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

by Susan Conant

  "For a likely show prospect? That's what she'd want. A thousand? More? For a real prize, a lot more. It all depends."

  "Three, four thousand. Minimum."

  "Probably more," I said. "Plus shots. Food. Where does she keep them?"

  "Place is a little zoo," he said.

  "Okay," I said. "Plus the cost of building runs. They're not that cheap."

  "This is just for your ears," Kevin said. "Seven, eight months ago, Stanton started to spend big."

  "Well, I can promise you he didn't spend anything on Margaret," I said. "He loathed her. Did you think he'd become her patron?" Her sugar daddy? The idea was grotesque. "What did he buy?"

  "He withdrew cash," Kevin said. "Regular, large sums."

  "And he worried about the price of bread," I said, but then I remembered that I'd only imagined that. "Not necessarily bread, but Millie was saying he'd been, oh, under stress. She thinks he was worried about money, but, you know, I can't believe it."

  "Believe it."

  "He had an appointment with her," I said. "Margaret. But he died first."

  "She had a letter from him. Showed it to me. I've got it. Said he'd be at her house. To have a talk. That's all. A couple of lines. According to her, she thought he wanted to patch things up."

  "I don't believe it," I said, thinking about the tattoo. Kevin is a law enforcement officer. In the eyes of the law, a dog belongs to his registered owner. In my eyes, Rowdy belonged to me. If the registered owner goes to jail, who owns the dog? I had no idea, but I wasn't about to take the chance of turning Rowdy over to anyone, never mind a murderer. I looked at him curled up in his corner. The bone was gone. He hadn't just gnawed on it. He'd ground the whole thing up with his molars and swallowed it. Vowing never again to give Rowdy a cooked bone—or maybe any bone at all—I smacked my lips at him.

  "Whose good boy are you?" I said.

  The question just slipped out. I always used to ask Vinnie whose good girl she was. He rose, wagged his tail, ran to me, and offered me his big head to pat, ears flattened. I scratched between his ears and thumped his back. He knew whose good dog he was.

  It wasn't until about quarter of ten, when Kevin got up to leave, that I realized he must have been watching the clock. Rowdy stood up, shook himself, padded over to Kevin, and flopped on the floor, tummy up, legs in the air, and eyes expectant.

  "You don't have to go. Steve would be glad to see you," I said. "Besides, I want to hear about Hal."

  Kevin knelt down, dug his fingers into Rowdy's neck, shook him gently, then rubbed his tummy.

  "You ought to get another dog," I said.

  "Naw. It was awful when I lost Trapper. I couldn't go through that again," Kevin said, shaking his head.

  "And Hal?"

  "I've got some news about that character."

  "What?"

  "It'll keep," he said.

  Steve arrived a few minutes after ten.

  "Johnnie Walker Black," he commented, glancing at the bottle.

  "I don't fool around."

  "I hope not."

  He'd left India at home. According to the monks of New Skete, your dog should sleep in your bedroom. Sleeping in your room gives the dog a chance to spend long relaxed hours near you, breathing your scent. Those long relaxed hours make for good canine mental health. The monks' advice proves that they don't cheat on their vow of celibacy. Besides, they don't keep malamutes. About half an hour after Steve arrived, Rowdy stretched his neck toward the bedroom ceiling and sang a series of yowling howls. We put him in the kitchen and locked the bedroom door. There are limits.

  In the morning, I told Steve about Rowdy's tattoo and about Margaret, and he pointed out something I'd realized even before I pumped Kevin. Everything would have made sense if Dr. Stanton had murdered Margaret. He adopts Rowdy. She recognizes Rowdy. She knows about the tattoo. She blackmails Stanton. He wants to keep Rowdy and stop paying blackmail, and he hates her anyway. He strangles her. But, according to Kevin, there had been no struggle.

  "What makes you think Margaret knew he had Rowdy? That she recognized him? Didn't he get Rowdy after she left?" Steve was eating scrambled eggs and English muffins. It's the only hot breakfast I know how to cook, and fortunately, it's also Steve's idea of a real meal. If we had more time together, his cholesterol count would be sky-high. Buck met Steve in early October, when Buck was in town to do something about wolves for the Museum of Science. "Steve's a regular guy," he said with approval. "I mean, he likes to fish and hunt." Besides fishing and hunting, regular guys eat eggs for breakfast.

