Page 31 of Death on Riddle Road
“You remember—” No, I didn’t.Not at this hour of the morning.Possibly in a couple more hours I would.“—that’s the hospice nurse Mamie told us about, the one who said there was something wrong about Derrick Dorrio’s death and insisted on the sheriff’s department getting involved and stood in front of the door.”
Oh, yeah.Her.
“And there she is,” Clara added, nodding toward the upright figure of a tall African American woman emerging from the building.With few other people here at this hour, Clara parked right in front of the building.“C’mon.Be good.”
Pretty sure the first order was for me, the second one for the dogs.
I levered my non-bending self out of the van seat and trailed Clara.
“Ms.Gleiner?”she called.
The woman stopped, waiting without expression.Under a dark blue winter jacket, she wore slightly lighter blue pants that appeared to be scrubs.Her thick-soled black shoes resembled expensive running shoes bearing a brand-name I didn’t know.
Her short, neat Afro showed patches of gray, in keeping with horizontal wrinkles on her forehead and across her throat.She had slanted shallows beneath her direct eyes that appeared to be permanent, rather than the result of working an overnight shift.
As I joined them, Clara was saying, “...and this is Sheila Mackey.We hope for a few moments of your time.You might not have heard about our efforts in other situations, but—”
“I know who you are.”Her straight, firm mouth didn’t reveal how she felt about that fact any more than her words did.
“We’d like to take you out to breakfast and—”
“No.”
Good thing she said no to that.The dogs would not have taken well to a breakfast-long delay in their arrival at the dog park, which they knew downright well was just-over-there.
“We know you’ve been working overnight.Another time, then—”
“No.I’ve talked to the authorities.I’m not talking to you about this...murder.”She didn’t quite spit the word, but you got the feeling she would have liked to.“It’s not what I expect and I won’t be any greater part of it than my civic duty requires.Good day.”
Her straight-backed stride gave an impression of strength.As if we’d needed another one after that brush-off.
“For someone who deals with dying all the time, she was pretty sniffy about murder being beneath her.”
Clara, I noticed, didn’t make that comment until Rose Gleiner was out of hearing range.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As we reachedthe multi-gated foyer accessing the Torrid Avenue dog park’s enclosures, we saw two people and three dogs in the small-dog side and one person and two dogs in the big-dog side.
Even though we’d be going into the big-dog area, the low population in the small-dog enclosure was welcomed, because it meant Berrie Vittlow was not in attendance, since she traveled with a minimum of half a dozen Boston terriers.
Berrie’s dogs aren’t well-behaved but are generally cute and friendly.Berrie strikes out in all three categories.Plus, she has the gall to lecture other owners and other dogs.
Once inside, and with the dogs freed from their leashes, Gracie, LuLu, and Murphy gleefully swooped across the open field toward Donna and her aging golden retriever, Hattie.
Donna appeared distracted by a puppy we hadn’t met before bouncing around Hattie.The puppy’s curly hair and body shape indicated poodle parentage.The other half of that parentage contributed distinctive markings — a lot of black, edged by brown, then white on its face, chest, and tip of its tail.
Adding a puppy to the mix can be a wild card in the dog park.They don’t know the rules of the road yet.
Our three, though, were dog park vets, who knew about defensive driving around four-pawed youngsters without even a learner’s permit yet.
Then something unusual happened.
Gracie peeled off to the left of the three-dog swoop and looped wide of the puppy and Hattie.
In the months of bringing Gracie to the dog park, I’d learned to trust her reactions to other dogs, sometimes other people, too.I figured she picked up micro-expressions or movements that I missed or didn’t know how to translate in the case of fellow dogs.
If Gracie was wary of another dog, so was I.
