Once Bitten (A Melanie Travis Mystery) (13 page)

“Maybe not.” Josh’s eyes lifted and found mine. “But that new guy of hers—whoever he was—he should have. Someone should have been looking out for her. Lord knows, she didn’t always have enough sense to look out for herself.”

Roused by the anger in Josh’s voice, Faith raised her head. I reached down and soothed the Poodle by cupping her muzzle in the palm of my hand and rubbing her lip with my thumb.

“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Sara? Anyone she ever talked about having a problem with?”

“Only her mother. But Delilah had no reason to want to harm Sara now. She’d had her whole life to screw Sara up. Anyone could see that Delilah had already done enough damage.”

A
fter Josh left, I grabbed a jacket from my classroom and took Faith outside for a walk. The Howard Academy grounds are spacious and inviting. My Poodle enjoys taking a spin around the playing fields just as much as I do. She bounced joyously at my side as I headed across the teachers’ parking lot and down the hill beyond.

The chill of November in Connecticut was in the air. A carpet of newly fallen leaves blanketed the ground. I burrowed my hands deep in my pockets and kicked up my feet as I walked. Dry leaves crackled and eddied upward in the breeze.

Faith raced on ahead to check out a boys’ soccer game, then doubled back to my side. Tail wagging, lips lifted in a grin, she was ready for whatever I wanted to do next. I wrapped her face in my hands, smacked a loud kiss on her nose, then sent her back out to run some more. Gleefully Faith obliged.

Following at a much slower pace, I considered what Josh had had to say. While he’d been talking about Sara, I couldn’t help but be reminded of what had happened between Sam and me. Though he and I had been together a lot longer than Josh and Sara, both relationships had come to the same abrupt and sorry end. Josh and I had both been dumped.

Even now, months later, the memory still had the power to make me wince.

Looking back, I still wasn’t entirely sure where I’d gone wrong. I’d known Sam for months before I allowed myself to consider the possibility of anything serious happening between us. And once we started seeing each other, I tried to take things slow. I’d worried about Davey’s feelings, and hoped desperately that I was doing the right thing.

But somewhere along the way, I’d lost control of the process. I’d fallen in love and found my focus narrowing from a whole world of possibilities to the thought of a life that included only one man: Sam. Once I got used to the idea, it made perfect sense.

It made me perfectly happy.

Right up until the day Sam left.

In the last four months, I’d run through a lengthy gamut of emotions. By turns I’d been shocked, wounded, vulnerable, aching. Oh, yes, and seriously pissed. It had taken me a while to work my way around to that stage, but once it arrived, it felt pretty good. Better than the alternatives, anyway.

And speaking of alternatives, I thought, feeling distinctly grumpy, what was I supposed to do with Bob? I must have been crazy to kiss him. Crazier still to tell him I’d think about what he’d said.

What was there to think about? Bob said he’d changed, and maybe he had. He still hadn’t grown up enough to figure out how to make his marriage to Jennifer work, however. Or how to be more than a long-distance father to his son. The last thing I needed was the turmoil of another uncertain relationship.

Why was it, I wondered, that the only men who seemed to find me were the ones who hadn’t found themselves yet?

Faith barked sharply, racing toward me across an empty hockey field. She was staring at the upper school building. I glanced at my watch and swore softly. The change-of-class bell had probably just rung. In another minute I’d be late.

“Thanks, sweetie,” I said, swooping down to give the Poodle a brief hug. We ran back up the hill, Faith leading the way.

Men
. Who needs them when you can have dogs?

After school, I drove home with trepidation. Turning onto my road, I’d half decided that if Bob’s car was sitting out front, I was going to keep on driving. I didn’t think of it as taking the coward’s way out, but rather as a necessary ploy for conserving energy. Some days just keeping up seems to take all I have.

Luckily for me, I didn’t have to make the choice. My driveway was empty. I pulled in, unpacked the car, let Faith out back, and had shortbread cookies and a glass of milk ready when Davey’s school bus came lumbering down the road fifteen minutes later.

“How was school?” I asked my son, helping him off with backpack and jacket.

“Good.” He’s reached the age of monosyllabic answers.

“Did you have fun?”

“Mo-om!” His voice rose and fell, its tone conveying the idiocy of the question. “It’s
school
.”

