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Authors: Laurien Berenson

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Twelve
Aunt Peg went to a drawer, got out a pen and a pad of paper, and began to make a list. There’s nothing she enjoys more than playing investigator by proxy.
“You’ll need to talk to the neighbor who found Sheila,” she said. “Maybe she put the Pugs outside when she got there.”
“She didn’t. The reason Mrs. Benning knew something was wrong was because the dogs were barking all night long, which had never happened before. If the Pugs had been inside the house, she wouldn’t have heard them.”
“Maybe, maybe not. The police found open windows, didn’t they? Trust me, the sound of a barking dog travels beautifully through screens. Have you any idea how far away Mrs. Benning’s house is?”
“No.”
“First question,” Aunt Peg said with satisfaction, making a note. “Who let the dogs out? Second question: were Mrs. Benning and Sheila acquainted? Did they know each other well enough for her to be aware of who might have come and gone at Sheila’s place?”
“I doubt it. Remember, Sheila was only renting that house. Her move to the East Coast was supposed to be temporary. It’s not like she planned ...”
Something, the merest flicker of knowledge in Aunt Peg’s eyes, stopped me. “What?”
Peg developed a sudden fascination with the pad in her hand. I watched as she doodled the outline of a Poodle with an outrageous topknot. Fine, I thought. If she had all day to draw cartoons, I had all day to wait.
“Who told you that Sheila’s sojourn in the East wasn’t going to be permanent?” she asked finally.
“Sam did.” I thought back. “And you did, too, after you first spoke to her. Sheila took a temporary assignment in New York, right? And after she got here, she met up again with both Sam and Brian.”
“She knew Sam was here before she came,” said Peg.
That was no surprise.
“Sheila never made any secret of the fact that she wanted Sam back. That was probably the real reason she came East. I guess she thought three months would be enough time to get him to dump me and go back to her. Sheila never did lack for confidence.”
Aunt Peg sat for a moment, frowning. Her cartoon Poodle acquired bracelets on its legs and a large pompon on its tail. When she spoke again, her tone was seriously annoyed.
“Last March you were very angry with me when you found out I knew Sam had an ex-wife that I’d never told you about.”
“Go on,” I said carefully.
“It probably isn’t my place to tell you this either.”
Uh-oh. I didn’t like the sound of this.
“Tell me what?”
“Sheila wasn’t planning on leaving.”
Whatever I’d expected her to say, that wasn’t it. “What do you mean?”
“That house in North Salem? She had a lease with an option to buy.”
“That can’t be right. Sheila had no reason to buy a house here. She was only planning to stay for three months.”
“She got here in March. It’s nearly July now. You do the math.”
“Yes, I know.” I shook my head. Life is easier when you’re in denial. “But I thought Sheila stayed on because she took the job at the magazine with Brian. You mean she intended to move here all along?”
“I would say so. Why else would she take an option on a house?”
“Maybe as a fallback if things went well with her job,” I mused aloud. “Or maybe she wasn’t as confident as I thought ...”
Abruptly, I sat up. “Wait a minute.”
Across the table, Aunt Peg seemed to brace herself, ever so slightly, for where my next thought might lead.
“How did you know about this?”
As soon as she sighed, I knew I wasn’t going to like her answer. “Sam mentioned it once, when I asked him when Sheila might be heading home.”
“Sam
mentioned it... ?” I repeated the words just for emphasis. “He never mentioned anything like that to me.”
“So I gather,” Peg said dryly as she watched my expression darken.
“Sam
told you about it?”
“And you wondered why I never brought up the ex-wife,” she muttered audibly.
“Why would he tell you something like that and not me?”
“If you can’t figure that out, go take a look in the mirror.”
“Why, do I look angry? I am. If Sam’s ex-wife was going to become a permanent part of our lives, I had a right to know.”
“Maybe Sam didn’t want to upset you,” Peg said gently.
“Or maybe he thought it would make his life easier if he told me another lie. Lord knows, I bought the first one long enough.”
“Sam never lied to you about Sheila.”
Trust Aunt Peg to take Sam’s side. My glare had a nasty edge.
“Not directly, maybe. But only because I never asked him flat out if he had an ex-wife. I never thought I
had
to ask. Sam told me about his life. I told him about mine. When I think of the things I owned up to ...”
