In Dog We Trust (Golden Retriever Mysteries) (38 page)

“Jackie is a professor in the English department at Eastern,” I added. “Menno Zook took a developmental writing class with her in the fall, and I know he kept in touch with her.”

Tony Rinaldi finished his cappuccino and I could see the wheels whirring around in his head. “You think this MVA is related to our crimes?”

“There’s no such thing as coincidence,” I said.

“Yeah, there is,” Rick said. “But sometimes you just have to look at what’s in front of you.”

“Occam’s Razor,” I said.

Tony looked at me, and Rick sighed. “Remember, the guy’s a professor.”

“If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck,” I said. “Occam’s Razor in a nutshell.”

He nodded. “
The Name of the Rose
.”

This time Rick looked baffled. “It was a book,” I said. “A medieval murder mystery. The hero solved the case by applying Occam’s Razor to his deductions.”

“Also a movie,” Tony said. “I’m a Sean Connery buff. Have everything available on DVD.”

“OK, enough diversion,” Rick said. “Back to the problem at hand. It’s possible that Jackie Devere either met Arsene Philippe when she visited Cyrus at Fairton, or that she asked Cyrus for a gun and he pointed her toward Arsene.”

“All conjecture,” Rick said. “But IF she got the gun from Philippe, and then she wanted to cover her tracks, she could have run him off the road.”

Tony opened up a note pad and wrote some things down, asking for dates, the spelling of names, and so on. Probably to prove he was just as good a detective, Rick took some notes himself. While they challenged each other on whose note pad was bigger, I got a hollow feeling in my stomach. “So it’s likely that the accident that killed him was related to everything else.”

“And it’s likely that your pal Jackie is at the center of it all,” Rick said. “What do you say, Tony? I think we should both head up to Eastern to look for her.”

“The school’s on break this week,” I said. “Spring term finished on Friday, and summer term doesn’t start til next Monday.”

“You feel up to a drive?” Tony asked Rick. “You go to Fairton, talk to Cyrus, and I’ll look around for Jackie Devere. Leighville’s my turf, after all. I’ll see if it looks like her car was in an accident with a motorcycle last week.”

They agreed to their division of duties, and I Rick dropped me off back at home on his way to Fairton. I left the investigating to the professionals and went back to the gadolinium consent form. I was sick of radiology procedures, privacy policies and health care regulations, but I wanted to be able to put dog food on the table for Rochester, even if all I could afford was to share it with him, so I kept working. I was so busy I didn’t even go out for the mail until I was walking Rochester after dinner.

There was a lumpy package in the box addressed to him. “Hey, boy, you’ve got mail,” I said, imitating the voice from AOL. Back at the house we opened it up.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” the note read. “Hope you like these biscuits.”

“Isn’t that nice,” I said. “Your Aunt Gail sent you some biscuits.” I sniffed them. They didn’t smell like pumpkin. “She must be trying a new recipe.”

I gave him one biscuit and left the rest, in their plastic bag, on the kitchen counter. I went back to the big manual, and I was caught up in work until eleven, when I realized it was late and my back and ribs had started to ache again.

“Rochester,” I called. “Hey, boy, want to go for a walk before bed?”

I found him sprawled out in the middle of the kitchen floor. The empty plastic bad that had contained the biscuits was near his head, and he’d thrown up twice. “You ate all those biscuits!” I said. “Bad dog! No wonder you threw up.”

His body was twitching, and his nose was warm. “Are you OK, boy? Do you need to go to the vet?”

I didn’t know what to do. The only other dog owner I knew well enough to call for advice was Jackie Devere, and I figured she had her own problems, especially if Tony Rinaldi had caught up with her.

I cleaned up the vomit and wiped Rochester’s mouth with a wet towel. Then I started pacing around, talking to myself as I argued the pros and cons of taking him to the vet’s emergency service. Would they think I was stupid and overprotective if he just had an upset stomach? What could they give a dog for overeating, anyway? Some kind of puppy Pepto?

