Bride & Groom (29 page)

“Good morning,” I said. “Yes, since you asked, I slept well.”

Reading from the centerfold, Buck said, “ ‘North, as we travel the path together, you enrich every moment of the journey. Thank you.’ And you know what that represents, Holly? It represents appropriate gratitude to a deserving dog.”

“Yes, it does,” I agreed.

Turning from the stove to look me in the eye, Buck said, “And where, I ask you, is
your
public expression of gratitude to
your
Alaskan malamutes?”

“May I remind you that I am getting married tomorrow afternoon? And that this is probably not the best time to criticize me?” With an expression of transparently fake abashment, Buck made a show of shifting his gaze to Sammy, who continued to hold his down-stay while whipping the floor with his happy tail. “I’m in the doghouse, kid,” Buck said. “With my daughter and my wife.”

I was tempted to go to the third floor to make my own breakfast. With the intention of keeping Buck two floors away from us, we’d stocked the refrigerator with milk, eggs, butter, yogurt, juice, and fruit, and the cupboards with coffee, sugar, cereal, and English muffins.

“With Gabrielle, you deserve to be,” I said. “Has Sammy had his breakfast?”

“Steve fed all the dogs an hour ago.”

“Where is he?”

“Taking a shower. And in his absence, let me tell you that you’ve got my approval for this marriage.”

“I’m glad,” I said.

Smiling at Sammy, he said, “Nothing to be ashamed of! Quality dog! Best reason on God’s green earth!”

“If you ever so much as hint at any such idea, if you ever so much as
think
it—”

The phone rang. The first of many calls, this one was from Ceci, who apologized for the early hour, but needed a consultation about the tents. Would we really need them? The forecast sounded perfect, but New England was, after all, New England, and... I’d no sooner promised to check the National Weather Service web site and hung up than the phone rang again. Uncle Don needed a reminder about directions to my house. I supplied them, and then made coffee and toast. Buck leaped to the conclusion that my polite refusal of his bacon and eggs indicated morning sickness. This new explanation for my marriage delighted him. I didn’t have the heart to disappoint him. Or the stomach to digest his cooking. Not long after Steve emerged from the bathroom, the uncles arrived, and Buck inflicted breakfast on them. I escaped into the shower. When I’d finished bathing and dressing, the uncles and Gabrielle were leaving to pick up Leah, who was accompanying Uncle Don, Uncle Dave, and my stepmother to Ceci’s house to assist in preparing for the wedding. To my relief, Twila had consulted my father about the possibility of finding a place to run her dog team, and Buck had not only suggested a state forest south of Boston, but had inveigled an invitation to go along. Before our guests departed, I reminded Gabrielle that she, Leah, Rita, and I had a one o’clock appointment to get our hair and nails done, and I reminded everyone that the rehearsal was at five o’clock at Ceci’s. We’d go directly from there to Nuages for the rehearsal dinner.

My father and I had a little tiff. He wanted to take Rowdy and Kimi with him. Having groomed them for the wedding, I refused. On September 28, there was obviously no snow, and Twila’s team would be pulling a cart, not a sled, along trails and dirt roads. Buck and I were still arguing when Twila’s car and her immense dog-box trailer were in the street and she was ready to leave. Buck was in the passenger seat.

“No, you will not have time to groom them when you get back,” I insisted, “and I want them clean for the wedding. Twila is skipping the rehearsal, and she’s going to groom North then, but you need to be at the rehearsal! Rowdy and Kimi are going to camp with you. They’ll get plenty of time in harness there. It will not hurt them to miss today’s run.”

Twila ended the spat by smiling at me from the driver’s seat, giving a conspiratorial wave, and driving off.

As I was standing on the sidewalk loudly thanking Twila and heaven, Kevin Dennehy’s back door opened. He was on his way out, but stopped for a minute to give me a few pieces of information about Claire’s murder. To my shame, I realized that I’d been so preoccupied with my own plans and with my impossible father that I’d almost forgotten about Claire.

“Sodium pentobarbital,” Kevin said. “They rushed it through.” He meant the autopsy, I assumed. “You know what that is.”

“Of course.” Sodium pentobarbital is the drug that veterinarians use for euthanasia. The brand names for it are a bit grotesque: Euthasol and, worse, Beauthanasia. “Was that the cause of death?”