I threw up my hands. “A runaway ex-husband with a gushing oil well and a teenage bride ... an aunt who left the convent to marry a former priest ... a brother who thinks taking a job as a bartender constitutes a career move ... not to mention you!”
“Me?” Peg asked innocently. “Sam likes me.”
“No wonder. The two of you have a lot in common. You both think the truth is something to be told only when it suits you.”
It was a low blow, and I knew it. It wasn’t so much that Aunt Peg told lies, as that she had a habit of manipulating the facts to suit her version of the truth. That the strings she pulled behind the scenes often worked to my advantage seemed, at the moment, entirely irrelevant.
She pushed back her chair and stood up. Standing nearly six feet tall, she towered over me. “If you were Davey’s age, I’d tell you that you needed a time-out. Since you’re supposedly old enough to know better, I will remove myself from your presence. You may find me outside with Davey when you come to your senses.”
I watched, still angry, as she closed the back door between us. Faith, who had listened to our rising voices with pricked ears and anxious eyes, whined softly under her breath.
“Come here,” I said, patting my knees. I gathered the front half of the large Poodle up into my lap. Her extended middle pressed against my legs. “Nobody was yelling at you. You’re fine. I’m the one who’s an idiot.”
Faith’s pomponned tail wagged in support of whatever I wanted to say. Her damp nose poked at the bottom of my chin. Studies show that people who keep pets have lower blood pressure. It doesn’t surprise me. This wasn’t the first time I’d discovered that having a dog in my lap was a positive mood enhancer.
Why was I yelling at Aunt Peg? I thought. None of this was her fault. She wasn’t even the one I was angry at.
I got up and walked outside. When I opened the door, Faith ran on ahead, bounding down the steps to join the Poodles in the yard.
“Watch!” Davey crowed, lofting a bright yellow tennis ball toward the back of the yard.
My son doesn’t have much of a pitching arm yet; the ball didn’t go far. The Poodles didn’t care. As one, they scrambled after it.
I watched long enough to make sure that Faith wasn’t being jostled by the rush, then turned to Aunt Peg.
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” Peg replied. She let that sink in for a moment, then smiled to soften the words. “The Chinese revere their elder relatives. Think about that.”
“We Puritans put them in nursing homes,” I retorted. “You think about that.”
Her smile turned into a grin. “Just try it.”
“I wouldn’t dare. Nevertheless, I shouldn’t have taken things out on you. Sheila’s the one I’m angry at.”
“And Sam.”
“And Sam,” I echoed softly.
“He was probably trying to protect your feelings—”
“Or his own.” I reached down, plucked a dandelion out of the grass, and twirled it between my fingers. “It scares me, you know. Sam and I are engaged to be married. And suddenly I’ve found out that I don’t know him nearly as well as I thought I did.”
“Talk to him,” said Peg. “Make him talk to you. It’s long past time the two of you got everything out in the open.”
“That’s just it.” My fingers felt wet. I glanced down and realized I’d crushed the small yellow flower in my hand. “I thought we
were
talking. I thought I knew everything. Obviously, I was wrong. So now I have to wonder—what else was going on that Sam didn’t see fit to tell me about?”
“Ask him. Call him when you get home. Demand some answers. That’s what I would do.”
Of course it was. That was Aunt Peg’s way. She never took grief from anyone. If I were half as strong as she was, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.
And I wouldn’t be worrying about what else Sam might have to confess to.

 

After that, Peg all but pushed Davey, Faith, and me out the door. You’ve heard my advice, her expression said. Now go home and make good use of it.
To my credit, I tried.
I didn’t succeed.
When we got home, I found that Sam had left a message on the answering machine. I played it through twice; the first time hopefully, the second, in frustration. Reach out and touch someone, my foot.
That’s the whole problem with modern technology. It gives us too many options. If Sam hadn’t been able to leave a message, surely he’d have kept trying until he reached me. Until we’d been able to talk. Now, I’d lost my chance.
“I’m sorry I missed you,” he said on the tape. “I’ve spoken to Sheila’s family. As I’m sure you can understand, they’re really upset about what happened. Her parents have invited me to come out and stay with them for a few days.”
There was a long pause before Sam’s voice, slower now, started again. “They want me to tell them about how Sheila was doing these last few months. None of the family has seen her since she came East. They want to know that she was happy. They ...”
He stopped again, cleared his throat. “They want more comfort than I’m going to be able to give. They want me to help them make sense of something utterly senseless. All I can do is try. They’re going to be holding the funeral at the end of the week, so I’ll probably stay in Illinois until then.
