Whom Dog Hath Joined (17 page)

“That’s interesting,” I said, twisting my laptop around so
he could see. “You think Vera Lee joined this committee because she knew there
was a body in the wall?”

“Or because she’s the kind who volunteers for stuff,” Rick
said. “Who else is on that committee?”

I looked at the list online. Hannah Palmer, the clerk of the
Meeting, was the chair. Besides Vera Lee, the only other name I recognized was
Eben Hosford. “Edith pointed him out to me at the Harvest Festival,” I said. “She
said he’s been very opposed to the renovations. I wonder why he’d join the
committee.”

“You know how committees work,” Rick said. “Don’t you have
to serve on them at Eastern? If you want to screw up progress, you join the
committee and then you argue every single point until the issue is dead.”

I thought of the committee I was serving on, and had to
agree with him.

He and Rascal left a few minutes later. I called Lili and
told her about talking to Amos Carter and connecting Don Lamprey back to his
family. “We can’t be sure until Rick talks to his brother tomorrow, but it
looks right.”

“That’s good,” Lili said. “I’m glad we’ll know who he is.”

“The next step is figuring out how he died,” I said. “But I
can leave that up to Rick.”

She snorted. “Like that’s going to happen.”

“You free for lunch tomorrow?” I asked. “It’s going to be a
slow day at Friar Lake, and I could come down to the campus. You have a studio
class in the morning, right?”

“But it’s done at eleven-thirty. I could meet you at noon. How
about the Cafette? It’s still warm enough to sit outside with Rochester there.”

 “That sounds great.” I relaxed back against the throw
pillow, and we chatted for a few more minutes. After she hung up, I stared at
the cell phone as the screen displayed the call ending, then returned to the
list of frequently dialed numbers. It was a visual testimony to the way I had
begun to reintegrate myself into the world at large, and Stewart’s Crossing in
particular. Rick Stemper, Mark Figueroa, Gail Dukowski at The Chocolate Ear. A
couple of folks at Eastern, including Joe Capodilupo. Tor, and Lili.

When I returned from prison and got the cell phone, the only
number I had programmed in was Santiago Santos. I scrolled down to his name,
and though I didn’t delete his number, I did remove him from my list of
speed-dials.

That was progress, I thought.

21 – File Search

After breakfast  the next morning, I loaded Rochester in the
car and we drove up to Friar Lake. Joey Capodilupo had set up a meeting with a
guy who was going to redo all the gutters and downspouts, and I walked around
with the two of them. I knew that Joey would be there to keep an eye on things until
his crew shut down at three-thirty. “I’m going to head down to the campus,” I
said. “Call me if you need anything.”

I closed my office, and Rochester and I drove to Leighville.
Though dogs technically weren’t allowed on the Eastern campus, nobody had ever
complained about Rochester. He and I strolled through the grounds, trees
turning color, students breaking out long-sleeve shirts, toting backpacks I assumed
were full of books – though they could as easily have been carrying netbooks,
laptops, tablets and other electronic gizmos. Rochester stopped beside a trash
can and lifted his leg to pee, his nostrils quivering as he did so.

Old wooden picnic tables and benches clustered around the
outside of the Cafette, an on-campus sandwich shop in a renovated carriage
house. They were incised with initials of long-gone lovers and the wear of wind
and rain. Lili joined us there, and Rochester tried to jump up on her, but she
gave him a gentle push on his snout, then scratched behind his ears and told
him he was a good boy.

“What about me?” I asked.

She reached up and patted me on the top of my head. “You’re
a good boy, too,” she said, and laughed.

I looped Rochester’s leash around the leg of an Adirondack
chair painted in Eastern’s colors of light blue and white and Lili and I went
inside. The Cafette was a worn, homey-looking place, decorated with old college
pennants and faded T-shirts. The multi-paned windows at the far end were open
and a light breeze ruffled the pages of an
Eastern Daily Sun
, the
college newspaper, open on one of the small tables that cluttered the front of
the room. The kitchen took up most of the back of the room, with a fireplace
along one wall. The first cold day, there would be a fire there, and students
lounging on the overstuffed chairs around it.

We both opted for the salad bar, chatting as we piled our
plates with bibb and romaine lettuce, tomatoes, raw mushrooms, and diced green
peppers. Lili added a bunch of other veggies to hers, while I opted for
croutons, raisins and crumbled blue cheese. We took them up to the register,
where the student worker on duty had a large silver ring pierced through the
side of her nose. I had an urge to get Rochester’s leash and see if I could
hook it to her ring, but I resisted.

