Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund (3 page)

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Authors: Blaize Clement

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T
he forensics people resumed their careful work, brushing humus away from the corpse’s head, watching each spoonful they removed, exquisitely mindful that valuable clues could be mixed with the rotted leaves and bark. My breath was shallow and fast, filled with dread for what I was about to see. The techs’ hands stopped moving, and a ripple of silent shock seemed to run around the circle of people bending over the body. When they pulled back to let me see the uncovered face, I felt the same shock.
Not because the jaw had dropped in the automatic reaction of death, or because the eyes were wide and staring. Those things were expected. What was unexpected was the fool’s grin slashed with bright red lipstick on the bluetinged face.
They all looked up at me as if for explanation as well as identification.
I said, “That’s Conrad Ferrelli.”
Guidry gave a curt nod, managing to thank me and dismiss me with one gesture.
“I don’t need to tell you not to divulge anything about the lipstick.”
Of course he didn’t. Innocent people would come forward to make false confessions. Guilty people would give false alibis. Citizens would call with leads and misguided information. That angry lipsticked leer was knowledge that
only the killer and the homicide investigators would have. And me.
I turned to go. I didn’t want to stay to see the rest of the uncovering. I didn’t want to find out how Conrad had been suffocated. That was something only the homicide investigators and the killer should know.
Guidry caught up with me. “You know Mrs. Ferrelli, right?”
“Why?”
“Her dog has to be taken home. I was thinking it would be easier for her if you came with me.”
“You mean if I told her.”
“That too.”
“What is it with you? Every time you get assigned to investigate a murder, you end up making me do all your dirty work.”
“I wouldn’t say
every
time, and I’m not making you do anything. You can refuse. You can let the woman open her door and find a total stranger standing there with her dog. You can let a total stranger break the news that her husband’s dead.”
I glared at him. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was tell Stevie Ferrelli that she was a widow, but Guidry had a point.
The Ferrilli house was just around the bend, the first one at the southern end of the waterside properties, but it seemed more respectful to arrive in a car than go straggling down the street leading a dog by a necktie.
I said, “We’ll have to take my car.”
The Community Policing Officer was kneeling beside Reggie, talking softly to him, and when I took the end of the necktie he came without resisting. Guidry followed us down the lane to Mame’s driveway and my Bronco. Reggie balked a bit at getting into the back but finally obeyed. With Guidry in the passenger seat, I looped a right to the bay and drove past a few shuttered houses that looked closed for the summer.
The Ferrellis’ tall cypress house was on the edge of an inlet,
with a curving drive sweeping across the front. The house had weathered silver gray, and near-black Bermuda shutters on its slim windows gave it a coy look, like an island woman with demurely lowered eyelashes. A louvered breezeway separated a wide carport from the house, and a sparkling white Scarab 35 Sport rocked gently at a wooden dock.
I parked in front of the entrance, went to the back of the Bronco, and looped a cotton leash around Reggie’s neck. He was tense, holding his neck stiffly arched as I led him up the steps to the door. Guidry rang the bell, and I laid my hand on top of Reggie’s head while we waited.
Stevie opened the door, her face showing a mixture of apprehension and irritation, as if she didn’t appreciate unexpected people at her door so early in the morning. She was about forty, with the lean high-cheekboned beauty I always associate with generations of money. She was barefoot, in white linen shorts and a high-necked black sleeveless knit top, her dark hair loosely twisted into a comb at the back of her head. When she saw Reggie, her mouth made an O of surprise, and then she looked quickly at Guidry,
I remembered the feeling, the dark curtain slowly descending so that color and light become dingy, the brain screaming that what you’re about to hear can’t be true, even though you already know before you hear it that it is.
I said, “Stevie, it’s about Conrad.”
She covered her own mouth, but I knew it was mine she wanted to shut up.
Guidry said, “Mrs. Ferrelli, I’m Lieutenant Guidry of the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department. May we come in?”