“I’m sorry we won’t get a chance to say good-bye in person, but I’ve booked a flight to O’Hare this evening. I’m on my way out the door now. I’ve boarded the older dogs, and I’m taking Tar with me.
“I’m not exactly sure where I’ll be staying so I can’t give you a number, but I’ll call in a day or two, okay? Give my love to Davey and tell Faith to hang on to those puppies until I get back, so we can whelp them together. I love you, Melanie. Bye.”
I love you, Melanie. Bye.
Cruel juxtaposition, that.
Had he gone to Illinois to see Sheila’s family, I wondered, or to try and heal himself? And why did I have the feeling that the more I tried to help, the harder he was pushing me away?
I’d wanted to offer solace. Sam wanted me to ask questions. It didn’t take a genius to see that we were on two different wavelengths. And now he was gone.
So I’d give Sam what he asked for. I had almost a week until I’d see him again. Maybe by then, I’d have some answers.
Melanie Travis, intrepid girl sleuth.
I can do that.
Thirteen
First things first, however. Monday was my morning to drive the car pool to soccer camp. Wouldn’t you just know it?
Davey had packed his gym bag the night before. At almost seven I was trying to let him take a little more responsibility for his own things. I could only hope it actually held cleats, shin guards, extra T-shirt, and a dry bathing suit and towel. Otherwise, he’d be bringing home another note.
The camp had drop-off at nine, pickup at four; with seven hours of freedom in between. Was it any wonder that every mother seemed to be smiling on her way out the driveway?
From there, I took the Merritt Parkway and headed south to White Plains. According to the masthead in my inaugural issue of
Woof!,
that was where the editorial offices were located. Sam wanted me to check things out, and the magazine seemed like a good place to start. I could only hope that Brian, whose Miss Marple crack still rankled, didn’t object too strongly.
Woof!
’s address turned out to be a boxy brick building on the edge of downtown. There were metered spaces on the street out front and a small parking lot in back. Since the lot was mostly full at nine-fifteen, I assumed it was intended for employees. That didn’t stop me from snagging the last spot.
Inside, I found myself in a narrow, fluorescent-lit hallway. A roster near the elevator listed the building’s occupants.
Woof!’
s office space was on the second floor. When I pushed the button, the door opened immediately. I stepped inside and rode up to another hallway, this one with two doors leading off from it.
The magazine took up the back of the building, a CPA’s office occupied the front.
Woof!’s
door was standing open. There was no reception area and I entered directly into a large, well-lit room.
Two metal desks with matching credenzas had been stationed on either side wall, the furniture arranged to delineate separate work spaces. A copier and a fax machine took up more room, and a framed enlargement of
Woof!’s
first cover filled the wall above them. As offices went, it was pretty generic.
My gaze skimmed over those details, then came to rest on a fresh-scrubbed child with rosy cheeks and curly blond hair who sat behind a third desk, just inside the door. Carrie, presumably. She looked barely old enough to be in high school, much less part of the workforce.
I’d started to introduce myself when a shout from the other end of the room stopped me.
“Melanie, hey!” Tim Golonka came hurrying toward the door. “What are you doing here?”
Good question. I decided to wing it.
“The first issue of
Woof!
looked so good, I wanted to drop by and offer my congratulations.”
“Oh. You probably want Brian then. I hope you haven’t come too far because he isn’t here. He left on a promotional trip this morning. Won’t be back until the end of the week.” He shrugged apologetically. “Not the best timing, under the circumstances.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that, too.”
“Really?” Tim perked up. He waved toward one of the desks. “Come on over to my office.”
I lifted a brow.
“All right, my space. For now. I’m planning on working my way up.”
“He wants my job,” said Aubrey, emerging through a doorway in the back of the room. She hadn’t seem relaxed at the dog show; today she looked positively stiff. Frown lines furrowed her forehead. “Hi, Melanie. Sorry about my big mouth the other day. Obviously, I was upset, and I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Forget about it. We were all pretty upset.”
“Thanks. And you ...” Aubrey pointed at Tim. “Try to take a deep breath, would you? Haven’t you ever heard of paying your dues?”
“Sure. A phrase coined to appease slow learners and losers. Not my problem. Besides, the way I see it we all move up.”
“All?” I asked, following him to his desk.
