by Neil Plakcy
“He cried some last night. But then he and Rochester started to play. Both dogs slept with me and Lili.”
“Yeah, Mark hates the way Brody gets in between us. I haven’t been able to cure him of that yet.”
“My great-aunt Ida used to have a saying. ‘When you go to bed with dogs you wake up with fleas.’ I’ve adjusted that, though. ‘When you kiss a dog, you get a mouthful of fur.’”
Joey laughed. “I’m sure he’s in good hands. But you have my number, if you need anything.”
“Relax and enjoy yourselves. How’s the weather there?”
“Seventy-eight and sunny,” Joey said. “We haven’t left Miami yet. Mark and I are out on the deck with a couple of fruity cocktails, looking at the rich people’s houses and all the sailboats and powerboats cruising past us.”
“I’m jealous.”
“Any time you want me to return the favor and watch Rochester, you let me know.”
I told him I would, and he promised to call again on Tuesday from Cozumel. After we hung up I looked back at the dogs. Rochester was using his big paw to press down on the rope, giving him extra leverage in his battle with Brody. “Don’t cheat, Rochester!” I said. “He’s a little puppy.” I reached over and lifted Rochester’s paw from the rope, and Brody twisted around onto his side, keeping a death grip on it.
Lili had been reading on the sofa in the living room. “Was that Joey?” she asked.
“Yup. Wanted to check on his little boy. And he offered to babysit Rochester sometime if you and I want to go away.”
“You’d leave him with Joey over Rick?”
I shrugged. “Rick works all the time, and Rascal spends more time with that old guy who looks after him than he does with Rick. I can tell Joey’s kind of obsessed.”
“The way you are,” she said.
“I guess. I wouldn’t leave Rochester in a kennel either. But now Joey will owe us a favor, so maybe the hound can stay with him if we go away. Do you see a cruise in our future? Or some other kind of trip?”
Though Lili had traveled a lot in her work, she’d never hit many of the hot vacation locations.
“I was thinking of that,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “Maybe spring break? If you haven’t started programming at Friar Lake by then.”
“Right now, my first program is a two-day retreat for senior staff at the college, at the beginning of April,” I said. “When does spring break come this year?”
“The second full week in March,” she said. “You ever been on a cruise?”
I nodded. “Years ago. Mary and I took one of these short cruises from L.A., down to Ensenada and back. We always argued so much about what to do on vacation that we thought the cruise would force us to chill out and do things together.”
“Did it work?”
“Our first port was Catalina Island, and she was on her cell phone most of the time we were there, doing business stuff. Then we had a day at sea, and she had a whole raft of spa treatments lined up. We did walk around in Ensenada together for a while, but Mary thought it was dirty and very Third World. I seem to remember she went back to the ship and I drank a whole lot of margaritas.”
“So maybe a cruise isn’t the right choice for us,” Lili said.
“What kind of trip would you want to go on?” I asked. “If you had a week in March, and you could go anywhere or do anything.”
“Honestly? I’d like to fly to an island where it’s hot and sunny. Lay by the beach, wander around taking photographs, eat great meals. I’d lay over a day or two in Miami and see my brother and his family. It’s been a long time. And I’d like you to meet Fedi.”
“That’s an idea I could get behind,” I said. “How about if I do some research and see where we could go?”
“Sounds like a plan, man,” she said, and leaned over and kissed me.
That evening, I looked for some material I could send to Felix to summarize. I had accumulated quite a shelf of dog books, from Cesar Millan to The Monks of New Skete to Barbara Woodhouse. One of my favorite recent reads was Until Tuesday, about a wounded vet and the service dog who bonded with him, and I picked out a couple of pages from that to scan for Felix.
I found him an additional tutorial and exercises, and I emailed him the link, as well as the scanned pages, and told him to let me know when he was ready to meet again.
Then I spent some quality time on the living room floor with both dogs. Rochester was busy with a rawhide, so I pulled Brody over to me and began to stroke his back, where the hair was wavier and coarser than Rochester’s. I wondered if that was because his coat was so light, almost white, while Rochester’s was a rich gold.