Right. As if I’d forgotten. Presumably due to the memory loss that comes with advancing age.

“Eat your snack,” I said. “When you’re done, we have to run downtown to a store called Pansy’s Flowers.”

Davey scooped up a handful of cookies. “Why?”

His new favorite question.

“I need to run an errand for Bertie. She wants me to check on the floral arrangements for the wedding.”

My son’s brow furrowed as he chewed. “Dad’s coming to the wedding,” he said finally.

I’d been standing at the sink, watching Faith through the window. I turned around slowly.

“You’re right, he is. Frank asked him to. That’s why he’s here.” Words seemed to sputter out of me in fits and starts.

“He came to see us, too.”

“Of course he did.” I moved across the room and sank to my knees beside his chair. “Your father loves being with you. You know that.”

“Not just me. Dad came to see you, too.”

“Well . . .”

“He did.” Davey’s voice was firm, half daring me not to believe him. “I heard him tell Uncle Frank.”

Oh, Lord, I thought. He’s only seven, and none of this is his fault. Why does he have to be in the middle?

“Are you and Daddy going to get married again?”

My stomach muscles clenched. Wildly I searched for answers, wanting, needing to say just the right thing. I reached across the table and folded my son’s small hand into mine.

“Your father and I both love you very much. You know that, right?”

“Yes.” Davey was frowning. “But what about Sam?”

“Sam loves you, too,” I said, squeezing his hand.

“When is he coming back?”

For a minute I didn’t move at all. There was only one way I could answer that question. The best thing I could do for my son was to tell him the truth.

“I don’t know.”

“Me either,” Davey said matter-of-factly. He reached for another cookie. “I miss Sam.”

“I do, too, honey.”

“Will Daddy leave when Sam comes back?”

And I’d thought the “why” questions were hard.

“I don’t know that either,” I admitted. “Maybe before. I think he’ll leave after the wedding.”

“Maybe Sam will come to the wedding.” Davey’s tone was carefully neutral, but his eyes were bright with hope.

“I don’t think so. He’s been gone a while now. He doesn’t even know that Bertie and Frank are engaged.”

“Yes, he does. Aunt Peg told him.”

I sighed and reached for a shortbread cookie. Aunt Peg and Sam had long been pals. I should have guessed that they’d remain in touch. And that she wouldn’t see fit to mention that fact to me.

“Does Aunt Peg talk to Sam a lot?”

“Only sometimes. When he calls to check up on us. Sometimes Aunt Peg tells me he said to say hi. But I’m not supposed to tell you.”

Undeterred by his lapse, Davey lifted his glass and finished off the last of his milk. Then he slid down off his chair. “I’m full. Are we going to go now?”

“Sure.” I reached out and ruffled his hair. Davey scowled and pulled away, as I’d known he would. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do but marvel at the resilience of youth.

And the sneakiness of aging aunts.

Pansy’s Flowers was a twenty minute drive away, tucked on a small side street off the Post Road in southwest Stamford. I’d been expecting a flower shop. Instead, Davey and I found ourselves at a full-fledged nursery. A high chain-link fence surrounded an acre of land—a generous allotment in that pricey commercial zone. It looked as though Pansy’s Flowers was flourishing.

I drove between rows of bundled bushes and trees and pulled into a parking space in front of a glass-and-cedar building with an enormous greenhouse attached along the back. Wind chimes, nudged by the door, jingled as Davey and I entered. Inside the store, the air was redolent with the heady aroma of damp earth and healthy plants.

A profusion of greenery filled the big room. Leaves reached out to brush our faces as we walked. The sound of water trickling in a dozen fountains provided the perfect backdrop.

“Wow.” Eyes wide, Davey sucked in a breath. “It’s like a jungle in here.” His hand slithered out of mine. “Can I go look around?”

I glanced in both directions. Breakable items seemed to be at a minimum. “Okay. But don’t touch anything.”

I’d barely finished speaking before he vanished, melting into the thick foliage. Verdant hanging fronds slipped silently back into place, leaving no trace of where he’d gone. I hoped I wouldn’t have too much trouble finding him again.

A counter ran along the store’s back wall. By the time I reached it, a heavy-set woman with gray-streaked hair and a confident stride had emerged through a door behind it. She wiped her fingers on her flower-sprigged apron and offered me a friendly smile.

