A Dog's Life

by Myra Love

       Chapter II

Later in the morning, the chief sent me to talk to some of Jim’s creditors.  I wasn’t surprised at that.  Everyone in town thinks I’m easy to talk to, with the possible exception of Clarence Haynes’ son Buzz.  I didn’t do a good job on a case that involved Buzz, and I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me, even though it all came out okay in the end.  As a result though, the chief took me off cases that have to do with juveniles and put me on regular duty.  I’m not crazy about the arrangement, but I can understand why.  And I’m doing pretty well with my new assignment.  With the exception of Buzz, everyone in town likes me and has enough respect for my badge that I rarely have to come on heavy or threatening.

Mattie had mentioned John Walsh and Marcus Fleming as two of Jim’s main creditors.  I knew of at least two more, Tom Willard and Clay Clausen, whom nearly everyone called CC.  The only guy of the bunch whom I really liked was Marcus, and it seemed strange to me that he’d have gambled with Jim.  Visiting Marcus, his wife Annie, and their son Joe is always a treat, so I decided to save him for last and end my day on a cheerful note.  Of course, at the time it didn’t occur to me to think that the visit might be less than pleasant if I arrived to question Marcus about his possible involvement in a crime.

I don’t know John Walsh very well.  He’s the assistant director of the human resources department at the hospital a couple of miles outside of town.  When I asked the chief what the man actually did, he said, “Hiring and firing.  More firing than hiring.”  That didn’t seem like a job for a nice guy, but since it was a sunny morning, I decided to roll down the windows of my car and take a ride out there to tackle him first.

When I walked into the hospital, I headed straight to the admissions desk since that and the ER were the places I knew best.  Usually Betty Dennison is behind the admissions desk, but this time a young woman was there.  I had never seen her before.

“May I help you?” she asked politely.

I smiled my best smile.  “Could you tell me where to find the human resources department?”

She pursed her lips.  “Turn right at the end of the hallway and follow the corridor until you come to a short set of stairs.  HR is downstairs.”

I smiled again, but she was already looking over my shoulder at the middle-aged man behind me.  “May I help you?” she asked him.

“Thank you,” I said.  She looked at me blankly, so I turned and went down the hallway.

The human resources office was marked with a sign, so I knew I was in the right place.  I knocked, and when no one responded, I pushed the door gently and walked in.  I didn’t see anyone in the office, and I was about to turn around and leave, when I heard a crashing noise from behind a door inside the office.  I’d assumed the door led into a closet, but when I walked over and opened it, I could see that there was an office behind it.  The inner office was small and had only one tiny window, but it held a desk.  Behind the desk was a man who looked very agitated.  For a second I couldn’t figure out why.  Then as my eye took in his motion, I recalled the noise that had caught my attention.  He’d knocked over a cup, spilling liquid on his desk and was struggling to mop it up.  He had a scowl on his face, but I walked into his little office anyway.  As soon as I got near the desk, I could identify the spilled liquid as coffee and the man as John Walsh from the nametag pinned on his jacket.

He looked up, a scowl on his face.  “Who are you?” he demanded.  “What are you doing here?”

Since I was in uniform, I didn’t feel I needed to tell him that I was with the police, so I just announced my name.

“Andy Searle?” he mumbled.  “The name sounds familiar.”  He shook his head in disgust and tossed several sopping tissues in the wastebasket near his desk.  “I never forget a name,” he added, “but I’m not good with faces.”

  I looked around the tiny office. It held the desk and chair, nothing else. There was no place for me to sit down.

“Andy Searle…Andy Searle,” the man repeated.  Then suddenly he smiled.  “You’re Jim Keeley’s nephew.  Well, actually Mattie’s nephew, aren’t you?”  His smile grew broad.  “I told you I never forgot a name!”

“Mr. Walsh,” I said seriously, “I need to ask you some questions.”

He looked blank.  “Questions?” he repeated.

“Can we go somewhere to talk?” I asked.

He shrugged.  “Can’t we talk here?”  He seated himself behind his desk, but then immediately jumped to his feet.  “Damn it!” he yelled and tried to turn his head far enough to look at the seat of his pants.  “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

He’d sat down in a puddle of cold coffee.  It was hard not to laugh, but I controlled myself.  “I need to go home and change clothes,” he announced, frowning.  “I suppose you can come along and we can talk there.  Though I have no idea what you want to talk about with me.”  He shot me an appraising stare.  “Must be something to do with Jim.”

