Ruff Way to Go

by Leslie O'Kane

  “Why would you want to do that?” he snapped. For some reason, Trevor sounded affronted at my suggestion.

  “When I last saw Shogun, he was acting more high strung than usual. Sometimes it’s helpful to talk to the breeder to get the full background on a dog. And I’d also like to be sure to enlist your sister’s help in finding him.” Furthermore, though I didn’t want to come out and say it, I was afraid that Shogun might have run away after all, and if those prints in the blood were his, he could be badly traumatized.

  “Oh. I see. That makes sense, except she hasn’t kept up with Shogun enough for him to know where she lives. She and Edith don’t get along, you see, so she practically never visited.”

  “It’s worth a quick check, though.”

  “Okay. I’ll call her and ask her. If you don’t hear back from me, that means she hasn’t seen Shogun.”

  “I don’t mind calling her myself, Trevor.”

  “But... I...this isn’t a good time. She’s very distraught at our losing the dog.”

  “Distraught? I thought you said she hasn’t stayed in touch with Shogun.”

  “I...that’s...what I meant was that Shogun hasn’t been back there. She hasn’t kept in touch in terms of taking the dog to her place for visits. Let me get you her phone number. Uh...just a moment.”

  I pondered the nervous vibrations I was picking up over the phone. Trevor was giving me the distinct impression that, for some reason, he didn’t want me to contact his sister. Maybe he hadn’t really told her that Shogun was missing and didn’t want her to hear the news from me.

  He got back on the line a moment later. “I can’t seem to find her address or her phone number. Tell you what, I’ll keep looking, then I’ll give her a call and tell her you’d like to speak with her, and she’ll get back in touch with you.”

  “Okay. That’d be great. Thanks. What’s your sister’s name?”

  “Luellen. Listen, I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll have her call you.” He hung up without as much as giving me her last name.

  There was something very weird going on. Why didn’t Trevor want me to contact his sister?

  I called information to check for a Luellen Cunningham in Campion. There was none. I flipped through the yellow pages of my Berthoud-Loveland directory, which included Campion, and spotted an advertisement for silky terriers. The ad listed both the address and phone number. 1 decided to forgo the phone call and go for the direct approach.

  Campion was farther from Boulder than Berthoud, but having hit traffic at an off time, I was at the house that I presumed to be Luellen’s just an hour later. It was a two-story home in a new, very suburban neighborhood, with only the mountains in the distance making the setting at all unique.

  A wooden cutout in the shape of a silky terrier was fastened to Luellen’s door. The cutout featured a cartoon dialogue bubble emerging from the dog’s mouth with the words, “Luellen is OUT.” The final word was written on a sliding panel. Just below the dog was a small hook holding a cardboard sign with the words, “I’ll be back at:” over a clock face. The hands were set to a time five minutes in the future.

  All of this signage could well mean that Luellen wasn’t home, I thought, but I rang the doorbell anyway. To my mild amusement, the doorbell sang out, “Arf, arf, arf,” in ascending tones. This set off a cacophony of live barking, but brought no human response. I took a seat on the bench beside her front door, keeping an eye on my watch to test the accuracy of Luellen’s door postings.

  With almost two full minutes to spare, a dark blue minivan pulled into the driveway. I half expected to see a mural of a silky on the side paneling, but the only doggie doodad was a little stuffed dog that swung from the rearview mirror.

  The driver, an attractive fortyish woman with shoulder-length dark hair, rolled down the window and called pleasantly to me, “Hi. I’ll be right with you.” Then she pulled her van into the attached garage.

  Unsure of whether or not she was going to come through her house or up the front walkway to meet me, I stepped down off the brick porch and peered around the corner. She trotted out of the garage toward me. She was dressed in slacks and a plaid blouse, rolled up at the sleeves. She wore the wrist braces typically worn by those suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome.

  “Hi,” she said to me. “Are you here to fill out an application?”

  “Application?”

