Jingle Bell Bark (27 page)

“Did you see who it was?”

“No, I never even got close. Why?” I nailed her with a hard stare. “Do you know who it was?”

“Not for sure,” Annie whispered. “But I think I might have an idea.”

“I
f you have information like that,” I said, “you don't need to be talking to me. You should be talking to the police.”

“Like that's going to happen,” Annie scoffed.

She reached out and hauled Faith into her lap. The Poodle is big for lapdog duty but she did her best, managing to get most of her front end draped over Annie's legs. Faith's head reached almost as high as Annie's, blocking my view of the girl's face. Once we had a canine barrier between us, however, Annie seemed to relax a little. Like maybe she thought I couldn't try to force her to do something as long as my dog was in the way.

“Why not?” I asked. It was a reasonable question. As far as I knew, Annie was a law-abiding citizen. If she had information about a police matter, I couldn't see any reason why she should run it through me.

“Look, it's not that easy, okay?”

“Life isn't easy,” I said tartly. “This person you're trying to protect hit an innocent woman over the head and put her in the hospital. He's also likely to have been involved in Henry Pruitt's murder.”

The police hadn't released information about the note that had been found in Carrie's purse. Even so, the reporter who'd written Friday's follow-up article had uncovered the connection between Carrie and Henry and speculated as to whether the two acts of violence were related. So I probably wasn't telling Annie anything she didn't already know. If she read the newspaper, that is.

“I'm not trying to protect anyone,” she said. After a moment, she added in a smaller voice, “Except maybe myself.”

I stared at her and sighed. It looked as though we'd reached an impasse. “Why don't you tell me what you know? And when you're done, we'll figure out what to do with it.”

“You'll keep my name out of it,” Annie said firmly. “You already agreed to that.”

“I'll keep your name out of it,” I repeated. It looked as though this time I meant it.

She nodded and we sealed the deal. Still it took her a few minutes to get loosened up enough to talk. Her hands rubbed restlessly over Faith's neck and shoulders; her eyes darted around the room. I thought about the two cups of coffee I'd drunk earlier and wondered if I had time to take a bathroom break. Before I could come to a decision about that, Annie finally began to speak.

“At first when Henry died I wasn't going to say anything because, hey, I wasn't really sure, and besides it's not my problem. Also too, well . . . I got my job because Henry was gone, so I didn't particularly want to look a gift horse in the mouth. You know what I mean?”

Close enough, I thought. I nodded, encouraging her to go on.

“But now with Ms. Baker getting hurt, I figured I really ought to tell somebody. Because Ms. Baker is a nice lady and none of this is her fault. She'd never even hurt a fly. So I'm thinking this shit is getting out of hand and it's gotta stop.”

“What has to stop?” It took effort not to sound as impatient as I felt.

“Johnny,” Annie said softly. Her eyes dropped. She buried her face in Faith's topknot. “Johnny Bowen.”

Finally, we were getting somewhere. Maybe.

“What about him?” I asked.

“He's um . . . dealing.”

“Drugs.” That had to be what she meant, but I said it anyway just to be sure.

“Yeah,” she said, then added quickly, “But it's not like he's some big slimeball or anything. And he doesn't sell the hard stuff, mostly just a little weed. He's small time, you know. The neighborhood supplier.”

The neighborhood supplier?
Outrage flooded through me. That neighborhood was only a couple of blocks from my own. An area that was filled with kids. An area that shouldn't have had any need for a
supplier.

“Now you're mad,” said Annie. She looked upset.

“Damn right I'm mad.” I shot up out of my chair and began to pace. “Johnny Bowen is selling drugs to kids—”

“No,” she interrupted, shaking her head furiously. “No, he isn't. He doesn't do that. He only sells to adults. To people who are old enough to know better.”

A drug dealer with a conscience? I didn't
think
so.

Then abruptly I stopped and stared at Annie. I wondered if she thought she was an adult, someone who was old enough to know better. And I wondered how this teenager who was driving my son's school bus had come to be so well versed in Johnny Bowen's dealings.

“I don't do drugs, if that's what you're thinking,” she said quietly.

