The Silence of the Chihuahuas (4 page)

Pepe would normally have yelled at me to be sure I didn't do anything to contaminate the crime scene. Then he would have sniffed around, gathering clues and telling me what he found. But this wasn't normal at all. Instead I scurried out of the house, feeling nauseous, and threw up in the bushes in the front. Then I called 911 and stood on the front porch crying. Pepe disappeared—no doubt gathering clues, but ones he couldn't share with me.

I really wanted to talk to someone so I called my boyfriend, Felix. The call went straight to voice mail and I didn't bother to leave a message. Felix had been really distracted lately, and sometimes he wouldn't return my calls until the next day. Nothing makes a woman feel more vulnerable than leaving a message asking a man to call and then waiting and waiting and waiting for that call.

At least I didn't have to wait long for the police. A blue and white cop car, blue lights flashing and siren wailing, pulled up within minutes. The driver was a female police officer. She got out of the car and swaggered up to me.

“Are you the one who called?” she asked. Her strawberry-blond hair was short and tight on the sides, almost like a man's haircut.

“Yes,” I said.

A young man—he looked barely old enough to have graduated from high school—emerged from the passenger side of the car. But he was wearing the slate blue uniform of a Seattle cop. “You called in a 187?” he asked eagerly.

The female cop frowned at him. “We don't use code with civilians,” she said. She turned to me. “You reported a dead body?”

“Yes I did. It's in the kitchen.”

“I see,” she said. “Do you live here?”

“No.”

“Do you know the victim?”

“No.” It was not entirely a lie.

The two cops exchanged a glance that made me feel I was a suspect.

“I know her name,” I admitted. “Mrs. Fairchild.”

The female police officer spoke. “We'll go in and check it out. So which way is the body?” I stepped with them into the living room and pointed through the dining room towards the door of the kitchen.

“You stay out here and don't go anywhere. We need to talk to you some more,” said the woman cop.

I didn't like the sound of that, but what could I do? Because I hadn't done anything, I shouldn't have to worry. But I did. I sat down on the living room sofa—which looked a bit like a giant bee since it was upholstered in yellow and black stripes—and wondered what happened to my dog. Just then he came slinking into the room. Probably scared away from the crime scene by the police.

He hates the police. I think he confuses them with the animal control officers who scooped him up off the streets of LA and put him into what he calls “dog prison.” I have tried to point out to him that if he had not been in a shelter we would never have met, but so far he does not seem moved by that argument.

I picked him up and held him. He was shivering.

“What did you smell, Pepe?” I asked. “What do you know?” And just then, two men walked through the open front door. They did a double take when they saw me talking to my dog. So did I. I recognized them. So did Pepe. He barked.

The older detective, Larson, was balding and wore wire-rimmed glasses and a rumpled navy-blue suit, just like he had the first time we'd met. “Well, we meet again,” he said.

At the same time, the two beat cops came out of the kitchen.

“You know this woman?” the female officer asked.

“Yeah, we know her all right,” the other detective said. “Who could forget her and that nasty little dog?” Sanders was a tall black man with a shaved head, dressed impeccably in a camelhair sports coat and crisp tan slacks.

“Yeah, that's right,” said Larson. “Claimed to be a PI. She was involved in another murder case a little over a year ago.”

“For your information I am a PI,” I told them, even though I had yet to be officially licensed. “And I just stumbled over this murder.”

“Like the first time, huh?” said Sanders, very sarcastic.

“Yes,” I said emphatically.

“So where you go, murder follows.” That was detective Larson, also being sarcastic. He didn't give me time to reply, just quickly told the uniformed cops, “OK. Why don't you show us the crime scene?”

“Looks like the cause of death was blunt force trauma,” said the younger cop quickly.

His woman partner gave him a chiding look. “But we'll leave the determination to the coroner,” she said.

“What about her?” the young man asked. He was irrepressible in his desire to be doing something significant. “Should we cuff her?”

“She can wait out here until we're done,” Larson said.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I mean, if she was involved in another murder—”

“I don't think she's a flight risk,” Larson told him.

“Yeah, but her dog sure is,” said Sanders. “Bit one of our technicians last time around,” he told the uniforms. “Then made a break for it. Had to put an APB out on him.”

“On a Chihuahua,” said Larson. They all shared a laugh at that.

I expected Pepe to comment on our situation, but he just stopped shivering in my arms and kept silent. His big ears rotated toward the kitchen where the cops were surveying the scene. I could only hear a low murmur of voices but he, no doubt, could pick up actual words. Still if he wasn't going to help me out, I needed to do something myself.

The living room was a hideous hodgepodge of styles. Here and there, I recognized Brad's work (the yellow-and-black sofa, for instance, and the huge gilt mirror over the fireplace, and maybe the blue-and-white Chinese vase in the corner full of dried pampas grass), but nothing really went together. The fireplace mantel was covered with little ceramic figures of peasant children. Two walls were olive green and one wall was turquoise; the remaining wall contained a mural of an indistinguishable nature scene. Was it a meadow? A forest? Were those nymphs frolicking in the woods? Or were those sheep making their way up a mountain trail?

I made my way over to look at the details and found myself standing in front of a rolltop desk. As I peered at the desk more closely, I saw that it had cubby holes organized and even labeled. One read B
ILLS
P
AID
, another read B
ILLS
T
O
P
AY
, another read P
ENDING
.

I was curious about that last one, especially since it contained the most items. So I pulled out the handful of papers inside. Most appeared to be invoices from various contractors who had worked on her house, including a plumber, a carpenter, and a faux finisher. But seven of them were from Brad. They went back for months and included bills for furniture purchases, upholstery work, and the painting of the kitchen. She'd written across the bottom of all seven bills, “Not a penny until it's done right!”

