In Dog We Trust (Golden Retriever Mysteries) (25 page)

“My father always said I didn’t know which end of the screwdriver you hammer the nails with,” I said. “I can’t even paint a wall without making a mess.”

He tapped the list with his finger. “Take a good look, Steve. You may find something there you can do.” He reached into his briefcase and pulled out another list. “These are some social service agencies in the area who work with ex-cons. Job training, that kind of thing. Don’t be embarrassed about going there; you won’t be the only guy with a college degree.”

I took the paper from him and glanced at it. I remembered shopping at Goodwill stores for vintage clothing when I was in college. I’d never thought I’d end up one of their clients.

“I think I lost a job because they found out about my record,” I said. “I was thinking maybe I could sue them to get the job back. I read somewhere on line that you can sue an employer if they discriminate against you based on your record.”

Santos sighed. “Discrimination based on criminal history is illegal in Pennsylvania, as long as the job isn’t related to your offense. But you’re in a strange situation. It would be hard for you to find a white-collar job that doesn’t require some use of computers, internet, that sort of thing. And you have a record for hacking into private data. Any employer could be concerned that if they gave you a log on to their network, you might wander into some files you weren’t supposed to see. You’d have a hard time convincing a judge that discrimination wasn’t relevant.”

I felt deflated. There just didn’t seem to be any good alternatives.

“Consider a lawsuit your last resort,” Santos said. “Do you want to work for somebody when you have to sue to get the job?” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get going,” he said. “I’m meeting my girlfriend at the nature preserve around the corner from here.”

Mention of the preserve flashed a memory of finding Caroline’s body next to it. I don’t know what my face said to Santos, but he hurried to continue. “My girlfriend and I, we’ve started bird watching. You know, something to do together.” He had a sheepish grin on his face. “She’s a tour guide at Independence Hall, and she started noticing all the birds around, so she bought a book. Now she’s got me hooked. You know they post alerts on the Internet, migrating birds?”

He laughed. “Guess I don’t have to tell you what’s out there online,” he said, standing up. “Anyway, keep your chin up. You’re going to find something. Just keep plugging away.”

I thanked him for the advice, though I didn’t feel better after our meeting. He hadn’t threatened to send me back to California, which was a good thing, but I didn’t see myself in a hairnet slicing beef at the Genuardi’s either. He was right, you didn’t see many blue-collar workers in River Bend. Most of my neighbors’ cars cost more than a receiving clerk or forklift operator made in a year.

I couldn’t think about dating until I had my economic house in order. I could just imagine hanging out with Rick on a Saturday night at The Drunken Hessian, picking up women. A hardware store clerk with a felony conviction wasn’t going to score the kind of women I was attracted to.

That evening, after I’d walked and fed Rochester and watched mindless TV to take my mind off my troubles, my cell phone started beeping its low battery alert. When I picked it up to plug it in, I noticed Melissa Macaretti’s phone number in my call log from Monday night.  I was about to delete it, but there was something familiar about that number, something dancing on the edge of my conscious brain.

I was holding the phone open when I saw the photocopies of the paperwork used to open the fake account for Edith at the bank in Easton. At first I thought the number on the paperwork was just similar to Melissa’s cell—but it was the same.

I remembered seeing Melissa at her work-study job, at Eastern’s music department. She knew Edith. I peered at the grainy driver’s license photo on the page; it could be Melissa, with a different hair style and different makeup. Or it could be someone else.

I plugged the phone into the charger and called Rick, worried that he’d yell at me again. But hey, I wasn’t snooping in Caroline’s murder, just making a connection that might solve Edith’s problems. Before he could launch into any arguments, I explained what I had found. “Give me the girl’s name,” he said. I spelled it for him. “You have an address other than that PO box?”

“I might be able to get it,” I said. “Let me call you back.”

