Jingle Bell Bark (22 page)

Just what Rebecca had been counting on, I thought.

“And besides, I'd already put down a deposit. Changing my mind after the fact would be like throwing that hundred dollars away.”

I was quite certain Rebecca had considered that in her marketing plans, too. No doubt a fair portion of her puppies were sold to impulse buyers who had no recourse if, upon reflection, they changed their minds about adding a puppy to their households.

“But then I decided that was just stupid,” said Alice. “Any dog I get for the kids is going to be a member of our family for a long, long time. So why shouldn't I make the extra effort to do things right? I want our puppy to come from a breeder who knows what they're doing, someone who can guarantee that their puppies get the best possible start in life.”

“Aunt Peg would be happy to help you find someone like that,” I said, feeling relieved for both our sakes. Now Alice would end up with a better pet for her family, and I wouldn't have to hold my breath wondering what was going to go wrong first. “There's a breeder in New Jersey, the woman who bred Henry's dog, Pepper. I have no idea if she has any puppies available but we can call and find out.”

“Thanks.” Alice smiled. “I was hoping you'd say that. Actually, I kind of figured you would. Which solves one of my problems... but not the other. I'm hoping you might want to help with that one, too.”

“What problem is that?”

She nodded toward the stage. “I told Rebecca I was taking a puppy. I even gave her money to hold him for me. So now I've got to go tell her that I'm backing out of the deal. You'll come with me when I do it, won't you? If I go by myself, I'm afraid she'll convince me to change my mind again. With you there for moral support, I'll be able to stick to my guns.”

“Of course I'll help,” I said.

What choice did I have? I was the one who'd convinced Alice to renege on the sale. No matter how unappealing the prospect, I supposed I ought to accompany her to deliver the bad news.

“I was thinking we should talk to her this afternoon,” said Alice. “As soon as rehearsal's over. No time like the present, right?”

Sometimes it's just like they say: no good deed goes unpunished.

“Right,” I agreed.

L
uckily, we were saved by the bell.

Or, in this case, the first six bars of “Flight of the Bumblebee.” As we got up to go confront Rebecca, my cell phone rang. I dug through my purse and told Alice to go on ahead backstage without me. No surprise, she didn't.

“Hey, Mel, it's Frank,” my brother said when I clicked on. Like I wouldn't recognize his voice.

“What's up?”

“We're having a baby!”

I knew that. I'd known it for months. Then my brain reprocessed the information correctly. “You mean
now
?”

“Right now,” Frank crowed. He swore under his breath and I thought I heard a horn honk.

“Where are you? Why aren't you at the hospital?”

“We're on the way. Bertie made me call you. Hang on a minute, here she is.”

There was a pause during which I was quite sure I heard Bertie say, “Don't sideswipe that truck, honey, I want to get to the hospital in one piece,” then her voice came through the phone, directed to me. “Your brother's a madman, you know that, don't you?”

“Have for years,” I confirmed cheerfully. “But he was born into my family so I didn't have a choice. You're the one who married him.”

“Yeah, well, I'm beginning to rethink that whole arrangement. Contractions are a real bitch, how come nobody mentioned that?”

Bertie had been to natural childbirth classes. She'd seen the video and been thoroughly briefed. So I was pretty sure she'd been warned. No sense in bringing that up now.

“How far apart are they?” I asked instead.

“Three minutes, give or take.”

“Three minutes? And you're just on your way to the hospital now? At rush hour?”

Okay, so the last part wasn't strictly necessary, but
come on.
Bertie and Frank lived in Wilton. The hospital was in Norwalk, at least a twenty-minute drive under the best of circumstances. They were cutting things pretty close.

“I know.” Bertie sighed. “It's all my fault: I did one of those hospital tours—you know, where they show you around so you know what to expect? And I kept seeing those pregnant women you hear about, the ones who go running to the hospital at the first twinge and then twelve hours later they're still pacing up and down the hallways. There was no way that was going to be me.”

I could understand that.

“So the first couple of contractions I kind of ignored, in case they were just wishful thinking. Then when I realized it was the real deal, I called Frank and he had to get home from Stamford. Which was okay because the contractions were still ten minutes apart and I didn't think we were in any great hurry. So I was just sitting there watching
Dr. Phil
because, really, when you're more than nine months pregnant what else is there to do besides watch cheesy television shows?”

Bertie was rambling now. Maybe she was trying to take her mind off of Frank's driving. Or the intensity of her contractions. Far be it from me to interrupt.