Mutely, she stood aside, and Guidry and I stepped into space that soared to a high cathedral ceiling, with a glass wall at the back overlooking the bay. We walked over dark tile to stand awkwardly on a rug where caramel leather sofas and chairs formed a grouping.
Stevie said, “Has Conrad had an accident?”
Guidry said, “I think you’d better sit down, ma’am.”
She sat, suddenly and heavily, as if her legs had suddenly given way. I slipped the cotton leash off Reggie, and
he trotted to her, instinctively going to give comfort. She touched his neck with trembling fingers.
Guidry said, “Mrs. Ferrelli, when did you last see your husband?”
She seemed to shrink inside her skin. I wanted to rush to her and comfort her, but I stayed quiet.
She said, “Tell me what’s happened. Why are you here?”
Guidry said, “We found the dog in the wooded area beside the street. Apparently, your husband was attacked while he was walking him.”
She shook her head. “No, there must be some mistake. Conrad takes Reggie to the beach. He doesn’t walk him on the street.”
Guidry’s voice was gentle but firm. “He was in the wooded area by the street.”
She looked to me, as if I might have better news.
“Dixie? Is Conrad hurt? Is it bad?”
I said, “Stevie, I’m sorry. He was killed.”
She reacted the way civilized women do, first with disbelief and irrational insistence that it was all a case of mistaken identity, then with controlled despair, with shuddering tears, with questions, and finally with gradual acceptance and the ability to give Guidry names to call, people to notify.
There should be some kind of cosmic rule that news like that only comes when you’re alone, totally removed from civilized strictures, so you can fling yourself on the ground and howl like a wild dog. So you can beat your fists on hard surfaces and break your own bones. Civilization forces us to push our grief into our chests where it turns into a sustained moan.
I left her with Guidry and went into the kitchen where a coffeemaker was steaming on the counter, two clean coffee mugs sitting beside it. I poured coffee into one of the mugs and carried it back to the living room for Stevie. She looked up at me with blank eyes when I set it on the table next to her. Guidry got up and handed me a coaster from a stack on the coffee table, and I lifted the mug and repositioned
it on the coaster. We were like fussy hosts taking care of a guest’s needs.
I went back to the kitchen and put out fresh water and dried food for Reggie, noting with approval that the food was what I had recommended, the same natural diet that Mame ate but for younger dogs. Reggie heard the plinking sound of kibble hitting his dish and trotted into the kitchen to wolf it down. I watched him closely, looking for any indication of swallowing problems or pain when he chewed. He seemed okay, and when he finished he looked up at me and wagged his docked tail.
I knelt to slip the necktie from his neck. It was peachcolored silk. Undoubtedly expensive. I could imagine Conrad putting it on him that morning, thinking it looked cool, or thinking it was funny, or thinking God knew what, since Conrad didn’t think like anybody else.
I said, “You had a bad morning, didn’t you? I’m so sorry.”
He lowered his rear end to the floor and sat with his head tilted, his dark eyes looking at me with such intelligence it seemed he might begin to speak. Too bad he couldn’t. He was the only witness who could tell us who had accosted Conrad and killed him.
I washed and dried Reggie’s food bowl and put it where it belonged. I folded the tie and put it on the shelf next to the bag of kibble, all my tidiness to make me feel I was in control of something, the same way Guidry’s fussiness with the coaster had been.
When I went back to the living room, Guidry was gently questioning Stevie, going softly but firmly into personal matters that seemed to rattle and annoy her. She said Reggie slept in the breezeway between house and carport, and that Conrad always got up early and took him to Crescent Beach to run. No, she hadn’t heard his car leave that morning, but she never did because she was asleep. When Conrad came home after running with Reggie on the beach, she was usually up and they had breakfast together unless one of them had an early appointment. No, she hadn’t been worried that he wasn’t home yet because it was still early.
As beautiful and rich as she was, Stevie had a childlike, vulnerable quality, and she looked up at me as if I might rescue her.
