by Susan Conant
"Good girl," Kevin said.
"Don't patronize me, you bastard. I'm telling you everything."
"I'm glad my mother can't hear you," he said.
We both laughed. Rowdy walked over to Kevin and offered his paw. Kevin took it.
"I'm telling you everything," I said, "on the condition that I keep this dog. He's not going back to her."
"Homicide and animal control have recently merged into one department," Kevin said, "but I'll make an exception in your case."
I spilled everything, including the rumors about Margaret drugging her dogs and my suspicions about her brother.
"So," I wound up, "Margaret hated Stanton. And even if she originally thought that King died, she could have seen him around here. Avon Hill's close enough to Brattle and Appleton, and Stanton walked Rowdy. She could've put two and two together. And if she did, she'd just have loved tormenting him. Plus, she could have had her revenge without taking Rowdy, her King, back. And you missed something big."
"I did, huh?"
"Money," I said. "When you looked in her backyard, you didn't know what you were seeing. She's got the most incredible kennel I've ever seen, and I bet you didn't go inside it. How much was Dr. Stanton paying out?"
"Two thousand a month," Kevin said.
"For how long?"
"Eight months or so."
Sixteen thousand, tax free. I wasn't sure it was enough to have financed that setup, but I didn't say so. Maybe she'd counted on more coming in. I wondered where she'd been earlier that evening. Out walking her dogs?
What I didn't wonder was whether to shake the remaining dog hair off my comforter and curl up in my own bed that night. I guess I could have nailed the kitchen door shut and toughed it out, but I didn't. Sleep wouldn't have come easily with my livelihood lying in a crushed mess on the floor of the next room. Steve and I live separate lives, but that night, I didn't even call before I showed up at his place with Rowdy at my left side and a small suitcase in my right hand. Steve lives over the clinic, and I can't usually go to sleep there unless we run the white-noise machine to mask the barking, but that night I made him put the machine on low, and I persuaded him to station India right outside the bedroom door. A strong man next to you in bed is a comfort, but real security is a German shepherd bitch on guard at the door.
16
Rowdy wasn't a big help with the cleanup. To him the roar of the vacuum cleaner was the growl of a mastiff. Dust mops were invading Shih Tzus. Sponges were rodent prey to be shaken until their necks broke.
The printer did work. The books had been scattered but not torn. Refiling wasn't much fun, but all of my important papers seemed to be there. The only irreparable damage was to the diskettes. Someone must have had it in for them. Some had been bent, and most had been ground underfoot. Fortunately, I'd kept hard copy of most of the files, and I'd stashed some backup diskettes in my bedroom closet.
Kevin's cousin Michael showed up to repair the torn wood on the kitchen door and install dead-bolt locks on the front and back doors. As I cleaned and filed and reassembled the bricks and boards and listened to Michael singing—like so many Cambridge carpenters, he also plays in a band—I thought about guard dogs, and I thought about that dog hair on my comforter. When a dog deposits excrement, he's marking his turf with a message for the next dog to come along. I've been here, he's saying, so watch out. Or maybe, I thought, I've spent too much time around dogs.
I also thought about Akitas and German shepherds and, you may be surprised to hear, golden retrievers. Hunting dogs won't necessarily guard a house, but they will guard you and your family. And what about the dog I already had? A few days earlier, he'd accidentally run into me while we were playing Frisbee. If you want to know what it feels like to be hit by an Alaskan malamute going full speed, sprint into a brick wall. Would he use that power? Would he bite? His teeth and jaws were smaller than Clyde's, but you needed to examine the dog and the wolf dog side by side, jaw by jaw, to notice the difference. If Rowdy perceived someone as a threat to me, he could metamorphose into a speeding, wolf-jawed brick wall. But would he? If a dog attacked him, he'd unhesitatingly ram into it, slash its ears, and crush its muzzle. But a person? Attacking me? Did he have it in him to see a human being as a threat? On my side was his alert intelligence; on the other side, his gentle disposition, his apparently universal trust that people were put on earth to rub the tummies of Alaskan malamutes.
