To Sketch a Thief Page 9

  As she watched the screen, Leah’s attachment appeared. “You’ll be wantin’ a hard copy,” he said, maneuvering the mouse as well as anyone with actual hands.

  The printer spat out five pages, which Rory retrieved before he could airlift them to her. As impressed as she was with Zeke’s mastery of basic computer skills, there was a small knot of resentment forming in her gut. It was almost as if he’d staged a coup while she wasn’t watching, and was now planning to call the shots. On a rational level she knew that wasn’t true. They were partners and he was simply putting his best effort into working the case. Unfortunately her expression had already betrayed her, because Zeke vanished from her chair and took up a position near the bookshelves, arms crossed against his chest and a testy set to his mouth. It was a good thing she wasn’t trying to earn a living as a poker player.

  She considered apologizing, then decided against it. Where Zeke was concerned, it was often smarter to just move on rather than reopen an issue. She busied herself searching through the papers on her desk for the notes from Tina’s consultation. They should have been right on top. She’d had them in her hand that very morning. Where could she have put them? She stepped back to check the floor beneath the desk. She found several printed sheets there, but when she retrieved them she saw that they pertained to another case. Apparently her filing skills were as haphazard as Uncle Mac’s. Of course, as flaws went, it wasn’t a fatal one. What was really bothering her was the certainty that if she were to ask Zeke where the notes were, he’d pluck them from their hiding place and float them into her hands like a master magician.

  When she looked up again Zeke was gone. Maybe she had misjudged how irritated he was. But a moment later he was back, a smug expression on his face and her papers in his hand.

  “These what you’re lookin’ for?” he asked, holding them out to her. “You left them in the kitchen when you were checkin’ the Sugarmans’ address.”

  Rory thanked him, hoping this little triumph of his had restored the equilibrium to their seesaw of a relationship. She pulled out the information on the bereaved owners Tina had given her. Under their names were those of the veterinarians, groomers, trainers, dog parks, doggie day care centers, doggie motels and pet stores they frequented, to the best of her knowledge. The e-mail from Leah contained approximately the same type of data And even though Leah couldn’t provide her with the specific addresses from which the dogs had been stolen, she had included the towns where they’d lived.

  Since the surface of the desk that wasn’t occupied by the computer and printer was still awash in unfiled papers, Rory took Leah’s list and Tina’s and made herself as comfortable as she could on the hardwood floor.

  “Okay, let’s see if we can find a common denominator here,” she said, making an effort to sound inclusive.

  Accepting her white flag, Zeke hunkered down beside her so that he could see the lists as well. They spent the next few minutes trying unsuccessfully to find a link, someone or someplace that would tie all the missing dogs together and point the investigation in the right direction.

  Rory finally threw the papers down in frustration. “There’s nothing here that points to one person who knew all these dogs and where they lived. Look at this. These five dogs went to the same vet, these six to the same groomer. Another six used to go to the same dog park and pet store. A lot of the dogs competed in dog shows, but not all of them did. There are all sorts of connections here, but nothing that actually narrows the search.”

  “I’d take bets that there’s more than one thief,” Zeke offered. “Two or more working together would be a whole lot more efficient if we’re talkin’ about fillin’ specific requests.”

  “Thanks.” Rory sighed. “I’ve been doing my best to ignore that possibility. I’ll still be interviewing suspects long after the victims have gone on to doggie heaven.”

  “I think what we need here is a map,” he said, “to get a better sense of what’s happenin’.”

  Rory jumped up and went over to the bookcase for her uncle’s Hagstrom atlases of Nassau and Suffolk Counties. She took her sketch pad off another shelf, opened it to a blank page, grabbed a pen off the desk and resettled herself on the floor. Using the atlas, she drew a rough outline of Long Island, along with the border between Nassau and Suffolk counties.

  “Okay,” Zeke said, “now write in the names of the towns that appear on those lists.”

