Ruff Way to Go

by Leslie O'Kane

“I came over to say hi once I’d moved in next door. She’s too shy to have made the introduction on her own.”

  “You never knew her while you were still living in Berthoud?”

  “No. Not till I moved here a few weeks ago.”

  Whew. That let her out. The woman had been hassled enough already with the embarrassing ploy I’d used to glean information from her earlier.

  Trevor took me on a tour of his two-bedroom duplex, which was really not my motive for asking to see the place, but rather to get the opportunity to watch Shogun’s comfort level. He was content to trot along with us, often leading the way, and would settle himself in the doorway whenever we stopped to chat.

  “Are you planning to stay here permanently?”

  “Nothing’s permanent for me anymore. I have a six-month lease, though, so it’ll be at least that long.”

  “You’re planning on staying in the general area, though?”

  “Yes, my job’s going well. I get to pick and choose my own hours. And I like Colorado.”

  “And how would you react if I decide to recommend a joint ownership of Shogun?”

  He shook his head. “That just won’t work. That’s the one thing we agree on. Once this divorce is finalized, I never want to see that woman as long as I live.”

  “You loved her once.”

  “Hard to believe. I must have been out of my mind. She’ s a witch. Believe me, Allida, if you decide to give Shogun to her... well, I don’t know what I’d do, but I guess I’d have to live with it.”

  “If I assign custody to you, what’s to prevent her from breaking in here and stealing him back?”

  “Nothing. And you’re right. There’s every likelihood that she would do that. That’s why I’m installing a security system, even though I may only be here for less than a year. I’m not exaggerating about her. The woman is evil. If I were you, I wouldn’t trust living so near her. You cross her, and the fangs come out.” He swept his hair out of his eyes and stared into the distance.

  He sighed and said quietly, “Allida, even though it’s not in my best interest to tell you this...” His voice faded, then he met my eyes. “If you decide to give me the dog, you’ll be putting yourself in danger.”

  ***

  I didn’t have another client until late afternoon, so I drove home. Shogun came with me willingly, but watched Trevor out the back window as we drove off and spent the trip lying on the backseat with his chin on his front paws. He perked up again, though, as we made the turn onto our street. Mom was at work herself.

  After I’d been home long enough to play with the dogs, someone banged on the screen door, which seemed odd, since we have a doorbell. I went to answer, my dogs beating me there. It was Paul and Melanie, Paul looking distressed. He was still wearing the black suit and striped tie he’d had on at the funeral. Melanie, though, was now wearing overalls and a T-shirt.

  “Hi, Allida. Is your mom here?”

  “No, she’s not.”

  He grimaced, then said, “I need to ask an enormous favor. Can you babysit Melanie for a couple of hours? Something’s come up at work that I can’t get out of.”

  “Sure. You’re...back at work already?”

  “Not full-time. But I need to establish some normalcy, a normal pattern. I just have to...Can you watch Melanie till three or so? I should make it back by then at the very latest.”

  “I’d be delighted to,” I said, though my brain was churning with the panicked thoughts that I had no experience with children whatsoever, let alone with children who’d recently been traumatized. But I did have plenty of dogs to help me. “Come on, Melanie. Would you like to see Suds’s puppies again?”

  “No!” She ran and grabbed her father’s legs.

  “Suds? You have Suds here?”

  “No, the original owner took Suds, but I still have her puppies.”

  To my complete dismay, Paul was livid. His hands were fisted and he looked as though he wanted to punch me. His daughter was still clinging to a leg, but he seemed to have forgotten her presence. “How could you do that without asking me?”

  “Without asking you what Paul? I’m sorry if this has... rubbed salt in your wounds, but let’s get a little perspective here. All I did was to foster-adopt a dog and her puppies that you had tried to foster, but couldn’t due to tragic circumstances. It never occurred to me that you’d be upset.”

  He clenched his jaw and stared up and past me, at the roof eaves, if he was even aware of what was in his vision.

