Drop Dead on Recall (5 page)

12

I try not to
swear too often, but was sorely challenged as I stood outside the front door of my house fishing for my keys. They were somewhere in my purse, trapped under a bag of pizza-flavored treats (for dogs), my wallet, a half bag of dark-chocolate-covered raisins (for me), Jay’s pin brush (which I sometimes borrow since I never seem to have a comb of my own, and hey, I bought it at Sally’s Beauty Supplies), assorted scraps and wads of paper, and an 18-inch plaited kangaroo-leather leash that cost more than a gourmet dinner but is soft and pliant as cashmere. Finally I freed the keys and opened my front door.

“Okay! okay! Settle down!” Jay goes through nearly every canine greeting maneuver in the book whenever I come home. He knows better than to jump on me, at least not when my hands are full, but it’s still a chore getting by him and his Joyful Demeanor.

I dropped my purse by the door, let Pip out of his crate, and ushered both dogs out the back door. There was no place to crash,
so I shoved a pile of
Nature Photography, Dog World, Front and
Finish
, and assorted other magazines, credit card offers, and ad flyers off the couch. I pushed the one decorative pillow I own, a tapestry number with a blue merle Aussie on it, into the corner, and plopped myself down. Despite my mother’s lifelong instruction to the contrary, I propped my feet on a corner of the coffee table and scanned the library books scattered there to remind me of my latest self-improvement project. All eight volumes would teach me—so the jacket blurbs claimed—to stop procrastinating and get organized. If I ever got around to reading them. Self-help guru Cheryl Richardson, whose books I actually had read at my friend Gina’s suggestion, might say the expired due dates were “a clue from the universe” that I wasn’t ready to stop procrastinating. Maybe later.

I was thinking about returning Detective Stevens’ call when Leo sauntered in. He hopped from the floor into a crouch on my torso with one silky motion, and began kneading the flesh over my sternum, flexing the toes and claws of one front paw, then the other, through my sweatshirt and, just barely, into the skin beneath. He purred brilliantly and gave me a cat-love look through half-closed amber eyes. I stroked his satiny orange felineness from crown to tail, and the bustling world slid away. Leo tucked his paws under his chest and settled into me, and we both hovered somewhere near sleep until a barkfest broke out in the yard a half hour later when Jay and Pip announced the arrival of the mail truck. I got Leo off my lap and myself off the couch and to the front door just as the carrier reached for the bell. Not my regular guy, but a grumpy substitute who lost no time on small talk before launching into a rant
about the car parked in front of my mailbox. “If I didn’t have this for you to sign for, I wouldn’t have delivered today ’cause of that
car.”

“What car?” The street in front of my mailbox was clear.

Although Grumpy looked toward the mailbox, he didn’t seem to notice that no car sat in front of it. “Don’t see many Yugos these days. All fell to bits, more’n likely. Foreign made, ya know.”

I signed for the delivery, waved at old Mr. Hostetler across the street, and went inside, wondering if anyone I knew drove a Yugo, assuming there had been one by my mailbox. I went to the kitchen and let the dogs in, grabbed a cold blueberry bagel and a diet root beer from the fridge, sat down at the kitchen table, and took a quick glance at the
Parade
magazine from the day before. I’m not a news fiend, but I do like to keep up with Parade’s version of celebrity gossip, Marilyn Dos Savant’s latest mind bender, and Howard Huge’s weekly exploits. I have my priorities.

The bagel was rubbery so I divvied it up between Jay and Pip, and then got to work. When I tell people I’m a freelance photographer, they seem to think I lead a glamorous life, bounding off to exotic locales and tramping around with my cameras and native bearers, striking all sorts of fascinating poses as I set up the perfect shot. It’s true, I do get to travel a bit, set my own hours mostly, and carry mountains of stuff along. I also spend a lot of time opening envelopes, processing orders, e-mailing proofs and mailing prints, contacting publishers, mailing photo CDs, e-mailing whatever, and filing, filing, filing. If I made more money, I’d hire an assistant. As things stand, I’m all I can afford. The benefit of doing it all myself is that I’m reminded that I am actually working when I photograph beautiful things.

I polished off my soda, piled the outgoing mail on a corner of the table, popped the empty can into the recycling basket in the pantry, and looked out the window into my backyard. The dogs were stationed at the back door, eyes wide and gleaming. Pip’s tail waved, and Jay’s entire rear end wriggled. “Okay, boys, let’s go play ball.” They started shouldering each other for first dibs on barging out the door, so I made them sit and stay while I opened it. They whined and squirmed, but both held the stay until I released them. It makes for a much safer egress, since bouncing down the back steps on my butt hurts a lot more than I remember things hurting thirty years ago.