“But then Frank got home and I got up and started to get ready to go and—here's another thing nobody told me—when you start moving around, the contractions speed up. Like a lot. So next thing I knew they were five minutes apart and we were in the car. And now they're closer than that, and we're stuck in traffic.”

“We are
not
stuck in traffic,” my brother yelled in the background. The assertion was punctuated by the loud blast of a horn. “Get out of the way, dammit! We're trying to have a baby over here.”

“So as you can see,” Bertie finished up, sounding surprisingly upbeat under the circumstances, “everything is going according to plan.”

“What do you need me to do?” I said. “Have you called the doctor?”

“Before we even left home. He's meeting us at the hospital.”

“I'll tell Aunt Peg,” I said. “And Sam. What about your family?”

“With the baby being so late and all, they didn't want to come ahead of time and have to wait and wait. So now they're on their way up from Pennsylvania. They'll be here in a couple hours.”

“Anything else?”

“Just get in your car and get the heck over here. I'm thinking someone's going to have to hold Frank's hand and if these contractions get much worse, it sure as hell isn't going to be me...ooohh!”

“Breathe!” I said automatically. It had been eight years since Davey was born. I couldn't remember whether, at this point, she was supposed to be taking deep breaths or panting. Hopefully, Bertie would know. “Breathe through it! Everything all right?”

“Ahh... I'm back,” Bertie's voice sounded strained. “Hurry up, okay?”

“On my way. Hang on to little Godot until I get there.”

“Godot.” Bertie chuckled mirthlessly. “Who would give a baby an idiot name like that?”

I snapped the phone shut and looked over at Alice.

“You have to go,” she said.

“My brother and sister-in-law are having a baby. They're on their way to Norwalk hospital.”

Alice nodded briskly and cut straight to the chase. “Do you want to take Davey or would you rather leave him with me?”

Good question. In all the excitement, I'd forgotten all about him. No point dragging him to a hospital waiting room where he'd probably have to entertain himself for several hours. Not only that, but I had no idea what the hospital policy was about young children visiting the nursery. Better to leave him with Alice and bring him back to see his new cousin tomorrow.

“Do you mind?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? Of course not.” Her hands shooed me away. “Go. Make your phone calls and get on the road. I'll keep Davey until whenever you show up. And if you're going to be really late, call, and I'll go get Faith and Eve, too.”

I gathered Alice close in a quick hug. “You're the best.”

She grinned in reply. “As if you ever doubted it.”

I called Sam and Aunt Peg from the car. Sam got the message, hung up quick, and hit the road. Aunt Peg wanted to talk.

“Don't you want to head to the hospital?” I said. “We can talk when you get there.”

“When I get to the hospital, there'll be all sorts of other important things to do. Besides, I can talk and drive at the same time. Isn't that what you're doing?”

Well, yes.

“Not only that, but I've been reading up on things. First babies usually take a long time to be born.”

“Not this baby. It's in a bit of a hurry.”

“It's about time it got with the program.”

I imagined Bertie felt the same way. At least she seemed to be reconsidering the whole Godot thing.

“So tell me what you've been up to,” said Peg. “Something useful, I hope.”

“For starters, I've been placating Betty Bowen.”

“Oh?” she said innocently. “Why would you need to do something like that?”

I'd driven south on High Ridge to the Merritt Parkway. There was a line waiting to get on the entrance ramp. I flicked on my turn signal and joined it. “Maybe because you marched yourself over to her house and called her a Peeping Tom?”

“I did no such thing!”

Fingers drumming lightly against the steering wheel as I waited for the light to change, I simply waited her out.

“Well, maybe I did. But it was for a good cause.”

“So you could figure out who murdered Henry,” I said. “How's that coming, by the way?”

“Slower than you might think,” Aunt Peg grumbled. “It's not as if I have a lot of spare time for all these extracurricular activities.”

And I supposed, by inference, that I did?

“You were supposed to be checking out his ex-girlfriends. Since I haven't heard anything, I assume that didn't happen?”

Now she sounded wounded; as though, once again, her unreliable relatives had let her down. I followed the line of cars up onto the parkway and accelerated quickly.

“I spoke with one,” I said. “With luck, I'll get a chance to see the other in the next day or two. Jenna spoke very fondly of Henry.”

“Of course she spoke well of him! She was talking to an investigator. If she murdered the man, she'd hardly want to come right out and say she hated him, now would she?”

