“It’s the separation anxiety,” I explained, taking on the corner bench while Joanne Palmer lavished attention on Maggie in the process of giving her a cursory examination. “I’ve got to be able to leave her alone in my office for a couple of hours at a time at least.”
Joanne examined the dog’s ears. “You’re in the process of determining her new guardian, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.” I had to fight back a sigh. “You heard about the inheritance, I take it?”
“It’s the talk of the town. Do you have any idea how much longer she’ll be temporarily under your care?”
I shook my head. “No. Which reminds me, I called yesterday trying to find out what you know about Maggie’s date-of-purchase and ownership history.”
“Oh? I mustn’t have gotten the message.”
“Do you know for certain if Ken was the sole owner, or was he once a joint owner with his ex-wife?”
She glanced through her folder for Maggie. “Maggie was born in April and purchased in June, two years ago, by Ken.”
That all but cemented things. “The divorce was finalized June third. Do you know the exact date she was purchased, by any chance?”
She scoffed. “Of course not. But I can’t see why that’s a concern. His ex-wife is dead, after all.”
Maggie rose to all fours and started to jump down. Once again, Joanne gave her a dog biscuit, and she stayed put while she crunched through that. She busied herself by licking up the crumbs off the metal surface.
“You said you’d met Mary. Right?”
“Once. When Maggie was about six months old. She came in with Ken, insisting I give Maggie something to calm her down, that she was destroying things and howling whenever Ken went anyplace without her.”
They had to have already been divorced for four months or so by then. Odd that Mary would make the dog’s behavior her business, but maybe she’d kept Ken wrapped around her finger even after the divorce. In any case, that only helped to refute her ludicrous claim that she’d been afraid of Ken. “That’s when you prescribed Clomicalm?”
“Yes,” she said, already bristling as if in anticipation of another debate on the topic.
I didn’t wish to get into another disagreement and decided to offer up an olive branch. “Do you have any suggestions regarding who you think Ken would have wanted me to select?”
Maggie again rose to jump down toward me. This time Joanne let her as she turned her attention to making some notations in Maggie’s records. “You mean, other than myself?”
“You?”
“I’m half joking, of course, but Maggie would be happy here with me. And heaven knows I could use the money.” She didn’t wait for a response—and wouldn’t have gotten one if she did. She handed me Maggie’s records. Maggie was already set to leave, standing with her nose an inch from the door. “Give that to the front desk. I’ve noted the refill prescription. I know I don’t need to go into details with you regarding how to administer the medicine.”
“Thank you.” With the tension easing between us, I told myself I should leave it that way, but like a child picking at a scab, I heard myself ask, “Did you ever follow up on Maggie’s medication? See how she was doing with Clomicalm?”
“Is that an accusation?” she asked through her teeth.
“No, just a question. I’m still puzzled about why Ken would put his dog on medication for separation anxiety, when he had such separation anxiety himself that he made sure they were always together.”
“Like I said, it was upon his wife’s insistence.”
“They were already divorced by then.”
“I had no way of knowing that at the time.”
“Of course you hadn’t.” Short of asking Mary whether she was home with the dog herself before prescribing an antidepressant to a puppy, that is. But I kept the thought to myself. I was, however, grinding my teeth—but then by all appearances, so was she. Back to hating me again, it seemed. “Thanks for the prescription.”
“Don’t mention it, Allie,” she said pointedly.
While waiting for Maggie’s prescription to be filled, I got a chance to return to the article about non-dog-loving lovers. The advice was too generic to be of much use in Russell’s case. I wrote out a check for the visit, loaded Maggie back into the car, and returned to my office. The Clomicalm was of no use until I needed to leave Maggie alone, and I hoped to delay that as much as possible. I got Maggie inside and talked her into lying down by my desk.
