A Farewell to Legs (26 page)

“How much to adopt him?” I sighed. If you’re going
to have a dog, you might as well have one a five-year-old can walk,
I always say.

It cost about $120 to adopt Warren, what with the
fee from the shelter (“it keeps us going,” said the woman), the
leash, the collar, the food bowl, the water bowl, the bag of dog
food, the dog treats, the dog toy, the dog pillow, and the dog tag.
So I’d go a week without eating—Lord knows, it would probably do me
good.

The dog and I got into the van and started home. He
didn’t want to get into the van, as he was quite happy walking
around the parking lot and sniffing every blade of grass
individually. But I managed to force Warren into the back seat (I’d
had practice with two toddlers at various stages of my parental
career) and close the door behind him. He didn’t relieve himself as
he climbed up onto the seat, which I took to be a positive
sign.

On the way home, since Warren was not an especially
talkative dog, I made a mental list of phone calls to make as soon
as we arrived. They included one to Lucille Purell Watkins, one to
Mason Abrams, one to Alan McGregor, and one to Barry Dutton about
my latest vaguely threatening phone call.

It took slightly less time to navigate the distance
this time, because I knew the way from highway to highway now. New
Jersey is the kind of state where you can do really well if you
never have to drive on a local street.

Two blocks from our house, Warren lost his lunch on
the back seat. Luckily, I had put a blanket out to cover the seat
under him, so cleanup was somewhat easier, but I was already
noticing how much caring for this dog (for which I took no
responsibility) was eating into my day.

Warren trotted out of the van as if he hadn’t just
made a deposit on its back seat, and set out exploring his new
neighborhood. It was a good thing I had the leash to hold him, or
he’d have explored all of New Jersey and I’d have been out
$120.

Preston Burke was finishing work on the door when he
saw us approach. “Watch his tail by the wet paint,” Burke said. “I
did-n’t know you had a dog.”

“I didn’t,” I told him. “Now, I do. It’s been that
kind of morning.”

Burke knelt down and started to stroke Warren. “Nice
dog,” he said. “He doesn’t mind strangers, does he?” Then he looked
into the dog’s eyes. “No you don’t, do you? Do you?” he said.
People ask dogs questions like that all the time, as if they’re
expecting an answer. “No, I don’t mind strangers,” the dog would
say. “I just like it when they give me some bacon.”

Warren relieved some pressure on his bladder out in
the front yard, which was my plan. So I closed the screen door,
preventing him from running out, and put down his food and water
bowls, filled both, then showed him where they were. He seemed
unconcerned, and went to explore the house. Finally, he settled on
the rug in my office, four feet from where I was working, and went
to sleep.

I was about to call Abby when the phone rang. It was
Margot the Agent, informing me that four production companies out
of the seventy-five or so that I’d faxed had requested a copy of
the script. It was better than nothing, but not much. In the middle
of the conversation, the call waiting beep sounded, and I blew off
Margot for, as it turned out, McGregor, who sounded excited.

“I’ve been looking over the books for People for
American Values,” he said. “I found the thirteen million.”

It took me a few seconds to absorb that. “That
fast?” I gasped.

“I told you it wouldn’t take long, especially if it
was Legs who hid the money.”

“Was it Legs?”

“No,” McGregor said. “It was done much too cleverly
for it to be him. Maybe someone who worked for him, because it
certainly looks like it was done at his bidding.”

“Why?”

“The money came out of separate, private accounts
Legs and his vice presidents had established to use for
fund-raising, entertaining pols and donors, paying for travel, that
sort of thing,” McGregor explained. “This has been going on for
years, which is why nobody noticed. They never took more than five
or six thousand at a time, but eventually, it added up.”

“I’ll say. To me, the five or six thousand sounds
good.” Doing mental arithmetic (which was never my best subject, it
should be noted), I estimated that it would take. . .
uh. . .

“How many of these five thousand dollar skims would
it take to amass thirteen million, Alan?” I asked him.

“Two thousand, six hundred,” he said.

