Play Dead (26 page)

“Just trying to learn more about Hannah
and Beth, really.”

“It was through one of those adult
education classes you see offered all the time. I took a class ten years ago,
and they still send me schedules every six months or so. I might have an old
class schedule around here someplace.”

She rifled through a stack of papers on
top of the refrigerator until she found what looked like a small newspaper. “Here
it is.” She paged through the catalogue, then flipped it back over and glanced
at the cover. “They even have a class going now. I didn’t realize that.”

“I’m sure they cancelled it and gave
refunds or something when Hannah died six weeks ago.”

“Not necessarily,” Mom said, looking at
the paper. “It says here she had a co-teacher named Naomi Smith. She might have
kept the class going.”

“Let me see.” I snatched the class
catalogue away from her. Mother was right. “Hot dog,” I muttered under my
breath, feeling as though I was finally on to something.

“Vegetarian ones only, I’m sure,” Mom
replied, still overly focused on food.

At eight
a.m.
the next day, I arrived at my office. During my drive into Boulder, I’d
come up with the idea of calling all the Smiths listed in the directory until I
could happen across Naomi’s number. I tossed my purse down, dropped into my
chair, grabbed the Boulder phone book, and paged through to “Smith.” The entry
was surprisingly large. I made an estimate. Approximately four hundred and fifty
Smiths in the directory—none of whom were listed as Naomi Smith.

Time for Plan B. I called the registration
number for the school, asked if I could please speak to the director of
education there, then inquired whether the class was still going on. It was.
Better yet, she gave me Ms. Smith’s number without my even having to make up an
excuse for wanting it.

I dialed this number, and Naomi Smith
answered. “My name is Allida Babcock,” I told her. “I’m calling to ask about
the cooking class that you teach.”

“Oh, yes. Our last class of the semester
meets tonight, but you’re welcome to drop in and audit, to see if you’d be
interested in signing up for the next class. That one starts in four weeks.”

“Great. Thank you so much,” I said and
hung up, slightly appalled at how deceitful I’d just been. Upon further
reflection, however, I decided that a little dishonesty went a long way. Trying
to learn more about two murdered women from the same cooking class was not
phone conversation material.

Energized with the admittedly false sense
that I was taking some action to find Beth Gleason’s killer, I drove to Joel
Meyer’s house with a renewed sense of purpose. My jaw dropped when he came to
the door.

He was clean-shaven.

“What happened to your beard?”

“I’m contemplating making a career change
and thought
the beard might
not be projecting the right corporate image.” He held his chin high and turned
his head slowly from side to side. “What do you think?”

What I
thought
was that he was now
number one on my list of suspects. The whole strange thing about insisting on
changing my tire and being in the neighborhood when Beth had been
stabbed—and now his shaving right when my mother had gotten a bizarre
visit from a clean shaven man who later may have tried to poison my dogs. A thought
pattern best kept unsaid.

“Personally, I like beards, but you might
be right about having better luck in the corporate world without one.” He
opened the door, and I noticed a distinct absence of yipping little dog. “Where’s
Suzanne?”

Joel looked puzzled. “Gee. I really don’t
know.” He turned and called for her, to no avail. “Wait here,” he told me and
strode off in search of her. Moments later there came a loud, “Oh, jeez!” from
the kitchen. “Suzanne! You miserable little rug rat!”

Out of curiosity, I followed Joel into the
kitchen. He was just slamming a closet door, Suzanne barking her protest from
his arms. He blushed at the sight of me. “I forgot to close the pantry door and
she got into the cereal.”

I nodded, but scanned the floor in
surprise. “Where’s her dog bowl?”

“Oh, it’s, uh, in the dishwasher right
now.”

He acted so disconcerted at this that I
grew extremely suspicious. “What kind of dog food do you use?”

“I, uh, gee. Can’t remember the brand
name. It’s that kind with the paw prints all over it.”

Iam’s,
I silently realized, but, to test him, asked, “Ion’s?”

“That’s it.” He swept up a leash that was
lying on the kitchen counter and clicked it on to the dog’s collar. “Off to the
park, right?”

“Yes,” I said, needing time to think. I
was now ninety—
five percent
certain that Suzanne wasn’t even Joel’s dog. And I had a pretty good idea to
whom the dog truly belonged. However, I didn’t want to show my cards too early.

“You and Tracy Truett met at the radio
station, right?” I asked by way of wanting to explore their ties and surmise
what was going on with Joel’s having conveniently shaved.

“That’s right. I used to be a tech at the
station, till I got a higher-paying job.”

“How long did you work there?”

“Couple of years.”

So the two of them could know each other
quite well,
I thought. My
belief that Tracy was totally innocent was all that was keeping me from running
from him. There were only three possible explanations for why Joel and Tracy
Truett had set me up like this. One: I had just found the killer; two: Tracy
was using Joel to find out if I was on the trail of the killer in some bizarre
attempt to save her radio career, or three: Tracy and Joel had paired up in
some equally bizarre attempt to encourage me to go out with him.

We started by walking the dog around the
block and doing basic leash training, which Suzanne was sorely lacking. She was
also showing the fascination for sights, sounds, and smells a dog has in a
relatively unexplored neighborhood.

I immediately discarded the thought of
using any kind of aversion techniques to discourage Suzanne’s barking—
such as spritzing her with water—because this is something I would only
want to do after first discussing it with the dog’s owner. A block from Joel’s
house, we encountered a Boston terrier in a fenced yard. Both dogs barked
wildly at each other, and we stuck to the basic positive reinforcement
training.

We made some progress during the hour-long
session— probably all wasted effort on my part, considering Suzanne was
not in the presence of her owner, and how well any dog will behave for a
trainer is irrelevant if the lessons aren’t reinforced at home.