  Rory was already busy doing exactly that. She added a dot for each dog stolen from a particular town. By the time she’d worked her way through the lists she had an aching back and a map that showed her at a glance where the largest concentration of thefts had occurred. Huntington Township, which included nearly twenty towns, villages and hamlets, came up the big winner. Smaller pockets of activity were scattered across Suffolk as well as in the closest regions of Nassau County.

  At that moment they heard a frantic skittering sound, followed by a thump, then more skittering accompanied by a deep, breathless chuffing and the clinking of metal on metal.

  “Looks like Hobo woke up and realized you were gone.” Zeke chuckled, rising to his feet.

  “He’s got abandonment issues,” Rory chided him. “You could try showing a bit more compassion. Dogs can sense these things.”

  Hobo reached the top of the stairs and raced for the study, homing in on Rory. He was so relieved to have found her that he didn’t immediately realize Zeke was also in the room. When he did, he swerved too sharply to avoid the marshal and his right hind paw lost contact with the floor, causing him to fishtail into the marshal’s leg. With a horrible sound that was somewhere between a whimper and a scream, he launched himself into the safety of Rory’s arms.

  After the collision, Zeke’s image wavered and began to disintegrate, bits and pieces of it flying off in all directions like a dandelion seed-head scattered by the wind. Then he vanished altogether. It was several minutes before he reappeared, looking more than a little disgruntled. “Lack of compassion, huh? And here I’ve been thinkin’ it’s my lack of a body that was makin’ the poor thing uncomfortable.”

  “Are you okay?” Rory asked to be polite, although she couldn’t imagine how anything could be too wrong considering he was already dead.

  “Nothin’ that some rechargin’ can’t fix. But never mind about that. I’ve been meanin’ to ask you about that clinkin’ noise I hear whenever this fool dog is racin’ around.”

  “You mean the tags on his collar?” She brushed Hobo’s fur aside so that Zeke could see them. “One is an ID tag you can buy in any pet store. The other one you get when you register your dog with town hall.”

  “Why would you want to register a dog?”

  “It’s the law.”

  “You ain’t serious.”

  “They want to be sure that all the dogs are up-to-date on their shots, plus the yearly registration fees pump up the town coffers.”

  “Just in this town?”

  Rory shook her head. “Pretty much everywhere.”

  “Then every dog in the county is registered in one town hall or another.”

  “I can see where you’re going with this,” Rory said, shaking her head, “but it would mean that clerks from several towns were involved in the scam.”

  “Or someone found a way to axe their computers.”

  “Hack their computers.” She sighed. “And that’s very helpful. Now you’ve widened the search area to the whole island, conservatively speaking.”

  Zeke raked his fingers through his hair. “The way I see it, whether the needle’s in a haystack or someplace else, it’s still the same needle and sooner or later, if you keep at it, you’re bound to find it. I’d start off at the local town hall and see if anyone’s hacked their system recently,” he said, careful to use the correct word. “Unless you’ve got yourself a better idea.”

  Rory assured him that she didn’t. “And after you rest up from today’s little fender bender,” she added, “you can make yourself useful by looking up w
ebsites that sell dogs. Especially sites that advertise lower prices, bargains, discounts, any of those buzzwords. There’s a good chance that’s how they’re luring customers, since they don’t have the overhead of breeders or stores. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “ ‘Fender bender,’ ‘buzzwords’—sometimes it don’t even sound like you’re speakin’ English,” Zeke grumbled.

  Rory provided a brief definition of the phrases, for which he thanked her with a courtly dip of his head. Although the marshal hadn’t chosen to let go of the world, the world itself had gone on and left him behind. She couldn’t even fathom how estranged he must feel from everyone and everything he’d ever known. She vowed to be more patient with him, a tall order at the best of times, and she made a mental note to pick up a dictionary of modern idioms and slang the next time she was out.