I had to do some schedule-shuffling again, now that Maggie was with me. I had less than half an hour till my next client was scheduled to arrive, so I ignored the flashing message light and called that client and then my next one. After lengthy discussions, I managed to reschedule them as home visits tomorrow. With luck and a good reaction to Clomicalm, I’d be able to keep Maggie at the office tomorrow while I made those visits.
With a course of action in hand—or at least in mind— I pressed the play button on my message machine, hoping whatever this was wouldn’t pose a serious setback to those plans. I heard a long pause. Just as I was about to give up and press the stop button, a woman’s voice, sounding horribly drunk and slurring her words, said, “That you, Dr. Babcock? I don’t know what’s wrong. I feel so sick. I can barely . . .”
My heart started thumping as I listened through another long pause. I didn’t recognize the voice. Who would call me “Dr. Babcock”?
“I gotta tell you somethin’. Right away. It’s a emergency. It’s ’bout your, uh, dog person thingee. The dog. Dead.”
Now I was thoroughly alarmed, but there was still more on the recorder. What was she talking about? Was this woman, whoever she was, saying one of my dogs was dead? One of my clients?
“Oh, hey!” the voice continued but slightly quieter now as though she was no longer speaking directly into the phone. “Whatcha doin’ here? This is my home! You get out! T-Rex?”
There was a click as someone hung up the phone.
T-Rex. Ruby Benjamin. My heart racing, I flipped through the phone book, got her number and dialed with shaking hands. No answer. Had she overmedicated herself with ACP?
Without waiting to consider any of the ramifications of what I was doing, I squeezed out the door, leaving Maggie staring at me through the glass. Then I got into my car and drove north up Broadway and toward the trailer park.
Leaving my car engine running, I raced out of my car, gave a loud, quick pair of knocks, then barged into Ruby’s trailer.
She was lying in the middle of the living room floor. T-Rex was whining beside her and started to growl at me as I neared.
“Please, God. Not again,” I murmured.
Chapter 11
My stomach was in knots as I fought back a scream of horror. Ruby’s face was blue and her wide-open eyes bulged. Though it was probably pointless, I needed to check for vital signs but couldn’t with her dog protecting her.
With my eyes on T-Rex, I turned so that we were sideways to each other and facing the same direction. A shoulder-to-shoulder approach was the least threatening to a canine’s point of view.
“T-Rex, that’s a good dog.” I used my most soothing voice and stepped sideways toward him.
He continued to growl, his hackles raised. This was no time for the nice-doggie-I’m-not-going-to-hurt-you routine. I was too on edge, and T-Rex, sensing that, had become all the more agitated.
With a confidence I didn’t feel, I demanded, “T-Rex, sit.”
I had a few chunks of a dog biscuit in my pocket, leftovers from my previous client. I held the biscuit in my fist over T-Rex’s nose and repeated, “Sit.” As he looked up to sniff the treat, the dog’s haunches touched down, and I gave him the biscuit.
With T-Rex having relaxed his guard, I put my palm on Ruby’s neck and checked her carotid artery. No pulse. Her skin was warm. I put my ear to her chest and could hear no heartbeat or breathing.
I reached toward the phone, which was in its cradle on the floor near her body,
then stopped, recalling the abrupt ending to my phone message from Ruby. Her phone could have been touched last by the killer. Deserting T-Rex for the time being, I ran next door to Yolanda’s trailer and pounded on the door.
Yolanda swung the door open a couple of inches and said, “What?”
“I need to use your phone. It’s . . . Ruby.”
She maintained her post in the doorway, but her face paled slightly. “What’s wrong?”
“She’s dead.”
“Oh, my God!” She sucked in a breath of air and in rapid succession, her expression changed from shock to sadness to anger. “It’s that Rachel! I should’ve warned Ruby to stay away from that woman. I did in fact. Jus’ after you left, I says to Ruby, ‘Stay away from Rachel. She killed Ken.’ ”
“I need your phone,” I repeated.