She weighed the salads, and Lili paid for them and the
drinks. “My turn,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll let you take me out somewhere
nice this weekend.”

“Not tomorrow night,” I said. “We’re baby-sitting Rascal so
Rick and Tamsen can go out to dinner.”

She began to sing, “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a
match…”

The cashier looked at us like we were nuts. And she was the
one with the big ring in her nose.

We walked back outside to Rochester. I fed him pieces of
French bread while Lili and I ate. As we were finishing up, Lili said, “You’re
going to think this is weird.”

“What’s that?”

“You remember those pictures I took of the sneaker? I started
fiddling with one of them, desaturating the color. Then I kept on fading it out
a few degrees at a time until I had a series. I imported them into a movie
program and timed the fade.”

I understood the technical terms but I had no idea why she
was telling me, or how I was supposed to respond. So I just said, “And?”

“And it’s sort of beautiful, but creepy. Like a metaphor for
life fading away. Though I would never say anything that explicit.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“Do you think it’s too strange?”

“I don’t think there’s anything so strange, or so morbid,
that you can’t make art out of it,” I said. “Look at murder mysteries and crime
TV shows. They take awful stuff and bring it into our living rooms and
bedrooms. And doing that helps us appreciate our own lives and our mortality.”

“That’s the way I feel, too,” she said. “I took so many
photographs of horrible things when I was a journalist, and there was always
this fine line between exploiting the pain of the victims and documenting the
events. Witnessing. There’s something of that going on in the back of my head,
too.”

“Can you show me the movie?”

“I’d like that. You want to come over to my office now?”

 “Sure.” The three of us walked to Lili’s office in
companionable silence, and Rochester picked a good spot on the hardwood to
sprawl. Lili and I sat in front of her desktop computer and she ran the movie
for me.

It was creepy but oddly beautiful. The sneaker began in
fully saturated colors, the blue canvas a vivid contrast to the white laces and
sole. “The real shoe is a lot more faded,” she said. “I upped the colors to
start with.”

Gradually, in frame after frame, the shoe’s colors faded,
and the background darkened. It was like watching a slow-motion shot of a
flower dying.

She played me a couple of slow, dirge-like pieces of music
that didn’t add anything to the movie. “How about something from the sixties,”
I suggested. “Like in that scene from
The Deer Hunter, w
here they played
'You’re Just Too Good to Be True.' A song with a hard-edge but some
melancholy.”

“That could work. I can’t use a real song because I’d have
to buy the rights. But maybe I can find something similar on one of the
royalty-free music sites.” Her desk phone rang and she picked it up. “Dr.
Weinstock.”

She listened for a moment, then said, “But I can’t do
anything about it. It’s a registration problem.” Another pause. “Yes, I told
her to go in and see you. I’m trying to notify you of the problem.”

She hung up in frustration. “What’s the problem?” I asked.

“I have a student in my art history class whose name on the
roster is Jean Bean,” she said. “When she handed in her first paper, she wrote
her name as Joan. I asked her about the discrepancy, and she said somebody
wrote the name down wrong when she first registered and she ignored it.”

“But she can’t do that,” I said. “All her records will be
wrong.”

“You’re preaching to the choir. I told her she had to make
the change, but she didn’t seem to care. So I called the registrar myself.
You’d think with all the rigmarole students have to go through with
registration and financial aid somebody would have caught this beforehand. But
no. And they say she’s the only one who can fix it.”

She made a washing motion with her hands. “You know what?
Not my problem.”

“I agree,” I said. “All you can do is figure out what name
to call her.”

“She’s been answering to Jean. I asked her which she
preferred and she said she didn’t care.”

“Students,” I said. “Sometimes, you can’t teach them
anything.”

“You got that.”

I stood up. “Doing anything for dinner tonight?” I asked.

“Lean Cuisine. And then I want to go through some old rolls
of film I’ve never had developed. My friend Adam says I can use his darkroom
tomorrow.”

“Adam? I haven’t heard of him before.” I felt a twinge of
jealousy. Lili and I had never explicitly talked about being exclusive, but I’d
always assumed we were, and that her desire to move in together was another
step along the same line.

“He’s a sweetheart. He does a lot of freelance work for
magazines, but likes to experiment with new techniques, too. We met at an
exhibit a few weeks ago and he mentioned that he had a darkroom in his
basement. Then I ran into him when I was out with the students on Monday night,
and I mentioned that I still had some rolls of film I never developed. He
invited me to come over and use his darkroom, and we agreed on tomorrow
morning. It’ll be a lot easier to work there than in my bathroom.”