An assortment of dog toys obscured a lounge chair on the patio. I’d put them there on Friday to save them from the lawnmower and there they had stayed while we ran back and forth to the show all weekend. I found Jay’s favorite Jolly Ball, a thick blue bouncy sphere about the size of a soccer ball with a handle molded of the same thick rubbery material. I also pulled a reasonably ungummed-up tennis ball from the pile for Pip. I pitched the blue ball toward the back of the yard with my right hand, and the tennis ball wildly to the left. Ambidextrous I am not. But dogs don’t care how goofy you are as long as they’re having fun, which these two were. Pure, unadulterated, ball-crazed fun. Perfect role models, if we only pay attention.

When the edge was off the canine energy, I abandoned my pitching station, left the boys to their own devices with balls and a tug rope, and surveyed the modest flower garden at the back of my lot. Buds on my bearded irises and peonies were beginning to split open, and the mounding foliage of coreopsis, coneflower, black-eyed susans, and catmint made colorful promises. The daffodils were finished and the lilacs beginning to droop, but full-blown late-blooming tulips glowed like watercolors and the edge of the bed smiled with violas. With all due respect to Emily Dickinson and the things with feathers, I think hope is the thing with petals that blooms within our hearts.

Poofy white clouds lazed across the warm blue sky, and the thermometer on the back fence read seventy-five degrees. June would arrive in less than a week, bringing warmer temperatures, and I couldn’t help wondering what else might heat up in the wake of Abigail’s death.

13

“Janet!” My neighbor, Goldie,
waved across the fence at me. “Whatcha up to?” Goldie was grinning, but pale violet half-moons under her eyes accentuated the pallor that had me worried about her the past few weeks.

“Just enjoying this glorious spring day.” That’s the thing about northern Indiana—spring is fickle. She grants us only a few balmy days, making the move from bone-cold, windy, rainy post-winter to sticky-hot summer in one nimble leap. Days with reasonable temperatures, soft breezes, and no rain arrive not in packs, but as lonely strays, and you’d better enjoy them while you can.

“How’s the garden?” I asked.

Goldie’s garden. I’ve never seen anything like it that wasn’t sustained by an army of paid laborers. Grass walkways wind from one plot to another with such craft that the small yard expands in your mind until you think you’ve walked through acres of flowers rather than a simple suburban lot. And if ever a person’s yard reflected the person herself, Goldie’s does. The exuberant, joyful profusion of colors mingle in unexpected combinations that, to a casual eye, might suggest chaos. But under it all is a rich and deep foundation built on discipline and strength, nurture and ruthless culling.

“My babies are starting to peek from under their earthy cover!” She laughed from deep inside and threw her head back so that the wide rim of her straw hat hit the top of her spine and popped from her head, revealing thick braids crossed and fastened into a crown of silver. Little stray hairs sparkled around it in the warm light. She caught her hat and tapped it back in place. “Ain’t I poetic?”

“You’re a wonder, Ms. Golden Sunshine.” That’s her name. Honest. Goldie has several years on me, so she was old enough in the sixties to be fully immersed in the counter culture. Née Rachel Golden, she went off to San Francisco in ’68 with flowers in her hair, and called herself “Sunshine” for a while. When she went back to school, she liked hearing her professors call “Golden, Sunshine,” so she went to court and reversed the names for real. She’s been Goldie Sunshine ever since.

Goldie had seen an article in the paper about Abigail’s death. “They didn’t say what she died of. Do you know?”

“No, I haven’t heard anything except rumors and speculation.”

“A shame, a young woman like that.” A dark cloud seemed to pass through Goldie’s expression, but it was gone before I was sure I saw it.

“I know. And the more I think about it, the less sense it makes.”

Leo hopped up onto the fence post, and Goldie bent toward him for a nose bump and nodded. “It’s hard to make sense of a friend’s death.”

“We weren’t friends. Actually, I didn’t like Abigail very much. Didn’t
know her well, never really wanted to. But I had the impression she took good care of herself. How could she just fall over and die like that?”

“So, then, what? You think someone bumped her off?”

“Bumped her off? You watching B movies again?” As if to vouch for the complexity of the human spirit, Goldie, passionately and loudly anti-war and pro-human-rights, loves murder and mayhem on the silver screen and has a huge collection of murder mystery tapes and DVDs. I returned to her question. “I don’t know. It’s possible, isn’t it? Maybe someone poisoned her.”

Goldie raised her eyebrows. “Who’s been watching B movies?” She adjusted a pin in her braid and grew thoughtful. “It happens, Janet. Sometimes people just die. Death doesn’t have to make sense.”

I met Goldie’s gaze and registered again that the circles underneath her eyes were darker than usual, and the sharp blades of her cheek bones more prominent, so I asked again, as I’d asked just about every day for a month or so, “Are you okay?”

She let out an odd little sound that might have passed for a laugh if I hadn’t known her so well. “Oh, yes, just didn’t get much sleep last night. Stayed up late baking bread.”

Meaning she wasn’t going to tell me what was wrong. But we’ve been friends long enough that I knew there was something. I’d have to try again later, or just wait until she volunteered the information. For the moment, I changed the subject. “So what’s new for this year in the garden?”