  “Yes. For a puppy from the next litter. I’m afraid I’m very picky about whom I sell my dogs to. And I must warn you that I don’t have any puppies available for sale at the moment.”

  Not wanting to broach the subject of Shogun too abruptly, I said, “Oh. That’s too bad.”

  “You’re welcome to come in, though, and see what fine animals these are.”

  “Sure. I’d like that. Can I give you a hand with your groceries?”

  “That would be nice. Thanks.”

  Whatever physical problem caused her to wear the wrist supports didn’t seem to slow her down when it came to carrying grocery bags. She thrust the two bags that she’d been holding into my arms, grabbed a couple more bags, then we did an awkward dance getting the inner door to the garage open while I introduced myself. My name clearly meant nothing to her. If her brother had already called to tell her about me, she must have been at the grocery store at the time.

  Luellen’s house was like entering a different world, where most of its inhabitants were less than a foot tall and very hairy. With excited long-haired dogs swirling around our ankles, we proceeded down a short hardwood-floored hallway and set the bags on the counter of her kitchen. I noted that her answering machine nearby had a flashing red light. Assuming the message would be from Trevor, I would have loved to overhear it. With luck, she might listen to it in my presence.

  “These are some of my favorite babies,” Luellen cooed, sweeping two nearly identical-looking dogs into her arms. All told, there were eight silky terriers who’d followed us into the kitchen. “This is Lucas and Candy. Silky terriers are just the perfect dog. They’re not too yippy and not too big. At the same time, they’re a dog’s dog. You know what I mean?”

  I’d never really heard anyone refer to a “dog’s dog,” so I merely smiled. All toy breeds are dismissed by a certain subset of dog lovers as being for folks who really want a housecat but, for allergies or other reasons, wind up with a dog. You put a silky up against a Saint Bernard, and I suspect the Saint Bernard would be considered the doggier dog.

  “Do you have any dogs, Allida, or will this one be your first?”

  “I have two dogs,” I replied, glancing again at her answering machine. I gestured at it with my chin. “I see you have a message.”

  “Yes, it’s a regular madhouse around here.” She nuzzled the dogs in her arms, then set them down. She grabbed a small stack of what looked like frozen vegetables and jammed them onto an already crowded shelf in the freezer. “Were you looking to get a puppy right away?”

  “No, not really.” There was no sense in delaying my telling her the real reason for my visit any longer. “Actually, I’m not here to ask about purchasing one of your puppies. I’m a neighbor of Trevor’s.”

  There was a barely perceptible hitch in her motions, then she continued to put away groceries. “When you say you’re a neighbor of his, do you mean in Berthoud?”

  “Yes, I live across the street from the house he and Edith shared.”

  Her face grew somber. “You must have known that poor woman who was murdered, then.”

  “Cassandra Randon. Yes.”

  “That’s such a tragedy. Trevor always spoke highly of both her and her husband. Do the police have any theories about who the murderer is?”

  “Probably, but they haven’t shared their opinions with us civilians.”

  She swept her hair behind an ear, her dark eyes focused on mine, a thoughtful expression crossing her pleasant features. She shared Trevor’s pointy nose, but overall, she was quite a bit more attractive than her brother. “Wait a minute
. Allida. I remember the name now. You do something with dogs, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I’m a dog behaviorist. In fact, Edith had recently hired me to help determine custody of Shogun.”

  She smiled. “That’s right. Trevor mentioned that to me just yesterday afternoon. He said Edith had hired you. I told him that if you knew what you were doing at all, he’d wind up with custody.”

  “Well, Luellen, I have to say that I do think it’s quite possible that your brother would have wound up with custody of Shogun. However, right now all I care about is locating Shogun. I was thinking that it was possible that he came here once he got frightened and left his home.”

  “Oh. I see. He’s not here, though.” An anxious look flitted across her features and she jumped back a little. “Oh, shoot. I forgot to get something critical at the store. Was there anything else you wanted to know, Allida?”

  I wasn’t certain, but I had gotten the impression that she’d seen something behind me that frightened her. I turned and watched as a ninth dog came toward us. The dog walked with those cute, perky little steps as he padded across the kitchen.

