Jingle Bell Bark Read online

  “That’s interesting. What do you suppose he was doing driving a school bus?”

  “Wait, there’s another quote. It’s from someone at Davey’s school named Michelle Raddison.”

  “I know her.” Before starting work at Howard Academy, I’d been employed at Hunting Ridge Elementary myself. “She used to run the main office. Now she’s the vice-principal. What does Michelle have to say?”

  “Here it is. Henry told all of us that retirement didn’t suit him. He liked feeling useful, and with his own children having grown up and moved away, he loved being around the kids. He always said there was no shame in doing any sort of job as long as you did it well.”

  Unexpectedly, I felt a lump gather in the back of my throat. “I wish I’d taken the time to get to know him better.”

  “Keep listening,” Peg said. “There’s more. Mr. Pruitt collapsed in his yard Monday evening and was taken by ambulance to St. Joseph’s Hospital where doctors were unable to revive him. He was pronounced dead later that night. An initial autopsy indicated that the likely cause of death was cardiovascular disease, however sources at this newspaper have learned that Mr. Pruitt’s remains are being held by the medical examiner pending further investigation.”

  “Further investigation? That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Of course it doesn’t sound good,” Peg said crisply. “It’s not supposed to. Read between the lines, Melanie. The newspaper is telling us that your friend, Henry, didn’t die of natural causes. It looks to me as though he was murdered.”

  7

  Well, that was just the kind of cheerful thought I needed to start the day.

  Henry had seemed like such a nice, unassuming man. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would have wanted to do him harm. Then again, I’d been content to think of him merely as Davey’s bus driver. I’d had no inkling that earlier in life he’d been quite successful in a whole different arena. Obviously, there was plenty I hadn’t known about Henry Pruitt:

  Thanks to Aunt Peg, however, and her plans for Henry’s dogs, I was destined to find out more.

  She and I met in front of Henry’s house that afternoon. Having come straight from school, I had Faith and Eve with me in the station wagon. Peg, already waiting on the sidewalk when I arrived, greeted the Poodles through the window before turning to me.

  “I assume this is the right house,” she said. “He doesn’t have a fenced yard.”

  I cracked all four windows and locked the Poodles in. “Not all dog owners do.”

  She knew that. And I knew that. We’d both been all over this territory before. Which never stopped Aunt Peg from making her point anyway.

  I joined her on the sidewalk and stared at Henry’s small, tidy cape. Since that morning, I’d been wondering whether the police would have come back and cordoned it off. I’d half expected to find a strand of yellow tape fastened across the door to block our access. Nothing of the sort had happened, however; the small house looked just as it had the night before.

  “How did you get inside?” Aunt Peg asked. “Surely the house must be locked.”

  “Betty Bowen, the next-door neighbor, has a key.” I started in that direction. “She was here yesterday. Let’s hope she’s home today. I probably should have thought to call ahead and check.”

  “A fine time this is to be remembering that. I hope you haven’t brought me all the way over here for nothing.”

  I considered mentioning that it was she, not I, who had initiated this visit. But somehow, the small satisfaction I might derive from being briefly right seemed hardly worth the lecture on the responsibilities of dog ownership that was sure to follow. Instead I held my tongue, stepped up onto the Bowen porch, and rang the doorbell.

  After a minute, I heard the sound of footsteps come pounding toward the door. Surely Betty wouldn’t have such a heavy tread, I thought briefly Then the door was flung open by a slender young man with spiked hair, a studded belt, and a pair of headphones, from which music squawked audibly, curled around his neck.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “You must be Johnny,” I said, though he looked quite a bit different from the clean-cut boy I’d seen in the high school graduation photo the day before. Only his dark, somber eyes were the same.

  “That’s right.”

  “Is your mother here?”

  “Nah, she’s out shopping. She’ll be back later.” He started to close the door.

  Aunt Peg reached out and placed her palm firmly against the wooden panel, forestalling that idea. “Perhaps you can help us.”

  Johnny looked dubious. “With what?”

  “We need a key to Henry Pruitt’s house,” I said. “Yesterday your mother lent me the one you brought back after Henry was taken away.”

  “So you’re the two ladies who took off with the old guy’s dogs.”

  He was only half right, but I didn’t bother to correct him. “We didn’t take off with them,” I said instead. “We took Remington and Pepper somewhere where they could be properly cared for until homes could be found for them.”

  “Whatever.” Johnny shrugged.

  “Whatever indeed.” Peg nodded toward the headset where music was still playing. “Is that Eminem?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know that?”

  “Why on earth does everybody think good music is only for the young? I don’t see any reason why I can’t enjoy it too. Now listen, we need to get something out of Henry’s house. And in order to do that we have to borrow your key. Run along and get it for us, would you?”

  Musical affinity notwithstanding, Johnny still didn’t look convinced. “How do I know you have permission to be in there? It’s not like you were friends of his or anything. I’ve never even seen you around here before.”

  “Very good,” said Aunt Peg. “Your powers of observation merit a gold star. As does your willingness to look out for your neighbor even after he’s gone. However, yesterday your mother chose to entrust Melanie and myself with the care of Henry’s dogs. In order to do that job, we need to get some more information. If you like, you can come over to the house with us to make sure that we don’t abscond with anything of value.”

