A New Leash on Death (Dog Lover's Mysteries Book 1)

by Susan Conant

  A NEW LEASH ON DEATH

  With a New Preface

  SUSAN CONANT

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2011 by Susan Conant

  First edition published 1990

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please buy only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  For Carter, who made it possible

  2011 PREFACE

  In preparing this new edition of my first dog lover’s mystery, I was amused to note that everything and nothing has changed since I wrote the book in 1989.

  In the era in which A New Leash on Death is set, cell phones, laptops, iPods, iPads, digital cameras, cable television, and e-books didn’t exist. Personal computers were big, expensive boxes into which we inserted floppy discs that held the programs we used as well as the files we created. With no web and no Internet, we had no easy access to information. We depended on libraries. Before e-mail and Facebook, it was difficult to stay in touch with friends. We wrote letters and placed expensive long-distance phone calls.

  As to dogs, under the guidance of the monks of New Skete, we’d recently learned to think of Canis lupus familiaris primarily as a domesticated wolf. As Holly Winter does in this book, we talked about alpha leaders and dominance. We were cutting edge! Although B.F. Skinner had outlined the principles of clicker training in 1951, dog obedience clubs throughout the United States still relied almost exclusively on jerk-and-drag methods. In rereading A New Leash on Death for the first time since I hunted for typos in the page proofs in 1990, I was happy to note that Holly was active in the dog-training revolution that replaced choke-collar corrections with lavish praise and tasty treats. Her options for showing dogs in obedience were, however, far more limited than they are now. Only four titles were available: C.D, C.D.X., U.D., and OTCH. Most contemporary performance events, including rally obedience, agility, freestyle, and nose work, didn’t exist.

  The routine care of dogs has changed. The only permanent form of identification was a tattoo. Microchips lay in the future. Instead of using once-a-month medication year round to prevent heartworm disease, many of us gave our dogs the little pink pills to which Holly refers, and we did so only during mosquito season. The price of everything has, of course, soared: a good leather leash costs a bit more than the twelve or fifteen dollars that Holly mentions! Fortunately, dogs and the love of dogs are unchanged. Indeed, the emotion that churned through me as I reread A New Leash on Death was my great love for the dog who inspired this book, my first Alaskan malamute, Natasha.

  The immediate inspiration for the story was a trivial incident that took place at the New England Dog Training Club: A man in an advanced class put his dog on a long down and stepped out of the building. The instructor called out, “Handlers, return to your dogs!” The man failed to appear. He eventually showed up, but during his brief absence, I experienced an absurd epiphany: I would go forth and write mysteries for those of us who see the world through dog-colored glasses! The next morning, Holly and Rowdy took possession of my consciousness. I channeled Holly, as I’ve been doing ever since. It has been an enduring pleasure to serve as her medium.

  This new version of an old book differs in only minor ways from the original. I have corrected a few factual errors, changed a few words, and made other small alterations. Otherwise, I have, as usual, let Holly speak for herself.

  Susan Conant

  Newton, Massachusetts

  May 2011

  Acknowledgments

  For technical assistance, I am grateful to my Alaskan malamute, Frostfield Arctic Natasha, C.D.

  Special thanks to Roger Peduzzi, D.V.M., and James Dalsimer, M.D., for advice on medical matters. Any errors are mine alone.

  Because the New England Dog Training Club meets in the Cambridge Armory on Thursday nights, it is especially important to point out that the characters and the dog training club in this novel are imaginary. Any resemblance to actual people or institutions is entirely coincidental.

