Melanie Travis 06 - Hush Puppy Read online

  THE DANGERS OF SLEUTHING

  Rifling through the boxes was hot, dusty work, and the fact that Faith kept pacing back and forth across the small room did nothing to improve my mood. The first time she ran out into the large area of the basement, I called her back. The second, I closed the door.

  “Lie down,” I said firmly.

  Faith whined under her breath.

  “I know you’re bored. We’ll only be here a few more minutes. Go to sleep.”

  My Poodle didn’t look sleepy in the slightest. Nor did she lie down. In deference to my wishes, she did deign to sit, but her gaze was still focused intently on the door.

  “What’d you see out there?” I asked.

  Faith got up and trotted back to the door. Her whine was louder this time, and she scratched at the wooden panel with a front paw.

  “Oh, all right. You win; we’ll go back upstairs.”

  I dusted off my hands and walked over to the door. As I drew near, Faith’s agitation increased. She gave a sharp bark to urge ne on.

  “What?” I said. “I’m coming.”

  Too bad Faith couldn’t answer that question, because if I’d paid attention to her sooner we’d have been a lot better off. As it was, the first inkling I had that something was wrong came when I opened the door and a searing wall of heat slammed into the room. Thick, dark smoke billowed after it. Orange spears of flame danced on the wall outside.

  The basement was on fire . . .

  Books by Laurien Berenson

  A PEDIGREE TO DIE FOR

  UNDERDOG

  DOG EAT DOG

  HAIR OF THE DOG

  WATCHDOG

  HUSH PUPPY

  UNLEASHED

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  HUSH PUPPY

  A Melanie Travis Mystery

  Laurien Berenson

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  THE DANGERS OF SLEUTHING

  Also by

  Title Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  UNLEASHED

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Copyright Page

  Since moving to Georgia, it has been my good fortune to be surrounded by strong Southern women. This book is gratefully dedicated to five of the best:

  Joanna Wilburn, Ruth Wilburn, DVM, and Sally Ross Davis—three terrific sisters whose kindness made a dream come true

  And to Laura Mulvaney and Jenny Troyer, who make each day at Ivy Manor Farm such a joy

  One

  My mother always told me never to open a door unless I knew what lay behind it.

  Sound advice, perhaps, but a rule I had trouble adhering to. As an adult, I’d come to realize she’d been speaking metaphorically, attempting to temper my natural enthusiasm with a bit of useful caution. No matter; by then the habit of throwing open doors and rushing gleefully onward was already deeply ingrained.

  Being an optimist, I was always certain that whatever lay beyond each new portal would be a happy surprise, and the few bumps and scrapes I’d suffered along the way had done nothing to diminish that belief. Nevertheless, on that soggy March afternoon, as I hurried through the Howard Academy auditorium, climbed the half flight of steps, and went backstage to the prop room, I wasn’t expecting any surprises at all. Much less the one I found.

  I’d been sent to find an oil painting of Honoria Howard, sister of early-twentieth-century robber baron, Joshua Howard, and cofounder of the school. Commissioned portraits of the pair hung side by side in the front hall of the stone mansion that formed the nucleus of the private academy. This painting, said to be of lesser quality, apparently also suffered the secondary sin of being monstrously unflattering. It had been relegated to storage and eventually found its way to the prop room, where it was hauled out on occasion when a set required period atmosphere.

  Having seen the portrait Honoria favored, indeed having passed by it daily since taking the job as special needs tutor at Howard Academy the previous September, I was privately of the opinion that the woman had been lucky to find an artist who’d been able to record her countenance for posterity without flinching. If that painting featured her good side, I could readily understand why no one had wanted to find wall space for this one.

  If I hadn’t been in such a hurry, the sound of voices, arguing loudly, might have given me pause. As it was, I’d already opened the door before I realized I might be intruding.

  Eugene Krebbs, the school’s elderly caretaker, stood in the middle of the small, cluttered room. Wearing his customary overalls and hangdog expression, he was holding a broom in one hand and gesturing forcefully with the other.

  He wasn’t a big man, and his clothes hung on him as if chosen to suit a larger frame. I judged him to be in his late sixties, though older wouldn’t have surprised me. His soft, fleshy features and watery brown eyes gave him a look of amiability that was at odds with a perpetually grumpy disposition.

  Before coming to Howard Academy, I’d worked in the Connecticut public-school system for half a dozen years. There, the rules had been stringent, the budget adhered to, the paperwork endless. And a man like Krebbs would have long since been retired. Here he was only one of many private-school eccentricities I’d encountered in the last semester and a half.

  His custodial skills were totally outdated—the broom he brandished was evidence of that—and a support staff seemed to do much of the actual work. I’d been told Krebbs had been a fixture at the school for decades. Everyone seemed to take his presence for granted, and though he never seemed to accomplish much, he was often to be found hovering glumly in the background.