I didn't say a thing. I just looked at her, sitting in my living room with a hole through her eyebrow where the hoop used to be, her full lips outlined with a ghoulish-looking black pencil, her pale, slender hands cradling my dog in her lap.

“Okay. It's not like I'm trying to pass myself off as some innocent or anything. Maybe I used to dabble a little. At one time. But I've put all that behind me now.”

“I should hope so,” I said.

Annie started to push Faith away. “If we're gonna have a fight about this, I'm leaving.”

“Sit,” I said, waving her back down. “And stop being so dramatic. How do you expect me to feel, with you coming in here and talking about taking drugs? You drive my son's school bus, for Pete's sake.”

“I expect you to believe me.” Annie's voice was taut with dignity. “I'm telling you the truth. All of it. So you'll understand that I know what I'm talking about when I say that Johnny was really pissed at Henry Pruitt. Pissed enough maybe to have done something about it.”

“Henry found out that Johnny was dealing.”

“Yeah. Johnny thinks maybe he suspected for a while. I don't like to speak ill of the dead or anything, but that Henry, he stuck his nose into everybody's business.”

She certainly wasn't the first person to tell me that.

“Now you have to understand that Johnny's kind of paranoid anyway. But he got this idea that Henry was watching him all the time. Following him when he went places. He even thought Henry might have bugged his phone.”

“You're kidding.”

Annie shrugged. “That's Johnny for you. He's a little out there when it comes to dealing with other people. Anyway, he thought Henry was acting pretty suspiciously. He was really worried about what Henry might do next.”

Johnny was the one dealing drugs, I mused. And he'd thought his neighbor was acting suspiciously?

“Why didn't Henry go to the police?” I asked.

“I don't know,” said Annie. “I don't know anything at all about his end of it. Mostly what I'm telling you are things I heard Johnny say. Maybe Henry needed proof or something. Maybe that's what he was waiting for.”

“What about Carrie Baker? Where does she fit into this?”

“I think Ms. Baker was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like Johnny saw the two of them together a bunch of times, added two and two and got five. He knows I work at the school and he kept asking me all sorts of stuff about her. He even had this idea that maybe I should spy on her or something, try to find out what she knew. . . .”

Annie's voice trailed off. She chewed on her lip and looked pretty guilty. I wondered how close she'd come to following Johnny's suggestion. Whether she had more reason to feel bad about the attack on Carrie than she'd initially let on.

“And did you?” I asked.

“No.”

I wasn't sure if I believed her, but it probably didn't matter now. What did matter was that Annie realized she'd made a mistake and was trying to rectify it. Now I had to figure out what to do next.

“How about if we go to the police together? There's a man named Detective Marley—”

“No way!” Annie bounded up off the couch so fast that Faith went tumbling to the floor. “You and I made a deal, and that wasn't any part of it. I'm not talking to any police.”

“Why not?”

“Do I look stupid to you?” She pursed her lips in exasperation, probably thinking that I was the stupid one. “If I go to the police and tell them that Johnny Bowen is dealing drugs, the first thing they're going to do is ask me how I know. What do you expect me to say to that? That I'm a good guesser?”

All right, so that was a problem. But anything I might report to the police would only be hearsay, especially if I refused to identify my source.

“What if we just tell them that we know Johnny was really mad at Henry, that he'd made threats against him . . .” I paused. “Had he made threats against him?”

Annie shrugged; her features were set in stubborn lines. It looked as though she'd probably given me all the information she was going to.

“You're so hot to talk to the police,” she said, “why don't
you
tell them that?”

“Because I'm not the one who heard Johnny talking about how angry he was at Henry Pruitt. It won't carry the same weight coming from me.”

“Sorry.” Annie picked up her coat and hat, spun around, and headed for the door. “That's all the weight it's going to get. If the police don't believe you, that's their problem.”

“Wait!”

Annie didn't even pause. She opened the front door and marched down the steps, pulling on her jacket as she went. The Poodles followed her to the bottom of the stairs, then stopped as Annie went on across the yard, looking back at me to see what I wanted them to do next.

“Annie?” I called.

She didn't turn around, but her stride shortened fractionally.

“You did the right thing.”

She waved a hand back over her shoulder, more of a brush off than an acknowledgment. I'd been dismissed.

