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

by Susan Conant

  Although I had no intention of being the only person who knew about the ransom demand, I avoided giving Zara a direct response. “We’ll work out the details tomorrow morning. The important thing to remember is that I’ll do anything I can to help.”

  Zara leapt to her feet, pacing back and forth, peering out the windows, taking a seat, leaping up again, and pacing like a caged animal. Without Izzy, I thought, Zara felt caged. Rowdy trained his eyes on my face in search of instruction. I met his gaze, shrugged, and mouthed, “Good boy,” in the hope, I guess, of reinforcing my connection with him and telling him that nothing was required except his presence. As to what, if anything, I should do, I had no idea. My knowledge of dog behavior and dog training offered little initial guidance. Yes, Zara was suffering from acute stress; she was, as it’s said, over threshold. Rowdy’s presence hadn’t kept her stress level down, nor had my promise to help in any way I could. As I watched her pace, I realized that although my intellectual understanding was letting me down, my dog trainer’s intuition, together with common sense, told me not to stand passively by as her pacing became increasingly frantic and as her arousal level escalated: interrupt the behavior!

  “Zara, stop!” I ordered.

  And she did. Once she was no longer scaring me by pacing so frenetically, I knew what to do. When you’re dealing with a dog-aggressive dog who goes bonkers at the sight of another dog, it’s vital to let your dog know that protecting him is your responsibility and not his: since you are his strong, bold, trustworthy protector, he need do nothing except relax and let you do your job. And you’d better be good at it! If an unwelcome dog appears, you need to remove your dog from the situation or, if need be, press the trigger on your citronella spray, blast your air horn, and use your dog-trainer voice, too, until that canine enemy turns tail and vanishes off the face of your dog’s earth.

  “Zara, you’re too stressed to think straight right now. You’re too frightened for Izzy. I’m worried, too, but I’m less stressed than you are, and I’m going take charge. We’ve got this evening and tomorrow to get through. There are plans that have to be made, and I’m going to make them. You don’t need to. I am a strong, capable person. I’m going to listen to what you want. We aren’t going to tell everyone about the ransom demand. But we’re going to have a plan, and we’re going to stick to it, and we’re going to get Izzy back. Do you hear me? We’re going to get her back.”

  chapter twenty-six

  Bossiness comes naturally to me. For one thing, I grew up with golden retrievers who were so used to obeying my martinet mother that they obeyed me, too, even when I was barely old enough to tell them to sit, stay, and heel. For another thing, I’ve lived with dogs and trained dogs ever since those early days. In contrast to my late mother, who favored the jerk-and-drag methods of her time, I’m an enthusiastic participant in the positive-methods revolution in dog training.

  Still, I use positive reinforcement in the form of food, praise, play, and yet more food as a means to an end, and that end is the same one I’ve always sought, namely, dogs who do what I tell them to do when I tell them to do it, thereby behaving like canine ladies and gentlemen.

  So, benevolent despot that I am, I felt comfortable taking charge.

  My first decree was that we needed to eat and, eventually, to sleep. By we, I meant only Zara and me. For all that John was our houseguest, I was so annoyed about his duplicity that I’d have wished starvation and insomnia on him, but as it happened, he was going to a Red Sox game with Quinn, Steve, and Monty. Neither Rita nor Quinn referred to the outing as a bachelor party. Rita called it a pre-wedding male-bonding ritual. Out of my hearing, Quinn probably did, too.

  Quinn wasn’t a bachelor-party type—and a good thing, too, since so far as I could tell, he’d have had no friends to invite. It was flattering and troubling that he’d chosen Steve as his best man. Yes, Steve is wonderful, but Quinn hadn’t known him for long; he and Steve saw each other almost exclusively when Rita, Quinn, Steve, and I got together; the two of them didn’t hang out without Rita and me. Worse, Quinn didn’t hang out with anyone else, either. What kind of man has no friends? But the Sox game was progress, I told myself, and since Quinn had paid more money than I can imagine to some scalper for four seats right behind home plate, Steve was actually looking forward to the evening. You know that line in the Robert Frost poem? Frost said that boughten friendship was better than none at all, so let’s hope he was right.

