A Pedigree to Die For

by Laurien Berenson

  “Then how did the bitch get loose?”

  “I haven’t a clue. Probably somebody got careless, that’s all. Poodles are trained to stay on their grooming tables, you know. They’re never tied like the other breeds. Maybe she simply fell off her table and decided to have a romp.”

  Carelessness. That’s what Langley had said, too. “So I guess I’m back to square one.”

  “There’s another show next weekend.”

  I never doubted it for a moment.

  “You know what they say. Perseverance is its own reward.”

  “That’s virtue, Aunt Peg.”

  “Whatever gets the job done, Melanie dear.”

  Monday morning, Davey started summer camp. During the winter, Emily Grace presided over Graceland Nursery School where he’d been a student for the last two years. Summers, she used the same facilities to operate Graceland Camp. It was the first year Davey was old enough to qualify for the summer program, and I thought he’d be excited. I know I was.

  Opening day at camp was like the first day of school—a a zoo. Everybody was present and accounted for, but nobody seemed to know exactly where they were supposed to be. The kids solved that problem by going everywhere—running, screaming, finding their friends—while mothers tracked down lockers to deliver lunchboxes and bathing suits, then pigeon-holed counselors to discuss things like bee stings, poison ivy, and extra coatings of sunblock.

  I delivered Davey to the Sunfish group and left him, along with a dozen other four- and five-year-olds, under the watchful supervision of three teen-aged counselors. A quick trip to his locker completed my duties for the day. On the way back to my car, I ran into Emily Grace. She was sitting on the edge of a portable podium—a little command center set up among the trees—checking off names against a list she held on her clipboard.

  “You’re in for a busy summer,” I said.

  Emily looked up and smiled. She was a pretty woman in her mid-thirties with long blond hair fastened back in a French braid, and warm, brown eyes. We’d met two years earlier when I’d signed Davey up for nursery school, and we had liked each other on sight. We spoke frequently, mostly mornings and afternoons when I was dropping Davey off or picking him up, and only the demands of two busy and varied schedules had kept us from becoming better friends.

  “You don’t know the half of it. People look around at all this . . .” She waved vaguely toward the chaos ensuing behind us in the large field. “. . . and think that it’s controlling some eighty-odd kids that’s the problem.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Hell no. The campers are a breeze. Try coordinating the schedules of twenty-five teenage counselors, many of whom have never held a real job before and think that if something interesting comes up—like their boyfriend asks them out that day—it’s no problem to call in sick.”

  “Don’t you have backups for emergencies?”

  “I thought I did.” Emily sighed. “I had two girls, sisters, all lined up. Then I got a call yesterday saying that they’d taken an au pair job up on Martha’s Vineyard, and that was that.”

  As she spoke, the wheels were turning in my brain. “You mean you’re looking for extra help?”

  “I would be, if I thought I had a prayer of finding any. But this late, all the good kids are already booked.”

  “How about a good adult?”

  “Here? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I’m not.”

  She looked up with sudden interest. “You mean you have someone in mind?”

  “Someone loyal, thrifty, trustworthy, and brave.”

  “An adult boy scout?”

  “Even better.”

  “Sounds promising. Who is this paragon?”

  “You’re looking at her.”

  Emily’s face fell. Mine went with it.

  “Oh,” she said. “I thought you were serious.”

  “I am.”

  “But Melanie, you’re a teacher.”

  “Think of me as qualified.”

  “Too highly qualified.”

  I tried another approach. “Think of me as unemployed.”

  “I thought you had something lined up.”

  “So did I, but the project lost its funding, and I lost my job.”

  Emily thought for a moment. “I might be calling you as often as a couple times a week.”

  “I’m available.”

  “And I can’t afford to pay you very much—certainly not what you’re worth.”

  Obviously she had no idea how bad my finances looked. If Davey’s camp fees hadn’t already been paid in early spring, we wouldn’t have been there at all. “How much is not much?”