  Could this be Shogun? Where had he come from? I silently answered my own question: In this strange—to him—environment, he would be lowest-ranking dog and therefore the last to enter a room to investigate new visitors. He came up to me as if returning to an old friend.

  “Sorry to kick you out, Allida,” Luellen went on nervously, “but I’m afraid I’ve got no choice but to run back to the store.”

  I knelt and let Shogun climb into my lap. “Shogun! Hi!” In my intense relief, I realized how frightened I’d been that Shogun had gotten killed in yesterday’s tragedy. “What a good boy Shogun is. Thank goodness you’re all right!”

  Luellen was staring in unabashed horror at us, her face pale. “That is not Shogun, Allida. That’s his brother, Krumpet.”

  I studied her features. “Then why does Krumpet know me and respond to the name Shogun?”

  “He’s just a friendly dog, that’s all. Krumpet, come.” She slapped her thigh as she called him. After a moment’s hesitation, the terrier headed toward her.

  “I stand corrected. What an embarrassing mistake. I guess I was just so relieved to think that I’d found him that my imagination got the best of me.”

  “No harm done. I’m just going to put all the dogs...outside now. They need their exercise.” She gave me a pained expression, then carried “Krumpet” out of the room, patting her thigh to signal all of the dogs to come. The remaining eight dogs trotted obediently after her.

  What a perfect place to hide a silky terrier. Not unlike hiding one particular needle in a packet of needles. But why would someone hide Shogun here? Or anyplace else, for that matter?

  Luellen returned empty-handed. Her cheeks were crimson by now, and she averted her eyes. She knew I was on to her.

  There had to be an explanation for her trying to hide Shogun, and if it had anything to do with Cassandra’s murder, I wasn’t about to force her hand.

  At least, not until I was relatively certain it wasn’t holding a dagger.

  I said goodbye, got into my car at what I hoped was a casual enough pace, drove a few blocks, then pulled over to consider my options. My hunch was that Trevor was trying to pull one over on Edith by helping to hide the dog at his sister’s. And yet I’d told Trevor that, if he was Shogun’s main caregiver, he was likely going to retain custody.

  So why would either Luellen or Trevor hide Shogun, unless their doing so was related to Cassandra’s murder? The dog was almost certainly at the murder scene, at least until the killer opened the gate, likely during the murder itself. How, then, could the dog have wound up at Luellen’s, if not on his own four feet or having been brought here by the killer?

  I needed to cross my name off the police’s list of suspects. Maybe the best way to go about doing so was to enlist their help now. I could tell Sergeant Millay that Shogun was in the home of the sister of the man who owned the property where Cassandra Randon was killed. Getting the officer to believe that this was Shogun—and, therefore, could have been brought here by the killer—was going to be a challenge. Despite my best efforts, the sergeant had remained convinced that Shogun was likely to have simply run off, never to return, the moment the gate was left open.

  I could picture Sergeant Millay, his hooded, emotionless gray eyes staring at me as I explained that, yes, this really was Shogun, in spite of what Luellen might say to the contrary. It would be more effective to have him witness Shogun running up to Edith or Trevor, but that meant convincing the sergeant to insist that they accompany us to Luellen’s home. Plus I wasn’t sure that either Edith or Trevor should be entrusted with the dog until all of this could be sorted out.

  I drove to the nearest public phone, outside of a gas station on Highway 287, and called the Berthoud police, asking for the sergeant. He was out, and the dispatcher asked if I wished to speak to another officer instead. Not really. Hard as it was to imagine Sergeant Millay believing me—or caring about the dog—it was even less likely that some policeman I’d barely met would act on such an odd request. I gave my name and said I’d call back.

  Time was of the essence. Luellen had not bought my act of pretending to realize that my identification of Shogun had been a mistake. She would call her brother and have him hide the dog someplace else.

