Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 121, No. 2. Whole No. 738, February 2003

Totoo by William Hallstead

William Hallstead began his fiction-writing career as Franklin W. Dickson; under that name he authored the 31st book in the Hardy Boys series. According to Mr. Hallstead, “There never was a Franklin W. Dickson. That was the pen name assigned to every one of the many writers who turned out books on Frank and Joe Hardy.” Under the pseudonym William Beechcroft he has had six more suspense novels published, as well as many short stories.

Malabar Island Detective Katherine Curtci spread her beach blanket, slipped off her robe, and exposed her bikini-clad, five-foot-ten-inch, sunscreened elegance to the Southwest Florida glare.

Her beeper turned her sigh of contentment into a groan of exasperation. She plunged in-to her beach tote and yanked out her cell phone.

“That you, Kat?” Sergeant Duckworth rasped.

“Moby, it’s Monday, my day off.”

“Wouldn’t call you, except I figured you’d be on your favorite south-end beach, and we just got a call from over there. Lost dog.”

“Lost — Did you say dog?” She pictured Duckworth, girth spilling over his belt, chuckling to himself.

“Yeah, lost dog. But it’s wearing an owner’s tag, same name as a missing person’s call that came in earlier this morning. A Beverly Bridger, white female, age twenty, from Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania. Dark hair, wearing navy shorts and a white top when last seen. She’s down here on vacation with a friend name of Lister. Sandra Lister. She’s the one called in the missing report.”

“Okay, Mobe. I’ll check out the dog, then I’ll interview Lister. Where’s she staying?”

“The Gulf Sands, just north of where you’re at. The dog’s on the beach the other way, toward the lighthouse. A snowbird has him.”

My punishment for finally getting a break, Kat fumed to herself. She yanked on her hibiscus-patterned robe, stuffed the blanket back in the tote, and plodded southward, barefoot on the hard sand at water’s edge.

The dog, on a leash looped to the arm of a beach chair, was small, black, and sprawled flat in the chair’s shadow. The chair’s occupant was large, pasty-white — and visibly delighted at the approach of a tall, raven-haired woman in a loosely sashed beach robe. He was still grinning after she officially introduced herself, complete with badge folder.

“M’God, cops are sure pretty in these parts.” His eyes roved. “In all parts.”

“To business, Mr.—?

“Davidson. Sam Davidson. From Norwalk, Connecticut. Down here to soak up the sun for a week.”

“Better take it in short increments, Mr. Davidson. You’re already medium rare around the shoulders. Tell me about the dog.”

“The missus went shopping and I came out here about half an hour back and found him groggy on the sand. Took him in for some water and cooling off, and called nine-one-one.”

“Maybe a vet would have been more—”

“No phone book in the unit.”

“Did you put that leash on him?”

“Nope. He came equipped.”

She crouched, let the dog sniff her hand, petted his head, and inspected the tags on his plaid collar. Rabies up to date. A Lackawanna County license. And a nametag: My name is Totoo. My owner is Beverly Bridger. Plus a phone number with a 570 area code.

The collar and the leash were encrusted with salt.

“You didn’t take him into the surf, Mr. Davidson?”

“Hell, no. He was nearly too weak to walk at all. I kept him inside for a while, then brought him back out to wait for you.” Davidson craned around in his chair. “Seems a lot better now. Not a bad-looking mutt.”

“He’s a cairn terrier.”

“A what?”

“A cairn. Scottish breed. Smart and determined.”

“You’re a dog lover?”

“Had a friend who owned one. I’ll take him now, sir. Thanks for—”

“Jeez, you had to call me ‘sir’? I’m not gray yet.”

“Thanks for your help, Sam. And either get yourself some major sunblock or you’d better go inside and watch TV.”

She carried the cairn back to her car in a public-access lot a quarter-mile north. Drove the few blocks to the Gulf Sands and led the dog to the motel office.

“Sandra Lister?” the short-cropped henna-rinsed manager repeated as she squinted at Kat’s badge then riffled through a box of file cards. “Okay, she’s in Unit Seven. She do something reprehensible?”

“Lost dog.”

“That little guy there? Thought that belonged to the roommate.”

“Have you seen the roommate today?”

“Nope. They usually don’t show their faces this early.”