  Emily considered. “Thirty dollars a day? A morning, really. Of course you know the hours are nine to one. I wish it could be more, but the budget is pretty tight. . .”

  “It’s fine,” I said, and it was. “I’ll take it.”

  “Super!” Emily looked as pleased with the arrangement as I felt.

  It took us a few minutes to work out the details, then Emily was off to lead the older campers on a scavenger hunt while I headed back home. As I reached the car, I paused, turning back for one last look at Davey. He was over in the playground, much too happily involved with the rest of the Sunfishes to take any notice of my departure.

  At times like this, I couldn’t help but wonder if he missed the siblings he seemed destined to do without. I wasn’t getting any younger, after all, and men didn’t seem to be lining up on the doorstep. Not that I’d done anything to encourage them. One failed marriage was enough, thank you.

  I’d always felt that Bob and I should have tried harder before giving up. But as things turned out, when the end came, I wasn’t even consulted. One Saturday I’d come home from the supermarket, ten-month-old Davey strapped in the snugli across my chest, and found Bob’s things gone and a rather inadequate note left in their place. He took the car and the stereo and left his son behind. I thought that illustrated his priorities perfectly.

  My mother was the type who would have said, “I told you so.” She’ll never know how much I longed to hear her say the words. She was also the type who would have said to put the whole thing behind me and get on with the rest of my life. Easier said than done, of course, but then my mother had never cared a bit about practicality when she was handing out advice.

  My eyes drifted heavenward, and I found myself smiling. I’d never doubted for a moment that she and Dad were up there somewhere, probably playing honeymoon bridge. They’d always made me proud, I thought. I was damned if I wouldn’t do the same for them.

  Eleven

  I picked up two days of work at Davey’s camp the following week. The money wasn’t great, but it felt good to be back among the ranks of the semi-employed. With a little luck and a lot of teenage irresponsibility, Davey and I might even make it to the end of the summer in a somewhat solvent state.

  On Thursday morning I dropped Davey at camp and swung by Aunt Peg’s. I found her clipping the faces and feet of a litter of puppies in her guest room.

  “I was thinking I might go pay the Wassermans a visit,” I said.

  “Tony and Doris? Why?”

  “The other day when Tony was here you said that their house was to the north, which should place it out somewhere behind the kennel. I know it’s a long shot, but maybe one of them saw or heard something the night Beau disappeared.”

  Aunt Peg was skeptical, but she agreed that it couldn’t hurt. I thought I’d simply walk over, but once she explained about the fence and the stream, it proved easier to climb in the car and drive next door than trek there over hill and dale. Like Aunt Peg’s, the Wassermans’ house was set back from the road. Theirs, however, was of a more recent vintage—a contemporary whose glass and cedar design was so pure as to be timeless.

  Only one car was parked in the driveway: a silver Taurus sedan. I climbed the front steps and pushed the doorbell. From inside, I heard not the chimes I’d expected, but rather a tinny rendition of
the first four bars of “Somewhere My Love.” I was still smiling when the door opened.

  Doris Wasserman was short and plump with long umber-colored hair drawn back into a bun at the nape of her neck. A smear of flour highlighted one high, Slavic cheekbone. Another decorated the front of her skirt. She held her hands, also flour-coated, up in front of her like a surgeon who’d been sterilized and wanted to avoid contamination.

  “If you’re selling something, I’m not interested.” Her eyes were wary and she leaned one elbow against the door, ready to slam it shut.

  “I’m not. My name is Melanie Travis. I’m Margaret Turnbull’s niece.” Without thinking, I held out my hand. Doris ignored it, for which I could hardly blame her. “I was hoping I might be able to talk to you and your husband about the night Max Turnbull died.”

  “What about it?”

  “If you don’t mind, I just have a few questions. . .” I let my voice trail away and looked past her into the house, hoping she’d take the hint.

  She did. “I guess it’s all right. Tony isn’t here and I’m baking, so it’ll have to be in the kitchen.”