I picked up the plastic bag, which still had one corner of a biscuit left in it, and was about to throw it away when the aroma of chocolate wafted out of it. Chocolate? I didn’t know much about doggie digestion, but I knew they weren’t supposed to eat chocolate. How come I hadn’t noticed that smell before? Didn’t Gail know dogs couldn’t eat chocolate? I thought she knew everything there was to know about the stuff.

Then I caught my breath. What if Gail hadn’t sent the biscuits at all? There was one other person who made biscuits for Rochester—Jackie Devere. I flashed back to the last time I’d seen Jackie, at Eastern, with Rochester. I’d bragged to her about how he’d helped me find clues to Caroline’s murder.

A murder she might have committed, or at least ordered.

It was as if I’d signed the dog’s death warrant.

I searched through the trash for the envelope that had brought Rochester the biscuits. There was no return address on it, and the postmark read “Southeastern Pennsylvania,” which was not helpful. I left it on the counter, and found Rochester’s leash. “Come on, boy, we’re going to the vet,” I said.

He didn’t get up, he just banged his head against the floor a couple of times and wagged his tail.

“Come on, Rochester, get up,” I said, tugging on the leash. But though he tried to get up, he couldn’t move enough. I ran to the front door, opened it, and dashed out to the Beemer. I didn’t have the keys. I ran back inside, found them, then ran back outside. I realized I wasn’t wearing shoes. I ran back inside, and Rochester thumped his head on the floor again and wagged his tail. “All right, boy, I’m going to make you all better, I promise,” I said. The words caught in my throat and I thought I might cry.

Upstairs, I threw on my shoes, grabbed a jacket, and a blanket to put over Rochester. I hurried back downstairs, dropped what I was carrying, and bent over to pick up the dog.

“Oof,” I said. “Dog, you’re going on a diet.” He must have weighed eighty pounds. Bending from the knees, I lifted and stood, then staggered out the front door to the BMW in the driveway. I nearly dropped him twice, but at last I was able to deposit him in the front seat.

A minute later I was back with the blanket. Then I had to grab my cell phone. At the last minute I grabbed the plastic bag containing the broken corner of the last biscuit, then I locked the house.

Rochester’s head rested in my lap, and he couldn’t stop panting. I backed down the driveway and sped out of River Bend as fast as I could, taking the twisty curves well over the residential speed limit.

The veterinary hospital was near Newtown, and I had to speed up Ferry Road, away from the Delaware, bypassing downtown. All those years of taking the late bus kicked in; I knew how to get there through the back roads, avoiding traffic lights and places where a bored cop might be hanging out looking for speeders.

“It’s all right, boy, Daddy’s going to make you better,” I said, petting his head as I zoomed one-handed around the narrow country roads. The cold air rushed at my face and stung my eyes into tears.

At least I think that’s why I was crying.

I made it to the vet’s in record time. Leaving Rochester in the car, I ran up to the door and rang the emergency bell. Then I rushed back to Rochester and lifted him once again. I was stumbling up to the door when it opened, and a young woman in light green scrubs looked out.

“Let me help you,” she said. She propped the door and hurried toward me. With her help, I carried Rochester inside. “I’m going to need his weight,” she said, steering us into the hallway, where there was a big scale built into the floor.

We knelt down and placed him on the scale, then stood up. He looked up at me with his big brown eyes and I knew I would do anything to make him better.

“I think he ate chocolate,” I said. “A lot.”

“He’s a big boy,” she said. “Seventy-two pounds. That’s good—there’s more body weight to help disperse the chocolate. How much do you think he ate?”

“Someone sent him biscuits.” I pulled the plastic bag from my pocket. “I think maybe they were made with chocolate.”

“That’s terrible. Who would do such a thing?”

She knelt down and stroked his head on the scale. “Don’t you worry, boy, we’re going to make you better.”

She stood. “Let’s get him into a room, and I’ll let the doctor know you’re here.”