She stepped aside, but continued to talk. “Nobody listens to me. Everyone thinks ’cause I’m overweight and old and got no money that I got no sense. They think ’cause I’m not educated like you all that I got no brains. But I sees what I sees. And I’m telling you, it’s that so-called social worker. She’s crazy. She’s killing off her clients, one by one.”
While she spoke I scanned first the living room and then the kitchen. Her home, though much neater and better furnished than Ken’s or Ruby’s had been, had no phone in plain sight. “Yolanda, where’s your phone?”
“Don’t remember.” She gestured at the empty cradle beside the refrigerator. “Press that pager button there and it’ll ring from wherever it’s at.”
I did as she’d instructed and heard a series of three faint beeps from further in the trailer. While attempting to follow the sound, I muttered in frustration, “I can’t just leave T-Rex over there. He’s too upset. I’ve got to get him out before the police and the paramedics arrive.”
More muffled beeps resounded, but I couldn’t tell from which direction.
Yolanda began lifting her couch cushions. “Bring ’im over here. I love dogs. Used to own two, till they both passed away a couple years back.” She handed me the phone, which had apparently fallen between the couch cushions.
“You don’t seem very upset by Ruby’s death.”
“Of course I’m upset. We were friends and neighbors. Wouldn’t you be upset?”
“Yes. I’d probably be in tears the moment I heard a friend of mine had died.”
“You done seen all the things I seen in my life, you tend to mourn only when the time’s right. You get a sense of when the crap’s done hittin’ the fan. It ain’t nearly over yet, and I ain’t letting the tears come till I’m all done ducking.”
The police dispatcher instructed me to keep watch over Ruby’s trailer until the police arrived. She hadn’t specifically told me not to go inside again. I simply could not cope with the thought of poor T-Rex trying to defend his lifeless owner when the paramedics and police arrived.
Feeling trapped in my own nightmare, I returned to Ruby’s trailer. T-Rex was lying beside her. Though he pricked up his ears and looked at me, he didn’t rise or growl this time.
I spotted his leash, which was lying atop a couple of magazines on the coffee table near Ruby’s feet. I then knelt and called him to me. T-Rex allowed me to snap his leash onto his collar and put up surprisingly little resistance as I led him next door, where Yolanda stood waiting outside. The dog’s resignation struck me as horribly sad, and I had to battle tears as I handed over the leash to Yolanda.
The sirens were already resounding in the distance. I gestured behind me to indicate Ruby’s trailer and murmured, “I’ve got to wait for the police,” before excusing myself.
Yolanda nodded and stroked the dog’s fur. “Guess you got yourself another dog to rehome, hey?”
That hadn’t occurred to me till now. “I guess so. I’ll probably have to let Animal Control take the dog to the Humane Society for adoption.”
“If it’s all right with you, I’ll keep T-Rex.” Yolanda straightened and met my eyes. “I used to have him over here every time Ruby went off to visit someone. Won’t be much of a change for either of us. Hey, T-boy?”
The dog wagged his tail and looked up at her with loving eyes.
“Fine. Let’s leave it this way, at least for now.”
The paramedics’ chartreuse van pulled into Ruby’s parking area. Yolanda ushered the dog inside her house and, casting an angry glance over her shoulder as she disappeared inside, said, “It’s that damned Rachel doin’ this evil. I feel it in my bones.”
In a routine that was becoming all too familiar, I went with the police to their station house to give them my full report. In testament to how shaken I was by Ruby’s death, I had been there for some time and was in the middle of being questioned when I remembered Maggie. I leapt to my feet.
“I’ve got to do this later. I just remembered that I’ve got a very distraught dog left all alone.”
“You’re worried about a dog?” the police officer said in tones of barely suppressed disgust at my sense of priorities.
Through gritted teeth, I retorted, “It’s Ken Culberson’s dog. Everyone in this city seems to know that that particular golden is now worth a couple million dollars.” A horrid realization hit me then, and I groaned and pressed against my forehead. “I’m not even sure I locked my office door.”
