To Sketch a Thief Page 5

  “Yesterday must have been awful for him,” she said instead. “I wish there was some way to explain it all so that he could understand.”

  “Animals get death better than you think,” Zeke said. “Whys and hows don’t matter to them ‘cause they can’t change what is. People are the ones who need to dress it all up with rules and ceremonies.”

  “Look who’s the pet psychologist,” Rory said, leaning back against the counter.

  “That there’s just one of those newfangled words you like so much. Say what you like, but I’ve owned my share of dogs and horses and I know what I know,” Zeke said. “Animals adapt fine to just about anything.”

  Hobo chose that moment to come racing down the stairs, his nails clicking like an old typewriter on the hardwood. Zeke’s experience notwithstanding, Rory was pretty sure the dog had panicked when he awoke and didn’t see her there. It was perfectly reasonable to assume that he was afraid of losing a second master and caretaker in less than twenty-four hours.

  A moment later Hobo careened into the kitchen, lost traction on the ceramic tile and wound up running in place like a cartoon character. Coffee sloshed out of Rory’s cup and onto her bathrobe as she flattened herself against the counter to get out of his way. Zeke burst into a hearty laugh that spooked Hobo into losing his balance and executing a belly flop. All four legs splayed, he slid across the room and crashed into the back door.

  Rory set her mug on the counter and went over to try to help him to his feet. But at ninety pounds he was pretty much on his own. After a few abortive attempts, he managed to pull himself upright. He gave Rory’s face an appreciative lick, while keeping a wary eye on his nemesis at the table.

  When the marshal made no threatening moves in his direction, Hobo risked turning his back on him. He looked pointedly at the door and woofed. He couldn’t have been any clearer if he’d actually spoken his request, and it occurred to Rory that it was easier to communicate with the dog than with the marshal. She unlocked the door and let Hobo outside, glad that Mac had had the backyard fenced for the Labrador retriever he’d intended to buy before death changed all of his plans.

  She watched Hobo make a spirited but clumsy dash for a squirrel, who scampered up an oak tree to safety. Pleased to have secured the yard from trespassers, he went on about the business of spreading his scent and asserting his claim to the property.

  “You can’t be serious about keepin’ that dog,” Zeke grumbled, the amusement gone from his voice.

  Rory turned away from the door. “I haven’t decided yet,” she said. When she was growing up her mother would tell her to sleep on a difficult decision, as if the right answer would be magically apparent by morning. But somehow Rory had never developed the knack. Last night had been no different. She’d fallen asleep as soon as she’d crawled into bed and if she had reached a decision while she slept, it had vanished along with her dreams when the phone rang.

  She went to the sink, wet a paper towel and wiped ineffectively at the coffee stains on her robe while she thought about what to say next.

  “I think a trial period, maybe a month or so, would be the fair thing to do,” she said finally and with as much authority as she could muster, given that the idea had just occurred to her. She wasn’t even sure if it qualified as a decision or just procrastination. She balled up the paper towel and tossed it into the garbage can under the sink.

  “Fair to who?” Zeke asked sourly. “Did you ever think that maybe being around me is traumatic to old Hobo there? Maybe you’re not being fair to him.”

  Rory didn’t have an immediate answer for that. She’d been so focused on Zeke’s objections that she hadn’t thought much about what Hobo’s objections might be.

  “Fair to everyone,” she said, although with less conviction.

  Zeke shook his head. “Okay, let’s not talk about what’s fair, let’s talk about the truth. The truth is that you’ve been trying to decide if you want to keep the dog, not what’s best for him or me. You probably don’t even realize it. Hell, I suspect you’ve even got yourself bamboozled into believing that you’re bein’ evenhanded.”

  “Oh, right, and you’re the very model of being honest with yourself,” Rory said tightly. “After more than a hundred years, you still haven’t made peace with yourself so that you can move on.” Even as she said the words she realized she’d crossed some invisible line, but she couldn’t bring herself to apologize or back down. When she was being pushed into a corner, she couldn’t help but push back harder.