  “That’s all you want?” Johnny asked. “Information?”

  Peg and I both nodded.

  “And you won’t mess up the place or anything?”

  As if it hadn’t been a mess yesterday before Alice and I had cleaned up.

  “No, we just need to find some papers.”

  “Well . . . I guess that’ll be all right.”

  Johnny’s acquiescence was probably at least partly due to the stubborn expression on Aunt Peg’s face. I’d seen that look before, and it didn’t bode well. No doubt Johnny was wondering how much more of his time she was planning to take up. Had he asked, I could have told him that this conversation was most assuredly going to continue until Aunt Peg found herself holding a key in her hand.

  “Hang on a minute,” he said. “I’ll go get it.”

  “What an accommodating young man,” Peg said as we waited on the step.

  “It wasn’t exactly as though you gave him any choice.”

  “Quite so. On the whole, I find that’s the best way to handle most people.”

  As someone who’d been frequently handled by Aunt Peg myself, I could vouch for that.

  Johnny returned a minute later, key ring in hand. He’d fit the earphones back into his ears and was now moving to a beat we couldn’t hear. He handed over the keys without comment. Peg and I waved our thanks.

  As Alice and I had done the previous day, Aunt Peg and I let ourselves in the back door. She stopped just inside and sniffed delicately. Peg didn’t comment but I knew she could imagine the condition the house had been in the day before.

  “It seems odd,” I said, pausing to decide where to look first.

  “What does?” Peg, who’s never hesitated in her life, was already striding through the kitchen into the living room.

  Dutifully, I trotted along behind. “That ju
st anybody can come walking in here. Short of Henry’s daughters arriving and securing this place, you’d think the police would do it. Especially if they think there was something suspicious about Henry’s death. What if we were the murderers, coming back to destroy all the clues?”

  Aunt Peg flicked a glance in my direction. “You’ve been watching too much television.”

  “No, I mean it.”

  “That’s what worries me. We’re not destroying clues, Melanie. We’re not even looking for clues. We’re looking for official AKC documents.”

  She said the words with reverence. Like we were on a mission from On High. Like that excused the fact that she and I might be trampling through a potential crime scene.

  “Okay,” I said. If the police weren’t concerned, far be it from me to make a fuss. “If you were important papers, where would you be?”

  “In my office.” Aunt Peg looked around the small living room. “If I had one, that is. I don’t even see a desk down here. Let’s try upstairs.”

  Once again, I was left to follow in her wake. It felt kind of creepy, wandering around in the house of a man whom I hadn’t known well and who had died under suspicious circumstances. Aunt Peg, however, seemed to feel no such qualms. She went marching up the stairs as though she had every right to go looking through Henry’s things. What can I say? The thought of dogs in peril has an empowering effect on her.

  By the time I reached the second floor landing, Peg had already located a desk and small file cabinet in a spare bedroom. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” she said, kneeling in front of the squat cabinet and opening the top drawer. “Let’s hope that Remington and Pepper were important enough to Henry that he held on to their registration certificates. In a pinch, even a pedigree would do. I imagine I could probably hunt down a breeder if I knew what lines they came from.”

  I leaned in and looked over her shoulder. Peg thumbed quickly through the files. Those in the top drawer seemed to be related to Henry’s business dealings, past and present. She slid that drawer shut and tried the next. Right up front she found what she was looking for. A folder with the Golden Retrievers’ names on it contained a pair of business-size envelopes bearing the return address of the American Kennel Club in North Carolina.

  “Bingo.” Peg rocked back on her heels and opened the first one. The certificate had been issued to Longacres Hot Pepper, owner Henry Pruitt. Pepper’s sire and dam were both champions, and both of those dogs bore the Longacres prefix as well. The breeder’s name was Cindy Marshall.

  “Anyone you know?” I asked.

  Aunt Peg nodded thoughtfully. “Cindy’s been around the dog show scene for at least a decade. I don’t believe we’ve actually met, but I certainly recognize the name. I imagine she’d know mine as well. She lives in northern New Jersey, maybe Gladstone or Basking Ridge. I believe she’s a member of the Somerset Hills Kennel Club.”

  “In other words, she’s the type of breeder who would probably take Pepper back and find him a good home if Henry’s daughters don’t want him.”

  “I’d be shocked if she wouldn’t,” Aunt Peg said firmly. “Let’s see what we can find out about Remington.”

  The second Golden Retriever had been registered under the name of Henry’s Pal Remington.

  “Cute,” Peg muttered. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

  I scanned the short certificate. Remington’s sire was a dog named Golden Boy the Great. His dam was listed as Daisy Dipsy Doodle. I chuckled under my breath. At least presumably they’d been purebred. Then my eye traveled down the page to the name of Remington’s breeder and my smile died.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” I said.

  “Rebecca Morehouse,” Aunt Peg read. “I just heard that name recently. From you, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, she’s the woman who’s directing Davey’s play at the arts center. The one my neighbor’s planning to buy her Christmas puppy from. Small world.”