I pretended not to know what was happening. A man had been murdered and Guidry had to find the person who’d done it. No matter how irrelevant his questions might seem, he had to ask them.
I said, “Stevie, I fed Reggie and put out fresh water for him. Would you like me to come back tonight?”
She and Guidry both looked surprised, but I knew she would need me, even if she didn’t.
Stevie took a deep breath. “Please.”
I said, “I’ll let myself out.”
I went outside and got in my Bronco and headed for Midnight Pass Road, taking the route that avoided the crime scene. In spite of my horror at what had happened to Conrad, and my empathy for Stevie, I had a schedule to keep and I was already over an hour behind. Cats were waiting to be fed and groomed and played with, a few birds were waiting for fresh paper in their cages and fresh seed in their feeders, a lone guinea pig was waiting for food and fresh cedar shavings.
As I turned onto Midnight Pass Road, I saw two middle-aged female power walkers leaning over a cardboard box on the sidewalk on the Gulf side of the street. The box had a hand-lettered sign saying FREE KITTENS, and the women had the sappy
Awwww
grins that people get when they see the baby form of anything. I resisted an urge to stop and rant about the stupidity of putting out kittens to broil in the heat. It was still early. Maybe the kittens would be rescued before the sun was fully up. If nobody rescued them, maybe whoever had put them out would take them inside. In my rearview mirror, I saw the women turn and begin their brisk elbow-swinging walk again. They had probably ruined their heartbeat goal by pausing to look at the kittens, but maybe seeing something that makes you say
Awwww
is better for the heart than exercise.
I was halfway to a Siamese cat’s house when I remembered
that Guidry had ridden to Stevie’s house with me. I felt a wicked grin coming on at the thought of him walking back to his own car. In those Italian leather sandals. With his linen jacket getting sweaty across the back, and his forehead getting moist from the heat … .
I slapped the steering wheel. What was wrong with me? I had just witnessed a gruesome homicide scene. I had just learned that a sweet funny man who had shown me kindness had been killed. I had just watched his widow crumble in stunned grief. And yet here I was thinking about Guidry’s body slicked with perspiration.
Then came the thought I’d been avoiding, postponing it with domestic puttering, feeding the dog, washing dishes, grousing about kittens left in the heat, imagining Guidry’s sweat. I couldn’t put it off any longer. Conrad’s killer had been driving the car I’d seen that morning. He had got a good look at me. And because I’d waved and smiled and said “Hey!” he had every reason to think I’d got a good look at him.
For the rest of the morning, I went through the motions like a robot, doing what had to be done and trying to give every pet the attention it needed. But all the time my mind was on the driver of Conrad Ferrelli’s car. He wouldn’t be dumb enough to keep the car. He had probably already parked it in front of some not-yet-open office complex or strip center.
He must have been hiding in the bushes and stepped out as Conrad and Reggie passed by. But Doberman pinschers are highly protective dogs, and Reggie would have attacked anybody hurting Conrad. Unless the killer had lured Conrad into the trees and killed him out of Reggie’s sight. But how could he have done that and then put Reggie into Conrad’s car? And when had he stopped and let Reggie out? Or had Reggie escaped? In either case, the dog would have headed home, cutting through the wooded area to reach his street.
By eleven o’clock, the temperature was climbing toward 100 degrees, and I felt like somebody was sticking
the sharp point of a knife into the center of my brain. The lovebird still on my list could wait awhile longer. I needed coffee and food, in that order.
I drove straight to the Village Diner, where I’ve eaten the same breakfast so many times nobody even asks me what I want. When they see me come in, Tanisha, the cook, starts making two eggs over easy with extra-crisp home fries and a biscuit. Judy, the waitress who is a close friend even though she and I never see each other anyplace except the diner, grabs a coffeepot and has a full mug ready for me by the time I sit down. This morning, I hustled to the ladies’ room and splashed cold water on my face and scrubbed animal off my hands before I took the booth where Judy had put my coffee. I drank half of it in one glug, and she was instantly back to refill it.

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