A Hell of a Dog

by Carol Lea Benjamin

  “I’m not so sure they’re going to be able to do that, Sam. You ought to prepare yourself for another possibility.”

  “You mean that someone did this on purpose?”

  “Yes. But the big question is—”

  “Who?” she asked.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “And the others?”

  “I don’t think any of them were accidents, Sam.”

  Now she didn’t say anything.

  “I’m working on this. I don’t have it yet, but I will. I wish it were neater. I wish it were easier. I wish I could have—”

  Chip stepped back and shook his head.

  “I’ll see you in the morning, Sam. I’ll talk to you then.”

  “It’s not your fault.” He put his warm hand on my face for a second. “These things always get solved after people have lost their lives. Think of all those interviews with the neighbors of serial killers, people who saw them every day, watched them grow up, and never had a clue. ‘He was the nicest boy,’ they say, ‘quiet, polite, and good to his mother. We had no idea.’ It’s the same way people are with their aggressive dogs, saying that the biting started out of the blue, because they’d missed a year and a half of warning signs.”

  “Thanks for saying that.”

  I put the phone back into my pocket.

  “Listen to me,” I told him. “There’s something I’ve got to do. I’m going to put you in a cab now.” I ignored the amazed look on his face. “I need you to take the dogs and go to the cottage.”

  “Rachel, it’s late. Everyone’s gone to bed by now. The hotel is only three blocks from here. I’ll have a German shepherd and a pit bull with me. What could possibly—?”

  “Electrocution. Anaphylaxis. A lethal push from a high place. We were guessing before. Now we know. It’s not safe at the hotel.” I was holding his arms now, looking into his eyes. “Please do this. Do it for yourself. Do it for your kids. Do it for me, Chip. I don’t care why, just do it.”

  “This is ridiculous. Where will you be?”

  “I can’t say just yet. But it’s some place I thought I could get to tomorrow morning. I no longer think it can wait.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “You can’t,” I told him. “It’s too overwhelming if two people show up. She’ll feel outnumbered. She’ll never talk.”

  “She? She who?”

  “The missing link we’ve been looking for.” I reached into my pocket for my keys. “Please,” I said, handing them to Chip. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  “But—”

  I put my fingers over his mouth.

  “I have to go.”

  I put my hand up for a cab. When one pulled up to the curb, I opened the door, and the dogs jumped in.

  “I’ll grab the next one,” I said, practically shoving Chip inside. I tossed the bag of chips onto his lap. “Change of plans. You can have these after all. Beer’s in the fridge. And wait up for me, okay? Otherwise I’ll be locked out.”

  I told the driver where to go and slammed the door.

  We could have shared a cab. I could have dropped him off in the Village and continued on alone. But I needed to think about what I was going to say. And I didn’t want to give Chip a chance to reconsider letting me go on alone.

  Once inside the second cab, I pulled out my cell phone again, punching in the number, then listening to the lonely sound that told me the phone was ringing on the other end. Unless she’d shut it off.

  “Please be there,” I whispered. “Please pick up.”

  “Hello?”

  I was so startled when she answered that I didn’t respond immediately.

  “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  I took a breath before answering.

  “It’s Rachel Alexander,” I said. “I don’t know if you remember me. We met at a dog show, a few years ago. I’m at the symposium that Sam Lewis organized, and—”

  “What do you want? Why are you calling so late?”

  “I’m sorry about that. But it’s really important that I see you, as soon as possible. Tonight, if I can.”

  “Tonight? Why? What is it?”

  “Something’s wrong,” I said. “I need your help.”

  There was silence on the line as the cab sped across the Brooklyn Bridge. I was almost there, and she hadn’t agreed to see me yet.

  “Something’s wrong?” she repeated.

  “Yes, very wrong.”

  “What does it have to do with me?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure. That’s what I need to find out.”

  The cab took the first right off the bridge and then veered left.

  “Can’t you tell me on the phone?”

  “No, I can’t. Look, I’m five minutes away. Will you see me, please?”

  “Rachel, do you know what time it is?”

  “I do.”

  “Well then, can’t it wait until morning?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s already waited much too long.”

  There was another silence. I thought perhaps she’d put the phone down.

  “Do you know where I am?” she asked at last.

  “I do,” I told her as the cab turned the corner onto Cranberry Street.

  “Are you coming straightaway, then?”

  “I’m nearly there.”

  Literally, I thought, as the cab stopped in front of her house.

  But I had the feeling it was figuratively so as well.

  28

  YOU CAN SEE HOW LUCKY I WAS

  She stood in the doorway in a long, pink nightgown, her bare feet sticking out at the hem, looking more like a child than a grown woman. The same dark curls framed her face, but her clear blue eyes no longer looked as innocent as they did when she’d been a child.

  “What’s this all about?” she asked.

  “May I come in?”

  Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. Then she stepped back inside to allow me in.

  She turned and walked into the living room, taking the place where she’d been before I came, her half-finished cup of tea waiting for her. I looked around the room and then back at her. It was too late in every way to start beating about the bush, something I had little patience for anyway. I took a breath and, standing in the middle of the room, began.

