Notoriously Neat (17 page)
Authors: SUZANNE PRICE
“Excuse me, Amelia,” she said to the frantic gabber, pushing toward me. “Sky, what are you doing here?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” I said.
She nodded her head back at the woman I’d extricated her from, dropped her voice. “Not that your arrival wasn’t a godsend.”
I gave a thin smile of acknowledgment. “I didn’t know you live on Abbott, Kimi.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I’m on Hamlin. The next street over. My yard backs on poor Natalie’s.” She shook her head. “If it weren’t for Nat, I’d never have black-eyed Susans. She starts them in her nursery every spring.”
I noticed that her face was very pale. “Kimi . . . do you know what happened?”
“As much as anyone,” she said. “Because of what I heard.”
“The gunshots?”
“And the rest,” Kimi said. “The police took my statement. There was the singing . . . and then everything else. It was so sudden. I’d always told Nat to keep her door locked. But she never paid attention. As if nothing bad ever happens in the Cove.”
She broke off, shook her head some more. I was thinking about the first part of what she’d told me. “Was Natalie in a La Dee Das rehearsal?”
“No,” she said. “She was practicing solo this morning. Her voice was so lovely. She had her studio windows open upstairs, and I was out in the garden to do some early watering. The weather may feel like winter, but our plants can’t be neglected. Or everything about spring will be spoiled . . .”
Her head sank and she began to cry, the tears spilling down her cheeks.
I put down Ski’s carrier for a minute, got a pack of tissues out of my shoulder bag, held it out. “Here. You can keep these.”
Kimi nodded appreciatively, pulled a tissue from the pack. “Please excuse me,” she said, wiping her eyes and face. “Anyway it was so sudden. What caught my attention was the dog. It sounded excited. And then Natalie stopped singing.”
I blinked, recalling what the EMTs had said.
“You heard a dog in Nat’s house?”
“Yes.”
“A barking dog?”
“No,” she said. “Not barking. I suppose you’d call it yelping. Like a puppy. But the sound was clearly coming from Natalie’s windows,” she said. “The most bewildering thing is that she didn’t own a dog.”
“You’re sure?”
“Oh yes, positive. She was devastated after her beagle, Molly, passed away last year. Natalie talked about adopting when she was ready for another pet. I have a friend up in Maine that runs a rescue center for Norfolk terriers, and we’d planned to go up there together this summer.”
I let that sink in a minute. “Kimi . . . what happened after you heard those yelps?”
“It’s just as I told the police officer. I heard Nat shout something. And then heard another voice answer her. A man’s. I don’t think he was speaking English . . .”
I waited. She dabbed her eyes some more.
“Do you know what language it was?”
“I’m not certain,” Kimi said. “My guess is that it was Spanish. His tone was very harsh. Very angry. The shots came so quickly afterward—”
That was when I heard Chris Martin tunefully advising lovers to keep on the road they’re on. I was tempted to completely ignore the ringtone, but it occurred to me it might be Vega calling from inside the house.
“I’d better see who this is,” I said.
Kimi nodded. I think she almost welcomed taking a break from her account of the crime.
A glance at the phone’s outer display told me it wasn’t Vega after all, but Bry calling from the cell I’d gotten him on our company plan. I flipped it open, held it up to my ear.
“Dudette,” he said. “Glad I didn’t get your vee-em.”
“Bry, listen,” I said. “I need to call you back. I’ll explain later—”
“We gotta talk right now, Skyster. Like this second. I’m at the Pilsner joint.”
I hesitated. He sounded agitated.
“Is everything okay over there?” I said.
“With me, yeah,” he said. “But ask about the Orlando kid and his monkey, and I got all kinds of bad news.”
Chapter 17
“Have the police contacted you?” I asked.
I was in the living room of the Pilsner home with Vaughn Pilsner, Bryan, and a cat carrier that contained an increasingly stir-crazy Skiball. Before speeding off from Abbott Lane, I’d called Vega on his cell and explained that Bry needed my urgent help. I could tell Vega assumed it involved a cleaning job. In fact, I’d counted on him making that assumption.
“I returned from my morning stroll only minutes before you arrived,” Vaughn said. “And I haven’t even checked the phone messages.”
