Whom Dog Hath Joined (24 page)

“Poor Aunt Gail,” I said to Rochester, when I slid back into
the car next to him. “She works too hard. And now my matchmaking is falling
apart. Aunt Gail, Uncle Rick, even Mark.” I looked over at him. “You understand
what I’m doing, don’t you, puppy? I love Mama Lili and I feel so blessed with
the way my life is going, I just want all my friends to be as happy.”

He nosed me, whether in sympathy for my plight or because he
wanted the biscuit. I wouldn’t give it to him in the car because I didn’t want
to have to vacuum up all the crumbs, which put him in a mood. I left him in the
kitchen with his bowl food, which he refused to eat as long as there was a
biscuit in the neighborhood.

“Tough nuts, dog,” I said, pointing at his bowl. “Eat your
food.”

I scrambled to get ready for work, giving Rochester his
biscuit after I showered. Didn’t help his attitude, though, and just to be as cranky
as he was I wouldn’t roll the window down for him. By nine-thirty, as we arrived
at the winding road that led up to the abbey, we were both in a funk.

The road needed to be widened, repaved and landscaped before
we opened, but we were waiting until all the heavy equipment was finished. I
had to pull to one side, dangerously close to a stand of pine, in order to let
a fire truck pass me, coming downhill.

“Don’t tell me the place burned down,” I said to Rochester,
who didn’t. I rolled down my window and sniffed the air. The breeze brought
with it a smell of wood smoke but I had a feeling it was from something more
than a fireplace fire. I pulled up in front of the office and looked down
toward the far end of the property, where I saw Joey Capodilupo standing where the
stable was. Or rather, had been. The ramshackle wood building with two big
front doors was gone. In its place was a smoking pile of rubble. Another fire
truck stood by as a couple of firefighters sprayed the debris with water.

I hurried down the gravel road to Joey, Rochester right
behind me. “What happened?” I asked.

Joey had grime smeared on his forehead and along one cheek,
and his T-shirt was soaked with either water or sweat. “Something ignited
inside the stable,” he said. “When I got here at seven-thirty the fire was
smoldering, but it took off right after that.”

“At least you saved the other buildings,” I said.

“Yeah, but this opens another whole can of worms. You ever
notice there’s no fire hydrants up here?”

I looked around through a smoky haze that hung in the air and
didn’t see any. “That a problem?”

“It is if there’s a fire. Fortunately this was a small one
and they could put it out with the water they carry. None of these buildings
are up to code, and we’ve already planned to install sprinklers. But now it’s
clear we need to have a couple of hydrants up here, too. That’s going to
require extra permitting and a new line from the main at the bottom of the hill.
That’s going to mean more money and more time.”

“Crap,” I said. At least that portion of the work would fall
to Joe Sr., not to me. “Any good news this morning?”

“We were storing the carpet rolls for the dormitory in the
stable,” he said. “It’s all burned to a crisp, but it was butt ugly.”

“I hope this is all covered by the college’s fire insurance
policy. And by the way, don’t let Mark hear you say that. You know how
sensitive these decorators are.”

“Yeah. Too sensitive for me. Any way you can shift the job
from him to somebody who has some taste?”

Ouch. Another matchmaking attempt fallen through, on top of
all the damage. “You sure don’t want me picking the finishes,” I said.

He grumbled something under his breath that sounded like he
didn’t want Mark doing anything, but then his cell rang and he had to answer
it.

The College president, John William Babson, showed up around
noon to survey the damage, and he wasn’t happy. I spent the whole day in
meetings and on the phone, scrambling to help wherever I could. Long
conversations with the college’s insurance administrator, the fire chief, the
company that supplied the carpet. All of them dull but required.

I got an email from the man who’d first hired me at Eastern,
Lucas Roosevelt, the chair of the English department. He wanted my help with a
computer problem, as he knew I was on the IT committee. The default settings on
the computers in English department classrooms for paragraph indent and spacing
didn’t match what the department required of students. Verri M. Parshall, the
previous IT director, had blocked his efforts to get that changed. Could I talk
to Oscar Lavista and the committee on Lucas’s behalf? I made a note.