“Witch’s garden.” She gestured toward a newly planted circle of earth in the middle of her yard.

“Witch’s garden?”

“Yep. Really another herb garden, but the ones used in witchcraft through the centuries. You know, belladonna, wolfsbane, that sort of thing. ‘Double, double, toil and trouble …’ ” She let out a silly cackle. “Maybe I could stock the garden with newts and bats.” Leo hopped up onto the fence post, and Goldie slipped a hand along the length of his body. “See? I even have a familiar.”

“Long as you don’t use the stuff.”

“Nah! I’m no witch, ’though I do like the Wiccan Rule of Three. See here—I’ve painted it onto a sign for the gate to the witch’s garden.” She pointed to a colorful wooden sign, rimmed with a garland of greenery and a smattering of raspberry foxgloves and some blue blossoms I couldn’t identify. Gothic letters spelled out:
Whatsoever ye shall do for good or evil shall come back to you three-fold.

I know a few witches who would do well to learn that rule.

14

Monday night Jay and
I went to Dog Dayz. It’s the biggest dog training school in northeast Indiana, and the busiest. I slipped my Caravan into the last available parking space, and decided when I walked into the building that every member was there with at least two dogs. News travels fast in the dog world, and the place was abuzz with rumors, facts, gossip, and questions about the weekend’s events. People seemed to think I had the inside scoop since I’d taken Abigail’s dog home, but honestly, Pip hadn’t told me a thing except that he enjoyed his dinner and really liked fetching tennis balls.

Marietta Santini, owner and drill sergeant, called the group practice ring to order at seven o’clock. In the adjacent ring, Suzette Anderson was working Fly on hand signals, and several other people I knew only by their faces were working on various commands. “Dogs on the inside! Ready! Forward!” Marietta’s upbringing as an army brat had not gone for naught. “About turn! Halt! Forward!” I was waiting for the night her smoke-graveled drawl ordered us to “present leashes!” I have to say, though, that for all her brusqueness with people, I’ve never, ever seen her be rough on a dog.

She ran us through a snappy routine of forwards, fasts, slows, about turns, halts, and circles for ten minutes, then had us line up along one wall. “Sit your dogs! Leave!” A chorus of “Stay” sounded down the line, and we humans walked away. A few green dogs needed their people close and attached by the umbilical cord known as a leash. The rest of us scattered higgledy-piggledy ten, twenty, thirty feet from the line of canines.

“Before we get to other announcements and brags from the weekend, I’m sure many of you have already heard the sad news about Abigail Dorn. You probably remember Abigail working her Border Collie, Pip, here. For those of you who haven’t heard, Abigail died over the weekend. ”

A murmur ran through the group, and a short, plump woman with a face and hairdo much like those of her Shar-pei, wheezed, “That’s so sad! What happened?”

I didn’t hear Marietta’s explanation. Tom Saunders and Drake had walked in and I was busy thinking,
Now, that’s my kind of male. Strong, graceful in a muscled masculine way, with—what do they say in those romances?—raven hair edged with a hint of silver.
Tom wasn’t bad, either.

Right on cue, Tom shot me one of his grins. He sat Drake between Jay and a Golden Retriever, told him to stay, and walked across the ring to stand next to me. My cheeks felt warm, and a few other parts heated up as I became reacquainted with hormones I’d forgotten I had.

My brain wasn’t entirely disabled, though, and I heard someone half whisper, “No great loss if you ask me” and another someone reply, “No kidding. Guess her karma finally caught up with her dogma.”

I also managed to register that Marietta was calling for a moment of silence. People training in the individual practice ring stopped what they were doing, and Suzette and Fly strolled over to the wooden fence between the two rings. Everything got very quiet for about five seconds, and then Fly started to bark.

“Now, Fly, stop that!” Suzette addressed the yapping dog in a stage whisper.
Yip yip yip
, Fly replied. I watched the fingers of Suzette’s right hand ball into a fist, pop open, and spread, over and over. Every time they opened, Fly yipped. And I happen to know that Suzette’s command to shut the dog up is
Quiet
, not
Now, Fly, stop that.

Tom waggled his eyebrows, Groucho style. “Subtle.”

I was about to answer when Marietta congratulated Jay and me on our success on Saturday, and went on to acknowledge other members’ victories, large and small. “And the really big brag is two in one—Fly is a new Obedience Trial Champion and Utility Dog Excellent.” She stopped and looked around the room. “Where in the heck are Suzette and Fly? They were here a minute ago.”

She was right. Suzette was nowhere in sight.

Marietta shrugged and got us back to work for a few minutes, then lined us up for recalls. Somewhere behind me I heard snippets of conversation about the long-standing rivalry between Suzette and Abigail, but what got my attention was a breathy, “I didn’t think Suzette meant it when she said she’d like to kill her.”