I knew Brad had done a lot of work for Mrs. Fairchild. I didn't realize that she had not paid him for any of it. I couldn't help thinking about his fanciful note: “Off to slay the dragon.” And then I thought: what if the cops saw these bills? Would they think it was a motive for murder? Would they think that Brad killed her?

I was just about to stuff them into my pocket, when the police came back into the dining room.

“What have you got there?” asked Sanders.

“Yeah,” said Larson, looking past me at the open rolltop. “Going through the dead woman's desk, huh?”

Pepe barked at the cops and went charging toward them. I ran to intercept him and dropped the bills I was holding. Like toast always landing on the buttered side, a couple of Brad's bills landed face up.

“You're disturbing the crime scene,” the female cop told me as Sanders came over and picked the bills up off the floor, then took the rest out of my hand.

“You could be arrested for that, you know,” said the young male cop.

“Something important here?” asked Sanders, looking through the bills in his hand.

“No,” I told him. At least they wouldn't know they came out of the P
ENDING
file. On the other hand, the dates and the note on the bottom were pretty clear.

“Sure.” He gave me a suspicious look, then told the uniformed cops, “Why don't you two put up the tape? Front door and back door. We don't want anybody else traipsing in before forensics gets here.”

As they went out, Sanders told me, “Have a seat, Miss Sullivan. We need to take your statement.”

Both the detectives sat across from me at the dining table. Sanders put the bills on the table as he took his seat and, of course, a few of Brad's bills were face up for all to see.

“Do you know the victim?” Sanders asked me.

“Not really,” I said.

“What does that mean?” That was Sanders.

“I came here once with my partner, Brad, to deliver some furniture.”

“Partner?” Larson gave that a bit of a leer.

“My business partner. Brad owns an antique shop. He does interior design and furniture restoration.”

Sanders looked around the dining room which was, if possible, in even worse taste than the living room. It was ringed with china cabinets full of silver and gold tableware. The wallpaper was silver flocked. The tablecloth was a piece of intricate but stained white crochet work. His eyebrows lifted but he said nothing.

“So what were you doing here today?” Larson asked.

“Well, I came here trying to find Brad.”

“What made you think he was here?” asked Sanders.

“I knew he was doing some work for Mrs. Fairchild.”

“And why were you looking for him?”

I stumbled to come up with something plausible. I had just told Jay to report that Brad was missing. Would the police connect the two events?

“I haven't talked to him for a while and his partner was worried about him—”

“Another partner?” That was Larson, again with a leer.

“Jay is his life partner,” I said. “His significant other. They're getting married.”

“I see,” said Larson, his expression betraying the same distaste for Brad's lifestyle as he had for my dog.

“And why did you think to look here?” Larson asked.

“She was the last client he was working with,” I said, hating the way that came out.

“And these are his invoices,” said Sanders, who had been sorting through the papers. “Looks like she hadn't paid him for months.” He handed them to Larson.

“Is it possible he came here to confront her about the unpaid invoices?” Larson asked.

“And it got ugly,” Sanders went on. “Your friend Brad. He has a temper, doesn't he?”

I shook my head. “Absolutely not,” I told him. “Brad's a sweetheart.”

Larson rolled his eyes. “How can we get in touch with him?” he asked.

“Um.”

“Um is not an answer.” That was Sanders. He sounded like my seventh grade teacher.

“The truth is . . .” I hesitated, then decided I had to be honest. Pepe was shaking his head at me. Too bad. “Brad is missing.”

Sanders sat up even straighter. “Since when?” he asked.

“I don't know for sure,” I said. “Maybe a day or two? You'll have to ask Jay.” I hoped that time frame would make it clear Brad could not have committed this murder. I hoped he really was on a buying binge.

“We may need to talk to you again,” said Larson, closing his notebook.

“Yes,” said Sanders. “We've got Brad's business address here,” he continued, holding up one of Brad's invoices. “We'll go by there to look for him.”

“There were other people she wasn't paying as well,” I said, quick to defend my friend.

“You don't need to tell us how to do our job,” said Larson, getting up rather stiffly. “You stay out of it, this time.”

“Of course,” I said, gathering up my dog and heading out the front door. But, of course, I wasn't going to do that. I had to try to find Brad before the police did. I headed straight for the shop.

 

 

I tried my key again, but it still didn't work. How was I going to investigate if I couldn't get into the shop? Luckily, the back door key did work. I was a little nervous as I entered the dim workroom, afraid of what I might find.

“Pepe, I hope you will let me know if you smell
muerte
,” I said as he ran ahead of me. I couldn't bear the thought of finding Brad dead. But what other explanation could there be for his disappearance? I didn't buy Jay's thought that he ran off with another man. Brad was totally devoted to Jay. Or, at least, he had been.

Pepe disappeared into the gloom. I felt my way to the light switch and flipped the switch. No lights. Apparently the electricity had been turned off.

Some light filtered through the high dusty windows along the sides and I could see some familiar items: the big red-tail hawk with his wings outspread, which seemed to soar suspended by cords over the work area; the stuffed owl on top of the grandfather clock (Brad loves taxidermy); and the armoire, which we had carried up the stairs at Mrs. Fairchild's house. It was no longer painted olive green with red roses. It looked like Brad had stripped that off and was working on a new color scheme: sky blue with Pennsylvania Dutch designs of pink hearts and purple birds. Not Brad's style at all.

Pepe was standing in front of the armoire, his nose pointed at the doors, one leg lifted the way pointers do when pointing at a pheasant.

“What's in there, little man?” I said, coming over to him. Then I saw the note pinned to the door. It read “Dragon Lady.” As I looked around the shop, I could see other notes pinned to other pieces of furniture. Every one of them read “Dragon Lady.”