In Dog We Trust (Golden Retriever Mysteries) (31 page)

“Am I under arrest?”

“Just want to talk to you about what happened,” Rinaldi said.

“Should I have an attorney?”

“It’s your right to have an attorney present whenever you want,” he said.

“Aren’t you going to read me my rights?”

He looked like he was getting frustrated, but he took a minute to settle himself. “As I’ve said, you’re not under arrest. Therefore, I don’t have to read you your rights.”

I thought for a minute. Rinaldi seemed like a nice guy, and he came recommended by Rick—but still. “I’d like to call my attorney, please,” I said.

He nodded. “Sure. You need a phone?”

“I can use my cell.”

I didn’t have an attorney, per se. A guy named Hunter Thirkell had drafted my father’s will, and he’d been helpful to me in getting things settled when the state of California wouldn’t let me come to Stewart’s Crossing in person. I’d gone to see him when I returned to town, just to say hello, and in the course of getting to know him I’d discovered that he’d been a prosecutor in juvenile court in New York when he was fresh out of law school. “My job was to put kids behind bars,” he had said.

Since then, he’d moved to the country, where he’d built up a general practice. Since he was the only attorney I knew in Bucks County, I called him.

Rinaldi offered coffee but I figured police coffee would be pretty lousy and asked for tea instead, and he went to get it.

“You haven’t been arrested, and you haven’t been charged?” Hunter asked, when I explained the situation to him.

“That’s what the detective said.”

“You made a good choice to call me. Don’t say anything til I get there.”

When Rinaldi returned with my tea, I told him that my attorney was on his way. He nodded. “All right. I’m going to do some research and the desk sergeant will let me know when your attorney gets here.”

He left me alone in the room with my tea. It was probably overreacting to call Hunter when Rinaldi just wanted to ask me some questions about Melissa and Menno, but I’d been spooked by Rick’s conjecture that one or both of them had run me off the road the week before.

I wondered where Rochester was. Had the desk sergeant found some dinner for him? Would somebody walk him? My mind wandered back to the day Caroline had been shot. The experience had traumatized Rochester—the sound of the bullets, the smell of the discharged firearms, the speeding black SUV. Would this experience upset him further? Would we never be able to come back to the dog park without being haunted by bad memories?

And if Menno and Melissa had killed Caroline Kelly, then who had killed them?

My mind was still rambling when Hunter showed up. He’s a genial blond guy, a couple years younger than Rick and I, and about fifty pounds heavier than he should be. At just over six feet, he was an imposing figure, whether in his suit and tie or in casual clothes, as he was that night-- an extra-large navy polo shirt, khakis and deck shoes. “How’re they treating you?” he asked when he came in and shook my hand.

“Fine. I just want to get this over with.”

Tony Rinaldi came in then, and after the introductions we sat down. After getting my permission, he turned on a tape recorder, and established his name and rank, my name and Hunter’s, and the date, time and location of the conversation. “I’d like you to start way back at the beginning,” he said. “Tell me about your neighbor—Caroline Kelly?”

“I only knew her at all because of her dog,” I said. “Rochester. The golden retriever. She used to walk him every morning and every night, and I’d be out walking myself around the same time. We would stop and chat now and then.”

Rinaldi had light-green eyes, which were arresting in combination with his brush-cut dark hair. They gave him a look of intensity that I was sure suspects found unsettling. “So your relationship was cordial?”

I nodded.

“You liked her dog?”

“He was OK. I wasn’t much of a dog person.”

“Yet you took over ownership of the dog after she was shot.”

“There was no one else. He was going to the pound if I didn’t take him in.”

“But at the pound, he might have found a family, right? He’s what, a purebred golden retriever?”

“As far as I know.”

“Those go for what, close to a thousand dollars, right?”

“Are you suggesting I killed Caroline so that I could get her dog? Because that’s ridiculous.”

Hunter reached over and touched my sleeve. “Let’s not jump to any conclusions, Steve,” he said. “Detective, is this all necessary? I don’t see how it relates to the two bodies Professor Levitan found this afternoon.”

“It’s just curious, is all,” Rinaldi said. “Your neighbor was shot, a woman you hardly knew, and yet you seemed to have a lot of motivation to keep your hand in all the details of the case.”

I looked at Hunter, who nodded. “I wouldn’t call it motivation,” I said. “Curiosity. And Rochester has a knack for finding useful information.”

Rinaldi’s eyebrows raised. “The dog?”

“It’s probably all coincidence. But he led me to the shell casing and to the information on Caroline’s friends.”

“Which didn’t pan out,” Rinaldi said.

“That’s true. But I still felt obligated to report it to Rick Stemper.”

He gave me a look which I interpreted to mean I had been keeping Rick busy with useless diversions, and I was very glad that Hunter was there.

We were sitting at a blond wooden table, in hard, straight-backed chairs in a matching wood. There were two posters on the wall, both advertising scenic Bucks County. One was a photo of rafters running the rapids upriver on a summer day, a mix of men and women in orange life jackets gripping paddles.

The second was a shot of Pennsbury Manor, William Penn’s home. We’d gone there on school field trips, learned about life in Colonial times from ladies in white aprons, walked through the herb garden and tried to avoid the smell and noise of the nearby landfill. That part didn’t show in the poster.

They were clearly handling a better class of criminals in Leighville these days than they had when I was a college student. “I know you went over all this with Detective Stemper in Stewart’s Crossing, but it would be very helpful if you could run through exactly what happened on the evening that Ms. Kelly was shot.” Sensing an objection about to arise from Hunter, Rinaldi looked at him and said, “Since the homicides may be related, it would be helpful for me to get the story direct from a witness, rather than just reading through Detective Stemper’s notes.”