Kat and swiftly recovering Totoo made it halfway to Unit 7 when its door burst open and a ponytailed blonde in orange halter and shorts flew out and rushed up to her.

“Ohmigod, you’ve found Totoo! But where’s Bev? It’s been hours since I called.”

“I’m sorry. We’re stretched pretty thin in-season. Why don’t we go back inside where we can talk?”

She and Bev were coworkers and close friends at a Scranton-based computer service company, Sandra said as, with hands trembling, she handed Kat a mug of instant coffee. They sat side by side on the unit’s small sofa. The two girls, both in their adventurous early twenties, had come to the island for a brief carefree vacation, though Sandra felt Bev’s dog had been something of a downsider.

“I’m not a dog person, but Bev loves the thing. Even has permission to take him to work.”

“He’s not a great vacationer?”

“He’s okay, I guess, but he’s a dog. Has to be taken out, walked, fed. Screws up a lot of potential, but she’s devoted to him.”

“How did she come up with a name like that?” Kat hoped their chatter would calm Sandra to a degree of reliability.

“ ‘Totoo’? He’s just like that dog Toto in The Wizard of Oz. First she called him Toto Two, then that turned into Totoo.”

“You reported Bev missing early this morning. When did you last see her?”

“She took Totoo out for a walk around eleven last night. I was worn out, and I went to bed. When I woke up at seven, she wasn’t here.” Sandra struggled to keep her voice steady. “Her bed hadn’t been slept in, and the dog wasn’t here, either. This isn’t like her at all. I called the cops and, surprise, I didn’t get that forty-eight hour waiting thing. A couple of hours, though. But here you are. I really appreciate it.”

“Has she been out all night before?”

“Not in the five days we’ve been here. Hasn’t even met anybody to be all night with, if that’s what you’re asking. I can’t imagine where she could be. What makes it worse is him.” She nodded at the dog. “She would never... just would never...”

“Did you two have an argument? Might she have gone back home in some sort of—”

“No! We’re like sisters. We’ve never even had a cross word.” Abruptly Sandra Lister broke into tears. “Oh God,” she gasped, “I just know something... something awful has happened.”

Kat slipped her arm around Sandra’s shoulders. “Why don’t you tell me whatever you can that might help. Do you know where she went on her walks?”

“At night, she liked to walk down that street across the road, the one with the boats at the bay end. She liked the view across the bay, the lights over there.”

“Do you think that’s where she went last night?”

“She always took Totoo there for his last time out. Is that where you found him?”

“Not exactly, but in this general vicinity.” She set her mug on the coffee table, stood, and smiled down at the tear-stained roommate. “There’s surely a logical reason for this, Sandra. Let’s give it a full twenty-four hours. Then, if she doesn’t turn up, we’d better apprise her family.”

“She has no family. Her mother died when Bev was born. Her father was killed in an industrial accident last year. Totoo — and I, sort of — are her family.” She sobbed, gulped. “I’m sorry. I’m a mess. What about the dog?”

“Looks like he’s in your care for the moment.”

“No, I can’t. I just can’t. I don’t know the first thing about dogs. Don’t the police have cages for lost dogs until their owners pick them up?”

“Yes, we do.”

“Well?”

Kat glanced down at Totoo, who stared up at her. A lousy cage after whatever he’d been through? The dog would be better off with... hell, with her, until Bev Bridger was found.

“I’ll see that Totoo is in good hands.”

Sandra Lister nodded. “I really appreciate that.”

At the door, she touched Kat’s arm. “I’ve got a perfectly awful feeling. Please find her.”

Kat patted her hand. “I’m sure there’s a logical reason for all this. I’ll be in touch.” Empty words, she was afraid. If only Totoo could talk.

Not good. A naive young woman on a late-night walk wrapped in tropical vacation euphoria. Half the department’s work was responding to calls from stunned visitors: “I left my purse in the car and it’s gone.” “My beach bag was out of my sight not more than four minutes.” But a woman disappearing on an evening walk? Had Beverly Bridger suddenly decided to go home for some reason Sandra was covering up? Not likely without her dog. Or had she met some irresistible hunk out there in the dark and spent the night at his pad? And let Totoo wander off by himself?