“Can I help you?”

“I’d like to speak with the person who’s in charge of arranging flowers for weddings.”

“That would be me.”

“Are you Pansy?”

Her smile widened. “Patricia. That’s what most people call me now. Pansy was a childhood nickname, just like all this”—she waved a hand to indicate the lush surroundings—“was a childhood dream. When the time came that I could open up the business, the two just seemed to go together.”

Made sense to me.

“If possible, I’d like to check on the status of some plans you may have discussed. . . .”

As I was speaking, Patricia reached under the counter, pulled out a box of files, and hefted it up onto the shelf. “Bride’s name?”

“Alberta Kennedy.”

She began to flip through the copious records.

“The woman you would have spoken to was Sara Bentley. I know she called for information and maybe got some prices, but I don’t think she’d gotten around to placing an order. You may not have a record—”

“Honey.” Patricia’s gaze flickered upward. “I keep records of everything. Here.” She slipped some papers from a sleeve. “Alberta Kennedy. December twenty-third. Wedding at St. Michael’s, reception at the Greenwich Country Club. Is that the one?”

“That’s it,” I said, amazed. “We didn’t realize Sara had gotten that far—”

“Daffodils, narcissi, and jonquils for the bridal bouquet,” Patricia read. She picked up a pair of glasses that hung around her neck and rested them on her nose. “Not too big, she said, nothing flashy. Two floral arrangements for the altar—yellow tulips, if possible. In December, no less. I was going to check on that, and Sara was going to get back to me. We still had the centerpieces for the reception to talk about.”

“Um.” I cleared my throat softly. “That’s actually why I’m here. Sara, the woman who was planning Bertie’s wedding, won’t be getting back to you. She died over the weekend.”

Patricia’s hand dropped. Her fingers opened and the pages scattered across the counter. “Oh, I’m so sorry. That poor girl, I just talked to her. She seemed like such a nice person. What happened?”

“There was a fire in her home in New Canaan. Maybe you read about it in the paper?”

“I saw the headlines. But I never realized who it was, poor thing. You just never know when your time is up, do you?” She busied herself gathering the papers into a tidy heap. “And when I spoke to her last week, she sounded so happy, so upbeat. What a sad, sad—”

For a moment I thought I’d misheard her. I held up a hand to stop the flow of words. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“Well, you know we’d only met that one time when she stopped in, but she seemed like a sweet girl. And last week on the phone she was so cheerful. I guess it’s a kindness, really, that she had no idea what was to come.”

“I think you’re mistaken,” I said slowly. “Sara wasn’t talking to anyone on the phone last week. She disappeared the weekend before.”

Patricia looked confused. She pushed up her glasses and consulted her notes again. “I wouldn’t be mistaken about a thing like that. My memory isn’t as strong as it used to be, and in my business I can’t afford to get details wrong. That’s why I write everything down. Here it is; see for yourself.”

I looked down to the place on the top page that her finger indicated.

“It’s right there in black and white,” Patricia said firmly. “Sara Bentley called me on Wednesday, November tenth. She’d gotten the price list I’d sent her and she okayed some of the flowers we’d spoken about. I don’t know anything about a disappearance, but that was her I was talking to, all right.”

M
y fingers gripped the edge of the counter as I stared down at Patricia’s meticulous records. So Sara had been alive and well last week. Well enough to contact a stranger about plans for Bertie’s wedding, apparently, but not enough to call Bertie herself, who’d been frantic with worry over her friend’s whereabouts.

“Do you have any idea where Sara called you from?”

“Home, I guess. Or maybe her office, since it was during business hours?”

“Sara didn’t work in an office.” I was thinking aloud as much as offering an explanation. “And she wasn’t at home either. None of her friends had been able to get in touch with her all week.”

“Sorry.” Patricia shrugged. “I wouldn’t have any idea about that. The only thing we talked about were the flowers for the wedding.”

Too bad. “What about the price list? When did you mail that to Sara?”

“Oh, I didn’t mail it. Sara said she had a fax. That’s why I figured she was probably in an office somewhere.”

I didn’t remember seeing a fax machine in Sara’s cottage. “Do you have the number you sent it to?”

Patricia flipped to another sheet. “Right here, with her address and phone number. She gave it to me the first time we spoke.”