  Chapter 11

  Rory couldn’t bring herself to push back the covers and leave the warmth of the bed. Although it was still early October, the temperature had taken a nosedive overnight, producing the first official frost of the season. Even so, with the comforter pulled up to her chin, she should have been warm enough. Yet if she moved an inch away from the warm depression her body had made in the mattress, a chill flashed through her. Hobo, who was sleeping curled into the space behind her bent knees, didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold, but then he had the advantage of a permanent fur coat.

  Rory knew she had no good options. Staying where she was and hibernating until spring would never work. Sooner or later she was going to need food and water and a trip to the bathroom. She was also pretty sure her clients were expecting some results from the retainers they’d paid her. And this particular morning she had an early appointment to meet with the Huntington town clerk, Deirdre Lopez, whose department handled dog registration among a host of other matters. There was nothing to do but leave the cozy cocoon of her bed and check the heating system. She didn’t recall ever feeling this cold when she’d visited Mac in the winter, which probably meant that something wasn’t functioning properly. Damn.

  She gave herself a pep talk. “Your bathrobe’s right inside the closet. It’s only a few steps away. You can grab it and get it on in less than a minute. Less than half a minute. Ten seconds if you’re really fast.” After a quick countdown, she threw back the quilt and sprang out of bed. The hardwood was cold beneath her bare feet, making her wish she’d installed thick pile carpeting.

  She threw the flannel robe around herself and punched her arms through the sleeves. After some rummaging among her shoes, she located her warmest slippers and slid them on. Definitely better.

  Hobo had lifted his sleepy head to see what all the commotion was about. Satisfied that nothing required his attention, he wriggled into the warm spot where she had been and went right back to sleep.

  Rory envied him.

  She shuffled over to the baseboard heaters. In the best of all possible worlds, she would have felt lovely warm air emanating from them, but in her world they were cold to the touch. Clearly not a good sign.

  With the reward of a hot mug of coffee for motivation, she trooped down the stairs to the main floor, where it was somehow even colder. She set the coffee to brewing and then made her way down the narrow wooden steps into the basement. She knew that one of the owners long before Mac had converted the system to oil heat, and she remembered having recently received an oil delivery. Beyond that, she was totally out of her element. She walked around the oil storage tank and the furnace, having no idea what she was looking for or even how they functioned. She felt as clueless as a used car buyer kicking tires.

  When she returned to the kitchen, she was heartened by the aroma of coffee filling the room. She pulled her address book out of the drawer where she kept miscellaneous papers and items she didn’t need but thought she might find a use for one day. The phone number for Atlas Oil was in her list of emergency numbers on the first page of the book.

  After a frustrating five minutes of selecting menu options, she was told by a computerized voice that a serviceman would be at her house sometime after three o’clock. She was instructed to press 1 if that was acceptable. Rory dutifully pressed 1. She’d work her day around it. No way was she going to waste another minute listening to a computer telling her what to do. It was bad enough that she lived with a ghost who was usually trying to do the same thing.

  She was sitting at the kitchen table, huddled in her bathrobe, her hands wrapped around her second cup of coffee for the warmth, when the lights flickered. She glanced around the room expecting Zeke to appear, but nothing happened. Then she noticed that the air near the center island was strangely warped, distorting objects seen through it as if it were an invisible fun house mirror.

  “Marshal?” she said, a flutter of apprehension in her tone. She didn’t know exactly what was happening, but this wasn’t starting out like any of Zeke’s normal appearances. She shook her head, amazed with herself. When had living with a ghost become so ordinary to her that she could consider the word “normal” in the same thought?

  “What’s goin’ . . . there?” Zeke’s voice skipped and crackled like a bad cell phone connection.

  Rory could barely make out what he was saying.

  “Some . . . not right,” he persisted.

  The frigid temperature in the house was the only problem she was aware of, but that was more than enough at eight o’clock in the morning. If there was anything else, she didn’t want to know about it just yet.

