Doggie Day Care Murder (12 page)

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Authors: Laurien Berenson

BOOK: Doggie Day Care Murder
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“He was more than just a nice guy. He was smart; he was fun. He was a great boss. He wasn't always checking up on us to make sure we were working hard enough.”
As I supposed—reading between the lines—Candy did.
“He understood that there was more to life than just slaving away at your job all the time. Like people might have outside interests. Or friends they need to talk to.”
Madison pursed her lips in exasperation. “Candy makes us turn off our cell phones during work hours. Like she thinks anyone would actually do that, just because she says so. I put mine on vibrate and she never even knows. That was the difference between them. Everybody liked Steve. Steve
got it
.”
At least it had appeared that way to Madison. Though she'd obviously missed out on one salient point. Not
everybody
had liked Steve.
“I guess you must have been pretty shocked by what happened.”
“Well, like,
yeah
. Who would want to do something like that, especially to such a nice guy?”
“Do you have any ideas?”
Madison tipped her head to one side. “If I did—and I'm not saying I do—why would I tell you?”
“Why not?”
“Because I don't even know you, for one thing.”
“Would you tell the police?” I asked.
“Not if I could help it. Talking to the police is
so
not my thing.”
“But they did ask you questions.”
“That doesn't mean anything.” Madison was on the defensive again. “They questioned everybody who was here.”
“I know,” I said. “They talked to me too. Did you tell the detective about Candy being jealous of Steve?”
“What? And lose my job? I don't
think
so.” Her eyes narrowed. “And you better not tell her either. If you do, I'll just deny ever saying it. I'll tell her you're a liar.”
Good going, Mel. How to make friends and influence people.
Madison looked past me and out the windows. I turned and saw a silver-and-black Hummer pulling into a double-wide parking space.
A man I'd met briefly the week before got out of the vehicle. I couldn't recall his name, but when an Airedale hopped out after him I remembered that the dog's name was Logan.
It figured. If I didn't watch myself I'd turn into Aunt Peg.
“Looks like you have to go back to work,” I said.
Madison was already pulling out a large index card from a stack on the counter. Roger Cavanaugh, I read across the top. That sounded right.
“We love Logan,” Madison crooned as the door opened. She stepped out from behind the counter and leaned down to greet the new arrival. “He's our number one client. You've been here since the very beginning, haven't you, boy? We're always happy when you show up.”
Since Logan and Roger were the first clients to receive such an effusive welcome, I assumed the display was for my benefit. Madison was telling me that we were through talking.
That was fine by me. The day was just beginning and I had plenty of other people to see.
12
C
andy had invited me to make myself at home at the day care center, so I did.
Leaving Madison to her job, I walked down the back hallway, passing both executive offices. Candy's door was open. She wasn't inside, but Winston was. The Corgi was blissfully asleep on his corner chair, his little legs paddling in the air and keeping time with his dreams.
The door to Steve's office was still firmly shut. I hesitated briefly, then kept walking. Eventually I was going to want to go in there, but I didn't need to do so just yet.
Heading out the back door, I bypassed the paddocks—all of them still empty this early in the morning—and strode down the path to the Dog House. Inside, only about half the individual rooms were in use.
The playrooms were similarly empty, save for a pair of employees. Two young women, both dressed in the Pine Ridge uniform, were standing just inside a doorway, talking and giggling as I passed by. It sounded as though they were comparing notes on how drunk each of them had been the night before. Aside from glancing briefly in my direction, neither paid any attention to me.
I wondered if the two were slacking off, or whether there wasn't anything for them to do. I also wondered whether Candy was going to have to start laying off staff if business didn't start to pick up again soon.
As I'd hoped, Bailey was in the grooming room at the end of the hall. I pushed open the frosted glass door and slipped inside, being careful not to let out a fluffy white American Eskimo dog that was racing in dizzying circles around the linoleum floor.
Bailey was arranging some grooming supplies—clippers, scissors, a wide tooth comb—on a towel on the counter that ran along the back wall. She looked up when the door opened and offered me a shy half smile.
“Don't mind Pepper,” she said, as the Eskie misjudged a turn and skidded into my legs, then bounced off and kept going. “He looks wild, but once he uses up some of his excess energy, he's really very friendly.”
“Don't worry, he doesn't bother me a bit.”