Kat had just one potential lead, if she could even call it a lead. She left Totoo at Island Vets for a checkup. Then she drove to her little mid-island beach house to change into more businesslike gray slacks and white blouse. At eleven-fifteen, she drove back to the island’s south end.

Opposite the Gulf Sands, she turned off the main road into Baylook Drive. The street was a short one, flanked by towering Australian pines. Three homes nestled along each side. At the bayside dead-end was a community dock. Beyond the dock and its four tethered boats, the bay glittered in the unrelenting sun.

Halfway down the shaded blacktop, Kat parked. “Door to door,” she muttered. And with nothing to sell. Well, maybe a degree of information-eliciting charm.

Forty plodding minutes and five nothing-seen-or-heard houses later, she was running out of hope. The last residence loomed imposingly on pilings, with its ground level neatly boxed in to provide a two-car garage. The Clymers, the stylized alligator mailbox announced. Clymers indeed, with towering steps to the main floor.

A white-haired gnome answered the door chime, an ancient fellow in rumpled khakis. He stood barely up to Kat’s breastline, which he savored at his piercing eye-level.

“Mr. Clymer?”

“Alban Clymer, at your service, unless you’re selling goods or goodness.”

She showed him her badge folder. “Detective Curtci, Mr. Clymer. Hoping for a little help.”

“Sweetie, I’ll be overwhelmed to help you any way an old man can. Bring yourself in and set yourself down. Coffee? Tea? A pinch of pinchbottle?”

“Nothing, thank you. Do you live alone here, Mr. Clymer?”

“Alban, for gosh sakes. And no, the wife is on the mainland getting her hair youthenized. I’m eighty-six, though; you don’t have a heck of a lot to fear.”

She perched on the edge of an overstuffed chair near the brick fireplace. Why did people move down here to escape snow country, then insist on a fireplace?

“So what can I do for you, darling? Oh my, that’s a beautiful head of hair you have. Shines like licorice.”

Oh, great. She had skewered come-on artists for less than that. But he was eighty-six, and he was teasing, not demeaning. “Thank you, sir.”

“Come on, girl. Between us, it’s Alban.”

“Were you awake around eleven last night? Alban.” Fat chance. She wasn’t sure he was completely awake now; possibly a bit aglow from a pinch of the pinchbottle?

“I’m awake every night at eleven, honeybun. That’s when the wife’s asleep and HBO starts its skin shows.”

Good Lord.

“Might you have noticed anything unusual out in the street? Or anything at all?”

“Anything at all on this street at that time of night would be unusual.”

“So you didn’t—”

“Don’t jump ahead of an old man, dear. I heard a boat.”

“Out in the bay?”

“Right out there at the dock. Then it went out in the bay.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Yep. Those boat owners are sixty, seventy. Not much given to moonlight cruising.”

Worth pursuing? What else did she have? “Any idea who it might have been?”

Alban shrugged. “Heck, I know exactly whose boat it was. Recognized the sound.”

She waited.

“Don’t you want to know whose boat it was?” he asked.

“Sure, Alban. Whose?”

“John Spencer Kingman’s. That’s whose.”

Was the old coot playing with her? “Alban, John Spencer Kingman is a U.S. Senator.”

“You’re a very smart babe. That’s who owns the boat that makes a peculiar burbly sound. It’s an inboard. I’d guess a six-figure inboard. The others are rackety outboards. Last night that boat went out just as The Bottom’s Line was ending. Those skin flicks are short.”

“What time was that?”

“Eleven-thirty, thereabouts. The senator has a place up around the corner. Second one northward. Uses it for a couple weeks when the Senate’s out of session. Like now.”

“Did you hear the boat come back in?”

“Nope. Past my bedtime by then, honey.”

“Well, Alban, you’ve been a real help,” Kat said as she stood.

“I’ll bet you say that to all us snitches.”

She couldn’t help grinning. “I do, but so far, none of them has made a U.S. Senator my next stop.”

“The senator say he will see you.” The Hispanic maid, in uniform, no less, had left Kat on the front deck of the imposing three-story house. Now she led Kat down a pine-paneled entrance hall, through a two-story-high great room, then out onto the vast screened-in rear deck.

