by Susan Conant
“Yeah, well, she was an exception. Steve, what about Patterson? Do you …?”
“Occam’s razor,” Steve said ponderously.
Under normal circumstances, I’d’ve asked him whether it was some kind of specialized veterinary scalpel, but I managed to keep quiet.
Steve must have misunderstood my silence. He started to explain: “The basic principle that—”
“The simplest explanation is the best.”
“More or less,” he said. “Don’t multiply your elements.”
Steve isn’t callous, you know, but how much raw sensitivity can he afford? If your dog ever needs a leg amputated, do you want to have to do the surgery yourself because your vet is too busy sobbing and wailing?
“So?” I asked.
“To explain what happened to Oscar Patterson,” he said laboriously. “Minimize the elements. Miner arrives. Cliff Bourque and his dog arrive. Bourque leaves. Patterson shows up, Bourque returns, or maybe someone else does, Brenner, whoever. Miner goes home. So?”
“So? Okay, so there’s no mysterious stranger. Or no Brenner?”
“Keep going.”
“Well, Miner was there,” I said.
Steve nodded.
“And Cliff Bourque did leave Mattie. And Patterson did disappear.”
“So?”
“Okay, I get it. So if what you want is a simple explanation, that’s it. Bourque never went back that night, which is what his wife says. So the only people there were Miner and Patterson. And the dog, of course. Mattie. Steve, I know one reason, which is—”
“The dog,” he said. “Sorry. What were you going to say?”
“There’s this story I heard, from Geri Driscoll. Patterson’s practice was large animals, too, and what he did was deliberately send Miner out to some farm where there was a bull that kicked. So Miner went out there, and it kicked him, just as planned, I gather, and Miner ended up in a manure pile, which was exactly what Patterson knew would happen. Or maybe he didn’t exactly know it, but he knew it was likely, and he sent Miner, with no warning or anything.”
Steve sounded less sympathetic than I’d expected. He pointed out that bulls are going to kick some of the time, and where there’s a bull, a manure pile shouldn’t come as a big surprise.
“He could’ve been killed!” I said. “Besides, it must’ve been so embarrassing. He must’ve felt so humiliated and also furious, because Patterson set him up.”
“Guys’ll do that,” Steve said. “Sounds like Patterson staged some kind of initiation.”
“Yes, but Miner failed it.”
“Not necessarily. It depends more on how he took it.”
“Well, he took it badly, I think. I would, too.”
Steve said nothing.
“Okay,” I said. “You don’t want to say it. It was one of those stupid male rites. It was a silly macho test, and he flunked. He took it like a girl.”
“Half of the veterinary students in this country are women,” he said. “Most of them would’ve passed.”
“So he took it like an anorchid. Is that better? A mental anorchid.”
Steve laughed. Do I need to translate? Well, you can’t show a male dog in breed, in conformation, unless he’s got both testicles where they belong. In a cryptorchid, one or both haven’t dropped, a monorchid has only one, so an anorchid has …? It happens in dogs, too.
“I still don’t think Patterson should’ve done it,” I said.
“Look, Holly. If Miner was afraid of animals and didn’t want to get dirty and couldn’t laugh at it, the last thing he should’ve done was become a veterinarian.”
“I guess. Maybe that’s why he’s so … Do you know, when you were away, and Rowdy got that ear infection? Did I tell you this? He muzzled Rowdy. It was the first thing he did.” Rowdy and Kimi had been stretched out on the floor, but when Rowdy heard his name, he stirred, clambered to his feet, shook himself, and ambled over to me. “And,” I continued, “Rowdy didn’t mind very much, but I did.”
“That’s what he does with Willie,” Steve said. “Since, uh … Without Jackie around, he keeps him muzzled.”
Without Jackie around. Rather, with Jackie in a plastic body bag in the freezer, where there were no—I repeat—no worms. And later, with her body reduced to ashes in a mass cremation.
“Willie does bite,” I said. According to Rita, talking about dogs is a defense, but what was I supposed to do? Sing that horrible song out loud? “Or at least he nips,” I added. “But Rowdy loves vets, and he wouldn’t bite anyone, anyway. Of course, he is big.” I stopped. “Jesus. You don’t think … Steve, Cliff Bourque brings in his bitch, Mattie, right? Suspected bloat. She’s retching. Maybe she’s going to vomit. What’s the first thing you don’t do?”