The address Sara had listed was her home in New Canaan. The phone number had a New Canaan exchange. But the number for the fax began with a 914 area code: Westchester County.

I stared at the number for a minute, thinking about what to do next. Sara had been missing for most of a week, only to turn up dead. I wanted to know where she’d been in the interim.

“You have a fax machine here, right?”

Patricia nodded.

“Do you mind if I send something?”

“I guess not.” She produced a pen and a clean sheet of paper, and watched me write out a message.

I added my name and phone number at the bottom, then walked around the counter and followed Patricia to a small office. The fax machine was on a shelf, beside a desk. I punched out the number and watched the transmission go through. A confirmation slip printed out and fell into the tray.

“Do you think that’ll help?” Patricia asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

I hoped it couldn’t hurt.

When we got home, I got Davey settled at the kitchen table with his homework, then went down to the basement and opened up Faith’s portable grooming table. Now that the Poodle had finished her championship, I’d found myself slacking off on the all-important coat care that had taken up so much of my time over the past two years.

As long as Faith’s points were in order, it wouldn’t matter. The minute I received notification from the American Kennel Club, I planned to put a five-blade on my clipper and run it over her entire body. On the other hand, if anyone’s championship could go unconfirmed, it was probably my dog’s. Just in case, it was time I paid Faith’s coat some much-needed attention.

I’d just hopped the Poodle up on the table when the phone rang.

“I’ll get it!” Davey sang out from upstairs.

Talking on the telephone is one of his favorite pastimes, and since my son doesn’t get many phone calls, he often tries to snag mine. Unwary callers may find themselves entertaining him for fifteen minutes or more. On the plus side, he’s great at taking care of those pesky telemarketers.

This time I gave him five minutes, left Faith lying on the table, and walked up to the top of the steps. “Who is it?” I asked, poking my head out through the doorway.

As usual, Davey was chatting away, his body wriggling with animation as he recounted in minute detail the events of his school day. I had to ask the question twice.

Finally, he turned in his seat, carefully covering the bottom half of the receiver with his hand as he’d seen me do. “Aunt Peg. I’m telling her about social studies.”

“Does she want to talk to me?”

“I don’t know.” As if the thought had never even occurred to him. “I’ll ask her.”

This involved another several minutes of discussion on both their parts. By the time the issue had been resolved, I was back in the basement brushing again.

It takes two hands to tease mats out of a neglected coat. When Davey called down that Aunt Peg wanted to speak to me, I reached over and put her on the speaker phone. The fact that we had an extension in the basement at all was a symptom of how much of my life I’d been devoting to Poodle hair.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I expected to hear from you last night.”

“I’ve been busy,” Aunt Peg said huffily. “Am I supposed to check in with you every day?”

Well, now that she mentioned it . . . yes.

“Did you visit Grant and Delilah?”

“Twice,” Peg said with satisfaction. “I was there yesterday and today.”

Faith flinched as my comb caught in a snarl of hair. I patted her rump reassuringly and began to gently work the knot apart, starting at the outer edge and working in. “How’d you manage that?”

“You’re not the only one in the family who can think on her feet. As a matter of fact, I think I find myself rather well suited for this detecting business.”

Heaven forbid.

“When I arrived on Sunday afternoon, as you might expect, there was quite a lot going on. Family and friends stopping by to offer support. Some sort of specialized police and fire unit combing through what remained of the cottage. Even the local press was there. Delilah was harried, to say the least.”

“Not grief stricken?” Fingers still busy, I had to pull the comb out of my mouth to ask.

There was a moment of silence on the line.

“Everyone handles loss differently,” Aunt Peg said finally. “But no, Delilah didn’t seem to be overwhelmed by grief. Indeed, if anything, she was behaving like the ringmaster of a rather unwieldy circus.

“Which doesn’t mean she wasn’t in pain,” Peg was quick to point out. “Perhaps taking charge like that was her way of controlling her emotions until she could deal with them in private. Grant, on the other hand, never came downstairs at all. Delilah apologized for his absence and said their doctor had given him a sedative.”

“So much for gender stereotypes.”

“Delilah’s a very strong woman. Make no mistake about that. I know for a fact that she rides roughshod over both the kennel clubs she belongs to, and some would say she’s done the same to each of her husbands.”