The view of the bay was magnificent. The view of the senator, in voluminous white slacks and surely an xxx-large ivory golf shirt, was forbidding. Not because of his imposing size; because of his scowl.

“Better be a damned fine reason for the local police to interrupt my siesta time. I’m down here to get away from interruptions, not to welcome them.” He hadn’t budged from his huge wicker chair, and he didn’t invite her to sit down. From the third-story deck overhead, she heard recorded country nasal enough to compete with Willy Nelson.

“Detective Curtci, Senator, Malabar—”

He waved an impatient hand. “So Esmeralda informed me. What business can you possibly have here?”

“I’m investigating the disappearance of an island visitor, Senator. A woman named Beverly Bridger.”

“Never heard of her.”

“She went for a walk last night around eleven, probably down Baylook Drive. A resident at the bay end of the drive states that your boat left the dock around eleven-thirty.”

“I know absolutely nothing about any boat leaving the Baylook dock last night, Detective. And I do not understand why you think a departing boat concerns me.”

“It was your boat, Senator.”

“You say you have a witness?”

“Yes.” If not an eyewitness, at least an ear-witness.

Senator Kingman glared at her. Then he looked at the ceiling and bellowed, “Gary, get your butt down here!"

The music overhead cut off in mid twang. She heard footsteps thumping down stairs, more than one person. An athletically trim youth in khaki shorts and a blue T-shirt thudded onto the deck from the great room. He was followed by a less trim boy in jeans and a rumpled tan golf shirt.

“My son, Gary, Detective, and his buddy, Edward Herkiser. Penn State seniors celebrating spring break. Gentlemen, this local detective lady claims our cabin cruiser went out late last night. Might you know anything about that?”

Silence. Herkiser glanced at Gary. And Gary shrugged. “Yeah, Dad. We took it out for a short spin around the bay. Came back maybe an hour later.”

“There you are, Detective... Kersey, is it?”

“Curtci, Senator.”

“Whatever. Mystery solved.”

“No, the mystery is what happened to Beverly Bridger.” She turned to the two collegians. “Did either of you see a young woman out there on Baylook Drive last night?”

“No,” Gary Kingman said. “Not a soul, did we, Herk?”

“Not a soul,” echoed young Herkiser.

“Not when you left in the boat, not when you came back?”

“Nobody,” Gary said.

Herkiser echoed him again.

“Satisfied?” Senator Kingman rumbled.

Gary and his sycophantic friend stood there blank-faced. No, not quite. What was that twitch playing at the corners of Gary’s mouth? A feeling of superiority as he watched his powerhouse father handle an upstart woman cop? Or was something more going on here?

“Senator,” she said, “may I have your permission to check out your boat?”

“No, you may not, Detective. I’m tired of this ridiculous fishing expedition of yours. If you have no further questions, I believe I hear Esmeralda sounding the luncheon chime.”

“Gentlemen,” she said to Gary and his pal, “you will not leave the island until you are cleared by me, you understand?”

“GOOD DAY, DETECTIVE!” Senator Kingman thundered, finally hoisting himself out of his chair. “Leave!”

Thus bounced from the senator’s vacation retreat and fuming at his high-handed attitude, Kat drove to Island Vets to pick up Totoo.

“He’s still a touch shaky,” young but balding Doc Harter told her, “but with a little TLC, he’ll be fine.”

“The man who found him told me the dog was completely exhausted, dehydrated. Could a night on the beach have done that to him?”

“If he was in the surf. He’d been completely immersed in sea water. Salt residue all over him. Gave him a bath. Now he’s a real pretty little cairn. Smart one, too. Found the biscuit bin a second after I put him on the floor.”

“He’s cleared to go?”

“Oh, sure. Just give him that TLC I mentioned, and he’ll be fine.”

Totoo wasn’t going to get much tender loving care in a police retention cage. “Looks like you and I are going to spend the night together,” she told him.

At the Island Mart, she picked up a bag of dog food and a box of biscuits. Totoo zeroed in on the biscuits while they were still in the bag. No appetite problem with this guy.

Tuesday morning, she couldn’t bring herself to leave the little cairn alone all day. She took him with her when she reported in. She was relieved when Moby welcomed the company.

Totoo curled up in a corner of the squad room. “Take him out a couple times, will you, Mobe? I’ll leave you a biscuit supply.”

