Notoriously Neat (19 page)

I shook my head. “No, I don’t need one.”

“Are you certain? I accept full responsibility and will cover any medical expenses—”

“Seriously,” I said. “I’m good.”

“What about your vehicle? If you need bodywork or other repairs . . . ?”

“We can worry about it later,” I said. “I think I just scraped that tree. Don’t think there’s more than a dent in my side.”

He swallowed with relief, offered his hand. “My deepest apology, then,” he said. “I’ve waited months to meet you, Sky. My name is Skip Averil. You may have heard of the Bayside Inn? I operate it with my life partner, Davies Kearns. It’s quite elegant, though we do try to be reasonably affordable.”

We shook. Only in the Cove will somebody make a long-winded introduction and pitch their B&B all within three minutes after driving you off the road.

Shrugging free of my seat belt, I shifted around, swung my legs out the door, and sat looking up at Chloe, Skip, and the three worried-looking women who’d been riding in the Lexus’s backseat.

“I need you to tell me what’s been going on,” I said to Chloe.

She looked at me. “Sky . . . did you hear about Natalie?”

I nodded yes. “I’m sorry, Chloe.”

“It’s dreadful,” she said in a moist, sorrowful voice. “After Gail, and then Nat . . . we knew we couldn’t put anyone else in jeopardy with the rest of us.”

“In jeopardy of what?” I said. “Chloe, I have to know—”

“It’s about the rotties,” Jackie said.

Chloe gave her a reproachful glance. “Shhh. You shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Rotties?” I said. “What’re rotties?”

They all stared at me in silence.

“Is somebody here going to speak up?” I demanded. “For instance, you, Chloe?”

She turned back to face me, saw my serious expression, and finally expelled a relenting sigh.

“Rottweilers,” she said. “There are five puppies. Gail rescued them from a dogfighting ring in Lowell.”

“One of its leaders brought a wounded dog to her a while ago, thinking a small-town veterinarian wouldn’t figure out how it had gotten hurt,” Skip said. “When she recognized it was mauled in a fight, she secretly began gathering information on their operation. Orlando even pretended to be interested in betting on the fights . . . They never knew he was Gail’s son.”

“And the puppies . . . ?”

“They’re champion stock dogs,” Skip said. “The ringleader brought their mother to Gail when she was ready to give birth to the litter. I suppose he wanted to avoid veterinarians in his area.”

I took a second to digest that, nodded. Everything was coming together for me, the puzzle pieces falling into place. I’d read that dogfighting was an epidemic problem in Lowell’s inner-city neighborhoods, where it had become part of the gang scene. The breeders there must have been concerned that a local vet could be working with city cops to bust their operation. So they went up the road to Pigeon Cove, figuring they’d find a bumpkin who’d see no evil and ask no questions.

“Gail outsmarted them and kept the puppies,” I said.

“They stayed with us,” Chloe said with a nod. “I offered to hide the first, but was afraid you might figure things out if I brought my puppy to the Fog Bell.”

“What would’ve been wrong with that, Chloe?”

She looked at me. “You’ve been through so much since moving to the Cove,” she said. “Abe Monahan’s murder. Then Kyle Fipps, the piping incident last winter, and the rest . . . I felt you needed to be spared any more excitement for a while. So I asked Davies—he plays piano and is the opening act at some of our recitals—if he and Skip could care for one rotty. Then I spoke to Nat, who took the second. Jackie, Robynn, and Ruth here volunteered to care for the rest.”

“How’d the breeders find out where they were being kept?” I said. “The program with your names on it was still at Gail’s office today when—” I stopped. “She had two of them. The original and a copy for Orlando.”

Skip was nodding. “I believe Orlando was able to quickly put his list out of sight when they broke into Gail’s office . . .”

By slipping it behind a cabinet, I thought.

“. . . but they must have gotten hold of Gail’s when they ransacked the place,” Skip said. “They used it to find Natalie.”

“And now she’s dead and they have her puppy,” I said.

He nodded soberly.

I was quiet for a second, trying to process everything. “I don’t understand why Orlando didn’t tell this to the police,” I said.

