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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As we reached the 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.

This swing away from Donna and Hattie — two of her favorites — indicated she thought something was off about the puppy.

“Is something wrong—?” I started calling out to Donna.

But three things happened together.

LuLu stopped dead in her tracks. Murphy galloped on. And Donna ordered, “Murphy, stop. Hattie, no .”

Surprised at the sharp order, Murphy slowed. Then we all heard a clack sound.

Hattie had snapped at Murphy.

Hattie .

True, the clack meant she’d made no contact, except with her own teeth, so it had been a warning only. But even that...

Hattie ?

Gracie altered her loop and cut between Murphy and the two dogs with Donna. She herded her pal toward us. I closed the gap and grabbed Murphy’s collar.

LuLu went to Clara and Gracie came to me.

The only participant still moving was the puppy, who gamboled around like it had discovered the greatest game ever.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Donna picked up the puppy.

“Whose puppy—?”

She cut me off. “It’s not the puppy. It’s Hattie. Possessive. Jealous. Out of her mind.” She turned to her dog. “If you don’t stop this ridiculous behavior, I will put you in the car alone.”

Hattie’s head drooped.

“I would think so,” Donna said to her. “No, you don’t get to go see Clara and Sheila like nothing happened. You stay here and lie down.”

Leaving her dog lying where she was while looking as if her heart were breaking, Donna strode away with the still-squirming puppy.

“Will you release your dogs to come over here, please?” she asked.

We did, including instructions to “Go see Donna.”

She put the puppy down and watched as the three older dogs made its acquaintance. At one point, Donna said a low, “Hattie” and I saw her dog, still at a distance from the others, had gathered her legs under her, prepared to get up. She sank back down at that word from Donna.

In another minute or two, Murphy grew bored with the newcomer and sprinted away, with a backward look over his shoulder.

This was an invitation to the trio’s favorite game, sometimes with LuLu in the lead, but mostly Murphy.

Rarely Gracie, because she preferred to chase until she was at the shoulder of the leader, letting her herd this way or that, depending on which shoulder she’d picked.

LuLu and Gracie streaked after Murphy. With a yip, the puppy lumbered in pursuit.

Donna clucked her tongue. “Best thing for him. He’ll never catch them, but it will run some of that energy out of him. As for you,” she added to Hattie, “you old fool.”

Hattie pulled her gaze back from tracking the puppy to look at Donna, who went to her, crouched before her, and took her graying muzzle between her palms.

“You do not — ever — do that again.”

Woman and dog stared into each other’s eyes. The dog emitted a short sigh. Donna ruffled her dog’s ears and patted her on the head, then rose and said, “Okay. With me.” At the picnic table, Hattie went into a down without being told while Donna took a seat on the top. “You can come join me.”

With Hattie already in her place, that order had to be directed at the humans in the vicinity.

Clara and I obeyed, also sitting on the top. I might have mentioned that male dogs enjoyed peeing on the picnic table seats, so the regulars used them only as a step up to the safer top.

“I didn’t see what happened. What did she do?” Clara asked Donna in a whisper.

Hattie was so good it seemed fitting to speak of her misbehavior in a whisper.

“She clacked at Murphy,” Donna said in a normal voice.

Maybe she wasn’t as impressed with Hattie’s status as the perfect dog, so her misbehavior didn’t warrant Donna’s whisper.

“She didn’t go after him and she sure didn’t bite him, but she clacked her teeth at him, reminding him she could. At least she thought she could.”

“But why?”

“Because the old fool has the delusion that the puppy’s hers and, in her dotage, she’s gone all maternally protective on me. She even got sniffy with the grandchildren and Bernie’s their dog. Not clacking, but trying to get between them and the pup — possessive.”

“Bernie?” Clara asked.

“Yeah. My daughter left it up to the kids what to name him. They didn’t go too far afield, considering he’s a Bernedoodle.

My turn for a repeat-the-word question. “Bernedoodle?”

“Bernese Mountain dog and poodle cross. Bernese Mountain dogs are known for being susceptible to certain cancers. Hope the poodle in Bernie gives him a good, long life, because the kids are gaga about him. Not to mention my old girl.”

I latched onto the opening. “Speaking of gaga...”

“So you’re not here solely for the dogs.”

I ignored Donna’s jab. After all, it’s not rude not to answer when the other party already knows the answer.

“We hoped to get background—”

I could not ignore the next voice.

“You two are screwing it up again!” came a shout from the small dog enclosure.

Our heads whipped around for our eyes to confirm what our ears already knew.

Berrie Vittlow and her mini-herd of Boston Terriers had entered the dog park’s small-dog enclosure.

Occupied with the drama around Hattie and the puppy, we’d made a major tactical error by sitting on the picnic table closest to the fence that divided the areas.

There were no other people in the large-dog enclosure to alert us to the Berrie arrival. The two humans and three dogs retreated to the farthest corner of the small-dog enclosure and looked between Berrie and the gate, likely calculating their chances of escape.

We’d been deprived of the usual last-ditch warning system of a near encounter with Berrie and the Bostons because their patriarch, Marcus, who indulged in outraged histrionic barking if I arrived after he did, stuck to his bizarre rules by not barking at me since I was inside the enclosure.

So, here we were, in Berrie shouting — more like screaming — range. “Screwing it up again!” she repeated.

