Dog Dish of Doom, page 3
“We’re not holding any auditions right now,” I told her, figuring this was another of my father’s “discoveries” for the senior pageant. “I don’t know what they told you, but you’re best off trying somewhere around three.”
The woman reached calmly into her jacket pocket and produced what looked like a very slim leather wallet. She flipped it open to reveal a badge.
“I’m Detective Alana Rodriguez of the NYPD,” she said with almost no inflection whatsoever. Clearly she’d gotten in line twice when they were handing out indifference. “I’m here to discuss the murder of Trent Barclay last night.”
I’ve done better at first impressions.
“Of course, Detective,” I said. Then I stood there and we looked at each other for a long moment. Detective Rodriguez did not move a facial muscle. I got the impression you couldn’t get her to move one without dynamite.
“May I come in?” she monotoned finally.
Idiot. “Of course,” I said. “Sorry about that.” I stood to one side and let the detective into my front hall, which doubled as the living room. She came in and towered over me just for effect. She wasn’t as tall as the Chrysler Building, but she had a couple of stories on me easily.
I ushered her toward the sofa, which was crammed next to Dad’s rehearsal piano, and she sat, so we were just about eye-to-eye. Until I sat on the facing armchair. “I read about Trent in this morning’s paper,” I told the detective. “It’s an awful thing.”
“Did you know him well?” she asked.
There was a tone about the question, prepared and ready, that I can’t say was my favorite thing. “Not really,” I said. “He and his wife were clients of mine. Actually, their dog, Bruno, was the client.”
Rodriguez’s eyes narrowed. “The dog is the client?” she said. She must have known that, since she knew to come talk to me. It was a way to elicit a response. I was going to be careful about all the ones I gave her, I decided.
“Yes. My agency specializes in nonhuman talent.” I considered giving her a business card, but didn’t, figuring she could ask if she really wanted one. “Of course, Trent and Louise would have gotten all of the money Bruno earned, but he would be doing all the work.”
“You went with them to an audition for the dog yesterday,” the detective said. That was not a question; it was a directive to continue talking.
“That’s right. Les McMaster is looking for a dog to play Sandy in the Broadway revival of Annie, and I thought Bruno would be very good for it.” And that was all I was going to say until someone asked me a direct question.
So she did. “Did anything unusual happen at the audition?”
“Unusual?” All right, so I was buying time. I knew what she meant. But this was getting into uncomfortable territory, where I might have to implicate a very major theater director in the death of a dog owner. That wouldn’t really sit well with any potential clients. It’s not easy being a one-person business.
“Yes,” Rodriguez said. She’d produced a voice recorder, one of the slim ones, from her jacket and was holding it in my general direction. But hey, no pressure. “Anything at all?”
“Not really,” I said. The whole scene backstage where Trent had accused Les of being a no-talent hack whose career was hinging on his—that is, Trent’s—dog had happened after the audition. That was how I was justifying my response. Sue me.
Rodriguez, who clearly had heard another story somewhere in her investigation, raised her eyebrows. “Really,” she said.
Now I seemed to be withholding information from a New York City police officer, and that couldn’t be good. “Well…”
“Ms. Powell,” Rodriguez said, “it’s a really bad idea to lie to a cop. Right now I have no reason to think you were involved in the murder of Trent Barclay. But if you give me one…”
Whoa! Back up, lady! “Involved?” I spouted. “What do you mean, ‘involved’? You think I killed Trent? What possible reason would I have to do that?”
“I said no such thing,” the detective countered. She had the most bland expression on her face since Pia Zadora gave up acting, if you could call that acting. “So why don’t you stop playing games with me and tell me what you know that might help me solve this case and leave you alone?”
I thought about that. I had no loyalty to Louise Barclay, and Trent certainly didn’t have any use for my scruples anymore. The only one to whom I had ties was Bruno, and I was pretty sure he hadn’t stabbed Trent in the back with a carving knife. So who was I protecting?
“There was a … I wouldn’t even call it an incident; it wasn’t that big, backstage after the audition,” I told her. “Trent was going on about how Les McMaster was a terrible director because Les had asked me to keep Trent and Louise away from him if he hired Bruno to work on Annie.”
Rodriguez’s expression never changed, but I’m pretty sure her hair flattened out while she was listening. I can’t be sure it was a conscious thing, but it gave her the look of someone who was hearing things she either couldn’t or didn’t want to believe.
“The director wanted you to let him work with their dog but not to let them near him?” she asked after a moment.
Les McMaster was a prominent theater director and could make me a pariah in the business if he decided to put his mind to it. Worse, he could make sure nobody ever heard my name again, and I’d have to find some actual legal work to keep up the payments on my house. But I was talking to a cop about a murder, and my options seemed sort of limited.
“He wanted it written into Bruno’s contract,” I said.
“Theater people,” Rodriguez muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing. So was McMaster in the room when Trent Barclay made all these disparaging comments about him?” Rodriguez was back to being unflappable. You couldn’t flap her no matter how hard you tried.