  Zeke’s jaw clenched, causing the bones and veins of his face to stand out. His eyes narrowed like a sniper homing in on a target. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he shot back at her. “And you’re a fool if you think you know me.”

  “Know you? How can I know you, if you refuse to tell me anything?” Frustrated, Rory almost threw her coffee mug at him, but she stopped herself in time. He wouldn’t have felt it anyway and she would have been stuck cleaning up the mess. Instead she thumped it down sharply in the sink.

  “You want to know something about me?” Zeke snapped. “Then start by keepin’ your word and figure out who killed me!”

  “I’ve tried and you know it.” She’d found articles about his death in the archives of the local newspapers, but they’d provided little useful information and led to more questions than answers, none of which Zeke had been willing to discuss with her.

  “You found out I was shot to death in this house. Why, thank you kindly, ma’am, but I was already in possession of that information.”

  “Who was John Corbin?” Rory demanded, locking eyes with him to make it clear she had no intention of backing down. If she was going to have an angry ghost on her hands, she might as well try to harvest some information from the ordeal. “Was John Trask using the alias John Corbin when he was on Long Island?”

  “How are you gonna hone those detecting skills of yours if I just provide you with all the answers?” he asked wryly, some of the venom gone from his tone.

  Rory kept her guard up. She’d never known him to capitulate so easily. “If you actually had all the answers, you wouldn’t need me to figure out who shot you,” she pointed out. “And I seriously doubt I’m going to have many cases in which everyone involved is dead and gone, along with their entire generation.”

  “I daresay you never expected to have this case either and yet here you are.”

  She took a deep breath and gave herself a time-out for a silent count of ten. “If you really want me to make any progress,” she went on evenly, “you’re going to have to give me something more to go on.”

  “Corbin was Trask,” Zeke said, his tone heavy with exasperation. “Does that suit you?”

  Rory ignored the question since it was only meant to goad her. “Then it seems pretty cut-and-dried. Trask knew you were after him, so he killed you before you had the chance to arrest him.”

  “There you go jumpin’ to the wrong conclusion.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meanin’ I know for a fact that he didn’t do it.”

  “Really? And how can you be so sure of that?”

  “I had him square in my gun sights—right there in front of me—when I was shot in the back.”

  “I see,” Rory murmured, trying to wedge this new piece into the puzzle. Someone else had been in the room that day. She couldn’t see any reason for Zeke to have been hoarding this information, except as a means of controlling her and what she ultimately discovered about his death. And that made no sense, unless there was a part of him that wasn’t all that keen to learn the truth after all. Since she wasn’t equipped to psychoanalyze him, she focused on containing the rage that was frothing up inside her like magma in a volcano. Easier said than done.

  “I cannot believe you didn’t tell me this before!” Her words rose in an angry crescendo in spite of her efforts.

  “You think this is easy for me? This isn’t easy!” he responded, shouting her down. “To you it’s just histo
ry. But it was my life. It was my damn life!” He vanished before she had a chance to respond.

  Rory was momentarily stunned by the emotion she’d ignited in him. She’d had glimpses of his dark side before, but she’d never heard the pure, sharp anguish that riddled his anger now. Still, one thing was certain, he wasn’t the only injured party and she was getting pretty tired of losing every battle simply because he up and left the arena.

  “Maybe I should keep Hobo and send you off to the pound,” she yelled to the empty room.

  Chapter 6

  At one forty-five Rory stopped in the bathroom to run a comb through her hair and apply a bit of lip gloss. She lingered for a minute, somehow still surprised by the adult woman who was staring back at her from the mirror. In the family, it was generally agreed that she had her mother’s sculpted cheekbones and her father’s straight nose and determined chin. But no one could figure out where she’d gotten the wide hazel eyes, with their blackringed irises, that her aunt Helene swore she’d pay good money to have herself. Rory had grown up imagining that one day a stranger with the same eyes would come to their door and introduce herself as a long-lost cousin. Smiling at the memory, she turned out the light. It was time to meet Tina Kovack.

