Chapter Fourteen

THE NEXT MORNING, we learned that New Orleans traffic would be the least of our problems. Chris picked us up promptly at eight and gave us an update.

“I was able to dig up some of the additional background info you requested on Dr. Grieve. After talking with his parents, I found out he was raised a Catholic. Whether Grieve still observes is anyone’s guess. Grieve also attended Saint Ignatius Loyola High School in Springfield, Illinois. Unless I’m mistaken, that is a Jesuit school.”

“On a different note,” he added, “I realized I forgot to give you guys some suggestions for dinner before I dropped you off. Where did you go?”

I told him about the Cajun restaurant across the street and the jambalaya. He asked if the cooking was traditional style and grew strangely silent after my reply. Hannah picked up on that almost immediately.

“Chris, why the concern over our eating habits?”

“You’re still walking, so I guess everything’s fine. It’s just that Louisiana has some unusual laws regarding health inspections. As it happens, the state excuses restaurants preparing certain traditional foods from following the usual health codes. That includes jambalaya.”

“Gee, thanks, Chris,” I said. “Are there any other quaint, local customs you forgot to tell us about? Concentrate on those that might be deadly.”

“I told you New Orleans is an acquired taste. This is one of those times when that’s true in more ways than one.”

Yesterday, Hannah and I walked past a teenager with a T-shirt that read, “You know you’re a Cajun if the Wild Kingdom inspires you to write a cookbook.” While drivers all around us were exhibiting the same level of road awareness normally found only in a demolition derby, Hannah and I spent the half-hour trip to the animal shelter contemplating death by food poisoning. I wasn’t sure if that was better, but it was certainly a unique way to pass the time.

We forgot our culinary concerns when we arrived at the shelter, a large, single-story brick building at the end of a small one-way street. It looked out of place amid the two-story homes surrounding it. A tall fence enclosed the rear of the property. We pulled into the driveway, and I noticed someone had spray-painted a pornographic image on the side of the backyard fence. Not only was the clinic out of place; it was unpopular as well.

Dogs began barking as soon as we rang the shelter’s front doorbell. After a moment, the door was opened by a short, African-American woman in a bright, purple lab coat. By the name on her badge, we’d just met Dr. Treenway.

Standing in front of the entrance, the doctor was clearly not pleased by our presence. “Last month, I called the cops every day for a week, trying to get somebody to do something about the damage to our property. I left messages, but no one would call back. Can you at least write a report while you’re here talking to my volunteers?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Chris responded. “We’re only here about the Mary Dhillon disappearance. We’re under something of a time constraint, but I promise I’ll have a patrol car come out to address your concerns about property damage. Can we please come in?”

Though still miffed, Dr. Treenway stepped back so we could enter. The barking became more emphatic when we walked into the shelter, and we’d have to speak loudly just to make ourselves heard.

The shelter was cleaner than I anticipated, without the smell I would have expected for this type of facility. Dr. Treenway led us to a small room just big enough for the four of us to sit. Based on the instrumentation on the walls and the pull-out table, the room likely doubled as an examination area when not used for meetings.

As he had done with the Dhillons, Chris introduced Hannah and myself. He then asked Dr. Treenway if she would run through the staff she had at the shelter.

“Even though the shelter is open Monday through Saturday, we still have a relatively small staff,” she began. “I am the director of the facility and the only veterinarian. Our full-time employees include two veterinary technicians, Bernice Carson and William Laws. They provide most of the day-to-day care for our animals and even perform some minor procedures. Drew Allen is our maintenance man. He only works four days a week, and much of his time,” she added pointedly, “is spent fixing all the property damage caused by the locals around here.”

“Because our paid staff is so small,” she continued, “we rely a lot on our volunteers. Mary is one of five volunteers working at the shelter. Depending on the individual, they work from one to three days each week. Their duties include cleaning the cages, walking the animals, and some general chores.

“The entire staff will meet with you today, though we are having some logistical issues. Nicky, one of our volunteers, might not be here for another hour due to childcare issues, and Drew just called to say he might be late as well. Someone stole his car a couple of months ago, and he’s had to take the bus here ever since.”

We decided to finish our interview with Dr. Treenway and talk to the veterinary technicians and volunteers in separate groups. The remaining discussion with Dr. Treenway was short and to the point. The technicians had the primary responsibility for supervising and assigning work to the volunteers. As the sole veterinarian at the shelter, Dr. Treenway concentrated on the animals themselves. Her duties included examining each animal brought to the shelter and performing most of the procedures that were necessary based on the animal’s condition.

Dr. Treenway’s contacts with Mary Dhillon had been typically brief, usually limited to when Mary helped bring an animal into one of the examining rooms. Her feedback on Mary’s behavior was also brief: Mary was punctual, she worked well with the animals, and with one exception, she worked well with the other staff.

We asked about the exception. According to Dr. Treenway, Mary’d had a “dustup” with Bill Laws when she first started working at the shelter. Dr. Treenway didn’t remember what the dispute was about, but she’d heard Mary talking loudly to Bill from the next room.

With no more insights to offer, Dr. Treenway left us to perform an examination on a “large black-and-white Siamese cat with an exceedingly angry disposition.” It sounded like a few of the nuns I’d known in grade school.

With Dr. Treenway gone, Bill Laws and Bernice Thomas joined us in our makeshift conference room. Bernice was tall and gray-haired, with the same no-nonsense attitude as her boss. Speaking to the three of us was clearly not at the top of her agenda.

