Page 64 of Death on Riddle Road
Besides, the dogs and I voted no.
Clara listened to the dogs, who could be heard even from this distance casting their votes from inside the van.My vote, she ruled invalid because I didn’t have twelve kinds of identification to display while standing on my head and handing it to her in specific order with my feet.
At the dog park, we spotted three vehicles in the parking lot.A second low turnout with the schools closed and more people than usual off work, even considering the day was raw and spasmodically spitting pellets of slushy rain.
Maybe people enjoying time off opted for a cozy, inside by the fireplace interlude on a day like this over a foray to the dog park.
Or maybe this wasn’t rare.Because my experience of the dog park was at civilized hours.So maybe this was usual for — yes, I’m going to gripe about it again — this early.
All the occupants from the three vehicles were in the big-dog enclosure, with Donna in the center of a small human group sitting atop one of the picnic tables.Bernie the Bernedoodle puppy was tumbling after a pair of rescued greyhounds, who would have left him in the dust if any existed in these conditions.
As soon as Bernie spotted Gracie, LuLu, and Murphy streaking across the open after being released, he yipped in excitement and altered course to intersect them.Actually, to intersect their wake, because they were way too fast for him.
Hattie raised her head, but stayed by Donna’s side as she intersected Clara and me with unerring precision and jerked her head toward another table.
Once we were ensconced there, Clara said, “Donna, when was the barn built out near that spot where Jaylynn was killed?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Hattie was a puppy and I was taking her to training not far from there, but I still had Rosie.Now, was it before or after Rosie had the biopsy that looked so bad, but came back as noncancerous...?”
We waited.
She blinked.“Eleven and a half years ago.”
Neither of us doubted it.Donna telling time by dog history was foolproof.
“You were wondering if it was there, with its lights, when she was shot?”Donna piecing together our motivations was spot on, too.“No, it wasn’t.Closest building of any kind was well to the east and didn’t have a view of the spot.That’s the folks who reported a possible shot.If that’s all—”
Afraid she’d leave us for the other picnic table group, I quickly asked, “What do you think of Emil Dorrio?And how close was he to Derrick?Back then and more recently?”
“You don’t want to know much,” she said dryly.
“Also all the family dynamics.”
She snorted.
“The family’s interesting.You might have heard studies about how family wealth reaches a third generation only about thirty percent of the time and beyond that only about 10 percent.What they don’t talk about is how families don’t hold onto power and influence any better.”
Clara tipped her head.“What about aristocratic families, say in Europe?”
“I suppose titles can help them hold on, at least to some trappings.But it makes sense, if societies are upwardly mobile, they’re also downwardly mobile and some people are going to slide down.
“Judge McKay Dorrio was the upwardly mobile one — that was Yale’s great-grandfather.My grandfather knew him and thought highly of him.The next generation produced another judge and a doctor, but also a couple other sons who didn’t do as well.When the second judge’s offspring started following the same pattern, he was pretty darned ruthless in pinching off the branches he didn’t consider worthy and Yale’s daddy tried the same.But he wasn’t as ruthless as the second judge or maybe the branches were more resilient.Anyway, some of those less respectable branches didn’t get pruned off entirely.Stuck around.Like Emil’s daddy.”
I’d need a chart to follow this in detail, but I got the gist.Derrick came from the well-regarded side of the family.Emil did not.
“Thing was, most of the male Dorrios had a propensity for falling for women of, let’s say, not the first order, going right back to Judge McKay Dorrio.He married one of Fern’s great-great-aunts or cousins or such—”
Fern’s family business at that time centered around what used to be called a house of ill repute.This woman who married McKay Dorrio could have been the white sheep of her family...or not.
“—and she didn’t have social connections, but she had the brains and the will to raise that next judge and the doctor to uphold the Dorrio name in most ways.But when it came to marrying, those two and her other sons...”Donna shook her head.“They all went for sex over sense.A trait passed down to most of the Dorrios.”
“But Beverly,” Clara protested.
That could be taken two ways — as standing up for the idea of Beverly having sense or disbelieving she’d ever been sexy.
Donna responded to the latter.