  “How did Beryl come to take your place at the symposium?” I asked.

  “Mummy’s here?”

  I nodded and pulled a chair closer to the couch, sitting across from where she sat, her legs curled under her, her cheeks pale, her eyes red, as if before I’d come she had been crying.

  She stared at me for a few seconds before speaking. “She never said she was here.” I could see her struggling with more than she was saying. “I thought she was calling from England.”

  She hadn’t talked at all on the tape. It seemed she’d never wanted to appear on camera. After all, she’d only been five or six, a pretty thing, but too shy for all the hoopla that must have accompanied the filming of her mum’s training classes for the BBC.

  “Come here, Christine,” Beryl had said, looking off to the side, at the child who wasn’t coming. “Come and wave good-bye to everyone. Christina, darling, come to Mummy.”

  Beryl looked straight into the camera. “Wouldn’t it be lovely if our little ones were as obedient as our dogs?”

  She’d disappeared for a moment, the camera not following her. Instead it showed the dogs, all their heads turned to watch the teacher. And there she was again, carrying a serious-faced little girl of five or six with thick, dark, curly hair and startling blue eyes, quite a big child to be carried, but Beryl didn’t seem to be having any difficulty at all. She seemed not to notice the weight as she kissed the little girl repeatedly, then whispered something into her ear.

  After that, Tina and her mother were all smiles, waving at the camera until the screen went dark.

  “You didn’t say why Beryl is teaching instead of you, Tina.”

  “Well, I don’t know what t
o say,” she said, sitting straighter, trying to keep it all together now. “I was talking to Mummy and I told her I’d made this commitment but I simply couldn’t keep it. I felt awful about it, because Sam’s always been so good to me. I just told Mummy how difficult a time I was having calling Sam and disappointing her with the news. Well, then she said she’d take care of it. Naturally I thought she meant she’d call Sam and apologize for me. I even gave her the number. I had no idea she’d offered to come and speak in my place.”

  “And why was it that you couldn’t speak at the symposium?” I asked.

  “I don’t see that that’s any of your business, Rachel. Is that it?” She stood, ready to dismiss me.

  “I was wondering why you changed your name, Tina?”

  She sighed and sat down again. “Rachel, I don’t see—”

  “Please. It’s important.”

  “Mummy throws a big shadow. You’ve met her now, haven’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, then.”

  I waited.

  “When Daddy was gone, she moved us back to England. I was only three at the time, so mostly I lived there. But I knew I’d been born here and that my father was an American, and I was curious, do you know what I mean? When it came time for college, I decided to come back to the States. After I graduated, I went home again. But living with your mother after you’ve been on your own—” She shrugged. “Anyway, by then I knew I wanted to work with dogs, and there isn’t business enough in Chipping Camden for two dog trainers. There really isn’t enough work for one, but Mummy can make a living anyway because she’s so famous. People come to her from miles and miles away.

  “Mummy said if I stayed, I could help her. There was enough work for both of us. But I didn’t want to be thought of as Beryl Potter’s little kid. I wanted to make it on my own. So I came back here. And I changed my name. Is that so difficult to understand?”

  “Not at all. So Sam doesn’t know that it was your mother calling to take—”

  “My stepmother,” she said. “My mother died when I was very little. I don’t remember her. But Beryl always used to tell me that she must have been both beautiful and sweet, else I wouldn’t be. She was a wonderful mother to me—please don’t think otherwise, I mean, because of the name change. Actually, it’s what she always called me.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “And Mummy never minded. She kept my secret for me. She thought it was the right way to do things, to soldier on, she’d say, manage on your own. It’s what she did, after all, when Daddy died.”

  “When was that?” I asked.

  “A couple of years after my mother died.”

  “His heart?”

  She nodded.

  “And your mother? She must have been very young.”

  “She was. She was only twenty. She committed suicide. So you can see how lucky I was that Beryl kept me, can’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Another woman, someone less strong, someone selfish, might have passed me on to any of my parents’ relatives to raise. After all, I wasn’t hers. But she didn’t feel that way. She felt I was. You can’t imagine how good she is, how fiercely loyal. Even coming here, taking my place. It was simply brilliant of her to do that. But does that mean—”

  “No, she never told Sam about the relationship. It all seemed a happy coincidence, the deus ex machina saving the day.”

  She clapped her hands together.

  “Oh, good for Mummy, she didn’t tell.”

  “Yes, she’s full of surprises,” I said, thinking about Cecilia and looking around the neat little room for what seemed like the first time, looking and seeing now what wasn’t there.

  Frank was right. People will tell you the most astonishing things if you give them half a chance. It was late—it was nearly one by now. But we’d only just begun. And what I was going to ask next was going to get those tears flowing again. I was starting to be sure about several things, none more than that.

  “Tina, I’m sorry to cause you more pain,” I said, “but I have to ask you a few more questions. I have to ask you to tell me about Martyn.”

  Her eyes opened wide, and she shook her head, as if by doing so she could make what had happened to hurt her no longer true.

  I nodded, then got up and moved to the couch, touching her hand after I sat down next to her. “Tell me about it.”

  “He’s why I couldn’t go.” Her voice sounded small, almost inaudible. One tear rolled down her cheek.