I logged into Eastern’s mainframe and pulled up my class roster. As I’d remembered, each student’s name was a hyperlink, opening a new window with social security number, date of birth, and address, among other things. I called Rick back and read him the information. “She lives in the freshman dorm called Birthday Hall. So it’s reasonable that she would have a post office box.”

“I’ll run her through the system tomorrow and see what comes up,” he said. “In the meantime, remember what I said. No detective work on your own.”

“I was out of line yesterday,” I said. “You were right. I shouldn’t have said anything to Chris or Karina.”

“And don’t say anything to this girl, either,” he said. “You don’t want to spook her. If she’s still got any of Edith’s money on her, we want to catch her with it. If you let her know we’re on to her, she’s likely to hide it or spend it, and that’s no good for Edith.”

I sighed. “I understand. I won’t say anything to her.”

On Monday, the tech writing class continued giving their presentations. I was curious to see what Layton Zee was going to do, since he’d never handed in a research paper. He was scheduled to give his presentation that day, and not surprisingly, he wasn’t prepared.

He was wearing a t-shirt that read, “On the other hand, you have different fingers,” and beltless jeans that threatened to slip off his hips.

“Come out into the hallway with me,” I said.

He followed me. “You haven’t handed any papers in this semester, Lay,” I said. “Did you think I would pass you just based on your attendance?”

He shrugged. “I did the in-class work.”

“Not enough. Right now, something like eighty-five percent of your grade is an F. You don’t have to make a presentation—at this point it doesn’t matter. You don’t even have to come back for the rest of the semester.”

“Can’t you cut me a break, Prof?” he asked. “I mean, showing up every day’s got to count for something.”

“Yeah, ten percent of your grade. It’s all spelled out on the syllabus, Lay.”

“You’re an asshole, you know that?” he said. He stood up straight, as if that would give him some kind of height advantage on me, but I’m just over six feet so we were pretty much at eye level.

“You want to call me names? Call me whatever you want—in front of the academic dean, so it’ll go on your record.”

“I can’t believe this shit,” he said. For a minute it looked like he wanted to hit me, but then he turned away, heading down the hallway muttering.

I’d heard about students who got violent from other professors, but this was the first time I’d experienced it myself. While the class pretty boy, Ira K. Lindo (who went by the nickname I.K.) was giving his presentation, I wrote down everything I could remember of the conversation.

I went from there to freshman comp, where I returned the rough drafts of their research papers. We went over MLA style citations again, and I repeated, for what was probably the fiftieth time, “If you use someone else’s exact words, you MUST use quotation marks, and you MUST identify who said those words, and why I should trust them. To do anything else is theft.”

I caught myself. I didn’t mean to be sending any coded messages to Melissa Macaretti. “I mean plagiarism, which is a kind of theft, after all.”

Jeremy Eisenberg didn’t get the whole citing your sources thing, and so I went over it again. And then again. By the time the hour and a quarter had passed, I thought maybe I’d gotten it through their heads. But only the final drafts would prove if I had.

I resisted saying anything to Melissa about Edith’s stolen identity. I was pretty shaken from my encounter with Lay Zee, and Rick was right; I wasn’t the cop. It was up to him to see if he could catch her with Edith’s money. I’d already done what I could for Edith; I had driven her to Easton and set the wheels in motion for her with the bank and with Rick.

After class I went up to the English department and used one of the computers in the adjunct area to type my confrontation with Lay Zee into an email to Lucas Roosevelt. I’d just finished when Jackie came by on her way to make copies.

“You won’t believe what happened to me today,” I said.

“If it involves a smart, well-behaved student, then I probably won’t,” she said. “Otherwise I’d believe anything, especially at this point in the semester.”

I told her about Lay Zee, and how he’d threatened me. “It makes me a little nervous to go out to my car,” I admitted. “I mean, suppose he wanted to run me over?”

“Our students may be slow and lazy, but I doubt they’re homicidal,” Jackie said. She knocked on wood. “Though you never know.”