“No. Trent, Louise, and I—and Bruno—were in a dressing room backstage. I had done my best to make sure Les was nowhere near because I knew Trent could be, um, passionate about his opinions, and he’d already questioned Les’s ability to direct his dog. Would you like a cup of coffee or something?” Maybe I could ingratiate myself to Rodriguez and she could keep my business from being completely destroyed because I’d dropped a famous director’s name while being questioned about a murder.
“No thank you,” the detective said quickly. “So McMaster didn’t hear Trent’s tirade about him, is that right?”
This was the part I really hadn’t wanted to talk about, because if I said what I really thought, Les could be incriminated and I could be looking for work representing something more disrespected than animal performers. And I couldn’t begin to imagine what that might be.
“Do I need to talk to a lawyer?” I asked. I’ve seen enough cop shows (and have cast two Siamese cats named Bridget and Sprinkles in one) to know that the word “lawyer” is supposed to stop all questioning in its tracks. Of course, I was a lawyer, but never a criminal attorney, and I didn’t really know any who did that kind of work. I should have kept up with more of my law school class on Facebook.
“No you don’t,” Rodriguez said. “You’re not being arrested or charged with anything. Not yet.”
Not yet? “I can’t say I’m crazy about that answer, Detective,” I said.
She didn’t even shrug; that’s how unconcerned she was. “I understand, but I can’t rule anything out. You’re not telling me everything you know, and that raises some suspicions. Now. Did Les McMaster hear what Trent Barclay said about him, or not?”
“The truth is, I don’t know,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed a little. “And where were you last night between ten and two in the morning?”
I didn’t care much for that question. “Here, and I can wake up my parents to vouch for me if that’s necessary,” I said.
The detective shook her head. “Not now,” she said.
“Okay…”
Rodriguez stood up and snapped the voice recorder off. “That’ll do it for now.” She did not reach out to shake my hand. “I’ll see myself out.” That was no big thing, since the second she stood, my front door was four feet from her right hand. She opened it and left.
Steve, who had been lying on his bed in one corner of the room the whole time Rodriguez had been there, stood and walked over to me, offering a nice smooth dachshund head to stroke. So I did.
“I’m hoping that wasn’t the highlight of my day,” I told him.
But never think a bad situation can’t decline quickly. Before I could process the situation I was in, the door to my parents’ bedroom opened and my father emerged in what he called his “backstage robe,” a smoking jacket that had probably looked a lot like satin in 1987. Behind him was my mother, who is more the flannel pajamas type. It was hours before either of them should have been awake and I stared at them with a sense of impending doom.
“We want to help,” Mom said.
I was right. Things could always get worse.
CHAPTER FOUR
My first impulse—to tell my parents that they’d had a dream about me being questioned by the police in a murder investigation—had been quickly discarded. I might be able to convince one or the other, but telling them they’d both had the same dream was pushing it even for me.
I came clean instead, but not before asking them exactly why they were awake at what was for them an ungodly hour.
“I can sleep through a world war, you know that,” Dad said. “But if there’s the slightest bit of trouble for you, your mother wakes right up, and when she’s awake, I’m awake.” They’re like the same person, only with two bodies because they’re a double act and get paid more that way.
“Tell us exactly what’s going on,” Mom said. “And did you eat?”
I explained not only Trent’s death, Rodriguez’s allegations, my concerns about Les and my reputation, but also the fact that I’d made scrambled eggs and toast for myself but not them because I wasn’t expecting my parents to be awake before lunch.
“Don’t worry about that, Kay,” my father said. “It’s the police thing that’s bothering me. It’s never good to see a cop at your door.”
My mother gave him a special smile. “Except in the fire-hydrant sketch,” she reminded him.
It’s a long story.
“Well, then, but I mean real cops.” My father stood up and walked into the kitchen. “You want coffee, El?” he called back.
“No thanks,” Mom said, then she turned her attention to me. “Do you think the detective really thought you killed that man because he was messing up your chance to get his dog a job?”
I shook my head. “She just sounds that way naturally, I think,” I told her. Dad walked back into the room with two mugs of coffee and handed me one. He knew I’d need it. “I really don’t think she suspects me so much as she doesn’t know enough to rule me out yet.”
“We should get on this case,” Dad said, looking at Mom. “We should investigate and clear Kay’s name.” My father, like so many show people, has a thirst for the dramatic and a real talent for blowing things wildly out of proportion.
I fixed a stern glance and pointed it at him. “You’re not doing anything like that,” I said in my best schoolmarm tone, stopping just short of calling him “young man.” “My name is just as clear as it was yesterday. It doesn’t need clearing. You’re going to stay away from anything in the least connected to Trent Barclay’s murder. Got that?”
He held up his hands, palms facing me, in a gesture of surrender. “I got it, I got it. Is it okay if I watch the news to see if they say anything about it?”
“No.”
“Man, you’re strict,” Dad said, and I did my best not to laugh, which wasn’t very good. My father has always been able to get on my good side by being silly. Say what you want, but when your adolescence includes going out in front of a bored audience and singing “Take Me Home, Country Roads” eight times a week, a little thing like that can go a long way.
Mom, however, is a tougher audience. “I’m still concerned,” she told me. “What if whoever killed this Barclay man has a grudge against you too?”
