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

by Susan Conant

  Rowdy and Sammy needed to go out, as did India and Lady, so I told Zara that I’d take care of the dogs, return Rowdy to her, and watch the rest of the game before settling myself in Rita’s guestroom. Since Zara had taken some kind of sleep medication, she expected to fall asleep soon. We agreed that she’d leave her bedroom door ajar so that Rowdy could enter the room without awakening her and leave during the night if he wanted to.

  “Don’t worry about the television,” Zara said. “It won’t keep me awake. If I hear it at all, it’ll be cozy. It’ll remind me that I’m not all alone.”

  I was tempted to tell her that tomorrow night at this time, Izzy would be back here with her, but I couldn’t bring myself to offer what might turn out to be false comfort.

  After all four dogs had had a quick trip to the yard, I got a nightgown and my e-reader and returned to the third floor with Rowdy and Sammy. The Sox-Orioles game was still tied. Standing just outside Zara’s room, I heard nothing at all. I did some speedy calculation: Twenty minutes to get there. Then five minutes. Ten at the outside. Twenty minutes to get back home. So, forty-five or fifty minutes. Staring at the TV screen, I decided to let fate decide: If I caught sight of Steve, I’d go. If not, I’d ditch the plan.

  And there he was, just behind home plate, my hunk of a husband, unmistakable, with Monty on one side, and Quinn on the other. Even if they left Fenway right now, I had time or almost enough time, anyway. Besides, the game was tied. They weren’t leaving yet. Yes, I had enough time—if I left right now.

  Zara was asleep and was probably going to stay asleep. If she awakened, there was no chance that she’d check the ID tag on the dog she’d assume was Rowdy. Even so, I took a moment to switch the dogs’ collars. I felt only a hint of guilt about the deception. In Zara’s eyes, Sammy and Rowdy looked identical, and as a stand-in for Rowdy, Sammy would be, if anything, even more attentive and more outright cuddly than Zara expected. Besides, I had no choice. Sammy was observant, but he’d alert to the presence of cats, dogs, raccoons, skunks, and any other creatures, including people.

  If Izzy were present, Rowdy, however, would not only perceive her presence but would also communicate his perception to me; I trusted Rowdy and only Rowdy to tell me whether Izzy was still alive.

  After leaving my nightie and my e-reader in the guestroom, I led Rowdy out the door and down the stairs to the kitchen, where I snapped a leash on him and grabbed my purse and a little black waist pack stocked with dog-walking essentials. Then, as quickly as possible, I took Rowdy to my car, crated him, started the engine, found the Sox game on the radio, and set off for 55 Peach Street in Waltham.

  Because there was no traffic, the trip took us seventeen minutes. Turning onto Peach Street, I scanned for a parking spot, found one almost immediately, and pulled into it. Then I got Rowdy out of the car and disguised us as ourselves: fastening the little pack around my waist and leashing Rowdy, I became a credible dog walker, and Rowdy, as always, made the perfect dog.

  My Cambridge snobbery had led me to expect that Peach Street, aka Weed Street, would have only a few streetlights, and weak ones at that, but the illumination was better than I’d expected, more than sufficient to show that the burdock, chickweed, and other trash vegetation was still flourishing.

  Although the night was warm, no one was sitting on any of the diminutive porches or front steps. The bluish light in the windows suggested that everyone was inside watching television. As if to compensate for my snooty expectation about the streetlights, Rowdy hurled himself into an egalitarian display of appreciation for Peach Street by lifting his leg on one tall weed after another. Truly, the dog is the better half of myself.

  Although I was eager to get to 55 Peach, I kept Rowdy’s leash loose and let him meander and sniff and anoint as he pleased; I wanted his attention focused on his surroundings and not on me. Even more than usual, my own attention was on him. If Izzy was in the vicinity, it was remotely possible that she’d passed this way. Rowdy didn’t seem to think so. He checked out the bases of streetlamps and utility poles with nothing more than his usual interest. His ears were relaxed, and his plumy tail waved casually over his back. A runner, a slim woman in yellow Spandex, sped down the street in the direction from which we’d come. Otherwise, we saw no one.

