Chapter Nine
A blast of warm air enveloped me as I stepped into the living room. “You must be Becky Gruber,” I said. “I’m Melanie Travis.”
The woman ignored my greeting. She was looking around the room for something. After a few seconds, she found it: the remote control for the television. She didn’t turn the TV off, but she did mute the sound. I supposed that was better than nothing.
“Is your husband, Bill, at home?” I asked brightly. “I’d like to speak with him too.”
“He’s at work.” Becky rolled her eyes as if I should have known. “Whatever you have to say about Harriet, you can tell me.”
She glanced back at the TV screen, where two characters were kissing. I could guess what she was thinking. Whatever I had to say had better be good, because I was making her miss her soap.
“It’s about Ralph Penders’s death.”
A smile twitched briefly around the corners of Becky’s thin lips. Now she was interested. She gestured toward a pair of squat, upholstered chairs. “Have a seat. Did Harriet do it?”
I perched on the edge of a plump cushion that felt like it wanted to swallow me whole. “No.”
Becky peered at me closely. “You sure?”
“Pretty sure. Why? Do you think she did it?”
“Always a chance. That Harriet, she’s smart. She could pull something like that off, and no one would be the wiser.”
I agreed with Becky about that. Not that I had any intention of saying so out loud.
“What reason would Harriet have had for wanting your neighbor dead?” I asked instead.
“The same one we all had, I guess.”
I tried not to look too curious. “What’s that?”
“The man’s a nuisance, has been for years. He was always storming around the neighborhood, muttering under his breath. Or walking down the middle of the road, wearing his pajamas outside in the winter, like he didn’t even feel the cold. It’s just not natural. Most of the time, he didn’t have a clue what he was doing.”
“As I understand it, Mr. Penders had dementia,” I said.
“As if that’s an excuse,” Becky sniffed. “Man like that should have been locked away somewhere, not allowed to run around loose in the real world, terrorizing innocent people.”
Terrorizing seemed like a strong word. “Who did he terrorize?”
“Everyone!” Becky threw her hands in the air for emphasis. “Whoever he came in contact with. And don’t even get me started on that daughter of his.”
“What was the matter with her?”
“You ever meet her?”
I shook my head. I’d never met Ralph Penders either.
“Madison, that’s her name. I asked her once if she was named after that fish in the movie with Daryl Hannah. She told me it wasn’t a fish, it was a mermaid. Like I would care about the difference.” She cackled under her breath. “Who would name a kid after a fish anyway?”
Becky didn’t appear to want an answer, so I didn’t offer one. Which was good. Because I would have told her that Ralph Penders was obviously the kind of person who would do such a thing. And that Madison was a mermaid.
“So Ralph was a problem, and you don’t like Madison either,” I said to recap.
“Now you’re just making me sound bad.” Becky frowned. “It’s not my fault that the two of them were trouble.”
“Both of them?”
“Madison was supposed to be watching out for her father because he wasn’t fit to be living alone. Huh! Like that ever happened. Maybe she cooked him a meal sometimes, but most days she was nowhere to be found.”
“Maybe she has a job,” I said.
“Her job should have been taking care of her father,” Becky retorted. “One day, Ralph came wandering over here and tripped on a rake Bill left sitting out in the yard. Ralph skinned his knee pretty bad. Madison had to rush back in the middle of the day and take him to Urgent Care. When they got home, she came flying over here like the whole thing was our fault.”
Becky’s eyes narrowed. “Bill tried to calm her down, but she wasn’t having it. Madison threatened to sue us for leaving a dangerous object lying around. Right in our own yard! Can you believe that?”
“It does sound kind of nutty,” I admitted.
“So I threatened to sue Ralph right back for trespassing. ‘Tit for tat,’ ” I told her. “ ‘And we’ll see you in court.’ ”
“Did she sue you?” I asked.
“Oh hell, no. That woman doesn’t have the brains God gave a pig. She probably consulted some ambulance-chasing lawyer, who told her she didn’t have a hope of making the complaint stick.”
Becky sat back in her seat, looking pleased. She’d enjoyed telling her story, and highlighting the part she’d played in it. Her gaze flicked once more toward the television, where a commercial was now playing. A harried-looking housewife was trying to sell soap.