  “I truly am sorry, Paul.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess...I guess there was no reason for me to blow up. You just...have no idea how hard...”

  He broke off and stroked his daughter’s hair. Watching him now, I felt like an idiot for just blurting out to little Melanie about the puppies. She probably could only associate those puppies with her mother’s death.

  “Melanie?” Paul asked in a tender voice. “Is it all right if you stay here for a couple of hours while Daddy’s at a meeting?”

  She nodded, said sadly, “I guess so,” but let go of her grip on her father and approached me as if she were walking into the doctor’s office for immunization shots.

  “I won’t be late.”

  “Good, because I do need to leave for an appointment with a client by four o’clock.”

  “I’ll be back long before then.”

  He waved and rushed down the stairs. I turned to my new charge. “Could I introduce you to my other dogs? I know you’ve already met them through living across the street, but this is the first time you’ve been in their home, right?”

  She shrank back, wrapping her sleeveless arms around her chest. “I hate dogs.”

  “Okay. Let’s do something else then. And I’ll go put all of the dogs outside.”

  This killed me. I felt that I’d lost a potential dog lover because of a horrible trauma that had nothing to do with dogs in general. I knew that I was wrong to think all people should love dogs. They were sometimes smelly, noisy, and messy—the dogs, that is, though the same can be said for people—and there were probably other flaws that I couldn’t come up with on my own. But, by my experience, I wasn’t sure how I could have coped with the loss of my father at Melanie’s age if I hadn’t had my family’s golden retrievers to commiserate with.

  She was staring at Shogun, who’d run up to greet her. “This dog belongs in that blue house next to me. How come he’s here?”

  “I’m just keeping him for a couple of days, then I’ll give him to one of the Cunninghams.”

  “How come?”

  I hesitated, not sure how wise this was of me to be sharing personal information with a little girl. “How come what? How come I’m giving Shogun to one of them?”

  “Uh huh.” She gave me a big nod and stared straight into my eyes.

  When I was a child, I hated the fact that people were always trying to keep “secrets” from me, and that I usually already knew them. “They’re getting a divorce, so they won’t both be able to keep him.”

  She nodded solemnly, in an adorable affectation of someone much older. “My parents were getting a divorce.”

  Melanie’s poor enunciation must have gotten the better of me. Or else she’d misunderstood or was simply trying her best to make adult conversation. I’d been with Cassandra just a couple of hours before her murder, and she’d spoken about how she was fostering the dogs solely because Paul was a dog person. There was no chance that she was on the verge of divorcing her husband.

  I realized, too, that this was going to cause Paul nothing but pain if his daughter was blurting out to people that he and his late wife had been getting a divorce. I had to set her straight. For emphasis, I knelt and got down to eye level with her, just as I might when establishing a bond with a good-sized dog.

  “Melanie, honey, a divorce is when a marriage ends and...a mommy and a daddy don’t live together anymore. Your parents weren’t ending their marriage.”

  She looked directly into my eyes.
“Oh, yes, they were. I heard them say so. That’s why my daddy came home so early. He had to pack his suitcases. He was going to live someplace else.”

  Chapter 13

  My reaction was a mixture of shock and almost horror, yet I immediately reminded myself that this was just a little girl. She might have concocted a scene in her head about her daddy packing up that day, or had gotten confused when he’d only come home to pack up for a business trip.

  “Shogun is a nice little dog, isn’t he?” I muttered to Melanie, desperate for a quick change in subject matter.

  “Yes. I like little dogs. I just don’t like big dogs.”

  “How ‘bout we play with just Shogun and Doppler for a while, then?”

  She thought about that for a moment, then nodded, her short dark hair bobbing. “Okay.”

  I brought Doppler inside, leaving Sage and Pavlov on the back deck. It was difficult for me to keep a calm exterior while my thoughts were in a whirlwind. I tried to decide if I should call Sergeant Millay later this afternoon when Melanie had gone and tell him what she’d said about the possible status of the marriage immediately before Cassandra was killed.

