Dad gnashed his teeth. Not a good sign. “Joyce?” he said.
She bit her lip. She was in trouble. I didn’t know that she could get defensive. I did know that she’d had a bad week. Something about a breakup with her latest boyfriend? “Well, I wasn’t exactly sure how to do it, was I? Being your admin was still new to me. I’d like to see you wade through Russian bureaucracy.” She put down her tablet and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. It was a long time ago. You wanted to know if he had been a member of the Russian military. The truth is, I had no idea how to find out. I wanted to do a good job, but at the time you had to be with Lyudmila, and Lyudmila wasn’t going anywhere without Yuri. You said to make it happen. So I did. He’s been a diligent worker. Very protective of the family. Never absent. Never late.”
“Until yesterday,” Mere said.
“What are you suggesting, agent Armstrong?” Dad said.
“I’m saying that our background checks have turned up the fact that he not only was a member of the Russian military, he was a member of Russian homeland security.”
“He was a spy?” I said. If it hadn’t been such a miserable weekend, I would’ve thought that was cool.
Agent Armstrong went on. “I’m also saying that perhaps his relationship with your wife wasn’t as innocent as it seemed. That maybe they had a rendezvous at the Breakers while you were on the mainland. That maybe they quarreled and it got out of hand and he strangled her.”
I couldn’t believe it. Yuri, with the three-day stubble and the bags under his eyes. Yes, he loved her, but he never would’ve tried to get close to her. He was too tragic for that kind of thing. “You and me, Henry, we understand love from afar a little too well, I think,” he said on more than one occasion when he caught me looking at Pixie, the whole long length of her. “My chances are over, but you can still play a hand. Why not ask her on a real date? Flowers. Candy.”
“No,” I said now, and Joyce shot me another glare. “Yuri would never have made a move on Lyudmila, and he certainly wouldn’t have strangled her.”
“But his weapon killed the best scent hound in the state,” agent Armstrong said. “And the man himself is nowhere to be found. I’d like to talk to him directly.”
“Henry,” Mere said. “You’ve got to admit it looks grim.”
She was right. All the same, I couldn’t help thinking Yuri would find something philosophical about it.
Ah . . . death. Such a tragedy. Such a beautiful woman. You never know what life brings you. That is why you must tell your girl what you think of her before it is too late.
thirteen
PIXIE
It was late afternoon when I got home. In the backyard, Dean was digging a hole toward the end of the bluff, away from the Douglas firs, closer to the scrub, the ironwood, and the Himalayan blackberries, where all the critters made their homes. Next to him was a large object wrapped in an old blanket that was stained red.
I grabbed another shovel from the garage and went out to join him. After all, she was my dog.
“You don’t need to help me, Pix. You just got out of the hospital,” Dean said, looking up.
We were in the hospital so much, the house rule was that we had twenty-four hours to rest after after we were discharged. But the reality was that no one rested without being called a wuss. It wasn’t worth the grief. But Dean was talking about something else. He was talking about burying Patience. He had his rain poncho on and his mud boots. It was a torrential day. Everything was getting blasted in the wind and sideways rain.
“Yes, I do.”
It didn’t go quickly. Even away from the trees, the roots were thick, and even though our arms were thicker, it was slow going, and we had to bury her deep because some of the critters that made their homes in the brush were coyotes. We didn’t want Patience dug up and carried off.
From where we worked, we could see the Shepherd McMansion below. It was swarming with activity. Helicopters circled overhead; Coast Guard boats got as close to shore as they could, which wasn’t close. Volunteers walked the lagoon; three of my brothers among them. They were taking it so slow they looked like herons.
I didn’t forget my obligation to the Shepherds. Henry texted me more than once to come down and show him how to walk the grid, but I told him that Sammy could help him. I knew I couldn’t compare the loss of a dog to the loss of a stepmother, but I wanted to honor Patience, who’d been a menace but also a hero.
I hadn’t realized how heavy Patience was until Dean and I both heaved her into the deep hole we’d dug. We had to swing her to get her to the bottom. Dean had done his best to wrap her in an old blanket, but the red blood kept seeping through. Her tongue lolled out and got dirty, but she didn’t care.
That was when I knew that Patience was finally, completely gone. All that was left were memories and compost.
fourteen
HENRY