“Come on guys,” I said to the Poodles. I patted my thigh to call them to me. “Let's go inside.”

 

 

So I called Detective Marley myself. I mean, really, what choice did I have? The information I had was incomplete, but it was better than nothing.

Unfortunately, the detective didn't seem to think so. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You're telling me
now
that Henry Pruitt's neighbor is dealing drugs?”

“That's right. I just found out.”

“And how did you happen to come by this information?”

“You know. It's kind of a word-on-the-street thing.” Did I sound like a bad episode
of Law & Order
or what?

“My men are on the street,” said Marley. “They haven't heard anything about that.”

“Look,” I tried again. “All I'm saying is that Johnny Bowen had good reason to be upset with Henry Pruitt. He was dealing drugs, he suspected Henry knew it, and he thought Henry was going to turn him in.”

“And yet . . .” He paused. I thought I heard the sound of papers being shuffled in the background. “Mr. Pruitt never contacted us about this alleged problem.”

“I can't help that. Maybe he was killed before he got the chance. Johnny Bowen also suspected that Carrie Baker knew what he was up to.”

Marley's sigh was audible. “She hasn't mentioned anything about that to us.”

“The thing is, Johnny might have been wrong. Maybe she doesn't know anything. I'm told he's kind of paranoid—”

“Who told you that?” Marley inquired, his voice steely.

“A friend.”

“Does this friend have a name?”

“Umm . . .” I waffled only briefly before keeping my promise to Annie. “No.”

“I see. Well, thank you for the information. We'll be sure and look into it. Perhaps when Ms. Baker regains her memory . . .”

He was blowing me off. Totally. Even without Annie, I'd expected him to accord me at least
some
credibility. Was the idea so far-fetched that a civilian might come up with information the police didn't have? Apparently, Detective Marley seemed to think so.

“Maybe this is why Henry didn't contact you,” I said.

“Pardon me?” The detective had been on the verge of ending the call. Now I had his attention again.

Of course, judging by the sharpness of his tone, maybe that wasn't such a good thing. I didn't let that stop me. “Maybe Henry didn't tell you about what Johnny was doing because he was afraid you wouldn't believe him. Maybe he tried to wait until he had proof. Maybe the waiting killed him.”

“You may, of course, feel free to believe that,” said Detective Marley. “But please rest assured that we are actively investigating every possible avenue of suspicion. . . .”

Yada, yada, yada, I thought. I wondered if the detective actually believed that any more than I did.

“I'm sorry I wasted your time,” I said and hung up.

S
o I did what I always do in times of trouble. I went to see Aunt Peg. She didn't seem terribly surprised by my arrival.

“It's about time,” she said, ushering me inside.

Walking through the throng of Poodles that had accompanied her to the door was like wading through thigh-deep water: slow and a bit cumbersome. Once the dogs realized we were heading for the living room and got turned in the same direction, however, progress became much easier. I'd left my own two Poodles at home. What I wanted to discuss with Aunt Peg was serious; I was trying to keep distractions to a minimum.

“How about a nice piece of cake?” she asked before we could find our seats.

So much for the no distractions theory.

“No, thank you,” I said. “No cake. No small talk. Sit. What do you mean it's about time? Were you expecting me?”

Aunt Peg, never one to take orders, remained standing in the middle of the room. She looked bemused. “You realize your manners leave a lot to be desired. Of course I was expecting you. I've been expecting you since yesterday. It's a sad thing when the only knowledge I have of my own niece's exploits is secondhand.”

“Sam?” I asked. I supposed he'd told her about my meeting with Carrie.

“Of course, Sam. Who else would be keeping me informed? Certainly not my own relatives. Though if I had
my
way”—Peg's steely gaze fastened on me reproachfully—“Sam would
be
a relative.”

“Yes, I know.” No use ducking that thorny issue. Better to concede right off the bat or she'd only keep bringing it up. “I meant to call you, it's just that I've been busy.”

“Or maybe you forgot all about me when you got bumped on the head?”

I stared at her. “I didn't get bumped on the head. That was Carrie Baker.”

“Oh, my mistake.” Aunt Peg didn't look chastened. Actually, she looked slightly disappointed that I
hadn't
been the one to get knocked around.