Late in the afternoon, Lili called. “You want to come up to
my place for dinner?” she asked. “I want to show you the movie I made of the
sneaker with the music I found.”

“I would love to come,” I said. “Horrible day. I’ll tell you
about it when I see you.”

By the time we left the office, Rochester was mad because I
hadn’t let him go anywhere near the burnt stables despite his eagerness to
stick his nose where it didn’t belong. I was dead on my feet and in no mood to
jump into the delicate negotiations that would result in Lili moving in with
me.

When Lili opened her door, the aroma coming from her kitchen
was a tantalizing mix of sweet and spicy, which cheered both me and Rochester. “You
smell like smoke,” she said as we pulled apart after a kiss.

I followed her to the kitchen, where I sunk down at the
table and explained about the fire at Friar Lake. “Nobody was hurt?” she asked.

“No, we were lucky.” I sniffed the air. “What smells so
good?”

“My mother’s roast chicken with apricots and prunes,” she
said. “And don’t make a face. It’s delicious.”

“At this point, sweetie, you could cook me shoe leather and
I’d be happy to eat it.”

She’d even bought a small bag of Rochester’s chow, and she
mixed it up with some diced chicken. He wolfed it down as we began to eat.

While we ate, I told her about my day, including my meeting
with Babson. “He ought to be grateful it happened now,” she said. “Imagine if
you were already open for business.”

“In that case, the ugly carpet wouldn’t have burned up.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Ugly carpet?”

“Joey Capodilupo thinks it’s ugly. He also thinks that Mark
Figueroa has no taste.”

“Poor baby,” she said. “Matchmaking not going so well?”

“Not at all.” I told her about Rick’s reluctance to get
involved with Tamsen, and how Gail thought she was too busy to date Declan.

“Maybe you should stick to crime-solving as a hobby. You do
a pretty good job of that.”

“Thank you. I don’t feel that way now, though.  I’ve been
able to give Rick a couple of clues, but I still don’t think we’re close to
finding out who killed that boy.”

She stood up. “I’ll clean up in here. Why don’t you go do
some sleuthing. That always cheers you up.”

“You are a treasure,” I said. “A woman whose price is far
above rubies.”

She leaned down and kissed my cheek. “I love a man who knows
his literary allusions.”

“I love you, too.” I walked out to the living room, settled
on the couch, and called Rick. “Did you speak to Eben Hosford?”

“Once I had his full name, I checked the computer database.
Our town records have only been digitized as far back as the 1980s, and there’s
nothing under his name but a couple of building code violations. I haven’t had
time to go digging around in microfiche for anything before that. Drove up to
his house but he wouldn’t let me in the gate. Just stood on his doorstep with
his shotgun next to him. Denied he was a part of Brannigan’s circle. Denied he
knew anything about that false wall.”

I heard him sigh, then he continued. “I checked with Mrs. Holt
and with Edith Passis. Neither of them remembered Hosford being involved, and both
of them said Brannigan had only recruited girls to help him. Edith didn’t even
think Hosford became a Quaker until a year or two after the war was over.”

“How about Vera Lee Isay?” I asked. “Did she know Hosford?”

“She says she didn’t.”

“Did you ask her why she joined the Meeting in Stewart’s
Crossing?”

“Yeah. She said she didn’t want to be specific, but the Meeting
in Lahaska wasn’t serving her spiritual needs, whatever that means. She insists
it was a coincidence that she joined just as the renovation was beginning.”

“Can you get Hosford’s fingerprints? See if they match any
around the body?”

“The crime scene guys retrieved a lot of fingerprints, from
the walls and the ladder inside that space. But I don’t have anything that
connects Hosford to Lamprey other than speculation, so I don’t have any legal
reason to request his fingerprints.”

“What about the soap?” I asked. “Or the candles? I know Gail
has bought from him. You could pick up what she has and get it printed. I’ll
bet his prints are on the inside of the packaging, so that would eliminate Gail
or anyone else who happened to pick it up.”

“I’ll ask Gail. But look, Steve, sometimes we have to accept
when a case reaches a dead end. The trail is dead. The autopsy results are
inconclusive – somebody could have knocked Lamprey out with a blunt object, or
he could have hit his head in an accident. I have no more clues and no suspects
beyond Peter Breaux, and he’s vanished.”