Joel praised me lavishly and asked me out
again, which I declined. I left, got into my car, drove around the block, then
parked just beyond the view from Joel’s windows.

Not even fifteen minutes later, a sporty
two-door that looked like a Corvette came zipping around the corner and pulled
into Joel’s driveway. Tracy Truett emerged. Leaving the engine running, she
trekked to Joel’s door and let herself in.

I got out of my car and peered into hers,
just to see if I could verify my suspicions. Dog hair was all over the
passenger seat.

Tracy came back down the steps a minute
later, with Suzanne under her arm. Her jaw dropped at the sight of me standing by
her bumper.

“Hi, Tracy. Can we have a little talk
about you and your dog?”

“I knew you’d figure this out, sooner or
later.” With Suzanne balanced on a hip under her arm, she marched past me. She
was wearing a bright, solid yellow outfit that all but screamed “Big Bird” to
me. “I have no idea how I wound up letting Joel convince me to lend him Suzanne
in the first place.” She unlocked the passenger door and held it open for me. “Get
in.”

I shook my head and gestured at my vehicle
parked at the far end of the block. “I’ve got my car—”

“My feet are killing me. We either sit
down in my car to talk, or we can head back inside and yak with Joel for a
while. I figure you probably want to hear this from me first, or you wouldn’t
have ambushed me here in the first place.”

I toyed with the notion of pointing out to
her that she was in no position to accuse
me
of ambushing
her,
but
it struck me as wasted breath. I sighed and got into the little car, Suzanne
eagerly hopping onto my lap.

“See, it’s like this,” Tracy said as soon
as she plopped into her own seat. “My God but these new shoes are killing me.”
She pulled them off as she spoke and chucked them onto the rear window ledge. “Why
on earth I had to go out and spend my savings on shoes when I don’t even have a
job and—”

“Tracy, could you just explain why Joel
wanted to pretend Suzanne was his dog?”

“You probably already figured this out for
yourself, but it was so he could have an excuse to see you.”

“And, if we had started dating, what? Didn’t
he think I was going to notice the absence of his dog?”

“He planned to tell you that now that you’d
done such a great job improving his dog’s demeanor, he felt he could give her
to someone who had a more flexible schedule. Someone who could be with her more
and who really wanted her.”

“That would be you?”

She threw up her hands. “Hey, don’t look
at me like that. This was all Joel’s idea. I told him way back you’d never fall
for it, but did he listen?”

Her story was plausible, but did nothing
to allay my concerns about Joel’s having shaved at such an inopportune moment. “Why
did Joel shave his beard?”

She let out a guffaw. “Hate to disappoint
you, honey, but
that
he didn’t do for your love. He’s willing to pretend
he’s a disobedient-dog owner...or whatever I meant to say. But he didn’t shave
to impress you. He’s been working the night shift on some production-line
hoozy-fradgit place, and he’s trying to clean up his image to impress the head
muckamucks. He wants a promotion so he can join the white collar, silk tie wearers
of the world.”

If only I could find out that he hadn’t
shaved till after four
p.m.
or so
yesterday, when the suspicious, clean shaven dog food salesman came to Mother’s
door. “Do you know what time he shaved it off? I saw him yesterday morning, and
he still had it then.”

She shrugged. “He’s been talking about
taking it off for a while now, but I didn’t see him yesterday, except to drop
off and pick up Suzanne in the morning. Why?”

“I just...I’m afraid he might be involved
in all of this mess with Beth Gleason’s murder.”

“Joel? “
she shrieked. “Hah! He wouldn’t hurt a
fly. I mean, yeah, he tried to pull the fur over your eyes to get you to be
interested in him, but that’s just Joel. Every week, he falls in love with a
different strange woman he happens to pass in the street. Which is not to say
that you’re strange, or a streetwalker, or anything. Just that...well, you know
what I mean. Then he concocts these elaborate schemes to run into her again.
They never work, but they don’t harm anyone, either.”

If this was the whole story, I hadn’t been
“harmed” by his subterfuge, either. Not so long as I got paid for my work with
Suzanne.

“So how do you like my dog? She’s
extremely intelligent, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” I said with sincerity, though that
was one question I never said “no” to; admitting a client’s dog was not the
brightest thing you’d seen on four paws was the fastest way to lose a client. “And
that’s all the more reason to train her well. Intelligent dogs are much happier
when they know what their owner expects from them and can be challenged
accordingly.”

“Well, then. That settles it.” She patted
my arm. “Let’s just keep this little meeting to ourselves, shall we? The least
we deserve out of all of this is for him to pay you, and for me to get a well trained
dog out of the deal.”

“Except that much of my work is with the
owner, not just the dog, so I need you—”

“Aah, we can work that out. I’ll just
insist on joining the two of you on all your training sessions. Joel’s in no
position to object. Hate to boot you out, but I gotta jam.”

“Jam?” Was that radio lingo?

“I gotta find a job.” She grinned and
leaned toward me, her wide, square-jawed face just inches from mine. “Say. I’ve
been meaning to tell you. I worked for a couple of years as a dog groomer. I
was pretty good, too.” She poofed up her own wet poodle-like hair spikes as she
spoke. “Want to hire me as a combination receptionist-slash-groomer?”

“I can’t afford to hire a receptionist,
and I don’t include dog grooming in my services.”

“You’ve got to expand your vision, Al.
Think about it. You could call your new business ‘A Whole New Woof.’ I could
clean up their fur; you could clean up their behavior. It can’t miss. And, it’ll
make your work a whole lot easier. See, if the dog looks better, the owners will
enjoy being around their dogs more, so they’ll naturally think the dog behaves
better, too.”