Ruff Way to Go (23 page)

In the
middle of our game, one of the puppies scrambled up the stairs. It was Fez, and
though I hesitated, afraid that Melanie would be frightened at the sight of
him, I said nothing as she spotted him.

“Look!” she
squealed. “He made it up the stairs. All by his self!”

“Yes.”

Though she
hesitated for a moment, she knelt down and Fez waddled over to her. Melanie
swept the little puppy into her arms and nuzzled his fur.

After a
moment, she looked up at me. “Can I see the other puppies?”

The puppies
were now five and a half weeks old and getting to the stage where it is
important for them to socialize one-on-one with people, separate from their
litter. Separation too early from the litter can lead the dogs to be too
dependent on humans and to not fit in well with other dogs or animals. Too late
a separation from the litter can be just as harmful in the opposite direction.
Despite being taken from their mother a week and a half ahead of schedule, they
had my dogs to teach them how to behave as an adult dog. I explained this to
Melanie in the simplest of terms as we grabbed the smallest dog, a female I’d
taken to calling Mrs. Smith, because she reminded me of my kindergarten
teacher—they both waddled their cabooses as they walked. I’d also named
the cutest puppy Little Russell. The two others were Dogface and Fluffernutter,
after my favorite sandwich as a kid, a name that sent Melanie into great fits
of giggles each time it was used. We played with each puppy outside, and
Melanie was soon completely restored to her previous bouncing enthusiasm around
the dogs. As time wore on, I started to glance at my watch a lot. Paul Randon
was very late in spite of his promise.

This rapidly
became one of the longer afternoons in my personal history. We watched TV,
something that I’m loath to do during the day. As four o’clock drew near and I
was fresh out of every idea for possible entertainment of a kindergartner—in
a house with no toys—I began pacing. I realized that I’d made a big
mistake, which showed my inexperience as a babysitter: I didn’t know how to
reach Paul.

“Melanie, do
you know your dad’s number at work?”

“No.”
Melanie clicked off the TV and flopped down on the middle of the living room
floor. “I’m bored. I want to go home. When’s Daddy coming?”

This was at
least the hundredth time the question had come up, and this time I answered
honestly, “I don’t know. He should have been here by now. If he doesn’t come
very soon, you’ll have to come to work with me.”

“Okay,” she
said, ready and willing to drop everything and go.

I was
running the possible solutions of what to do through my head. This was not
going to be fair to my canine client, a mixed breed who had been so badly
housebroken that he howled to get inside whenever he wanted to relieve himself
so that he could go on a newspaper. That problem could be solved with a day or
two’s worth of attention from the owner and normally wouldn’t have merited my
services, but the dog had also become over-attached to his owner and was
starting to develop separation anxiety as well. The owners had no kids of their
own and there was no advantage to suddenly throwing someone else’s child into
the mix.

Whatever
planning I might have been able to do to accommodate Melanie was being
circumvented by the rut that my thought pattern was in; I could only think
about how inconsiderate this was of Paul to disappear like this. Melanie was
enrolled in morning kindergarten. Why hadn’t he arranged this important meeting
of his to take place then? And what could possibly be more important than being
with your child on the day of her mother’s funeral?

We went out
to the garage. I didn’t have a car seat for her, but strapped her into the
backseat of my Subaru. Just as we were about to pull out of the driveway, Paul
drove up. He got out of the car, panting, his pale yellow tie askew. His dark
hair was also mussed, as if he’d been driving with the window down, though that
currently wasn’t the case. “Allida.Hi. I’m a bit late.”

“Yes, you
are.”

He ignored
my tone of voice and got his daughter out of the car. “How’s my princess?”

“Can I get a
puppy, Daddy?”

Paul’s eyes
widened in surprise and he shot me a look that I hoped meant that he was
impressed at how quickly I’d restored his daughter’s appreciation for dogs. “We’ll
see, princess.”

“Do they
allow dogs where we’re moving?”

