Once Bitten (A Melanie Travis Mystery) (8 page)

“Declaring undying love and leaving a phone number?” Bertie laughed. “Only if you lead a charmed life.”

The first thing I noticed about the kitchen was that nearly the entire back wall of the room was made of glass. A large picture window looked out over the clearing, and several bird feeders hung from the branches outside. Considering that it was November, business was brisk: some sparrows and a blue jay were currently enjoying Sara’s largesse.

The second thing I noticed were the dog bowls on the floor. There were three altogether, one for water and two filled with dry kibble. Though Titus probably weighed less than half what Faith did, his stainless-steel bowls were huge—easily larger than the ones I used to feed my Poodle.

Bertie followed the direction of my gaze and guessed what I was thinking. “Who knows? Maybe Sara leaves food out like that all the time so she won’t forget to feed him.”

“Forget?” It was hard to keep the censure from my voice. I’d no more forget to feed Faith than I would Davey.

Bertie gestured toward the back door. “I know she had that doggie door installed so she wouldn’t have to be bothered letting him in and out all the time.”

Aunt Peg would have been happy to tell Sara that dog ownership was a privilege, not a bother. Since neither of them was there, however, I decided not to comment.

“At any rate, it looks as though Sara must have taken Titus with her. That’s probably a good sign, don’t you think?”

“Maybe.” Bertie still wasn’t convinced. She walked over to the answering machine on the counter. Not unexpectedly, its light was blinking. “That’s strange.”

“What?”

“I left several messages on this machine, and I know there were a bunch of others. It’s one of the older models. You can tell how many messages there are by how long you have to wait for the beep.”

“So?”

“It says there’s only one message on here. I called Sara on Monday and Tuesday, then left a third message yesterday.”

Diverted from the dog bowls, I walked over and had a look. “Well, either the machine is broken or else someone has come in and wiped the messages clean.”

“See?” said Bertie. “I told you something was wrong.”

I reached over and pushed the play button. “Unless Sara’s been here since yesterday and deleted them all herself. Let’s see who this one’s from.”

The tape began to spin and almost immediately an angry voice rang out. “Sara, you creep, this is Maris. Call me, do you hear? I’m tired of being the one who always has to bail you out, and I’m not going to stand for it anymore. It’s Friday morning now. Get back to me today or you’ll be sorry.”

“M
aris,” I said, turning to Bertie. “That’s an unusual name. Any ideas?”

“Maris Kincaid. Lives in Norwalk. Breeds Soft Coated Wheaten Terriers and shows a few every now and then. She has a grooming business that she runs out of her basement to pay the dogs’ expenses. She and Sara are friends.” She glanced down at the machine and grimaced. “Or not.”

“I wonder what Sara did to her.”

“Who knows? One thing I learned pretty quickly with Sara is that it tends to be feast or famine. Either she’s your bosom buddy or you want to kill her. At first I thought it was just me, but it seems to be the way she treats everyone.”

“Didn’t you tell me last week that Sara was doing some grooming, too? She must have records around here somewhere. I wonder if any of her clients have heard from her this week.”

“There’s a desk up in the loft,” said Bertie.

“Computer?”

“Laptop. We can take a look, but if it’s not here, she probably took it with her.”

Upstairs, in the top drawer of Sara’s desk, we found her business records, such as they were. Actually what we found was a calendar, with names and times stuffed into some of the date boxes and an occasional arrow pointing out to the margin, where several phone numbers had been scribbled.

“You must be insane,” I said to Bertie. “
This
is the woman you hired to plan your wedding? No wonder all her businesses have fallen apart.”

“Sara’s usually very organized.” Bertie sounded defensive. Also annoyed. I would be, too, if this was what I had to defend. “Her businesses fell apart because she didn’t take them seriously. I’m sure Sara has better records than that somewhere. She has to. They’re probably on her laptop.”

Which was, as we’d suspected it might be, missing.

I flipped through the calendar to the second week of November. “Sara was supposed to groom three Poodles, a Maltese, and two Cockers this week. Plus, she was pet-sitting a Siamese cat in Rowayton. I may as well call these people and see if any of them heard from her. Maybe one of them can give us a lead on where she went.”

“Good idea.”

Bertie crossed the room and opened the door to Sara’s closet. The small cupboard was a mess. Its hanging bar and shelves were jam-packed with a jumbled assortment of shoes and clothing.

“It figures.” She sighed. “I was hoping we might be able to tell if she’d packed some things, but with this much junk, how would we ever know if anything was missing?”