  She walked out the kitchen door with Hobo at her side. Leaving him alone in the house where Zeke might pop up at any moment seemed too much like animal cruelty. Besides, Tina Kovack had been a friend of the deceased, so the odds were that she already knew Hobo and probably wouldn’t object to having him there for the duration of their meeting.

  As they crossed the backyard to her office, she wasn’t at all surprised to find Tina already pacing up and down the driveway. Rory had no intention of asking her how long she’d been waiting, nor was she going to apologize for that wait. It was still well before the time of their appointment and Tina was going to have to respect certain boundaries if Rory was going to take her case.

  When she’d first considered having the office built on her property, rather than renting space in town, she’d written out a list of the pros and cons of each option. The only major con on the list was the fact that clients would know where she lived and might feel they had the right to intrude upon her private life. Based on their conversation that morning, Tina Kovack might well be the poster child for exactly that sort of problem.

  Tina’s face lit up when she saw Rory and Hobo coming. She hurried back up the driveway to meet them at the office door. Rory immediately recognized her as one of the women in the group photo on Brenda Hartley’s mantel. She looked to be in her late forties, and she was tall, close to six feet at least, with the body of a one-time athlete that was just starting to go to seed. Her spandex tank top showcased a small potbelly and a bulge of excess fat beneath her bra line in the back.

  Tina dropped to her knees in the grass beside Hobo and threw her arms around him. “Hobo, sweetie boy!” She kissed him loudly on the snout. “I had no idea you were here!” Hobo responded by happily slathering her cheek with saliva. Tina didn’t seem to mind in the least.

  She looked up at Rory. “One of the neighbors told me she’d seen him get into a car with some stranger. I’m so glad that he’s okay. It’s bad enough that Tootsie’s missing. She’s one of mine, you know. Oh goodness, I’m sorry, where are my manners?” She stood up and thrust out her hand. “I’m Tina.”

  Rory shook her hand, marveling at how much more coherent Tina sounded. She was still speaking fast, but certainly within the normal range and she was actually pausing for punctuation. There was every reason to believe that her phone call had been a simple aberration brought on by stress.

  Rory unlocked the door and ushered her and Hobo inside. Apart from her desk and chair, the office was furnished with a small, brown leather love seat and matching armchair that sat at right angles to one another with a glass and chrome side table between them. The walls were painted a soft cappuccino and were bare except for her framed PI license and an eight-by-ten close-up of her with Mac at the circus when she was eight years old. She’d debated displaying something that personal in an office setting, but decided that the only criterion that mattered was that she wanted it there. Although there were still odd moments when looking at the picture made her sad, she’d mostly come to a place where it just stirred up sweet memories and buoyed her spirits.

  Hobo immediately made himself at home on the love seat, curling up with a grunt. Based on the fur Rory had seen on Brenda Hartley’s couch, he was clearly accustomed to the finer things in life. He was going to need some retraining if she decided to keep him, or other, less dogfriendly clients would wind up with ninety pounds of drool and fur in their laps, and she might well lose their business.

  Tina passed up the armchair and folded herself into the narrow space beside the dog. “I hope you’re going to keep him. You are going to, aren’t you?” she asked, stroking his back as she spoke. Hobo sighed contentedly.

  “I’m not sure. He’s a lot of dog and even though I have an office right here, I’m not always around.” Plus, Hobo and her ghost hadn’t hit it off very well. But she refrained from saying that aloud.

  “Maybe you should take him,” Rory suggested, feeling an unexpected tug at the thought of losing him. That did not bode well. If she kept him much longer she’d be hopelessly bonded to him. “He seems really happy to be with you there,” she pointed out with as much enthusiasm as she could muster.

  “The trouble is I have twelve dogs now and there are more on the way.”

  Rory didn’t know how to respond to that. Maybe Tina wasn’t quite so sane after all.