  "Margaret got fired in the early summer," I said. "Supposedly, King died in August, or maybe it was early September. Dr. Stanton got Rowdy around the beginning of October, I think, maybe a little before. A year ago. You know, it's possible she's never seen him, though she could have seen him around here. She lives on Avon Hill. But she wouldn't have seen him at a show. He didn't show Rowdy."

  "And now we know why."

  "Now we think we know why. No papers. Damn it! I mean, Stanton had quit going to shows anyway, but I'm thirty years old, and I'm not ready to retire. And look. When you show up in obedience with a malamute, everyone thinks, you know, that it's sort of a joke. I mean, everyone says, 'Hm, willful and stubborn.' But Rowdy is different."

  "So just get an ILP number."

  That stands for Indefinite Listing Privilege. An ILP number would have let me show Rowdy in obedience, but not in breed, and it definitely wouldn't have made him my dog.

  "Because Margaret could have the ILP cancelled anytime she felt like it. Damn it, I want to keep him."

  "Has it occurred to you that Margaret wasn't necessarily the only person who could have made that connection? Between Rowdy and her dog? For a start, you did. Did anyone else?"

  "Who?"

  "Anyone who saw the tattoo."

  "It's practically invisible," I said. "Unless you know it's there."

  "Who was Stanton's vet?"

  "Dr. Draper. I know because there was a rabies certificate in the file, the one in the library."

  "I'll check the chart. Maybe Draper saw something and made a note."

  "He wouldn't have done anything about it?"

  "Why? Stanton was just the kind of guy who has his dog tattooed. Responsible, knows about tattoos, loves the dog. You see a tattoo, you assume the owner knows it's there. Why say anything?"

  "Okay, check the chart," I said. "But don't ask Dr. Draper. Don't say anything to anyone. I almost didn't tell you. And also, I keep thinking that maybe Stanton did have the papers. You know, the AKC isn't the fastest organization in the world. When you register a dog, it takes a month or so to get the papers. I've been thinking that the registration might have been transferred, but it isn't on their books yet."

  "That's wishful thinking," Steve said. "I'll check his chart today. I've got to go. I'll call you."

  I started a column about cures for digging. It was on my mind. Rowdy was starting to turn my yard into a scale model of Verdun. Steve called at noon.

  "I've checked the chart," he said. "There's nothing about the tattoo, but there is something you ought to know about. According to this, he's overdue for everything except rabies."

  "There must be some mistake." I'd seen Dr. Stanton's record.

  "Maybe he switched vets. People do."

  "You don't just change vets for no reason."

  "Oh, is that right?" Steve's was the voice of experience.

  "Stanton would have made some note in the file," I said. "There's something fishy here. When was he due?"

  "Let's see, September. A year from when we first saw him. And, oh, you might want to think about kennel cough. He got his heartworm test a little early, March. That was negative. You've been giving him the pills?"

  Millie had given them to me. They were the old-fashioned kind, the little pink ones that you give every day from April through November. They were protecting Rowdy from heartworm, but not from anything else. They hadn't protected either of us agains
t an overdose of Valium. A dog who loves everyone and who'll eat anything is vulnerable, even a big dog who looks like a wolf. Steve could protect him from distemper and leptospirosis and parainfluenza, but it was up to me to defend him against human beings.

  9

  Steve found ten minutes for us early that afternoon. Most dogs especially hate the shot for kennel cough, which isn't a shot at all. It's a nasal spray. I held Rowdy tightly while Steve loaded a hypodermic and squirted the contents into Rowdy's nose. Rowdy didn't budge. He didn't whine. He didn't struggle. He just took it. The real shots didn't faze him, either. Malamutes are highly desirable as laboratory animals. They have a high tolerance for pain. If I ever murder anyone, it will be some piece of scum who takes advantage of that toughness, that dignity.

  Back home, I called Roger at work—some computer software outfit—and told him I had a few questions about Rowdy. He said he'd be home at four and invited me to stop in. I accepted. I'd bring Rowdy along to avoid being alone with Roger. The only way to straighten out the mess of Rowdy's papers, the only way to guarantee that I could keep him, the only way to make sure that no one ever slipped him any more Valium was, I'd finally realized, to find out what the hell was going on, and Roger was the logical place to start. If anyone knew who the lady with the corgis was, it was Roger. Besides, although I had no intention of telling him about the tattoo, I wanted to know just how much he'd had to do with Rowdy, how much chance he'd ever had to find the tattoo the way I'd found it. And, of course, I wanted to know the same thing Kevin had wanted to know about Margaret, whether there was any sign of a recent upswing in his income.