Giving up on cake, Aunt Peg finally took a seat. Then I did as she requested, filling her in on everything that had transpired since we'd last seen each other in Bertie's hospital room.

“Annie Gault,” she said when I got to the part about that morning's visit. “I've heard that name before.”

“She's Davey's new bus driver. The girl who took over Henry's route.”

“That's right. I've heard him talk about her. He's utterly fascinated by the fact that she has something stuck through her eyebrow.”

Funny, I thought, Davey had never mentioned that to me. I stared at Peg through narrowed eyes and wondered if she might be the sort of person who would sneak my son off to a tattoo parlor when he got a little older. Probably.

“What are you glaring about now?” Aunt Peg asked.

“Nothing.” No sense putting any ideas in her head. “Forget about the pierced eyebrow. Listen to what she had to say.”

Peg was uncharacteristically quiet while I related my earlier conversation with the bus driver. For once, I got to go all the way from beginning to end without having to stop and answer a dozen questions.

“We have to take Annie's information to the police,” she said at the end.

“Been there.” I sighed. “Done that.”

“And?”

“Detective Marley asked for proof—”

“Oh pish,” said Peg. “Why should you be the one who has to come up with proof? That's his department.”

“The problem was that I couldn't give him Annie's name. So everything I told him sounded like rumors or hearsay. He wasn't at all convinced that I knew what I was talking about.”

“Damn.”

Aunt Peg isn't prone to using swear words, even mild ones. So the fact that the epithet had slipped out had to mean that she was feeling pretty provoked. It wasn't hard to guess who might have been getting on her nerves.

“Henry's daughters?” I said.

She growled under her breath. The Poodles, draped over the furniture around us, lifted their heads and pricked their ears with interest. “I'm about ready to strangle both of them. When it comes to dogs, those two women don't have an ounce of sense.”

“What have they done now?”

“For starters, they've informed Cindy Marshall that the wonderful home she found for Pepper and Remington won't be needed after all.”

“Do they have an alternate plan?”

“eBay,” Aunt Peg muttered.

I wasn't sure I'd heard her right. “Pardon me?”

“eBay,” she snapped. “You know, the on-line auction site?”

I hoped she was joking. Judging by her glower, however, that didn't seem to be the case. At least she wasn't growling anymore.

“I don't believe eBay lets people auction off live animals,” I said.

“As if those two would let a little thing like that stop them. Robin and Laurel are determined to make some money off those dogs. Apparently, they've found a way to circumvent the rules. They haven't listed Pepper and Remington as animals, they've listed them as clues.”

“You're kidding.”

“Do I sound like I'm kidding?
Clues!”
Aunt Peg snorted the word. “In an on-going murder investigation. Their listing talks about how Pepper and Remington are the only surviving witnesses to an unsolved mystery.”

“What a truly terrible idea.” I was appalled. “That's their father they're talking about.”

“A father who apparently didn't suit them well enough when he was alive. Now that Henry's gone, they're going to capitalize off his death any way they can. I suppose I should be shocked that people will descend to this level, but having seen the lengths that people are willing to go to in order to have their fifteen minutes of fame, I'm sorry to say that almost nothing surprises me anymore.”

“Have you tried notifying eBay about what they're up to?”

“I sent an email, but I haven't heard anything back yet. I just found out about this whole scheme this morning when the two of them dropped by to see how their property was doing.”

Knowing Aunt Peg, I was sure that the daughters' property was doing very well indeed. Though now that I was no longer preoccupied with my own news, I wondered where the two Golden Retrievers were. I'd expected them to greet me at the door with Peg's Poodles.

“Don't even get me started,” Aunt Peg said. Mind reading is another one of her skills. “I know I told you the boys were such dolls that I'd brought them into the house so they wouldn't be lonely out in the kennel by themselves. Well, Robin and Laurel weren't having any of it. They'd paid for kennel runs, they said, and that was where they expected their dogs to be housed.”

“It didn't occur to them that Pepper and Remington would be much happier in here with everyone else?”