“And there were none on your cell?
He shook his head. “Mine only works half the time. I’m a bit prehistoric when it comes to using those things.”
That didn’t quite answer my question, but I left it alone. Thanks to Bry, I knew he’d at least told the truth about walking through the door just ahead of me. In fact, we both were still wearing our overcoats.
Still, I wondered if telling someone a partial truth was the same thing as lying. If the answer was yes, I’d lied to Vega. It wouldn’t be long before he found out, though. And that made me feel beyond awful.
I looked at Bry. “Okay,” I said. “You’d better let us know exactly what happened.”
He shrugged nervously.
“Ain’t much besides that Orlando lit outta here, Skyster,” he said. “I was in the office cleaning the kennels.”
“And he was in this part of the house?”
Bry nodded. “Must’ve been right here downstairs. The phone rang, an’ he picks up. Starts talking real loud.”
“Could you make out what he was saying?”
“Nope,” Bry said.
“How about whether he was speaking English or Spanish?”
“Dunno. By the time I start paying attention, he’s off the phone. But I know right off he’s amped about something.”
“How could you tell?”
“Like I said, he made a racket. Slams the phone, starts running through the house.”
“And then?”
“Then I hear the back door open, look out the window, and see him hoofin’ out past the stables to the garage. He’s carrying one of those humongous gym bags, and the Mick’s kinda tucked into his jacket. Like you might carry a baby, y’know?”
“And that’s when you saw him ride off,” I said with a nod.
“On Doc Pilsner’s scooter, yeah. Or whatever you call that thing she used to buzz around in when she’d feed those stray cats around town—”
“A Vespa,” I said, picturing her on it. She’d made those rounds every night, winter or summer.
“Do you know which way Orlando went?” Vaughn said.
“Started out toward town,” Bry said with another stiff little shrug. “But then he hung a left around the corner. Could ’a gone anywhere from there. I ran out to take a look but didn’t see him. He was really zoomin’.”
I took a deep breath. “What did you do next, Bry?”
“Broke out my cell right there on the street,” he said. “I was on my way back to the house when I phoned you.”
“And you never thought to contact the police?” Vaughn said.
From the incredulous look Bry gave him, you’d have thought Vaughn had asked whether he’d considered dialing Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.
“When in doubt call Skyster. That’s my motto,” Bry said. “I—” He broke off, cocked his head toward the front of the house. “You hear that?”
I shook my head no. “Hear what?”
“I dunno . . . sounded like somebody got into a car out front.”
I realized I had noticed something like that. But I’d been concentrating on Bry’s story and was mainly concerned with the sort of cars that would arrive blaring police sirens.
Vaughn quickly stepped out into the foyer, returned. “I didn’t see anyone. And the only vehicles in front of the house belong to the two of you.” He shrugged. “It must have been a neighbor.”
Though his explanation was good enough for me, I could tell it didn’t do too much to settle Bry’s nerves. But his jumpiness was understandable. The momentary diversion had said everything about the serious trouble Orlando was in—and our pressing need to figure out what to do about it.
I glanced down near the foot of the sofa, where his electronic tracker lay discarded at the edge of a large Persian rug. The bracelet was bent and pulled apart as if he’d used pliers to clip it off his ankle.
“The police won’t take long to show up,” I said.
“No, they won’t,” Vaughn said. “At the bail hearing it was explained that an alarm sounds at the Middleton correctional facility. They then notify the local authorities.”
I nodded. “It’s probably best to let them handle this mess. Bry can fill them in—”
“Removing a police monitoring device is a felony,” Vaughn interrupted. “Orlando’s bail will be revoked and he’ll be back in prison.”
He was right, and I felt terrible about that. But Orlando had known what he was doing.
“He fled house arrest,” I said. “You can’t protect him from the consequences.”
“Sky, please hear me out,” Vaughn said, shaking his head. “I’m convinced Orlando wouldn’t have done it without some desperate reason. The district attorney has already started building a case that he killed Gail. This will only substantiate it . . . unless I can show his intention wasn’t to escape trial.”
“Do you have any idea what it was?”
“No,” Vaughn said. “I only wish.”
“Have you informed the DA that Gail was Orlando’s mother?”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer. His silence said everything, though.