I rose, trying to stay calm. At least anyone after the inheritance would realize that snatching the dog would be pointless; the money had to come through Maggie’s trust fund, and her legal guardian had to be formally assigned by me.
The officer walked me to the lobby, saying, “We’ll send someone over to pick up the tape from your answering machine. There might be something important we can get from it.”
“I don’t have a tape-style recorder. It’s digital. You’ll have to take the whole machine.”
“That’s fine.”
“It’s not ‘fine’ with me, though,” I grumbled, my emotions still too on edge to be able to get a grip on myself. “I don’t have a spare answering machine.”
“You can get one of those answering services that do everything automatically.”
“Thanks. I’ll take that under advisement.” In actuality, I’d already tried that service but hated having to dial another number just to hear my own messages.
“We know where to reach you,” the officer said as he opened the front door for me.
“Good. We’re even.” I ran to my car and drove off. En route, I chastised myself for being so short-tempered with a police officer. In their eyes, I was undoubtedly a suspect yet again. This was hardly the time to make enemies of them.
Fortunately, much of the police force must have still been at the trailer park, for I broke the speed limits on my way to my office with no ramifications. Unfortunately, whatever time I’d saved by breaking traffic laws was spent in parking woes. Someone had ignored the “private parking” signs. Not only had Russell’s clearly marked private parking space been taken, but so had my own.
Cursing the audacity of the parking scofflaws, I found a space on the street around the corner and made my way down the steep hill to my office. I trotted down the steps, then froze at the sight in front of me through the glass door. Mary, Ken’s ex-wife, was sitting in the classic yoga position, while some purple-clad woman with straight black hair down to her waist stood over her, administering what looked to be a long-distance massage. Maggie, meanwhile, was lying on her side in the middle of the room.
I threw the door open and snarled, “What the hell is going on?”
My outcry immediately awoke Maggie, who had merely been asleep. The cloying smell of overly sweet incense reached my nostrils.
The purple-clad woman said, “Shush.”
“Hey!” I marched up to her and jabbed a finger in her direction. “You don’t get to shush me! This is my office! You people are trespassing!”
“Shush,” Mary said, eyes still closed, “We’re almost finished.”
“You can’t . . . shush me! Trespassers are not allowed
to shush people!”
“I’m doing astral manipulations, Allie.”
Her voice was low and soothing, but in my current mood, infuriating. This purple woman I’d never seen before in my life was now calling me by my nickname.
“I’ve successfully moved Mary’s astral emissions back to her and away from the retriever.” She put her hands on her hips and studied me. “By the way, Allie, your astral projection is nearly a solid black. You could use my services yourself.”
“Lady, it would be impossible for me to state just how unlikely the chances are of my hiring you to do anything with my ‘emissions.’ ”
She sighed and shook her head, as if having to tolerate my lower level of awareness. “If you can see through all that blackness, you will notice that Maggie has been cured. She is finally back to being a dog.”
Through my clenched jaw, I said, “I don’t know who you are or what your game is, but I can assure you, Maggie is now and always has been a dog!”
She held my gaze for a long moment, then said, “There are books by greater minds than ours that I could recommend you read to show you otherwise, but I can see that I would be wasting my time.”
Still seated cross-legged on the floor nearby, Mary was listening to our argument without comment, a bemused expression on her face. When Purple Person whirled on a heel and headed for the door with her nose in the air, Mary gathered up her purse as if she intended to leave as well.
“Mary, could I speak to you for a moment?” I asked with as little hostility as possible.
She looked surprised by the request, then said, “Oh. I suppose you want an explanation.”
Purple Person was now battling to squeeze out the door while keeping Maggie inside. No way would I assist her with anything, which I think she realized, for she glanced at Mary and said, “Could you grab hold of the dog’s collar, do you suppose?”
Give the Dog a Bone Page 13