  “No problem.”

  Inside, the house was every bit as impressive as it had looked from without. There were high cathedral ceilings, skylights, and an abundance of light and space. I’d have thought the furnishings would have a similar feel, but they didn’t. Most of the pieces were dark and solid. Many were covered with cheap knick-knacks. It looked as though the Wassermans had compromised: one had chosen the house and the other, the decor.

  I looked at the heavy, somber furniture, then back at Doris and decided they belonged to together, which meant that Tony was the one in the family with taste.

  When we reached the kitchen, Doris went straight to a mound of dough that was sitting on the counter. I perched against a stool that had been pushed to one side of the room and breathed in deeply. When it came to baking bread, Doris was obviously a pro. The air in there alone had to be worth a whole day’s ration of calories.

  “This is a beautiful house,” I said.

  “Nice to look at, lots of work to keep up.” Doris dug her fingers deep into the dough and went to work. “Tony says sometimes he wishes we’d never bought it at all.”

  “Is he at work?”

  Doris glanced up. It was only a fleeting impression, but for a moment she looked distinctly uneasy. “Of course he’s at work. Where else would he be?”

  I could feel the climate in the room cooling and made another stab at putting Doris at ease. “What does he do?”

  “He sells insurance.” One fist pounded into the dough with a sharp slap. Then it was lifted, flung over, and pummeled anew from the other side. “He has his own agency downtown. Not the biggest, but he does okay.”

  “I guess he must, if he has his own agency.”

  “Tony works hard for what he gets. Long hours, weekends, too. Nobody ever gave him anything for free.” Doris threw the dough into a big bowl and covered it with a piece of cloth. “You said you wanted to talk about the Turnbulls. What about them?”

  So much for chitchat. I hiked myself up onto the stool and got down to business. “The night Max Turnbull died, did you or your husband see or hear anything unusual?”

  “No.” Doris didn’t even stop to think before answering. At this rate, she’d have me back out the door in no time. “Why should we?”

  “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Max was in the kennel when he died. It’s just over that rise, maybe not visible, but certainly within earshot. Peg and I have reason to believe that Max wasn’t out there alone. Someone was in the kennel with him, someone who may have caused his death, or contributed to it significantly.”

  I’d thought perhaps she might be shocked, but Doris Wasserman surprised me. If anything she looked almost pleased. Like someone who’d opened the Encyclopedia Britannica and found a copy of the National Enquirer nestled within.

  “How about a cup of coffee?” she offered.

  “No thanks, I’m fine. What would help, though, is if you could try and remember—maybe reconstruct what you and Mr. Wasserman were doing that night? It was a Tuesday, May twenty-eighth.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Doris shook her head. “That was a couple of weeks ago.”

  “It was an unusually warm day for May.”

  Her head was still shaking.

  “It was just after Memorial Day, does that help?”

  “No. . .”

  “ ‘Roseanne’ was on T.V. that night. It was the last new show of the season—”

  “Oh yeah sure.” Doris began to smile. “I remember that. She’s some broad, that Roseanne. I never miss her if I can help it. And I’ll tell you, her mother, she’s great, too. That show where they opened the loose meat place—”

  If I didn’t jump in now, it could be hours before I got another chance. “Mrs. Wasserman, did you hear anything out of the ordinary while you were watching T.V.?”

  “Oh no, I wouldn’t have. I keep the set turned up pretty loud. I don’t want to miss a thing.”

  “How about later, maybe around two A.M.?”

  “I’d have been asleep then.”

  “And Mr. Wasserman, he’d have been asleep, too?”

  “I guess so.” Doris drew her lips into a thin line. “I mean, when I’m not watching him, how the hell do I know what he’s up to?”

  “But he was here?”

  “Yeah, sure, but . . . ” She stopped, frowning. “Wait a minute. I remember that night. It must have been that night. Those Poodles were barking like crazy. It went on and on, and Tony was just about going nuts.”