“I don't think they give a fig for anyone's happiness but their own. What they do care about is protecting their supposed assets. They didn't like the idea that their Goldens were outnumbered by my Poodles. As though my dogs might rise up in insurrection against Pepper and Remington because they were different.”

That was so silly it was almost laughable. I gazed around at Aunt Peg's house dogs. Six big black Poodles, all now blissfully asleep around us. “They look ready to revolt, all right.”

“I can't even argue with the two of them anymore.” Aunt Peg threw up her hands. “It just makes me too crazy. I took the boys back down to the kennel. In a little while I'll go get them and bring them back up.”

Low as my opinion was of Henry's two daughters, I did have to admit one thing.
I'd
never managed to out-argue Aunt Peg, and unfortunately I'd had plenty of practice. I wondered what their secret was and whether or not they'd be willing to share it with me before they left.

“So then we agree,” she said.

I looked up, wondering what I'd agreed to while I'd let my thoughts wander.

“If Detective Marley wants proof, you and I are going to have to get it for him.”

I might have mounted a feeble protest but what was the point? Deep down inside, I was pretty sure that was exactly why I'd come to see Aunt Peg in the first place.

“What would you suggest?”

“We need to get back into Henry's house,” Peg said decisively. “If Annie is correct, Henry was already in the process of gathering evidence. He hadn't taken it to the police, so where is it? Maybe it's still sitting right there, waiting for us to come and find it.”

“Maybe it's something like those pictures,” I said. “We need to have another look at them.”

Aunt Peg nodded. “At them and everything else we can lay our hands on.” Abruptly, she rose from her seat. “Let's go.”

“Right now?” I was talking to empty space. Aunt Peg was already striding from the room.

“No time like the present,” I heard her say from the front hall. “I assume Davey's taken care of?”

“He's with Bob.” I got up and went after her.

“Perfect.” Standing by the door, Aunt Peg already had the closet open and was pulling out her coat.

“Aren't you forgetting something?”

She paused, turned, looked down at the Poodles that had followed us to the door, then up at me. “What?”

“Johnny Bowen.”

“What about him?”

“What if he's home when we get there? I can't imagine he's just going to hand us the key so we can go snooping around again. He must be feeling pretty desperate. The attack on Carrie Baker shows that. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not cross paths with him, especially not until we have something concrete to take to the police.”

“Johnny isn't going to bother us,” Aunt Peg said calmly.

“How can you be so sure?”

She wound a scarf around her neck and tucked a pair of wool gloves into her pocket. “Because we're not a couple of ninnies, that's why. We're not even going to approach Henry's house until we know he's nowhere around. You and I are going on a stake-out.”

Aunt Peg sounded positively delighted by the prospect. I wondered if she'd considered all the ramifications of her impromptu plan. “In my Volvo?” I asked.

“Don't be silly. We'll take my minivan. Neither of the Bowens have seen it and the windows are tinted so they won't be able to look inside. We'll just park a little way down the road and observe for a while. Once we figure out whether or not Johnny is at home, we can make our move.”

Aunt Peg with a plan was like a Border Collie with a flock of sheep: it would be easier to stop a force of nature than it would be to deter her from her chosen path. Twenty minutes later, she and I were sitting parked beneath a tree three houses down from the Bowen residence. From that vantage point, we could see a small detached garage behind the house. The door stood open; a racy looking Mazda was parked inside.

I'd seen Betty's Volkswagen; process of elimination gave the sports car to Johnny. We hunkered down to wait. Ever prepared, Aunt Peg pulled a deck of cards out of her glove compartment, shuffled, and dealt.

She was whipping my butt in our third game of gin when Betty drove up, parked in the driveway, and began unloading groceries from the backseat of her car. After a minute, Johnny came out to help. When the car was empty, both went inside. A few minutes after that, Johnny emerged by himself. Pulling on a battered-looking leather jacket, he turned up the collar against the cold and climbed into the Miata.

The engine raced as he pulled out of the driveway and shot past us. Aunt Peg and I ducked down in our seats, but we needn't have worried. Johnny didn't even glance in our direction.

“Time to go,” said Peg. “That was easy, wasn't it?”

Maybe too easy, I thought, but I was already scrambling out of the van and following her across the road. It was too late for second thoughts now.