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

by Susan Conant

"He put something there? Took something?" I said.

  "He left something," Steve said. "And then, later, someone always came and got it, right, Hal? A man or a woman?"

  Hal pushed his shoulders backward and twisted his mouth.

  "A woman," I said, "with a yellow dog."

  "A man," Hal said so loudly that I jumped.

  "Do you know the man?" I asked. I knew it was a useless question, and I was surprised that he answered at all.

  "Nice big dog," he said, and his face took on a guilty expression. He said exactly what I expected him to say, not to touch the dog, and I saw a bit of what had happened. I didn't know when it had happened, but I could see it.

  "Some dogs like to be patted," I said, "like Rowdy." Hal still had his leash, and I leaned over and again demonstrated enthusiastic patting. Rowdy sat down, leaned against me, and gave me one of his gentle-wolf stares. He was going to remember this day forever. "There was a big dog here, wasn't there? And you touched the dog. You patted the dog. It's okay. We won't tell anyone. Was it Rowdy? Was it this dog?"

  Hal shook his head.

  "A big dog?" I asked. "Bigger than Rowdy?"

  There aren't too many dogs much bigger than Rowdy.

  "Big dog, nice big dog." His tone of voice was the one everyone uses to talk to dogs. Rowdy liked it. He stood up and fixed his eyes on Hal.

  "You talked to the dog," I said. "And you patted it. Where was the dog?"

  He looked puzzled.

  Steve understood. "Right here. Here, by this tree. And the man let you pat the dog?"

  Hal bent down and wrapped Rowdy's leash around the trunk of the tree.

  "I get it," I said. "The dog was tied to the tree. The man tied the dog to the tree. Then the man left. And while he was gone, you patted the dog and talked to him."

  Hal's was the sly grin of someone who's gotten away with something.

  "Don't touch the dog," he said with self-satisfaction.

  I dropped Steve and Hal at the clinic, went home, took more aspirin, and slept for three hours. At four, after a shower, coffee, and deep meditation on the pros and cons of drinking brandy, I called Steve.

  "Did he say anything after I left?"

  "Just guess."

  "Not to touch the dog. Anything else?"

  "Not a thing."

  "So what do we know now? We know he patted a dog," I said.

  "We know a lot," Steve said. He has the kindest voice I've ever heard. "The branch of the tree. That's where Stanton left his payments. 'All the time,' remember? Thursday was someone's payday. Before class, Stanton would leave an envelope in the fork of the tree."

  "I get something now. You know, at first, it didn't make sense that he'd walk his dog in the playground. An ophthalmologist, of all people, you know? If anyone should be in favor of keeping dogs out of playgrounds, it's an ophthalmologist, especially an ophthalmologist who loves dogs. I mean, suppose some kid in Cambridge gets toxocariasis? The place is anti-dog enough already. So Dr. Stanton would, first of all, be in favor of the law, and second, he wouldn't want to stir up trouble by having people complain about a dog in the playground. So he didn't decide to go there. He was acting on orders."

  "And the big dog," Steve said. "The one Hal patted. I wish we could tell for sure when that happened. I also wish we could tell who picked up those payments. Anyway, I've got a feeling that the big-dog episode was a one-shot deal, and I'll bet it was the night Stanton died."

  "I wonder if he'd recognize the dog."

  "Or the man."

  "He'd be great in court."

  "The ideal witness," Steve said. "But I did check something out. I went through our records here, at least for everyone at the club who's a client, everyone I could think of."

  "And?"

  "And Dr. Draper was a lot freer with Valium than I am."

  "And?"

  "I've got a couple of things. Last spring, Roger Singer's Newfoundland developed something that looked like eczema plus some wheezing, maybe asthma. Draper checked out the usual things, and then he put her on prednisone, which didn't help, and she had a bad reaction to it. He tried antihistamines and did some more tests and kept her under observation, but he still didn't find anything. At that point, she was starting to do herself some damage from scratching, and she had bad perivulvar dermatitis. He put her on Valium. I might not have done it, but it seems to have worked."

  "Roger."

  "Second, Vixen. When Ron brought her in for her shots last December, he also got some Valium because he was taking her on a plane, but it was hardly any."