“No. Same as the others. Head trauma. Blunt instrument.”

“That talk we had. I know you must’ve passed along what I told you. Has anyone followed up on it?”

He rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders.

“The world would be a safer place if you ran it,” I said.

“I gotta go.”

“Claire Langceil was a friend of Mac McCloud’s. She and her husband and son were at Mac and Judith’s when we had dinner there last Saturday night. Mac and Judith’s son and daughter were there, too. Ian and Olivia. And Olivia’s husband, John Berkowitz. Someone needs—”

He interrupted me by pounding his right fist into his left hand.

“You’re a Cambridge cop,” I said. “I know.”

“Hey, you got beautiful weather for your wedding.”

We did, too. But Kevin’s remark and the warm sunshine reminded me of my promise to Ceci to check the forecast and make a decision about tents. I scurried inside to my office, dislodged Tracker the cat from my mouse pad, and visited three weather sites, all of which predicted that Sunday and Monday would be clear and mild. Finding itself on the mouse, my right hand automatically performed the familiar act of checking for E-mail. As usual, I had dozens of new messages from my dog lists. Scanning for personal E-mail, I saw that I had a message from Mac McCloud. The subject read: Urgent.

Holly,

I need a great and unpleasant favor that I cannot ask of my family. Please meet me at my house as soon as possible.

Best,

Mac

The message had been sent only ten minutes earlier. The time was now nine forty-five. It struck me as more than odd that Mac had E-mailed instead of calling, but the phone had been busy off and on all morning, and he knew that I read my E-mail all the time. Still, I tried to call him, but got no answer. On the off chance that Kevin hadn’t actually left, I checked his driveway, but his car was gone. I made no effort to track him down, mainly because I somehow had the sense that Mac’s urgent message had to do with dogs rather than with murder. I found Steve in the yard with Sammy. After quoting Mac’s E-mail and saying that I’d tried to call him, I said, “Steve, Mac knows that we’re getting married tomorrow. I have a bad feeling that this is about Uli. I need to go there. I need to go there right now.”

CHAPTER 38

Steve refused to let me go alone. I argued that when we exchanged wedding vows, I wasn’t going to promise to obey him and that I had no intention of accepting orders from him now, either. He countered by saying that if he were setting out for some destination that I considered risky, I’d refuse to let him go alone. I reminded him that all the murders had taken place in the evening near the victims’ houses or, in Laura Skipcliffs case, at her hotel. He said, “So what?”

I called Ceci, told her to cancel the tents, and managed to end the conversation. Then Steve and I left. We took separate cars. I had no idea how long the urgent favor would take. Steve and Pete were meeting at one o’clock to pick up the champagne and the rest of the wine, hard liquor, and mixers. I, of course, was getting my hair and nails done. It made sense for each of us to be mobile. Still, as Steve’s van followed behind my Blazer out Route 2, I missed his company and kept glancing in the rearview mirror to make sure he was with me.

As Steve had remarked, Mac and Judith’s house was conveniently close to Cambridge as well as to Belmont, Brookline, and Newton. For once, there was no traffic by the Fresh Pond Mall or on Route 2. Only twenty minutes or so after we’d left home, I turned into the long wooded driveway that led to Mac and Judith’s house. One car was parked in the rounded area at the end of the drive. I couldn’t tell whether it was Mac’s or Judith’s, but Steve said it was Mac’s. Almost everything about the house looked just as it had on Saturday when we’d arrived for dinner. In the morning light, I couldn’t tell whether any lights were on. As Steve and I walked to the front entrance, I noticed that two big pots of blue asters now sat on either side of the door. The glass panels were clean, and the hardware still shone. No sound came from the house. Steve rang the bell. We waited silently.

Reaching past Steve, I rang the bell again. No one answered. Then I rapped impatiently, just as Claire Langceil had done. Feeling annoyed, I said, “Why would you summon a person on some urgent mission the day before her wedding, and then not answer the door?”

Steve replied to my question by trying the handle and then by opening the unlocked door. “Mac?” he called. “Judith?” His deep, strong voice reverberated in the spacious entryway. It seemed to descend the stairs to Mac’s office and to ascend to the first floor. “Mac? Judith? It’s Steve and Holly.” This time, he shouted. He must have been audible throughout the large house, even in the bedrooms and in Judith’s study on the top floor.