I stooped down and held out a hand. A wet black nose brushed my fingers briefly as the dog sped by again.
“Can I help you with something?” asked Bailey.
“I'm Melanie. We met last week?”
“Oh. Sure.”
She sounded anything but sure. I tried again.
“My husband and I show Standard Poodles. You told me how much you'd like to try that yourself someday?”
“That's right, now I remember. Sorry, I meet a lot of clients here and I don't always pay that much attention.” Her cheeks colored, the blush slipping up over her fair skin. “No, I mean I do pay attention, but mostly to the dogs not the people. You know?”
I nodded. “You pay attention to what's important. And I didn't have a dog with me when I was here before.”
“You don't have one now either,” Bailey pointed out.
She leaned down and held her arms open wide. Pepper abruptly changed course and charged toward her. As dog and woman collided, Bailey straightened, scooping the Eskie up into her arms and depositing him on a nearby rubber-topped grooming table.
The maneuver was neatly done, and Pepper landed on his feet with his tail wagging. His pink tongue brushed a kiss across Bailey's chin before she reached around behind her and picked up a pin brush.
Some people have an affinity for animals and some people just don't. Bailey might not be entirely comfortable with me, but her rapport with Pepper was obvious. I'd trust her with one of my Poodles any day.
“I'm not here as a client,” I said. “Candy's going to be updating the Pine Ridge web site and I'm going to work on the design. So I'm here as an observer to get ideas. Do you mind if I watch you work?”
“Suit yourself. Though it's probably going to be pretty boring.”
“Been there, done that.” I hiked myself up onto another grooming table and settled in to chat. “I have Poodles.”
“I envy you that,” said Bailey.
She separated the Eskie's coat and began to brush. Work like that could be done by rote: the fingers busy, but the brain a million miles away.
“I've always wanted to try my hand at a continental trim, but we don't get too many Poodles here. Mostly they're the little ones and the owners just want something clean and fluffy, or else a Royal Dutch.”
“Easier than the continental, though. Trust me, you'd change your mind up if you had to show them.”
Thanks to the fact that we had dogs in common, Bailey was losing her reserve. “Yeah,” she said with a smile, “I guess I probably would.”
The door opened and a man stuck his head in. Mid-thirties, prematurely balding, sporting a paunch he didn't bother to try to hide. His white shirt had a streak of dirt across the front; his khakis were rumpled.
I'd seen him before. On my first visit to Pine Ridge, he'd been the man who was outside working in one of the paddocks.
“You want me to fix that cabinet now?” he asked Bailey.
“No, not while I'm trying to work in here. I thought you were going to do it first thing this morning before the dogs started to arrive.”
He shrugged. “Didn't get to it.”
“Yesterday?”
“Didn't have time.”
“All right then.” She sounded exasperated. “Tomorrow morning?”
“Could be.”
He withdrew, shutting the door behind him. Bailey looked like she'd like to throw something. Instead, she picked up the brush and went back to work.
“Larry Holmes,” she said, though I hadn't asked. “He does maintenance. Or at least he's supposed to.”
“It looks like he's not very good at his job.”
“You ask me, he's not very good at anything. Except maybe complaining about how hard he works. Things are constantly breaking down around here and it always takes forever to get them fixed. But whenever you ask Larry for help, he's too busy. I swear I have no idea what that man does all day. It will be interesting to see what happens to him now.”
“What do you mean?”
“With Steve gone and Candy in charge, a new web site wouldn't be the only change I'd expect to see.”
“Like what else?”
Bailey started to speak, then caught herself. “Oh, you know,” she said vaguely. “Just stuff.”
Stuff she didn't want to talk about apparently. Whereas griping about Larry came quite easily.
Just to keep her loose and talking, I said, “So who has worked here longer, you or Larry?”
“Like you mean, who has seniority?”
I wouldn't have put it that way exactly, but I nodded anyway.
“Larry's been here right from the start. At least that's the way I understand it. He and Steve had known each other for years. I think they were high school buddies or something. But then Steve went on to college and I guess Larry never got around to doing much beside hanging out and drinking beer.”
Bailey shook her head. “If you ask me, Steve gave Larry a job here just to lend an old friend a hand. It certainly wasn't because he's good at what he does. I mean, maintenance? How hard is that? And if he ever got things fixed right the first time, they wouldn't keep breaking down.”