I wanted to ask him what made him think Jim was involved, but I was still trying too hard not to laugh as I followed the man out of his office.  He used a side door to leave the building, which was smart, given how wet his pants looked.

“My car is over there,” he said, pointing to the employee parking lot.  You can follow me.”

I started to ask for his address, just in case I lost sight of him, but then I remembered that it was in my notebook.  I’d done my research before I set out.  So I went over to my car and pulled into traffic.

Walsh lived in town, but right on the edge, where the new developments were.  His house was one of about twenty identical units.  When he pulled into a driveway, I pulled in behind him.  As I walked past his car to follow him inside I noticed that he’d spread newspaper on the driver’s seat.  It took me a minute before I realized he was just trying to protect his BMW from the coffee on his pants.  Shaking my head, I walked through the door that he held open for me.

“Just wait until I change and we can talk,” he said, racing towards the door to what must have been the master bedroom.  “My wife will have a fit.  She just got this suit back from the dry cleaner yesterday.”

I sat down in the living room.  It was enormous, so big that my entire apartment could have fit in one corner and there’d have been plenty of room left over.  The house was big, but the living room was oversized.  I reached into my pocket for my notebook.  I hadn’t remembered that Walsh was married.  Checking my notes, I saw that his wife Mary Ellen was a full partner at Loggins, Merriweather, and Walsh, a big law firm in the city.  I wondered if she were in their criminal defense unit or handled contracts and civil suits.  Her job explained the big house and the BMW.  I was sure hospital administrators didn’t earn that much.

Walsh came into the living room dressed in another expensive suit and sat down across from me on the sofa.  “Now what can I do for you?”

I cleared my throat and paged through my notebook slowly.  I always paged through my notebook before I started asking questions. It helped me focus and made the person I was about to question a little nervous.

“Hmm, let me see,” I mumbled, paging through my notebook some more.  When I looked up, he was staring at me with an amused expression on his face.  I closed the notebook.  “What made you think that I was coming to talk to you about my Uncle Jim?” I asked.

He raised his eyebrows.  “Did I say I thought that?” he asked in a bored voice.

I nodded.  “Right before we left your office.”

He shrugged.  “Well, Jim owes me a bit of money, and I spoke with him about paying me just an hour or so before you showed up.  So I guess it occurred to me that he might have asked you to come to see me.”

“Why?” I demanded.

He snorted.  “To ask for more time, of course.  Why indeed!”

I didn’t say anything for a minute.  Walsh took a deep breath.  “Now what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Where were you last night?” I asked in as casual a voice as I could manage.

He peered at me with bewildered eyes.  “Last night?”  He shrugged.  “I left work around seven, drove home, and waited for my wife to come cook dinner.”

“And then?”

“She got home around eight, and we ate at eight-thirty.  Then I watched a DVD while she cleaned up, did the dishes, and finished some work she’d brought home.  We went to bed around eleven.”  He sniffed.  “She fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, but it took me an hour to fall asleep.”  His face looked resentful.

“Do you usually have trouble sleeping, Mr. Walsh?” I asked.

He frowned.  “I’m sensitive to traffic noises,” he replied.  “Even here you hear trucks on the highway.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.  Sensitive is not the word I’d have used to describe the guy.  “So do you have trouble sleeping through the night or just trouble falling asleep?”

He looked puzzled.  “Why these questions about my sleeping habits?”

“Were you awake during the middle of the night?” I persisted.

He shook his head. “No, I slept right through from midnight to six-thirty.”

“How about your wife?” I asked.

“How about my wife what?” Walsh snapped, sounding annoyed.

“Did she wake up before you?  She has a lot further to go to work, doesn’t she?”

Walsh groaned.  “She sleeps like the dead.  Never wakes up until I wake her up.”

I nodded.  “So she can’t attest to your having been in bed during most of the night.”

He shook his head.  “What’s going on?  Why all the questions?”

I smiled grimly.  “Have you ever visited my Uncle Jim at home?”