  I’d never had occasion to speak with Krebbs before; in fact, I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard him do more than mutter or mumble. Certainly I’d never heard him yell.

  “You don’t belong here.” Krebbs shook the broom to reinforce his message. “Now take your butt and get out before I decide to turn you in.”

  The object of his wrath was a girl. Standing beside an old couch, tangled in a jumble of moth-eaten velvet curtains, she looked barely half his size. The expression on her face was all angry defiance.

  “You just try it!” she said with a sneer.

  A student? I wondered, trying to place her. She looked about ten, which meant fifth grade. In my position as tutor, I taught a cross section of pupils from throughout the school, but this girl didn’t look familiar. She had short dark hair, a skinny build, and, I noted absently, remarkably dirty hands. Rather than wearing the school uniform, she was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. I was quite sure I’d never seen her before.

  “Excuse me,” I said loudly. “Is there a problem here?”

  Krebbs turned and glared. The girl moved swiftly. Slithering past him, she bolted for the door.

  I blocked her path and held out my arms to catch her. Even though I was braced, she nearly knocked me down. Close up, she was tiny
. Her chin barely came to the middle of my chest, and when my hand circled her arm, I felt only the bulky material of her sweatshirt, not the bone and sinew underneath.

  “Not so fast,” I said. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “See?” said Krebbs. “Like I said, she don’t belong here. She don’t even have a name.”

  Surprisingly, his words seemed to wound the girl; or maybe it was the derision in his tone. “I do too have a name.”

  “What is it?” I asked, looking back and forth between them. I wondered what she was doing in this musty, out-of-the-way room. And what she could possibly have done to make Krebbs so angry.

  “Jane,” the girl said softly.

  “Jane Doe, I’ll bet,” spat Krebbs.

  I ignored him and said, “I’m Ms. Travis. Are you a student here?”

  Jane tossed her head, the gesture looking oddly out of place on the small, elfin girl. “Not exactly.”

  “She means no,” said Krebbs. “Look at her. Her clothes are dirty. She’s dirty—”

  “Do you mind?” I snapped. There was no way Jane was going to talk to me in the face of the caretaker’s open hostility. He closed his mouth and stared at me sullenly.

  It was too late. With a quick wrench, Jane pulled her arm free and raced out the door. Already several steps behind, I followed her across the stage and watched helplessly as she bounded down the steps, pushed open a side door, and was gone.

  Frowning, I turned back. Krebbs had ambled out onto the stage and was sweeping listlessly, his broom seeming to disperse as much dust as it gathered.

  “What was that all about?”

  I had to ask the question twice. The first time, either Krebbs didn’t hear me or else he chose to ignore it. The second, I walked around in front of him and planted myself in his path.

  “Eh?” he said.

  “Who was that girl and why were you yelling at her?”

  “I weren’t yelling. I thought about hitting her with the broom, though.” Krebbs smiled slightly, as though he found the notion satisfying.

  “Why?”

  “Trying to get rid of her. I been trying for a week, maybe more.”

  “Where does she come from?”

  “Heck if I know. She just showed up one day. Found her in the dining hall, snatching cookies out of the cupboard. She’s a thief, pure and simple. I ran her off, and I thought that was the end of it. But she came back, all right. Probably casing the place, with some kind of robbery in mind.”

  The thought of that tiny slip of a girl masterminding a robbery was ludicrous. Krebbs seemed perfectly serious, though.

  “Have you spoken to Mr. Hanover about her?”

  Russell Hanover II was Howard Academy’s headmaster. Popular with parents and alumni alike, he was conservative, dedicated to the education of young minds, and starched stiffer than a nun’s habit. I couldn’t imagine he’d condone the caretaker’s heavy-handed tactics.

  “Why would I do a thing like that?” asked Krebbs. “It’s my job to take care of the school, and that’s what I was doing. I would have gotten rid of her for good this time if you hadn’t of come along.

  “You’re new around here.” His rheumy glare made the words sound like an accusation. “Maybe you don’t know how things work yet.”

  “I know that you don’t go around chasing young girls with a broom. Nor trying to scare them half to death either.” I could see why Jane had felt the need to yell at this man. I was half-tempted myself.

  “Things are different here than they are in public school,” Krebbs said with a snort. “People are different. You’d be a far sight better off if you took the time to figure that out before poking your nose into where it don’t belong.”

  I pulled myself up, and said with dignity, “I am a teacher here, Mr. Krebbs. And as such, I am entitled to seek answers when I see a situation that strikes me as unusual. Why were you in the prop room?”

  He shrugged and ducked his head. I was reminded of a dog indicating submission to a dominant male. In Krebbs’s case, however, I suspected the obeisance was all for show.

  “Just doing my job. I came up onstage to sweep up and noticed that the door was open. Shouldn’t have been anyone in there this time of day, so I went and had a look.”

  “What was Jane doing in there?”