  "He went to San Francisco, I think. California, anyway," I said. "He has relatives there. Okay. Obviously, a Newfoundland is the classic big dog. Lion is a lot bigger than Rowdy. Vixen? What do you think?"

  "She's tall," he said. "She's leggier than Rowdy. He's bulkier. Also, his coat’s so thick."

  "I don't think you look at her and think 'big dog.' And why would Ron tie her up? You wouldn't need to. You'd just tell her to stay. But you'd have to tie Lion up. Concord Avenue's right there. And what does Lion weigh? A hundred and thirty pounds? More? Roger must have got a ton of Valium."

  "Draper's good. He's experienced," Steve said. "But he did overprescribe. Singer had enough for you and Rowdy, too. You know, though, maybe someone else did, too. We see a lot of dogs, but we don't see them all."

  "So who didn't have Valium? Or who didn't get it from Dr. Draper?"

  "Roz. Vince. Ray and Lynne. Diane. Arlene. You."

  "Me?"

  "We're being systematic."

  "Margaret?"

  "She's not a client of ours."

  "So who does she see? Can you find out?"

  "I can try," he said. "But I can't promise anything."

  Kevin knocked at the back door a few minutes after I hung up. I still didn't tell him about the tattoo. I did tell him about Roger, and he in turn put my mind to rest about Ron.

  "Coughlin was repairing a pipe. There's no way he could've been there," Kevin said. "And he's explained that visit to the can. To my satisfaction."

  "How?"

  "He had the runs," Kevin mumbled. You'd think a cop could talk frankly about bodily functions. The man obviously needed another dog. "He made four trips that night, at least."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Couple of people saw him leave and come back. Guy even had his doctor call."

  Kevin had some other information, too. Neither Dr. Stanton nor Gerry Pitts had served in the Antarctic. Bill Lytton, Margaret's brother, had.

  I also pried out of him the news about Hal Pace, but it was no news to me.

  "They say he's got a thing about dogs."

  "You know what that means? He likes dogs so much that he keeps talking about them. He talks about them so much that they think he's brain-damaged. They'd say the same thing about me."

  "Some of us already have," Kevin said.

  When he finally left, I called Buck to tell him about Bill Lytton, mostly because Steve wouldn't take it seriously and Buck would. He takes anything seriously if it has to do with dogs. I was hoping that he'd have some idea of how to follow it up, too, but all he did was tell me again about Bill Lytton's famous hunting dog.

  "I heard that one of Margaret Robichaud's dogs fell asleep in the ring," I told him. "On a long down. Have you heard anything about that?"

  "I've heard," he said. "Lots of people have heard."

  After I hung up, I realized that I didn't know where Rowdy was. I found him in my bedroom. I'd forgotten to close one of the drawers under the bed. Carefully distributed over the comforter, the floor, and the windowsills were all the socks I own, every clean pair, at least. Rowdy hadn't chewed or torn them. He'd just arranged them for me. Smug and proud, ears up, eyes bright, tail twitching, he was sitting in the middle of the room waiting to enjoy my reaction.

  "Cute," I said appreciatively. "Now, if you're such a smarty, put them back."

  I had a big grin on my face. A dog doesn't pull a trick like that on a stranger.
He doesn't do it to you unless he wants to make sure he's your dog.

  15

  It took me all day to turn my scrawled interviews with Bobbi and Margaret into articles. Rowdy spent most of the time asleep in the bedroom. Every hour or so, he'd wander into the study, scratch my jeans with one of his front paws, give me an imploring look, whinny at me, and rest his head on my lap. After dinner, I put on my navy parka, gloves, and a watchman's cap, leashed Rowdy, and started out for a walk.

  I don't understand how a woman can live in a city without a big dog. If you're afraid to go out alone after dark, don't just complain about violence and oppression. Want to take back the night? Get a dog, and not a pocket poodle. The second you get that big dog, the world will become an infinitely more polite place than it was the second before. Get a mixed breed, a crossbreed, a Rottweiler, a German shepherd, an Airedale, a Doberman, a Newfoundland, a Bernese mountain dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Get an Akita. Someday I will. With a well-trained Akita at your side, you could walk coolly through Hell.