Brody rolled onto his back, holding his paws curled up above him, and I stroked the soft down of his belly. As I moved the hairs around I revealed patches of skin. “This dog is purple!” I said to Lili.
“Excuse me?”
“Come here and see. His skin is purple.”
“Steve. There are no purple puppies.”
“Not his hair. His skin.” She leaned down and I showed her. “See? This is purple. Rochester’s skin is pink. Joey got some defective puppy.”
“It does look purple,” Lili said. “Maybe it’s the light, or just a darker shade of pink.”
I grabbed Rochester and tugged him over to us, then rolled him over to expose his belly. “See? Rochester’s skin is normal. Brody is a mutant.”
“Maybe he has special powers,” she said. “Like in those X-Men movies. He can shoot lasers out of his eyes, change the weather or create magnetic fields.”
“His fur could change into feathers and he could fly,” I said, ruffling the fur on the puppy’s back.
“Maybe he’s a telepath,” Lili said.
“Nope, that one’s Rochester’s special power.” I leaned down and rubbed my face against Rochester’s. “Isn’t that right, my sweetie?”
Lili laughed. I loved it that she could join me on my flights of fancy. Whenever I’d started one of those around Mary, riffing about something that had happened at work, or a T-shirt slogan or a bumper sticker I saw on a car, she’d shut me down, telling me I was stupid, that a man with an Ivy League graduate degree shouldn’t sound so foolish.
Lili went back to her book and Rochester to his rawhide. I rolled over and looked at Brody’s face. Brown streaks came down from his eyes, making him look doleful. His paws were too large for his body, an indication that he’d be getting bigger. He had lost his sharp puppy teeth, and his regular ones were in. I could tell that like me, Joey must be brushing his dog’s teeth, because they were clean and tartar-free.
Brody stood up and then stepped right over my head on his way to reach Rochester. “I am not some obstruction in your path, puppy,” I said.
As I watched him try to get the rawhide from Rochester, I wondered what my dog had been like at Brody’s age. Caroline had adopted Rochester at about six months, and he’d come to me a few months after that, already full grown. I’d never gone through that adorable little fluff ball stage with him, or the awkward months as he transitioned from puppy to full-grown.
Had he always had a knack for detection, perhaps something Caroline hadn’t recognized? We hadn’t talked much about him while she was alive. Mostly I’d complained about him jumping on me, and Caroline had apologized, and rhapsodized about what an adorable dog he was. I hadn’t agreed until, after her death, I had agreed to take him in temporarily, and we had bonded.
Was that when his ability to sniff out criminal activity had come up, when he helped me figure out who had killed Caroline, and why? Was it some connection between us?
That night, as I walked them, Brody dawdled and Rochester pulled. “Yo, dogs, I’m not Gumby!” I said. I realized that the trick was to loop the two leashes together, so that if Brody balked, Rochester would tug him, and I wouldn’t be in the middle.
It was biting cold, and I tried to hurry them along, but they both seemed oblivious to the temperature, focused on the sights, sounds a
nd smells of Sarajevo Court.
We continued the previous night’s pattern, with Brody and Rochester in bed with Lili and me. She had a hard time getting comfortable with so much of the bed’s real estate given up to canine contortions, including Rochester stretching out all four legs in one corner.
When we woke Monday morning Lili had trouble stretching. “I slept funny,” she said. “My back hurts.”
“Want me to rub it?”
“I’ll be all right once I get moving.” She got up and went to the bathroom, and I used the one downstairs before bundling up to take the dogs. It was so cold that all the smaller dogs we saw were wearing sweaters, and I was grateful for Rochester’s double-coat, which kept him warm in winter and cool in summer.
By the time we got back home, I was chilled through and my lips were dry and chapped. I used a tube of lip balm and then fixed breakfast for Lili and me, and poured out kibble for the two dogs. Lili and I shared the morning paper as we ate.
“I want to work on the rest of my photojournalism course this morning,” Lili said, as she cleaned up the dishes. “All right if I use the office?”