The thought made me laugh. “Nobody thinks of me as an investigator, Aunt Peg. And that certainly includes Jenna. She and I are friends.”

“Even so. It makes sense that she would want to deflect suspicion away from herself and onto someone else.”

“Yes, it would,
if
she were guilty. Which I'm willing to bet she isn't.”

“Well, someone has to be,” Aunt Peg muttered. “Otherwise this perfectly nice older man who was, by all accounts, universally liked, wouldn't be dead. And I wouldn't be checking the classified section of the
Greenwich Time
with trepidation every morning to see whether Robin and Laurel have made good on their promise to run an ad for the boys.”

“The boys?
”

“These two really are a couple of sweethearts. No wonder Henry was so besotted with them. I've always thought you could tell a great deal about a person by looking at his dogs. Even though I never met Henry, having lived with this pair for the last two weeks, I'm quite certain he and I would have gotten along like gangbusters. These Goldens are lovely, both of them; it's obvious they had a wonderful upbringing. I couldn't see the point of leaving them in the kennel all by themselves so I brought them up to the house to live with my dogs.”

“Have you spoken with Cindy Marshall since we saw her at the show?” I asked.

“No, but she emailed to say that she has several very good prospects for homes that would keep the two of them together. She'll be conducting interviews this week. Now if only I could convince Henry's daughters to let them go, I think we'd be all set.”

I'd used the connector to join up with 95. Now the exit for the hospital was fast approaching. “There's something I've been thinking about,” I said to Peg.

“What's that?”

“Nearly everyone I've spoken to has mentioned that Henry was the type of person who was very involved in everything going on around him. Even Davey said that his bus driver knew all about what was happening in the neighborhood. What if Henry saw something he shouldn't have and that's what got him killed?”

“Like what?” Aunt Peg sounded interested.

“I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud. Throwing another idea into the pot.”

“Another mixed metaphor, you mean.” Still, she didn't sound displeased. “Remember those photographs we found in Henry's desk? As I recall, they were pictures of the neighborhood.”

“I know, I was thinking the same thing. Unfortunately, I don't remember what was in them. It couldn't have been anything sinister, or I'm sure we would have noticed.”

“I imagine we would have,” said Peg.

“Listen, you think about that. I'm almost at the hospital, so I'm going to park, go inside, and see if I can find out what's happening with Bertie.”

“I'm ten minutes behind you,” said Aunt Peg. “See you soon.”

Inside the hospital, I was directed upstairs to the maternity wing. A nurse at the desk sent me down the hall to one of the birthing rooms. Standing outside, I paused and knocked.

Almost immediately the door flew open. Frank came barreling out. He was dressed in green scrubs and looked positively elated.

“It's about time you got here,” he cried. “This is the most amazing thing. We have a baby. I'm a father!”

“Congratulations!” I wrapped my arms around him. “That was quick.”

“Tell me about it. We almost didn't make it in time. They had a stretcher waiting for us at the door, and we were barely off the elevator before it was time to push.” My brother was shaking with emotion, like he wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.

“So?” I asked.

Frank looked at me blankly.

“Boy or girl?”

“Oh. Oh. Right. She's a girl. Eight pounds, seven ounces. A beautiful baby girl. She's going to look just like her mother.” Frank gave me a loopy smile. “I still can't believe it.”

“Can we go in and see Bertie?”

“In just a minute. They're just getting things cleaned up in there. They told me to come back in five.”

He and I strolled down the hallway toward the elevator. “How's Bertie doing?”

“Fine. Perfect. Absolutely amazing. She was great.”

The elevator door opened and Sam stepped out. “It's a girl,” I said. “She's already here.”

Sam looked back and forth between my brother and me. I realized our faces probably featured the same goofy grin.

“What's her name?” he asked.

“Oh God,” said Frank. “I don't know. People are going to ask that, aren't they? And I won't know what to tell them. Bertie and I never made a final decision. She said she wanted to see the baby first to make sure the name matched.”

“I think he's suffering from reaction,” I said to Sam. “Not surprising, under the circumstances.”

We turned Frank around and walked him back to Bertie's room. A doctor and two nurses were just leaving. “You can go in now,” the doctor said. He looked at Frank, then reached out and patted him gently on the shoulder. “You and Bertie both did a great job. And you have a beautiful baby daughter.”

“I have a daughter,” Frank repeated. He stared at the doctor as if he were hearing the news for the first time.