Sire and Damn (Dog Lover's Mysteries Book 20)

by Susan Conant

  “I wish that Uncle Oscar could remember when Willie barked,” I said. “And when he had his ice cream. It would help if we knew what happened when.”

  “How would it help? I don’t see how.”

  “Rita, if we knew that Uncle Oscar came downstairs for his ice cream at, let’s say, seven thirty, and we knew that Frankie broke in at eight o’clock, then you could stop worrying that—”

  “—that Uncle Oscar killed someone and has totally forgotten the little incident.”

  “No one intended to kill Frankie.”

  “If you bash someone on the head with a poker, exactly what do you intend?”

  Without answering Rita’s question, I said, “Since Frankie walked out of here, whoever hit him didn’t realize—”

  “Holly, please! Enough rationalization. And excuses. As of this morning, everyone knows that Frankie’s dead, and no one has stepped forward to say, ‘Sorry. I caught him in the act of stealing your wedding presents, and I acted on impulse.’ Furthermore, for all we know, Frankie passed out, and whichever one of my relatives hit him may very well have thought he was dead.”

  “If he blacked out, maybe he was in the house for quite a while. Longer than ten minutes. Damn! It’s so confusing. Rita, I think that if we made a chart of who was where when, it would help. That’s what Steve would do. He’d make a timeline.”

  “A timeline. Isn’t that another one of those Facebook things? I am so sick of hearing about Facebook!”

  As if conjured up by the mention of social media, Zara appeared—but not silently. She slammed the gate open, paused to close it, and ran to us with Izzy at her side. “Look at this!” She held out a phone. “Pictures of the guy stealing Izzy! You remember? I told you that someone took pictures. He finally sent them.” Her cheeks were pink with excitement, her eyes flashed, and she talked so fast that it was difficult to understand her. “You didn’t believe me. I know you didn’t. Neither of you believed me, and neither did anyone else. But it’s okay. Really, it’s okay. Holly, look!”

  Feeling guilty, I took the phone and examined the photos, which were sharper than I expected.

  “He Photoshopped them,” Zara said.

  “Zara, sit down,” Rita told her. “Take a deep breath. You’re upsetting Izzy.”

  To me, Izzy looked happy but relaxed, and I know a lot more about dogs than Rita does. Izzy’s tail-wagging was enthusiastic rather than anxious, and she wasn’t leaning against Zara, pawing at her, or regarding her with concern. As far as I could tell, she was sharing Zara’s excitement. Fluent as I am in the language of dogs, I’ll translate: Something good has happened! Isn’t that great!

  In contrast, the furrows on Rita’s forehead and her locked jaw radiated psychotherapeutic suspicion. Of what? At a guess, Zara’s rapid speech and elevated mood led Rita to worry about the onset of a hypomanic episode. I happen to know what such an episode is because I’d once had an encounter with Steve’s horrible ex-wife when she’d been having one, and Rita had subsequently explained it to me. That time, the trigger had been prescription drugs. This time, in what I assume to be Rita’s view, hypomania could signal the resurgence of the bipolar disorder that I’d been told Zara had.

  So, Izzy said one thing, and Rita said another. Whose assessment did I believe? If you ever have to choose between the judgment of a psychotherapist and the judgment of a dog, trust the dog. Even the best shrinks can misread and misinterpret. But dogs? Dogs are never wrong.

  Ignoring Rita, I said, “Zara, you were right. He’s hot! He’s really hot.”

  The first of the four pictures showed the dog thief stealing Izzy: He had her leash in his hand. He was moving away from the camera but had turned his head to look back. The second picture, which must have been taken after Izzy’s rescue, was a rearview shot of the would-be thief running off. The other two photos, cropped from the first two, were close-ups: one of his face, the other of the back of his head. As Zara had reported, he was tan and had curly brown hair. She’d said that he was tall. Was he? It was hard to tell. In the first photo, the one with Izzy, he seemed to be of at least medium height. Just as Zara had reported, he wore a white T-shirt and jeans. His shoulders and arms were muscular, and he’d been born—born—to wear jeans. The close-up of the back of his head showed that his ears didn’t stick out; it was otherwise uninformative. But the blown-up picture of his face? Geez! Even with that startled expression, even when Zara must have been shouting at him, even when he’d discovered that he’d been caught on camera, he was gorgeous. Whew!