I called Buck to fill him in and to make sure that no one alarmed him with a misleading account of my burglary. Not burglary. Why did I keep calling it that? Nothing was missing. Breaking and entering were the right words, but I didn't want to think them. My house has been robbed, I could say. It's been ransacked. I've had a burglary. But someone "broke in"? Someone "entered"? I'd been broken and entered. That's how I felt.
"What do you think about an Akita?" I asked my father.
It was a stupid question. Mention any breed of dog, and Buck thinks it's terrific. Ask whether you should get a dog, and he thinks it's an inspired idea.
"Interesting breed," he said. "Helen Keller had one."
"I was thinking of a guard dog," I said, "not a guide dog."
"Oh, hers wasn't a guide dog. It was a pet. What do you want with a guard dog? What happened to the Smith & Wesson? Where's your .22?"
In his own way, he's quite protective. He gave me the Smith & Wesson for Christmas last year. The .22 was a present for my fourth birthday. They're both in the closet of my bedroom in Owls Head with the double-barreled shotgun and the deer rifle and a couple of Buck's other birthday and Christmas presents, but I didn't say so. He gets his feelings hurt more easily than you might think.
"I can't carry a gun through Harvard Square," I said. "And I didn't ask you about a gun. I asked what you thought about an Akita."
"Great idea," he said.
Rita tells me that parental consistency and predictability are important for children's mental health. How nice for me. I got Buck off dogs and guns without getting him started on wolves or fishing by asking whether he'd heard any more about Margaret Robichaud. He'd been making some subtle inquiries about Margaret, or so he said. Subtle he's not. A couple of people had told him the story about the dog that fell asleep in the ring. According to one of his sources, Buck said, everyone had been surprised because the golden was a young one, not some jaded veteran.
"The kind of dog you might want to calm down," I said. "You'd just want to shave off that nervous edge."
"You bet," he said.
I'd invited Steve for dinner, and since I had to cook liver that day anyway, I made some for us. Liver is nutritious. I hate it, but I try to be practical and efficient. Any pet-supply house will sell you dried liver, but compared to the liver you cook yourself, it's pretty unappealing. It's against the rules even to carry food into the obedience ring, but I like to use liver as a reward during training. Some people don't believe in edible rewards. Their kitchens probably smell better than mine. To cook liver for dogs, I take beef liver slices and roast them slowly, uncovered, until they're almost completely dry. After the liver has cooled off, I cut it into little pieces and freeze it. I fried Steve's and mine with butter and onions.
Over the liver and onions, Steve told me that he'd run into a classmate from veterinary school, Lisa Blumenthal, who has a practice in Belmont. I know Lisa. Her husband, Don, raises goldens. Steve had mentioned Margaret to her, and Lisa had been eager, he said, to make a confession and also to complain. Margaret had taken her goldens to Lisa for their heartworm tests, and while she was there had pressed Lisa for something to calm them down on the road. Lisa, of course, knew who Margaret was.
"It wasn't that Margaret said anything outright," Steve told me. "But Lisa got the message, namely, that a few words from Margaret wouldn't help Lisa's reputation, or Don's, either. So Lisa gave in, and guess what Margaret left with."
"Why did Lisa give in like that? She must have felt awful. Didn't she think she was practicing bad medicine?"
"You know," I said, "I can imagine Margaret dumping Valium in my thermos."
"Pouring," he said. "It must have been dissolved first."
"Pouring it. I don't know how she could have got to the thermos, but it's something you can see her doing. And I think she could strangle someone, especially Stanton. But breaking in here? And that business with the dog hair."
"There's something weird about that," he said.
I agreed.
Thursday, of course, means dog training. We left both cars in my driveway and walked the dogs to the armory. The young off-duty cop the club had hired was lounging inside the door talking to Gerry Pitts and John, the manager of the shelter. The cold must have driven the cop in. It was four below zero, so bitter that even Rowdy was glad to get indoors. Malamutes can live outdoors year-round, regardless of the cold, but only if they're acclimated. To tolerate subzero weather, they need to build up their coats. A house dog adapts to inside temperatures, and he's as comfortable outdoors at four below as you are.