“Wait a minute!” Becky suddenly straightened. “You shouldn’t have let me get sidetracked like that. You said you had something to tell me about Harriet. She’s in trouble, right?”
“I’m afraid she is. The police spoke with some of Ralph’s neighbors. Did they talk to you too?”
She nodded.
“Did they mention how he died?”
“No. I just know he was in the hospital. I figured Ralph died of insanity. Or maybe general orneriness.”
“That wasn’t it,” I told her. “He was poisoned. He died after eating one of Harriet’s marshmallow puffs.”
“Well, I’ll be.” Becky grinned. “Way to go, Harriet.”
“Except that Harriet wasn’t responsible.”
Her grin died. Becky liked her own version of events better than mine. “Then who was?”
“I don’t know. That’s what the police are trying to determine.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
There didn’t seem to be any point in admitting that I was on Harriet’s side, and trying to help her. So instead I said, “Harriet told me that she’d handed out several batches of marshmallow puffs to her neighbors.”
“She did,” Becky agreed. “We got one too.”
“I need to get them back,” I said.
“Oh no, you don’t. Halloween’s coming and I––” Abruptly Becky stopped speaking. “Wait a minute! Are you trying to tell me that my puffs might be poisoned too?”
The end of her question ended on a sharp scream. Before I could answer, she’d already jumped to her feet.
“Probably not,” I said. “It’s just a––”
Before I could finish, Becky had already run from the room. Her kitchen was right around the corner. I heard the sound of a freezer door opening, then slamming shut.
Seconds later, she was back. Becky was carrying a large plastic tub in her arms. There was frozen condensation on the sides, and the container’s top was sealed tight.
“Here. Take it! Get it out of my house!”
She thrust the heavy tub at me. When I didn’t raise my hands fast enough, she tossed the container in my direction. I just managed to grab it before it fell.
Becky ran to the door and yanked it open. “Get out! And take that poison with you!”
I was barely on the stoop before she slammed the door behind me. The pane of glass rattled in its frame. She was lucky it didn’t shatter.
Faith was sitting up on the Volvo’s backseat. She watched me walk down the sidewalk to the car. I suspected she’d been sitting up for a while, and that she’d seen me get thrown out of Becky Gruber’s house.
When I opened the Volvo door and set the plastic container on the floor behind the front seat, the big Poodle bounced up and down in place. I could have sworn she was laughing at me.
“Don’t you dare say a word,” I told her.
Faith was the soul of discretion. Her tail whipped madly back and forth, but otherwise she kept her thoughts to herself.
Good dog.
* * *
Kevin’s playdate was at a home in backcountry Greenwich. By coincidence, that was also where Aunt Peg lived. I hadn’t spoken to her in twenty-four hours. By now, she would be champing at the bit to find out what was happening.
I thanked Kev’s hostess profusely and promised to reciprocate soon. As I buckled him into his booster seat, Kev sat back and demanded, “Where to next?”
Life with a busy mother has taught my son that we are almost always on the run to somewhere else.
“We’re going to stop and see Aunt Peg,” I said.
“Yippee!” Kevin’s shriek was loud enough to make Faith’s ears flatten against her head. “Will she have cake?”
Aunt Peg was almost as famous for her addiction to sugar as she was for her line of Cedar Crest Standard Poodles. She always had something sweet on hand to offer guests. Even ones who showed up unexpectedly.
“You don’t need to have cake in the middle of the afternoon,” I told him.
“That’s not what Aunt Peg says.”
“Aunt Peg isn’t a growing boy.”
“Aunt Peg is huge,” Kev pointed out. “She ate cake and she grew plenty.”
Aunt Peg stood nearly six feet tall and had shoulders that would do a shot-putter proud. She could lift a fifty-pound Standard Poodle with one arm, and she slept fewer hours a night than I did. So clearly I was losing this argument.
“Aunt Peg is an exception,” I said.
“To what?”
I sighed. “Everything.”