  “You met some months ago, when you spoke together.”

  She nodded, looking into her lap.

  “We fell in love,” she said, wiping her eyes with the heels of her hands. “No, that’s not true. I fell in love. Martyn only fell in lust.”

  “He didn’t say he was married?”

  “Oh, he did. But he told me it was a bad marriage and that his wife was a very weak person, neurotic, he said, and that she was in therapy and he was hoping that when she got stronger he would—”

  She paused, looking behind her, out the window to a small garden. There was a light on outside, shining on the little bench and the ivy that surrounded it, a pristine place to sit when the weather was warm enough.

  “It sounds pretty lame, doesn’t it?”

  I nodded. “He can be pretty persuasive, can’t he? And he’s a very charming man.”

  She nodded.

  Then she looked suspiciously at me. “Is that why you’re here? Are you and Martyn—?”

  “No, Tina.”

  “I’m so ashamed, Rachel. Not only did I follow him from seminar to seminar, but now it’s all over, and I’m still acting like a jealous—”

  “Don’t do this to yourself, Tina. You’re sincere, so you made the assumption that he was too.”

  “He seemed to be,” she said.

  I picked up the napkin from next to her teacup and handed it to her. She blew her nose and held it crumpled in one hand.

  “He encouraged me to come to his talks. He even paid for one of my tickets. ‘Come to Denver,’ he said. “Be with me.’ Then ‘Come to Minneapolis.’ But then—”

  “Did you tell him about the baby?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Just a guess.”

  “I did tell him.”

  “And what did he say?”

  Tina began to sob. I slid closer and put my arm around her, rubbing her back. I felt her tears running into my neck, felt how thin she was beneath her nightgown.

  “What did he say, Tina?”

  “‘What are you trying to pull?’ he said. ‘I’ve had a vasectomy. It can’t be mine.’”

  “Good Lord.”

  “He’d said he loved me, then he was so cold. I couldn’t face going to the symposium, knowing he’d be there. And I couldn’t tell Sam I’d been such a fool.” She pulled away and looked at me. “Did Sam send you? Is that why you’re here?”

  “Tina,” I said, ignoring her question, “did Beryl know about this?”

  She nodded. Then I looked to see if the door to the garden had blown open, because suddenly I felt very cold.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That I’d take care of it. But I was so grateful, with all of this, that she was going to take care of calling Sam for me, that I didn’t have to do that as well.”

  “Tina, I know it’s late,” I said, “but can you make us some tea? There’s something I need to tell you, and I need a minute to think.”

  She stood up and bent to pick up her cup. “I still don’t know why you came, Rachel, but I’m awfully glad you did.”

  I stood and hugged her, my heart feeling as cold and hard as stone, knowing what I had to say next and what it would do to this vulnerable woman.

  I watched her walk away, not an ounce of fat on her. Then I looked around the room.

  Beryl didn’t have a grandchild. There was no tricycle in the garden, no Dr. Seuss on the coffee table.

  Nor was there a grandchild on the way.
There was no Dr. Spock, no What to Expect When You’re Expecting, no bag of knitting, and no saltine crumbs next to where her teacup had sat.

  Tina had taken care of it, as she’d promised Beryl. But not in the way that Beryl had imagined, had dreamed.

  And clearly Beryl had taken care of her end of the deal. But not in the way Tina had imagined. Nor anyone, possibly not even Beryl.

  But why the other two?

  In order to get that answer, I suspected I was going to need a little help from my friends.

  29

  WE TOOK SEPARATE CABS

  I rang the bell next to the wrought-iron gate and waited for Chip to come and open it.

  “This is Tina Darling,” I said when the gate swung open. “Beryl’s daughter. She’s staying here tonight.”

  He took a look at Tina, stepped closer, put an arm around her shoulders, and walked her to the cottage. I locked the gate and followed behind them, Dashiell and Betty circling around me, sneezing with joy that I’d returned.

  Tina was so exhausted, she could hardly keep her eyes open. I took her upstairs to my room, turned down the covers, and when she sat, I bent and slipped off her shoes. Without saying a word, she lay back on the pillow, drew up her knees, and closed her eyes.

  “Do you want me to leave Dashiell with you?” I asked.

  She nodded without opening her eyes.

  He’d followed us up, his nails ticking on the oak stairs. He stood at the side of the bed, watching her, his forehead wrinkled with concern, dowsing for where she hurt. But this wasn’t a stomachache or a pulled muscle. The hurt Tina felt was everywhere, leaving room for nothing else.

  I patted the bed next to her, and Dashiell hopped up, snuggling against her. As I pulled the cover over both of them, I saw her arm reach out to embrace him.

  Downstairs, I poured two glasses of wine and joined Chip on the couch. “Chip, when Sam called to ask you to speak, did she tell you you’d be covering a spot left by another speaker who had seemed to abandon ship?”

  “She did. She said Tina had agreed to teach, but that at the last minute, she was unable to reach her for a confirmation.”

  “I was able to buy that one. She’d been after you for a long time. And the topic is one any number of people could have handled.”

  “But none as brilliantly as I did.”