  A NEW LEASH ON DEATH

  1

  My name is Holly Winter. It's not my fault. Until I was born, my parents, or, as they always said, my sire and dam, hadn't had any practice in naming people. In the week before my birth, two of their golden retriever bitches produced a total of seventeen puppies. I was number eighteen. I'm lucky not to be "Buck's Little Lady" or "Marissa's Winsome Miss." I've often had the feeling that a human puppy must have been a surprise to Buck and Marissa. They must have been stunned when I began to utter words. Buck still considers speech to be some peculiarly advanced form of barking. When I graduated from grammar school, he told everyone that I'd finally got my C.D., which, in case you hadn't guessed, is an obedience title, Companion Dog. With my high school diploma, I became a Companion Dog Excellent, and when I got my B. A. in journalism, I was Marissa's fifth Utility Dog. Buck was proud of me then, and he's still proud of me, partly, I suspect, because I'm thirty years old and haven't yet developed canine hip dysplasia. I'm also something of a puzzle to him. Although he subscribes to Dog's Life and reads my column, he can't understand why I write about dogs instead of breeding them. Furthermore, he can't understand why anyone who's welcome to share his house in Maine with him and his fifteen wolf dog hybrids would choose to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Buck's become a little eccentric in the eight years since Marissa died.

  My involvement with Dr. Stanton's death was, like my name, Buck and Marissa's fault. If I'd been brought up to have a normal attitude about adopting a dead man's dog, I'd never have tried to find Rowdy's AKC registration papers. But, then, I'd also be the kind of person who'd feed supermarket dog chow instead of Eukanuba, and I'd never insist on precision heeling, and no one would ever have known who killed the old man.

  It started on a Thursday evening last November. Thursday evenings are to me what Friday nights are to Orthodox Jews. Every Thursday night between seven and ten, the Cambridge Dog Training Club holds classes in the Cambridge Armory, and, unless I happen to have a bitch in season, you'll find me there. Bitch, by the way, is not a dirty word. One way to spot a newcomer to the world of dogs is any hesitation about saying it. Bitches in season are bitches in heat, and, for obvious reasons, they're not welcome at dog training classes or obedience trials. In the presence of a bitch in season, the only thing an unaltered male dog obeys is the call of the wild.

  To understand what happened to Dr. Stanton, you need to know a little about the Cambridge Armory. A lot of dog training clubs meet in armories because armories are large enough to hold even big beginners' classes, and also because armories are a lot nicer than schools or YMCAs about what are always called accidents. Armories, of course, don't particularly like accidents, either. Go to any dog training class in the world, and you'll find one rule: If your dog has an accident, you clean it up. There's another rule about accidents: Don't let your dog have any on the grounds of the armory. Armory managers are convinced that dogs have one aim in life. On the night Dr. Stanton died, I'll bet Gerry Pitts, the manager of the Cambridge Armory, checked outside at least ten times just to make sure that no handlers were exercising their dogs on the lawn.

  If you're walking up to the armory from Concord Avenue, there are chain-link fences on your left and right to keep you off the lawn. Just before
you get to the steps of the building, there's a gate to the lawn on either side. You go through a set of glass doors to enter the front hallway. The men's room is on the left. Ahead of you is a set of swinging doors that are always open, and through the doors is the big hall where we hold classes. Really, it's a gym with a battered floor that's better for dog training than for basketball. Dogs slip on highly polished surfaces, and if there's one thing that most dogs hate, it's slipping. No dog has ever objected to the floor of the Cambridge Armory, and I keep hoping that no one ever gets the idea of refinishing it. The armory is shabby, just the way I like it.

  If you show up on a Thursday night, you'll see a big group of dogs and handlers in front of you, and at the far end of the hall, separated by a stretch of portable baby gates, you'll see a small advanced class. To your left, against the wall and near the door to the armory's offices, you'll find our desk, which is, of course, a card table. The ladies' room, should you need it, is to the left of the door to the offices. All along the left side of the hall are bleachers. At the far end, on the right, beyond the small advanced class, you might notice the door that leads to a shelter for homeless men. The shelter is open only in cold weather. The men are allowed to enter the shelter at ten, when we leave, but sometimes they hang around the front door and the hallway to wait.

