Hounded to Death (17 page)

“Do you have any idea what happened here?” he asked in a low tone.

Aunt Peg and I both shook our heads.

“Florence was unconscious when we found her,” Aunt Peg said. “There's a good chance she has a concussion. At the moment, that's all we know.”

“But why…?” Richard sounded as confused as we were. “My mother's never harmed anyone in her life. Who could possibly want to hurt her?”

“It doesn't make sense to us either,” I said.

“Do me a favor,” said Richard. “Please? Ask around and see if anyone knows anything. This is a travesty and something needs to be done about it.”

Even as I started to shake my head, Aunt Peg was already nodding.

Go figure. I'd been about to refuse for her sake.

“Call me later,” said Aunt Peg. “And let me know how your mother is doing.”

“I will,” Richard promised.

B
y unspoken agreement, Aunt Peg and I took the most direct route back inside the inn. We kept to the well-lit areas of the path and didn't even so much as glance into the shadows. We'd both had enough excitement already.

“Now what?” she asked when we entered the lobby.

I walked over and stood near the fire. Despite the evening's warmth, I was feeling a distinct chill.

“For one thing, I vote that we stop walking around outside the inn after dark.”

“Done,” Peg agreed. “That's two bodies in as many nights. I don't think I could take finding a third.”

“Two bodies?” a voice repeated behind us.

Richard's friends, Marshall and Derek, had been walking past on their way from the dining room. Unfortunately they'd overheard what Aunt Peg had said. The pair stopped in their tracks.

“Did I hear correctly?” Marshall asked. He sidled over to stand beside Peg. “Has there been another murder?”

“Certainly not,” Aunt Peg said briskly. “This was merely an unfortunate accident.”

The chances of Florence having accidentally hit her head seemed slim to me, but I could understand Aunt Peg's desire to downplay the evening's events. Like me, she could probably already hear the gossip express revving its engines and preparing to leave the station.

“Tell us what happened,” said Derek. “Was it anyone we know?”

“Florence Donner,” I said. There was no point in denying it, I was sure that everyone would know the rest of the story soon enough. “She was walking Button outside and it looks as though someone hit her over the head.”

Marshall gasped. “How awful. Is she all right?”

“No, she's not all right,” Aunt Peg said shortly. “The woman probably has a concussion. Richard is on his way to the emergency room with her right now.”

“That sounds serious,” said Derek. “Why was she attacked? Was she robbed?”

“We don't know. It didn't occur to any of us to check. Florence was unconscious when we found her, but her purse was lying on the ground right next to her.”

“Richard must be beside himself,” said Derek. “The two of them have an unusually close relationship. His mother means the world to him.”

“So we've noticed,” Aunt Peg said dryly.

She looked past him to the doorway where Margo was now leaving the dining room with several friends. “If you'll excuse me, I see someone I need to speak to.”

As Aunt Peg walked away, Marshall plucked off his wire-rimmed glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. His movements were jerky with agitation.

“This is an outrage,” he said. “If you ask me, somebody ought to do something.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“I don't know. Maybe hire a security team or make the police post a guard at the perimeter. If it were up to me, I'd lock down the inn until we find out exactly what's going on here.”

“
Lock down the inn…?
”

I hoped he was kidding. Marshall was clearly upset, but even so, his suggestions were more than a little extreme. Not only that, but having a guard posted at the perimeter of the property most likely wouldn't have kept Florence safe.

“That's what I said,” he said forcefully. “But what's the use in telling you? I should take my concerns somewhere where they'll do some good. This inn must have a general manager. I'm going to find him and demand to know what kind of a slipshod establishment he thinks he's running.”

Filled with the power of his convictions, Marshall spun around and stalked away.

Derek watched him go with a small smile on his face. “Don't mind Marshall. When things upset him, he tends to have a very short fuse.”

“Whereas you're more willing to take the wait-and-see approach.”

“Something like that. At any rate, I have no intention of getting all bent out of shape until I've talked to Richard and found out what happened.”

More power to him in that attempt, I thought.

There was an empty couch behind us. I sat down and patted the cushion beside me. After a brief hesitation, Derek settled down beside me.

“You and Florence are friends,” I said.

It seemed like a good assumption considering that he and Marshall had had dinner with Richard's mother on the first night of the symposium. But Derek was quick to correct me.

“
Richard
and I are friends,” he said. “We've known each other for years. We met in Louisville at the spring cluster, and of course we tend to frequent many of the same shows.”

It wasn't unusual for exhibitors to have good friends that lived several states away. Traveling in search of good judges was a fact of dog show life, and close relationships were often forged in the cramped camaraderie of the grooming tent.

“Florence is an admirable woman,” Derek continued. “Because of my friendship with Richard, our paths tend to cross quite a bit.”

“I just met Richard,” I said. “So I don't know anything about his relationship with Florence except what I've observed here. It does seem a little unusual for a grown man to spend so much time with his mother.”

“Not to them. I know I couldn't imagine living that way myself, but for Richard and Florence, it seems to work. They share the same interests and their mutual passion for dogs takes them to many of the same places. So I guess it only seems natural that they travel together.”

Natural
wasn't the word I would have used to characterize Richard's relationship with his mother. But that was Aunt Peg's problem, not mine. I had something else I wanted to ask Derek about.