  Where was I?

  “Does he look familiar?” Zara asked. “Have you seen him around?”

  “No. I’d remember.”

  Rita took a look, too. “I’ve never seen him, either.”

  Vicky’s voice rang out from the kitchen. “Rita? These croissants are stale.”

  “Back to work,” Zara said. “Editing calls.”

  “I’d better get going, too,” I said. “I need to get food for tonight. Hi, Vicky! Have to run. See you tonight!”

  chapter twelve

  An hour later, when Zara and I set off for Watertown, I understood why people succumb to the temptation to pass off their pets as service dogs. Izzy was with us because she’d be allowed in Pignola’s, but my poor dogs were stuck at home because they’d be banned from the store and because it was too hot to leave them in the car. I also understood why people rob banks, run Ponzi schemes, and otherwise acquire quick fortunes: we were in Zara’s Mercedes (I sound like Quinn), which was so luxurious that merely sitting in the passenger seat made me feel like a pampered billionaire.

  As Zara and I had walked home, which is to say, as we’d been running away from her mother, I’d told her that I really did have to shop for food; I hadn’t just been making an excuse. She, Rita, Quinn, Vicky, Uncle Oscar, MaryJo, and Monty were all coming to our house for dinner, as was Zara and Rita’s cousin John Wilson, who was going to stay at our house. I’d accepted Zara’s offer to help me shop and get ready. I’d also started to tell her about Frankie Sorensen, but she’d already talked to Quinn and had been about to check Frankie out online when the photos of the would-be dog thief had arrived.

  Zara and I were not headed to Pignola’s because we intended to pop in for a quick visit with Enid Garabedian or because we felt drawn to the place where Frankie Sorensen’s presumably unappetizing corpse had been dragged out of the Charles River; rather, we were going to Pignola’s because it’s where I often shop when people are coming for dinner. As the author of a slim volume titled 101 Ways to Cook Liver, I’m an acknowledged authority on making homemade dog treats, but my expertise in the kitchen—and everywhere else, come to think of it—begins and ends with catering to dogs. When I cook for members of my own species, that is, my other species, I stick to fresh, simple, or foolproof food, which is what Pignola’s supplied in abundance. Tonight’s menu included the same appetizers that Enid had offered us—hummus, baba ghanoush, and melted kasseri with pita; a big Greek salad; hot and sweet Italian sausages made by a little local company; and fresh fruit salad with ice cream.

  Zara’s car was so splendid that even the male voice on the GPS spoke in aristocratic tones, but since I knew the way to Pignola’s, I persuaded her to make Lord GPS quit interrupting us by silencing him altogether.

  “If it only it were this easy to turn off my mother,” Zara said. “Or if she were an app, it would take seconds to remove her. Life should come with a drag-and-drop feature for moving impossible relatives to the trash.”

  I said, “Operant conditioning is slower than drag-and-drop, but I’ve used it to shape my father’s behavior when he’s being especially irritating. The problem is that he finds any attention reinforcing, and he’s hard to ignore when he annoys me.”

  “My mother, too.” In an apparent change of subject, she said, “My mother is very devoted to Uncle Oscar. She irritates him just as much as she does everyone else, but she’d do anything for him.”

  “And?”

  �
��He never left the house last night, and he went downstairs and had ice cream. You know how slowly he moves. He must’ve been there for a while. He could’ve been the one who killed the burglar. Sorensen. If my mother knew that he did or thought that he did, she’d cover up for him. You know, she was gone from the restaurant for a long time.”

  “Take a left here,” I said.

  “Of course, so was I, but I was getting away from my mother. Or obeying Izzy!”

  “I thought she was alerting.”

  “She was.” Zara glanced in the rearview mirror and projected her voice. “Weren’t you, good girl!”

  The dog’s tail beat a happy rhythm against the sides of the crate.

  I said, “It was a happy day for both of you when Izzy ended up in that shelter. You want to turn right here, and then bear left at the fork.”