  On that Thursday night, I was dogless and had been for about a month. My last golden, Marissa's parting gift to me, died in September, and Buck was taking his time about finding me another, mainly, I suspect, because he intended to surprise me with a wolf dog pup. Don't get me wrong. I like wolves, and I like wolf dogs as much as I like all other dogs. My only objection to Buck's current obsession is that you can't register wolf dogs with the American Kennel Club (or, as Buck says, you can't register them yet), and if a dog can't be registered, he can't be entered in a sanctioned obedience trial. You can train and enter him in fun matches, but I'm too much Marissa's daughter to bother training a dog I can't really show. Besides, I make my living in the dog world, and I can always use another C.D. on my résumé.

  In any case, I'd volunteered to help Ray Metcalf at the desk that night because I knew that my doglessness was temporary—it always is—and I wanted to get my yearly turn out of the way. The Metcalfs breed Clumber spaniels and, to prove "Winter's rule," look nothing like their dogs. Ray and Lynne are both so tall and bony that if they were dogs, they'd be aging greyhounds. Clumber spaniels are long and low, like basset hounds, and they're supposed to look heavy. Although my hair is the color of a dark golden retriever, I bear little resemblance to any other breed of dog I've ever owned.

  Ray and I were busy around seven because it was the first Thursday of the month, when a new beginners' class always starts, and we had to give people forms to fill out, collect the forms and the money, and keep the untrained dogs from mauling one another while the handlers did their paperwork. Barbara Doyle, who has German shepherds, helped us. We also checked in a few people for the Utility class that Roz runs at the far end of the hall while Vince Dragone, our head trainer, does the beginners' class.

  The more advanced a dog training class is, the smaller it is. Most people originally go to dog training because they just want the dog to come when he’s called. Before long, they discover that there's no "just" about it. Once beginners realize that a reliable recall isn't something you achieve in eight Pre-Novice classes, most of them quit. On that Thursday night, Vince's beginners' class had twenty-five dogs, and Roz's Utility class had three.

  At eight, the beginners left, and the advanced beginners, who'd had four lessons, arrived. Ray and I checked everyone in, and Vince started his second class of the night. Hussan, his Rottweiler, was still on what's called a long down: Hussan hadn't moved since seven, and he'd be in exactly the same place until Vince released him. It takes a lot of patience to train a dog that well, and it takes an imperturbable personality to come in at seven, teach for three hours, and leave at ten looking as relaxed as if he'd been training for ten minutes.

  When the club fired Margaret Robichaud and replaced her with Vince, Margaret blamed Dr. Stanton and said we were sexist, but the membership doubled. Margaret's approach—jerk on the dog's lead, and if that doesn't work, jerk harder—was going out of style, and we were all pretty tired of her gift for putting people off. She used to tell the beginners that if they weren't going to train for two hours a day, they should go home and forget it. She and Dr. Stanton were already less than friends, but he only spoke for the rest of us. We were all thrilled at the chance to hire Vince, who understands that all dogs are descended from wolves and who likes dogs the way they are.

  At eight thirty, the five members of Roz's Pre-Open class arrived. Open comes after Novice and before Utility. Novice, Open, Utility. Companion Dog, Companion Dog Excellent, Utility Dog. C.D., C.D.X., U.D. The Novice exercises, the ones for a C.D., are incredibly important, since they're the foundation of everything else, but they can bore an intelligent dog. The point of Roz's Pre-Open class was to liven things up for the dogs while giving them a head start on the Open exercises, which are fun, especially retrieving and jumping. Five people had taken Roz up on her offer to do the Pre-Open class.

  The first person to check in for Roz's class that night was Steve Delaney, my vet and my lover, with India, his German shepherd. Steve's eyes are something like Siberian blue, but gentler and warmer, and his hair forms those thick waves you see along the back of a Chesapeake Bay retriever. Just in case you wondered, there's nothing ethically wrong with having an affair with your vet, especially if you've met under emotionally charged circumstances. When old Dr. Draper diagnosed Vinnie's cancer in June, I thought he'd see us through, but he retired in August. Vinnie didn't show the pain until early September, and by then, Steve had taken over the practice. After he ended Vinnie's suffering, he spent half an hour holding my hand and listening to the story of her life. My friend Rita, who's a shrink, believes in a primordial link between sex and death. That night I had a vivid dream about Steve. The next day I called to thank him—for his help with Vinnie, not for the dream—and he's been consoling me ever since.