“Sure. If I need to do anything online I have my laptop or my new iPad.”
It was funny to be able to speak so openly about the laptop to Lili, since I kept my hacking tools on it. But I was trying not to keep secrets from her, at least not big ones.
Lili went upstairs and I tried to concentrate on my iPad, but Brody kept grabbing Rochester’s leash from the table by the door and dragging it around the floor. “You can’t need to go out again,” I said to him the third time he did it. “I just took you.”
He tried to play with Rochester, but my big dog resisted. Rochester looked up at me as if to say, “This puppy was all right for a while, but he can go home now.”
I sat on the floor with Brody and a rope. Of course, once I was there, Rochester wanted in on the action. Every time I got up, Rochester ignored the puppy, and Brody began to whimper.
“Can you please keep that dog quiet?” Lili asked from the top of the stairs. “I cannot concentrate.”
“I’m trying,” I said. “He’s very demanding.”
“Like Rochester isn’t,” Lili said, and retreated back into the office, closing the door behind her.
This was why I had resisted having a dog, I thought, as I squeezed a ball in front of Brody. They were so needy. Even Rochester, who was a sweetheart, had to be fed and walked and played with, his coat groomed and his teeth brushed. He needed regular reinforcement that he was a good boy, lots of belly rubs and ear scratches and sweet endearments.
With two dogs in the house, it was as if the needs had been squared, not doubled. When one wanted to sleep, the other wanted to play. When one wanted to go out the other wanted to stay in. When Rochester didn’t eat his bowl food fast enough, Brody nosed his way in, creating skirmishes that could lead to war.
Outside the wind picked up, bringing sleet with it. Not a day to go outside and tire the puppies out with a walk. They gobbled treats within seconds and got bored with balls between tosses. When they did play together I had to watch them carefully to make sure no one suffered mortal wounds.
By the time Lili came downstairs for dinner, they were both finally asleep, curled together beside the sofa. But at the sound of Lili’s arrival, Brody jumped up and tried to tackle her.
“This puppy is a pain in the tuchas,” she said, gently pushing on his snout. “Down!”
“At least you’ve been locked up in the office. I can’t get anything done with the two of them here.”
“You’re the one who said we could take the puppy.”
“No. I said I was leaving it up to you.”
“And I said you weren’t going to make me into the bad guy.” She stopped. “We’re all getting a bit of cabin fever. It’s miserable outside and not that much better in here.”
“Why don’t we invite Rick and Rascal over for dinner?” I asked.
“So I can cook even more?”
“I’ll cook,” I said, trying not to get angry. One of the many useful skills I’d learned in prison was how to defuse arguments. “Rascal can herd the other two dogs around, and the three of us can act like humans.”
It looked like Lili was going to argue again, but she said, “There’s a meat loaf in the freezer you can heat up. With a salad and baked potatoes, we can stretch it to three.”
I kissed her cheek. “It’ll get better, I promise,” I said.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she grumbled, but she smiled.
10 – Joe Hardy
I called Rick. “Gee, I’d have to give up this Lean Cuisine I’ve been thinking about all day,” he said. “I can be there at six.”
I got the meat loaf out and the dogs gathered around me as I put it in a pan and covered it with tomato sauce. “It’s frozen, puppies,” I said. “You’d break your teeth on it.”
That didn’t deter them. I prepared the baking potatoes and slid them into the oven beside the pan. The dogs settled once all the food was out of sight, and I used the lip balm on my chapped lips. Something about the size and shape of the tube reminded me of the vials of potassium that had been stolen from Dr. Horz’s office, and I went online, where I looked up veterinary uses of potassium. They were similar in animals and humans, used to treat a deficiency. But the potassium that vets used was in a liquid solution, in an injector.
Why would someone steal it, though? I remembered the last time I’d gone to the drugstore to buy cold pills, and found that I had to show my driver’s license to the pharmacist in order to buy a blister pack of pseudoephedrine. Junkies had figured out a way to use it to make methamphetamines, so sales were restricted, and drugstores had to keep records of who bought the pills and in what quantity.