  “Was it ever my lucky day! Before, I used to dread leaving my apartment. I’d go for weeks without leaving home. Izzy won’t let me stay in bed, you know. It’s one of the things she’s trained to do—grab onto me and drag me out of bed if I’m depressed. But she doesn’t have to do that now. I want to get up and take her out and do things. It feels like a miracle that I can go places. Anywhere! And love it. Well, it is a miracle. The miracle is Izzy.”

  When we were passing through Watertown Square, Zara took a moment to check in with a couple of location apps, and she did the same thing when we arrived at Pignola’s. Because she had no visible need for a service dog, I was a little worried that someone would challenge us about Izzy’s presence or even outright refuse to let Izzy in, but no one did. As I was filling my cart, a couple of people admired Izzy and got permission to pat her. When it comes to stealing food, Labrador retrievers are almost as bad as malamutes, so I was impressed, as I’d been at Vertex, by Izzy’s self-control.

  Watching Izzy, I realized that if I’d slapped service-dog vests on Rowdy and Sammy, they’d have chomped their way through Pignola’s. I could just see Rowdy rising up on his hind feet and shoving his face in the display of cheeses. Meanwhile, as I was trying to stop him from devouring thousands of dollars’ worth of triple crème and Parmigiano-Reggiano, Sammy would’ve taken advantage of my preoccupation by dashing to the meat cooler and gorging himself sick on steak, sausages, and chicken. Once my beautiful boys had revealed themselves as naughty dogs rather than service dogs, I’d have been forced to pay for the cheese and meat, kicked out of the store, and subjected to well-deserved public humiliation. As it was, Izzy was a credit to all service dogs, as the social-media world got to see in the six or eight photos that Zara took and immediately posted.

  When we’d finished loading the bags of food into the back of the car, Zara said, “I have a surprise for you.”

  “I hate waiting. Tell me.”

  “The burglar?”

  “Frank Sorensen.”

  “I found his address. Or an address, maybe an old one. Peach Street. We’re doing a drive-by.”

  “It better be a quick one. Most of the food is perishable.”

  “It’s right near here.” She entered an address in the GPS.

  As we pulled out of the parking lot and turned left onto Pleasant Street, I said, “I was going to look online, but I got interrupted. What else did you find out?”

  “Not a lot, but Waltham has police logs online, and they give people’s ages and addresses. About a year ago, Frank and Gil Sorensen got arrested at a bar in Waltham. They had the same home address, the one we’re going to. Frank was twenty-three. Gil was twenty-six. So, add a year. They both got charged with disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace, but Frank also got charged with assault and battery, and something about a dangerous weapon and bodily harm. He punched a guy in the head. And drug possession. Class B and Class E, whatever that means. I’ll find out, and I’ll look more later. I had to get back to a client. I just thought that since we were out here, we’d take a look. I’m curious to see where they lived.”

  Directed by the aristocratic GPS, we followed Pleasant Street into Waltham, where it changed its name to River Street. After a few turns, we arrived at a narrow side street lined with two-family and three-family houses. If my own block of Appleton Street had gone down in the world instead of up, it would’ve looked a lot like the block where the Sorensens lived, or had lived a year earlier. The shabby wooden houses were set close together. The paint that remained on them had faded from the original lime greens, whites, and browns to a uniformly colorless gray. Worn little aluminum awnings dangled precariously over front doors. Nourished by the summer rain, burdock, chickweed, purslane, dandelions, and crabgrass grew from cracks in the asphalt driveways, and weedy vines clambered up rusty chain-link fencing. In little patches of what had once been tiny lawns, tropical-looking vegetation reached almost alarming heights.

  Peach Street, as it was called, had a strikingly inappropriate name. Peachy it was not.

  “No wonder Frank turned to crime,” Zara said. “The address is fifty-five.”

  “It’s this one on the right. With the green awning. There are three mailboxes. Do you want me to get out and—”

  “No!” She put her foot on the gas.

  “You’re right. This car is pretty distinctive. There’s no reason to draw attention to ourselves. And what would we have learned? That Frank still lived there or that he didn’t. Either way, so what?”

  “I was just curious,” Zara said.