“Sure. Aubrey can have Sheila’s job.”
“Tim—!”
He ignored her warning tone. “It’s not like you weren’t number two until she got here. You know you want it.”
For a moment, the room was utterly silent, as if we were all holding our breaths for the blowup that would follow. Then, surprisingly, Aubrey laughed. “I hope you aren’t planning to say that to the police.”
“Only if they ask, boss.” Tim smirked at Aubrey and waved me to a chair. “Just one big happy family, that’s us.”
“Except me,” Carrie piped up from the other end of the room. “I’m not related to any of you.”
“What did we tell you?” Tim asked in an undertone. “She thinks we’re crazy.”
“All dog show people are crazy,” said Aubrey. “It goes with the territory. That’s why
Woof!
is going to be such a smash. If everyone was normal, who would we write about?”
“Are you going to write about Sheila’s murder?” I asked curiously.
“That’s up to Brian,” said Tim. “So far, he hasn’t said yes or no. Come to think of it, he hasn’t said much of anything.”
“He will when he gets back,” Aubrey said confidently. “Think how devastating it must be, having this all dumped on him just when the magazine’s at its most critical stage. By the end of his trip, I’m sure we’ll be back to business as usual.”
Business as usual by the end of the week, when the copublisher had just been murdered? She had to be kidding. Maybe Aubrey was trying to put a good face on things in front of an outsider, I thought. Either that, or she was severely delusional.
“Aubrey,” Carrie called, her hand cupped over the bottom half of the phone receiver. “Roger Lenahan on line one.”
“Got it.” Aubrey spun away and strode back toward the room she’d come from earlier. Reaching the doorway, she paused. “Don’t let Tim tell you too many lies.”
“I’ll try not to.”
“Don’t pay any attention to Aubrey,” Tim said when she’d closed the door behind her. His fingers twirled a pencil on his blotter. “She has issues.”
“About what?”
“Brian. Sheila and Brian. Aubrey and Brian. If you catch my drift.”
Only an idiot wouldn’t.
“So Sheila arrived and took Aubrey’s job?”
“Sort of. Aubrey’s always been managing editor. She’s the one who has the experience, the know-how. She was with
Dog Scene
for nearly a decade.”
His voice was reverent. As if
Dog Scene
was
The New York Times
or
Vanity Fair,
rather than a weekly wrap-up of dog show happenings; published on newsprint and chock full of ads placed by exhibitors who hoped to influence the upcoming judges. Ah, the innocence of youth.
“Wow,” I said, matching his awed tone. “Brian was lucky to get her.”
“You bet. When Sheila came on board, Aubrey’s job and title didn’t change, but she still got demoted. Because Brian made Sheila copublisher. They were like equal partners.”
“So Sheila was Aubrey’s boss.”
“Supposedly, yeah. But you could tell Aubrey didn’t buy that. She knew a lot more about the publishing business than Sheila did, so it’s not like she felt she needed to defer to her or anything.”
“That must have made for some friction.”
“Friction. Good word!” The pencil stopped mid-spin. “You mean like a motive for murder?”
“I don’t know,” I said casually. “Why don’t you tell me? You’re the one who saw them together.”
“They didn’t fight a lot, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Did they fight at all?”
“Sure. Everybody here mixes it up at some point. Like Aubrey would have an idea to pitch and Sheila would say, ‘Oh, God! Not another transvestite handler story. Like that’s anything new!’ ”
His imitation made me smile. He had Sheila down pat.
“Then what would happen?”
“Usually Brian would step in and make a decision. Bottom line, it’s his magazine, and he never lets anyone forget it, you know?”
“I thought you just said that he and Sheila were equal partners.”
“They are. They were.” Tim frowned. “But he was still in charge. I guess you could say he had seniority. I mean, we’ve all been here since winter. Sheila just started a couple of months ago. It’s not like he was going to let her walk in and take over.”
“Why do you suppose Brian took her on as a partner?” I asked. Privately, I had my own theory about that, but I wanted to see what someone who didn’t know about their past history might come up with.
“I wondered about that myself,” said Tim. “I know Sheila made some sort of investment in the magazine. I heard her say something about it once to Brian. But it’s not like
Woof!
needed the money. For a start-up, this place is pretty solid.
“It’s not like we needed another writer either. Brian and Aubrey and I were doing pretty well digging up stories. This is the dog show world; people gossip. Heck, they were all but throwing stories in our laps.