“How about you?” I asked. “How long have you been here?”
“Not nearly as long as that. Maybe nine months?”
Her fingers continued to work their way gently through Pepper's long coat. When a dog was well-behaved, grooming could be soothing, almost hypnotic. Bailey was beginning to relax again.
“This place hasn't been in business all that long, but they had another groomer before me. I heard she got them in trouble and they fired her.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Some lady's bitch got bred by accident when it was here for grooming.” Bailey looked up and giggled. “I guess I would like to have seen that. Anyway, the other girl got canned even though she didn't think it was her fault and now we have all sorts of new rules, like only one dog at a time can be loose in here. The others have to be supervised by someone else or else in crates.”
That had to be the tale of star-crossed lovers Buster and JoyJoy. A regular Romeo and Juliet. And Bailey was getting positively chatty. It was time to segue to a more difficult topic.
“I guess you must have been pretty upset about what happened to Steve,” I said.
“Sure.” Her eyes lifted briefly, then lowered to her task. “Who wouldn't be?”
“Do you have any idea why someone might have wanted to kill him?”
“Heck no. How would I know anything about that? The police are the ones who are supposed to figure that stuff out.”
“I guess they talked to you about it.”
“Just for a minute.”
In my experience, police that had been called to a murder scene never talked to anyone
just for a minute.
Especially not someone who knew the deceased and had been in the vicinity when the body was discovered.
Eyes still cast downward, Bailey kept talking. “It's not like I had anything to tell them. Steve and I . . . that was over a long time ago. And anyway, it was just a fling. It's not like it meant anything.”
I had started to hop down from my seat on the table. Now I froze in place.
Whoa, I thought. Back the train up. That was new. Steve and Bailey?
“You two had a fling?”
She shrugged as if it didn't matter. “I guess you didn't know Steve very well.”
“I only met him once.”
“Steve liked girls. And girls liked Steve. I think just about everyone here hooked up with him at least once.”
“
Really?
”
“Yes, really.”
Her exasperated tone made me feel old. Like I'd advanced beyond the age where I could understand what the younger generation was getting up to. But let's be honest here, I
was
a little shocked at her casual acceptance of the status quo.
“Didn't that make things a little awkward around here?”
“Like how?”
If I really needed to spell that out, I
was
out-of-date.
“Well, with so many of Steve's exes running around . . .”
“What?”
Bailey glanced up again. A smile played around the corners of her mouth. She looked as though the conversation was beginning to amuse her.
As long as she kept talking, I was happy to be of service.
“Like you think we were all fighting over him or something?”
“Or something,” I said.
“Well, we weren't. Steve was good looking and all. And he could be a lot of fun. But I don't think anyone here kidded herself into thinking that he was the guy she was going to spend the rest of her life with.”
“Oh.”
As if that made everything all right. But then who was I to say? Maybe to them it did.
An intercom on the wall buzzed. Bailey stepped over and pushed the button. She and Candy spoke briefly about an Old English Sheepdog that was on its way back for grooming.
“Sorry,” she said when the conversation finished, “but I'm running a little behind and I've got to get back to work.”
“No problem.” I slid down off the table. “Thanks for your time. It's been nice talking to you.”
I was opening the door when Bailey said, “One thing?”
I turned and paused.
“Candy's probably going to remove Steve's name and picture from the web site. You know, because of what happened? But this place is still his vision. It's something that he founded and worked hard for. So if you have a choice, try not to let her do that, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “I'll see what I can do.”
I left the grooming room and went back outside. I'd been too busy that morning to eat breakfast, but I'd stashed an apple in my car. I walked across the compound and around the front building to the parking lot and thought about what I'd learned so far.
The first time I'd met Steve and Candy, I'd liked them both. But the two employees I'd spoken to thus far both clearly favored Steve over his sister. Of course, they'd both been women and maybe that made the difference. It seemed like a miracle that things had run as smoothly at Pine Ridge as they did judging by what I was hearing about Steve's behavior.
Out front, the same delivery van I'd seen on my last visit was once again parked beside the building. Its side panel bore the logo of a local wholesaler:
BYRAM PET SUPPLY
was stenciled in block letters, with cartoon images of a puppy and a kitten peeking out from behind the words. Presumably, Pine Ridge received regular deliveries from the warehouse store.

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