“Yeah. And there’s a second thing. I didn’t tell you about that. One part of Miner’s story is real fishy. Patterson takes over. It looks like G.D.V. syndrome. This is a large dog. He’s got a second veterinarian there. And the first thing Patterson does is send away the second veterinarian? And if there’s a chance of vomiting, yeah, you never use a muzzle, because the dog could aspirate.”
“I’m getting confused. Mostly now we know what didn’t happen. So what did? Mattie got sick. Bourque called Miner, and they met there, at the hospital. Bourque went home.”
“And Miner slapped a muzzle on her,” Steve said. “He knew better, you know. He knows better. And he wouldn’t have left it on.”
“But he was afraid she’d bite,” I said. “A large dog? And maybe she was terrified. That’s so stupid. It’s one of the things Chinooks are famous for, not biting. They’re totally gentle, totally unaggressive. You’d think Miner … Steve, wouldn’t her record’ve said what she was? That she was a Chinook?”
“Sure. Of course it would.”
“And a veterinarian wouldn’t forget that. No veterinarian would. I mean, if someone brings you in a Karelian bear dog? A Lundehund? Whatever? That’s unusual, right? It’s interesting. You’re not going to forget that.”
He nodded.
“Well, Miner said he did! That’s crazy. I mean, this is a fussy guy who spends half an hour picking over the details of Rowdy’s entire medical history before he treats a plain old ear infection? Steve, this guy has such an eye for detail that he rearranged the ornaments on my tree. At the party, when you were away? Did I tell you about that? He rehung them in perfect little neat rows. It was weird.”
“He gets lost in details.”
“Yeah. Anyway, at the party, Jackie was talking about Oscar Patterson and telling everyone about what’d happened, and she mentioned that the dog that died was a sled dog. So, of course, I asked what kind, and she said she didn’t know, but Lee would. Anyhow, later, when they were leaving, one of us asked him. She did or I did, I don’t remember. And he said he didn’t know. Or he couldn’t remember. But what I do remember is that, first of all, he was kind of irritated at her for pressing him about it, and, second, he said something like, ‘What does it matter?’ And at the time, I didn’t know him, really, and so what? But she must’ve thought that was pretty strange.”
“Yeah. It’s possible he could’ve forgotten, but if he had? Jesus, he would’ve spent an hour going over all the possibilities.”
“And she must’ve known that better than anyone, that any detail would matter. So she’d’ve known something was wrong.”
“So why didn’t he tell you? He probably did remember.”
“I think he just plain didn’t want to talk about it. No, there’s another thing. Nobody was drinking all that much, but he must’ve had a fair amount of wine. I mean, he’d talked about it before, obviously, but I’ll bet it was when he was cold sober. He’d had a few drinks, it was late, he was tired. He didn’t trust himself. But Jackie must’ve caught it. And once she sank her teeth into something, she wouldn’t let go, would she? And if she just worked it out and took him up on it?”
“I thought she seemed real devoted.”
“I think she was.
But what she wasn’t was sneaky. And she talked all the time. Maybe she really was shocked, and she threatened to turn him in, but I don’t think so. Maybe he just realized that even if she wanted to keep it a secret, sooner or later, she’d open her mouth and say something. Maybe it wouldn’t even have been anything important, but he’d always have had to worry. He’d never have known for sure, not with her around.”
“Back up,” he said. “Bourque brings in the dog, Miner muzzles her, Bourque leaves.”
“And Patterson shows up. He finds Mattie dead, and he rips into Miner. What Patterson walked in and found was that Miner had killed Mattie, or that’s what it amounted to, anyway. She died because Miner was afraid of big dogs.”
“Christ, if I walked in on that—”
“Plus Patterson and Miner already have this history, the bull and the manure pile and all that. And Patterson used to barge in and take over from people anyway. Also, what he did to Brenner? Anyway, Patterson would’ve been livid, and he did something: He hit Miner, threatened him, whatever. So what Miner saw coming was basically another bull and another manure pile, only worse this time, because what he’d done was real malpractice. What Miner must’ve really wanted was to get rid of the whole situation, only he couldn’t, of course. He couldn’t bring Mattie back to life. The closest he could come was to get rid of Patterson. I wonder what he did to him.”