  As an aside, let me mention that although the poem, “Provide, Provide,” is supposedly about an old hag who was once a Hollywood star and has hit hard times because she failed to provide, it’s possible that in the devious, multilayered manner of poems, it’s also about the poet, and if that’s the case, the reason he had to think about buying friends instead of making them was that no one wanted to hang out with a guy who used weird words like boughten; so, Frost should have advised his readers to provide by talking like normal human beings.

  Anyway, because I wanted a little time alone to mull over my plans, I didn’t raid our freezer but walked down the block to our local fancy-food emporium, Formaggio—properly, Formaggio Kitchen—for a rotisserie chicken, a collection of delectable side dishes and cheeses, and a loaf of French bread. By the time I got home, my mind was clear. Among other things, I’d decided to tell no one but Rita about the ransom call. I hadn’t worked out exactly how to avoid telling Steve, who, honest and open and straightforward man that he is, would’ve wanted to inform the police. Searching for a way to conceal everything about the ransom from him, I finally hit on an improbable and elusive but perfect strategy: for once in my life, I’d keep my mouth shut. Why tell Rita? I trusted her completely. Also, as a psychotherapist, she had tons of experience in keeping secrets.

  On the way home, I met Steve, who was walking to Rita and Quinn’s.

  “No news?” he asked.

  “No,” I lied. “You’re taking one car, aren’t you?”

  With a wry smile, he said, “Quinn’s Lexus. But John’s meeting us there.”

  “He’s from New York. Has it occurred you that he could be a Yankees fan?”

  “Knowing him, I wouldn’t be surprised.” In Boston, those are damning words.

  “It’s a good thing we’re playing the Orioles. What if you had to go to a Yankees game with a Yankees fan?” I told him that I intended to watch the game on television and promised to keep an eye out for him. “I’m going to stay in Rita’s old guestroom,” I warned him. “I don’t like the idea of Zara being alone on the third floor, even with Rowdy. I’ll take Sammy with me.”

  When I got home and checked on Zara, she said that she wanted to take a shower—a good sign, I thought—and agreed to watch the game with me. She wasn’t a big baseball fan, but when she watched, she rooted for the Mets, not the Evil Empire, as I’d have predicted even if I hadn’t already known.

  “We’re both thinking of nothing but Izzy,” I told her, “but we have to get through. It’s less than twenty-four hours now. You can do it.”

  From my own kitchen, I called Rita, who sounded flustered. “MaryJo is starving. Vicky doesn’t want to eat before eight. MaryJo wants to watch the game so she can see Monty on television. Thank God for Uncle Oscar! He says that anything is fine with him. And he’s very sweet with Willie.”

  “Rita,” I said, “I need to swear you to secrecy.”

  “Consider me sworn,” she said.

  “Izzy has been kidnapped. Dognapped. Zara has had a ransom call. You can’t tell anyone.”

  “Holly, call the police!”

  “I can’t. Izzy is Zara’s dog.”

  “How is Zara doing?”

  “Rowdy is with her. He’s helping her get through, I think.”

  “I’m coming over.”

  She hung up. Five minutes later, she was at my door, and ten minutes after that, we were in her old apartment, which still felt to me like hers. The fan was running in the bathroom, and outside the bathroom door, Rowdy was in a sphinxlike
down. He associates bathrooms with water and therefore hates them. Still, he was watching out for Zara. When she appeared in her bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her head, Rita said that she knew about the ransom call and asked all those therapist questions about how Zara and I were feeling about everything,

  But when she’d finished, I actually felt better than I had before, and then Rita turned sensible and practical. She told Zara to dry her hair and get dressed, and when Zara reappeared, Rita had her play the ransom call. As I listened for the second time, I again envisioned the caller on weedy Peach Street.

  “Working-class guy,” Rita said. “It’s a lot more money to him than it is to you. And he’s smart. He isn’t asking for more cash than you can raise in a hurry. You can raise it, can’t you? I can help. If you’re determined to pay him.” Just as I’d done, Rita made no mention of what was so painfully missing in the call: the sound of a dog barking or, indeed, any other indication that Izzy was still alive.

  “Absolutely,” Zara said. “If I can get to the bank. How am I going to get there? I’m not used to going anywhere without Izzy. I’m not used to leaving home without her. Or to being home alone without her, either.”