I tucked the calendar under my arm and headed for the bathroom. “Maybe we’ll have better luck in here.”

The bathroom off the sleeping loft was utterly charming, with a claw-footed bathtub, half a dozen hanging plants, and a lace-curtained window overlooking the clearing. It didn’t, however, reveal any clues to Sara’s whereabouts. A toothbrush sat in a holder next to the sink, and I found deodorant, moisturizer, sunblock, and dental floss in the medicine cabinet above.

Would Sara have taken those things with her if she’d left of her own volition? I had no idea. It could be that, like some people I knew, she kept a toiletries bag packed with doubles of everything for travel.

“Hey!” yelled Bertie.

“What?”

“Come here.”

Her voice sounded muffled, and when I walked back out into the bedroom, I saw that it was empty.

“Where are you?”

“In the stupid closet.” A loud thump punctuated her words. “Open the door, would you? There’s no knob on this side.”

Quickly I strode over and drew the wooden door open. Face flushed, hair disheveled, Bertie shoved aside the tightly packed hanging clothes and emerged from the back of the closet.

“What were you doing in there?”

“There’s a shelf deep in the back. I thought that might be where Sara would keep a suitcase, so I pushed my way in to have a look. But then the door swung shut behind me and I couldn’t get it open.”

“Find anything interesting?”

“No,” Bertie admitted, smoothing her hair back off her face. “You?”

“Not really.”

Together we trooped back down the stairs.

“If you really want to find Sara,” I said as we walked outside, “you ought to consider hiring a private investigator. Someone like that would have access to all sorts of information that I don’t. For example, they could find out if she’s been using her credit cards, and if so, where the charges were made.”

“And they’d charge me a bundle in the process.” Bertie pulled the door shut behind us. “I can’t afford help like that. Whereas, as long as Bob hangs around, you’re—”

“Free,” I muttered.

“Exactly,” Bertie concurred happily.

Sometimes being wanted is a double edged sword.

Saturday morning, I awoke to the unaccustomed sensation that I wasn’t alone in bed. I could feel another warm, solid body pressing against mine through the tangle of covers. Deep, even breathing matched my own. It took me a moment to get oriented.

When I had, my hand crawled out from beneath the duvet and reached out to stroke a long, fuzzy muzzle. Immediately Eve’s head came up and her tail began to wag. Sharp puppy teeth nipped playfully at my fingers as she bounced to her feet.

“You’re up! You’re up!” she seemed to be saying. “Let’s play!”

Faith has finally come to understand the ritualistic pleasure of waking up slowly on a Saturday morning. Not so, her daughter. Eve is a ball of fire from the moment she senses that my eyes are half open.

Faith sleeps on Davey’s bed and always has. During the week when she’s with Aunt Peg, Eve spends her nights in a crate. To be honest, Peg is under the impression that the puppy sleeps crated at my house, too. I figure what she doesn’t know won’t hurt either of us.

“You need to go out, don’t you?” I asked.

Only a dog owner who was truly clueless would wait for an answer to that question. Any puppy, awakened from sleep, needs to pee right away. Hence the beauty of keeping them crated overnight. Letting Eve sleep on my bed at her young age was the equivalent of putting her on the canine honor system.

Of course, I was doing my part, too. Basically that consisted of waking up, getting up, and running directly to the back door. No slippers, no bathrobe, just bare feet on the cold wood floors and a puppy who seemed to enjoy playing the game of “chase mom down the stairs.”

The commotion we made awoke Faith as well. Business attended to, Eve was investigating the frost, which had left a thin, shimmering coating on the backyard overnight, when Faith came sauntering into the kitchen. I opened the door and stood in a draft of cold winter air as the Poodle took her time stretching before strolling outside.

Mother and daughter touched noses briefly. Eve’s front end bowed down, leaving her haunches high and tail beating from side to side, a clear invitation to play. Having been in all night as well, Faith had more pressing things to attend to.

Rebuffed, Eve picked up a tennis ball and tossed it for herself. No flies on this girl. Already it was easy to see she was going to be a live wire in the show ring.

Much as I loved Eve’s temperament, however, that was only one of the criteria by which she had been chosen from her litter of six. The others had to do with her conformation, her movement, and even that indefinable characteristic known as presence. Aunt Peg was the one who had picked her for me, and as far as I was concerned, she had chosen well. Best of all, the puppy seemed to be adapting readily to her schedule of living in both our homes.

I had stopped by Aunt Peg’s to pick Eve up the afternoon before on my way back from Sara’s house. Peg likes to set a good example for us poor minions who try to follow faithfully in her footsteps. As always, she’d had the puppy freshly brushed out and ready to go.

