“Chaka, stand down,” she ordered in a hoarse voice.
The dog obeyed immediately, releasing Robin’s arm. He sat beside Peggy, ready for the next game.
Since the minute Robin had quit moving, Chaka had simply been in a holding pattern, literally.
Levon was no longer at my side. He had launched himself from the patio door, walking (not running) toward the little tableau.
“Ms. Herman,” Levon said, “I’m going to tell you your rights, now.” With a grim face, Levon informed Peggy of her right to remain silent.
The back door flew open and Lena ran out, stopping short as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. “What’s happening?” she asked, terrified.
Robin rose to his feet, very deliberately. He didn’t want to startle the dog.
“Lena, I’m so sorry,” Peggy said, and she began to cry
“What for?” Lena knew she was about to get bad news. You could tell it in her face and the hunch of her shoulders. She looked from Levon to Robin to Chaka to Peggy. Phillip, standing at my side on the patio, muttered, “Oh, Jeez.”
“What’s happened?” Lena demanded, when no one spoke. “Tell me.”
So Peggy did. She might not have confessed to us (though I think she would have, it had clearly been weighing on her), but she felt obliged to tell her sister the truth. Peggy began to speak, haltingly at first, then more quickly.
Saturday night, the week before, Chaka had been antsy because of the approaching storm. He’d whined to go out much later than usual. Peggy, who’d been reading in bed, had gotten up to let him out. Hoping the dog would be quick about his business, Peggy stood in the open doorway, admiring the scudding clouds and the rolling thunder, when a movement caught her eye.
“Someone was in your backyard,” she said, turning to me. “And she was running toward our house.”
She and Lena had adopted Chaka from a Rhodesian ridgeback rescue group, who only knew that Chaka had been well trained. The Herman sisters had discovered, to their considerable surprise and dismay, that Chaka’s previous work training had been as a restraint dog. Chaka came, sat, heeled, like any well-trained dog. But he also knew that when a person—or, in fact, anything—was running toward his owner, it was Chaka’s job to bring down that attacker and make sure he stayed down.
“We actually thought it was a good thing,” Peggy said. “It made us feel safer. After all, if someone was attacking us…” She shot me a guilty look. “But we couldn’t really believe someone would actually seem to be attacking me.”
Tracy Beal had been trying to get out of our yard in the quickest possible way, to escape Virginia. But she’d been running toward his territory and his owner, so Chaka had obeyed his earliest training. He’d jumped the fence and clamped his jaws on Tracy’s left arm.
Somehow, Tracy managed to stay on her feet, but the weight of the dog on her arm had forced her to crouch.
Chaka was not interested in savaging the woman he’d brought down, only in restraining her until Peggy dealt with her.
Tracy hadn’t known that.
Peggy had started running to the fence. By a flash of lightning, Peggy saw that the struggling woman had raised a knife. Acting purely on instinct, Peggy seized one of Lena’s new garden statues (the elf) and hurled it at Tracy Beal.
It must have been like being hit with a missile. Tracy had staggered, then gone flat on her back, her hand releasing the knife.
Since his prey wasn’t resisting anymore, Chaka let go of Tracy’s arm. He sat by the body, waiting for Peggy to praise him.
Peggy said she could see Tracy was dead. She told Levon, “I didn’t know what to do. Chaka was innocent. I couldn’t let him be killed. And it was her fault! She wasn’t supposed to be in Roe’s backyard. Clearly, she was up to no good.”
“What did you do then?” Levon said.
Chaka looked from Peggy to Lena, perhaps hoping for a treat.
Robin held out his arm, showing me that his sleeve was marked with dog saliva.
“You pulled off the sweater she was wearing,” I said.
Peggy just nodded. “I stuffed it in the bag I took to the Goodwill drop-off the next day.”
Lena began crying, almost silently.
“Shit,” Phillip whispered, and I could only agree.
“After that?” Levon said.
“I got the statue and threw it back into our yard. And I told Chaka to jump back over. I followed him. I took the statue inside and washed it and put it back in the urn.”
She took a deep breath. “When Chaka went into Roe’s yard after Moosie, I pretended I couldn’t jump the fence. But I knew Roe had seen me do it before. I guess you just put it all together?” Peggy turned her gaze from Levon to me.
I could hardly bear to meet her eyes.
“Yeah,” I said. “I suddenly saw the whole picture.”
“And you put this together to catch me.”
I nodded.
“Well, bully for you,” Peggy said, with overwhelming bitterness. “I divorced my husband, my son doesn’t come to visit, and what I’ve got are my sister and my dog. I wasn’t going to let that bitch stab Chaka. A person who’d do that to a dog deserves to die.”
Levon said, “I have to take you in, Ms. Herman.”
“What will happen to Chaka?” Peggy asked.
“I don’t know. That’s not up to me, and I’m glad,” Levon said. He called the station.
“You okay? If we go?” I asked Levon.
“Sure,” he said. After all, he was the one with the gun.
Phillip and Robin trailed me back to the door. We watched out the window until the uniforms showed up with their siren whooping. The Cohens wouldn’t like that, of course.
Levon had to pass through our house to get to his car, parked in our driveway. “I’m going to call for an ambulance for Lena,” he said. “She’s distraught.”
“Who will take care of Chaka?” Robin said, dismayed.
“I’ll come back to get him. I’ll drop him off at the kennel where the Hermans have boarded him when they had to be out of town.”
I was relieved. I did not want to entertain Chaka as a houseguest.
“Do you think she’ll stand by her confession?” I wondered if Peggy would decide to fight.
“She might,” Levon said, shrugging. “She knows she deserves to be in jail. Or maybe the shock of jail life will scare Peggy so bad she decides to recant.” Levon left.
“She deserves to be there?” Phillip was outraged. “Peggy didn’t set out to hurt anyone. She’s not a criminal. She was trying to protect her dog. A lot of people would think she was justified.”
“Not Tracy Beal’s mother and sister,” I said. “For starters.”
Robin said, “As Levon said earlier, not my call. And I can’t forget Tracy came in this house in the night intending to harm Aurora. After all, she brought a knife.”
Phillip looked troubled, maybe doubtful, but after he glanced at the clock he let out a yelp and dashed for the shower. I had forgotten his friends were coming over, and it did not occur to Phillip to cancel. He’d have an amazing story to tell them.
Down the hall, Sophie began to advise us that she was lonely.