“It’s not homicide, but you won’t believe what I figured out while I was helping my old piano teacher.”

“Helping her how? Tuning her instrument?” She waggled an imaginary cigar, á la Groucho Marx.

I ignored the humor. “She’s an adjunct in the music department, and one of my students has a work-study job there. The student stole my friend’s identity and started intercepting her mail and moving money out of her bank accounts. I’m still trying to figure out how it all comes together.”

“In little old Stewart’s Crossing? Where nothing ever happens except the stop light changes from green to red and back again?”

“Even there.”

I knew that Jackie knew Menno, so I didn’t mention any names, but she was still suitably horrified. “I know some of our students behave badly, but it’s hard to believe they’d stoop to something like that,” she said.

“I’m still pretty shaken up,” I said. “I think I need to go home and take Rochester for a long walk, just to calm down.”

“You live in Stewart’s Crossing, don’t you?” she asked. “River Road is so pretty over there.”

“It is. Maybe I’ll take Rochester down there.”

On my way out to the parking lot, keeping an eye out for Lay Zee, I called Edith to let her know about Melissa, but there was no answer. I called The Chocolate Ear and found that Edith wasn’t there, but Irene said she came by almost every afternoon.

“I’m on my way there,” I said. “If she shows up, tell her to wait for me.”

I found Edith sitting at one of the white wrought-iron tables in the corner of the café, right under a poster for a French chocolate bar, drinking tea. “But she’s such a sweet girl,” she said, when I told her about the matching phone numbers.

I shrugged. “Appearances can be deceiving. You know that, Edith.” I sipped my raspberry mocha, watching her.

“Poor Menno,” she said.

“Menno?”

“Her boyfriend, Menno. He’ll be just shocked to know what she’s done.”

“Menno. You mean Menno Zook?”

“You know him?”

“He’s in my freshman comp class, along with Melissa. I didn’t know they were going out. They never sit together.”

“Oh, yes, they’ve been dating since the fall,” Edith said. “Melissa’s the one who recommended Menno to be my handyman.”

The revelation hit Edith the same time it hit me; I could see it play across her face. “You don’t think…” she began.

“Did Menno ever come to your house when you weren’t home?”

She nodded. “At Thanksgiving, I had him paint my bedroom while I went to visit my cousin. When I went to Charleston he came over to recaulk my tub.”

“I think the first one of your statements was missing from December,” I said.

Edith began to cry. “I was such a silly old woman.”

I took her hand and squeezed. “Don’t say that, Edith. You trusted a nice girl and her boyfriend. Anyone would have.”

Irene saw Edith crying and came over to see what was wrong. I explained what we’d figured out. “At least now you know who’s behind all this,” Irene said, in her no-nonsense way. “You’ll see, Rick will get it all wrapped up for you. Probably get most of your money back, too.”

“Just in case you see or hear from Melissa or Menno, don’t let either of them know that we’ve been talking,” I said. “And if Menno wants to come over and work on something for you, make an excuse to keep him away for now.”

Edith nodded, and then thanked me again for my help. I left Edith and Irene at the café and drove back to River Bend. As usual, Rochester was delighted to see me. I decided to take Jackie’s advice and go out with him for a good, long walk. But it was a little far to the River Road, so I hooked up his leash and we headed to the canal. Except for the kitschy mule-barge rides up in New Hope, there’s no longer any commerce on the canal, though way back when, before there were highways, those old barges used to transport coal from the mines upriver down to the deep water port at Bristol.

The canal was abloom with wildflowers, and the towpath was roofed with fiddlehead ferns and spotted with daisies, black-eyed Susans and the tiny pansies we called Johnny Jump-ups. Fish splashed in showy leaps, and cattails grew in the marshy shores. The smell of wildflowers mingled with the aroma of stagnant canal water. Rochester surprised a pair of nesting birds, and despite the presence of the town just a few hundred yards away, the area was quiet and peaceful.