“Maybe we were all a little busier than we wanted to be, but nobody really minded. We were all really enthusiastic about getting
Woof!
off the ground, you know?”
I nodded. He was enthusiastic still. If I were starting a magazine, I’d have hired Tim in a minute. Aubrey, for all her supposed publishing expertise, would have taken longer to win me over.
“So then I wondered if maybe this was a personal thing,” said Tim. “Like maybe Sheila was the one who needed the help. It’s been pretty obvious to all of us around here that she and Brian were involved.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Not for me.”
Interesting answer. “Meaning?”
Tim lowered his voice, even though there was no one close enough to hear us. “I don’t have the hots for Brian.”
“Does Aubrey?”
Tim shrugged. “Maybe there was something between them in the past, nothing I’d know about for sure. Just a feeling I had when I first got here, that they seemed to know each other awfully well for two people who’d just started working together. Anyway, whatever it was, it’s over now.”
If it wasn’t Aubrey’s resentment he was referring to, there was only one other choice. “Carrie?”
“It’s not her fault,” he said. “It’s just that she’s so young.”
Like he wasn’t.
“And she was involved with Brian?”
“No, nothing like that.” Tim looked horrified by my misunderstanding. “It’s more like she kind of has a crush on him. When he’s here, she follows him around the office like a lovesick puppy.”
I smiled at the simile. “What does Brian think of that?”
“Funny thing, it’s like he doesn’t even notice. He thinks Carrie’s just trying to be helpful.”
“And is she helpful?”
“Well yeah, sure. I mean, how hard is it to be a receptionist? Answer a few phone calls. Type a few letters. But Carrie’s always asking to do more. Asking Brian, that is. The rest of us she couldn’t care less about. She wants to be near him all the time.”
“Was that a problem for Sheila?”
“It was more like Sheila was a problem for Carrie. When Brian brought her in and introduced her around, you could tell Carrie was pissed. Of course, she smiled and made nice about it. She’s not dumb. But after that, she’d get back at Sheila in little ways.
“Like she’d always fix a cup of coffee for Brian, but she never made any for Sheila. And when Sheila asked her, she’d make it wrong, fill the cup with sugar when she knew Sheila took it black. Or she’d manage to lose Sheila’s phone messages.
“Then Carrie would be all apologetic, like she couldn’t figure out how she could have gotten so mixed up. Sheila was usually pretty nice about it, even though Carrie’s behavior must have been a real pain in the butt.”
“Tim?” Aubrey’s voice called from the back office. “Are you busy?”
“Yes,” he shouted back.
“Are you working?”
He thought for a moment, grinned at me, then answered, “Yes!”
“Did you finish the edit on the Tar Heel Circuit story?”
Sheesh, I thought. The office wasn’t that big. Rather than all this shouting back and forth, why didn’t Aubrey just walk the dozen steps out to where we were?
“Hang on.” Tim rifled through the papers on the top of his desk, grabbed up several sheets that were paper-clipped together, and strode into the back room.
Several minutes passed. I could hear Tim and Aubrey talking, but I couldn’t make out the words. A glance in Carrie’s direction revealed that she was sitting at her desk, thumbing through a fashion magazine. Since nobody seemed to mind my presence, I decided to wait it out.
Five more minutes passed. I got up and walked over to the door. Carrie was reading an article entitled “How to Land the Man of Your Dreams.” How appropriate. She marked her page in the magazine with a finger and looked up.
“Which office was Sheila Vaughn’s?” I asked.
She seemed surprised by the question. “That one.” Carrie pointed to the room where Tim and Aubrey were conferring.
“She shared an office with Aubrey?”
“No.” Carrie pointed again, this time at the remaining work space. The desk top was clear, the computer turned off. “That’s Aubrey’s desk over there. At least it was.”
She hadn’t wasted any time, I thought. Sheila was barely gone and Aubrey was already staking out her turf.
“What’s in there?” I asked. Two doors remained; both were dosed.
“Brian’s office.” Carrie gestured toward the first, then the second. “Bathroom. Can I help you find something?”
“No. I’m just being nosy.”
“Oh.” Carrie smiled. She seemed to like the idea. “Okay.”
“I was a friend of Sheila’s,” I said, just to see what sort of response I’d get.
“Really? I didn’t think she had many friends.”
BOOK: Unleashed (A Melanie Travis Mystery)
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