  “I’m a breeder.” Tina laughed. “I’ll bet you were thinking I was a nutcase. Like some old spinster lady with a hundred cats. Of course I’m not old, at least not by today’s standards, and I’m not a spinster, and I don’t particularly like cats, but you know what I mean.”

  Rory tripped over her words as she tried to assure the woman that she’d thought no such thing. If she’d been prone to blushing like her mother, she would have been beet red by now.

  “Not to worry,” Tina insisted, explaining that she enjoyed watching people’s faces when she told them how many dogs she had. Sometimes she even fudged the number to get a better reaction.

  “So you breed Maltese,” Rory said, recovering her poise. It didn’t take a detective to figure that out, but Tina seemed impressed anyway. “Did Brenda Hartley buy her Maltese from you?”

  Tina bobbed her head. “I’ve bred some champions. I used to do the whole show circuit thing too. It just got to be too hectic and time-consuming. So now I mostly stick to breeding them. I still get a kick when I hear that one of my pups has won a show. The truth is,” she said, lowering her voice as if she were afraid that someone might overhear her, “they always feel like they’re mine, even after they have another home. It’s actually a bit hard for me to part with them at all. But if I didn’t, I think my husband Joe might just walk out the door and never come home again.”

  Rory squelched the desire to whisper back that she was pretty sure Joe wasn’t hiding out in the bathroom or the garage with his ear to the door. Instead she said, “Why don’t you tell me what I can do for you.”

  “Right, sorry, I tend to go off on tangents. Especially when I’m nervous. You probably have a lot of other appointments and important sleuthing to do. Do you call it sleuthing? Anyway, are you aware of all the dog abductions on the island, especially in Suffolk County, over the past few months?”

  Rory remembered reading about the crimes, but since she didn’t have a dog at the time, she hadn’t paid close attention to the news coverage.

  “Thirty-two puppies and dogs, all purebloods, stolen from breeders and pet stores as well as from individual owners. No, wait, what am I saying? It’s thirty-three now counting Tootsie.”

  Rory tried to interrupt to ask why she was counting Tootsie in with those that had been stolen, but Tina was going full throttle and apparently nothing short of a brick wall was going to stop her.

  “Ev
ery one of the missing dogs was reported to the police, but not one of them was ever found. Including my George and Gracie.” Tears welled up in her eyes. She tried to blink them back, but one escaped and trickled down her cheek. “Well, maybe they’ll take us more seriously now that Brenda’s been murdered,” she said, wiping her cheek dry.

  “I think you need to back up a few steps there,” Rory said, jumping in before Tina could get her second wind. “What makes you so sure that Brenda’s death was even related to the dog thefts?”

  “Tootsie’s missing,” she said as if that were all the proof anyone needed.

  “So was Hobo, until I found him wandering around. Whoever killed Brenda left the front door open.”

  Tina shook her head. “I just know it had to do with Tootsie. I just know.”

  It occurred to Rory that Marti Sugarman had voiced the same concern. It wasn’t necessarily a logical conclusion, but then the two women were so focused on dogs that they were probably inclined to see everything in dog-related terms.

  “With all due respect,” Rory said, “it’s far more likely that her death was the result of a botched burglary or even an argument that got out of hand.”

  “Well, there you go—Tootsie is probably worth more than anything else in Brenda’s house, Ms. McCain. A lot more. So you can call it a botched burglary or a botched dog abduction, but it’s really the same thing.”

  “I see your point,” Rory conceded, although she wasn’t quite ready to abandon the theory that Tootsie saw the open door and took off to see the world. “But without more information, we can’t ignore the possibility that an unrelated issue led to Brenda’s death.”

  Although Tina shook her head firmly to indicate that she was inclined to do just that, she refrained from continuing the debate.

  “Since these dogs are expensive,” Rory said, moving on, “I guess it’s safe to assume there’s a black market for them. Although to be honest and again with all due respect, I don’t really understand why anyone would pay a lot of money when there seem to be more than enough great mutts like Hobo to go around.”