“In a veterinary hospital? You must be kidding. Take your pick.”
“Yeah. Anyway—God damn. You know what? Cliff Bourque’s been right all along. For a start, he knows that he wasn’t there and that he didn’t even see Patterson. The poor guy. No wonder he’s half crazy. Anyway, so there’s Miner with two bodies, Mattie’s and Patterson’s, and I guess that’s when he discovered this business of imaginary dead dogs. Patterson wasn’t all that big. Their records probably look like yours, only that time it was a Newfie or something. With Jackie, it was easy, I guess. He could say that his wife had left him. If a guy tells you his wife walked out on him, you focus on him and how he’s been left.”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “You don’t usually ask where she’s gone.”
21
A voice with the tone, timbre, resonance, and range of Rowdy’s lifts itself above the ordinary canine woofs and arfs maybe once or twice a century. On the morning of the twenty-fourth of December, he melodiously burst forth in the definitive performance of the Malamute Variations. His theme began with one long, frigidly clear, weirdly male soprano note, descended to rich midrange, then plunged to a prolonged, all-stops-open basso profundo. I pulled a pillow over my head and swore. My eyes felt as if I’d been crying in my sleep. An unshaven human male cheek scratched the back of my neck. Steve’s voice joined the howling in a verse of “Good King Wenceslas.” Then he straddled me and yanked the pillow from my fists.
“Would you shut that dog up?” I said nastily.
“Holly, don’t be mad,” he said. “You have two Alaskan malamutes, and your veterinarian loves you.”
“Could I ask you something? Why are you so happy?”
“I’ve been thinking about something.”
“What?”
“If one of us’d said the wrong thing to him? Jesus, we’re lucky to be here. And now I get to fire the little bastard and move back to Cambridge and run a one-man practice again. Besides, I’m in bed with a tough woman. But I don’t mind because she has such beautiful breasts.”
Sometime during the next hour, the dogs, who’d been let out and in and given their ample morning rations of nutritionally perfect, vet-recommended premium canine chow, nosed out a package under the tree that I’d assumed to contain a copy of my Aunt Cassie’s husband’s latest tedious academic book. Apparently, though, unless Uncle Arthur had for once managed to produce a colorful work, the present had been a large, flat, tomelike fruitcake, or so I inferred from the waxy-looking red and green bits and the brownish, doughy mass that Kimi regurgitated onto the kitchen floor.
One of the convenient things about breakfasting with your vet is total freedom from the expectation that you’ll lose your appetite if a dog throws up or that you’ll at least quit chewing your English muffin while you scrape up the vomit before the dog decides that, gee, now that it’s already half digested, maybe it’ll stay down this time.
“I hate to ruin your good mood,” I said to Steve, “but you can’t fire Lee Miner yet, not unless you’ve got some excuse besides the truth. If you tell him that? You were right, what you said before. He’ll probably jab a needle in your arm, for God’s sake. Though, actually, he probably won’t do anything. Why should he? There’s no evidence.”
Steve was eyeing Kimi. “Probably soaked in brandy,” he said. Then he looked up at me. “I’m going to have a talk with what’s-his-name.” He waved a thumb in the direction of the house next door to mine. As I’ve mentioned, my friend and neighbor Kevin Dennehy is a Cambridge cop of elevated rank.
“What’s Kevin supposed to charge him with? Not knowing where his wife went when she walked out on him? Those bodies are gone. Patterson’s is long gone. I mean, he disappeared about three weeks ago. And Jackie … Jesus, this makes me sick.” I stopped and took a deep breath. “Groucho died this Tuesday, right? Just after you got back. And Jackie—” I had to stop again. I swallowed, waited, and continued. “Groucho’s body was picked up on Wednesday, so that’s when Jackie’s was, too. And that John Kelly business isn’t evidence. In other words, all we can prove is that nobody can find anybody. Yeah, right. Any. Body.”
“Dennehy’s smarter than he looks,” Steve said.