  “I wasn’t being critical, Zara.”

  “I know.”

  “I was curious, too.”

  chapter thirteen

  “Most people are going to have to eat with their plates in their laps,” I told Steve. “I hope that no one minds.”

  “Vicky will.”

  We both laughed. We were in the kitchen getting ready for the arrival of our dinner guests. We’d already fed the dogs, let them out, and then cleaned and hosed down the yard, put out extra chairs, set up the grill, and otherwise converted the yard from dog space to human space.

  “There’s room at the picnic table for her,” I said. “The food and the serving stuff can all go on the folding table. I put out real plates, not paper, and we’re using real glasses, not plastic, and the wine is decent.”

  “Bitch?”

  I laughed. “Steve, how unlike you! No, the wine isn’t Bitch, but if Vicky is horrible enough, I’ll open a bottle of it and present it to her as a subtle little hint.”

  “She was gone from Vertex longer than anyone else, wasn’t she?”

  “I’m not sure. I told Rita that we should make a timeline. I said that that’s what you’d do. But we never got around to it. Zara showed up with the pictures of the guy trying to steal Izzy.”

  “A timeline’s not a bad idea.”

  “We can’t do one now. We have eight people coming for dinner.”

  “While they’re here, we can ask them about who was where when. Who saw what. They might lie, but we can ask.”

  “They’re our guests! We can’t interrogate them or cross-examine them. And the liar in the family is supposed to be John, anyway.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Rita. She says that John is a harmless pathological liar. But we can leave him off your timeline. He wasn’t even here.”

  “Or so he says.”

  “What do you—” I gave a belated laugh.

  “Gotcha.” He smiled. “Seriously, Holly, we’ll do a timeline after everyone leaves. No one wants to think about it, but Oscar could have some organic condition. And Vicky could be worse than hostile. Monty—”

  “Steve, we’d better stop talking about people who are going to get here any minute. We don’t want to be overheard.”

  “Just pay attention. If anyone says anything about leaving Vertex, getting back there, whatever, just listen. And remember.”

  “With luck, we’ll have better things to talk about,” I said. “Like the wedding.” Then I remembered something. Dropping my voice to a whisper, I said, “But in case someone mentions Quinn’s drug sa
mples, watch what you say about drug companies. John Wilson is a pharmaceutical company rep. A drug salesman.”

  “Does he sell veterinary drugs? Maybe he’ll shower us with presents and take us out to dinner.”

  “That’s just what you’re not to say. And he sells human drugs, anyway. He works for one of the big companies. I forget which one.”

  “The perfect job for a pathological liar.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “You know exactly what we can’t say.”

  Although we’d been talking softly, I put a finger to my lips when I heard Zara and Izzy dancing down the back stairs from Rita’s old apartment. When I opened the kitchen door and let them in, Zara flung her arms in the air and announced, “Editing catch of the day! Vocal c-h-o-r-d-s are now vocal c-o-r-d-s. And that’s not to mention Jell-O, which now has a hyphen and a capital O.”

  “That’s certainly cause for celebration,” I said. “If you’ll open that bottle of wine, we’ll drink to your triumphs. Izzy, hello, good girl.”

  I somehow took it as a compliment that Izzy’s only clothing, so to speak, was a heavily embroidered flat collar; the absence of her service-dog vest meant that Zara felt at home with us. Zara’s designer jeans had the look of new denim, and her teal T-shirt had pretty scalloping and tucks, but by her standards, she, too, was dressed for home. I knelt on the floor to say another hello to Izzy, who smelled of clean dog. Her nails were short, and either Zara or a groomer had done a tiny bit of trimming to neaten her feet. As I stroked Izzy’s throat, I couldn’t see her teeth, but I didn’t need to: I already knew that Zara brushed them every day. I suppressed the shameful thought that such meticulous grooming was wasted on a dog not destined for the show ring.

  When I stood up, I saw that Zara had opened the bottle of wine but hadn’t helped herself to a glass of it. Of course! She’d told me that she wasn’t supposed to mix her medications with alcohol. Instead of making matters worse by apologizing, I asked, “Ginger ale? Lemonade?”