I looked at Hunter, and he quirked an eyebrow, as if it was up to me. I decided to plunge in. “It was just after dusk,” I said. “I heard three shots, in quick succession, but at the time I didn’t realize they were gunshots. You always hear people banging, doors slamming, that kind of thing. It wasn’t until I saw Rochester come running toward me that I thought something was wrong.”

He looked at his notes. “You mentioned something about a black car,” he said.

I nodded. “Right after I heard the shots, this black SUV came barreling past me. Again, I didn’t think much of it, at first. It’s a long run from the gatehouse of River Bend to River Road, and people often drive down it pretty fast.”

I picked up the Styrofoam cup of tea, which had cooled down, and noticed my hand was shaking a little. I took a sip of the tea, which needed sugar—or flavor of some kind. I put the cup back down on the table before I could spill any of it.

“You and Detective Stemper are old friends, isn’t that right?” Rinaldi asked. The tone of his voice was just this side of grating—very determined, edgy. As if he wasn’t going to stop asking questions until he had the answers he wanted.

“We knew each other in high school,” I said. “We ran into each other a few months ago and got friendly.”

“So your friendship with him gave you an inside track on the investigation.”

Hunter said, “Detective?”

“Just trying to establish some facts, Counselor.” Rinaldi looked back to me. He was wearing a long-sleeve oxford cloth button-down shirt in light blue and a navy rep tie with some kind of small emblem on it. He’d unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, and the tie hung a little bit crooked.

“Let’s get to what happened this afternoon,” he said. “What made you drive Ms. Kelly’s dog all the way up to Leighville for exercise?”

I noticed the way he kept referring to Rochester as Caroline’s dog, as if the whole series of murders and thefts revolved around ownership of an excitable golden retriever, but I didn’t say anything. I explained about dropping my grades and graded papers off at the college. “I thought I’d take Rochester with me and he could run at the dog park.”

I was turning into just the kind of goofy dog owner I’d always made fun of. If I’d left Rochester at home, he’d have slept all day, and I’d be home with him instead of stuck at the police station in Leighville.

“Tell me about the accident,” Rinaldi said.

I sighed. This was turning into a huge deal, and I just didn’t have the energy. My ribs were aching, and all I wanted to do was go home and sleep for hours. But I described walking with Rochester along the canal, how he’d run off, and I’d tracked him down by the River Road.

“You don’t seem to have much control over the dog,” Rinaldi said. “He got away from you this afternoon, didn’t he?”

“That was different,” I said.

“Sorry, I interrupted you,” Rinaldi said. “You tracked the dog down on River Road.”

“I got his leash on him and we were walking home, sticking to the right side of the street, where there’s a shoulder. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital.” I shrugged. “You’ll have to get the rest of the details from Detective Stemper.”

“I will. You recovering all right?”

“A couple of cracked ribs and a bear of a headache,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I’m getting pretty worn out. Will we be finished here soon?”

“Shortly. Anything else I can get for you? More tea?”

“I’ll manage. What else do you need to know?”

“So you’ve been laid up at home for the last few days? Recuperating?”

“Uh-huh. And grading papers. That’s why I had to go up to Eastern today, remember? To hand in my grades and drop off papers for students to pick up.”

“And then?”

Once again, as I’d done at the scene, I walked Rinaldi through Rochester’s escape from the dog park and run into the woods, the barking, and the way I’d followed him in and discovered the bodies. “You didn’t disturb anything?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think Rochester did either. When I got there, he was standing about six feet away, staring at the bodies and barking. I don’t think he got any closer than that.”

“If you would, please, walk me through what you did since you were released from the hospital after the hit and run—that was Wednesday?”

Hunter interrupted. “What’s your purpose here, Detective? Are you suggesting that Professor Levitan needs an alibi for the time the murders were committed?”

“Until the coroner establishes the time of death for the victims I’m not suggesting anything like that, counselor. However, it would make my life easier if I already had the information at hand that let me eliminate Professor Levitan as a suspect.”

“I’d advise you to hold off on answering that, Steve,” Hunter said. “You’re upset, your mind might not be working too clearly right now, and that’s such a vague question I’d worry you might get some details wrong that might make Detective Rinaldi’s life more difficult rather than easier.”

Rinaldi shrugged. “We can go on,” he said. “I have just one more question for you, Professor. Do you own a nine-millimeter gun?”

The problem was I did, and I wasn’t supposed to.

Hunter jumped in before I had the chance to say anything. “I think we’re well beyond ‘helping you get some background,’ and into the kind of questions you’d be asking of a suspect,” he said. “If you’re going to charge my client, you should do so. Otherwise, I think it’s time for us to go.”

“If I have any more questions, I’ll be back in touch.” Rinaldi clicked off the tape recorder and stood up, then took the machine and left the room.

I started to speak, but Hunter put his finger to his lips. “We’ll talk outside.”

We stopped at the front desk, where Rochester was lying watchfully at the feet of the sergeant, a heavy-set Polish guy in his mid-sixties. When the dog saw me come down the hall, he jumped up and nearly strangled himself trying to come down the hall to me. “Yes, here I am,” I said, as the sergeant followed him down the hall and handed me the leash.

I reached down and rubbed behind Rochester’s ears as I thanked the sergeant for taking care of him. “Sweet dog,” the sergeant said. “I’ve got Labs myself.”

“Yes, he’s a sweetheart, aren’t you, Rochester?” I asked.

We walked outside, and Rochester made a beeline for a boxwood hedge next to the war memorial, where he let loose a long stream of urine. “Thanks for coming out tonight, Hunter,” I said. “I appreciate it.”