Little Dog Laughed (25 page)

“Doctors are busy fellows,” Dave said, “so maybe you haven’t had time to read the statistics. Only seventeen percent of AIDS victims are intravenous drug users. Seventy-three percent are homosexuals.”

“He was a family man,” Trowbridge blustered. “Lovely wife, devoted to each other, two beautiful children.”

Dave looked around at the handsome setting in its veil of rain. “Back in the real world,” he said, “marriages last nine years with luck. Divorces are as common as weddings. Fifty percent of children are being raised by their mothers alone. Sex films come into your bedroom on television. On every street corner in LA boys run out to your car when you stop to sell you little envelopes of crack, Mom is a junkie, and the apple pie is laced with PCP. You lead a sheltered life out here, doctor. You’re out of touch.”

“Drew was no homosexual—he loved sports, for heaven’s sake, racquetball, jogging, the gym. Before he got caught up in this shopping mall project of his.” Trowbridge grimaced. “Then there was no time for anything but work.”

“Contaminated blood?” Dave said. “From a transfusion? Any transfusions in the last seven years you remember?”

Trowbridge shook his head. “No accidents. No surgery. No transfusions. No.”

Dave gave him a thin smile. “We seem to be narrowing the options, don’t we? You never suspected? He never came to you with a venereal disease? Herpes, hepatitis? No rectal injuries? Nothing that would suggest to you—?”

“Absolutely not.” Trowbridge acted fretful. “He was under a lot of stress, lately. Maybe he saw”—the frail shoulders moved uncomfortably—“some, some, some woman. Prostitutes spread AIDS.”

“That would be nicer, wouldn’t it?” Dave said.

Trowbridge glared. “I’m due at the hospital. But I’m going to phone that medical examiner. He’s made a mistake.”

“Then so did whoever killed Dodge,” Dave said. “We have a serial murderer in LA these days. Five young men stabbed to death in the same way as Dodge. All of them AIDS victims. All homosexuals.”

“You didn’t know Drew.” Trowbridge glanced up grumpily at the rain. “He was the most open, sunny, natural, outspoken young fellow in the world. It’s fantastic to suggest he had some dark, sordid sex life no one knew about.”

“Someone knew,” Dave said.

“Well, don’t upset Katherine.” Trowbridge put a leg into his car. “Don’t tell her.”

“I expect she already knows,” Dave said. “She’ll have had a phone call from the health authorities by now.”

“Then she kept it from me. She wouldn’t do that.”

Trowbridge dropped into the big car, slammed the door, started the engine. Dave rapped on the glass of the passenger-side window. With a grimace of annoyance, the doctor touched the button to lower the window.

“You’ll have to tell her, if she doesn’t know,” Dave said. “And if they were the loving couple you think they were, you’ll also have to treat her. You’ll also have to watch her die.”

Trowbridge glared at him and angrily rolled the window up again. He drove the dark blue car away over the crackling gravel of the drive, out past the white rail fence, down the curving street. Dave turned, took steps over the flagstones, lifted and let fall the polished brass knocker on the red door. He had time to glance twice at his watch before the door opened.

A short woman in her fifties stood there, in a fresh blue warm-up suit, new jogging shoes, a dish towel in square freckled hands. She was stocky, gray-haired, wholesome-looking. “I’m Gerda Nilson. What do you want?”

Dave told her his name, took from a pocket the ostrich-hide folder that held his private investigator’s license, let it fall open for her to read. “I need to ask Mrs. Dodge a few questions. I won’t keep her long.”

“Can’t you read the police report?” the woman said. “That black man—Lieutenant Leppard from Los Angeles—he asked a hundred questions. Yesterday. It took hours. I thought he’d never leave. In my time, Negroes—”

“Came to the back door,” Dave said.

Her blue eyes narrowed, she tilted her head. “Brandstetter? He mentioned you. It’s not an easy name to say, but it’s hard to forget.”

“He said Drew Dodge’s body was found at my house, right?”

“Yes.” She frowned. “So, you’re not investigating for somebody who hired you, like on TV?”

“Nobody hired me,” Dave said. “I’m investigating on my own. I never saw Drew Dodge in my life till yesterday. Am I right—you’re a member of his family?”

“His mother-in-law,” she said.

“Did he ever mention me? He had my business card. I didn’t give it to him. Do you know who did? Or why?”

“Why he’d need a private investigator?” Her mouth twitched grimly at a corner, she stepped out to him, and pulled the door shut back of her. She lowered her voice. “Lately, he’d run into bad trouble. I don’t know the particulars, but it must have had to do with the mall. It was worrying him before he went to the hospital, but this last week, I’d say things had got really bad.” She stood tiptoe to reach Dave’s ear. “I think he was scared to death.”

“I passed the construction site on my way into town,” Dave said. “It looks like quite a project.”