  Washington Street runs from near Central Square toward MIT and the river. Shall we say that it's not Brattle Street. It took me ten minutes to find a legal parking space. If you park in a tow zone in Cambridge, a truck from Pat's Towing hauls your car away, and you have to pay all of your old tickets before you're allowed to retrieve the car from Pat's. The paint was peeling from Roger's brown triple-decker. The urine smell in the hall hadn't been left by Lion. Canine females don't spray. Human males do. Rowdy liked Roger's hallway. Dogs place no value on hygiene. Or maybe they do—the worse, the better.

  Lion was barking so loudly that I knew Roger's apartment had to be the first on the left. The door opened a crack, then Roger's and Lion's big black-haired heads jutted out. Lion pushed open the door, and the dogs sniffed and wagged tails at each other.

  "Friends, Lion," Roger commanded her firmly, as if she were showing signs of imminent attack. "Friends. Easy. It's all right, girl."

  She was barking out a welcome and drooling. If dog drool offends you, don't get a Newfoundland. With better manners than Roger, she ran into the apartment and wagged an invitation to follow. Rowdy accepted.

  "Come on in, Holly," Roger finally said.

  The place had a thick, musty smell, like an airtight clothes hamper full of damp towels and dirty socks. Rowdy wiggled all over, and he and Lion dashed through an open door into what I could see was the kitchen, which probably smelled even better than the living room. Yum.

  Like about half the apartments in Cambridge, Roger's had white everything—walls, woodwork, curtains, rug, Haitian cotton couch, tub chairs from Crate and Barrel. But Roger's decor reflected the presence of a Newfie. Layers of black fluff coated everything. Lion had sculpted artful carvings into the baseboards and the legs of the oak coffee table. It was a cozy little place.

  Roger disappeared into the kitchen, where the dogs were probably working on some new interior-decoration plan, and he reappeared with a bottle of Massachusetts wine and two glasses. Many people don't think of Massachusetts as a great wine-producing region, and they're right. He poured me a glass. I held it near my mouth. Maybe I'd been wrong about the smell in the hall.

  "So you going to dog training tonight, Holly?"

  "Of course," I said. "Do I ever miss?"

  "You okay now?"

  "Fine. Rowdy, too."

  There was an awkward silence during which I decided that Roger actually looked more like a gorilla than a Newfoundland, the kind of gorilla that sits in its cage at the zoo and inspires kids to ask their parents embarrassing questions.

  "Now that I've got Rowdy," I said, "I wondered if you could tell me a couple of things about him."

  "Giving you a hard time, huh?"

  From Roger's point of view, the purpose of my visit was obviously to ask his advice about dog training.

  "I just wondered where he came from, and I thought you might know. Millie said something about a woman with corgis.

  "Oh, her," Roger said. "Roberta Reed. Lives out in Pepperell, Dunstable, one of those places. Dog went on some rampage and ended up with her."

  I knew Bobbi Reed.

  "What was she doing with a malamute?"

  "It was one of those rescue operations. She was an old friend of Uncle Frank's, and she talked him into it. Beautiful dog, too bad to see him put to sleep, the usual."

  Dr. Stanton was not the kind of person who gets talked into things, but I didn't say so.

  "What kind of shape was he in? When your uncle got him?"

  "Uh, not bad. Thin."

  "And his coat?"

  "Not bad."

  "I tried to give him a bath, but I didn't have much luck," I said. "I wondered if there was some knack to it. I thought maybe when Dr. Stanton first got him, you might've given him a hand." There. I'd asked for advice. Some men aren't happy unless you do.

  "No," Roger said, and started to say more when a noise came from the kitchen, the sound of an object being dragged across the floor.

  "They're up to something," I said.

  Something was a forty-pound bag of Science Diet dog food, or, should I say, a bag that had once held forty pounds of Science Diet. I was a little surprised to see it. I'd figured Roger for the supermarket generic type. Roger had carried the color scheme from the living room over into the kitchen, but he'd worked even harder to personalize it there. His most effective decorator touch was a free-form smoke-gray abstract over the stove.