I was dying to know more specifics about this Adam—how old
was he? Did Lili think he was good-looking? I couldn’t figure out how to ask
without sounding possessive. Then I stopped myself. She had asked to move in
with me, not Adam, even though he had film developing facilities in his
basement. That had to reassure me. But I had to admit I didn’t like the idea of
Lili being alone in a dark room (or darkroom) with some other guy.

“I figured I’d come to your house after I finish at Adam’s.
If that’s okay with you.”

At least she wasn’t having dinner with Adam, I thought. “Sure.
I found this recipe on line for homemade dog biscuits. I’ll make some of them
while I wait for you, and then I’ll have them when Rascal comes over.”

“You really are puppy-whipped,” she said.

I crossed my arms over my chest in mock anger. “And is that
a problem?”

“Not when the puppy is as adorable as Rochester.”

He heard his name and raised his head, and when we stood up
he hopped to his feet. Lili leaned forward and we kissed. Rochester tried to
nose between us but I swatted him away. When we backed apart she said, “I
should be there about three or four o’clock.”

“The only place I might be is out with the dog. But you have
your key.” I had given Lili a key to my house the second or third time she
stayed overnight, and I’d added her to the permanent guest list at the front
gate.

I hooked Rochester’s leash and we headed for the parking
lot. On my way home, Rick called. “I spoke to Arnold Lamprey. His brother went
missing back in 1969. They assumed he’d made it to Canada, started a new life.”

“They never wondered about him?”

“Their dad was a World War II vet, and his brother Brian
served in Vietnam. The family didn’t approve of Don’s decision.”

“It still seems cold.”

“Well, Arnold’s interested now. He’s going to get his
brother’s dental records and send them to me so we can compare them.”

“How about the other kid? Breaux?”

“I called the Mounties in Ottawa.”

“Really?” I interrupted him. “The Mounties? They always get
their man.”

“They’re the national police force for Canada, dimwit. I had
someone check immigration and customs records. It took a while, but late in the
day the guy called me back. No one named Don Lamprey ever entered the country.
But Peter Breaux did, the day after John Brannigan’s journal entry.”

“Anything after that?” I asked Rick. “He have a driver’s
license, insurance card?”

“There are a number of other guys with that name. But none
of them are the right age. Not even close.”

“You think he went to another country from there?” I asked.

“There’s no record of him leaving Canada, though my contact
told me that he could have turned around and walked right back across the
border, without anyone knowing. They only cracked down in the last couple of
decades.”

“So he basically disappeared after he crossed the border.”

“That’s about it,” Rick said. “One more thing. I was curious
about how come no one smelled the dead body at the Meeting, and once I knew
when the boys were there I asked Tamsen to check the old records and see if
there was any mention of exterminators or a bad smell.”

“Did she find anything?”

“Yup. The heater broke at the beginning of February, and
they couldn’t afford to repair it until the spring. So nobody was in the
building during the time the body would have smelled.”

“You think someone broke the heater deliberately to keep
people out? That would mean that the killer had to be one of the Friends.”

“Or someone who had access to the building. Remember, when
we were kids a lot of people never locked their doors. Anybody in town could
have learned what was going on, and gotten into the Meeting, not just members.”
He sighed. “Anyway, I have to go to the gun range tomorrow morning and get some
practice in before I requalify. Since I gave you back your dad’s gun I should
make sure you know how to handle it. Want to come along?”

“Sounds like fun. Can I drop Rochester off at your place to
play with Rascal?”

We agreed that I’d meet him at his house at ten, and hung
up. I wondered how a family could let a son go missing like the Lampreys had,
and felt sorry for the kid, dying alone and unmissed.

Could the same thing have happened to me if I hadn’t
survived prison? Once my father was gone, the only person who kept in touch
with me during that dark time was Tor—something I’d be forever grateful for.

Now, though, I had friends and a family again. It was up to
me to manage to hold on to all of them, so that I didn’t end up the way Don
Lamprey had.

22 – Target Practice

Saturday morning after our walk, and after Rochester had
wolfed down his chow, we played tug-of-war with a couple of different ropes,
including a red-and-white striped one with a green plastic loop on the end that
he kept trying to put his paw through. When he lost interest, I retrieved my
dad’s gun.

My father was born on a farm in Connecticut, and he had
grown up around guns. He hadn’t been a hunter or a target shooter, but he was a
Civil War buff and had collected guns, rifles and other materiel from that
period. Though my .22 wasn’t historic, it had belonged to him and so it was one
of the few real connections I still had to him. I took it out of its leather
case and cleaned it at the kitchen table the way he had shown me, and it almost
felt like he was looking over my shoulder as I applied the oil from an ancient
squeeze bottle.