  We crossed a narrow side street that intersected with Peach. Checking the numbers on the houses, I saw that we were almost at our destination. When we reached the house at number 55, I saw that it was as dilapidated and depressing as I remembered. The ugly aluminum awning still sagged over the front door, to the right of which were three doorbell buttons and three mailboxes. A bare bulb mounted above the door cast dim light onto the concrete steps and the hard-packed, weed-infested remains of a tiny front lawn. The windows on the ground floor and the top floor of the house were dark. On the second floor, the front windows showed the flicker of a TV screen. Parked in a driveway next to the house were two small dark sedans. Rowdy showed no more interest in this house than in the others we’d passed.

  Headlights approached from our rear. My heart responded with a few extra beats. Feeling foolish, I positioned myself in back of Rowdy to block the driver’s view of my big eye-catching dog. The car passed.

  Feeling silly, I cast nervous glances to the left and right before climbing the steps with Rowdy at my side and taking a close look at the mailboxes and the push buttons. The mailboxes were of three different styles—which is to say, three different styles of cheap and dented metal. The labels on the mailboxes and under the vertically mounted doorbell buttons were, however, stylistically consistent: ragged scraps of paper Scotch-taped to the mailboxes and beneath the buttons showed names printed in block capitals. The top button was labeled SMITH; the middle button, BROWN; and the bottom button, SORENSEN.

  As I was verifying that the same three names, with no initials, also appeared on the mailboxes, I was startled by a sound from inside the house: the light beat of footsteps descending a staircase and heading for the front door—in other words, right toward Rowdy and me. Tightening my grip of Rowdy’s leash, I all but flew down the concrete front steps and, in a panic, hustled Rowdy across the weedy little ex-lawn, past the two cars in the drive, and around the corner of the house, where I came close to colliding with a row of trash barrels.

  Their presence, however, proved useful. Silently patting my thigh, I guided Rowdy to shelter behind the barrels. Once we were in the deep shadow of the house, I quickly lowered my right hand in front of Rowdy’s face, and good boy that he is, he understood my awkward signal and dropped to the ground. Crouching beside him, I peered around the closest trash barrel.

  Striding toward the cars was a man who should’ve been at Fenway with Steve, Quinn, and Monty. In spite of my sense that I was seeing someone I’d assumed to be elsewhere, I had no difficulty in recognizing John Wilson, Rita and Zara’s cousin—one member of the couple who’d bought Tabitha’s puppy, the man who’d given Izzy to Zara and had made her promise to swear that Izzy had come from a shelter, the man who’d once been married to Cathy Brown, the same C. Brown who lived right here.

  I remembered what John had said when I’d asked him whether he was in touch with his ex-wife: “If I knew where she was,” he’d said, “I’d go after her and get my diamond ring and my money back.” The liar! He’d known exactly where Cathy was. Had he been telling the truth about trying to recover his ring and his money? If so, maybe he’d just succeeded. Maybe he hadn’t. I didn’t care.

  What I cared about was Izzy, who adored John and who reacted to him with noisy glee. If she’d barked, I’d have heard her. If she’d yipped softly or whined or even breathed loudly, Rowdy’s sharp canine ears would’ve picked up the sound. But if Izzy were nearby, Rowdy’d have detected her scent before John appeared, wouldn’t he? The silence in spite of John’s presence confirmed what Rowdy had already told me: that if Izzy was here, she was undetectable. I’d hoped to find proof of her presence. What I’d actually found was that Izzy might be here. And might not. T
he Sorensen apartment, the one of the ground floor, was dark. Of the two cars in driveway, one was John’s. The other might belong to Cathy or to the unknown Smith who lived in the third floor. Gil Sorensen might be elsewhere. Izzy might be with him. I just didn’t know.

  chapter twenty-eight

  In retrospect, I realize that the next day was the day when everyone got caught. Well, everyone but Rowdy and me. We arrived home from Waltham before Steve returned from Fenway; and when we reached the third-floor apartment, Zara was still asleep; so, I had no difficulty in restoring Rowdy’s and Sammy’s collars to their rightful owners, thereby destroying the evidence of our disappointing excursion to Peach Street. The next morning, Zara was filled with praise for Rowdy, who, she said, had helped her make it through the night.