“You expected me to leak the story to the
Anchor
, didn’t you?” I said. “That’s how come you told it to me in the first place.”
Anchor
, didn’t you?” I said. “That’s how come you told it to me in the first place.”
Vaughn looked at me. I looked pointedly back. Skiball mewled in her carrier as if to second my indignation.
“As an investment counselor, I always dealt in calculated moves,” he said. “My thought was that the public should learn of it first. That it might put pressure on the prosecution even while they formulated their case.”
“And you were under the impression I’d be all too eager to jump at a scoop. Being a lowly small-town columnist trying to go big-time.”
“It was a mistake,” he said. “I sincerely apologize.”
I pressed my lips together, pouched my cheeks with air, and slowly blew it out. I didn’t like knowing Vaughn tried to manipulate me. I liked it less that he’d automatically taken me for an opportunist. But I believed he was being truthful about his motives and that made it easier to understand.
“Skyster,” Bryan said. “There’re a couple things I scoped in the clinic. I mean, stuff that makes my brain go ooga-ooga. I want the two ’a you to see them before the cops get here.”
I nodded and carefully set Skiball’s carrier down on the sofa. A moment later we followed Bry out into the entry foyer, through the door to the veterinary offices, and then back to a large floor cabinet in the kennel area.
“This’s the pantry,” he said. “Take a look inside.”
He opened the pantry’s door and I saw that it was filled with ten-pound bags of puppy food—the same high-end brand I fed Ski.
“Gail ran a boarding kennel,” I said. “What’s so odd about her stocking up on puppy food?”
“I been comin’ here to clean twice a week, Skyster,” Bry said. “She’d always tell people to bring their own dog food. When you change it all of a sudden, it can give poochie stomach problems. Plus the doc wasn’t even boarding any puppies.”
“You’re positive?”
“Trust me, I oughta know,” Bry said. “Cleanin’ the kennels was my job. You’re lookin’ at a human pooper-scooper.”
I left that alone, thinking Bry had a point about all that expensive puppy food. There must have been twenty bags in the pantry. But hadn’t a neighbor told the police she’d heard dogs on the night of the murder? Plural?
“All right, Bry. What else?” I said. “You mentioned a couple of unusual things.”
He motioned for Vaughn and me to stay put, hurried out into an adjacent examining room, and returned after a second with a folded sheet of bright pink copy paper.
“This was behind one of those cabinets with medical whatnots on ’em . . . looked like it must’ve slipped behind it,” he said. “Turns up while I’m cleanin’ the floor this morning, and I put it away in a drawer. Don’t know what it means, or if it’s really too important, but I was gonna tell you about it anyway.”
I unfolded the sheet of paper and my eyes widened. It was a recent La Dee Das recital program—or a photocopy of one—featuring the names of the vocal group’s dozen or so members. Five of the names had check marks beside them, including Natalie Oswald and Chloe Edwards.
Scribbled atop the list was a single word:
perritos
.
perritos
.
Staring down at the program, I recalled the conversation I’d had with Kimi Fosette back on Abbott Lane not half an hour earlier.
“You heard a dog in Nat’s house?”
“Yes.”
“A barking dog?”
“No. Not barking. I suppose you’d call it yelping. Like a puppy. But the sound was clearly coming from Natalie’s windows. The most bewildering thing is that she didn’t own a dog.”
I thought about Kimi’s remarks. I thought about the neighbor’s testimony. Then I read over those checkmarked names on the program.
The names, and the word penned above them.
Perritos.
It was Spanish for “puppies.”
It was Spanish for “puppies.”
Though I couldn’t have explained why, not quite, the program was suddenly shaking in my hand.
Chapter 18
I could hear patrol car sirens shrieking from the direction of Main Street as Bryan and I raced from the Pilsner house to our parked vehicles—I’d pulled my Versa right behind his Ford Fairmont beater when I got there minutes before.
“You mind if I ask what you’re thinking before we split up?” Bry said.
It was a fair question. The problem was that I didn’t have an answer. My gut told me there was a connection between puppies, murder, Chloe’s secretive activities, and Orlando skipping out on house arrest. But I couldn’t have said what it might be if my life had depended on it.
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