“Not to mention her daughter.” I told her about the conversation I’d had with Josh.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Peg said at the end. “Delilah always has been driven. She’s the sort of person who knows what she wants and goes after it, and she can’t understand how others can lack her determination. After that episode with Sara in Junior Showmanship, there were plenty of people who felt that she’d been pushing the girl much too hard.”

“That dog wasn’t poisoned, by the way.” I gave a final comb-through to the mat I’d been working on and moved to the next. “Only given a laxative so it couldn’t compete at Westminster. I got the facts from the other junior handler, who’s now grown up, married, and living in Greenwich.”

“You see?” said Aunt Peg. “That’s what happens when you listen to gossip. Everybody adds a little bit to the story and pretty soon the whole thing gets blown all out of proportion.”

Taking the high road, I neglected to mention that it was she, not I, who’d supplied the errant details in the first place.

“How did you manage to finagle another invitation back to the Warings’?” I asked instead. “And what did you find out while you were there?”

“The first part was easy.” Aunt Peg sounded smug. “I simply told Delilah that I needed her help. Drawing on the length, if not the strength, of our friendship, I led her to believe that I was nervous about my upcoming judging debut and asked if she had any advice to pull me through.”

“I didn’t know Delilah was a judge.”

“That’s because she seldom takes assignments. Delilah would much rather breed and exhibit. Then, too, judging often involves a fair amount of travel. At one time, she didn’t seem to mind, but once she married Grant she decided she’d rather stay home. Delilah’s been approved for most of the herding breeds for more than a decade. Of course she was happy to give me a few pointers, and I was happy to offer to come back today when things would have calmed down.”

Good old Aunt Peg. She didn’t miss a trick.

I tapped Faith’s flank and she leaned up, then rolled over onto her other side. Once again I parted the hair down the middle of her back. “And?”

“For starters, the fire in the cottage was set deliberately. There’s no question about that.”

“Do the police have any leads?”

“Not that they’ve told Delilah about, but she’s quite sure they’re mounting a very thorough investigation.”

“What about . . .” I stopped, sighed, then plunged on. There was simply no delicate way to put this. “What about the body? Do they know for sure that it was Sara?”

“Not yet. At least not by this afternoon. The authorities need Sara’s dental records, and for some reason there’s been a delay in procuring them. All I know is that it’s the kind of bureaucratic screw-up that left Delilah screaming into the phone about the incompetence of hired help. I’m told things should be sorted out by tomorrow.

“One thing they do know for sure,” Aunt Peg continued. “The fire
was
the cause of death. So your theory that Sara may have been killed earlier in the week seems to have been wrong.”

“As it happens, I found that out for myself today.”

“Really? How?”

I brought her up to date on my visit to Pansy’s Flowers. “Patricia’s absolutely sure she spoke with Sara last Wednesday. They had a perfectly normal conversation about the arrangements for Bertie’s wedding.”

“How very odd,” Peg mused. “So despite Bertie’s concerns, Sara seems to have been fine last week if you overlook the fact that she’d left behind dog and cell phone and disappeared.”

“Apparently so.” I exchanged my pin brush for a slicker and moved on to Faith’s bracelets. “But I may have a lead on where she was staying. Patricia faxed Sara a price list earlier in the week, and she knew Sara had received it because they talked about the details on the phone. The fax went to a phone number in Westchester with an Armonk exchange.” I’d come up with that last piece by dialing information and asking.

“The police could find out whose number that is.”

“I know. I’m going to drop by New Canaan and tell them about it tomorrow after school. In the meantime, I used Patricia’s fax machine to send a message to the same number, asking whoever received it to contact me to talk about Sara.”

“You did
what?”

I figured she’d heard me, so I kept right on brushing. Time, tide, and Poodle hair wait for no man. Or something like that.

“Melanie, dear girl, what were you thinking?”

“Simple. That I might put myself in touch with someone who knew where Sara’d been for the last week.”

“Did it ever occur to you that you may have faxed your name to a murderer?”

My hands stilled. “Uhh . . . no.”

Her windy sigh reverberated through the phone line. “Not only that, but by using his fax number, you told him you were hot on his trail.”

“But I’m not.”

“Precisely the problem,” Aunt Peg said sternly. “Isn’t it?”