I realized. He was equally perturbed with his ex-neighbors. But unfortunately for Candy and Steve, they were the only ones who’d remained in the vicinity for him to vent his wrath on.
“With all the commotion they’ve got going on over there, people coming in and going out at all hours, who would want to live next to that? Once Steve Pine sweet-talked the zoning board and got permission to put up a business in a residential area, the rest of us might as well have given up.”
“But you didn’t,” I said quietly.
Busch stopped pacing and stared out across his yard at the facility next door. The sight seemed to fuel his ire. His knuckles grew white as his hand gripped the wooden railing.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t give up. That’s not the way I do things. I’m not a quitter. I take a different approach. Seems to me, the only thing left to do now is to try to make those folks as miserable as they’ve made me.”
“Murder makes people pretty miserable,” I commented.
“Murder?” Busch spun around to face me. “Hell, you think that’s what I’m talking about?”
“It sounds as though you were mad enough to consider it.”
“Maybe I was, but it doesn’t mean I did. Peaceful protest, that’s my way. I’m a product of the seventies. Make love, not war. You’re probably too young to remember that.”
I knew the reference; anyone would. But that didn’t mean I was convinced. There’d been nothing peaceful about his earlier rant.
“You’re overlooking one thing,” I said. “The Stamford zoning board is what’s responsible for your problems, not Steve and Candy Pine. Once they changed the classification for this area of town, it was inevitable that development would follow.”
Busch stared down at me. His eyes were hard.
“You didn’t tell me when you knocked on my door that you were on their side.”
“I’m trying not to take sides. I’m just trying to find out what happened.”
I’d been referring to Steve’s murder, but Busch misunderstood. In his mind, his problems were bigger and more important than anything else.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” he said. “Once again, the little guy got bulldozed. You talk about the zoning board. You think I didn’t go down there? Hell, back when I still had neighbors, I even rounded up some of them and we put in an appear
ance at the town meeting. You want to know what happened?”
I nodded, just to make myself feel like I was part of the conversation. Why not? He was going to tell me anyway.
“Nothing happened, that’s what! We all got together and went down there on a cold February night and nobody listened to a damn thing we had to say. Oh, they let us say our piece all right, but all they were doing was humoring us. In the end, the vote still went unanimous the other way.”
Busch closed his hand in a fist and pounded it down on top of the railing. The entire deck shuddered from the blow.
“I know how things work, it’s not like I was born yesterday. The town officials get in cahoots with the developers. They tell you they’re making decisions for the good of the town and all the time they’re getting kickbacks under the table. One man can’t stand in the way of progress, they told me. Well, that’s a crock. I’m standing here now, by God.”
A drop of spit flew from between Busch’s lips. No wonder Steve Pine had given up on trying to reason with the man. Busch was so enamored with his own agenda and his own version of events that nothing else even made an impression on him.
The notion of this man keeping his protests to a peaceful level was becoming harder and harder to swallow. I hoped the police had interviewed Busch after Steve’s murder and that they’d been subjected to the same sort of vitriolic rant. That might move their investigation along.
“Thank you for your time,” I said, rising.
“No problem.” Busch frowned. “Where’d you say you were from again?”
“I didn’t, actually—”
“ ’Cause I was thinking that I’ve seen you somewhere before. Maybe at a town meeting?”
“I don’t think so.”
I retreated through the sliding glass door and headed for the front of the house. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be around when Busch’s memory finally kicked in.
“Hey, wait a minute!” he said abruptly.
My hand was on the doorknob to the front door. I froze.
“Now I remember. I saw you last week. You were over at that place.” He jerked his head in the direction of Pine Ridge. “You’re one of them.”
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