“Good idea,” said Lucy, observing that although her car seemed to have major front end damage, Chris’s enormous SUV seemed unscathed.
“Oh, look at that!” exclaimed Chris, joining her and examining the front of her SUV. “My paint is scratched.”
“You went through a stop sign,” said Lucy, who didn’t appreciate Chris’s attitude.
“I know,” admitted Chris, who was rather haphazardly dressed in a pair of ratty sweatpants and an ancient Wellesley T-shirt. “It was my fault. I was in a hurry because I ran out of all-natural yogurt for the girls’ breakfast and I needed to get to the store and back before Brad left for work and then there was the stock market fiasco—you know the Dow is down nearly two hundred points?—and how am I going to tell my poor widows they don’t have the money they thought they did and…”
“I understand,” said Lucy. “It could happen to anybody. You do have insurance, right? Why don’t we exchange information, while we wait for the cops?”
As Lucy expected, Chris was a model of efficiency and extracted a neat little folder from her glove compartment with all the necessary papers. After a bit of searching, Lucy also produced the current, crumpled registration card and an empty plastic sleeve designed to hold it that was imprinted with the name of her insurance company. That bit of business completed, the two women looked hopefully down the road for an approaching police car. Seeing none, Chris suggested moving the cars to the side of the road.
“I don’t think we should, not before the cops get here, “said Lucy. “If anybody comes along they can get by.”
Nobody was coming, there was no sound except the chirping of birds and the buzz of cicadas. The sun was shining, the day was warming up, and the air was filled with the scent of a few late-blooming wild roses. High in the sky, a flock of geese in a straggly V formation was headed south, encouraging each other with an occasional honk.
“What a morning,” said Lucy, full of appreciation for the natural beauty that was all around her.
“You can say that again,” moaned Chris. “First this, and now Brad is going to be late for his meeting and there’s no way I’m going to be able to get Pear and Apple to their Gymboree class.” She was tapping her foot impatiently. “At this point I’m just hoping we make it to French class.”
“Aren’t they a bit young for that?” asked Lucy.
“Oh, no. The younger, the better. Children’s brains absorb language easily, they have to so they can learn to talk. Think about it: they have to absorb an enormous amount of information. But as they get older they lose that ability. That’s why kids who’ve been kept in closets or raised by wolves or whatnot,” Chris shrugged and shook her head, “well, they have a very difficult time learning any language skills at all. Sometimes they remain mute.”
Lucy couldn’t help wondering what other interesting bits of information filled Chris’s hyperactive brain, and what she might have observed from her house on Prudence Path. “You’re an intelligent woman,” she began. “I’m curious what you think about the murder. Do you think Fred did it? That Mimi was an abused wife?”
“Who knows? We’re all so new here, and I’ve been so busy, I haven’t really gotten to know the neighbors. If it wasn’t for the bake sale, I wouldn’t know anybody—but that’s not enough to go on, is it? I mean, anybody can bake something, right?” She paused. “I never saw any bruises, if that’s what you mean.”
“You live right next door. Did you ever see any other men around, when Fred was out?”
“Mimi having an affair? Oh, please.”
Mentally, Lucy put a big question mark against Frankie’s assertion that Willie’s husband had been carrying on an affair with Mimi.
“Did you ever see Mimi and Fred fighting?”
“No. They were pretty quiet, except for Preston and that obnoxious motorcycle of his.”
“You know, I worry about those boys. Are they doing okay without their dad?”
“I invited them for supper last night but they wouldn’t come. And Brad tried to get them to join him in tossing a basketball around but they weren’t interested.” Chris looked at her watch. “This is ridiculous,” she said, just as they heard the faint wail of an approaching siren.
“I guess we’re getting the full treatment,” said Lucy. “Sirens, fire trucks, ambulances, the whole works.”
“No wonder property taxes are so high,” fumed Chris.
The little message light on her phone was blinking when she finally got to the office. She’d walked over from Al’s Body Shop where she’d been informed that it would be at least two weeks, maybe longer, before her car was drivable.
“I bet your insurance will cover a car rental,” advised Phyllis, who was an expert in all matters pertaining to automobile insurance ever since her cousin Elfrida hit a moose a couple of years ago.
Picking up the phone to call her insurance agent, Lucy listened to the message. It was Bill, telling her the dog had been sick again. And again. So after she called the insurance agency, and learned she was indeed covered for a rental car, she called Scratch Westwood’s office and got an appointment. Then she worked on the events listings for a couple of hours before picking up the car and getting the dog.
“When did Libby have her last bowel movement?” inquired Scratch Westwood as he palpated the Lab’s abdomen. He was exactly as Frankie had described him: tall, with wire-rimmed glasses and a thinning fringe of hair. Personally, Lucy didn’t think he had much sex appeal but he was a big hit with Libby, who was grinning at him in doggy adoration.
“I don’t really know,” admitted Lucy. “Maybe yesterday morning.”
“Not last night or this morning?”
“Now that you mention it, I don’t think so,” said Lucy, recalling the dog had been unusually quiet the previous evening and hadn’t demanded to go out as she usually did.
“I’m going to take some x-rays,” said Scratch. “Has she eaten anything unusual lately? Chicken bones? Tin cans?”
Lucy chuckled. “No tin cans, but she did get hold of an old wallet.”
“Ah,” he said. “C’mon girl. Let’s take some pictures.”
Libby would have followed him anywhere, wagging her tail the entire time. Lucy sat in the waiting room, trying to think of a way to bring up Mimi’s murder so she could gauge Scratch’s reaction. But when she was called back to the examining room it was clear that the vet had bad news.