“So if they did it every week for fifty years,
they’d have enough?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” McGregor said. “It was
five thousand, but five thousand from each of ten accounts at a
time. So it would only take five years if they did it every week,
which they didn’t. They took more like ten years, and did different
accounts at different times. No pattern, no huge withdrawals, no
noticeable crime, for a long time. If Legs hadn’t gotten killed,
it’s possible this could have gone on longer, and made whoever did
it even more money.”

“Wow. So maybe whoever killed Legs is pissed off
now, because the attention from the murder cut off the gravy
train.”

“Maybe. Or maybe whoever killed Legs decided to do
it because they had enough money to do whatever they wanted now,
and they didn’t need him anymore.” McGregor has a devious side you
rarely get to see in certified public accountants outside an IRS
audit.

“You care to take a guess at who was skimming,
Alan?” I asked. “Any style to the crime that could point to one
person or another?”

“That’s the beauty of it,” he said. “It could be any
one of those ten vice presidents, or it could be Legs.”

“I think we can disqualify Legs as a suspect,” I
said.

“Yeah,” McGregor chuckled, “that’s just what they
want you to think.” I thanked him and hung up.

I was starting to formulate a theory, and the best
way to confirm it was to call Lucille Watkins. She answered on the
third ring, and appeared to be sober. She even remembered who I
was.

“I don’t know there’s anything more I can tell you,
Mr. Tucker,” Lucille said. “My brother’s been dead seven years, and
he couldn’t possibly have been in Washington last month. That’s all
there is to it.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I’m wondering about something.
You said there was a time when things got so bad that Branford sold
his blood to make some money.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Drank it all up, fifteen
minutes after he got the money.”

“Did he ever sell anything else?” I wasn’t sure
exactly how to broach the subject.

“Anything
else
?” Lucille asked. “Like what, a
kidney or something?” She laughed rudely, having been surprised by
the question, and by her response to it.

“I was thinking more of his hair.” She stopped
laughing, and came back after a few seconds, sounding mystified.
“You know, Mr. Tucker, I’d forgotten about it, but there was this
one time he had a bunch of hair cut off—you know, Bran wore a long
pony tail for a while—and sold it to one of those ‘real human hair’
wig places. He got a good price for the hair, too. How did you
figure that out?”

“The hair was where the DNA came from,” I told her.
“Whoever was in the room was wearing the wig that the company made
from your brother’s hair.”

“Eight years later?” she asked in wonder.

“Some people wear those things for thirty years,” I
said. “Do you think Tony Bennett’s fooling anybody?”

She was aghast. “
Tony Bennett?”
she
asked.

Lucille gave me the name of the company in Odessa,
TX that bought Branford Purell’s hair. It had gone out of business,
but the records it left were still available to local authorities,
so I’d call Abrams later and fill him in, but I was willing to bet
I knew what they would say.

One person who wore a toupee was involved in this
affair. One person who had sabotaged every attempt I’d made to find
out more in his presence. One person who might have had Legs’
confidence, and could easily have been helping him skim money away
from his own foundation.

Branford Purell’s hair had ridden in on Lester
Gibson’s head.

P
reston Burke finished
painting the front door just before the kids got home that
afternoon. He had done a much better job than I would have, sanding
and smoothing the entire surface before he applied primer and then
two coats of paint. I was impressed, and ashamed.

All that took a back seat to the touching scene when
Ethan walked in the door, hung up his backpack, and walked directly
through the living room and past the hyperventilating dog without
noticing anything out of the ordinary. Warren looked mightily
disappointed, but I explained to him about Asperger’s Syndrome, and
he nodded his understanding. Ethan went right into the bathroom and
turned on the exhaust fan. It was anybody’s guess how long he would
be in there.

Things were different when Leah walked in. The dog
practically rushed the door this time, and Leah fell to her knees,
yelled “He’s
here!”
and gave the dog the biggest hug since
Charlie Brown met Snoopy. “Daddy, he’s here!” she repeated, sincere
in her belief that the dog had merely gotten our address from the
shelter people, hopped into his car, and driven all the way to our
house on his own, without my knowledge.