  "Oh, damn. I'm so sorry," I said as I leashed Rowdy and hauled him away from the open bag. It took all the strength I had. Northern breeds are better adapted to hauling than to being hauled.

  "Happens all the time," Roger said cheerfully, pushing Lion away from the bag and adding, probably for my benefit, "Lion, shame, bad girl."

  As he put his hand on her collar, I noticed that it was her metal chain-link training collar, the kind you never, ever leave on a dog. I also noticed that it was on the wrong way. If you put the collar on right, it tightens when you pull on the lead, and it releases the second you let go. If you put it on wrong, it tightens, but it doesn't release.

  "You ought to take that collar off," I said. "She could get it caught on something and choke."

  Roger said that he must have forgotten.

  "Oh," I said as I headed toward the door, "I meant to ask you something else. Where did Rowdy get his shots this year?"

  "Draper, I guess." His jowly face looked blank.

  "Dr. Stanton didn't have some kind of argument with Dr. Draper? He wasn't unhappy about something?"

  "No. Nothing."

  "You didn't take Rowdy in for him?"

  "Uncle always did that. Didn't like to recognize, uh, how he was failing."

  "How did he get there? I mean, he didn't drive?"

  I knew, of course, that Dr. Stanton hadn't driven for a couple of years. His sight was too bad.

  'Took a cab, I guess."

  With a ninety-pound dog?

  It turned out that Bobbi Reed lived in Dunstable, which is right off Route 3, near the New Hampshire border. I called and told her that I wanted to do an article about corgis, and we set up a visit for the next day. Since it was Thursday, I went to dog training. The patrols were out, and we'd also hired a security guard. The prospect of Dr. Stanton's legacy was already helping.

  On the way home, I was surprised to spot Hal on Concord Avenue, not far from the armory. After
Kevin's cryptic remark, I'd assumed Hal was still locked up somewhere, but there he was, as usual, fishing around at the base of a tree, probably looking for cans and bottles. Rowdy was heading for the same tree, but I held him back, not that Hal was sober enough to have cared.

  "Hi, Hal," I said. I spend my spare time dreaming up slick openers like that.

  Hal mumbled something.

  "What?"

  He mumbled again. I thought I heard him say something about me. Something obscene. Maybe I was right. His articulation suddenly improved. "Don't say that!" he yelled. "You're not supposed to say that."

  Dark as it was, I could see him look right through me before he meandered off toward the armory.

  * * *

  On Friday morning, I put Rowdy in the Bronco and took Route 2 to 128, then 3 North. Bobbi Reed and Ronni Cohen used to live in Cambridge. In those days, Bobbi was active in the club, but she quit when they moved. The drive from Dunstable to Cambridge is less than an hour, and Bobbi doesn't lack energy, so maybe the move was an excuse to find a trainer other than Margaret Robichaud. Since the move, I'd run into Bobbi at a couple of shows, and she'd told me that she was breeding corgis. She'd always had a couple of them. One of her specialties was brace work. A brace is a pair of dogs of the same breed. In obedience, they do all the usual exercises, but the two dogs work together with one handler. When they heel, they both walk on the handler's left side, and so on. When it's done well, it's a flashy performance.

  Bobbi is about five feet tall. Even for dog training, she always wore lots of scarves, and she liked the jewelry you buy at the Peabody Museum Shop: Navajo necklaces, Peruvian beads. That ethnic look suits someone with her dark hair. She used to be a nun. That was before she met Ronni and developed ecumenical fervor, in more ways than one. Ronni's parents welcomed Bobbi the way the Church welcomed Ronni. Bobbi left the Church, and she and Ronni moved to Cambridge, where no one cared. Most of the dog people didn't notice. In Cambridge, most people are interested in whether you shave your legs as a political statement and what you think about Wittgenstein. Obedience people are interested in how careful you are on your turns. I wondered whether Dunstable cared. If it ever had, I would bet it didn't anymore, because Bobbi had probably found a way to build a new library without raising taxes while organizing the harvest festival in her spare time. She was the treasurer of the Cambridge Dog Training Club before Ron Coughlin, and she was also the planning genius of our big annual obedience trial.