“So you’re giving up?”

“I’m moving on. I’m on the lookout for a Peeping Tom out in
Crossing Estates,” he said, naming a community of fancy homes in the suburbs. “Coordinating
a DUI stop with the state police. And talking to the kids at Stewart Elementary
tomorrow morning about what it’s like to be a policeman.”

“You’ll let me know about the fingerprints?”

“Yes, brother Joe. Now I’ve got to go.”

After I hung up, I thought about Arnold Lamprey and his
brothers again. Was it enough closure for him to know that Don had died there
at the Meeting House? Or would he always wonder how it had happened? I
remembered those missing children I’d found about online, how their families,
like that of my father’s friend Des, had probably never stopped looking for
traces of their kids.

I could always look for Brian Lamprey – but that was a
dangerous slope to put myself on, because I could see how easily the search
could lead me to unauthorized locations. One thing that I’d learned from my
online support group was that when I was tempted to hack, I had to focus on
something else—something that was equally important.

I looked at Rochester. “What do you think, boy?” I asked.
“You ready to do this with me?”

He rolled on his back and wagged his legs in the air, his
signal for a belly rub. I reached down and scratched, then stood up and walked
to the kitchen, the dog on my heels. One of the lessons I learned in prison was
that I had to face up to anything, or anyone, that scared me. If I didn’t, I
lost all power over that thing or that person.

Lili was just closing the dishwasher. I stepped up and said,
“Yes, I said, yes I will yes.”

She stared at me for a moment, then said, “The end of Molly
Bloom’s soliloquy from
Ulysses.
Are we playing literary trivia?”

“No, I’m telling you that I want you to move in with me.”

I waited nervously for her response. Suppose she’d changed
her mind? Despite her reassurance, what if she was worried about linking her life
to a convicted felon and an (sometimes) unrepentant hacker?

Then she said, “Just the kind of response I hoped I’d get.
Positive and romantic and all tied up in a man who sees life through the lens
of literature.”

My heart skipped a couple of beats as joy rushed through my
veins. I crossed the tile floor to her and took her in my arms, and we kissed. Rochester
kept nosing between us and I had to push him away. This moment was all mine and
Lili’s.

When we finally pulled apart, I had a moment’s hesitation.
My life, and Rochester’s, were going to turn upside down, and so soon after
taking on the new job at Friar Lake. It seemed like my life had become one big
chain of changes, and I didn’t like it. But then I looked at the smart, sexy,
beautiful, talented woman in front of me and knew I was making the right
decision.

Rochester even seconded the motion with a woof – though that
could have just been him wanting attention.

“You’re sure about this?” Lili asked. “Because I don’t want
you to feel any pressure.”

“I’m sure.”

We went back into the living room together and talked
through some details. “I like your couch better than mine,” I said, putting my
hand on it. “My parents had mine for ages, and when Rochester was a puppy he
chewed on the legs.”

We held hands as we walked around the apartment together.
“Your dining room table is better than mine,” I said. “But the chairs at my
house are more comfortable than yours.”

“I agree.”

“And I think your desk will fit better into my extra bedroom
than the crappy one I’m using, which I’ve had since I was a kid. And if we
angle it right, there’ll be room for both of us to have computers there and
even work together when we need to.”

I had a ton of kitchen stuff, inherited from my parents, but
Lili had a few pieces she liked that I was sure we could make room for. “And I
think you should bring all your art and your rugs,” I said. “We’ll move things
around and rearrange until it all fits together.”

“That’s good,” she said. “A lot of what I have is basic
stuff I got at IKEA when I moved here. I’ll either donate what I don’t want to
keep up or put it up on Craigslist.”

“Whatever you want to bring, we’ll make room for,” I said.

I had grown up in a house full of clutter, and lived in
tiny, cramped spaces in New York. When Mary and I moved to California I’d had
the impulse to add layers – framed photos, books, occasional tables, potted
plants and display cabinets. Mary had a design esthetic of Zen-like simplicity,
though, and she fought me on each acquisition. Gradually I adapted, and the
forced monasticism of prison life had become imprinted on me after that.