Dog Helps Those (Golden Retriever Mysteries) (29 page)

“Jesus, Rochester, this is not an agility course,” I said, tugging the leash.

“People gonna sit on that bench,” Ford said, coming up behind me. “Gotta have it cleaned now.”

Rochester hopped down and tried to jump up on Ford. I jerked back on the dog’s leash. “He was up there for five seconds,” I said, pulling tightly.

“Need to have a bench cleaned,” Ford said into his radio. I groaned and kept on walking. We passed Fields Hall, and Rochester managed to intercept a passing frisbee, then submit to being petted by a couple of adoring female students. As we walked downhill toward the football stadium, we neared a beer delivery truck with a ramp up into the back. I held a strong grip on Rochester’s leash as he strained to dash up it.

As soon as Ford and I reached the stadium, I said, “Looks like everything’s okay.”

“Except for the dog,” Ford grumbled.

Rochester tried to jump up on him again, and this time I didn’t pull him back until he’d already placed his big furry paws on Ford’s groin, and the older man had reared away in horror. I smiled and said, “Have a great day!”

After finishing the walkthrough, Rochester and I slogged back up to Fields Hall. I hadn’t been to an Eastern graduation since my own, so many years before, and I was astounded at how much planning went into one. Rochester seemed to be as exhausted as I was, after all his jumping, playing and tugging.

I was too tired to think about talking to anyone else, or making dinner. I stopped at a drive-through on the outskirts of Stewart’s Crossing, and fed Rochester bits of a plain hamburger as we drove through River Bend. “You know, Uncle Rick says I’m spoiling you,” I said, as I pulled into the driveway. “I should have eaten my dinner first, and then given you yours.”

He looked at me.

“Yeah,” I said. “What does Uncle Rick know?”

I let him out of the car, and he peed. We went inside, and at least I sat down and ate my dinner before I poured out his kibble. He was chomping noisily as Rick called my cell. “Want to grab a burger?” he asked.

“Already did. I stopped at a drive-through on the way home. I’m beat, anyway. Graduation’s tomorrow and things are crazy up at Eastern.” I told Rick about Rochester’s antics at the walk-through with Ford.

Rick laughed. Then I told him about my conversation the day before with Van Dryver, and how I’d hung up on him. “That guy needs to get his nose out of this,” he said. “He’s muddying the waters. Can’t Lili call him off?”

“You want me to get my girlfriend to call her ex and ask for a favor? What planet are you from?”

“Planet Cop. You want to play Hardy Boys? This is how we operate. We lean on people to talk—or to shut up.”

“He’s not some cub reporter for the
Boat-Gazette
,” I said, citing our local paper. “He’s an investigative journalist for the
Wall Street Journal
. I could ask Lili to give him a blow job in exchange for dropping the story and he’d still say no.”

“You’d ask her that?”

“Of course not, asshole. I was speaking metaphorically.”

“Never heard of a metaphorical blow job,” he said. “But then, I don’t have a master’s degree in English. They teach you that kind of stuff up at Columbia?”

I took a deep breath. We were both stressed and I could see that arguing wasn’t going to get either of us anywhere. “Sorry. I’m beat,” I said.

“I know how you feel. I’ve been going at this case hard and I’m not getting anywhere. I wish Matthew Durkheim would just turn himself in.”

“Good luck with that.” Rochester had finished his bowl, and was still looking like he hadn’t been fed. “Listen, I’m falling down on my feet. I’ll talk to you tomorrow after graduation is over.”

I went upstairs and lay down on my king-sized bed. Rochester clambered up next to me, and I leaned back against the headboard. I kept expecting Santiago Santos to show up for a surprise visit—he always seemed to pick the worst times. Instead, when my phone rang, it was Lili. “Steve? You busy?”

“Just chilling. What’s up?”

“I’ve been driving around. Feeling weird. Do you mind if I come over?”

There was something strange in her voice. I sat up and even Rochester raised his head. “What’s the matter?”

“I’d rather talk in person.”

“Sure, come over. I’ll call the gate and let them know you’re on your way.”

“Okay. I’m not far—a couple of miles up the river.”

I hung up, then dialed the guard house and gave them Lili’s name. I wondered if it was time to put her name on my permanent guest list.

But then I had a terrible thought. What if Van was right? He had said that Lili wouldn’t stay out in the middle of nowhere for long, that she had big dreams and she was determined to see them fulfilled. What if she was coming over to break up with me?

It was the end of the academic year, and maybe she’d gotten a better offer, either from a bigger college, or from a magazine or newspaper. Suppose she’d been driving around trying to figure out how to tell me she was leaving. I sat back, and Rochester crawled over to put his head on my lap.

Then I took a couple of deep breaths. I was letting my imagination get away from me, as I often did. For all I knew, Lili was upset about failing a student, or a leaky roof, or something else totally unrelated to our relationship.

Whatever it was, I was going to need some coffee to deal with it, because I was exhausted. I went downstairs and started the cappuccino machine, and by the time Rochester heard Lili’s car pull up in the driveway and started barking, I had the espresso ready, chocolate syrup already mixed in, and was steaming the milk.

“Hi, sweetie,” I said, greeting her at the door with a kiss.

“Something smells heavenly,” she said, after she kissed me back.

Well, that was a relief. Whatever was bothering her probably was not about me.

She reached down and petted the dog as I walked back into the kitchen to finish the coffee. “Must be Rochester’s new shampoo,” I called behind me.

She followed me into the kitchen, the dog on her heels. “Have anything to go with that coffee?” she asked. “Suddenly I’m starving.”