“You going back for another senatorial filibuster? Know what I think? I think the girl fell off that dock at the end of the street, drowned, and the tide took her on out.”

“Possible, I guess, but why would her dog walk across the island and end up exhausted on the gulf shore crusted with sea salt?”

“Huh. Keep digging.”

“While I’m doing that, how about having our resident computer ace check out those two midnight boatmen for possible rap sheets.”

She called the Coast Guard. No bodies found anywhere in the area for the past month. If Bridger had sunk, though, she wouldn’t come back up for a couple more days.

Kat drove across the three-mile causeway to its pair of toll booths on the mainland end. The two attendants now on duty hadn’t been there Sunday night, but they told her neither of the Sunday night shift attendants had mentioned seeing anything at all suspicious in any departing vehicle.

She returned to Malabar Island. Interviewed the occupants of several houses in the vicinity where the dog had been found. Nobody had seen anything.

“Not much of a ratchet forward, Mobe,” she lamented as the descending sun splashed the squad room with hot orange. “I’m dead certain those two college hotshots know more than a shrug’s worth. I’d like to take a look at that boat, but with what I’ve got so far, the chances of a search warrant are nil. Especially with the senator backing up Gary’s and his buddy’s story.”

“What did you expect a father to do, Kat? He’s not about to— Hey, Totoo, suppertime’s coming up. Hang in there, will you?” Moby swiveled back to Kat. “Never saw such a dog. Sits and just stares at you until you give him the biscuit.”

He shuffled through the papers on his desk. “Computer came up with this much. Herkiser’s clean, but young Kingman’s had his jollies. A slew of speeding and reckless-driving raps, fines paid but no convictions. High-spirited kid stuff, except for a charge of assault in an Altoona, PA, tavern. No conviction on that, either.”

“A pattern, though. An unruly son protected by a prominent father.”

“Seems so, Kat. Looks like you’re up against the proverbial stone wall. Or maybe those two didn’t have anything to do with the girl’s disappearance, after all. Maybe she just bugged out.”

“Sure, Mobe. And left her dog? Get real.”

“Get real yourself, Detective. In two days you’ve got nothing at all.”

“I’ve got a boat leaving.”

“Boats leave all the time, Kat.”

“And, as a long shot, I’ve got Edward Herkiser. He might be the key, but not while he’s with Gary.”

“So get him in here. Hasn’t the senator told you to stay away from his house?”

“Good point, Mobe. Very good point.”

Day three, and she was still nowhere. Now, though, she had a plan. Came to her last night as she played stare-a-biscuit with Totoo.

“Kingman residence,” said Esmeralda in a monotone phone voice.

“I would like to speak with Gary, please. This is Katherine.”

Apparently that was the kind of call Gary was used to getting. He came on the line in seconds.

“Hey, Katherine? Do I know you?”

“We’ve met, Gary. This is Detective Curtci. There are just a few points I need clarified.” She ignored his snort of disillusion and pressed on. “It would be a help if you and your friend would come to the station today. Say, in an hour or so.”

“I don’t think—”

“I really don’t want to bring you in on material-witness warrants, Gary.”

“We’re not under arrest or anything like that?”

Interesting question. “No, no. Just an informal chat.” Said the spider to this formidably-backed fly.

“I’ll see.” Off-balance for sure. Would he run to papa, a worried son with something to hide? Or swagger in here like the arrogant clod his rap sheet appeared to spell out?

Or perhaps the senator had deduced she wasn’t going to let this drop until she interviewed them without him present.

A few minutes before noon, the two of them pulled into the PD parking, an arrival timed, perhaps, for lunch hour to cut her short. Wouldn’t work. She never ate lunch. The car was a lustrous forest-green Jag, no doubt the senator’s vacation buggy.

She took on Gary first, leaving Herkiser in the drab little waiting area. The interrogation room was also barren of decor; just a center table and two hard chairs.

“No one-way mirror?” Gary quipped.

“You’ve been in these before?”

“I’ve seen them in movies.”

“We’re not that fancy here.”

Gary plunked into one of the chairs. Kat sat across from him. For a long moment, she said nothing. The calculated silence seemed not to bother him at all.

“Let’s go over what you told me Monday, Gary.”