“I know, Puss,” I said. “But you know he’s going to
be a big responsibility, right? You’re going to have to walk him
every day after school.”

“Every day, Daddy,” she said.

“Like today, right?”

“Today? I have six pages of homework!” Leah fretted
prettily, but to no effect on her hardhearted father.

“Today. Here’s the leash and here’s a bag.” I handed
her a plastic bag from the supermarket.

“What’s the bag for?”

“What do you
think?”

She thought about it. “Ewwww. . .” she
said.

“You got it.”

“You mean I have to. . .”

“You sure do,” I said. “There are laws in this town,
and this is the kind of town where they’re serious about those
laws.”

She grumbled, but took the leash, and led the dog
outside. We settled on a specific route—one that would require
crossing no large streets, and a brief visit to the park. That, I
figured should give Warren the time and varied scenery he would
need.

While she was out, Ethan came out of the bathroom
and started on his homework. I was about to impart the news of the
dog, but the phone rang, and I went to answer it.

“Mr. Tucker?” The voice was shaky, and vaguely
familiar. I braced myself for the latest threat. “This is Jason
Gibson.”

Whoa. If you’d told me Marcel Proust was going to
call out of the blue, I might have found it just a tad less likely
than a call from Legs Gibson’s younger son. But this was a lucky
break, since Marcel probably didn’t speak English all that well,
even when he was alive.

“Hi, Jason. I’m surprised to hear from you, but I’m
glad you called.” I was trying as hard as I could to sound somewhat
jovial. “What’s up?” If I got any more jovial, they’d probably have
me committed.

“I just wanted you to know,” Jason began. His voice
was urgent, and somewhat hushed. I couldn’t tell if he was on a
land line or a wireless phone. “About what my brother and I were
telling you the other day. It wasn’t the truth.” “Jason, where are
you? Are there people listening to this conversation?” I got up to
pace.

“No, I’m back at school. They don’t know I’m calling
you. But I just wanted you to know.”

“What wasn’t the truth, Jason? You guys didn’t tell
me much that could be lies. You didn’t tell me much at all.”

He paused, thinking about how to say this without
getting himself in trouble, or saying anything that could be traced
directly back to him later. “Well, I
was
there the week
before the stabbing, but. . .”

I was going to wear out a path in the rug. “But
what?”

“Don’t believe anything they tell you, Mr. Tucker.
Every word of it is a lie, okay? I don’t want to leave the country,
so I’m telling you now. You can’t trust anything they tell
you.”

“Who, Jason? Your mother? Your Uncle Lester?”

Jason chuckled a chuckle with no humor in it. “My
uncle’s never going to tell you anything, Mr. Tucker, so you don’t
have to worry about him lying to you. But everyone else is a total
liar, okay?” He hung up.

The front door opened and Leah walked in with Warren
on the leash. He was panting happily, and she still had the plastic
bag, which was empty.

Warren looked at me as Leah took his leash off. He
seemed to grin, but that was just the panting from his exciting
walk. Then he walked onto the rug in my office and relieved himself
right next to my chair.

Ethan walked in from the kitchen and took a look.
“Dad!” he said. “Did you know we have a dog?”

I
n the abstract, it’s easy
to kill a dog. You just think of it as something that has invaded
your house and intends to make your rug smell bad. In the concrete,
material world, you have to look into those big brown eyes and
watch those floppy ears, and the fact is, you just can’t do it. And
bringing back a dog to the shelter is a lot like bringing back a
used car. Once you’re out the door, “The merchandise is your
responsibility. But we’d be happy to sell you some floor mats and a
pine tree deodorant you can hang from your rear view mirror.”

Ethan and Leah were introduced, that day, to the
wonderful world of rug cleaner and paper towels, and the fun-filled
uses to which they can be put. They complained, but the dog was
still new to their lives, and they did what was asked of them. I
knew this trend would not last long, but I was powerless to stop
it.