Bill Laws, with his blond-hair and easy smile, didn’t seem to mind our presence in the slightest. He fixed his eyes on Hannah from the moment he entered the room. For that reason alone, I disliked him on sight. Unlike Dr. Treenway, Bill and Bernice had some interesting insights regarding Mary’s personality.

“Let me start by emphasizing,” Bernice said, “that Mary was exceptionally good with our animals. More than the other volunteers, she was willing to do the dirty work this place requires. This is a clean and well-run shelter, and we couldn’t keep that up without people like Mary. On the negative side, Mary was also a bit odd. Our clients never took to her, and I don’t think she ever really took to them. She was judgmental, and people don’t react well to that type of attitude. Eventually, Bill and I decided to keep her in the back with the animals.”

We asked Bill Laws about the dustup mentioned by Dr. Treenway. He shook his head and laughed.

“That happened very early in Mary’s tenure here. It was the first time she saw me scruff a cat. That’s when you pick up a cat by the skin and hair on the back of its neck. It’s something we do on a daily basis, but Mary thought I was hurting the animal. More than her words, I remember the look she gave me—you’d have thought Mary wanted to rip out my spine. When I first saw her, I couldn’t help noticing how pretty she was. After that incident, Mary looked a lot less appealing.”

“Was there anyone on staff Mary was friendly with?” Hannah asked him. “Did she talk about any friends outside of the shelter?”

“Not that I know of. I don’t think Mary ever felt friendly with anyone. You could say she wasn’t a people person, but that didn’t go far enough to describe her personality.”

Dr. Treenway picked that moment to renter the conference room and tell us the volunteers were now available. Having finished with Bill and Bernice, we moved to a larger exam room so we could speak to all of them at once.

Mary’s fellow volunteers were a mixed group. All were female, ranging in age from their midfifties to early seventies. At thirty-six, Mary would have easily been the youngest of the volunteer staff. With the age difference and her personality issues, I wondered how well Mary had fit in.

I didn’t have to wait long for an answer because the knives came out quickly. If I’ve noticed one thing in my twenty-seven years, it’s that men and women tend to take a different approach when faced with someone they dislike, particularly if the dislike is intense. While men might not resort to physical violence, that calculation, “can I take this person if I need to?” is always present in their minds.

Women often prefer a surgical approach—they identify a weakness and verbally cut away using every tool at their disposal. With Mary’s fellow volunteers, that surgical technique was very much on display.

The remarks concerning Mary’s character and personality were quick and pointed. Mary was “cold and calculating.” She was “perfectly willing to take advantage of her good looks, and her appearance got her whatever assignment she wanted.” All four of the volunteers agreed, “things around here are a lot more pleasant since Mary has been gone.” Purely as a matter of strategy, I wasn’t sure I’d have made the last statement to police in a discussion regarding a potential kidnap victim. Maybe Law and Order reruns didn’t run on cable in New Orleans.

After listening for a few minutes, none of us bothered asking whether Mary had built any friendships around the shelter. The answer appeared obvious if somewhat depressing. Remembering something the Dhillons had said, I asked if Mary’s behavior had changed in the few months before her disappearance. Denise Evers, one of the older volunteers in the group, spoke up almost immediately.

“I’m not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but Mary started talking with herself, somedays almost constantly. I know everybody speaks to themselves occasionally, but with Mary, you’d think another person was in the room. Sometimes it would sound like a conversation, other times an argument. When it first started, I thought she was talking to the animals. Looking back, I think this was something else.”

Hannah followed up with, “Two questions—when did this start, and did you ever get a sense of who she might be talking to?”

Denise thought for a minute. “I do remember hearing a name. I think it might have been Michael, or maybe just Mike. As to when it started, I’d say sometime last fall.”

Chris, Hannah, and I all looked up when we heard the name. The timing and the behavior change also fit perfectly with what Mrs. Dhillon had relayed in our interview at their home.

We asked the ladies if they had anything else to add, but they were all out of Mary Dhillon stories. And we received word that Drew Allen had just arrived at the shelter. We dismissed the four volunteers and prepared for our last interview of the day.

From the moment he walked in the room, I knew Drew Allen was a moron. It wasn’t his appearance that led to that judgment. Drew looked a little like Boyd Crowder, the bad guy on the TV show, Justified, John insisted on binge-watching. If you took Boyd and sucked away his intelligence and charisma, you’d be left with Drew Allen.

It wasn’t even Drew’s clothing, although his old Nirvana T-shirt would have been enough to condemn him in my eyes. Instead, it was what he was wearing with his shirt. Specifically, it was the green-and-orange golden retriever pendant, the same one Mary Dhillon wore in the picture in her bedroom. I wasn’t sure Hannah and Chris had noticed, so I figured I’d jump right in.

“That’s a nice-looking pendant you have there, Drew. Mary Dillon was wearing one just like it in a picture her parents showed us.”

Drew had several different options for his response: “I saw Mary wearing hers, and I decided to buy one for myself,” was one option; “I told her how much I liked it, and she gave it to me as a present,” would have been another.

Drew picked a different approach—he ran for the conference room door. Unfortunately for him, that doorway was occupied by Detective Chris Robinson, the same Detective Robinson who was large enough to eclipse the sun at certain hours of the day. Drew ran into Chris, bounced off his considerable bulk, and careened backward, almost ending up in the same chair he’d started from.

He was, indeed, a moron.