  “I don’t suppose he went to investigate?”

  “Nah, he wouldn’t have done that. But later I heard a car drive by, going real fast. We don’t get much traffic here late at night. When we do, it’s usually kids looking to vandalize mailboxes, so I went to the window and had a look. It was a dark colored station wagon. That’s all I saw.”

  “Which way was it heading?”

  Doris gestured away from Aunt Peg’s. “East.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “That’s it. The car drove by and was gone. Look, I’ve got to get back to my baking, okay?”

  “Okay.” I slide down off my stool. A dark station wagon. That probably narrowed the field of suspects down by at least a million or two. If indeed the person I was looking for had been driving the car. “Thanks for your time.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Doris walked me to the door. “Just as well you caught me rather than Tony, seeing as it’s the Turnbulls you wanted to discuss. I’ll tell you, he’s been complaining something awful about those dogs.”

  I paused on the front step and listened. I couldn’t hear a thing. “Do they really bark that much?”

  Doris shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me. White noise—you know what that is? Mostly I don’t even hear them. But Tony, well, you never know when something’s going to get on his nerves. When it does, I don’t try to understand, I just stay out of the way.”

  I smiled at that, feeling an unexpected link with Doris Wasserman. There’d been times during my marriage when I’d felt exactly the same way about Bob. Poor Aunt Rose, with no experience to draw on, and all of this still ahead of her.

  I started down the steps. “If either you or Mr. Wasserman thinks of anything, no matter how small, would you let me know?”

  “Why not? Although if you don’t mind my saying so, dead is dead. What does it matter now?”

  I turned and looked back up at her, still standing in the doorway. “Whoever was in the kennel with Max that night stole one of the dogs. My aunt would like to get him back.”

  “Someone really took one of those big Poodles? Imagine that.” Once again Doris sounded pleased. No doubt I was providing fresh information for the neighborhood gossip mill. I’d started toward my car, so I almost missed her last words, muttered under her breath as she closed the door.

  “I hope it was one of the barkers,” she said.


  Saturday morning I awoke to the beat of steady rain and a weather forecast that promised thunderstorms all day. I called Aunt Peg when I got out of bed, catching her just before she left.

  “Are we still on?” I asked, drawing back the curtain to stare at the driving sheets of rain that swept across the yard.

  “Of course. They never call these things off. Dress warmly, dear!”

  She hung up before there was even time to comment, and I knew I was committed. I didn’t even want to think about what the show would be like with Davey in tow, dragging him along as he stomped from puddle to puddle, so my second phone call was to the neighborhood baby-sitter.

  Joanie is everything a mother could wish for. A girl of rather solid proportions, she is fourteen going on forty-five—mature, dependable, and loving. She adores children of all shapes and sizes, and plans to marry her boyfriend and start a family of her own just as soon as she graduates from high school.

  In the meantime most of the neighborhood children serve as her surrogate family, an arrangement that pleases all of us enormously. Davey is crazy about her, an affection fostered by Joanie’s endless enthusiasm for the games he delights in. They spend hours playing Daytona 500 and hide-and-seek and I think it’s a tossup as to who’s actually having more fun. She’s a gem as my mother would have said, and I’m lucky to have her.

  That arrangement made, I pulled on my oldest pair of blue jeans and a faded red tee shirt. Donna Karan would have cried just looking at me. A rummage through the hall closet turned up a crumpled yellow slicker and a pair of rubber duck shoes. I slipped it all on. In no time at all, I’d been transformed into the Ancient Mariner.

  The trip, which should have taken an hour, took two instead as my aging, senile Volvo registered its protest of the weather. In the prime of its youth, the car had been a paragon. Now at the advanced age of twelve, it was merely less than the sum of its parts, a crippled old warhorse with perhaps only one or two good charges left. The Volvo usually obliged me by performing in good weather; only sheer effrontery on my part compelled it to do the same in bad.