Death on Torrid Ave. Read online

  He handed me the left-handed onion. On the return trip, his hand took a detour, seeming to hover over my hair.

  I stepped back. “What are you doing?”

  “You look a lot better than you did at the dog park.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I bit off Right back at you before it escaped.

  That flustered him a bit. “Sorry. Your hair. You had some hair messed up. Probably form the hood…” Or maybe he pretended to be flustered, because he recovered awfully fast. “You shouldn’t hide it by tying your hood tight.”

  “It was sleeting.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He cleared his throat and I realized there’d been a long pause. “Why were you smiling at the onions?” he asked.

  “Memories.”

  His mouth quirked. “About onions?”

  “Yes.” The single word and tone should close that door. “And I need to finish shopping if I want to make more memories. See you the day after tomorrow.”

  With a cool smile, I moved on.

  We didn’t cross paths again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next day, I had a couple errands to run on the way to the dog park. Why don’t you come along and see where I moved to, a town named Haines Tavern, Kentucky.

  In writing fiction, it’s called establishing the normal world.

  In A Christmas Carol, that’s Scrooge being, well, a Grinch. And in Grinch, that’s the Grinch being a Scrooge. In the first Star Wars it’s Luke Skywalker’s life down on the farm or up on the farm. It’s also life down on the farm for Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

  Aunt Kit taught me all that.

  So, here’s my new normal world.

  I backed out of my attached garage. The garage was of much more recent vintage than the house, but nicely done, including sitting back from the house’s Georgian façade — a supporting cast member giving front-of-stage to the star.

  The garage represented the one area I didn’t have plans to work on. The rest would take time.

  Continuing to back up the car, I bypassed dead, thorny branches of overgrown rosebushes on the left — hoping they were winter dead and would come back in the spring — and tried to ignore the expectant gaze of my dog in the rearview mirror.

  I knew disappointment was coming her way and felt guilty. Dogs do not understand the value of delayed gratification.

  Our routine of the past month included walks for her, interviewing contractors for me, trips to the dog park for her, yoga for me, chewing on toys for her, planning improvements on the house for me, checking out the window for potential marauders for her, talking on the phone with various family members for me, creating nose art on every window in the house for her, attending lectures at the County Extension office to learn about caring for the flora lurking under dead leaves and frost for me…

  It’s exactly the contrast I wanted from the previous fifteen years. Pleasant, quiet, serene, even a little boring.

  I know, I know. I never should have even thought that last part.

  It was an invitation to trouble.

  Because here’s the thing about setting up the normal life in fiction — it’s the precursor to knocking that poor protagonist for one heck of a loop.

  By a ghost and three spirits, by the true Christmas spirit of the Whos, by a galactic war, by a tornado. Our hero — ahem, or heroine — is about to have normal smashed to smithereens.

  * * * *

  Gracie slumped in the back seat when we turned right instead of left at the first stop sign.

  She already knew left meant the dog park. Good.

  Right meant something other than the dog park. Bad.

  Gracie and I are past the initial getting-to-know-you stage, but I catch myself now and then looking at her and thinking, Holy smokes, I’m totally responsible for this creature.

  Yes, a lot of people my age — mid-thirties — are responsible for a number of creatures, including little human ones. But during my Abandon All years, I didn’t do any of the pairing up into a couple and starting a family that often occurs during those years. So this was new for me.

  I prepared for it by researching.

  Not only did I do considerable research in college, but in the years with Kit, I added a virtual Ph.D.

  I tagged along while she did background training, interviews, and road trips for whatever she wrote. It was a necessity for the follow-up books to Abandon All. I could better pretend to be their mother since I’d been present during their gestation.

  Besides, it was fun, so I did it for all her books, especially enjoying the background work for her mysteries.

  So, naturally, my preparation to adopt a rescue dog included research. I read about the importance of bonding with the animal. One blogger wrote about how she went a week without bathing to imprint her scent on the animal.

  Phew! I bet it imprinted on the dog. And anybody else within a mile.

  Before I gave up showers, however, a footnote said the blogger returned the animal because they weren’t on the same wave length.

  Sometimes I wished the dogs got to vote on who adopted them.

  When I was a kid, my family had Bounce, a golden retriever. Lovable, loving, amiable, and not the brightest. He would have imprinted with a rock. He certainly bonded with my stuffed caterpillar named Wombat. Bounce took over Wombat his first day in the house. We’d find the increasingly woebegone Wombat in drawers, under the bed, behind doors, nestling in potted plants, and sitting in Bounce’s water dish. We buried Wombat with him.

  Gracie was decidedly more emotionally cautious than Bounce.

  Not me. I was the human version of Bounce.

  I took one look at Gracie on the collie rescue website and I forgot every other breed, mix, and unknown I’d looked at. I was smitten. Not with a collie. With this collie.

  When I went to her foster home to meet her, my heart thudded hard with excitement.

  The heart-thudding took on different cadences as I went through the vetting — no pun intended — process, including a home visit.