With effort, bending at the knees, we got Rochester up off the scale, carried him into an examining room, and laid him on a Formica-topped table. The tech took my name and his and then hurried off to find the doctor.

Poor Rochester. I hadn’t been able to protect him. When I’d been run off the road, if Rick hadn’t come by and gotten him, he might have been killed. And now, I’d given him poisoned biscuits, and left the bag where he could eat all of them.

The room was small, dominated by the examining table in the middle. On one wall, a set of cabinets was mounted over a sink. The walls were covered with posters—the anatomy of a cat, the reasons why dogs needed dental care, a huge ad for heartworm treatment. Rochester lay on the table, heaving and twitching, and I petted his head over and over again and murmured to him.

I couldn’t help it; I started to cry. For Rochester; I loved him and I felt I had let him down by not taking care of him. But it was more than just that. I was crying for all my losses-- my parents, my marriage, my unborn children—everything I’d cared about and hadn’t been able to hold onto.

I remembered the day when Mary had her second miscarriage. We were at the hospital, in one of those curtained units of the emergency room, and she would not let me hold her hand.

The first time Mary discovered she was pregnant, we’d told everyone we knew as soon as the home pregnancy test turned color. We’d shared the news of the miscarriage, too, accepting the awkward sympathy of friends and family.

No one knew about Mary’s spending spree but me, and no one seemed to notice that the miscarriage had bothered me, too. I was the dad, after all. I’d been looking forward to the baby, too, and I admit I’d been hoping that the little bundle of joy would repair some of the cracks that were already appearing in our marriage.

The second pregnancy was our secret. Only Mary’s OB-GYN and her staff knew. Mary quit her job to reduce her stress level, and she spent most of the day in bed, watching soap operas, eating Ben & Jerry’s, and crying.

The doctor said it was the hormones, but I think Mary already knew the baby would not come to term, and she was crying for her loss.

That night, while Mary slept, I went on line and hacked into the three major credit bureaus. It was a matter of a few minutes to find her record and place a flag on it indicating that there was a possible fraud, that the cards in her name should not be honored.

Hacking had become such second nature to me that I didn’t give a second thought to my actions. For the next week, I focused on taking care of Mary, shutting out my own pain and loss. It wasn’t until two weeks later, when a sheriff appeared at the door of our house with a warrant for my arrest, that I thought again of that hack.

I didn’t want Mary to know what I had done. I let her believe that I’d been doing work for a client, a guy in Hong Kong who’d hired me for the occasional bit of computer skullduggery. She was angry at me, of course, but we both believed that it was unlikely that a white-collar crime like mine would result in any serious penalties.

My attorney, though, was less sure. “They’re looking for a scapegoat,” he told me, after I’d been bailed out, and we’d met to discuss strategy. “You did a dumb thing, Steve. If you’d hacked into an ordinary company, they’d let things slide, because they wouldn’t want anyone to know that their systems were vulnerable. But the credit bureaus have their own investigative branches, and they don’t want anybody else to think they can get away with what you did.”

“What does that mean for me?” I asked. I’d dressed up in a rare suit and tie, trying to make a good impression on this attorney, whose brother had gone to graduate school with Tor.

“It means they want you to go to jail.”

My jaw dropped open and I couldn’t speak for a minute. “What do you mean?”

He recited the relevant statutes for my crime, and the possible penalties. “But I didn’t even steal anything,” I protested. “All I did was put a flag on my wife’s account.”

“Doesn’t matter. The crime was the hack, not what you did once you were inside.”

Things just got worse from there. Within a few weeks, we’d accepted a plea deal that prevented me from going to trial, where I could have been sentenced to up to ten years for each hack—a total of thirty in all. In that context, a year behind bars sounded pretty good.

Within the first month of my unfortunate incarceration, Mary had served me with divorce papers. By the end of the fourth month, my father had suffered a stroke in his sleep. His body had been discovered by a neighbor two days later, when she noticed he hadn’t brought in his daily paper.