He jerked
slightly at the question, as if he’d gotten a jolt of static electricity,
cluing me in that he’d rather not have had me overhear. “I’m sure they do.”

“You’re
moving?”

He cleared
his throat, his features drawing into a frown. “Soon, yes. There are...too many
memories here.”

“I can
imagine.”

“Thanks
again for watching Melanie at the last minute like this.” He got back into his
car, Melanie on his lap, and he let her steer as they drove across the street
to their own driveway.

It wasn’t
until I’d driven off myself toward my client’s house that something puzzling
hit me. Paul was now wearing a different tie than the one he’d worn when he
dropped her off, supposedly on his way to work.

My work “day”
ended at a house so far north of Boulder that I was almost in Lyons. I decided
to swing by Susan’s house. She’d made the decision to dump me so precipitously
that I could claim to want to make sure that she hadn’t changed her mind again
about my working with Boris. I secretly hoped that she might be willing by now
to tell me the whole story behind her father and his odd behavior.

There was a
different car than usual in the driveway—a beat-up pickup truck. No sign
of Susan’s old Galaxy 500. Maybe this was her husband’s vehicle and she’d been
telling me the truth about his schedule after all.

A
pleasant-looking, though overweight middle-aged man opened the door. He was
average height—five-ten or so— and had curly brown hair and was
wearing white paint-splattered overalls.

“Hi. I’m
Allida Babcock. I’ve been working with your dog.”

“Oh, yeah.”
He pumped my hand vigorously. “Hi, Allida. I’m Susan’s husband, Fred. You live
across from my in-laws. You own that great German shepherd and the collie, don’t
you?”

I
immediately liked the man. “Yes. And the cocker spaniel, too. They are terrific
dogs, aren’t they?”

“Sure are.
If it were up to me, I’d have five or six dogs, but Suzy says one’s enough for
her. Come on in.” He held the door open for me, and I stepped inside their
messy living room. Boris gave me a couple of territorial barks, but then
allowed me to pat him. I’m sure his tail would have been wagging, had he had
one.

Fred wore a
bemused expression on his face as he watched me. “Susan told me she used to
babysit for you and your brother. Said you were a pair of hellions.”

I didn’t
want to get into a discussion of the past and quickly asked, “Is she here?”

“Don’t know
where she is, I’m afraid, but Boris is here, as you can see. We’ve got no plans
for the next hour or so. I’d be happy for you to work with the two of us. Susan’s
here a lot more than I am, but I’ll do what I can to help make Boris easier for
her to get along with.”

This was an
unfortunate turn of events. Susan obviously hadn’t told him about our last
conversation, in which I’d been fired—though it’s hard to consider one’s self
“fired” from a nonpaying position. “Susan didn’t tell you that she doesn’t want
me to continue working with Boris?”

He studied
my face as if to see if this was a joke. “She doesn’t? Why not?”

“I’m not
sure. You’ll have to ask her.”

He furrowed
his brow, then shook his head. “No way. You must have misunderstood her. I gave
her the fifty-dollar bill she said you needed just this morning.”

“The fifty I
needed?”

“Yeah. You
only accept cash, right?”

“That’s not
true.” I felt horribly uncomfortable, but I wasn’t going to be a party to a lie
between a woman I barely knew and didn’t much like and her husband. “In fact,
Fred, I’m afraid that you and she must have had the misunderstanding. I wasn’t
charging her at all for my work with your dog. We were going to work it out in
trade. She was going to do yard work at my mom’s house.”

“Whoa.” He
held up his palms and shook his head again. “That’s crazy. Why wouldn’t she pay
you? I already told her I’d be happy to fork over the money if it made her
happier with Boris.”

I shrugged,
embarrassed. “She said she couldn’t afford it.”

He averted
his gaze, the muscles in his jaw working. “Damn that woman,” he muttered under
his breath.

He slammed
his fist into his palm so hard that I was startled and instantly began to worry
what her husband’s anger might mean to Susan. What if I’d just set off an
abusive spouse? She might have been hoarding the money so that she could escape
from him.