  I had an image of the sergeant interrogating Paul Randon based on his daughter’s one statement to me, and the scenario turned my stomach. I couldn’t do that to him. It was just too likely that Melanie had fabricated the story. She was coping with the sudden death of her mother. She didn’t need me or anyone else to put too much stock in her perceptions of her parents’ marriage right now.

  Surely Paul wouldn’t have chosen to bring her over to my place if what Melanie had blurted was the truth. He’d have known that there was a possibility she would divulge such a potentially incriminating piece of information and would have found another sitter—some teenager who wasn’t likely to report it.

  We played a game of hide-and-seek, with the dogs as the seekers and Melanie as the hider. She laughed infectiously each time the dogs found her.

  My big dogs watched us through the glass door with such obvious jealousy that their furry faces could have been green.

  In the middle of our game, one of the puppies scrambled up the stairs. It was Fez, and though I hesitated, afraid that Melanie would be frightened at the sight of him, I said nothing as she spotted him.

  “Look!” she squealed. “He made it up the stairs. All by his self!”

  “Yes.”

  Though she hesitated for a moment, she knelt down and Fez waddled over to her. Melanie swept the little puppy into her arms and nuzzled his fur.

  After a moment, she looked up at me. “Can I see the other puppies?”

  The puppies were now five and a half weeks old and getting to the stage where it is important for them to socialize one-on-one with people, separate from their litter. Separation too early from the litter can lead the dogs to be too dependent on humans and to not fit in well with other dogs or animals. Too late a separation from the litter can be just as harmful in the opposite direction. Despite being taken from their mother a week and a half ahead of schedule, they had my dogs to teach them how to behave as an adult dog. I explained this to Melanie in the simplest of terms as we grabbed the smallest dog, a female I’d taken to calling Mrs. Smith, because she reminded me of my kindergarten teacher—they both waddled their cabooses as they walked. I’d also named the cutest puppy Little Russell. The two others were Dogface and Fluffernutter, after my favorite sandwich as a kid, a name that sent Melanie into great fits of giggles each time it was used. We played with each puppy outside, and Melanie was soon completely restored to her previous bouncing enthusiasm around the dogs. As time wore on, I started to glance at my watch a lot. Paul Randon was very late in spite of his promise.

  This rapidly became one of the longer afternoons in my personal history. We watched TV, something that I’m loath to do during the day. As four o’clock drew near and I was fresh out of every idea for possible entertainment of a kindergartner—in a house with no toys—I began pacing. I realized that I’d made a big mistake, which showed my inexperience as a babysitter: I didn’t know how to reach Paul.

  “Melanie, do you know your dad’s number at work?”

  “No.” Melanie clicked off the TV and flopped down on the middle of the living room floor. “I’m bored. I want to go home. When’s Daddy coming?”

  This was at least the hundredth time the question had come up, and this time I answered honestly, “I don’t know. He should have been here by now. If he doesn’t come very soon, you’ll have to come to work with me.”

  “Okay,” she said, ready and willing to drop everything and go.

  I was running the possible solutions of what to do through my head. This was not going to be fair to my canine client, a mixed breed who had been so badly housebroken that he howled to get inside whenever he wanted to relieve himself so that he could go on a newspaper. That problem could be solved with a day or two’s worth of attention from the owner and normally wouldn’t have merited my services, but the dog had also become over-attached to his owner and was starting to develop separation anxiety as well. The owners had no kids of their own and there was no advantage to suddenly throwing someone else’s child into the mix.

  Whatever planning I might have been able to do to accommodate Melanie was being circumvented by the rut that my thought pattern was in; I could only think about how inconsiderate this was of Paul to disappear like this. Melanie was enrolled in morning kindergarten. Why hadn’t he arranged this important meeting of his to take place then? And what could possibly be more important than being with your child on the day of her mother’s funeral?