  Krebbs mumbled something under his breath.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Looked like maybe she was sleeping. She had some of them velvet curtains down and was using them for a blanket.”

  Sleeping? Curiouser and curiouser. “And there was something about her demeanor that made you suspect she was dreaming of robbing the school?”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been so sarcastic. Certainly, Krebbs’s baleful look indicated as much. He picked up his broom and shuffled away across the stage.

  I headed in the other direction and returned to the prop room. I hadn’t taken the time to look around before; now I did. The place was a mess. Old furniture, knickknacks, bits of costume and scenery were all piled haphazardly in the cramped space.

  Howard Academy had hired a new drama coach at the end of January. Until then, the position had been handled in a perfunctory manner by the music teacher, who also ran the glee club. It was easy to see that her abilities had been overtaxed by both jobs. The prop room looked like it hadn’t been cleaned or organized in years. It was probably possible to trace the history of shows performed by moving each successive layer of junk to see what lay beneath.

  A thick coating of dust covered fabric and upholstery alike, and the heavy burgundy curtains Jane had been using as a blanket were beginning to mildew as well. I lifted the drapes off the couch and shook them out. There was a small thump as something square and solid landed on my foot. A book had been nestled between the folds of material.

  Setting the curtains aside, I reached down to see what Jane had been reading. The paperback had a bright, cheery cover: Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. A stamp on the flyleaf proclaimed the book to be “Property of Howard Academy Library.” Judging by the crease in the spine, Jane had been about halfway through the play.

  I wondered if she’d been enjoying it. Shakespeare was one of my favorites, but I’d been considerably older than ten when I’d started reading him. Even now, I was tutoring eighth graders who wouldn’t have dreamed of approaching the bard’s work without the comfort of a Cliffs Notes edition close at hand.

  I folded the curtains and set them aside. The book I left on the couch where I’d found it. What little I knew about the elusive Jane had intrigued me. I hoped Krebbs hadn’t succeeded in scaring her off; I was looking forward to the opportunity of getting to know her better.

  Two

  Thank goodness the prop room was small or I might have been there all afternoon. As it was, it took me twenty minutes to find Honoria’s portrait and another ten to pry it out from behind the cupboard where it had been wedged. The oil painting was of medium size, and encased in a massive gilt frame whose faded gold color did nothing to lighten the portrait’s somber tone.

  For some reason, the artist had painted primarily in shades of brown and gray. Perhaps he’d decided that livelier colors didn’t suit his subject, for he’d portrayed Honoria, seated in a straight-backed chair, as a woman with rigid posture and stern, unbending features. Her eyes were small and deep-set and seemed to stare directly at the viewer. Her mouth was fixed in a line of permanent disgruntlement.

  One of Honoria’s hands lay fisted in her lap. The other dangled at her side, its fingers twined through the topknot of a medium-sized gray dog. A Poodle, I realized, moving the portrait out into the light and taking a closer look, either a large Miniature or a small Standard. When I wiped away a decade’s worth of accumulated grime, the dog’s lion clip was clearly visible, identifying it as a relative, albeit distant, of Faith, my own Standard Poodle at home.

  A small brass plaque screwed to the bottom of the frame read, “Honoria Howard and
Poupee. 1936.” Honoria’s inclusion of the dog’s name along with her own made me smile. I knew very little about the school’s cofounder, but already I liked her better than I had a few minutes ago.

  “There you are!”

  I jumped slightly. The painting, propped on the floor but still heavy, swayed in my grasp. Michael Durant, the new drama coach, hurried to grab the other side of the frame. He was tall and slender, his build almost storklike, but there must have been strength in his arms because he held the portrait upright easily. He brushed back the dark brown hair that was long enough to curl around his collar and studied the painting with his usual intense gaze.

  “I see you found the old witch. My God, she’s a handful, isn’t she? No wonder you didn’t bring the painting back. We were all wondering where you’d gotten to.”

  By “all” he meant the rest of our newly formed Spring Pageant Committee. Six weeks earlier, Russell Hanover had come up with the idea of putting together a lavish drama production to celebrate the lives of Howard Academy’s founding family. In honor of this first-time endeavor, Michael had been added to the staff, and plans were now supposed to be taking shape.

  The only problem was that although Russell’s idea seemed good in theory, nobody could quite figure out what the play was supposed to be about. By all accounts, Joshua Howard had been a shipping magnate whose methods had stopped just short of larceny. He was also rumored to have dabbled in bootlegging. And while I thought such topics would make for a lively and entertaining production, I could also understand why Russell felt the need to highlight other aspects of our esteemed founder’s life. If only someone could come up with any.

  The week before, our somewhat desperate headmaster had formed an ad hoc committee, and, to my chagrin, I’d found my name at the bottom of the list. Our first meeting had taken place the previous Friday. In a frenzy of creativity befitting a bevy of educators, we’d brainstormed wildly. Everyone had thrown out ideas, and nothing had been settled.