  The second to check in for Roz's class that Thursday night was Dr. Frank Stanton, one of the grand old persons of obedience training. He looked better than he had for a while. Until about a year earlier, he was living proof that if you want to stay young, forget Nautilus and Retin-A. Just keep training dogs. Lately, though, he'd been pale. When he had some color, he was an attractive man, tall, with lots of white hair and heavy glasses. That night, as usual, he was dressed more warmly than anyone else. His sweater was one of those expensive hand-knit Irish ones, and over it he wore a tweed sport coat.

  A founding member of the Cambridge Dog Training Club, he was also an official in four or five other dog organizations and an unofficial historian of the American dog world. Two years earlier, when his eyesight started to fail badly, he stopped going to shows, but he never missed a class, and he was still strong enough to handle Rowdy, his Alaskan malamute. That's pretty strong. There are bigger dogs that can pull more than a malamute, but, pound for pound, an Alaskan malamute is possibly the strongest dog in the world. If you see an arctic dog with blue eyes, it's a Siberian husky, not a malamute, whose eyes are brown. Siberians are smaller and faster. (By the way, never call a Siberian a husky.) I remember wondering, when Dr. Stanton checked in that night, why Buck had decided to breed wolf dogs when he could have had a malamute. Maybe it was because he thought wolves would be easier to train. A lot of people would agree with him.

  "How's Rowdy doing these days?" I asked as I returned Dr. Stanton's card. Once you get beyond the beginner's stage and join our club, you pay twenty dollars for a card that's worth six lessons. The card has the numbers 1 through 6 printed along the bottom, and whenever you check in, the person at the desk punches out a number.

  "I believe that Rowdy is beginning to pull slightly less, but I may, of course, be deceiving myself," he said.

  Especially with young women, he had a courtly m
anner. You know that Harvard accent that movie actors never get quite right? Dr. Stanton had the real thing, and for an old man, he had a young voice, thanks to a lifetime of talking to dogs. Rowdy obviously liked the accent and the voice. When Dr. Stanton said his name, he quit trying to provoke Hussan into getting up and gave Dr. Stanton a doggy grin and a tail swish. When Dr. Stanton wasn't acting courtly, he could be outright nasty to people, but he deserved every canine smile and wag he ever received.

  Lynne Metcalf, with a young Clumber spaniel, also checked in for Roz's class. Lynne is so rich she doesn't have to work for a living, but she's a nice person anyway. Ron Coughlin arrived next, with Vixen, a mixed breed bitch (setter, golden, Doberman, and who knows what else), who was possibly the most intelligent dog in the club. Ron had been junior partner in Coughlin and Sons Plumbing and Heating for twenty years. Then came Diane D'Amato, with the movie star of the club, her black miniature poodle, Curly, who'd just filmed a TV commercial for rawhide chew toys. One of Curly's specialties is dancing on his hind legs. He rises up on tiptoe and prances around in a circle or across the floor. He knows how to bark out an accompaniment. Don't get the idea that Diane is rich. Dogs get paid a flat fee with no residuals for commercials. Diane earns her living as the office manager of an auto body shop. Curly's work doesn't pay much, but Diane gets a kick out of seeing him on TV, and so does the rest of the club.

  Dog trainers are a diverse group. About all we have in common is dogs. One of the complaints some people made about Margaret Robichaud was that she preferred the idle rich to the rest of us. I never noticed it, but, of course, she would have carefully avoided offending someone who writes for Dog's Life. I did notice that Margaret spent more time with purebred dogs, especially golden retrievers, than with mixed breeds, and I didn't like it. One thing that's completely out of place in obedience training is any kind of snobbery.