“Oh, millions of dollars,” she said. “Why, it’s going to change the whole lifestyle of this valley. Sears-Roebuck, fashion shops, an enormous supermarket, anything you can name.” She remembered, and the sparkle went out of her eyes, the years showed up in her face. “Was. I don’t know, now.” She regarded him in the gray rainy light. “No, he never spoke your name. And I don’t know what he’d need with your services. Except that he wasn’t himself after he came back from the hospital. He was depressed and jumpy. Not himself at all.”

“Because of his health?” Dave said.

“Oh, no. That was fine. He’d lost all this weight, and now he felt so much better, and he was going to gain it back, and, oh, no, he was real cheerful about that. No, it was something else. Trouble with the shopping mall. What else could it be?”

“He didn’t talk to you about his business problems?”

“He wouldn’t worry me.” She shook her head decisively. “He wouldn’t worry Katherine or the children. He was cheerful and sunny all the time—no matter how hard he worked, sometimes all night long. It was his nature.” Her lower lip trembled. She bit it. Tears showed in her eyes. “He was the dearest boy. The dearest boy.” She used the dish towel to wipe away the tears. “Come in. It’s cold out here.” She opened the door, motioned Dave inside ahead of her, hung his coat in a crowded closet. In the entryway, two spider bikes, one red, one blue, leaned between two six-foot-tall ficus trees in tubs. Stairs led down to a long, beam-ceilinged living room with an inglenook fireplace and furniture that looked comfortable and jumped-on. Videotape boxes were strewn on the wall-to-wall carpet in front of a big console television set.

Dave said, “Do you live here, Mrs. Nilson?”

“I live in Minneapolis,” she said, “but I come out for Thanksgiving and stay through till the snow melts back there. Mr. Nilson died five years ago, and I’ll admit it—I get lonesome. But I think they like having me. I try to pay my way, cooking, looking after the youngsters. That lets Drew and Kathy have some time together.” She gave a short laugh. “It did, until this shopping mall thing took over Drew’s life. Then I was company for Kathy, wasn’t I?” She tried for a smile. “Sit down. I’ll get us some hot coffee.” She moved off with a laugh. “It’s not sunny California today.”

“I wonder if you can let me have a picture of Drew?”

“A picture?” She turned. “Oh, no. He was deathly afraid of cameras. There’s not a picture of him in the house. So easygoing he was about most everything. But no pictures. Not on your life. We had to laugh about it.”

“Can you tell Mrs. Dodge I’d like to see her?”

“I’ll take her some coffee too.” She paused in a far doorway. “Dr. Trowbridge gave her something to make her sleep, but maybe coffee will keep it from working right away. I’ll try.”

“Thank you,” Dave said.

And she came, barefoot in jeans and a bulky sweater, looking pale and drawn, dark circles under her eyes, eyes red, maybe from fatigue, maybe from weeping, maybe both. She was her mother’s daughter, no mistake. Same snub nose, same slightly uptilted blue eyes. But slim and trim. Among those cassettes must be Jane Fonda’s workout tapes. Fragile Kathy Dodge did not look. Strong enough to drag her husband’s body from dark Horseshoe Canyon Trail into Dave’s courtyard in the rain, and prop it on that bench? The dead man hadn’t been heavy. Dave watched her drop disconsolately onto a couch and set the coffee mug that matched Dave’s and her mother’s on a table piled with architecture and interior design magazines, investment magazines, kids’ magazines. Dave said:

“I’ll be quick about this. I know you’re tired.”

“I’m more than tired,” she said. “I wish I were dead.”

“My name is Dave Brandstetter,” he said. “Did Drew ever mention my name to you?”

“No.” She eyed him dully, shook her head. “Never.”

Dave pulled a typed paper from inside his jacket, unfolded it, put on his reading glasses. “Did he ever mention any of these people to you? Bill Bumbry? Art Lopez? Sean O’Reilly? Frank Prohaska? Edward Vorse?”

She rubbed her forehead, sat wearily forward, picked up the coffee mug. “I don’t know.” She drank. “I don’t think so. I don’t remember. I’m sorry. I’m just—too damn tired.”

“Try, Kathy,” her mother said. “Mr. Brandstetter’s had a shock, too. It was in his patio where they found Drew.”

“What?” The young woman jerked her head up, both hands pushing at her hair. “Found Drew? Where?”

“It’s all right.” Dave folded the paper, pushed it away, sat forward, made to stand up. “I won’t keep you anymore.”

But she held up a hand. “No, wait.” She frowned at the pocket where the paper had disappeared. “Let me see.”

He pulled the list out and gave it to her. She frowned over it for a moment, then passed it back. “I think Art Lopez worked for him. At the construction site. He died.”

“The same way as Drew.” Dave pushed the paper away and rose. “Thank you.” He turned to the mother. “Thank you, Mrs. Nilson.” He walked toward the steps up to the entryway, stopped there, turned back. “One last thing. Did he seem frightened to you lately?”

“He had terrible nightmares,” Katherine Dodge said. “He’d wake up screaming. But he wouldn’t tell me why.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Dave said.

He got his coat and went out into the rain again.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1986 by Joseph Hansen

Cover design by Mauricio Diaz

978-1-4804-1684-0

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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