  Then came the day I brought her home. When I invited her to jump into the back of my car, she gave her foster mother a long don’t-make-me-do-this look. With tears in her eyes and voice, the woman said, “It’s okay, Gracie. You’ll be happy with Sheila. Good girl.” Gracie didn’t budge. “Get in the car, Gracie.”

  Without looking at me, Gracie obeyed the foster mom.

  I talked to her throughout the drive to Haines Tavern. She looked out the window.

  As I took her out of the car, I bent down to grab the bag of goodies the foster mother sent along and caught a whiff of the top of Gracie’s head.

  Corn chips.

  If I wasn’t already there, I fell irrevocably in love.

  I’m not even that wild about corn chips. On her, though, the scent was irresistible.

  I swear I’ve caught this dog looking at me with the flipped version of my Holy smokes, I’m totally responsible for this creature thought — that she’s responsible for me.

  Collies can be like that, according to my reading. They’re bred to watch over the flock. If you become their flock, get ready to be watched.

  But Gracie has not fallen in love with me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  First errand stop was the post office to mail a package of cookies to my great-aunt Kit.

  Until the past few months, I’d periodically packaged up cookies and taken them to the madhouse post office in Manhattan to send to my family, while Kit ate them straight from the brownstone’s kitchen.

  Now, I took them along when I drove to visit my family every few weeks — we needed to talk about them coming to visit me — and mailed survival rations to Kit in North Carolina. Yes, she could get cookies in the Outer Banks, where she now lived, but not my caramel nut cookies.

  From my point of view, it didn’t hurt that I did the mailing from the Haines Tavern post office.

  In dipping into the history of my new town, I’d learned the Haines Tavern post office started l
ife as the first permanent house in the county. It also had been the first Haines’ tavern, barn, and stable.

  It became the post office well after Hezekiah Haines built a second, significantly larger, brick structure as his home, tavern, and lodging rooms — with separate barn and stable, the height of poshness.

  The post office sat in the center of one of the four blocks facing the town square. Next to it was the town’s branch of the county library. On its other side sat another historic building, which housed a combination hardware and feed store. That might sound like it ruined the charm of the town square, but the frontage on the square retained its historic appearance, while the business end of hardware and feed faced the back, with the entrance from a side street.

  The Historic Haines Tavern — every written reference included the word historic, always capitalized — occupied the square frontage at right angles to the post office and its companions. This was the second of Hezekiah’s buildings. The tavern sat in the middle with a set-back patio and deck flanking it for summer seating, then gardens, all enclosed by a tidy fence replicating the one in a 19th nineteenth century painting of the Historic Haines Tavern, available as postcards, prints, and placemats.

  Next around the square came two churches sitting side-by-side — First Church of Haines Tavern and First Church of North Bend County. Someday, I wanted to learn the history of those two buildings. I had an image of a race to finish first that left John Henry in the dust.

  The county courthouse occupied the fourth side of the square, directly across from the tavern. That had to be convenient in earlier times when people got drunk at the tavern and could be marched straight across to the courthouse, which also served as the jail.

  Now Historic Haines Tavern’s main business was serving meals, with the bar mostly for waiting for a table. And the current jail was about a mile away, near the dog park.

  Of course, in the center, sat the town square and at its center rose a fountain. I looked forward to seeing it running when the weather turned warm. I also had hopes for the square’s four corners, which promised gardens in the spring.

  Today, they were slushy, sodden messes.

  Oh, yes, it would be another fine day at the dog park.

  But, first, the post office.

  * * * *

  “Good morning, Shelia.”

  “Hi, Ruby.”

  Ruby Zweydorf had called me by name since my first trip to the post office and insisted I reciprocate. Nobody was a stranger to Ruby. Including my dog. “You didn’t bring our sweet girl Gracie in today? Leave her at home?”

  The Haines Tavern, Kentucky, post office might have influenced my decision to buy the house I did.

  As I mentioned, this normal world is all pretty new to me.

  The first time I saw the post office, on the way to viewing the house, it was decorated for Christmas, exactly the way a tiny brick historical building should be decorated. With deep red ribbons on real evergreen wreaths hung on the central door and in each of the two narrow windows on either side of it.

  Now firmly into February, I missed the decorations, but the elfin proportions still made the building cute.

  Ruby matched the proportions, except for her outsized smile.

  “Gracie’s in the car,” I said. “We’re on our way to the dog park, but needed to mail this first.”

  “More cookies?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “But why didn’t you bring Gracie in?”

  “Uh, that customer of yours wasn’t too happy last time I did. Said it was against the law except for service dogs. I didn’t want to risk causing a problem for you.”

  I was being discreet by not naming the customer who had objected vociferously to Gracie being in the post office a couple weeks ago. I’d been taken aback by his reaction. He knew Gracie from the dog park and certainly wasn’t afraid of her.

  “Pffft. I’d call Bob Coble a fussy old woman, but I won’t insult old women. And I can handle any problem he tries to dish out.”

  Ruby clearly didn’t consider discretion necessary in front of the gray-haired man sitting on a stool in the corner reading the newspaper. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’d ever been in the post office when he wasn’t there in the corner, behind a newspaper.