  As a special treat for Rowdy, we followed Concord Avenue to Garden Street and wandered around Harvard Square. Rowdy loved Harvard Square. It's busy and smelly. In the square, we ran into some people I know, and we spent some time talking with them. I had lots of compliments on my husky. Someone mistook him for a German shepherd. We headed up Mass. Ave. to Porter Square and took Walden Street back to Concord Avenue. It must have been about nine fifteen when we got to the corner of Appleton Street, or, as it's correctly pronounced in Cambridge, the cawnuh of Appleton and Concud.

  Dog lovers who believe in ESP would tell you that while we were roaming through the square or looking in shop windows on Mass. Ave., Rowdy should suddenly have plunked himself down, tilted his head toward the moon, emitted a series of howls, and torn off in the direction of that cawnuh. At the very least, they would say, his hackles should have gone up as we passed the Lyn Hovey stained-glass shop on the corner of Appleton and Concord, and when we crossed Appleton and walked by the funny little building that occupies the edge of my property and forms one wall of my yard—it's called a spite building, why I'm not sure—a precognitive fit of growling and snarling should have seized him. Maybe he has no sixth sense. He padded up Concord Avenue, lifted his leg on a corner of the spite building, and wagged his plumy white tail all the way up the steps and through the hall to the kitchen door, which was ajar.

  If I'd had all my ordinary senses and brain cells functioning right, I'd have remembered that my next-door neighbor is a cop, and I'd have taken my chances with Mrs. Dennehy. I'd have kept Rowdy's leash in my hand. What I did was turn on the kitchen light switch, let Rowdy loose, and walk in as usual. Everything looked normal except for the kitchen door, which was ripped up and had its lock broken, and the open door to my study. I always, always keep that door shut except when I'm actually in my study. Rowdy did not growl, check the place for intruders, or stand protectively at my side. He ambled over to his water dish and lapped. I grabbed his collar and pulled him with me to the study. My worst fear about a robber or a rapist or a mugger isn't what he'll do to me or my house. My worst fear has always been that some sick bastard will hurt my dog.

  There was no one in the study to hurt either of us. Nothing was there that hadn't been there before, but most of what was there was on the floor. The entire contents of three metal filing cabinets, the contents of all six drawers. File folders. Paper. Diskettes. Books. The bricks and boards that had been bookshelves. The computer, thank God, was still on the table, but the printer had been knocked off its stand. Your brain doesn't operate right at a time like that. Instead of wondering whether someone was in my bedroom or living room, I thought about the printer. I toyed with the idea of lifting it back onto its stand and starting it up. My heart was beating hard, but I wasn't crying or shaking. What brought me to my senses was the sound of Rowdy's claws digging into the diskettes, probably ruining any that weren't already hopelessly scratched. I leashed him and edged slowly out.

  When I knocked on the Dennehys' back door, I still had that false calm a crisis gives you. Mrs. Dennehy came to the door.

  "Is Kevin home?" I asked as clearly and politely as if I'd been giving foreign students a lesson in English as a second language.

  Kevin was home, and he took charge. He called his buddies, got his gun, refused to let me go home, and placed me in the care of his mother, who installed me at her kitchen table and dosed me, not with scotch or brandy or Valium, but with sweet, milky herbal tea. Cops are exempt from the Harvard no-wallpaper ordinance. Mrs. Dennehy's kitchen is papered in a pattern of yellow teapots and blue bunnies on a tan background. I'd never noticed the bunnies before. They made me nervous. Mrs. Dennehy always makes me nervous. Instead of fastening her gray hair into a bun in the usual way, she must drive the hairpins into her skull with a hammer. She always looks as if she's stoically suppressing pain. I started to shake, and she gave me more herbal tea and patted me on the back. To calm myself, I did what I've done for as long as I can remember. I clung to my dog, buried my face in his coat, and breathed in that scent of domesticated wolf.

  Kevin returned before too long and took me home. By then, I wasn't shaking. I was furious. In my study and bedroom, a couple of detectives were dusting for fingerprints. Their gray powder was all over the doors. It was probably all over my diskettes, too. I answered a lot of questions. No, nothing was missing, not that I could see. Papers, maybe. Diskettes.