  I was up a good two hours before Zara showed up in my kitchen. By then, I’d fed the dogs, let them out in the yard, let them in, taken a shower, dressed, run up the street to the Hi-Rise for fresh bread, and commiserated with Steve about the Red Sox, who’d lost in the fifteenth inning. I’d left a note for Zara telling her that Rowdy was with me and that I’d expect her for breakfast. Although she had a fresh-from-the shower look, her eyes were puffy, but she’d taken the time to blow-dry her hair and put on makeup, and she wore a pale-green linen pants outfit suitable for her trip to the bank. When she entered the kitchen, Steve politely rose to his feet, hugged her, and tried unsuccessfully to get her to eat more than toast for breakfast.

  When he asked what was on our agenda today, my guilty startle almost made me spill my coffee, but I covered up by saying that we were going to run a few errands, get the guestroom in the apartment ready for Rita’s parents, and go to Rita and Quinn’s to try on our dresses one last time and to go over the wedding ceremony in case anything needed editing.

  “We’re all having lunch there,” I reminded Steve.

  As I was about to say more, John Wilson came downstairs. As usual, his hair was carefully styled, and he was so clean-shaven that I almost wondered whether he’d waxed his face instead of using a razor. He wore a seersucker suit with a white shirt and a red tie.

  “Hey, Steve,” he said in that slick voice of his, “sorry about not showing up at the game. I got a last-minute call from one of the higher-ups in the company.” He glanced upward and raised a hand toward the heavens as if to suggest that the higher-up was none other than the Almighty himself.

  John’s pants immediately caught fire. His nose grew five inches. If only.

  Steve smiled. “When you didn’t meet us at the gate, Monty scalped your ticket.”

  I expected John to ask how much the ticket had gone for so he’d know how much to ask Monty or Quinn to reimburse him—for a ticket that had been Quinn’s gift to begin with. To avoid having to listen to John, I cut him off by offering breakfast. Since I was eager to get Zara to the bank, I hoped that he’d refuse, but he accepted, and we somehow got through the twenty minutes that it took him to eat his yogurt and toast and to drink two cups of coffee. Particularly hard to take were his nauseating expressions of concern about Izzy’s whereabouts and his fake sympathy for Zara.

  I was almost overwhelmingly tempted to ask him outright what, if anything, his ex-wife knew about the dognapping. Was she complicit in it? And what about his own involvement? Having apparently given his ex-wife’s dog, Cheyenne, aka Izzy, to Zara, was he now involved in stealing Izzy and returning her to the same ex-wife? Yes, the ex-wife who was living in the same building formerly inhabited by the late Frank Sorensen and evidently inhabited by Frank’s brother, Gil. I had the sense to keep my questions and my speculation to myself, and since I have the opposite of a poker face—everything shows—I busied myself by tidying the kitchen, taking out the trash, and making unnecessary little trips up and down stairs, all the while wishing that John and I were both dogs and that instead of being a civilized human hypocrite I could confront him in honest malamute fashion by snarling, leaping, slamming him to the floor, and pinning him until he shrieked for mercy.

  John eventually left for what he said was a business appointment, and soon thereafter, Steve went out to do errands. When they’d gone, I drove Zara and Rowdy to the bank. At her insistence, we took along one of Izzy’s service-dog vests. Because Rowdy was much bigger than Izzy, we’d adapted a red vest of Izzy’s by using safety pins to fasten it to the red yoke of Rowdy’s dog pack. The result looked only a little makeshift.