When Eve came dancing over to the door to greet me, I reached down to pat her, then snapped my hand back. “What on earth have you done to her head?”

The puppy was wearing two tiny ponytails, one above each eye. Each colored rubber band held only a small amount of hair that was so short that it stood straight up before fanning out like a small, delicate flower.

“They’re called puppy horns.” Aunt Peg flipped one ponytail to the side so I could see how she’d put it in. “I realized the other night when Davey and I were applying gel that she just might have enough hair to reach. As I recall, we didn’t do this with Faith, but Eve’s topknot is thicker. Check on them a couple of times a day. Redo them each morning. Not too tight, or you’ll undo any gains you might have made. Vigilance is everything.”

It seemed to me I’d heard that before.

“Speaking of the other night,” Aunt Peg said casually, “are you seeing much of that ex-husband of yours?”

“Almost nothing,” I said to our mutual delight. “Among other distractions, Frank has apparently put Bob to work in the coffee house. I’m on my way over there now to pick up Davey.”

“After coming from where?” Aunt Peg hates to be out of the loop.

“Bertie and I were at Sara Bentley’s place.”

“Doing what?”

“Looking for Sara. She seems to have disappeared.”

“No!” said Peg, but her eyes were gleaming. There’s nothing she enjoys more than a good mystery. “Since when?”

“Bertie and I both saw her at the show last Saturday. And we know she was there Sunday, because she left a note for Bertie with Terry.” I quickly recounted the note’s contents. “But as far as we know now, that’s the last anyone saw of her. Bertie left several messages for Sara during the week and finally talked to her parents. They hadn’t seen her either.”

Aunt Peg frowned. “Didn’t you tell me that Bertie had asked Sara to take over the planning for her wedding?”

“Yes. That’s one of the reasons Bertie’s so anxious to find her. If she doesn’t get some arrangements nailed down soon, we may find ourselves eating chicken fingers in your backyard.”

“Heaven forbid.” That heartfelt sentiment is about as close as Aunt Peg comes to swearing. The last time she’d thrown a party, one of the guests had been murdered the following day. “I suppose you’d better find her, then. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Just keep your ears open. Maybe you’ll hear something at the show next weekend.”

“I doubt it,” Aunt Peg said sternly.

The Tuxedo Park Poodle specialty would be her first judging assignment, and Peg was prepared to take the task very seriously. Though she wouldn’t admit it, I knew she’d been nervous for weeks. First over the prospect that she might not draw—an issue that had already been satisfactorily resolved, since her entry had majors in all three varieties. And second, that she might not do a good enough job.

“Horse feathers,” I’d told her.

Aunt Peg had not been reassured.

“Nobody will talk to me,” she said now. “I’m the judge and that’s considered to be very bad form. Besides, the A.K.C. rep will be watching, so I don’t dare talk to anyone either. If there’s any snooping around to be done, you’ll have to do it yourself.”

Like that was a surprise.

I let both Poodles back inside and ran upstairs to shower and dress. I thought I heard the dogs barking while I was washing my hair, but by the time I stepped out of the shower, the noise had stopped. No doubt Davey had taken charge of the situation.

Not having any brothers or sisters, my son tends to treat the Poodles like younger siblings. And though Faith is a wonderful watchdog, she also feels honor bound to keep an eye on a multitude of things that I don’t think bear watching. Like squirrels in the backyard, a UPS truck making deliveries at the neighbor’s house, or joggers on the sidewalk in front of our house.

Obviously, I should have taken her warning more seriously, because when I walked into my bedroom a few minutes later, one towel wrapped around my body and another in the process of wringing moisture out of my wet hair, I found Bob sitting on my bed.

Shocked, I stopped just inside the doorway. One hand flew to secure the towel I’d tucked together above one breast.

“What are you doing here?” I gasped.

“Waiting for you.” Bob looked almost as surprised by this turn of events as I was. At least he had the grace to blush. “I didn’t realize you’d be . . .” His hand waved ineffectually.

“Nearly naked?”

A sound gurgled in his throat.

“This is how most people come out of the shower. Especially when they’re not expecting company. Out!”

Bob stood. Slowly. “You look good, Mel.”

“Out!”

“I’m sorry. I’m going.” The apology might have carried more weight if he’d made an effort to avert his eyes. Instead, Bob was staring.

Abruptly, irrationally, I was glad I’d shaved my legs. Vanity, thy name is woman.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Bob said, edging past me toward the door. “I only wanted to talk.”