“I’m sorry
to have been the one who—”

“Hell, it
ain’t your fault.” He gave me a lopsided smile. Though his cheeks were red, he
met my eyes, and I had to say that his eyes portrayed only kindness. “She does
stuff like this all the time. ‘Fraid my wife has an expensive drug habit.”

“I...had no
idea. I’m sorry.” I found myself making a quick appraisal of which scenario I
believed—this man whom I’d only just met as a spouse abuser or Susan as a
drug user. Susan hadn’t struck me as the sort to be an addict, but then, I
suppose I had a preconceived, naive notion of skinny, greasy-haired teens with
dark circles around their sunken eyes. She did, however, have a fiery temper
and rapid mood swings. Her husband was the more likable of the pair and, I
decided, more credible.

“You’re
tellin’ me. She’d been off the stuff for a while now, but she must be hooked
again. It’s all her damn... dieting that did it to her. She was obsessed with
getting back to her old weight, and got into taking uppers to lose weight.”

“If there’s
anything I can do...” I let my voice drift off, feeling stupid for starting to
mutter the automatic response that nobody really expects to be sincere.
Besides, I knew nothing about drug addiction or anything helpful to do toward
easing his predicament.

“I’ll bet
Cassie’s death pushed her right over the edge,” he muttered to himself.

“Cassandra
Randon?” I asked, surprised at the familiarity he’d shown. Susan had implied
that she barely knew the woman. “Did you know her?”

“No. Only
met her a couple times. I meant for Susan’s sake, though.” He studied my face. “Didn’t
Suzy tell you? She and Cassandra were running a business together—back
before she and I met, that is.”

“No, she
didn’t mention it. What kind of business was this?”

“Oh, they
started up some mail-order thing—customized monograms or something like
that. People could send in clothing and stuff, and they’d monogram it.”

“Cassandra
and Susan must have met when the Randons bought the house next to Susan’s
parents’ place, then, right?”

“Yeah, and
they found out about their mutual sewing talents. Then I guess Susan told
Cassie about her idea for this custom monogramming business, and they gave it a
go for a while. But Susan doesn’t really do too well with other women, and they
couldn’t work together. So Cassandra was supposedly goin’ to buy out Susan’s
half of the business.”

He winced
and ran his beefy hand across his curly brown hair. “Suzy told me that she
never did get her money out of Cassandra. Hell. Now that I think about it, she
probably lied. Same way she lied to me about paying you. She probably bilked
Cassandra for all she was worth. Maybe that’s where she’d been getting her drug
money, till now.”

“Again,
Fred, I’m really sorry that Susan’s got such serious problems. I’d better go
now.”

“Hey. Don’t
be thinking that...” He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Whatever drug
problems Susan might have doesn’t mean she had anything to do with Cassandra’s
death, you know. I promise you that. She’d never kill anyone. Not in a million
years. She’s had this drug addiction problem for years, off ‘n’ on, but she’s
never stolen or hurt anyone.”

“I’m...glad.
Have you talked to the police about your wife’s troubles?”

“Oh, man. I
shouldn’t’ve got into all this. You’re going to go straight to the police, aren’t
you?”

I hesitated
and thought for a moment, then scanned the man’s face. If he was lying about
any of his convictions, including his insistence that his wife was innocent of
Cassandra’s murder, he was a skilled actor. I couldn’t see the sense in my
rushing to call Sergeant Millay. If Susan had a history of drug problems and
was in the area when Cassandra was being murdered, he would know to check her
alibi. He seemed to barely tolerate my dragging him over to Luellen’s house to
search for Shogun. Sergeant Millay was going to think I had nothing better to
do than to tell him how to do his job.

“No, I’m
not. But you and Susan might want to talk to them.” Though I felt a bit
Pollyanna-ish, I couldn’t help but add, “If nothing else, the police might be
able to help you get Susan into a good treatment program.”