  After powdering the living room door and poking around, Kevin's buddies gave us permission to use the living room. We sat at opposite ends of the couch, oddly formal, as if we were about to sip Harvey's Bristol Cream and munch on petits fours without dropping any crumbs. Although I'd twisted the valve on the radiator to give us some heat, none had yet arrived, and the old ashes in the fireplace made the room smell even colder than it was. Rowdy sat in front of me and kept offering me his paw.

  "I'll tell you one thing," Kevin said. "This is no professional job. You've got a tape deck in here, camera in plain sight. Another thing. First thing a professional does, he makes sure he's got a way out. He makes himself a bolt-hole, opens a window, breaks the lock on another door, anything. This guy didn't. I don't like that. Professional, you don't need to worry. Guy comes in, makes sure he can get out, picks up what he wants, leaves. He's in and out in a couple of minutes. You're the last thing he wants to see. This guy was after something. Papers?"

  "Maybe he was desperate for information on electronic flea collars," I said. "He just couldn't wait for Dog's Life to hit the stands."

  Kevin didn't smile. He held up what looked like a Ziploc bag. "The guy left you a present."

  "A plastic bag?"

  "The bag," he said, "is ours."

  "Oh, an evidence bag. Is that right?"

  "Containing one large clump of fur. Color, yellow. You didn't, uh, keep any?" He sounded suitably embarrassed.

  "I don't save dog hair. I weave not, neither do I spin." Mrs. Dennehy must have put me in a biblical frame of mind. Some people, of course, do save the hair when they groom their dogs. One of the books I'd borrowed from Dr. Stanton's library had a picture of hats and mittens knitted from malamute undercoat. I'd just as soon crochet my own hair.

  "You didn't have some as a kind of, uh, memento?"

  "Of Vinnie? Of course not. If I want mementos, I've got pictures and ribbons and trophies. Did you think I gave her a haircut after she died? What kind of creepy idea is that? Where did you find that stuff?"

  I once knew a woman who did something even creepier. When her dog died, she took its body to a taxidermist. The stuffed dog sat forever on its favorite chair in her living room. The dog was, or had been, a smooth fox terrier. The woman was French. I asked her whether this kind of thing was customary in France, but she said no, it was unusual there, too.

  "The fur was on your bed," Kevin said. "Right on top of the bed."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "A calling card. A message to someone. You. Me."


  "That's freakish," I said. "This guy is some kind of pervert. Burglars don't take their dogs to work. Was there a dog here? Can those guys tell?"

  "They haven't finished yet, but they think no," Kevin said. "They think no dog. Just fur."

  "A coat without a dog. Like a grin without a cat," I said. "Like the Cheshire cat." I didn't like the idea of that hair on my bed.

  "What kind of dog would you say this came from?"

  He handed me the plastic bag. I got up and held it under the light from my standing lamp.

  "It's like Vinnie's," I said. "A golden retriever. Some dog with a coat like a golden's."

  "Sit down," Kevin said. "You and I need to have a little discussion. We received a piece of correspondence today. Unsigned. The gist of which is to suggest that if we want to know who murdered Stanton, we should start by taking a close look at his dog."

  "Oh?" I said innocently.

  "Well?"

  "Well, go ahead," I offered. "He won't bite. Or do you want me to call a vet?"

  "I want you to tell me what the hell is going on."

  "I'm glad your mother can't hear you," I said. "If you yell any louder, she will."

  "I'm telling you it's time to stop playing games. Some weirdo has trashed your house and dumped dog fur on your bed. The same weirdo nearly overdosed you. An old man died. You saw him? Did he look pretty? You eager to get your face done like that, too, Holly?"

  "No," I said quietly. If I hadn't adopted Rowdy on the night Dr. Stanton died, I'd have thought a lot about that face. In fact, I'd have taken everything seriously, but when there's a dog around, especially a dog like Rowdy, I find it hard to be scared.

  "What all this has in common is dogs," Kevin said. "And for some reason, when I think dogs, I think you."

  "I haven't done anything," I said.

  "Right. Now you start. Talk to me about that dog. Now."

  Kevin didn't frighten or intimidate me into talking. He startled me. I'd never heard him sound like that before. Besides, once he'd decided to look closely at Rowdy, it was inevitable that he'd find the tattoo.

  "What he's got is a tattoo," I said. "It's an AKC registration number. He belongs to Margaret Robichaud."