“He planned to,” Skip said. “
Plans
to. Today.”

I looked at him.

“Orlando couldn’t reveal the truth until he was convinced the puppies were safe,” he said. “And he wouldn’t feel that way while Gail’s killers were still at large searching for them. Not unless he actually had the puppies in his hands.”

I wasn’t simply looking at Skip now. I was staring.

“That’s why he escaped house arrest,” I said. “To gather the rotties in one place before the breeders could get hold of them.”

Jackie was nodding. “He came by our homes to pick them up this morning,” she said.

“On Gail’s Vespa.”

She nodded some more.

“And where are Orlando and the puppies now?”

“At the Bayside with Davies, where the brutes that killed Gail and Nat will never know to look for them,” Skip said. “Once we’re all there to help him explain things, he intends to surrender to Chief Vega.”

I took a deep breath, pulled my legs back through my door.

“What are you doing, dear?” Chloe said. “You really shouldn’t be driving right now.”

“I must agree,” Skip said. “Not after you were hit—”

I made a slicing gesture with my hand. “Any of you speak Spanish well enough to translate for Orlando?”

They all looked at me in silence.

“Then lead the way,” I said, and shut my door.

Orlando and I were kneeling on the floor of Skip and Davies’s downstairs study, Mickey on his shoulders, the gym bag full of black and rust Rottweiler puppies between us.

“They’re so tiny,” I said.

“And sweet.”

“Gentle too!”

“
Muy, muy afectuosas
,” Orlando agreed with a nod.

I looked down at the puppies. So did Orlando and Mickey. None was much larger than Skiball. I didn’t understand why that had surprised me. But then, their playful, affectionate dispositions had also come as a surprise when I should have known better. Rottweilers were working dogs. The ones that became fighters weren’t born vicious. Warped, vicious people made them that way.

“Excuse me, Orlando,” I said after a moment. “But who’s translating for whom around here?”

He smiled, but I could see the sadness in his eyes.

“Gail . . . my mother . . . she help me learn English,” he said. “Now you will teach?”

I gave him a nod, softly placed a hand on his arm. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll be very happy to teach you.”

“Sky! Orlando?”

I turned toward the doorless entryway, saw Chloe leaning her head into the woody, book-lined room.

“Yes?” I said.

“Davies has fixed us a delightful lunch in the back parlor,” she said. “The two of you—well, three of you, since he does have fruit for Mickey—won’t want to miss it.”

I glanced at my watch. “Be with you soon, Chloe. Chief Vega ought to show up any minute and I want to let him in.”

She nodded. “We’ll wait until he can join us,” she said, and retreated.

Orlando was silent a moment. I could tell he was struggling to translate his thoughts into English for me
. “El jefe de la policía
. . . Chief Vega . . . you say he will believe all I tell him, yes?”

It was my turn to smile.

“These cuties are pretty strong proof you’re giving him the truth,” I said, motioning at the puppies.
“Son las pruebas.”

He nodded. More silence. Again, though, it was easy to read his emotions in those large, expressive brown eyes. And this time they showed intense trepidation.

“I already spoke with Chief Vega over the phone,” I said. “
Confía en él.
Trust him. He’ll do everything possible to find the men who killed your mother and Natalie. The puppy they took from Nat’s home too. Vega is my friend and a good man. When he gets here—”

We heard the resonant chime of an old brass bell at the front door.

“Right on cue,” I said. “I’ll answer . . .”

Orlando shook his head. “I am a man,” he said.
“No soy muchacho.”
He sprang to his feet, Mickey still perched comfortably on his shoulders. “Before, I run and run from police. But now I do not run.”

I nodded. Vega wouldn’t figure he was running. But it wasn’t about that. Orlando needed to prove something to himself more than anyone else.

He walked out to the front door and opened it. There was a side porch off the study, and I drifted over to it while I waited, craning my head to try to spot Vega’s cruiser through its multipaneled French doors.

But the car that had pulled up wasn’t a police cruiser. In fact, it wasn’t even a car. It was a white Grand Cherokee on a raised suspension with big whitewall tires. I could see the men who’d gotten out of it from where I stood, and was ready to vouch that they weren’t early-season guests at the B&B coming to take in the brisk ocean air.