“Yeah, he’s probably smart enough to go find Cliff Bourque, who’s probably hanging around somewhere semidrunk and sounding paranoid, and then Kevin will tell me how naive I am, and, at a minimum, Cliff Bourque will be hassled, and Cambridge might even have to send him back to New Hampshire. ‘Merry Christmas, Cliff! Sorry about your dog, and, by the way, thanks for almost getting run over to save mine.’ ”
As I’d been talking, I’d been debating the pros and cons of telling Steve about that ridiculous and sinister business of the lilac bush. It now seemed less silly and more menacing than it had, but I felt no sense of personal threat. Cliff Bourque had followed Lee Miner that night; he’d tracked his prey. Maybe Bourque had even been surprised that the trail led to my party, the party he’d decided not to attend. It seemed clear to me that Cliff Bourque meant me no harm at all, but Steve might not agree. I decided not to mention the episode.
“Could be we’re giving him too much credit,” Steve said.
I was startled. “Cliff Bourque?”
“Miner. He wrapped everything up tight here, yeah, but we can’t be positive there’s nothing in those records, up there.”
“So let’s call and find out. Or at least let’s try. We don’t even know if they’re open today.”
Lorraine, who administers these kinds of things for Steve, had declared the day before Christmas a holiday. Steve was on call, and Miner was due to take over later, in the early evening, when Steve and I were leaving for Owls Head, or that’s what Lorraine had decided.
“No,” I added. “Even if they are, call Geri Driscoll. It’ll be quicker. Tell her in confidence that you found some odd transactions that started after Miner got here. Tell her that you don’t know what’s going on, but would she look at their records? Starting with when Oscar disappeared, three weeks ago, whenever. And Steve? Get her to look at everything, not just cash payments. Make sure she checks to see if anyone’s supposed to have brought in an animal that had already died. Or if another animal died around that time.”
“She won’t—”
“Steve, take it from me. She’ll do anything you ask her. If I call, she won’t even remember who I am.”
I watched and listened while he was on the phone. He got the story out okay. After that, she did most of the talking. He turned unbelievably red.
He hung up and said, “That woman is disgusting.”
“Yeah. She’s also kind of sad, but in s
ort of an evil way, if you ask me. She says that if Patterson doesn’t show up soon, she’s getting an abortion, just to spite him. It’s so … it’s so coldhearted. If I didn’t …”
“What?”
“You know, Steve, Geri was practically there that night. Their house, hers and Patterson’s, is right near the animal hospital. Also—”
“Yeah?”
“What makes her so sure that Patterson’s alive?”
“Wishful thinking,” Steve said.
“Maybe. Anyway, she’ll look?”
He nodded. “She’ll call back.”
The phone rang a few minutes later, but the call was from Steve’s answering service. After a few words of instruction to be relayed to an owner, he started to bolt out the door, came to a halt, and said, “Holly?”
“Yeah?”
“If Brenner shows up, don’t open the door. Don’t let him in.”
“Steve, he doesn’t even know my real name, never mind where I live.”
“People know you,” he said. “You’re not hard to find. All he’d have to do would be to ask around.”
“I’m not afraid of Brenner,” I said defiantly.
“I know. That’s what scares me. Don’t open the door.”
After Steve left, I felt at loose ends. Regardless of what happened, including whatever I did, it seemed unlikely that Steve would go to Maine with me for Christmas. He obviously couldn’t leave Lee Miner in charge of his practice, and he’d never find someone else on a few hours’ notice. In other circumstances, the dogs and I would have gone by ourselves, but how could we? Steve and I hadn’t really reached any decision about what to do. We hadn’t heard from Geri Driscoll. Lee Miner was probably eating a late breakfast in Steve’s kitchen over the clinic or walking the muzzled Willie, with Cliff Bourque presumably still tracking him.
If you don’t have a dog, what do you do when you don’t know what to do? To avoid missing Geri Driscoll’s call, I propped open the door to the side yard and went out there to work the dogs. With Kimi, I didn’t do a run-through, but concentrated on getting her sits absolutely straight in front and at heel position, speeding up her drop, and keeping her prancing with me instead of lagging on her about-turns. Those details are where you lose points, of course. Before long, my hands were icy and raw. When I train with food, I want control over exactly when I pop it in the dog’s mouth, and I avoid wearing gloves. A winter-long case of chapped hands is one of only two disadvantages of training with food. The other is the mess you find in your washer and dryer when you forget to empty your pockets.