  In any case, when we got to the bank, which was a small branch near the Fresh Pond traffic circle, I parked close to the entrance, and Zara decided that she could go in alone. If I’d been entering a bank with the intention of withdrawing a large amount of money in twenty-dollar bills, I’d have taken an oversize tote bag or even a suitcase. Zara, however, had done online research on the height and weight of currency and carried nothing more than one of her usual large purses. As she walked to the bank entrance, she stood tall, her shoulders back, her head high, and it seemed to me that she looked brave, elegant, and young. Strangers probably envied what they saw as her poise and self-confidence. No one, I felt sure, would ever look at her and realize that she needed the help of a psychiatric service dog.

  In Zara’s absence, I checked weather reports on the radio and on my phone, mainly to find forecasts for the day after next—that is, for Rita and Quinn’s wedding day. The ceremony and the reception would both be indoors, and Appleton Chapel was only a short walk from the Harvard Faculty Club, but all of us were hoping for the perfect weather that everyone wants for weddings, indoors or out. All sources agreed that today’s overcast skies and high humidity meant that we’d have rain in the late afternoon or early evening. But the next two days were supposed to be sunny, with highs in the mid-seventies.

  Because of my inexperience in withdrawing large amounts of cash, I somehow expected that Zara would have to consult with the branch manager, present multiple forms of ID, sign complicated documents, and otherwise wade through time-consuming formalities. I even imagined that when she finally left the bank, a coterie of kowtowing bank employees would line up to bid her an obsequious farewell and to escort her out the door.

  As it was, she returned in only a little more time that it would’ve taken me to withdraw a couple of hundred dollars.

  Possibly to compensate for the bank’s failure to provide appropriate fanfare, Rowdy, who’d remained in his crate, greeted Zara’s return by addressing her with a long series of syllables emitted with the intonation of someone whose native language is American English. The most characteristic malamute vocalization is a resounding woo-woo-woo or, in the case of dogs who can’t pronounce their w’s, roo-roo-roo. In addition to the almost universal woo-ing, many malamutes utter what are obviously declarative sentences, detailed questions, and expressive exclamations and comments. Malamute talking, as it’s known, makes generous use of the consonants r and w. Favorite vowel sounds are ah and oo. In spoken malamute, so to speak, the ah sounds remarkably like I, and the oo sounds correspondingly like you, so a talkative malamute like Rowdy ends up saying things like Ah rah rah wah rah, oo oo oo?

  And what does he mean? Typically, I have a strong opinion about what’s going on, don’t you-you-you? If I may venture to translate the string of syllables that Rowdy uttered to Zara as she got into the car, he said, “You were gone longer than I like, and I really like you! Did you get what you wanted? And are you happy to see me, too?”

  Zara flopped back in the seat and laughed.

  “Did it go okay?” I asked.

  She patted her handbag. “All set. I just wish that we could deliver it right now.”

  “I do, too. We’ll stay busy. It won’t be long now.” Wishing that I felt as confident as I sounded, I added, “You’ll have Izzy back in no time.”

  chapter twenty-nine

  “No obey, of course,” Rita said.

  Zara and I were seated with Rita and Quinn at their kitchen table. Spread over its surface were copies of traditional marriage services with large sections of text crossed out. A r
eference to the “dreadful day of judgment” had been slashed, as had a lot of other religious material. God had survived, presumably by divine intervention. Phew!

  “No one obeys anyone anymore, anyway,” said Zara.

  “My dogs do,” I said. “They obey me. They even obey my commands. Most of the time. But we’re very unfashionable.”

  “What’s au courant?” Leave it to Quinn to ask that question.

  “Cuing. Instead of promising to love, honor, and obey you could promise to love, honor, and reliably respond to cues.”

  “Everyone responds to cues,” Rita said. “We can’t help it.”

  “Then it’s a safe promise.”

  “This looks good,” Zara said. “Overall. But this bit you’ve added about psychosocial context is sort of jarring.”

  “What’s jarring about it?” Rita asked. “Marriage does take place in a psychosocial context.”

  “It jars with ‘plight thee my troth.’ And it also clashes with the Jane Eyre part—‘If any man can show just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace.’”

  “Zara, we changed that,” Rita said.

  “To any person,” Quinn said.

  “We’re keeping it,” Rita said. “I love Jane Eyre.”