She has a tendency to say the same thing over and over. Have you ever noticed people who do that often are lying or — and I think this is the case with Berrie — have such a limited repertoire of thoughts they have to repeat.

“You can’t go after Dova Dorrio, you know.”

Okay, that Berrie screech made me look toward her. Possibly with my mouth open. What on earth was she talking about?

“ She’s important.” Her emphasis said we were not.

Now, there, she had a point. We weren’t especially important.

Not more so than other individuals. Mind you, our system does tend to hold that individuals are important, but somehow an open and reasoned discussion of social philosophy with Berrie did not seem likely in my near future.

The screech went on. “You better not mess with her. She’s got connections.

Not just Emil Dorrio, either. She’s real, real good friends with our congressman.

The one who goes to Washington.” Apparently, she added that in the belief that she was the only one who knew where Congress was.

“And he’s not the only one. She knows lots of important people down in Frankfort.

All she has to do is pick up the phone.”

I slid off the table and turned away, pretending a need to straighten Gracie’s leash, which I’d looped around my neck like a long, fur-encrusted necklace. In the process, I added a few steps away from the fence.

Clara followed me.

“Frankfort, that’s the state capital,” Berrie tacked on with further lack of confidence in our knowledge.

Donna had been off the tabletop like a shot with the first screech and was in the lead. Heck, she might have already been out of Berrie’s spittle range.

“If you had any sense, you’d be looking at the drugs... They say they lock up the drugs at places like Kentucky Manor, but people can walk in and out of the rooms without the least little bit of security, not to mention the ones who live there. They should have guards every step of the way.”

I slowed, contemplating the image of uniformed guards looming over hospice patients, watching them consume each palliative drug. Perhaps frisking them for any drugs they were secreting away in anticipation of a miraculous cure, to be followed immediately by a new career of drug-selling.

Clara pushed me ahead of her to keep me going.

“Pick up the phone. That’s all Dova has to do!”

Berrie’s voice stretched to keep up its volume as we gained distance. Perhaps that’s why Berrie went back to the simplistic slogan.

The result was my image of the uniformed guards now blended with Dova picking up a mammoth, filigree phone suited to a ritzy society dame in a black and white movie.

“Bye, Berrie,” Clara called cheerily, still pushing me. Lower, she said, “Pick up the phone and, what? Dova’s Frankfort and D.C. connections would have us carted off to jail?”

I chuckled. “Berrie’s delusions — of grandeur several times removed and of paranoia — have run away with her.”

“Or maybe it was her wishful thinking running away with her,” Donna said as we reached her. “She’d love to see the two of you cut down to her size. But she’s not wrong. Dova Dorrio does have connections. Including our esteemed congressman.”

Her tone turned esteemed on its head.

“You’re not impressed by that connection?” I asked.

“No. He mistakes his own lack of foresight or imagination for having principles. Thinks he’s rock-solid, but only his head is. Securing his goodwill was a cake walk for Dova. She’s very good with people.”

“What do you mean by good with?”

“Just what I said.” And she wasn’t saying any more on that topic.

Clara said to me, “The Dorrios have a history of influence in the state, especially this area.”

“An ever more distant history,” Donna said. “Some would call it turnabout being fair play.”

“How?” Clara asked.

“All the times that branch of the family — most recently represented by Derrick’s father and mother — was holier-than-thou, and now it’s them bringing the wrong kind of attention to the name. You should talk to Derrick’s parents, Yale and Beverly Dorrio,” Donna said.

That was already part of our plan for the day. “What do you know about them?”

She slanted me a look that said, That’s for me to know and you to try to find out.

She then changed the subject, leaving no room for appeal.

“I will say, Berrie’s not entirely wrong about the other aspect.

The drugs,” she clarified. “Plentiful and powerful. Which is why they have considerable security. That, after all, is what could attract thieves. So they’re very open about keeping a strict guard on them.

The individual carers can’t access the drugs and even the nurses have limited access by predetermined timed locks.

It was part of what they set in place to get approval to add hospice care at Kentucky Manor.

“But restricting access to the patients was never a consideration. The opposite, in fact. The idea is to let family and friends visit with as few limitations as possible, as long as the patient wants them to visit.”

“Did Derrick want visitors?” I asked.

Donna clicked her tongue. “I did not know the details of his short time there, Sheila. Why would I?”

Because she knew everything, even though she often chose not to share.

Then she unwittingly confirmed my premise that she knew everything.

“I do, however, know the carer who was assigned to him,” she said casually.

“She drew the assignment because she has considerable experience in hospice care. Understandably, they did not want to expose someone new to the complications of his particular situation. I suggest you talk to her. Her name is Rose Gleiner.”

Clara expelled a discontented breath. “We know her name. She wouldn’t talk to us.”

“Oh?”

I confirmed, “Not a word. Except that it wasn’t what she was used to and she didn’t like it.”

Donna chuckled slightly. “That sounds like Rose. She wouldn’t approve of something as irregular as murder, though she was the one responsible for an assistant coroner being called in and that’s who alerted the sheriff’s department.”

“You know her — the hospice nurse, I mean, not the assistant coroner — really know her?” I asked.

“We’ve been friends since kindergarten.”

Clara brightened, like a spotlight flipped on. “You’ll tell her to talk to us?”

After a beat of consideration, Donna said, “I’ll talk to her about whether or not she might choose to talk to you.”

It didn’t sound nearly as good as Clara’s suggestion, but coming from Donna, it was worthy of that spotlight.