Vince's advanced beginners were working on the figure eight. They had a long way to go. Every dog there was lagging on the outside loop. At the far end, Roz's Utility group was doing scent discrimination. Steve and I had moved so fast in the cold that we were early for our eight-thirty class with Roz, so after we checked in at the desk with Barbara Doyle and Ron Coughlin, we hung around there. Barbara had only one shepherd with her, Freda, who was stretched out on the floor. Vixen was sitting at Ron's side, impatient to get to work. I ran my hands over her. Her coat was only a little like a golden's, paler and shorter. And Ron? He looked like what he was, a nice guy in a good mood, an ordinary guy, a capable plumber, a gifted handler, nothing more.
And Ron's good mood? His conversation with Barbara and Steve left no doubt that he was enjoying the prospect of Dr. Stanton's legacy. They were speculating about what the club would, or rather could, do with the house at the posh end of Appleton Street. The capriciousness of Cambridge zoning combines with the eccentricity of Cambridge people to mean that you can never tell what will and won't be allowed here. One thing we wouldn't be able to do was hold our classes there. The house didn't have a room even half big enough. It wasn't clear whether we'd be able to use the house as a library or, as Barbara was suggesting, a library and museum.
"If you ask me," I said, "the real problem is going to be parking. It's permit only, and the neighbors aren't going to want a lot of new permits issued, and they're also not going to want us to turn half the yard into a parking lot."
"We wouldn't need many permits," Barbara said. "How many people are going to be there at once? Not many more than when Frank was alive. It's not as if we wanted to open up a shop."
"We'd want to meet there," Ron said. "That'd be, what? Six or eight cars?"
"People have that many now," I said. "Shrinks with offices in their houses. They have therapy groups that big."
"Not the same thing," Ron said. "That's not official. The shrinks live there. The neighbors put up with it. What about a parking lot? It wouldn't have to be big. A long, wide driveway."
"I'll bet it depends on how they feel about dogs," Barbara said. "If that block has a lot of dog lovers and they back us, it'll go through fine. If we've got dog haters, we haven't got a chance."
"Plus," Steve said, "it'll be a public building. We'll need fire escapes, fire doors, inspections of the electrical system, plumbing."
Ron rocked back in his chair and grinned. "I guess I can tell you about the last time I inspected the plumbing," he said.
"What's wrong with it?" Barbara asked.
"Nothing now. This happened last spring. March maybe."
"The pipes froze," I said.
"Too late in the year for that. It was skunk weather."
We all laughed, mainly, I think, because having a skunk spray your dog is the ultimate unfunny event. It goes on being unfunny for a long time. Unlikely as it might seem, Cambridge has skunks and raccoons. They live on garbage.
"Here's what happened," Ron said. "Frank's away. Millie's on vacation. He leaves Singer to house-sit and dog-sit."
"When he got that award," I said. He'd been inducted into some ophthalmological hall of fame. "Whatever it was. He was really excited about it. Remember?"
"He was," Barbara said.
"So," Ron continued, "I get a call from Singer. This is maybe Wednesday, and his uncle's due home Saturday. He tells me the bathtub drain's clogged, and I show up, and the tub's full of water and fur, and the drain's full, and I mean full, of fur. So I open it up and I ask him what's going on, and he tells me Rowdy got loose and a skunk got him, so he's been trying everything to kill the smell so his uncle doesn't find out he's let the dog loose. And Rowdy's shedding."
"Wella Balsam," Barbara said. "And tomato juice."
Ron laughed. "Right. There's tomato juice all over the walls. Looks like a slaughterhouse. And he's poured on vinegar, and there's a drugstore's worth of shampoo bottles around, and he's begging me not to tell his uncle. He's like a great big kid. You should've heard him. 'I said I wouldn't let him loose,' he says to me. 'Don't tell my uncle.'"
"The big baby," Barbara said. "It was probably just an accident."
"Dr. Stanton didn't like accidents," I said. "Did he have both dogs there? Lion, too? Where was Lion when all this was going on?"
"Sick," Ron said. "In the hospital."
"When she lost all that hair," Barbara said. "What was it? Eczema?"