  How could I prevent Luellen from secreting the dog away a second time? I could stand guard at her house, but then what? Follow her if she left with a dog under her arm? Even at that, she was likely to spot me following her and could simply outwait me. And there was no chance of enlisting immediate help from the police. Even if I could prove that she was harboring Shogun, that wasn’t a crime. Especially not when Trevor, Shogun’s owner, knew that Luellen had the dog and that he was safe.

  As I pondered the matter, I realized that there was simply no way for me to control Luellen’s actions with Shogun. I could, at least, take comfort in knowing that the sweet little dog was safe and being well cared for. The same couldn’t necessarily be said for Suds and her litter, however. An animal shelter was a good temporary home for a stray—better and safer than the streets—but it wasn’t any place to house a nursing dog and her five puppies.

  Before I could dismiss the notion that the husky and her puppies were suffering, I had to see her. Perhaps another foster home had been located. If not, I could think about taking them in myself.

  The thought of Suds and her litter brought Melanie to mind. I wondered how she, at her young age, was handling such an immense, monstrous thing as the violent death of her mother. I barely knew Melanie and didn’t know how to go about reaching out to her. Maybe I could at least talk to her father about the possibility of their adopting one of the puppies.

  The animal shelter was in Loveland, due north of Berthoud and a short drive from Campion. Loveland is a nice little town, several times the size of Berthoud, though that’s not saying much. Its biggest claim to fame is that, before Valentine’s Day, people all over the country route their cards through the city to get their “Loveland” postmark on the envelopes.

  The shelter was privately funded and operated out of a converted house. I pulled into the parking lot and walked toward the single-story brick building. The warm breeze carried the distinct odor of manure from the cattle feedlots that surrounded this part of the county. The stuffy air within the shelter smelled even worse, but I knew that my nostrils would soon adjust. The young woman at the counter looked to be a teenager at most. She was clad all in black, except for the series of silver rings on her ears and through her nose. It strikes me as comical that we humans intentionally poke holes in our bodies to supposedly make ourselves more attractive, yet call dogs stupid for pleasing themselves by rolling in something of foul fragrance.

  I asked her if I could talk to someone about a husky named Suds, and she pointed to a half-open door next to the counter while she answered the phone. I took this to mean that I could go on in, and did so. Ther
e, to my pleasant surprise, sat a man holding one of Suds’s puppies in his lap.

  He grinned at me. He was thin and tan with a distinctive, high-bridged nose and a particularly appealing smile. His eyes were darker than his light brown hair, some errant locks covering the slight hint of wrinkles on his forehead. His good looks were augmented by the fact that he was cradling a puppy. A dog-loving man is infinitely more attractive to me than, well, someone like Russell, though he had other qualities that made him attractive.

  “Can I help you, miss?” he asked. I couldn’t help but notice that he gave me an appraising look, eyeing me at length as he spoke.

  “Yes. Hi. My name is Allida Babcock. I wanted to ask you about Suds and her puppies.”

  “Ah. Great.” Still seated, he held out the puppy to me. “This is one of her puppies I’ve got now. Would you like to hold him?”

  I did, of course. Soon I was sitting in a desk chair and cradling a warm fuzzy body in my arms. I nuzzled his soft fur, and the puppy licked my cheek. His sweet, milk-scented breath was warm and pleasant on my skin.

  What was a bit worrisome to me was that Suds had allowed the dog to be taken out of her sight. Mother dogs are almost always far too protective to allow a stranger to remove a puppy until the offspring are at least five or six weeks old. Perhaps Suds was becoming too stressed by being bounced from place to place in the past couple of days to maintain her mothering role.

  “We’re calling him Fez because of his pattern of darker fur on his head. I’m John White. I’m the kennel supervisor.”

  “Kennel supervisor? So you decide which dogs are adoptable.” This was a particularly lame comment, but I was distracted by his looks and my concern for Suds and family.

  “That’s right. Among other duties.”

  “Ah,” I said, nodding. The trouble with starting down a particularly dull conversational path is that it’s hard to leap gracefully on to a better one.