Could the same thing be happening with potassium? Were junkies in North Philly shooting it up? I did some more searching but couldn’t find anything before Rochester and Brody jumped up and began barking at the arrival of Rick and Rascal. True to his heritage, Rascal ran the other two dogs around the downstairs, trying to corral them into behaving. The puppy yelped and barked, but it looked like they were all having a good time.
I handed Rick a Dogfish Head Midas Ale from the refrigerator, and uncapped one for myself. It was sweet yet dry, made with ingredients found in ancient drinking vessels from the tomb of King Midas. It was a good brew for a cold winter night, somewhere between wine and mead.
“What’s new on the police beat?” I asked as we sat in the living room and the dogs raced up and down the stairs.
“Picked up Bethea again at the corner of Main and Ferry,” he said. Bethea was a middle-aged woman with mental problems who liked to stand at the one intersection in town with a traffic light. As soon as the light turned yellow against her, whichever side she was on, she began a slow, painstaking transit, tying up cars until she made her way across. By the time traffic could move, the light had changed, and horns honked and people yelled.
“She’s out even in this weather?” I asked.
He shrugged. “She’s been living with her sister-in-law in one of those run-down duplexes at the north end of the Flats.” The Flats was a low-income pocket of Stewart’s Crossing squeezed into a couple of acres of land downtown. It was sandwiched between the fancy houses along the river and the eastern bank of the canal, and it flooded regularly. Rick had once told me that neighborhood accounted for at least fifty percent of the crime in town, from illicit drug deals to domestic disputes.
“Last month the two of them got into a fight, and the sister-in-law kicked her out,” he continued. “She’s been sleeping in that thicket of maple trees behind DeLorenzo’s hoagie shop, dumpster-diving for food.”
Lili joined us, holding a glass of white wine by the steam. “That’s terrible,” she said, as she sat beside me on the sofa. “Isn’t there somewhere she can go?”
“Not if she doesn’t want to,” Rick said. “I got the judge to put a psych hold on her and we took her o
ver to the hospital. Hopefully they can find something wrong with her, and keep her there over the holiday.”
“Doesn’t the county have social workers?” Lili asked.
Rick sighed. “I’ve driven her to the mental health office myself. But she denies she has a problem, and as long as she seems coherent there’s nothing they can do to force her. Statistics say that at least thirty percent of the homeless have mental problems. It’s a way bigger problem than just Bethea and Jerry Cheseboro and Stewart’s Crossing.”
Lili started to talk to Rick about the man she’d met who was living behind the florist’s, and I got the food from the oven and brought it to the table. After dinner we moved to the living room and I said, “I’ve been wondering about the potassium that was stolen from Dr. Horz’s office.”
Rick groaned. “You’re not playing Nancy Drew again, are you?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “The name is Hardy. Joe Hardy.”
He snorted. “Dr. Horz is pretty baffled about the theft, which makes two of us.”
Rochester jumped up onto the sofa beside me and Brody nosed around my feet. Rascal ignored them both and dozed on the tile. “I was thinking about those vials of potassium that were stolen from Dr. Horz’s office,” I said to Rick. “Could somebody have stolen it to get high? The way junkies are using cold medicine to make meth?”
“You have the most vivid imagination of anyone I’ve ever met,” Rick said. “I haven’t heard of anything like that. And since potassium isn’t a schedule one drug, a vet isn’t required to lock it up. She kept these vials in a cabinet in the lab room along with other medications.”
“Anything else taken?” I asked.
“Not that she can tell. A lot of the supplies, she just reorders when they get low. She only noticed this potassium was gone when she went to get a vial and couldn’t find any.”
“It seems like such an odd theft,” I said. “Is she making a big deal out of it?”
“At first she was worried that other stuff was taken, which was why she called the police. But since the vials weren’t worth that much, it’s only petty theft, and she isn’t going to push it. I wouldn’t be surprised if more stuff goes missing in the future, as long as she has that kennel assistant on her staff.”