  Rita, Zara, and I were seated around Rita’s table, on which I’d spread the takeout from Formaggio. Rowdy was sitting at Zara’s left side. Her hand was on his shoulder, and she was digging her fingers deeply and rhythmically into his dense coat.

  Rita said, “Izzy has a whole beautiful wardrobe of those vests. Put one on Rowdy.”

  “No!” I protested. “You can’t pass him off as a service dog. That’s—”

  “It’s perfectly ethical,” Rita said. “It’s not like trying to sneak a pet onto a plane by pretending he’s a service dog. If Zara needs him to go where she needs to go, then he is her service dog, at least for the moment.”

  Zara and I spoke simultaneously: “That’s true.”

  “Legally, it is true,” I said. “Dogs don’t need certificates or whatever to be service dogs. If you have a disability, and your dog lets you do whatever you need to do, then he’s your service dog.” I smiled at Rowdy. In his own fashion, he smiled at the chicken on the table. “Zara, if you don’t watch out, he’ll steal our dinner. In every other respect,” I added, “he’s the perfect dog.”

  “It would be helpful,” Rita said, “to have a detailed plan about what we’re going to do. This evening. Tomorrow morning. Afternoon. Not just about delivering the ransom, but a plan, a schedule, if you will, for the time until then. It’ll make it easier to get through.” Then she talked incomprehensibly about binding anxiety.

  I said, “Let’s eat.” Channeling Rowdy?

  When we helped ourselves to the food, I, as usual, filled my plate. Rita, who was eating for herself and my godchild, took more substantial helpings than she’d have done a few months earlier, when she’d been watching her weight. Zara took a chicken wing, a small piece of Brie, and a thin slice of bread. Zara and I drank sparkling water from the refrigerator, and Rita had a big glass of milk. Being half malamute and blessed with an enviable metabolism, I ate with my usual gusto. Rita ate as if it were her duty to do so, as it was. Zara pushed her food around and sipped water. Rowdy drooled.

  As we ate—or in Zara’s case, didn’t eat—we agreed that I’d spend the evening with Zara. Although Zara had no interest in the Sox or the Orioles, we’d watch for Steve, Quinn, Monty, and John in their just-behind-home-plate seats at Fenway.

  “Zara, do you have something to help you sleep?” Rita asked. “In case you need it.”

  “I’m a traveling pharmacy. I’ll drug myself to oblivion. And I have guided imagery on my iPhone.” She paused. “Does Rowdy sleep on the bed?”

  “If you want him to. He’s not supposed to get on the bed unless he’s invited. Just pat the bed and give him permission. But if the room is hot, he might end up on the floor.”

  We ran through a rough schedule for the next day. As Rita pointed out, there was a branch of Zara’s bank near Fresh Pond, so Zara wouldn’t even have to go to Harvard Square to get the cash she’d need. I couldn’t imagine strolling into the bank and withdrawing thousands of dollars, but when I asked a tentative question, Zara said that her money was hers; that what she did with it was none of the bank’s business; and that even so, in the morning, she’d call someone she knew at her bank in New York.

  Because Rita’s parents, Erica and Al, were arriving and were going to stay in Rita’s old apartment with Zara, she and I would tidy things up and prepare the guestroom for them. Then we’d go to Rita and Quinn’s to review the service and the vows they’d written for the wedding and to try on the dresses we’d be wearing. We’d already had a fitting, but Rita wanted to be sure that the alterations had been done correctly. Once Al and Erica arrived, everyone would gather for a late lunch at Rita and Quinn’s.

  “And then,” said Rita, “the three of us are going to deliver the ransom.”

  Zara almost shouted: “Oh, no, we are not! I’m going by myself.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Rita.

  “You’re not,” I said. “I’m going with you.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Thanks to a certain Monty Python sketch, I realized that we were merely exchanging contradictions and that if Rita and I intended to persuade Zara of the folly of going alone, we’d have to elevate the discussion to the level of argument.

  “Do you intend to take Rowdy with you?” I asked.

  At the sound of his name, Rowdy looked at my face. People always say, “Doesn’t Rowdy love you! He watches you all the time.” He does love me, but he watches me because he’s been carefully trained to make eye contact. In return, I watch him. We exchange positive reinforcement. I give him bits of liver. He gives me the pleasure of seeing his gorgeous head, his blocky muzzle, his all-but-black almond-shaped eyes, his heavy bone, his big snowshoe feet, his plumy white tail, his gloriously healthy and shiny double coat, and all the rest, the best of the rest being his charismatic aura of power.