My pulse sped up. I knew who they were. I knew they’d come for the pups. What I didn’t understand was how they could have found them.

All in their mid-twenties, they wore loose, low-riding pants and head scarves, and sported loads of diamond-crusted bling. I glimpsed one with long, dreadlock braids spilling over a waist-length black jacket with a huge painted death’s-head in front, and a smaller skull and crossbones on each shoulder.

Another had on a denim jacket with raggedly cutoff sleeves over a purple hoodie. If they were going for the stereotypical cholo look, they’d done a great job of it. But the mentality of hoodlums who hunted in packs made them conformists to the bone.

One more thing I noticed about this bunch: They’d pulled handguns out from under their saggy clothes. Which said to me that their particular brand of conformity made them very dangerous.

I briefly considered lunging into the parlor for help, but dismissed the thought in a heartbeat. What were the La Dee Das supposed to do?
Sing
those creeps away?

And then I heard Orlando shouting from the door, “Sky!
¡Tome los perritos! ¡Necesitas salir! ¡Corre!
”

I wouldn’t have needed to know a single word of Spanish to realize he wanted me to take the puppies and run. And if I still hadn’t understood, Mickey’s piercing, frantic screech would have tipped me off.

I hurried over to the gym bag and tried zipping it shut, but the rotties kept popping their heads out as though it were some kind of new, fun game. I pushed one in, and another appeared. I pushed that one down, and up came two more floppy-eared heads.

“C’mon, guys,” I whispered, trying to get them back inside. “Not
now
.”

The rotties stared at me curiously but weren’t ready to stop playing. A tongue slurped my wrist. Somebody nibbled on my jacket sleeve. One yelped mischievously and tried climbing out for a romp before I managed to get him all the way back into the bag.

Finally I gave up. It would have to be half-zipped or nothing. Grabbing the bag’s strap, I hefted it off the floor and bolted out the side of the house through the French doors.

I stood out on the porch, glanced this way and that. The Cherokee was over to my right. I saw nothing but woods to the left. The waterfront—and apparent reason Skip and Davies named their B&B the Bayside Inn—was directly ahead of me down a broad and gradually sloping lawn.

After a moment I saw something else. Actually, two identical somethings.

A pair of motorboats was docked at the bottom of the slope. Small fiberglass boats with outboard engines. Though everyone in the Cove was still too busy coughing and sneezing to think about sailing, it
was
technically spring, and I assumed the innkeepers must have recently pulled them from their winter berths.

I stood there trying to decide if—

“¡Ella está alla!”
a male voice shouted. Meaning “She’s over there!”

Since it hadn’t been Orlando yelling at the top of his lungs, and since I seemed to be the only “she” around, my decision suddenly became very easy.

This despite the fact that I’d never piloted a boat, motorized or otherwise, in my life. Unless you counted rowing in Central Park.

I went bounding over the porch steps and down the slope at an all-out run. Over my right shoulder, I saw the guy with the skull jacket whirl away from Orlando and start after me. But even as he did, Mickey reached out over Orlando’s head with both paws, grabbed his dread braids, and yanked.

Judging from Skull Jacket’s high-pitched scream of pain, it was evident the Mick had pulled very hard. And judging by the way his pistol-toting
compañeros
froze where they stood, they wanted no part of a seemingly crazed monkey.

I scrambled down the lawn, Orlando’s gym bag full of puppies swinging in my right hand. I’d heard more shouted exchanges in Spanish behind me—it sounded as if Skull Jacket had somehow freed his hair extensions from Mickey and ordered his posse back on track.

I fought the urge to shoot a look over in their direction, afraid of losing even half a step. My clogged nose made it hard to breathe, so I opened my mouth wide and took in one huge gulp of air after another as I fled downhill. The rotties bounced in the bag, a few of the pups curiously poking their heads out before they went tumbling tail-over-snout back in. I strained to keep a firm grip on the bag’s strap and ran toward the dock.

I was almost there—
almost
—when I heard a grunt of exertion close at my heels. This time I couldn’t help but glance back over my shoulder.