"Probably," Steve said. Lion was Dr. Draper's patient then, not his. He hadn't even been in Cambridge, but no one asked how he knew.
"I wonder if Dr. Stanton ever found out," I said.
"Not from me he didn't," Ron said.
From eight thirty to nine, we worked with Roz on Pre-Open. Rowdy was a born jumper. He'd sail over the broad jump or the high jump and plant himself right in front of me. The smug expression on his face said that he knew how good he was. Unfortunately, he'd also discovered a new trick with the dumbbell, tossing it around in his mouth when he should have been holding it steadily in his closed jaws. He thought the tossing act was cute, but no judge would agree.
At nine, after we helped Roz put away the broad-jump hurdles and the high jump and finished folding up the mats—you need them for jumps to keep the dogs from slipping on the floor—all of us joined Vince for our regular Novice class. Roger had shown up with Lion, who was at his left side in that sloppy, crooked sit Vince had been telling him to correct. We lined up, handlers and dogs, along the wall. I followed an impulse to stay away from Roger, but I heard Ron, who was next to him, laughing, and when I looked down the line of people and dogs, I could see Roger's red face. Now that Dr. Stanton was beyond caring about whether Rowdy had been loose, Ron obviously felt free to rag Roger about the skunk and the bathtub. Ron was grinning and gesturing, and I was pretty sure that Roger was hearing how funny we'd all thought the story was.
I found it less hilarious than Ron did. Every bath that Roger had given Rowdy was a chance to see the tattoo, and he could have called the AKC. How many baths had it been? Five? Ten? More? Hadn't he told me that he'd never bathed Rowdy? I wondered how he'd managed to get Rowdy into the tub so many times. With all my experience, I'd had to use a muzzle, but Roger had a size advantage. He probably outweighed me by eighty pounds. He wouldn't have had to push and pull as I'd done. He could have lifted Rowdy. With those thoughts came a memory of something trivial, something I'd forgotten. Last year, in the late winter or the early spring, Roger had a cast on one arm. He'd said something about slipping on the ice. It happens all the time here, and I hadn't thought any more about it. Rowdy was sitting squarely at my left side, his mammoth front paws, for once, even with my feet, the way they're supposed to be. For once, he was looking up at me, watching for a signal to move. Gentle, happy, eager to work, this was a dog I wouldn't have wanted to lift unmuzzled into a bathtub e
ven if I'd had the strength. I'd have been afraid of being bitten. I'd have been afraid of having my arm broken.
"Let's see some nice straight sits," Vince said. "You lose points for a crooked sit, you know. Handlers, forward. Nice loose leads."
There's a book to be written on Zen and the art of dog training. Training requires total concentration. If you're not all there, neither is your dog. If you're jumpy, so is your dog. For the next hour, my mind was where it belonged, on Rowdy and Vince and straight sits and a loose lead. When I noticed Roger at all, it was only to notice what a lousy handler he was, careless, inattentive, and inconsistent. He'd even put the wrong size training collar on Lion, inches too long, and his lead was a heavy one with a big snap. When the lead was loose, the extra chain hung down, the weight of the chain and snap tightening the collar. That's incorrect, of course. When you jerk on the lead, the collar should tighten, then instantly loosen again.
At the end of the nine o'clock class, everyone was tired, and Gerry and John were eager to have us clear out. I put on my parka, zipped it up, pulled on my gloves and hat—new, blue with a row of sled dogs, a present from Steve—and grabbed my purse. In a gesture of defiance, I'd left it under my parka, as usual. Let someone steal it. Let someone plant a bomb in it. The armory was, after all, my church, and I wasn't going to desecrate it by acting paranoid.
Steve, India, Rowdy, and I left the hall with Roger and Lion ahead of us. The entryway was crowded with men keeping warm as they waited for the shelter to open. By then, the temperature outside must have been six or eight below. Hal was squatting on the floor near the doors to the outside. As I started to move toward him with one of those hello smiles forming on my face, Lion shook herself playfully, and Hal sprang upright and bolted out of the building, out into that six or eight below.
"He'll come back," John said. "He always does."
I hoped so.
17