  Rowdy? Rowdy has star quality. Rowdy is a presence.

  Where was I? Oh, so then I said, “Rowdy is not going without me. You remember in the Bible? Ruth to Naomi. ‘Whither thou goest, I will go.’ Where Rowdy goes, I go, and if you want him along, you’re going to be stuck with me, too.”

  “Holly, that’s not fair,” Zara protested. “Besides, Naomi wasn’t Ruth’s dog. Naomi was her mother-in-law.”

  Ignoring the nitpicking, I said, “You are more than welcome to take Rowdy with you, but only if I’m there, too.”

  “Zara,” Rita said firmly, “if you insist on going all by yourself, it’s possible that you’ll get to this parking lot and then discover that you are, in fact, unable to get out of the car and deliver the ransom. You have to have backup.”

  “Me,” I said. “If you can’t deliver the ransom, I’ll do it. Rowdy can wait in the car with you, and I’ll go in your place.”

  Rita banged a fist on the table. “Holly, you and Zara don’t look a thing alike. This Gil person is going to take one look at you and realize that you’re not Zara. Let’s remember that he and his brother must’ve been watching all of us. That’s how they planned my burglary. They watched us, they watched our houses, and they followed Zara on that damned Facebook and who knows where else.”

  “Blame Facebook,” Zara said. “Blame me! It’s my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “Rita doesn’t mean that.”

  “Of course I don’t,” Rita said. “All I mean is that the safe assumption is that he knows what we look like. Among other things, he saw you today when he stole Izzy, and since he’d obviously been following you, he must’ve seen Holly, too.”

  The three of us exchanged glances.

  “I’ll wear Zara’s clothes,” I said. “And a hat.”

  “I look much more like Zara than you do,” Rita said.

  I objected. “Rita, delivering ransom just isn’t—”

&nbs
p; “It’s obviously not something I’ve ever done before, but you haven’t either, Holly, and there’s no reason to believe that you’d be any better at it than I’d be.”

  “I’m more, uh, temperamentally suited to it than you are, Rita.”

  Rita laughed. “Just don’t tell me it’s because you have big, rough dogs.”

  “Well, it is.”

  “And Willie is easy? Who’s always saying that Willie has real terrier character?”

  “He does,” I admitted, “but we’re not talking about dogs.”

  “Holly, do you know what you just said? You actually said that we’re not talking about dogs. This? From you?”

  Zara raised both hands high in the air. “I surrender. Peace, please. Truce. White flag. But you’re both going to have to ride on the floor of my car.”

  “Rowdy and I are going with you,” I said. “We can decide about Rita tomorrow.”

  chapter twenty-seven

  After Rita left, Zara and I turned on the TV and tried to spot Steve, Quinn, Monty, and John among the hundreds of fans seated behind home plate. Yes, why peer at the screen and struggle to see people we’d just seen in person and would see again in the flesh in no time? Senseless. But the humble fact of being on television seemed to confer fleeting stardom or would do so, anyway, if we could catch sight of them.

  Our task was challenging because we were watching on Rita’s little portable TV, which for many years had represented her apology to herself for owning any TV at all. She’d used this one mainly to watch PBS, of which she was a generous financial supporter, a member of an elite circle of wealthy donors who gave big bucks to fund the production of soap-operatic melodramas that masqueraded as highbrow British theater-on-film. I wallow in those soaps, too. I just like watching them on a big screen.

  Anyway, we managed to catch sight of Steve or possibly of a tall man we identified as Steve, so we decided that the men on either side of him were Quinn and Monty. Our little game was a moderately successful distraction, and the Sox-Orioles game was engaging, too, at least for me. I brought Sammy upstairs and sat on the floor idly working on his coat with my Chris Christensen 27mm T-brush, a tool that could’ve been designed for those of us who groom big hairy dogs while watching television, since it grabs undercoat and holds onto it instead of flinging it all over the place. I ate some ice cream and persuaded Zara to have a little, too. In the sixth inning, the game was tied, but it held no interest for Zara, who decided to go to bed.