Walsh nodded.  “Of course I have.  We’ve played poker at his place, your aunt’s place, every month for the past couple of years.”

“Who else besides you and Jim?” I demanded.

Walsh rolled his eyes.  “The usual, of course.  CC, Tom, Jim, and me.”

“You know gambling is illegal in this state,” I said firmly.

He smiled.  “Who said we gamble?  Maybe we play for matchsticks.”

“And maybe I’m the queen of England,” I retorted.  “When do you guys get together?”

Walsh shrugged.  “When the spirit moves us.”

I narrowed my eyes. “We could continue this conversation at the police station.”

“First and third Wednesday of every month,” he said under his breath.  “First Wednesday at Tom’s place, third at Jim’s.”

“You never play here?”

He shook his head.  “Wife would call the cops on us.  She hates gamb…ah, poker playing,” he replied.  “Mary Ellen isn’t as good-natured as your aunt.  But maybe it’s a generational difference.  Back when Mattie was young, women knew their place.”

I managed to suppress a snort by turning it into a cough.

“Anything else you need to ask me?” Walsh demanded petulantly.  “If not, I have to go back to the office.”

I snapped my notebook shut.  “That’s all for now, but keep yourself available.   I may have more questions later.”

“You never told me what this is about,” he mumbled.

“That’s right,” I agreed with a grin.  I turned to go. “I’ll need to talk to your wife sometime soon, just to see if she can give you an alibi.”

“An alibi?” Walsh repeated.

I smiled. “I can let myself out,” I said, and I did.

“Two birds with one stone,” I called out as I walked onto the grounds of Clayton Clausen’s GM dealership.  Clausen stood in front of the door to the showroom talking to Tom Willard.  Willard looked over at me and pretended I hadn’t said a word.

“Hello, Andy,” Clausen said amiably.  “Come to trade that cruiser in for a real car?  I can give you a good deal on an SUV.”

I shook my head.  Tom Willard cleared his throat.  “Well, if you and Andy need to talk business, I’d best be on my way,” he said, turning to go.

“Wait up, Tom,” I called out before he could get more than a few feet away from CC.   I need to talk with both of you, and I might as well do it now rather than hunting each of you down separately.”

Tom Willard swallowed hard.  I could see his Adam’s apple move.  “Hunt us down?  Gee, that doesn’t sound very friendly,” he said, smiling broadly.  The smile didn’t reach his eyes though.  They remained wary.

“Come about Jim and Mattie’s dog?” Clausen asked.

I nodded, sorry not to have the chance to question them without their knowing exactly what I was up to, the way I had been able to do with John Walsh.

“Well, you might as well come into the showroom then.  My office is in the back,” he continued, sounding resigned, but not at all nervous.  “Jackson!” he yelled at the young man sweeping leaves from the tops of the cars in the lot. “I’ll be in the back.  Keep an eye on things out here and in the showroom!”

Jackson looked up from his mopping and called out, “Aye, aye, sir!”  He didn’t seem to be kidding, and Clausen smirked at me, raised his eyebrows, and pointed to his temple with his forefinger.

I kept my face immobile and followed Clausen into the showroom, past the cars on display.  Tom Willard dragged in after me.  Clausen’s office was a large room with a desk, comfortable leather chair, and matching sofa.  Behind the desk, he had a bar.

“Care for something?” he asked, indicating the bottles lined up on the bar.  “Or are you not allowed to drink on duty?”

I shook my head, but Tom Willard mumbled, “Don’t mind if I do.”

“Wasn’t really offering you, Tom, but go ahead if you want,” Clausen said with a smirk.

Willard filled a glass with whiskey and seated himself on the sofa.  Clausen didn’t take anything.  He just sat down behind his desk and put his feet up.  “Now what can we do for you, Andy?”

I looked around the office and realized I had nowhere to sit other than next to Tom Willard.  Sitting beside him wouldn’t put me in a good location to evaluate his expressions, so I walked over to Clausen’s chair and pulled it away from the desk and shoved it across the room, so it was next to the sofa.  “There!” I said, smiling.  “Now I can keep an eye on both of you.”  I seated myself atop the large desk and pulled out my notebook.