  “Heat’s not working,” she shouted, as if volume alone could fix their communication problem.

  “That . . . it,” he said, ”. . . need to . . . it fixed.”

  “There’s a guy coming later. That’s the best I can do.” After a moment’s thought she added, “Just try not to scare him away.”

  Either the cold was acting like an additional barrier or he specifically needed a certain level of heat for the process to work. So, Rory thought with a little smile, every cloud does have its silver lining.

  She found the office of the town clerk on the main floor of Huntington Town Hall, a three-story brick building that overlooked Main Street. She only had to wait five minutes while Deirdre Lopez finished up a meeting with one of the women who worked in her department. When her secretary let her know that Rory had arrived, she left her desk to greet Rory at the door. She was slim and stylish in a navy suit, matching pumps and elegant touches of gold jewelry. Her short blond hair was layered, each strand lacquered firmly in place. She reminded Rory of a throwback to a more formal time when women didn’t wear pants to work and wouldn’t dream of going without stockings. Like most elected officials she had the wide smile and glad-handing down pat.

  Deirdre offered her a seat and, once she was settled in it, went back to her own well-worn leather chair. The desk between them was large, functional and nondescript, likely one of many that had been purchased in bulk by the town. It struck Rory that the top of the desk was remarkably neat for someone with such a diverse range of responsibilities and more than a dozen people working under her. Rory couldn’t help but admire her organizational skills. When they were handing out the genes for that, she and Mac must have skipped out for ice cream sodas.

  “So, Ms. McCain, I understand that you’re investigating what may be the theft of several dogs in Huntington,” Deirdre said with the perfect mixture of interest and concern.

  Rory gave her a quick rundown of the situation and the reason for her visit.

  Deirdre’s brows lowered over her eyes as she listened. “I had no idea the problem had become that widespread and I have to thank you for bringing it to my attention, since no one else has seen fit to do so.” Her words were clipped with a touch of outrage and Rory had the distinct impression that someone was going to be hearing about the omission before the day was out.

  “In any case,” Deirdre went on pleasantly, her anger tucked back into its cubbyhole for the moment, “I’m happy to tell you that there haven’t been any attempts to hack into the compute
r system in this department during my tenure, which is going into its seventh year.”

  A little heavy on the preening. Apparently Deirdre also had the double-jointed gene essential in someone who liked to pat herself on the back. Rory managed to keep her poker face even as these thoughts were flashing through her mind. She wasn’t without a few talents herself.

  “If you’d like, I can certainly get in touch with my predecessor to find out if she experienced any problems of that nature.”

  Rory assured her that wouldn’t be necessary. Data from more than seven years ago would hardly be worthwhile anymore, since the dogs in question would at best be senior citizens by now.

  “I happen to maintain a casual friendship with several of the other town clerks on the island,” Deirdre went on, highlighting her social status. “If you’d like, I can touch base with them, find out if they’ve had any computer breaches and let them know about your investigation.”

  “Thank you, I’d appreciate that.” Rory fished a business card out of her handbag and passed it across the desk to her. Could Zeke’s outlandish theory be right? Was a cabal of town clerks involved in the thefts? No, she still couldn’t bring herself to buy that. But whether she accepted the offer of help or not, she had no doubt that Deirdre would soon be giving her friends a heads-up about this reopened investigation. Not that it mattered. Rory had harbored no expectations of keeping her visit a secret.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?” Deirdre edged forward in her seat, ready to spring into action the moment her visitor left.

  “You seem to run a tight ship here,” Rory acknowledged, rising from her chair, “so I assume you have no reservations about the integrity of anyone in your department, is that right?”

  “They wouldn’t last a day if I did,” Deirdre said with a little toss of her head that would have been more effective if her hair had been longer and not glued in place. She stood and came around from her side of the desk to shake Rory’s hand again. “And you can rest assured that I’ll be keeping an even more careful eye on every one of my people from now on.”