I’m not a reader of gothic novels, but I didn’t need to be one to have the vaguely unreal sense that we’d been cast as characters in some melodrama, or perhaps in a parody of one. Even so, I felt compelled to play my role. “Mac?” I called. “I’m here. Where are you? Judith, are you here?”

With no discussion, Steve and I simultaneously decided that enough time had elapsed to justify our actually entering the house. Also by unspoken agreement, we headed side by side up the stairs in search of Mac or Judith. The immense living room, with the fireplace at one end and the dining table at the other, was as tidy as it had been when we’d arrived for dinner. There was no fire. The ashes had been removed and the hearth cleaned. Except for a basket of yellow chrysanthemums, the table was bare. The kitchen, too, was neat and presentable, but it showed signs of use. The scent of coffee lingered, and a large skillet in the dish drainer was still damp. A few droplets of water were visible on the tile floor near a large blue pottery dish that had a blue floral motif and bore Uli’s name. The dish was half full of water.

Noticing a collection of message pads and a pen on a counter beneath a wall phone, I said in an undertone, “Maybe there’s a note.”

“Why leave a note there?” Steve asked sensibly. “Why not on the front door?” He, too, spoke very softly, as if we’d become intruders who wanted to avoid detection.

Still, I checked. The message pads were blank. As if compelled to search for proof that I was expected, I ran my eyes over the cabinets, counters, and appliances. The kitchen was remarkably uncluttered. The cooking utensils must have been in drawers or cupboards. A wall calendar with a photograph of a Bernese mountain dog hung near the phone, but there was no corkboard or message board.

“Nothing,” I said. Suddenly inspired, I called, “Uli! Uli, come! Here! Uli, here!”

We listened, but heard nothing.

“Probably with Judith,” Steve said.

A quick look in the other rooms on that floor revealed no one. The bathroom was obviously meant only for guests: Small lilac towels hung on a rack, and there were no bottles of shampoo, no tubes of toothpaste, no cosmetics. What seemed to be a guest room held a double bed, a dresser, and little else. Another room served as a pantry and storage area. With a sense of increasing alarm, I headed upstairs. Steve followed. Absurdly, we called out Mac’s and Judith’s names. When I reached the landing, I looked through the open door of Judith’s little study and then entered. In contrast to the rest of the house, the room was messy, but only in the manner of a writer’s workspace. A computer and printer sat on the desk, the surface of which was thick with paper. Yellow legal pads were piled on the floor. Books leaned lopsidedly against one another on shelves. Paper spilled from a wastebasket. Hurriedly, I led the way to Judith’s bedroom. The bed had been made. All the drawers were closed. I opened the door to the big closet. No one was in it. The other two bedrooms on the second floor had evidently once been the children’s. In one, framed photographs of stringed instruments suggested Ian. The other room had a flowered comforter and matching pillowcases. Neither room looked used.

“No one,” I said at normal volume. “Mac’s office is on the ground floor. I guess his bedroom is there, too. We probably should’ve looked there first.”

We both ran down the stairs to the first floor, then down to the entryway, where we paused to locate light switches and illuminate the stairs that led downward. Foolish though it was, we again called out for Mac and Judith.

This time, we heard a sound. It was difficult to identify. A soft groan? A sigh?

As I was about to go straight ahead toward Mac’s office, Steve unhesitatingly opened a door on the left. We stepped into a large bedroom with off-white walls and a full bed with a handwoven rust-colored spread neatly tucked in. On the far side of the bed was a nightstand with a pottery lamp, a stack of paperback books, an empty glass, and a prescription vial, the kind of plastic bottle used to dispense tablets and capsules. Its cap lay next to it. Sprawled face up on the floor at the foot of the bed was Mac McCloud. He wore a navy turtle-neck sweater over khaki pants, and he had shoes and socks on, expensive-looking white running shoes and thick ragg wool socks. His eyes were closed, and his face looked lifeless; despite the sound we’d heard, my first impression was of death. Steve, however, dropped to the floor next to Mac and felt for a pulse. I didn’t need to see Steve’s face to understand that he’d automatically shifted to his professional mode; the set of his shoulders alone conveyed absolute concentration and effortless efficiency. As he checked Mac’s mouth and jaw to make sure that Mac had an airway open, he said, “Go see what’s in that bottle on the nightstand. Don’t pick it up. Don’t touch it.”