Clausen looked annoyed.  He hadn’t liked being dragged across the room in  his chair.  Willard, on the other hand, who’d already taken a big gulp of his drink, looked like he wanted to laugh and was trying hard not to.

“So you know about Jim and Mattie’s dog, do you?” I addressed Clausen.  He glared at me and nodded.  “How about you?” I turned to Willard.

He shook his head.  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“He didn’t tell you that one of their dogs had been stolen?” I asked, inclining my head towards Clausen.

Willard shook his head again.  “I just got here a couple of minutes before you showed up.  Maybe CC would have said something to me if you hadn’t interrupted us.”

I gave him a dubious look.  “Where were you last night?” I asked Willard.

“What time?”

“Oh, why don’t you start around ten?” I suggested.

He laughed mirthlessly.  “That’s easy.  I sat in front of the TV from ten to eleven and watched the news.  Then I went to bed.”

“And you?” I asked Clausen.

H smiled.  “Pretty much the same,” he said amiably, his pique at me apparently gone.  “I start work at seven in the morning, so I don’t stay up very late.”

“Not even on the first and third Wednesdays of the month?” I asked sharply.

Clausen and Willard made eye contact briefly.  I couldn’t tell anything from their faces.  I’d hoped for some sort of visible reaction, maybe a start of surprise, but I guess playing poker you get good at keeping your feelings to yourself.

“On the first and third Wednesday of the month,” Clausen began, “we get together with a couple of friends.  There’s no law against that, is there, Officer Searle?”

I smiled faintly, feeling like I’d managed to rattle him a little.  Otherwise, he wouldn’t have switched from calling me Andy to calling me Officer Searle.  “No law against getting together with friends, no, but betting on poker is illegal.”

“Who said anything about betting on poker?” he asked, his face bland.

“So Jim didn’t lose money to you or Tom?  He doesn’t owe you anything?”

Willard grunted, but before he had a chance to say anything, Clausen cut him off.  “I lent Jim some money a while back.  If I’m not mistaken, Tom did as well.”

I suppressed a snort.  “Let me get this straight.  He owes you money, but not as a result of losses at poker.”

“That’s correct,” Clausen answered.

“You lent him money as well?” I asked Tom Willard.

Tom Willard scowled.  “A little.  The poor guy is having trouble staying on top of things.  His wife spends on those dogs like there’s no tomorrow.”  He shook his head.  “I can’t stand dogs.  Don’t like cats either.”

“Nor kids either,” CC interjected.  Tom Willard taught at the local high school.  If Clausen was trying to get a rise out of him, he failed.  Tom just nodded.

“That’s right.  Hate the little buggers.  Of course, some of them on my football team aren’t so little.”  Willard was very proud of his team and scornful of anyone in the student body who wasn’t on it.  The only reason the school district kept him on was because he kept taking the team to the state finals.

“Both of you lent Jim money, you say.  Have you recently put any pressure on him to pay you back?”

CC’s face took on a very innocent look.  “Us?  We’re his friends.  We’d never pressure him.”

Tom Willard nodded enthusiastically.  “Yeah, we’re his friends.”

CC’s expression changing slightly, so he looked mildly accusatory.   “If you’d use your influence to get that aunt of yours to stop adding dogs to the household, maybe Jim would be able to save some money.”

I snorted.  “Right!  And Santa Claus will bring Lisa and me a new house at Christmas.”

“When are you two going to tie the knot?” Willard interjected.  “Seems like you’ve been engaged forever.”

I didn’t reply to that.  I had no interest in letting him change my interrogation into a conversation about Lisa and me.  “So let me see if I have this right,” I said.  “You don’t play poker with Jim for money, but you did lend him money.  And neither of you has an alibi for last night.”  I opened my notebook and pretended to scan it.  “Now what if I told you that I had a witness that says otherwise?”

Clausen shrugged.   “Well, it would be his word against the two of us, wouldn’t it?”

I closed my  notebook.  “Stay available in case I have more questions,” I ordered them.

CC smiled.  “We aren’t going anywhere, are we Tom?”

Willard smiled back at him.  “We’re longtime residents of this place.  We have homes, families, and jobs.  We aren’t going anywhere.”

I snorted again and walked out the door.

© 2015 Myra Love - All Rights Reserved