Aunt Peg’s home was a restored farmhouse that had once been the nucleus of a working farm. The five acres of land that remained with it gave her plenty of room for the handful of dogs that currently lived with her. A busy dog show judge, she was on the road for much of the year. Now she only had one Standard Poodle “in hair,” a young bitch named Coral, whom Davey was handling in the ring.
“That’s odd,” I said. I had parked the Volvo in Aunt Peg’s driveway, but no Poodle posse had come flying down the steps of the house to greet us. Aunt Peg’s canine alarm system kept her apprised of all visitors. She usually had the door open before I’d even turned off the car. “Maybe she’s not home.”
“Nope,” said Kevin. “She’s home. She’s eating cake.”
Maybe. But that wouldn’t have kept Aunt Peg from coming to the door. On the console beside me, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Aunt Peg.
Saw you drive in. Be right there.
Where are you? I texted back. She didn’t answer. Typical.
Kevin, Faith, and I were standing beside the car a minute later when I heard the sound of spinning gravel. I looked out toward the road and saw Aunt Peg go flying past the end of the driveway on a bicycle.
She was steering with one hand on the handlebars. The other hand was clutching the end of a long leash. The leash was attached to Coral, who was trotting along smartly beside her.
“Wheee!” she cried as she went speeding by.
“Wow!” Davey’s eyes widened. “Aunt Peg’s riding a bike. Cool.”
My stomach dropped. That was so not cool.
Roadworking a dog built muscle and fitness for the show ring. There were different methods, but most people now used treadmills. Roadworking a dog from a bicycle was a young person’s game. Aunt Peg was seventy. She could kill herself doing that.
Kevin, Faith, and I ran to the end of the driveway together. Kev was clapping his hands with glee. Faith wanted to go run with Coral. I was just hoping I wouldn’t have to scrape Aunt Peg off the macadam when we got there.
The pair traveled another quarter mile down the quiet lane before making a graceful turnaround. Then they came heading back in our direction. It made me nervous to watch Aunt Peg, so I focused on Coral instead. The Poodle bitch had a beautiful way of moving. She was so well balanced that her stride appeared to cover the ground effortlessly.
Coral was wearing the continental clip. The front half of her body was covered by a dense coat of black hair. Her face, hindquarter, legs, and feet were shaved to the skin, except for rosettes on her hips and rounded bracelets on her lower legs.
In the show ring, the long hair on Coral’s head would have been banded and sprayed into a high, towering topknot. Now it was wrapped and bound up in ponytails to keep it out of her way. The big Poodle appeared to be enjoying her exercise.
Aunt Peg coasted the last twenty feet between us. When the bike came to a stop, she removed her feet from the pedals and braced the frame on either side. Coral waited impatiently until Aunt Peg had unsnapped her leash. Then she came bounding over to us.
Faith and Coral had met many times before. Now the two Poodles only touched noses briefly before spinning around and dashing away. Kevin went running after them.
“Whew.” Aunt Peg expelled a long breath. “That was fun.”
“Fun?” I stared at her. “Are you crazy?”
“I sincerely doubt it.”
“You could have been killed.”
“I sincerely doubt that too.” Aunt Peg hopped off the seat. She grasped the bike’s handlebars and began to walk up the driveway. “Hardly anybody dies from riding a bike up and down a quiet lane.”
“They might if they were attached to a dog. You’re not even wearing a helmet.”
She gave me a baleful look. “I rode bicycles for decades before people even knew what helmets were. I think I know what I’m doing.”
That was the problem with Aunt Peg. She always thought she knew what she was doing.
“What if Coral saw a squirrel and took off? She could have pulled you right over.”
“That wasn’t going to happen,” Aunt Peg said calmly.
“How do you know?”
“Because I train my Poodles to listen to me, like any responsible dog owner should do. Seriously, Melanie, are you sure you want to continue this conversation?”
Actually, I wasn’t. For one thing, any minute it was going to turn into a lecture. And for another, now that Aunt Peg had both feet on the ground and I knew she was safe, I was feeling much better.
It was probably wiser to simply put the whole alarming episode behind me. Pretend it had never happened—or at least that I’d never seen it happen.
Aunt Peg wasn’t going to take my advice. She never did.
“You’re right,” I said with a sigh. “Let’s just go eat cake.”