  “Small neighborhood, anyway. I wonder how Mr. Pruitt came to buy one of his dogs from a reputable breeder and the other from a local puppy mill. I guess we’ll never know the answer to that.”

  “Unless Rebecca wants to tell us.” I walked over to the desk whose surface contained a blotter, a pen set, and a laptop computer. Idly, I began pulling drawers open and looking inside. “I was going to talk to her anyway about Alice’s puppy. When I do, I’ll ask about Henry and see if she’s willing to take Remington. With luck, you’ll have your kennel empty again by the end of the week.”

  “There’s no hurry on that score.” Aunt Peg braced a hand against the file cabinet and pushed herself slowly to her feet. “Melanie, what are you doing in that poor man’s private desk?”

  I looked up. “Exactly the same thing you were doing a minute ago in his private filing cabinet. Snooping around.”

  “At least I had a good excuse.”

  “So do I. I’m trying to find his address book. It’s all well and good for us to decide that Pepper and Remington need to be placed in good homes, but until Henry’s relatives show up and say for sure that they don’t want them, we don’t really have the right to do anything. If we can find his daughters’ names and phone numbers, we could give them a call and ask what their plans are.”

  “Good idea.” Peg came to join me. She started opening drawers on the other side. “Wait a minute, here’s something.”

  “What?”

  “Photographs.” She picked up a sleeve from a local developer and dumped out a thick stack of double prints. “Maybe they’ll tell us something.”

  “Like what?” I leaned over and had a look. “What Henry’s daughters look like? How will that help?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the one who wanted to snoop around. You think of something.”

  Something that would justify our pawing through even more of Henry’s private things? I didn’t think so.

  But since the pictures had already been spilled out onto the desk, I had a look at them. Henry must have been the photographer; he didn’t appear in any of the shots. Most were pictures of his house and the surrounding neighborhood. Included, too, were photographs of the Bowens’ house, a local park, and the junior and senior high schools.

  “How very banal,” said Aunt Peg.

  “Maybe he was trying out a new camera. Or maybe he was thinking of moving and wanted to have a record of where he used to live?”

  “If I do say so myself, that’s about the silliest idea you’ve ever come up with.” She gathered up the photographs, slipped them back into the envelope, and placed them back where they’d been. “Nor do I see an address book. Maybe that neighbor woman knows how Henry’s daughters can be reached.” Aunt Peg pushed the desk drawer firmly shut. “Let’s go see if she’s back, shall we?”

  We checked to make sure we’d left everything as we’d found it, then locked the back door behind us. “You know,” Aunt Peg said as we started back across the yard. “It occurs to me that maybe we should have worn gloves. Now I suppose we’ve left our fingerprints all over everything.”

  Alice and I had done the same the day before.

  “Too late now,” I said. “On the other hand, if the police want to know what we were doing in Henry’s house, we have a perfectly logical explanation.”

  “If they’re dog lovers,” Peg muttered.

  Betty Bowen hadn’t returned home during the time we’d been inside Henry’s house. And Johnny had probably been watching us out the window; he opened the front door before we were even halfway up the walk. I couldn’t help but wonder why he didn’t have something better to do in the middle of the afternoon. I guessed his age at a year or two on either side of twenty. Why wasn’t he in college or at work?

  “Find what you wanted?” Johnny asked with a smirk. He threaded his index finger through the key ring I held out to him and twirled it out of my hand. “That Henry, he was pretty busy for an old guy. He had stuff going on all the time.”

  “Did you know him well?” I asked.

&nbs
p; The young man shrugged. It seemed to be a habitual expression of his feelings toward the world. “We’ve been living next door to each other forever, so I guess we’ve crossed paths. I used to mow his lawn when I was little.”

  “Not any more?” asked Peg.

  “After he retired he started doing it himself. Kind of put me out of a job. Like I said, Henry was always up to something over there.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know how we could get in touch with his daughters, would you?”

  “Nah. All I know is that they live far away. My mom might know, though. Do you want me to have her call you?”

  “That would be great. Thanks.”

  I dug a piece of paper out of my pocket. Johnny found a pen and I wrote down my number. I’d barely finished before he snatched the slip of paper and shut the door in our faces. Johnny might have been accommodating but his manners could use a little help.

  8

  Aunt Peg headed home after that, and I drove Faith and Eve back to the Brickmans’ where I had planned to pick up Davey; except that as it turned out, he wasn’t there. “The kids were playing outside and saw Sam’s car drive up,” Alice explained. “Apparently, that seemed like a good enough reason for everyone to go and congregate at your house. I called ten minutes ago and got Joey and Carly home, but Davey and Sam are there waiting for you.”

  That was a nice surprise. Sam had been out in Illinois visiting his family over the Thanksgiving break. I hadn’t expected him to return until the weekend.

  Though Sam and I had been engaged since spring, we hadn’t exactly worked out any details about the wedding yet. The last time we’d started making plans in that direction all hell had broken loose, and Sam and I had ended up spending more than half a year apart. Call me superstitious, but with everything between us now going so well, I hated to do anything that might alter that fortuitous state of affairs.