“Cookies in the cabinet.” I poured the foam over the espresso, then whipped cream, more syrup, and chocolate shavings. I had been massing my chocolate artillery in case Lili wanted to break up with me, because I wasn’t going down without a fight. Now I could just enjoy the coffee.

She opened up a package of chocolate thumbprint cookies and brought them to the kitchen table. Rochester sprawled at her feet as I carried the cups and joined her.

“So what’s up?”

“I spoke to Van. Something he said really upset me.”

“Let me guess.” I stirred my café mocha. “He said you’d never be happy out here in the middle of nowhere. That you needed a life of action and adventure.”

Her eyes widened with surprise. “How did you know?”

“He said the same thing to me. I hung up on him.”

“I should have done the same thing. You don’t think it’s true?”

I took her hand. “I hardly know you, Lili. We’ve only been dating for a couple of months. But I’ve seen some things that matter to you.” I used my other hand to hold up my thumb. “Your students. You genuinely seem to care about them and about helping them explore their talent.”

She smiled, then picked up her coffee and sipped.

I held up my index finger. “Your talent. You look at the world as an artist, and you bring that vision to everything you touch—your clothes, your apartment, the things you create with your camera and your computer.”

My third finger went up as she ate a cookie. “Your heart. You have the ability to open yourself up to love—from me, from Rochester. You care about people—look at the way you stood up for Felae.”

I let go of her hand and picked up a cookie. “You’ve already been around the world. I know you enjoyed it, that you learned from what you saw, and that you were moved by it. Do you need that kind of stimulation on a constant basis? Only you can say that.”

I bit into the cookie. It was Lili’s turn to talk.

“You’re a smooth talker, Steve Levitan,” she said. “I didn’t realize you had gotten to know me so well so quickly.” She reached down and petted Rochester. “And obviously, in a way that Van never did. You’re right. Those
are
the things that matter to me the most. And I have them all right here.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know why I let that jerk get under my skin.”

“He has a talent for that. He said some things about me, too.” I picked up another cookie and ate it. The caffeine and the sugar were working their magic, and I felt more alive. If we were delving into Lili’s psyche, it was time she got a look at mine as well. “He said he knew me. That he knew what I’d done.”

“The hacking? That’s old news.” Lili picked up her mocha again and sipped.

“Not exactly.”

She cocked her head a bit, almost the way Rochester does. I resisted the urge to smile. “You know I’m on parole, right? That if I do anything illegal I could go back to prison in California.”

“But you wouldn’t do anything like that? Would you?”

She looked at my face and then took my hand. “Steve?”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” I said. “I could say it’s an addiction, like drugs or alcohol. But that would be a cop-out. I could put the blame on Rick Stemper and say he knows what I do, and he doesn’t stop me. But it’s not his problem, it’s mine.” I took a deep breath. “I could justify myself by saying I only do things for a good cause, like to help figure out who killed Rita. But that’s just sad.”

I slumped back in my chair. Even Rochester stayed by Lili’s side. “I won’t blame you if you walk out now.”

“I don’t understand,” Lili said. “What did you do?”

I told her.

“You can do that?” she asked, when I was finished. “Break into someone’s e-mail account?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s amazing. But you don’t do it to steal anything or get people in trouble?”

I shook my head. “Absolutely not. And since I’ve been out of prison I’ve only hacked a few times, to help Rick with investigations.”

“And he knows about it?”

“It’s kind of like that program the military used to have. Don’t ask, don’t tell,” I said. “I pass the information on to him, or give him leads, and he doesn’t ask me where I get the information.”

“Did you tell him this stuff, about this insider information?”

“I gave him a sort of back-handed hint that he should subpoena Rita’s email records. But he understood what I was saying.”

I was still waiting for Lili to chastise me, to back away, at least to say that knowing I couldn’t suppress those criminal instincts made her want to reconsider our relationship. I felt like that guy in the comic strip, the one with the cloud that always follows him. Instead, Lili reached over and took both my hands in hers.

“You showed me tonight that you’ve gotten to know who I am over the past few months,” Lili said. “Well, I’ve gotten to know you, too. I know that you’re smart, and funny, and you’re good with words. That you have the ability to love and care about people, too. Tonight you’ve shown me one more of the things you can do. That doesn’t change anything else that I feel about you.”

She pulled me close, and her kiss left me no doubt about what those feelings were.

Lili didn’t stay the night, but we did go upstairs together after we finished our coffee. Rochester dozed on the kitchen floor until Lili left, when he returned to his customary place beside my bed.

As I got ready for work on Friday morning, the day of Eastern’s graduation and the kickoff of reunion weekend, I remembered I wasn’t just an employee—I was an alumnus, and I had to dress the part.

Every Eastern class came up with a clever clothing item so that classmates could identify each other at reunions—which was important, as the years passed and we all looked less and less like those skinny, fresh-faced undergrads we’d once been. Some chose ball caps, some windbreakers, some T-shirts. If you came to a graduation, you wore your item, even if wasn’t your reunion year.

For our my class’s twentieth reunion, we’d hired a graphic designer to create a white polo shirt with the slogan “Class of 89: We’re Just Fine!” splashed across the back in Eastern’s sky blue. I’d worn it to work a couple of times since then, and had to dig through the closet to find it.

I debated leaving Rochester at home. It was going to be a wild and busy day and I wouldn’t have much chance to check in on him. But knowing him, he’d be better off in my office than home alone all day. I tied a blue-and-white Eastern bandanna around his neck so that the rising sun logo rested on his shoulders. The colors looked jaunty against his golden fur.

I tried to take him for a quick walk before leaving home, but he was very agitated, tugging me left and right, chasing a squirrel and a duck and trying to eat a crushed can of Red Bull. There was a horrifying thought: Rochester on an energy drink.