“Sure. We took the boat out around eleven-thirty or so. Cruised the bay nowhere in particular. Came back an hour later. We saw nobody when we left or when we came back. That’s all there was to it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure, I’m sure.”

That went on a few more minutes, but she hadn’t expected to hear anything else. Her target wasn’t Gary Kingman. It was Edward Herkiser.

“All right,” she finally sighed. “You can go back to the waiting area while I talk with your friend.”

He grinned. “Okay, Katherine. Want me to send him in?”

“I’ll come for him in a few minutes.” She needed those minutes. She stepped out to Moby’s desk. “I’ll take Totoo now, Mobe.” With the cairn on his leash, Kat beckoned to Herkiser. He followed her into the interrogation room.

“You going to interview the dog, too?” he asked as he sat where she told him. “What’s he doing here?”

“Visiting. Relax,” she advised Herkiser as she took her chair, the leash still in her hand.

“Is this going to take long?”

“Up to you, Herk. Is that what they call you?”

“That’s what Gary calls me.”

“I’ll call you Edward. Time to tell me the truth, Edward. What really happened out there on Baylook Drive?”

“How many times do you want to hear this? Around eleven-thirty, we took the boat out. Came back an hour later. We didn’t see anybody when we left or when we came back in. That’s it.”

Almost word-for-word identical to Gary’s statement. Rehearsed? Or was she at a dead end here? Maybe they truly hadn’t seen Beverly Bridger and her dog. Even if they had, were they to stick to their story, there was no hint of another lead. It all came down to this moment with this close-mouthed boy.

She let the leash drop.

Then she leaned forward, her eyes hard on his. “Did you perhaps hear anything unusual that night, Edward?”

He seemed not to hear her. Totoo had wandered from under the table and stopped beside Herkiser’s chair. Edward’s attention had swung to the dog. Motionless on his haunches, the cairn stared upward, unblinking.

“I’ll ask you again, Edward. Did you hear or see anything unusual out there that night?”

“Uh, anything what?”

“Unusual.”

“Huh-uh.” He was trying to ignore the dog’s unremitting gaze. Totoo’s attention riveted on Herkiser. Who twitched uncomfortably. On his forehead sweat glistened.

“She was a twenty-year-old girl, Edward. About your age. Just out for a walk with her dog. With that dog, Edward.”

He swallowed. Blinked. Wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Dammit,” he whispered. To the dog. “It was an accident.”

“It was what, Edward?”

“An accident,” he wailed. And like a pent-up flood behind a ruptured levee, the story poured forth.

“In a way, it was an accident,” she told Moby after the arrests, the senator’s predictable explosion, the hastily summoned lawyers. “They ran into Beverly out there and talked her into a moonlight boat ride. Just a chance encounter. God knows why lonely women fall for invitations from strangers, but she and Totoo went aboard. Kingman and Herkiser had two six-packs with them. When they left the bay and cruised into the gulf, the six-packs were in them. That, plus his cocky arrogance, prompted Kingman to make a pass at Beverly in the cabin. It escalated into serious grappling. According to both of them, her head smacked the cabin wall hard enough to kill her.”

“Manslaughter and attempted rape.”

“That’s what they realized, too, Mobe. It got uglier, if that’s possible. They tied her body to one of the boat’s two anchors and into the gulf she went. About five miles offshore, Herkiser estimates.”

“But the dog—”

“Herkiser says Gary made him throw Totoo overboard, expecting him to drown. But that’s one tough little canine. He obviously swam toward lights on shore — five miles of doggy-paddling with those stumpy little legs. Some dog, that one.”

“Damn near human, too. You say he’s the one who cracked the case — with his hard, beady stare?”

“It was more than Herkiser could take, an accusing stare from a little dog he’d tried to kill. Totoo’s a great interrogator. Come on, Totoo, let’s go home.”

“He’s yours now?”

“Beverly had no family, Mobe. Her friend doesn’t want him. So it looks like I’ve got a partner.”

Moby chuckled. “In your case report you gonna give your partner a mention for an assist?”

“Not a bad idea.” What she wouldn’t mention, though, was the dog biscuit she had taped under the arm of Herkiser’s chair just before his interrogation.

Copyright © 2002 by William Hallstead.