  We went out to the garage. I didn’t have a car seat for her, but strapped her into the backseat of my Subaru. Just as we were about to pull out of the driveway, Paul drove up. He got out of the car, panting, his pale yellow tie askew. His dark hair was also mussed, as if he’d been driving with the window down, though that currently wasn’t the case. “Allida.Hi. I’m a bit late.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  He ignored my tone of voice and got his daughter out of the car. “How’s my princess?”

  “Can I get a puppy, Daddy?”

  Paul’s eyes widened in surprise and he shot me a look that I hoped meant that he was impressed at how quickly I’d restored his daughter’s appreciation for dogs. “We’ll see, princess.”

  “Do they allow dogs where we’re moving?”

  He jerked slightly at the question, as if he’d gotten a jolt of static electricity, cluing me in that he’d rather not have had me overhear. “I’m sure they do.”

  “You’re moving?”

  He cleared his throat, his features drawing into a frown. “Soon, yes. There are...too many memories here.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Thanks again for watching Melanie at the last minute like this.” He got back into his car, Melanie on his lap, and he let her steer as they drove across the street to their own driveway.

  It wasn’t until I’d driven off myself toward my client’s house that something puzzling hit me. Paul was now wearing a different tie than the one he’d worn when he dropped her off, supposedly on his way to work.

  My work “day” ended at a house so far north of Boulder that I was almost in Lyons. I decided to swing by Susan’s house. She’d made the decision to dump me so precipitously that I could claim to want to make sure that she hadn’t changed her mind again about my working with Boris. I secretly hoped that she might be willing by now to tell me the whole story behind her father and his odd behavior.

  There was a different car than usual in the driveway—a beat-up pickup truck. No sign of Susan’s old Galaxy 500. Maybe this was her husband’s vehicle and she’d been telling me the truth about his schedule after all.

  A pleasant-looking, though overweight middle-aged man opened the door. He was average height—five-ten or so— and had curly brown hair and was wearing white paint-splattered overalls.

  “Hi. I’m Allida Babcock. I’ve been working with your dog
.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He pumped my hand vigorously. “Hi, Allida. I’m Susan’s husband, Fred. You live across from my in-laws. You own that great German shepherd and the collie, don’t you?”

  I immediately liked the man. “Yes. And the cocker spaniel, too. They are terrific dogs, aren’t they?”

  “Sure are. If it were up to me, I’d have five or six dogs, but Suzy says one’s enough for her. Come on in.” He held the door open for me, and I stepped inside their messy living room. Boris gave me a couple of territorial barks, but then allowed me to pat him. I’m sure his tail would have been wagging, had he had one.

  Fred wore a bemused expression on his face as he watched me. “Susan told me she used to babysit for you and your brother. Said you were a pair of hellions.”

  I didn’t want to get into a discussion of the past and quickly asked, “Is she here?”

  “Don’t know where she is, I’m afraid, but Boris is here, as you can see. We’ve got no plans for the next hour or so. I’d be happy for you to work with the two of us. Susan’s here a lot more than I am, but I’ll do what I can to help make Boris easier for her to get along with.”

  This was an unfortunate turn of events. Susan obviously hadn’t told him about our last conversation, in which I’d been fired—though it’s hard to consider one’s self “fired” from a nonpaying position. “Susan didn’t tell you that she doesn’t want me to continue working with Boris?”

  He studied my face as if to see if this was a joke. “She doesn’t? Why not?”

  “I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask her.”

  He furrowed his brow, then shook his head. “No way. You must have misunderstood her. I gave her the fifty-dollar bill she said you needed just this morning.”

  “The fifty I needed?”

  “Yeah. You only accept cash, right?”

  “That’s not true.” I felt horribly uncomfortable, but I wasn’t going to be a party to a lie between a woman I barely knew and didn’t much like and her husband. “In fact, Fred, I’m afraid that you and she must have had the misunderstanding. I wasn’t charging her at all for my work with your dog. We were going to work it out in trade. She was going to do yard work at my mom’s house.”