“The only connection I have with Trent Barclay is his dog, Bruno,” I assured her. “He doesn’t seem the homicidal type.”
Mom’s lips puckered. “There’s his wife and the director, both of whom make very good suspects, and they know you.”
I stood up. “But they don’t have a reason to be mad at me,” I said. “Now, I’m going into my office, and you two should go back to sleep. It’s not even ten.”
“We have auditions,” Dad told me. He got up too. “I should shower and get dressed.”
Mom looked at him. “The auditions don’t start until one,” she said.
“I know. I want to be ready.” They exchanged a look, and both headed for their bedroom.
I chose not to think about that.
Instead, I got myself into my 2012 Prius (laugh all you want, but I pay less in gasoline bills than you do) and headed back into Manhattan. Okay, East Harlem. I can’t afford office space in Midtown.
It took about forty minutes to get into town because there was more traffic than I’m used to. I rarely drive during anything approaching rush hour, but Rodriguez’s visit had thrown off my usual schedule. By the time I got to 118th Street, I was already running a half hour behind the schedule I had pushed back mentally when I woke up that morning.
But Consuelo, the lovely fifty-year-old I’d hired as a receptionist and kept on as an office manager/assistant/entire staff, had organized me within an inch of my life. Short and trim with hair that hadn’t naturally been this dark in fifteen years, she was on her feet and carrying her iPad toward me even before I had both feet in the tiny office.
Maisie, the macaw we’d appropriated in lieu of payment from an owner who had been, let’s say, less than kind to the bird, flapped her wings in the cage over Consuelo’s desk. Maisie is in a constant state of irritation and thinks everyone should just go away and leave her alone. She hasn’t yet worked out the part where she gets food and the cage gets cleaned without people coming by to help.
“You have an appointment with that parakeet at eleven thirty, then a phone call with a bear cub and a callback for the calico cat,” she was saying as I took off my jacket and hung it on a hook over my not-very-large desk. Consuelo always refers to the clients and not the owners, because she knows I won’t remember the names of the people but I will recognize the animals.
“All today?” I said. “That’s a lot. Did you hear about Trent Barclay?”
“That’s Bruno the dog?” Consuelo said. “Yeah, I heard. The cops called and I gave them your home address. That wasn’t wrong, was it?”
It figured, though. I shook my head. “No. As long as you know they’re real cops, always cooperate and always tell the truth.”
“You sound like a sixth-grade video in civics class,” she said. She has a slight accent, but her syntax is completely New York.
Consuelo had been widowed six months before I opened the office in East Harlem. Her husband, Roberto, had keeled over with no warning and had been dead of a heart attack before he hit the floor, she said the EMT had told her. They hadn’t had health insurance and he hadn’t had a checkup in six years, but he hadn’t been sick.
“It was just his time,” she’d told me at the interview. (I should explain that I figured anyone who applied for this job could do it. Some could probably do it very well. I like to work with people I connect with, so I asked each applicant to tell me her—there were no men—story.) “There’s nothing you can do about that.”
I don’t buy that particular sentiment. Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t believe that Consuelo could possibly have saved her husband’s life by watching him more closely. I don’t think anyone in particular was responsible for his death. But I do believe that his demise was caused by buildup in his arteries and not the strange, inexplicable ringing of a cosmic alarm clock that had simply sounded when the time was right.
Consuelo had been the person with whom I had bonded most immediately during the interviews, and my instinct had turned out to be well founded. She was very good at her job. That meant she organized my time and handled my clients and kept track of their health, their coats (except the birds), their bookings, and their owners. And she managed to keep everyone from getting mad at me, which is the biggest accomplishment of all.
I gave her a look now. “Either way, if a police officer calls you about anything involved in this, you tell them exactly what you know every single time no matter what. We’re good?”
“I like to think so,” Consuelo said.
She had an interesting look on her face. “What else did you tell them?” I asked her.
“The truth,” Consuelo answered, a sharp expression aimed at me. “That I didn’t know anything about this at all because didn’t nobody tell me.”
“There wasn’t time,” I said. “I met with them late yesterday; you know that. Bruno did his audition, there was some drama afterward, which is not terribly unusual, and then I drove home. I didn’t know Trent was going to end up snorkeling in a dog dish.”
“And of course you don’t own a telephone, so you didn’t have to call and tell me that the wheels were coming off, right?” She had a twinkle in her eye that showed both affection and defiance.
“All right, I apologize, Consuelo. I’ll make sure to tell you every time I think that one of my clients’ owners might just find a stray knife in his back. Okay?”
“Is that too much to ask?” She sat down behind her desk, which is larger than my desk because she runs the office and all I do is pay her.
Before I could continue this scintillating banter, the phone rang and Consuelo picked up. “Powell and Associates, Agents to the Paws,” she said.
That was new. Agents to the Paws? I mouthed back. Consuelo waved a hand to tell me to shut up.
“Of course,” she said into the phone, her face indicating this was a serious matter. “Let me connect you.” She pushed the Hold button and looked at me. “Louise Barclay.” With great significance.