  “Besides, this is my post office. Your Gracie is welcome any time, as sweet and well-behaved as she is.”

  Gracie can be sweet. Not all the time, but sometimes. As for well-behaved … call it a work in progress.

  I suspected Gracie’s behavior was bathed in the warm glow of nostalgia in Ruby’s eyes. She’d told me her family had a beloved and amazing collie during her childhood.

  “Though I can see why you didn’t want to take the cookies to the dog park,” she said. “Those dogs get one whiff of cookies and they’ll all be fighting to get in your car. Works the same way on me. I know you pack these up real well, but I swear I can smell them.”

  I chuckled, and pulled out a baggie with three cookies from my pocket and placed it on the counter. “Can’t have you getting in trouble for tampering with the mail.”

  “You are an angel.” She scooped up the baggie in a nanosecond.

  If Bob Coble saw this transaction, he’d probably report me for offering and Ruby for accepting a bribe to a postal employee. Especially if he ever saw Gracie come inside again.

  He certainly couldn’t complain when Ruby charged and I paid the full rate to get these cookies to Aunt Kit.

  “You bring Gracie in next time,” Ruby said as I prepared to leave. “I’ve taken care of Bob Coble.”

  I waved and went next door to the library, dropping off two movies on DVD and a tome on home renovations and repair. I picked up three more books on the topic — my head was going to explode soon — another on dogs, a trio of back issue magazines, and two more movies to supplement the ebook fiction I read.

  “I swear your house already looks better,” Amy Kackley, the woman behind the checkout counter said to me.

  I could have checked out electronically, but it doesn’t always work with the DVDs. Besides, I’d seen Amy and wanted to say hello for entirely selfish reasons.

  Donna introduced us a few weeks ago in the hardware store. Amy lived at the other end of the block from me and I often encountered her on walks with Gracie. Every time we spoke, she had something nice to say about the house. I couldn’t resist the boosts.

  “I haven’t had a chance to do much outside,” I demurred.

  The first priorities included replacing the roof, then repairing and painting the exterior trim.

  The kitchen and bathrooms functioned. Updating them would come later. The floors were solid, but needed refinishing. Raised seams under the paint revealed its neutral colors covered wallpaper.

  “Sometimes a house perks up, like it knows somebody’s taking an interest. Heading to the dog park?”

  “We are. Gracie’s in the car.”

  “I wish I could go during the workday when it’s not as crowded. Though, I hear that means you’re more likely to be the target for that demagogue.”

  Since I didn’t know whether she meant Dwight or Bob, I stuck with, “Gracie loves having lots of room to run.”

  “Well, I see you have lots more hard work ahead of you.” She nodded toward my checked-out stack. “The house is going to love it and so am I, watching everything you do.”

  I left the library with a heavy load but lighter spirits.

  Back at the car, Gracie spun around in the back seat excitedly.

  I didn’t fool myself it was for me. She was sure she knew where we were going next.

  And she was right.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Even with the errand-running, we reached the dog park ahead of Clara and LuLu, which threatened to send my dog into apoplexy.

  As soon as I saw the SUV pulling in, I had Gracie out and ready to go. She was done with being patient.

  I sprung the good news on Clara as soon as her door opened. “The mud’s going to be even worse today.”
/>   “We could go in the other section.”

  “Berrie’s there.”

  She backed out of where she’d been hooking LuLu to her leash and stared. “In a large-dog area?”

  LuLu took the opening to jump down without permission and greet Gracie with mutual, prancing circles.

  “She and the Bostons are with somebody with a large dog — a German shepherd.”

  Clara rolled her eyes as she closed up the SUV. “Who’s she lecturing this time?”

  “I didn’t recognize it.”

  It was not a veiled slap at the woman with Berrie, but referring to the German shepherd.

  Dogs were easier to identify than owners. They didn’t change clothes and rarely adopted a new hair style. Plus, there was frequently someone shouting their name, a great memory aid.

  “Doesn’t look happy in there with Berrie,” Clara said with a hint of satisfaction as she scanned the enclosure Ronald had used yesterday.

  That was one of the elements that saved Clara from being just too nice.

  Her observation was accurate. She didn’t look happy. She looked cowed — the owner, not the dog.

  As we approached the vestibule, any hope that being in a different enclosure would deter Marcus from his usual demonstration evaporated.

  He zipped from the far end to the gate, starting his noise well before he arrived. The Bostons brigade came after him.

  The shepherd tried to resist.

  His head swiveled from the gate to his owner and back.

  But after thirty seconds of head-swiveling, it was too much for him.

  He jumped up from a sit, turning toward the gate in mid-air and added his thunderous bark to the melee.

  “Do you mind!” Berrie shouted. “You’re interrupting a lesson.”

  “As if it’s our fault,” Clara grumbled. I barely heard her.

  Clara and I made our dogs sit and stay while we removed their leashes, then we released them into the enclosure. It was always a close-run thing of whether we could get out “okay” before they disappeared. Today was a little easier than yesterday. Today there were no other dogs in the enclosure to lure them.