“I was speaking with Florence earlier,” I said. “Before dinner.”

“I'll bet she tried to warn you off, didn't she?”

“Warn me off?”

“Florence isn't happy about her son's relationship with your aunt.”

“Yes, so I gathered.”

“But she's also not the kind of person to confront a situation like that head-on. Florence likes to manipulate people but she would prefer it if they don't realize what she's up to. Did she ask you to tell Peg to leave Richard alone?”

I nodded. Derek had read the situation pretty well.

“And will you?”

“No. And trust me, it wouldn't matter if I did. Nobody tells Aunt Peg what to do.”

“Good,” said Derek. “That should keep things interesting.”

As if that aspect of our lives needed any help.

“It's not like there's been a shortage of interesting things going on at this symposium,” I pointed out.

“You're right, of course. Whoever would have thought that a simple little gathering in the Poconos could turn up this many problems?”

While others had been titillated by their proximity to the dire events, Derek sounded genuinely worried. Perhaps because he had been acquainted with both of the victims.

“Charles was a friend of yours, too, wasn't he?”

Derek looked up quickly. “What? No. Where did you hear that?”

“From Florence. She told me that you'd mentioned something about coming to the symposium to talk to Charles Evans.”

“Yes, well…that was true. But as you might imagine, it didn't happen.”

“Was that a problem?”

“Of course not.” Derek fidgeted in his seat. He didn't look nearly as happy as he had earlier when I'd been answering his questions. “Why would it be?”

“Florence seemed to think that you'd come to the symposium for that very reason.”

“Florence exaggerates.”

“Really?” I tipped my head to one side innocently. “I didn't get that impression.”

“You don't know her as well as I do.”

I wondered if what Derek had wanted to see Charles about had anything to do with the keynote address. A speech that had, in a span of mere minutes, turned the respected judge into an object of derision from his peers.

Charles had to have known that his stand would be unpopular. But the man was also no fool. It seemed likely to me that before he would choose to deliver that address to this particular crowd, he might have expected to find support from some quarter.

Could Derek be another member of the dog show community who believed in the goals that the animal rights groups espoused?

“How did you feel about Charles's speech?” I asked.

Derek shrugged. “The topic was certainly a surprise.”

“You didn't expect him to come out in support of the animal rights' agenda?”

“No. Why would I?”

“I was just wondering if maybe that was what you wanted to discuss with him.”

“An end to selective breeding? The demise of dog shows as we know them? Hardly. I don't know what Charles hoped to accomplish by delivering that speech, but he ended up costing himself a great deal of credibility and respect. When he stepped up to the podium, Charles was a shining star on the dog show horizon. When he left, he looked like a bit of a crackpot.”

Derek leaned toward me. He lowered his voice confidentially. “Besides, even if I did happen to agree with what Charles said—and I'm certainly not saying that I did—there's no way I'd cop to that now.”

“Why not?”

“Come on. You're kidding, right? That stand not only made Charles unpopular, in hindsight it looks like it might even have gotten him killed. There's a certain irony in that, wouldn't you say?”

His closeness was making me uncomfortable. I leaned back and my shoulders braced up hard against the cushions. There was nowhere left to retreat.

In some cultures, this much contact would have been grounds enough to insist on marriage. Unfortunately, I was too interested in hearing what he had to say to push him away.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Those of us who breed and show dogs tend to think of the animal rights activists as a bunch of loonies. Fanatics who would go to any lengths to further their agenda. And yet, in our own way, are we really any different than they are? We're equally fanatic about protecting what we believe in. You only have to look at what happened to Charles to realize that.”

“What makes you so sure that it was his speech that got him killed?”

“It seems like the obvious conclusion, doesn't it? The views Charles espoused were clearly unpopular. Someone must have wanted to silence him.”

“If that was the case,” I said reasonably, “the killer should have gotten to Charles before he delivered the address, not after.”

“Not necessarily. Who's to say that whoever murdered Charles even knew what the speech was going to be about? But then after he listened to Charles talk, he became so outraged that he struck out in anger. You know, a crime of passion.”

I knew crimes of passion, all right. And at least in theory, that was a notion I could get behind. I just wasn't sure that we'd yet succeeded in narrowing down what the killer had been passionate about.

Derek had been hovering over me for long enough. I slipped out from beneath him and stood up. It felt good to have space around me.

Before I left, however, I wanted to take one last stab at steering him back to the question I'd originally wanted to ask.

“You never did tell me what you wanted to talk to Charles about.”

“It's not important.”

“You must have thought it was at the time.”

“I did.” Derek smiled grimly. “But things change, don't they? If you must know, before the conference I'd shared a brief correspondence with Charles about a matter of mutual interest. We had intended to continue our discussion here.”

“And did you?”

“No, I never had the chance. But as things turned out, it didn't matter. Someone else was able to solve my problem for me, so I didn't need Charles's intervention after all.”

“Problem?” I said with interest.

I hoped Derek would elaborate, but he didn't.

“As I said, it's already been resolved. Which was what I would have told Charles had I gotten the opportunity to talk to him. So you see, everything worked out all right in the end.”

Easy for him to say, I thought.

I doubted if Charles would have agreed.